#drawing per month obligation filled... Time to game

[epidaleacalamita]

alright, twofer complete, i can say i drew something every month of this year. not a lot of somethings, and not very impressive somethings, but something. yay! next year i. would like to draw more stuff with backgrounds and mess with stuff i don't have a grip on yet and get back out of the "characters standing with no background" regression i went into this year. but whether or not i actually do any of that boils down to how well i can control myself and not waste all my time ever on video games. we'll see

ZAFNI TOMOIRAZH

An information broker active in the Alfilian Union. Growing up during the Second Corporate War and the subsequent period of reconstruction, the young Zafni took a keen interest in the complicated relationship between the government, the corporations, and the mercenaries caught in the middle. It was this desire for understanding that led her to the business of secrets- first as a client, then an apprentice. Now, she commands a comprehensive intelligence-gathering apparatus that not only spans all of Union territory but extends its roaming tendrils into foreign lands. This line of work has naturally made her no small number of enemies, but all the sensitive information she's collected serves as more than enough leverage to ensure that nobody strikes at her for fear of retaliation.

SYZRYN

Zafni's close friend, confidant, and bodyguard. Formerly a student at the prestigious Thaumatic Academy of Trisme, they left the academy- and Trisme entirely- after a catastrophic accident during an experiment killed several of their fellow researchers and transmuted part of their body into crystal. Syzryn met and befriended Zafni entirely by happenstance not long after they arrived in Alfilia West, and was entirely unaware of her line of work until she revealed it to them. After they had practiced enough to achieve fine control of their crystallized arm, Zafni offered them work as her assistant, and the two have been by each others' side ever since.

[chenyinuo-fable]

A Child’s Affair With a Monster

I sought my mother’s affection when I was younger.  She was a writer dedicated to her craft, so she spent most of her time holed up in her study, writing from daybreak till twilight.  Most of the time when she left her study, it was out of obligation or necessity.  Maybe she needed to change her clothes, or my father needed her to join him for dinner with his colleagues.  She was supposed to be a constant presence in the house, yet it felt like she wasn’t there at all. 

There were a few times she would come out and visit me.  I was happy to see her, and thought I hadn’t noticed when I was younger, she always had a strained smile on her face.  Now that I think about it, I wonder if it was because it was obvious that I was yearning for her love. My father, who undoubtedly noticed, tried to fill my emptiness by spending his days off with me.  I was grateful, but there were times where I just wanted my mother’s attention. I would throw tantrums over it, but my father wouldn’t do anything about it outside of apologizing.  It was painful and cruel to a child. 

Eventually, I stopped caring for my mother’s love.  When it began, I’m not too sure, but it was pointless to yearn for the maternal love that I clearly would never receive.  I wondered if my mother noticed this as well, because she stopped visiting me.  Our time together lessened even more, and soon, the only time I saw her face was at the occasional meal. 

On my fifteenth birthday, she appeared at my party.  It was a strange sight, to see her holding my father’s hand as they stepped out into the room. At that point, I hadn’t seen her for over a month.  She appeared smaller than ever, and her smile was strained.  Did Father force her to come?  That was the only reason I could think of, since she rarely appeared in these types of events. 

The birthday present I received from her on that day wasn’t a novel, like I had initially expected.  Rather, it was a phone with a single app on it.  A puzzle game—something that I enjoyed occasionally while I was taking a break from my studies.  I accepted it with a simple “thank you,” and she disappeared into the darkness.  Once the gift was in my hands, her facial expression had softened.  It only lasted a fraction of a second, but for the young me who dedicated all of my attention to the few moments I had spent with my mother, I noticed. My friends crowded all around me to see what I had gotten from my elusive mother.  I held the box tightly in my grasp—I stopped caring about her—I should’ve stopped caring about her. 

The game was fairly simple.  It was sort of like a jigsaw puzzle combined with a coloring book. You fit in pieces of the drawing in order to create a painting, and with each painting, a sentence came with it.  There were thousands of puzzles, 3,571 to be exact.  I didn’t really know what got me to spend nearly a decade on this app.  

You can stop playing this game whenever you feel like it, was the first thing I saw when I clicked on the app for the first time.  I snorted, wasn’t that the whole point of games?  To use it for entertainment. There was no point in playing a game if you didn’t enjoy it anymore.  I disregarded the message and went to click on the first puzzle. 

Upon completion, I received a congratulatory message from the game, along with my first sentence: A monster cradled a child in its arms for the first time that evening.

Then, I completed one puzzle per day.  Soon enough, one completed puzzle became ten, and then thirty, and then one hundred, and so on, until I reached three thousand five hundred seventy-one puzzles.  Each sentence, which had been stored in a gallery, had been a piece of a novel.  A novel that my mother specifically created for me.  A novel about a monster and a child. 

The monster didn’t understand the real concept of love. 

My mother was a woman who could only watch people experience life from afar.  She described herself as someone who constantly lived in a third person point of view.  Rather than a character, she was a narrator, and in order to keep herself sane, she threw herself into writing.  In the few moments she didn’t feel dissociated with the world, she would come out and visit me, but her guilt would overflow whenever she saw me.  The guilt of not being able to be a good mother—of not being a functioning human.  How could she give birth to a child if she couldn’t care for them?  The life she brought into this world was needlessly suffering because of her shortcomings.  While blaming herself, she would try to keep a smile on her face for her child.  At the very least, she had to do that. 

Father could only take my hand as he watched Mother attempt to regain her humanity.  He attempted to pull her out of the study, away from her pen and paper, and help her integrate a sense of reality into her mind through dinners and meetings.  It would work temporarily, but nothing lasted.  The longest she’s felt real was while she was pregnant with their child—me. 

The monster adored the child in its womb.  She would spend countless hours just holding her stomach, humming softly and lovingly.

The sense of un-belonging returned soon after she gave birth to the child, as if her role was over, and she had to return backstage.  Father thought that her depersonalization got worse after a child and feared another child would be devastating for Mother.  That’s why they didn’t have another child despite our relative’s wishes.  Father never blamed me for my mother’s issues, and I never caught on to his fear. 

This isn’t an excuse for my neglect towards you, but I wished to tell you the reason why.  

My parents loved me.

You are my priceless child.

“Mother, can I read another one of your novels?” 

[nelllraiser]

when you wake | cutler, dakota, & nell

LOCATION: the catacombs. PARTIES: @clarkesconvenience, dakota, & @nelllraiser. SUMMARY: the key to waking the dreamers is revealed, but cutler, dakota, and nell are unlikely to succeed without first giving something up of their own.  CONTAINS: sibling death, torture mention, self-harm, gore

Cutler’s hands were aching. It had started in the morning as a dull, persistent twinge between the joints and had only intensified as the day went on, morphing into a sharp pain. It refused to leave with knuckle cracking and finger-splayed stretches, tendons only seeming to tighten and pull the bones of his fingers further into themselves. The half dozen advil hadn't helped, nor had the stiff drink he had downed before taking to the crisp winter air as a last resort. 

He hadn’t intended to go to the catacombs. In fact, he would normally avoid the labyrinthine stone pathway system that ran below the city at all costs. It was for this reason that he was shocked to find himself standing on the stairs at the entrance, fire licking up his hands as he descended. He grimaced as he crossed the threshold of the stone entrance, puffs of dirt and dust settling around his feet. The pain rippled across the back of his hands, as if leading him forward. 

“Bad idea.” He said aloud, even as his feet took him further into the depths. As if in response, the muscles in his hands spasmed painfully. Pulsing deep below the criss crossed lines of his palms was the knowledge that the cause of this sudden affliction was ahead of him, not behind. “Guess we’re doing this.” He spoke into the cool shadows, hoping no one was there to hear it.

Dakota had been having dreams for weeks now – although she didn’t know if they were just part of some bizarre fantasy slipping out in her slumber or if they were truly nightmares. Regardless, each time she laid down or rested in the slightest, she saw fleeting images of a cave-like place, low lighting, darkness… All flashing before her eyes too quickly for her to make too much sense of it all, but each time she woke up she comforted herself with a cigarette and a mug filled with coffee. Probably wasn’t the best idea for someone who, as of late, kept having a racing heart and acid reflux. But none of that really mattered, because at present she was standing at the entrance of a place she’d never been before – a place she was pretty sure she hadn’t ever noticed on a map of White Crest. 

Her memory was… Fuzzy, at best. She remembered grabbing a jacket, but not getting out of bed. She remembered moving through the underbrush in the middle of the night, and she remembered thinking it was strange that she was walking through tree branches in the darkness, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember walking out the front door. What scared her, though – aside from not being able to recall how she got to where she was standing – was that she didn’t even know why she stood at an entrance to what she could only assume were the catacombs of White Crest. You can wake up any time now, you know. But to her horror, she realized that perhaps she wasn’t dreaming, because she’d heard a voice that helped to snap  her back into reality, not too far away, amidst the shadows in the night. What the hell? “…Doing what?” 

The smell of blood was what Nell awoke to, though she couldn’t be all that sure of the difference between the real world and unconsciousness when White Crest had begun it’s steady descent into the collected subconscious of its citizens. Had she even been asleep when the tangy and salty scent of blood had alerted her? Ever since people had been falling into unwilling and unwelcome slumbers, the witch had done her best to sleep as little as possible, not wanting to be the next victim in a string of people that were something deeper than comatose. It wasn’t all that hard considering the fact that sleep hadn’t been easy since May of last year, the month that her sister had been struck down before her very eyes in Nell’s stead. But Nell couldn’t afford to fall into a sleep that she wouldn’t awake from. There were far too many things in her life that needed constant attention, obligations that refused to be silent in the form of a demon cult needing downing, a family whose father had been eaten by a demon shark, and her summoning magic that seemed to have grown a mind of its own at times. 

While she blinked bleary eyes open wider, her heart began to race, Nell’s mind picking up pace to match the beating in her chest as she recalled the last time she’d risen to the smell of blood. It had been the sticky redness of her sister’s beheading that had covered her face, arms, legs— and panic rose in her chest while she wondered if she’d soon find Bea’s headless body on the floor next to her. Thankfully there was no decapitated body in sight, though Nell couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness the scent of blood was bringing to her head. Where was it coming from? There was something deeper in her gut, a pulling and yearning that seemed to yell until she was forced to listen, and follow the metallic smell of blood. She walked until she came upon a familiar sight, the very entrance she and her sisters had used when they’d hunted Montgomery, Bea’s killer, down into the catacombs, capturing and torturing him so that they might earn their final retribution. She hadn’t dove back into the catacombs shadowy bowels since that day, almost worried that if Montgomery had a ghost, it would be down there in the belly of the town, still being digested, not yet truly gone. Was he the one who had brought her here? 

Nell didn’t know how long she tread the empty halls of the cavernous catacombs before hearing a voice, and in an instant she was drawing a knife from its hiding place, brandishing it before her. Following the sound, it didn’t take long until she found the source of it— a man who looked as lost as a lamb without it’s shepherd, and the woman she’d traded fierce words with outside The Stacked Deck. “Were you both brought here too?” Nell asked, familiar enough with mysticism by now to recognize that no natural force had placed her here. Was it the same for them? The tail end of her words was caught up in the howl of a wolf, a long and mournful sound that turned her head down the most narrow tunnel to the left of the party. “Did you hear that?”

“Oh, fuck. Jesus.” Cutler’s knees bent instinctively and his entire body lowered into a defensive stance at the reply in the darkness. It took him a moment to recover from the shock, leg still bobbing shakily with hopped-up nerves, even as the decidedly not-scary woman became visible in the darkness. Smooth, Cut. “Going into the creepy catacombs alone. Suppose this solves half that problem. I’m Cutler.” He began to lift his hand to shake and immediately dropped it again as his knuckles screamed and scraped against themselves. He tried on a reassuring smile instead, manifesting as more of a pained wince. 

It was then that a second voice breached the dim, settling heavy in the mildewed corners and damp brick. Anxiety and tender pain fluttered in his chest. “Brought here? I wouldn’t say-” A dry cough stuck in his throat, rasping behind his words and cutting off the statement that he didn’t quite believe. “Were you?” His hands clenched and unclenched at his side nervously as he fumbled for a way to lighten the conversation. “This isn’t how I usually meet people, but if this is the new spot maybe I should come down here more often.”

Dakota vaguely remembered him, but everything around her seemed like a distant memory at the moment. Was it that online forum? Did she see him at a grocery store? It was starting to irritate her just how confused she felt. “Cutler,” she heard herself say, though her gaze drifted more so back to the catacombs. “Do you know why –” she trailed off, mostly due to the fact that yet another voice was thrown into the mix. However, this girl was more than just a vague memory – she was more than even just familiar, because she was that girl from The Stacked Deck who burst through her poker game, though she never caught her name. The two exchanged words, something about being “brought” here. That was enough to finally snap her out of her dream-like trance.

“I was, yeah. I don’t remember getting out of bed. I don’t remember walking out the door. But somehow I’m standing here in the middle of the night with you fine people—” she paused to toss Nell a look. She wasn’t still angry about The Stacked Deck… per se. A howl in the distance, though, did in fact shut Dakota up quite quickly. Someone had told her to watch out for wolves. “Does anyone know why the hell we’re here?”

Nell’s dagger had dropped to her side into a more relaxed position, though she made no move to stow the weapon back from whence it had come. Giving the man named Cutler a nod, her lips pursed while she took in her surroundings, trying to remember how long she’d already been walking the craggy walls of the catacombs. Ten minutes? Thirty? A few hours, maybe? She couldn’t remember, and that only added to the stone of dread pooling in her gut, an unsteadiness that always formed these days whenever she could feel control slipping through her fingers. “I’m Nell,” she told the man before narrowing her eyes towards the other woman, barely resisting the urge to offer more sharp words. But she could feel that there were more important things at hand than a petty feud over some flipped tables and spilled cards. “You didn’t say your name.” By the way the dark-haired woman cut her words in the midst of another howl, Nell took it as confirmation that she wasn’t the only one hearing things. “I don’t know- but it’s probably for some bullshit reason.” That’s what had happened at the lake all those months ago, wasn’t it? People had come to Nell for the demon banishing ceremony, pulled by some otherworldly force to the right place at the right time. Another call of the wolf had Nell staring down the tunnel in question, a desperate need to answer it seeming to pull her towards it. “I think...we should follow that howl, though. Do you feel it?” The need that was seated in her mind’s eye, like an itch she couldn’t quite reach.

There was something in the air between the two women. Cutler was scared, not stupid. The tension was thick, billowing around hanging spider web scraps and floating dust specks. He could cut it with a knife. That is, if his quivering hands could even hold one in their current state. As Nell spoke, his fingers were reaching down the hallway even as his mouth protested. “Follow it?” His voice was high in his register, squeakier than it had been in several years. 

Something in him shifted as the young woman’s voice spoke once more. Calmer than she had any right to be. Grounding him. Can you feel it? Whatever “it” was throbbed in his hands and tugged at his gut, pulling him forward. “Yeah.” He found himself saying, “I can.” He turned back, making eye contact with both of his newfound companions. “We don’t have a choice, do we?”

By the second howl, Dakota couldn’t have given a rat’s ass about exchanging names and pleasantries, because she was about ready to turn around and head home. But… The moment she thought about retreating, there was a sickening, sinking feeling in her gut that made her stay. She felt it in her bones, she felt it in her chest – a knot tying itself tighter in her stomach that pleaded only one request: stay. “Dakota,” she muttered a few moments later, eyes looking askance towards the entrance of the catacombs. She wasn’t sure what the hell was about to be down there, but she was sure as shit not about to risk her life for some adventure.

… Except that she was, because a third howl began to make her think that being inside the catacombs was a lot safer than being out here. “We don’t. I feel it, too – whatever ‘it’ is. Let’s just.. Follow the howl and hope we don’t end up fucking mauled.”

Nell knew that a wolf howl was more often dangerous than not in a town like White Crest, a place so steeped in the supernatural that it had almost become...natural. She couldn’t begin to explain it, just as she couldn’t entirely explain why she’d come here in the first place, but the howl of the wolf didn’t seem threatening. It was a long, searching sound, as if calling out to someone for help. The subject of whether or not they had a choice was a touchy one for Nell, always balking at being forced into anything, but she couldn't’ help but feel that Cutler’s words were true. Steeling her shoulders into a determined and hard stance, she took the little height she possessed and made the most of it as she began to lead that way into the tunnel, doing her best to ignore all former thoughts of Montgomery as she began to descend. “Let’s get going, then.” While she walked the path, the scent of blood grew stronger, so much so that she swore she could nearly taste it on her tongue, thick and sharp. All the while the wolf’s howls led the way, showing which path to take when they came to forks or a circle of tunnels. “I think we’re almost there.” She could feel the magic in the air now, a shimmering that she’d known since a young age that was shining brighter in her head the closer they got.

Cutler fell in step behind the girl in front of him instinctively. She operated with a natural leadership and seemed to possess some hidden knowledge as she looked around the tunnels where he only saw shadowy recesses in grimy brick. In the low light, he spread his hands in front of him, looking for some medical explanation for the tingly-sharp pain that only grew stronger the deeper they went. At the back of his tongue, the familiar, coppery taste of blood brought back memories of the surgeries he had performed with these same hands; once valuable enough to be insured, now primarily used for punching prices behind a cash register. “Almost where?” He had almost run into Nell when she stopped, and scuffled backward a few steps. He looked to his left, making sure Dakota was with them. Whatever was around the sharp bend ahead, he didn’t want to face it alone. 

The thick, cloying scent of blood hit him like a wall, meaty and organic. Blinding pain seared through his hands and he expelled a soft sound, halfway between a moan and a cry. His eyes screwed shut instinctively, willing the static from the edges of his vision. “You guys don’t feel that?” He stared at his feet, sharp, jagged breaths hampering his attempts to get the words out. “Tell me you feel that.”

As they submerged themselves deeper into the damp, dank tunnel, Dakota could smell the presence of some sort of blood – fresh, most likely. It reminded her of hunting with her uncle when she was a kid – that smell of blood, human or animal, was almost universal.. And it was present down in the halls of the tomb that they walked. The phrase almost there was something she didn’t want to hear, but Cutler summed it up when he’d asked the question she was already forming in her own mind – almost where? 

The deeper they went, the stronger the scent grew – like a thick curtain or a shroud hanging around the three of them, metallic in its fragrance. Deeper into the tomb they walked, and the stronger it grew. Dakota’s heart hammered in her chest, not knowing exactly what lay ahead for them. Cutler had said something, and though she was fit to answer, she caught a glimpse of an object on the floor, farther ahead than she cared to go, that seemed to resemble something far too close to human remains.

“Hey, guys…? What the fuck is that?” 

Cutler remained bent over, hands on knees. “No.” The word tumbled out of his mouth, quietly and aimed at the floor. He barely heard it himself over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Dakota was speaking, Nell was ahead, but his gaze remained trained steadfast on the floor below him and the centuries of dirt and whatever else filled the gaps between the ancient brickwork below them. 

When he finally summoned the courage to stand back up, both of the women were looking at something ahead of them. It was dark, and he didn’t have his glasses on him, but he knew what it was, the same way he had known to come to the catacombs in the first place. What little light there was in the tunnels bounced off pale skin in the shadows. “It’s a-” Cadaver was the word at the front of his mind; the only other time he had been privy to the sickly white tones of bloodless flesh. “-a body. I think. Or part of one.” He drew air into his chest, forcing it to expand and contract, reminding himself to breathe. He could handle this. He’d seen dead bodies, operated on them. This was nothing he hadn’t faced before.

And then it moved. It jumped forward, movements quick and erratic. Spidery limbs crawled across the floor as it came into focus in sharp terror under the lamp light. It was a hand, isolated from the rest of its body, moving independently with jerky, inhuman motions. Cutler was already reaching for the Swiss army knife in his pocket; numb, throbbing fingers jammed themselves into his too-small jean pockets. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He barely managed to retrieve the multitool in time to stab the knife squarely into the hand in front of him. As it collapsed to the ground, he looked around frantically. “There’s got to be two, right? Two of them?” 

A soft scraping below him snapped his gaze back to the floor. It was moving. Again. 

Somehow Nell had walked right past the hand that had scuttled towards Cutler, and his string of curses made her head turn backwards over her shoulder, a frown of concern firmly in place. How the hell had she missed a living hand? Either her senses were growing duller, or the thing hadn’t spawned until after she’d passed it. Whatever the answer may be, the appendage certainly shouldn’t have been inching all over the ground like some fleshy crab. At least Cutler had managed to stab the hand, though it soon became apparent that the abandoned body part had made a steady and full recovery, dancing around the man’s feet as if it were auditioning for some grotesque rendition of The Addams family and the role of ‘Thing���. “Two would make sense.” After all, hands came in pairs, didn’t they? “So where the hell is the other one?” she muttered, sharp eyes scanning the shadows that seemed to be looming closer by the second as the walls of catacombs blurred and twisted into shapes she could almost make sense of. Squinting into the darkness, she searched for movement that she could track and caught a glint of silver instead. The moment she took notice of the abnormality, an enormous injection needle shot through the darkness, the three foot long steel tip of it aiming for Nell with deadly accuracy. “Holy shit!” she called out as she rolled and dodged, never having been a fan of any shot, let alone one that looked as if it’d been created for giants. 

Quick movements caught her attention, but Dakota wanted to haul ass in the opposite direction the moment she saw a fucking hand scurrying near their feet, like some sort of spider. Moments ago she was trying to decide if she were in a dream or walking along in the realm of reality, and now she was wishing to open her eyes and see that this was all an illusion. Cutler’s curses and quickness, though, reassured her that this wasn’t something she was going to wake up from anytime soon. “Stab it again!” Dakota exclaimed, hopping on the bandwagon of belief that there must be a second one walking around – another hand that needed to be destroyed. 

Her eyes searched the darkness hurriedly, hoping it would appear out of the blue so that she could stomp on the damned thing and get this hellish night over with. However, that wasn’t the case. Nell’s scream was a distant cry at this point – she’d felt herself wander into a spiderweb of some sort while looking for the other hand. Instantly she began to brush off, muttering little curses to herself, anxious hands running over her limbs. She couldn’t see a thing, but it was like she felt them all over. “Fucking Christ!” she shouted in disgust, obsessively sweeping her hands over herself only to stumble over another object on the floor – the second hand? -- hitting the ground with a thud.

To Dakota’s absolute horror, in the dimness of the catacombs she saw what looked like hundreds of spiders crawling towards her, some small and some large, others akin to tarantula size while some were beastly, at least as large as a dog with legs as long as she was tall. Letting out a string of curses – “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” – along with a cry of disgust as the small arachnids crawled over her legs. Finally, she had managed to scramble herself to her feet, now noticing the giant needle as the swarm of spiders seemed to follow every which way she ventured. She didn’t know how these nightmarish visions were spawning, but she had one idea that might put an end to them.

“Cutler, stab the goddamned hand!”

Cutler didn’t see the needle, or the spiders, or the fear in his companions’ eyes. He didn’t hear the persistent calling of his name over the chaos. He saw the scene as if from outside himself. Disaster arced outward, nightmare spawn barreling toward him and the hand at ground zero. The hand twitched, rising from the floor on clicking joints and he just stared, glassy eyed. This isn’t real. This can’t be real. 

The pain in his own hands brought him back to his body with a sickening jolt. Hot saliva pooled at the back of his tongue and pearls of sweat began to dampen his collar. The pain had changed. What was now a dull throb became a stabbing agony; converging at the centre of his palms where his life and love lines intersected. He knew what he had to do. The round, clean-cut fingernails of his left hand scraped nervously at the faux-mahogany handle of his multi-tool for a moment, seemingly impervious to the events unfolding around him. A series of moments flashed before his eyes. His first surgery in the OR. His last one. The good, the bad, and the ugly: all perpetrated with these hands. 

When the blade of his knife pierced the skin of his palm, there was no hesitation. It was a smooth cut. His professors would have been proud. An excruciating scream filled the tunnel. At first, he thought it was coming from him, but his teeth were clenched together over his locked jaw. Below him, an identical wound had appeared on the pale hand on the floor, viscous liquid seeping from it and into the sandy tile below. 

“I got it.” The words were spoken at regular volume, overwhelmed the shrieking from the hand below. The same inherent knowledge that had led him here told him it wasn’t long for this world. “I got it.” He said again, louder this time. Stronger. One down, one to go. 

The moment Cutler made his incisions was the same instant the enormous needle faltered mid-trajectory, dropping to the ground as if it too had been defeated. It gave a long enough pause for Nell to look past her attempted impaling for a moment to see the scene that lay before Cutler. His blood dripping from one hand onto the one below him, the ruby red droplets staining its ghastly skin red. Of course. Nell had been foolish not to realize it earlier. Between the plethora of magic swirling in the air, and the blood that the hand had demanded, it was becoming clearer by the second exactly what it was that was going on here. “It wants a sacrifice,” she said slowly, knowingly as she continued to glance warily towards the giant needle that lay still on the catacomb floor. “It needs payment in exchange for…” In exchange for what? They still didn’t have the faintest idea of what it was they were trying to accomplish here beyond making sure they didn’t get murdered by their worst nightmares. Suddenly, a voice seemed the echo through the cavern, raw and rough but full of determination and confidence. “We need to get the parts to the pedestal. We need to use the rest of our energy to get these parts to the real world. Like the skeleton said...they need to be made real so that they can be destroyed.”

Make them real so they can be destroyed. Based on the nightmare-ish visions they were experiencing and the voice’s mentions of the ‘real world’, Nell could only guess as to why the parts had to be done away with. This was what needed to be done to bring back those that had fallen prey to whatever sleeping curse had taken White Crest as its prisoner. Those like...Bex? Iron determination was quick to find its way back into Nell’s gaze as she thought of her slumbering pupil, an innocent girl caught between things she didn’t yet understand along with the rest of the town. “Where’s the other fucking hand?” she hissed, intent on stabbing the thing herself if she could find it. She’d do whatever it took to ensure her town was happy, that her little witch was safe. But whatever antidote Cutler had worked seemed to be wearing off, the needle rattling from its resting place to rise once more while the other hand roamed free. “Find the damn hand!” Nell yelled as she dodged another stab of the needle, narrowly escaping impalement. 

Amidst the darkness scattered hundreds of spiders, all that seemed on a manhunt for Dakota. The beastly ones reared up on hind legs, towering over her, latching on to her fear of them as if they fed off of it, the smaller ones closing in while crimson red dripped from Cutler’s palm to the single hand below. Sacrifice. The word rang in her ears as she dodged the spiders, though the moment his blood dripped they held themselves at bay, a few vanishing into thin air. Just that the few drops weren’t enough, apparently, because as the needle trying to impale Nell began to bring itself to life once again, aiming straight for her. 

All she knew was that if they didn’t find the other hand, and quick, she’d run out of energy and succumb to being eaten alive by a bunch of snarling tarantulas and Nell would be given a hefty dose of dead, God only knowing what would happen to Cutler. Dakota, though still panicked by both the spiders she was frantically kicking away from herself, hoping against hope the giant ones, as well as the giant needle chasing Nell, would vanish the moment Cutler destroyed the hands. It was painfully clear, though, that they all only had one option: face their manifested fears. You can do this. They’re just spiders. It’s just a dream. 

The spiders continued to rear up on hind legs, Dakota continually dodging left and right in order to miss the others when she noticed something large and ghastly scurrying through once again. The same object she must have tripped on in the first place. The second hand.  Adrenaline flooded her veins, knowing damn well that if she didn’t make her next move and follow that hand, the risk of all three of them not making it out of the catacombs alive would be much higher than she cared to gamble for. They’re just spiders. It’s just a dream. 

Taking a few steps back, Dakota braced herself before sprinting forward, dropping her right knee just in time to slide across the floor, right between the legs of the beast before her, only to chase down the hand she’d spotted moments before. “There!” she tried desperately to communicate with the others as the swarm of spiders began their chase, the hand speeding between Cutler’s legs and hoping to retreat to safety. “Do something!”

Cutler wasn’t worried about the other hand. The moment that Nell had said the word sacrifice, he had understood that proximity wasn’t the issue. It was the sacrifice in the action. The final relinquishing of his surgical career in a single choice, offered up to the dark mirror of what were once his most valuable assets. He was surprised to find that he felt lighter knowing he would never again hold someone’s life in his hands. Dark life force seeped down the grooves in his skin, tiny rivers running back to the sea. At this rate, he may never hold anything at all.

The tendons in his hand jumped and rippled around the wound. He looked at it clinically, like the cutaway diagrams in his anatomy textbooks, bridging the gap between his limbs and what every person was underneath. Meat. Flesh. As corporeal and precariously mortal as any other animal. Bone, muscle, and tendon scraped together as he switched the knife to his still-bleeding hand. Strangely, he felt no pain. It was what allowed him to repeat the action once more, stabbing the blade into his uninjured palm. Another scream from below him: the second hand meeting its end.

At once, sights and sounds began to seep back into his peripheral. Yelling from his companions, impossible visuals bombarding him. The hands were gone, but this was far from over. “We have to move.” Ahead of them, he felt the pull of a greater force drawing them forward. He had just made the greatest sacrifice of his life, and it was only a taste of what was to come. An appetizer for the great, slavering hunger that was closing its’ jaws around them. “Now. We have to move, now. I’ll cover you. Run.” 

Dakota didn’t know Cutler. His aspirations, his dreams, his pain, his guilt – it was all lost on her, but it didn’t take much to realize that what he’d just done was the sacrifice of his life. She stopped running from the spiders long enough to look upon the scene in both awe and admiration. There wasn’t time to unpack that, though, because while the bloodthirsty needle had dissolved into thin air and the crawlers she’d been dodging had suddenly vanished, she felt the pull – a foreboding sense of ruin lying ahead. We have to move, now.

Only one word made sense to her: run. It was something she’d done her whole life – something she practiced often and knew all too intimately how to do. It was a knee-jerk reaction that came with a side of always having an escape route in her back pocket. Dakota was hesitant about a lot of things in life, but one thing she’d never think twice about was disappearing without a trace… Until now. Breaking into a sprint, she knew there were more things than just two hands to destroy, and the faster they could find them, the faster she could retreat back to safety, burrow herself back into her own little world where shit like this could only ever exist in horror films. 

Her gut was never to be trusted, but something told her to hang a left as she was running through the tunnels, splotches of red catching her eyes, beckoning her to follow. The sense that she was growing closer grew stronger, her heart pounding wildly in her chest, blood rushing in her ears. She could feel it like it was burning a hole straight through her, whatever this force wanted her to find just at her fingertips, so close she could almost taste it – a few more feet and… Dakota slowed to a stop, the splotches of blood she’d been following leading her to this: 

A still beating heart lying balefully at her feet. 

Nell couldn’t begin to guess at what exactly Cutler had given up. After all, she’d only met the man some twenty minutes ago. Nevertheless it was apparent that his sacrifice had been more than enough, the stabbing of his hands paying the debt that had been demanded. Once they were out of here, she’d ask to take a look at his hands. Healing wasn’t her forte, but she could do enough to at least stop the bleeding and make sure he didn’t keel over from blood loss. She would have taken a look at his injuries now if another organ hadn’t spawned in the midst of them, the thumping of the bloody organ louder than any tell-tale heartbeat the witch had heard before. It seemed to bounce off the walls of the catacombs, until it echoed in her ears, drowning out her own thoughts as she watched Dakota approach the heart. 

Nell took a confident step in the direction of the heart, only to be met with iron bars shooting up from the ground mere inches from her nose. The message was clear enough. This was Dakota’s sacrifice to make. “Looks like it’s your turn,” she said none too begrudgingly, knowing her time would most likely be coming sooner rather than later. “It’s your sacrifice to make now.” As soon as she’d said the words, the bars that had kept her from the heart began to move towards her, as if trying to pin her against the rock of the catacombs. Taking a stuttering step back, Nell tried to quell the anxiety that was pooling in her chest as imprisonment looked unavoidable. This was too much like the underground jail of the Ring, and the place she’d been trapped for an entire week, continuously drained of her magic and barely fed until she’d finally managed to break free. The only thing it was missing was… Before she could even finish the thought a familiar voice was worming its way into her ear, silky, smooth, and commanding as Jax’s silver tongue made its demands. “Fuck off,” she growled despite knowing the man was dead, rising dread making it difficult to remind herself of logic.

The wet pumping of the heart matched the rapid thrum of Cutler’s own in his ears. Thud-thud. Steel bars shot up between himself and Nell. Thud-thud. The sharp smell of hospital antiseptic at the back of his throat. Thud-thud. The cracking of whisky over ice. Thud-thud. The cavernous walls of the catacombs swam under half closed lids as his brows furrowed together. Thud-thud. Around his neck, the crinkly plastic collar of a surgery gown began to tighten. 

Drawstring dug into the jumping tendons leading to his collarbone as he scrabbled at his jugular with red-ringed fingernails. With each breath he took, the string tightened further. His lungs burned with the effort of pulling air into them; black constellations spotting across his vision. Desperately, he kicked forward. The rubber sole of his work boots connected hard with the bars in front of him, sending reverberating shockwaves up his knee. 

“It’s not real!” The words hissed through his bared teeth as he lifted a knee once more. “Close your eyes if you have to, Nell! None of it is real!” This time, he felt the bar give under his foot just a little. On the third kick it bent inward with a dull clang and he felt the pressure on his neck release all at once at the string snapped. Coughs ripped painfully through him as he leaned against the bars. He thrust an arm through the newly widened gap, blood-slicked hand reaching for the young woman inside. “See this? Flesh and blood.” His voice was smoky and hoarse. “I’m as real as it gets. Climb through.” 

Something was wrong. It had started small, a little irritation, a headache beginning to form just behind her eyes. But Kevin had not had a headache in over a thousand years. She had felt them before, the dreamers, poking and prodding and sticking their minds where they didn’t belong. At the moment, she had paid it little mind. There was a spell to weave and a town in desperate need of dreams. But those pesky dreamers kept poking and prodding, meddling and touching. They scraped inside her chest and dug about inside her mind and spread a dreadful itch down her arms. They meant to tear her apart. Still, there was only so much there could do. Then she felt it. White hot, burning through her hands. Her scream tore through the air, a thunderclap echoing. Even as her fingers cracked and shriveled, she sought the source. There. The catacombs.

Kevin appeared with a burning flash of light. The air around her sizzled, her eyes blazing as she searched for the meddlers. Ah. There. Her eyes burned as she lifted a broken, burnt hand. The fingers were charred, black like charcoal creeping up her arm. “You. You will stop. Dream now, and forever more.” Her hands may have been ruined, but some of her power remained. It took only a jerk of her head to throw Dakota against the wall, leaving her unconscious, dreaming sweetly on the floor. She turned slowly toward the other two. “And you. Unless you wish to join her, you will leave. You will go and forget all that has transpired. I will not tell you again.”

“I know- I know!” Nell gasped as the bars scraped against her ribs while she grabbed hold of Cutler’s wrist, trying to avoid the self-sustained injury of his hands while he helped pull her out of the metal maw of the jail cell. “Thank you,” she breathed in gratitude. But just because things weren’t real didn’t mean that they didn’t set her heart to pounding. Her brain knew that the voice of Jax tickling her mind couldn’t be possible, but the rest of her body didn’t seem to understand, responding with rampant fight or flight to the sound of a man who’d cause her and Remmy unmeasurable despair. Thankfully— she’d always been the one to choose to fight. And it seemed the world had answered that need with a clear target in the form of the woman who’d appeared before her and Cutler, sending Dakota flying. “Shit,” the witch cursed underneath her breath, hoping Dakota was alright but knowing this wasn’t the time to check on the woman. “You’re the one doing this?” Nell demanded angrily, it being less of a question and more of an enraged accusation. This was the bitch that was keeping Bex asleep- that was keeping all those other innocent citizens in a hopeless slumber. “Fat fucking chance,” was her only reply to the other woman before she began to charge, a knife appearing in her hand from its hiding place as she ran towards the one responsible for the sleeping town. “Cutler- get the heart, and I can keep her busy!”

Sand and grit stuck to his hands as he dropped to the ground, patting his way forward. Cutler had thought he had last seen the heart here, by their feet - by Dakota’s feet, actually - but his frame of reference was now lying unconscious across the cavern. Sweat pearled at the back of his neck as he moved forward, feeling the centuries of dirt rise, puff and cling to his forearms and legs. He had seen the flashing glint of a weapon in Nell’s white knuckle grip just before she had hurtled herself toward their now-revealed foe. She was risking everything. He couldn’t let her down. What he would give to have his glasses now. 

He closed his eyes, lashes light with settled dust. He heard his own heart first; thudding fast and irregular against his breastbone. Then, slowly, he heard the other. Calm and steady. Confidently marking the offbeat. Got you. His knees scraped stone as he moved toward the sound, growing steadily louder. Finally, he was on top of it. His stomach turned over as he felt the heat radiating off of the muscular, pumping organ in front of him. 

The meaty-red smell of blood washed over him as he pulled the sticky blade away from its multi-tooled brethren in his swiss army knife. It wavered in the air above the throbbing mass in his shaking hands. Last time, stabbing the hands hadn’t worked, but he was out of sacrifices. There was nothing else to give but a prayer. His lips moved, silently voicing the words in his own heart. 

“God, please let this work. I’ll do anything. No, I’ll do everything. No more taking things for granted. I want to live.” 

They were close, too close to ruining everything. Kevin could feel her head swimming. Her hands still burned. Even if she were to cut them away, the searing pain would remain. And now they were aiming for her heart. If she could simply bring into focus, drive them away, force them into sleep like all the others, it would be fine. She could start again, rebuild, put herself back together. But their meddling had already taken its toll. The world was slipping in and out around her, her vision blurring, thoughts slipping like water through her fingers. 

She turned toward Nell. The witch had to go. Her power was bright, intense. If she could be eliminated, the other one would be easy. Kevin moved in a blink, appearing inches from Nell’s nose. “What is your aim? Why do you fight? Rest. Don’t you want to? Your dreams are so dark, little witch. I can see them all, I can feel them. You’ve lost so much, haven’t you? Would it not be easier to slip into a dream? I could take it. Your pain. Let me take it all away. It would take only a moment. Your dreams would be peaceful, you could have all that you want. Let me set you free.”

Even without the power to drive her words, Kevin’s questions seemed to pull at a part of Nell that so desperately longed for rest. Her words were soft in the witch’s ear, speaking to a tender place in the brunette that was simply tired. Tired of losing family and friends. Tired of losing literal and figurative pieces of herself. Tired of living on edge, wondering where the next blade or punch or bite would come from at all hours of the day. If she let herself slip into the peaceful slumber that Kevin promised, it would all be over. Kevin was right. Nell was barely twenty-four and she couldn’t help but feel as if she’d lived multiple lifetimes since her return to White Crest a year or so ago. This town was draining her, sapping the energy from her limbs even as she stood here with her knife still poised- frozen somewhere between herself and Kevin. Just let it end. Let it be over. She was more shell than human these days between infiltrating a demon cult, dealing with the aftermath of her accidental demon-shark summoning, and Bex falling into a deep sleep. Bex. The girl’s face rose to meet the eye of Nell’s mind, sweet and peaceful as she lay trapped in Kevin’s dreamscape. Nell seemed to jolt awake as she thought of her student, another sacrifice that would be made if Nell let Kevin take her. It wasn’t a sacrifice that Nell was willing to make. 

The ever-present fire that seemed to live within Nell’s belly was quick to reignite as she reminded herself of all the harm had done- the lives she’d be taking if Nell let herself go. Kevin had moved unnaturally fast in her approach on Nell, but she could be quick too. Uttering a spell meant to grant her speed beneath her breath, Nell’s knife was quick to flash through the air, mindlessly aiming for where Kevin’s heart should beat. It wasn’t until the blade had buried itself deep into Kevin’s chest that Nell realized how futile the action was. She could see the heart underneath Cutler just a few paces away— see his own knife stabbing into it over and over again. There was nothing beneath Nell’s dagger to stab. “I won’t leave them behind.” Nell promised as she savagely dug the knife deeper, anger and bloodlust making the decision for her despite the knowledge that there was no point. She wanted to make it hurt, to make Kevin feel even a flicker of the pain she’d unleashed on the town. “I’ll never leave my friends behind. Or people that don’t deserve to die. So you can fuck right off, you piece of shit.”

The first hit slipped off of the tubular structure of the heart like squeaky wet rubber. It continued to beat, even as the sharp edge of the blade tore through tough ventricles and into the spongy tissue underneath. Cutler could taste the warm, coppery liquid that sprayed from it, only realizing after his third hit that his teeth had bit into the soft skin of his bottom lip. A shaky inhale whistled through his fast closing windpipe, hot tears building in the back of his throat. This had to work. There was nothing else. 

Several feet away, Nell spoke. Her voice was soft and level, but he heard it in his own ears as clear as day. Another scream rang through the cavern; this time from the heart as he drove the blade toward the ground once more. His eyes flicked upward just in time to see Nell’s mirroring action, digging the blade into the soft tissue of their tormentor. He didn’t feel the quick-coagulating drip of blood at the corner of his mouth or the spill of tears washing tracks down his cheek. 

“We’re almost done.” As soon as he said it, he knew it to be true. He coughed into the crook of his elbow, covering a throaty sniffle. The steel toe of his boot connected with the now-shrivelled remains of the heart at his feet. “This is it.” 

Pain. It was still so foreign, so wrong. Kevin had cast it off long ago, the parts of her that were able to hurt. Or so she had thought. They were supposed to be gone. She was beyond this, between petty human aches and blows. But Nell’s knife cut as deep as her words. Her heart wasn’t home, the bloody, pulsating piece trapped in Cutler’s grip. Still, blood flowed from the wound. It drifted up, out, around them as if they were underwater, the blood moving as though to attract circling sharks. Kevin found herself stunned. It had been so long. Large, salty tears rolled down her face as she grabbed Nell’s shoulders with her withered hands. “I could have given you all so much. I wanted to share my dreams with you. I could have brought you peace.”

Kevin staggered back, hands clutching at her empty, heaving chest. This world, this sad, wretched world. It was wrong. It was broken. Perhaps it had always been too much for her to fix. Not even her most wonderful dreams could have set it right. Her entire body began to shake as she sunk to her knees. The air around her swirled, heavy, charged, heated sparks flitting through the air. They burst, flickering, snapping, brighter and brighter as a low cry spilled from her lips. The sound grew, filling the catacombs. It echoed, louder and louder, the force of it pulling the wind, shaping the air itself. With a force strong enough to whip up rocks, to tear deep gouges into the earth beneath her, Kevin let out her final cry. 

The wind rushed and roared, buffeting the walls of the catacombs, flecking them with blood so dark it was nearly black. But it slowly began to fade. Rocks fell back to the floor as the dust settled and Kevin lay motionless amidst the rubble, her eyes shut, as if asleep in one final dream. 

Nell watched Kevin fall with not nearly as much satisfaction as she would have wanted. The mysterious woman was down, and seemingly it was going to be for the count as she didn’t stir. Nell turned at the sound of Cutler’s voice, eyes resting on the shriveled heart that lay at the man’s feet as she wondered what would be the last of the parts they needed to destroy. Hands, Heart, and...what? Rocks began to tumble, and Nell spoke another spell, her hand raising towards the ceiling as a shield began to form above herself and Cutler. Unfortunately, a lack of sleep had made her reaction times slower than usual, and a boulder the size of her head slipped through before the magical shield was fully in place. It struck her shoulder just perfectly, a loud crunch echoing through the cavern as the witch gasped in pain, instantly recognizing the sensation of something being dislocated. “Fuck,” Nell cursed, glancing back to Cutler to make sure he hadn’t been hit as well. The rocks tumbled harmlessly off an invisible dome stationed a few feet above his head, the magic doing its job well-enough. 

It seemed that even though Kevin was incapacitated, her magic had no intention of stopping. Perhaps it had gotten away from her, metastasized until it functioned under a mind of its own- continuing to bring the dream world into the reality of White Crest. Or maybe this was just the design of the spell, a fail-safe self destruct button that would keep going even after Kevin was unconscious on the floor. “Yeah- we gotta keep moving,” Nell grunted through gritted teeth, her arm hanging uselessly by her side. The time for fixing it would come later. She didn’t trust that the momentary rockslide hadn’t jeopardized the structural integrity of the catacombs. Who knew if the rest of the underground tunnels were just waiting to collapse? Glancing back at the body of Dakota, Nell flexed her magic once more until the woman’s form floated alongside the witch, trailing after her like some morbid and hovering duckling. Nell was past the point of wondering what Cutler would make of her abilities, knowing that could be dealt with when White Crest didn’t hang in the balance. She advanced to the next chamber, stopping short as she heard a familiar voice. “Are you sure you want to play this game little girl?” 

The stuttering step of her gait jerked her arm uncomfortably, but she barely noticed as fear-blown pupils began to comb every corner of the new room. “Did you hear that?” she asked Cutler, her voice barely above a whisper while she gripped her knife even tighter.

Cutler watched the rocks tumble around him, landing off of him in a perfect circle and leaving him unharmed. Nell’s movements made two things clear to her immediately. First, that the impossible protective forces around Dakota and himself were a result of her. Second, her shoulder was dislocated. It hung loose and dead by her side, swinging as she continued to move forward.

“I didn’t hear anything.” He turned professional, examining her for signs of delirium or head injury. All he saw in her face was pale, unfiltered fear. It made her look younger. No, it made her look her age. She was young. Too young for whatever this was. “I can fix that shoulder.” He stepped close, hand hovering above her arm, mouth running as a distraction. “If I wasn’t already losing my mind, I think tonight’ll do it. How do I explain this to people?” 

His injured hands settled on her arm. He could feel his own distress; texturally, his skin was torn and bleeding, but there was no pain. For him, that is. Nell was putting on a brave face, but even the small movements from the last chamber to this one must have been excruciating. “Alright. This is gonna hurt, but just for a second. Like ripping off a band-aid. Ready? I’m gonna go on three. One. Two-” His fingers tensed, and he shifted her arm in the socket to hit the right angle in one swift movement. A single push upward returned her arm to the correct orientation with a sickening pop. A mixture of pride and relief washed across his face as he stepped away. “Sorry, that was a dirty trick.” 

Cutler wanted nothing more than to stop. To sleep, or to wake from this nightmare. He could feel heavy fog clouding his brain, telling him to relax and recover. He blinked slowly, the dark seal of his eyelids warm and tempting, willing his breath to a relaxed rhythm. It was Nell who kept him from succumbing, piercing eyes and bright determination tearing through his supernatural lethargy. It was her sharp gaze that tapered the last of his focus into a coherent thought: I’m losing my mind. My mind. 

“It’s the brain.” 

A coiled pink organ was there, right in front of them. It always had been, only now visible by his verbal acknowledgement; like invisible ink under blacklight, revealed by exposure. 

“Let’s finish this.” 

Cutler’s confirmation that he hadn’t heard anything did little to quell Nell’s mind, certain she'd heard the words echoing through the cavern clear as day. “You’re sure?” The owner of the voice couldn’t be present. It was impossible. She’d seen the life bleed out of him with her own eyes as she gave him his penance along with her sisters. A more fearful voice in her own head reminded her that the dead didn’t always stay dead. Be had come back, hadn’t she? Who was to say that some other necromancer hadn’t found the hunter’s bones and raised him back to the living? Maybe he’d been bitten by the undead before his death, and the sisters simply hadn’t known. Her racing thoughts were brought to a halt as she felt Cutler grip her arm, just barely hearing his assurance that he could fix it.

“What? No- no, just leave it,” Nell began, having no reason to trust that the random man she’d met in the catacombs knew anything about popping a dislocated limb back into place. “Don’t count- I’ll just get someone to fix it once we’re out of-” Her words were cut off by a painful grunt as the arm was put back into its rightful socket, a wince flashing over her features as she once again thanked the fact that she was used to pain. Begrudgingly, she offered him a “Thank you,” while also deciding to ask him about his apparent first aid knowledge once they got out of this place.

Having lost his distracting question in her attempts to keep him from fixing her arm, Nell’s brows knit closer together as she found an answer. “Easy- you don’t tell anyone about it. Then there’s no explaining needed. Especially about anything you’ve seen me do,” she added with the smallest hint of a threat. After all, there was still a confirmed witch hunter in town. “Unless you ask me first,” the witch compromised. “And if you need any explanations for yourself...you can talk to me after all this is over.” Her focus shifted to the brain on the ground, kneeling before it as she took a closer look. No doubt it would fight back just as the hands and heart had. “Alright...the sacrifice-” Without further delay, she took a new, clean knife from another hiding place before drawing it carefully down the bottom of her forearm and letting the ruby red of her blood gather neatly. Blood was always the standard for payment in her practices, certainly it would serve her here as well? 

Nell held her arm above the brain as the blood began to fall, and the witch willed it to place itself neatly on top of the last organ they were meant to destroy. Tiny rivers of red began to flow, filling the rivlets of the trenches and dips of the fleshy pink thing until they pooled along the floor. “That should do it.” She raised her knife- poised to finish the job before thrusting it towards the brain. But at the last moment a hand gripped her wrist in a vice-like grip, the blade still dangling above the brain. “Cutler, what the fuck-” She looked up expecting to find the face of the doctor looking back at her, preventing her from finishing the job. Instead she found the grin of the man who tread her nightmares far too often, a ghost that wouldn’t let her be despite her constant attempts to shake him. Again his voice sounded through the catacombs, one that sent shivers up her spine as he echoed the words he’d spoken that day in the forest where her sister’s life had been taken. 

“Are you sure you want to play this game little girl?” Montgomery was here, and looking as real as the day he’d lopped Bea’s head from her shoulders. “Get the fuck out of my head,” Nell growled despite her shaking hand, heart beating a frantic rhythm in her chest as she looked upon the person who’d brought fear into her life. Nell had always been reckless, one who constantly jumped without looking to see where she might land. She still was to an extent. But Montgomery was the reason for her newfound caution, and the feeling that she constantly needed to look over her shoulder in case someone new was lurking around the corner with the desire to kill those she cared about. Growing up, she’d been the fearless little girl- the one who was never shaken no matter what it was she encountered. She’d carried that into her young adult life, the confidence of youth and the sense of indestructibility that came with it giving her the strength to never falter in the face of danger. But then had come a danger she couldn’t stop, couldn’t fight against as it claimed the life of the person who’d died to protect her. The life of her oldest sister.

Nell hated it. Hated that Montgomery had made her this way. Hated that he’d taken one of her strongest attributes and turned it against her, making her heart race whenever someone crossed the property line of her home uninvited. Hated that he’d made her weak. Hated that he made her afraid. But she’d been unwilling to admit it, believing that looking it in the face would give it power— and power was the last thing she would be willing to forfeit. Not when it had been so forcefully stolen from her via the man whose hand was still holding her wrist captive above the pulsing brain. “Just admit it,” his voice came again, though these were words she’d never heard him speak before. 

“I’m not doing anything you want,” Nell spat back, seeming to forget that this was all simply a figment of whatever magic Kevin had conjured. “I’ll kill you ten times over before I do anything for you.” She tried to pull her wrist away from the cold of Montgomery’s hand, nerves still making the tightness of her throat nearly unbearable as panic continued to rise. Not here. Not now. Please- not in front of Montgomery. If he saw her fear, he’d know she was weak, know the power he held over her. He’d know that she'd begun taking the stairs over elevators because it felt like the walls of them would close in on her ever since she’d been kept holed up as a prisoner by the Ring. He’d know she had to sleep in her greenhouse when Bea wasn’t home, unable to rest in a home that reminded her of the time her sister had died. He’d know that she spent far too long looking for the escape route of any room she found herself in— that she wasn’t strong enough to protect all the people she loved. 

Again his coarse voice made demands of her. “Admit it!” Nell’s head shook silently as her bottom lip began to tremble, thinking of all the people that would stay asleep and lose the rest of their lives because she couldn’t utter one little truth. “No,” she protested once again, the singular word weaker as a tear slipped down her cheek. “I don’t want to. I can’t.” Montgomery shrugged, looking down at her as if he already knew her secret, a wide smirk playing across his lips. “Then you know what the price is.” Nell stared at the brain, remembering her promise that she’d made not five minutes ago about leaving no one behind. About always helping those in need. Was she so selfish as to go back on her word this soon? But admitting it felt like giving up, letting Montgomery win a fight that had started months ago and managed to live past his own expiration date. And what else did she have left to cling to if she let this go?

For one last time, the murderer’s voice rang out. “I knew you couldn’t do it.” And he was right. Hadn’t Nell proven that by staying silent? The desire to fight rose in her ever so briefly, the need to prove him wrong finally giving the push she needed to admit the truth. “Fine!” she snarled, still hateful that she’d have to admit it in the first place. “Fine,” came her voice a little softer this time, her arm going limp in his wrist. Her last defense had tumbled, forcing her to lay a truth that she hadn’t even begun to admit to herself bare before the man who was the root of it. “I’m afraid.” The words were quiet as they could come, but as she released them her wrist was freed, the apparition of Montgomery disappearing before her eyes while her blade finally fell onto the brain, piercing it deep as she admitted to the prisoner she’d become when it came to fear and her own mind. 

Cutler watched the kinks of the brain slowly fill with red, tracking the infinite curls and dips. The only brain he had ever seen up close had been off colour and logged with preservatives; undeniably dead. This one was swollen with life, sinapses presumably still firing through it despite it’s disconnection, seemingly uninterrupted by the splashing of Nell’s blood onto the surface.

When Nell raised her arm to strike it, her aim was true and he was just as surprised as she when her hand stopped before delivering the final strike. He heard own name sprung from her lips, venom in her voice. 

“What? I’m sorry, I-” He was cut off by her next words, delivered in his direction but not to him. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, clearly seeing someone else in his place. “Who’s in your head?” A million expressions flickered across her face. There was a battle going on behind her shaking lip and desperate protests. A battle for control of her mind, and one that she had to fight alone. When she finally voiced her fear, he recognized it for what it was: an offering. A display of strength, masquerading as an act of weakness. The effects were immediately palpable as the manufactured dreamscape around them dissipated. The rumbling of the cavern stopped and the fog in his mind began to clear. Every sensation returned tenfold. Sand, grit, and blood sealed the dry cracking edge of his lips. Sweat and cool humidity stuck his shirt to his back as he turned, looking for confirmation in Nell’s face. 

Then he felt the pain. It manifested itself as simple whiteness that blocked everything out, shielding him from the agony. His vision became a blazing void of nothingness, accompanied by a high whine in his ears. It was all he could do to remain standing in the face of his temporary blindness. When the cavern faded back, the pain was no longer blocked out, the muscles in his arms lit aflame by the wound in his palms. 

“I have to go. I have to get out of here.” He willed himself to take a step toward the doorway. “My hands.” The words sounded distant and strange, as if spoken by someone else with his voice. The early morning light haloed his heavy frame as he stood in the stone archway, looking up. They had walked through what felt like miles of hallways to get to the inner chambers and yet...he could feel fresh air from above ground and a misting of fresh dew on his cheek. It smelled like freedom. Like life. “You coming?” 

It was a long moment before Nell rose from her kneeling spot before the now shriveled brain, the previously pink tissue blacked and cracked. It was over. Finally it was done, and she knew as much when the air returned back to its normal density, the thickness of magic no longer pervading the stillness of the catacombs. Her gaze stayed on the broken brain for too many seconds, and somewhere an insidious thought began to form within her mind. Was this what her brain would look like one day? Rotted and burned out from one too many hits— turned into something she barely recognized? And then there was the revelation of her admission. She was afraid. Afraid because Montgomery, Jax, and countless others had shown her just how much she had to lose ever since the witch had returned to White Crest from a five-year travelling stint. It’d been easier when she was distanced from this place, friends and family out of mind’s eye and arm’s reach, their pain and suffering out of sight as well. Her shoulders remained weak while she stared into space, a few trailing tears still finishing their descent down her cheeks while she sat shell-shocked. Now what? What was she meant to do with this newfound fear? 

Again she thought of Kevin’s words, and the promise the mysterious woman had made to take all the pain away. To set her free. Would Kevin have taken the fear, too? It was too late to find the answer with no way of going back. Still— now that Nell knew the truth...how was she meant to live with it?

Nell’s reverie was broken by Cutler’s question, haunted eyes turning back to the man as she looked to his hands. She’d be able to see to them now- at least make sure that he didn’t lose any more blood than he already had due to the sizable injury. And Bex. Bex should be awake now, shouldn’t see? Nell wanted to be there when she woke up, or at least soon after. To tell Bex that she’d kept her promise. To prove that Nell had come back for her, and found a way to wake the girl from her neverending sleep. So despite the feeling of hollowness in her gut, and the dread forming in her chest she rose slowly from her knees, wiping them with tired and still shaking hands. The world was waiting for them out there, whether they were ready for it or not. It would be changed, the victims of sleep and nightmares unable to go back from what they’d seen and felt. Or perhaps it was simply the victims who would be different, and in turn they would change the world to fit their new selves. Cutler and Nell were different, too. That much was obvious as they made their way towards the rising sun, eyes blinking in the harshness of a new morning and new reality. They’d be left to find their own new way in the world, just as the sleepers would as well. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming.” Whether or not they’d be successful at such a feat was unknowable as they left the catacombs behind, but at least they wouldn’t be the only ones opening their eyes anew to the day’s dawn. 

[reidology]

He Was A Skater Boy… (Chapter 6) (Hotch/Reid)

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner / Spencer Reid

Summary: "Spencer, everything I’ve done for you is not about emotion, it's about justice. I advise you to get over yourself, the BAU is bigger than you and your little friend. Once he stops wasting your time you can go back to thinking rationally.”

Word Count: 3.4k 

(I know it’s been a long wait, so I hope this longer chapter is worth it! <3)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

Chapter 6: I don't wanna make it, I just wanna- (AO3)

It was dark and raining out, but inside the warm comfort of Gideon’s cabin the sound of the rain pittering against the windows was relaxing. Finally, this Wednesday Gideon wasn’t away on a case, so Spencer has made his way to his cabin for their weekly chess dinners. At the door he was greeted by his mentor with a question rather than, well, a greeting,  “How would you identify an injury as hesitant or otherwise?”

It’s not that Spencer didn’t appreciate everything Gideon was doing for him, he just sometimes wondered why they couldn’t ever have normal conversations. Talk about normal things, confide in each other. He already thought of the older man as a father figure, he wished Gideon would take in interest in his personal life. Granted, Spencer didn’t have a personal life until like last week. The lack of personal connection between them made him tick, why does it always have to be business? How about a ‘Hello Spencer, sorry about last week, let’s catch up!’, was that really so unthinkable?

Yes, Spencer was still pissed about Gideon leaving for a case with the BAU without even letting him know that he had rejoined the BAU . The place he’d been groomed to work for since he was thirteen by Gideon himself.

“A hesitation mark would be a shallow, perhaps uneven cut as opposed to a clean, deep wound that would reach past the epidermis of the victim’s skin.” Spencer answered dully. Too easy. The old man let him in and Spencer settled at his usual spot at the dinner table.

They ate in relative silence, meaning Gideon talked and Spencer listened, as per usual. The reason Gideon went on the case was to butter Spencer up to the team and introduce the idea of letting Spencer on. Spencer pointed out that he hasn’t even joined the academy yet and he’s already considering the BAU?

“Trust me, Reid, I know what’s good for you,” was the only response he got.

How come Gideon couldn’t tell him about this beforehand? After all, this is about him . This is his future! A simple head’s up is all Spencer wanted, a sign that he was in control of his own life. But of course, that would’ve gone right over Gideon’s head.

After Spencer helped clean up the dinner, they settled into a chess game. It was a welcomed distraction from the frustrations of the earlier conversation. But Spencer should’ve known his luck always runs out.

“I almost forgot,” Gideon began in his usual monotone, “Rossi has agreed to meet with you for a little chat over at the office.”

This had Spencer seething. He pretended not to hear him, focusing instead on his next move. If you have nothing nice to say , he thought, say nothing at all .

“It’s tomorrow evening, you should bring your resume. And your dissertation”

Spencer moved his knight to E5.

He didn’t look up, “I’m busy tomorrow evening.”

Aaron was taking him to the skatepark to teach him how to kick-flip and maybe do… other things. Gideon appeared to be surprised by this reaction, as if Spencer should be jumping with joy at the prospect of meeting with another old man to discuss how else he can be used.

“Spencer, this isn’t really something you can blow off. This is important.”

“So is this! I have plans with Aaron and I am going to see them through. Rossi can reschedule.”

“Who is Aaron? And how could he be more important than this?”

“You would know if you ever asked about how I’m doing.”

Gideon kept looking right through him, unimpressed. He set his Queen to E5, taking Spencer’s knight. Spencer tried not to choke up.  

He tells him about how Penelope urged him to socialize more, and get out of his comfort zone. About how he goes to study and read at the skatepark, how he met Aaron there, and offered to tutor him. His voice got small when he let slip that Aaron kissed him.

“A-and that’s why I need to tutor him tomorrow, his midterms are soon.”

It was a bit of a lie hidden in truth, but he couldn’t tell Gideon his plan was to suck face with the skater he met two weeks ago.

Gideon’s silence was deafening. Spencer shakily moved his pond to C4, after all it’s not every day you accidentally come out to your prehistoric mentor.

“This boy is a distraction. So is Penelope. She has been trying to control you for months, I knew it was a bad idea for you to see her. She’s feeding you lies, filling you with emotional dandruff, and putting you on the wrong path. Spencer, everything I’ve done for you is not about emotion, it is about justice. I advise you to get over yourself, the BAU is bigger than you and your little friend. Once he stops wasting your time you can go back to thinking rationally.”

Spencer has no means to hide the tears streaking his cheeks. Or the ones falling onto the board. He wants to tell Gideon that the BAU is his dream, not Spencer’s, that the only one controlling his life is him. Penelope has shown him that there’s more to life than just being a convenient supercomputer. He feels alive for the first time ever, he hopes Gideon will understand.

“I made a promise to a friend,” his lips trembled, “I can’t betray that.”

“No, you made a commitment to the FBI, to helping people, to catching monsters. Now you’re going to meet with David Rossi tomorrow or the past five years of your life will have been meaningless. It’s your choice, Spencer.”

He made a final move on the board. “Check mate.”

The message was clear. Gideon or Aaron.

Later that night, lying in bed, he texted Aaron:

Spencer: I can’t meet you tomorrow. It’s best if we don’t meet at all anymore.

The reply came in immediately,

Aaron: wdym? are you ok?

Spencer was too emotional to respond. He tried to go to sleep but his phone kept vibrating.

Aaron: is this a gay freak out?

or is it a me thing?

...

Spencer please just let me know you’re alright.

Spencer: I’ll be alright if you leave me alone.

Sending that to Aaron felt like a cut deep in his chest, he’d never been so cruel before. No reply came and he began to doze off into oblivion, he was about to drift when his phone vibrated again.

Aaron: fine, but I need my sweater back.

—————————————

Ever since Aaron had met this kid, he hasn’t been able to form a single coherent thought. The genius with hidden wit and geeky sarcasm already held so much power over him. Spencer had the compassion of a nurse, the most dazzling smile he’d ever seen, and eyes to draw him in and drown him in the deep end. Spencer could ask him to jump off the moon and he’d happily oblige. But this, this wasn’t like jumping off the moon. This was heartbreak.

I’ll be alright if you leave me alone.

The words flashed onto the screen and knocked the breath out of him. That message hurt worse than an ankle sprained a hundred times over. Nothing Spencer could say could make him believe that what they had, whatever they were building up to, didn’t mean anything. Something wasn’t right and Aaron was determined to find out exactly what. He couldn’t let this boy slip through the cracks, he couldn’t let him go before telling him exactly how he felt. But Spencer was stubborn, and he wouldn’t listen, he’ll shut himself out into isolation if Aaron doesn’t do something.

So he staged a coup. A devious plan to get Spencer running back into his arms. Ignoring the last text from Spencer, he replied ‘fine, but I need my sweater back.’

—————————————

Spencer has a plan. A plan to return Aaron’s sweater without actually seeing him. He plans to leave the clothing on the halfpipe and be gone before the man in question even gets there. He gets to the skatepark early and sets the sweater down at his usual spot, but when he turns around he comes face-to-face with his kryptonite. Aaron knows him too well.

Shoes dangling around his neck, baggy band T-shirt, oversized corduroy pants, striped green socks, messy hair, and the ever-present skateboard tucked under his arm.. How can this man have such an effect on him?  

“Spencer,” he flashed a crooked smile. Spencer didn’t smile back. This will be easier if he doesn’t show his true emotions.

The smile faded quickly when Spencer wordlessly handed him the folded sweater. He’d spent a few minutes smelling it before he left, just to commit the scent to memory.

Aaron swallowed nervously, “Just talk to me, please. I just want to know what I did.”

He reached for Spencer’s cheek but Spencer ducked away before he could. Why is he making this harder than it has to be.

“You didn’t do anything. It’s me. I can’t do this, I have to go. I have a meeting.”

Spencer stepped around the taller man, but Aaron grabbed his arm, “No, stay, please let’s talk about this.”

“I can’t.” He shrugged him off and walked away. Leaving Aaron even more confused and heartbroken than before. Little did he know Spencer’s heart was broken too.

———————————————-

David Rossi is an old Italian man with an affinity for classic cars and Cuban cigars. Spencer knows this because within ten minutes of meeting the man, the words ‘carbonara’ and ‘vintage’ had been uttered at least seven times. He seemed all right, Spencer liked that he hadn’t mentioned his age or his intelligence yet. Rossi introduced him to another younger agent before disappearing to his office with Gideon.

Elle Greenaway is… as intimidating as she looks. She may be shorter than Spencer but her height does not deter her from being absolutely vicious. The words ‘scrawny’ and ‘privilege’ may have been thrown around (to his face) many, many times. Nevertheless, she seemed genuinely interested in Spencer.

You see, he’d been dragged to the BAU by Gideon, to have this meeting with THE David Rossi, and he’d been sulking the whole way there. He remained polite and tried, really he tried, to act like he wanted to be there. But his mind was stuck on the day’s previous events. How could Aaron have changed his life so quickly? His universal perspective was completely skewed. He imagined the look on Aaron’s face when he finds out that David Rossi offered to cook him dinner at his mansion. The way his lip would quirk up as if to say ‘you’re joking, right?’ and the bright smile and wide eyes of excitement when he realizes that it’s the truth and the way his big hands would pull him in for a slow passionate kiss…

“Hey! Kid!”

Spencer broke out of his daydream at Agent Greenaway’s shrill voice and the snap of her fingers in front of his face. She looked amused, if not a little pissed-off at being ignored. “I asked you a question, what’s got you looking so miserable?”

By now he should know that this woman is direct and abrasive but unapologetic, he could respect that, but he was still caught off guard by the bluntness of the question. A panicked little squeak left his throat which totally betrayed the cool exterior he’d been faking this whole time. “Don’t even try to lie to me either, I’ll know.” Was that a threat?

“I- I’m not miserable.” He replied, miserably.

She did not believe that for a second. Greenaway took a glance around her bullpen then gestured to an empty office with a round table, “Sit down, Einstein. I’ll be right back.”

Spencer sat on one of the chairs, looking around he noticed a case board full of newspaper clippings, crime scene photos, maps, and more. Could he see himself sitting here, day after day, chasing monsters? He didn’t have time to entertain that thought before Elle came back and closed the door behind her. She placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. “ Oh thank god, ” He let out without thinking, she just chuckled at his embarrassment and took a seat across from him.

“I know a caffeine deficiency when I see one. But that’s not all it is, is it? Spill, Pretty Boy or I’ll make sure Rossi never lets you step foot in this building again.”

They both knew she wasn’t serious, no matter how convincing she sounded, but Spencer let up anyway. After taking a long sip of the scorching coffee, he shrugged, “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” his gaze remained trained on the coffee sloshing around his cup, “Maybe that’s what I want.”

“You don’t want to be here?” Elle asked quizzically. “I thought you were ‘the genius to put us all to shame!’ ‘the BAU’s missing link!’ ‘the kid who’s gonna change the game !’ That’s all Gideon’s been talking about for years.”

Spencer shook his head and reddened at the way Gideon’s been talking about him to these special agents, “Gideon he… he doesn’t know what I want. He doesn’t understand.” He wants Aaron. He wants to feel wanted, not just… useful .

“And what is it you want?”

At that he took another sip of coffee, it really could use some sugar, how long of a sip does he need to take before Greenaway changes the subject? He couldn’t answer that.

A knowing smirk grew on the older agent’s face, “Ahh… or should I ask, who is it you want?”

Spencer only choked a little bit.

“Wh-what? No, no i-it’s not a- who it’s uh-”

“What’s her name?” Her head was propped up on her hand, leaning over as if that would get him to spill all his secrets.

After some hesitation, he relented, deep breath in, “His name.”

Elle didn’t look surprised, just corrected herself, “What’s his name, then?” Deep breath out. It’s safe.

He tried to suppress a grin when he answered, but it was nearly impossible not to smile when thinking of Aaron Hotchner.

“His name is Aaron. He’s a law student, I met him at the skatepark. But I... I can’t see him anymore. He’s a distraction.”

Elle’s eyebrows shot up at that, “Is that what Gideon told you?”

He nodded. She made her disapproval clear with a roll of her eyes and a tsk .

“Listen, kid. Gideon’s an old man stuck in his glory days. You’ve got the rest of your life to work for the FBI. You’re only nineteen for Christ’s sake! Do you even know how many wives Rossi’s had? Too many. But he’s one of the best profilers I’ve ever met. Love isn’t a distraction, Spencer, it’s an asset. Go chase your dream guy, the BAU isn’t going anywhere.”

At that, she got up and went to leave, not before saying, “I better not see you for at least another decade, kid.”

She was right, and Spencer had a sweater to reclaim.

———————————————-

By the time Gideon drove him home, it was nearly 11pm, Spencer was exhausted from socializing with the team and talking about his genius intellect for hours. But he was determined to fix the rupture he’s created.

He’s been an avoidant ass to Aaron. He knows he doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try. He dug around the garage, making sure not to wake his mother, and found his old bike. And helmet, of course. He grabbed his satchel and made his way to Aaron’s dorm building in the dark. He wouldn’t risk texting Aaron in advance and being turned down or ignored. He left the bike in the grass and made his way up to Aaron’s door, attempting to catch his breath.

Before knocking he made sure he still had the gift in his bag. After his talk with Agent Greenaway earlier, he thought about how he could apologize. He wanted it to be meaningful, so he brought a gift. Spencer held his breath and knocked three times. He practiced his speech in his head, Aaron, I am so sorry I treated you like you were disposable. My mind was clouded with doubt about my future, but I never should have let that get in the way of you. You mean so much to me, Aaron, would you let me-

The door opened and it revealed a disheveled, bloodshot, miserable figure. Aaron had clearly been crying. It was almost midnight and Aaron had been up crying because of him. Spencer was such an asshole, how could he have done this to the only person to ever treat him like a normal guy? The guilt swallowed him whole and the practiced words left his mind. How could he fix this?

“Spence?” Aaron has never sounded so small .  

Spencer blubbered, feet stuck to the ground. His mouth opened but no words came out. Aaron shifted his feet and looked down at the ground.

“What are you doing here?”

Spencer swallowed his pride.

“I came to apologize. I know I really fucked up. You don’t have to forgive me but I- I hope you’ll give me another chance.”

Aaron looked up at him, analyzing his face, surprised at Spencer’s words. After today he thought Spencer was completely done with him. He sniffed and saw Spencer’s guilt build-up in his shoulders.

“Here… I got you this. I know it isn’t much but…”

Spencer opened his satchel and fussed around for the gift, he handed it to Aaron who took his hands out of his pockets with shaking arms. His eyes widened.

“David Rossi’s new book? It doesn’t get released for another month.”

“Open it.”

Aaron opens the cover and falls silent.

“Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going.”

“How did you get an autographed copy of my favorite author’s unreleased novel?”

“It’s a long story, but essentially there was a lot of begging.”

Aaron stood a while in uffish thought, staring down at the book, stroking the spine of it. Then he gave a little smirk at, “Begging, huh?” There was a glint in his eyes. The mischievous glint Spencer thought he had put out forever.

“Yeah, you should’ve seen it. I was on my knees and everything.”

Aaron smiled. “I want a real explanation, but right now I just want to kiss you. Can I kiss you?”

Spencer was in his arms before Aaron could finish the question. “You never have to ask.”

Aaron wasted no time grabbing Spencer’s face and crashing their lips together. Spencer immediately melted into it, clutching at the other’s hoodie, trying to get closer to that heavenly heat. Aaron broke away caressing the younger man’s face and pressed his forehead to his temple, “Stay,” he whispered.

Spencer nodded vigorously and was pulled across the threshold into the room. The door was kicked closed with Spencer pressed up against it. Aaron slotted their lips back together and draped an arm around Spencer’s small frame, the other landing in his hair. Spencer’s lips parted to let the taller man in, the sensation washed over him and made his toes curl. Using his hold on Spencer’s hair, Aaron directed his head up, exposing the pale expanse of his neck. He peppered kisses and nipped and sucked until Spencer made those irresistible sounds Aaron had been dreaming about. He licked behind his ear and Spencer let out a whine, God, Aaron could watch him come undone all day.

“A-Aaron.”

Aaron hummed as he slipped a hand under Spencer’s button-up shirt.

“Aaron, wait.”

Spencer tapped lightly at his arm and Aaron stopped what he was doing.

“What’s wrong?” Wow, he sounded wrecked.

“Nothing’s wrong, I promise. I just don’t want to do this like… this. Our first time shouldn’t be rushed,”

Aaron nods and hums his approval in Spencer’s neck.

“Let’s go to bed?” Spencer cards his fingers through Aaron’s thick hair. The man pulls him in for a sweet kiss, then pulls him toward the bed.

“Anything you want, sweetheart.”

[themusicplace-blog1]

THIS PROCESS SUCKS! The most effective method to CHOOSE THE RIGHT SEO AGENCY WITH THE LEAST LOSS OF HAIR

When you've spoken with more than 1,000 CMOs, advertising experts, and entrepreneurs about site design improvement (SEO), one getting a handle on stands more than some other: dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, I don't simply mean about how Google's calculation functions or how to comprehend which measurements truly matter.

(BTW, in case you're in this pontoon look at our free CMO's Cheat Sheet to Understanding SEO Metrics.)

No, what I'm alluding to is the organization determination process. Generally, everybody abhors it. Why? Give me a chance to tally the ways:

Here are only a couple of reasons why picking a SEO organization can feel like a terrible task:

Our industry is loaded up with fakes.

You know perhaps some fundamental purposes of how SEO functions, yet not all around ok to feel like you can pass judgment on plans or experience precisely.

Most offices don't disclose to you how SEO functions in any sort of substantive manner or what they'll really accomplish for you in detail. "Simply trust us."

A few offices state they work in one zone, for example, specialized SEO and that that angle is generally significant.

Notwithstanding when you do get subtleties of what offices will accomplish for you, they're everywhere.

Valuing and terms of agreement differ.

Web optimization is basic to your organization's prosperity, which just elevates the weight.

At the point when taken inside and out, it doesn't simply have a craving for contrasting one type with a totally different type; it resembles apples to obscure black market mobsters.

I could go on, however Yogi doesn't have a major enough blossom.

Getting YOUR Work done: HOW TO ENSURE THE RIGHT SEO AGENCY FIT

Give me a chance to give you access on a mystery—there's no ideal office for each organization.

We're not a counterpart for each business, and I'm kinda one-sided.

So how would you approach assessing an ideal choice for you? Begin by discovering answers to the accompanying inquiries.

KNOW YOUR GOALS

What would you like to achieve with SEO?

Is it accurate to say that you are searching for exponential traffic development?

Top rankings on significant watchwords?

Recuperation from a poor site relocation?

Spread out your objectives with as much definition as you can assemble. Extra focuses in the event that you can name explicit measurements you need to hit (e.g., 15% expansion in natural changes; 20% natural traffic increment YoY).

In the event that you don't feel you're ready to characterize explicit measurements, it's OK. The correct office should most likely work with you to decide practical objectives for your particular circumstance.

Comprehend WHAT YOU'RE UP AGAINST

Talking about your circumstance—what is sensible for you?

A 10% YoY increment for a since a long time ago settled, well-streamlined site in a focused industry may be incredible, while a 30% MoM increment for another site with basically no traffic to talk about may be horrendous.

You should know—or discover—the accompanying:

How old is your site?

Topographically, where would you like to appear?

What catchphrases are most critical to you? What amount would they say they are looked for? How focused would they say they are? How would you rank on them and who positions in front of you?

Are there specialized site issues keeping your SEO down?

What sort of trust sign have you developed (e.g., backlinks), particularly contrasted with your rivals?

Do you have drawing in substance? Not as in "my mother peruses all my blog entries." More along the lines of Google Search Console and investigation information indicating low bob rates, various pages per visit, and so on.

Have you at any point had any Google punishments or past SEO endeavors that could be harming you today?

You can likewise demand a SEO review to cover a few or the majority of the abovementioned and more from a SEO office. Some are free, and some cost cash, yet numerous organizations will offer these reviews without expecting you to sign a full-administration contract.

With this learning, you're prepared to begin examining organizations.

Absolute minimum SEO AGENCY REQUIREMENTS

All organizations will have their novel situating and how they approach SEO. Yet, any real office needs the accompanying. Think about this as your "Stop! Try not to Pass Go" minute.

Go to SEO Jail

"Hello Kids! It's Digital Marketing Board Game Night. Children. Children?"

How might we help you? Enter your email and one of our masters will get in touch with you to talk about your showcasing needs.

Enter your email here...

SIGN UP

Life span: Digital showcasing organizations travel every which way constantly, so it makes a difference when an office remains in business for over five years. Far and away superior is in case you're ready to discover an organization that has been executing on SEO crusades since the beginning of Google (think 10+ years).

Size: How enormous is your organization? Is it a two-man shop where an excursion or surprising sickness quits everything? Or on the other hand a behemoth where your record gets the 'C' group chipping away at it? Attempt to discover how prepared an office is to do what they've guaranteed.

Procedure: Many organizations approach SEO in an unexpected way. The best ones have deliberately made their own procedure to represent each and every progression of the way, incorporating potential obstructions.

Record Manager: Another significant least prerequisite is whether your office will give a devoted record administrator. This individual customarily fill in as your essential purpose of-contact (POC), and they should have a thorough comprehension of each part of your battle, planning with their colleagues as needs be. Record chiefs are there to serve you and should make themselves accessible to respond to questions or furnish bits of knowledge with sensible turnaround times.

Group: notwithstanding having a record administrator, get some information about reinforcement contacts at the organization. Extra focuses on the off chance that you will have a committed reinforcement who is proficient of your record. You might need to know other colleagues who will chip away at your record also.

Experience: Selecting the privilege SEO office ought to consistently include assessing their experience, yet there are various methodologies in such manner. You could pick an office that has shown demonstrated outcomes in your industry or comparative vertical. On the other side, you could go the contrary way and search out an organization that has delivered brings about different ventures, carrying a new viewpoint to shake things up with more current strategies.

Updates and Reporting: No issue where you turn, providing details regarding execution is constantly an absolute minimum. Be that as it may, common or unremarkable offices come up short at steady correspondence and careful examination. What you don't need is an organization that makes a technique and gives your SEO a chance to battle keep running on auto-pilot uncertainly without repeating exchange.

Lucidity: Your organization of decision might be the master on SEO, however you may not be. Organizations go to offices either in light of the fact that they don't have the data transfer capacity to do it all alone, or they need to confide in a group of experienced people who are the specialists. You're depending on their ability yet never settle for an office that doesn't take the necessary steps to make everything straightforward. You need absolute straightforwardness and clearness.

In case you're not 100% secure with any of the above necessities, move onto the following office.

GETTING THE RIGHT FIT

The absolute necessities recorded above will help you remove unfit offices. Presently you need to locate the best fit for you from the numerous shops that do scratch off every one of those containers.

How would you ensure in case you're Officer Trainee Hightower you don't get a Citroën? Consider the accompanying.

The Right Size: Depending on what your needs are, this thought needs a "Goldilocks" approach—not very huge, and not very little. Little offices are better prepared to give more involved customer experience, however the nature of work might be lower and you might be stuck if a key individual ends up inaccessible. Then again, an extremely huge organization can get results yet neglect offering a human touch in their correspondence and are less adaptable in attempting new things (also a significantly heftier sticker price).

Coordinating Your Needs: A significant thought; your necessities are quite often directed by your general objectives. Do you as of now have content or do you need an accomplice to set procedure and convey content all the time? Is there some other exertion you need progressively far reaching help with, for example, third party referencing or lead age?

Wanted Communication Intervals: The privilege SEO organization should be adaptable enough to oblige how you need to convey and how regularly. Regardless of whether you need week after week email touchpoints, every other week telephone calls, or month to month in-person gatherings, attempt to discover what's essential to you. Reward tip: The more drawn in you are with your SEO organization, the more you'll escape your association with them.

Great Rapport with Your POC: Human creatures are profoundly social animals, and it's OK to be specific about who you work with. It generally enables when you to have a decent compatibility with your assigned POC. (Furthermore, on the off chance that you ever find that you don't have a decent association with your POC subsequent to marking, don't be bashful about requesting another one.)

THE CONTRACT OFFER

The real contract is critical. Knowing and understanding what's included permits you the most obvious opportunity with regards to contrasting one type with it's logical counterpart, or if nothing else pears.

Search for:

Administrations: You should know explicitly what you're getting, what won't be done inside the extent of the battle. Additionally, comprehend what you'll be relied upon to do or endorse.

Length: Many organizations will attempt to secure you for broadened periods, so before pushing ahead, seriously investigate the responsibility. <cough>Some organizations even offer month-to-month contracts.<cough>

Terms: The fine print can be an executioner on the off chance that you aren't cautious. Continuously get some information about anything where you're uncertain.

Valuing: obviously, estimating is another huge worry as there's an enormous range and even extraordinary evaluating models. Make sure to get some information about extra charges which may not be canvassed in your agreement. I leave this point last as it should be the last thought, accepting the office is inside the scope of wha

[writersindigestion]

taunted | edward nygma x reader

“maybe regret wasn’t a strong enough word.”

reader gender: female

words: 2527

warnings: probable PTSD, paranoia, trauma, substance abuse, death, general negativity

notes: hey, y’all. this part was getting... extremely lengthy. the original document is closing in on 10,000 fucking words, so i did y’all a favor and split this part up. no ed in this one, though he is heavily mentioned... will post the next part within a day or two. lotsa edward later on.

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART FOUR | PART FIVE | PART SIX also available on: AO3

[Y/N] never made a return to her post at the GCPD. She didn’t tell them she wasn’t coming in, she didn’t tell them she was quitting, and she definitely didn’t tell them why. Surely they had tried contacting her cell phone - not that she could answer it, considering it had been stolen. The precinct had tried calling her home phone as well, but in the past weeks, she’d completely moved in with Chrysanthemum. Every time she returned to pack more things, she’d see the blinking light on the answering machine, but could not gather the guts to check her messages.

The only employee that ever got ahold of her was Kyle - and he was more than happy to keep his mouth shut for a chance at spending more time with a woman who never failed to make him smile. He’d brought her desk things to her, all bundled up in a little package so as not to break anything. All she’d really wanted was her coffee mug, but she was sure-as-shit happy to have any of her stuff from work in the first place.

Kyle had asked if she wanted to spend the night at his home, but [Y/N] turned him down, explaining that she didn’t feel safe enough in Gotham to accept his offer. He pressed her for details, worried that she was in danger, but she shut him out. It hurt, just a little, to think of the kicked-puppy expression on his face as she closed her door for the night.

This was for his safety as much as it was for hers. Who knows what his plans were as of late? Was he busy murdering someone else? Did he look for her? Was he still covering his tracks? Or even, blissfully, she wondered if justice was hot on his heels.

She shook those pleasant thoughts from her head - the man was a genius, if not a felon and a murderer - he wasn’t likely to get caught. Still, a little part of her was hopeful, and a large part of him was an egomaniac - he could get sloppy for the sake of narcissism.

There was nothing more in the world that she wanted than to meet him again so she could give him the beating of his life. If [Y/N] ever saw Edward again, however, she knew she’d either end up dead, kidnapped, or laid. None of those situations were ideal since she figured fucking him would just feed into whatever sexual, and likely psychological, fixation he had with her (or maybe, it was herself with the fixation).

It didn’t matter - it was the only thing that mattered - it didn’t matter at all. She didn’t dwell on it - it was the only thing she dwelled on - she didn’t dwell on it at all.

Her head ran itself in circles, trying in vain to make her feel safe. Safe? But being afraid was so much safer. Stay afraid, stay safe - that’s how it worked, right? It had been so long since the young woman had felt secure. Every single thought of Nygma was encapsulated entirely by fear - especially when she was alone.

But sometimes, at night, she would feel her lover crawl into bed behind her, wrapping thick, warm, caring arms around [Y/N]’s middle - and no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on the feeling of Chrysanthemum breathing next to her, she only felt the cold, slender limbs of the forensic murderer coiling tighter and tighter at her torso. Depending on her level of lucidity, she might feel the feathers of dark, unintelligible murmuring along her neck, or icy claws tiptoeing between her legs. And as she leaned into the heat of her lover, she couldn’t help but think of the anaconda drawing her deeper into its circle.

She’d often find herself in a state of sleep paralysis, unable to escape the nightmare, even though she knew it wasn’t real.

[Y/N] rarely slept anymore. Her girlfriend would cry with frustration, tired of seeing the traumatized young woman in a state of such despair. She offered her everything - a confidant, a therapist, medical help, a vacation, a night out - but most everything required leaving the comfort of the apartment building, and so her efforts were ineffective.

Drugs, however, were the one thing that helped. Most of her surplus cash was spent on weed, booze, and sleep meds. At first, Chrysanthemum wasn’t bothered by the blatant substance abuse, but after finding her lover puking in the toilet on one too many occasions, she started hiding all of her drug paraphernalia, leaving only a solitary beer in the fridge every morning.

[Y/N] noticed the sudden disappearance of her liquor, pills, and marijuana. In fact, for several days, most of her alone time was spent searching for her stash. She never found it, and hated herself too much to complain. When she wasn’t working at the coffee shop on the ground floor, she was sitting, stock-still, in the chair by the window, a lonely beer in one hand, and her head in the other. The TV would drone on in a nearby part of the room, filling in the empty spaces between morbid thoughts, and her eyes would lay steadfast on the church across the street.

In the midst of depression and the beginnings of a drug habit, a new development was forming - Jim Gordon was sent to Blackgate prison for a string of crimes that were suspiciously… Nygma-fied. [Y/N] spent the morning following that piece of news with her head hugging the porcelain throne, and a small handgun clutched in her fist. She wouldn’t let Chryssie leave for almost four days, she was so petrified that she was next on his list. Eventually, she lacked both the emotional and physical strength to keep her girlfriend home with her.

The frayed woman was allowed two beers and a small glass of wine, provided that she accompany Chrysanthemum on at least two outings per week. Begrudgingly, [Y/N] obliged, even going so far as to add an errand every day! Unfortunately, her daily trip was to the building next door, where she took up a gym membership and started participating in self-defense classes.

It was “unfortunate”, being that the only reason for pushing herself was to try and keep her girlfriend safe from a man that she hadn’t seen in several weeks. Chryssie joined her on most gym days, intent on keeping the withering woman from hurting herself. At least she was more health-conscious now - the exercise kept up her appetite, which Chryss was sure to satiate with nutritious meals.

“Gotta keep your strength up, girly! Do it for me, if not for yourself.”

More weeks passed. More gym days. More coffee-making days. More staring-at-the-church days. More searching the apartment days. More snakes-around-her-waist days.

[Y/N] had long since reached a stalemate with someone she wasn’t even sure was still a player in their sick, little game.

The woman somehow refused to admit to herself that she was afraid - especially at this point in the situation. Sure, she got nervous if her girlfriend was a bit late coming home. Sure, she choked on her own heart when someone knocked on the door. And sure, she checked the dark corners of their home for long, lanky men every morning, noon, evening, night, and each time she got home from any single errand - but that didn’t mean she was scared, per say… Just… Unhealthily cautious.

It was getting to the point that she wished he would: a) kill her, b) kill himself, c) otherwise die, or d) get himself arrested.

And one glorious, partly-cloudy, snow-littered, chilly day - Edward Nygma selected option - drumroll, please - … “D”!

When her roommate returned home that day, she was concerned to find [Y/N] sobbing - not that it was unusual, however…  Tender hands caressed shaking shoulders, and she placed her head in the crook of her neck. “Honey… Baby?” She cooed, rubbing circles on her girlfriend’s arms, “Baby, what’s wrong? Can I help?”

The fragile woman’s body shook harder after the question, her tears soaking into the crumpled newspaper she had clutched in her fists. After another moment of tears, she relinquished hold of the paper, letting Chryssie take it.

“Jim Gordon Released As Cops Catch Correct Killer.”

The couple were quiet for a moment before soft giggles started to rise from [Y/N]’s chest. Her giggles escalated in volume until she was practically howling with laughter until her cackles became so loud that they could no longer even be heard.

It was infectious. Both women found themselves on the floor in a fit of hysteria, eyes cinched shut against their own giddiness. Nearly five minutes passed before either of them spoke.

The previously crying woman was the first to break the silence. “... That’s a lot of alliteration…”

…

They erupted once more into peeling squawks of laughter, and laid there, on the floor, for nearly an hour, content to simply hold each other.

She had Edward’s mugshot framed later that evening, tucking it carefully away in the bathroom cabinet, and a celebration was planned for the next night.

All of her friends came - the ones she’d spent months avoiding, the ones she’d alienated. When asked what the sudden cause for cheer was, [Y/N] would only grin wider, would only speak louder - it was like weeks of damage and shame had been lifted from her shoulders.

Everyone was ecstatic to see the woman they once knew act like herself again. She was ecstatic to smile again. When the bane of your existence was under lock and key, what more reason did you need to throw a party?

She wrote a card to Jim, feeling forever grateful for his work in the force. It took her a few tries to get it just right - half of the rewrites were because of her tears staining the page. She couldn’t tell him the real reason, but she could congratulate him on his regained freedom.

God save Gotham if Gordon should ever fall like that again. The people should shudder at the thought.

[Y/N] was bustling with energy now that Edward had been detained - she felt like she could conquer the world. That was… Until the Adderall wore off.

She came down from that high pretty hard, finding herself blearily wandering her apartment after spending an ungodly amount of time wide-awake. The road to real recovery would be a long one, but it was nice to imagine, if only for a night, that she could feel like herself again. Chrysanthemum had flushed the leftover pills anyways.

Tiny steps, then. [Y/N] thought positively, or at least tried to. She figured that feeling down wouldn’t make her situation better. There were compulsions to avoid, paranoia to ignore - therapists to see, something she still refused to do.

The first item on her agenda was to visit someone she’d been meaning to see for far too long.

Solid, black leather boots sunk into the ground, her feet set firmly into the dark, damp earth, and her body turned towards the warm, grey headstone before her. The dirt, though it had begun to pack together, bore no grass, showcasing recently overturned soil. The woman’s face was solemn, her tongue twisted around itself as she searched for the right words to say.

After several minutes, [Y/N] spoke, voice bending and cracking with the weight of sorrow, “I’m sorry I… I didn’t come sooner, Kristen. I know how much punctuality meant to you. We were supposed to hang out… Several months ago.”

A cold breeze bit at the back of her neck, but she would not pull her hood up as if to punish herself for the negligence of her friend. “It’s my fault you’re here now - you know that, right?”

Her brow crinkled, feeling the stinging behind her eyes. She could almost hear Kristen yelling at her from behind the tombstone.

You know that’s not true. I wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for Edward.

She cringed, angling herself away from the grave just slightly, but the wind only served to draw more tears forward. It wasn’t fair. [Y/N] didn’t deserve to be so heartbroken, and her friend absolutely didn’t deserve to be swimming with the proverbial fishes.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t by your side when you needed me. He is an evil man - I knew that and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you,” She said, her words becoming more and more strangled as she continued, “I should be in Arkham with the rest of the clinically insane - or at the very least in prison. I practically let him kill you. I let him murder my best friend.”

The babbling woman clutched a small, tin box in her hands, jostling inwardly with her guilt-ridden conscience. Stepping forward, she set the parcel just before the headstone, next to a few, stray, withered flowers. “I was going to bring you a bouquet, but I figured you’d appreciate this more.”

Fumbling, she opened the box, ignoring the teeth of winter air on her skin. Inside lies a newspaper clipping, showcasing Ed’s arrest, a small bag of generic, strawberry-flavored candies, a box of matches, a Beatles cassette tape, and a tube of chocolate pink lipstick.

“It’s cheesy, yeah, but I think about you a lot. The matches are because your hair is fiery, by the way,” She explained, laughing slightly at her own expense, but the moment of mirth only served to make her feel more empty as it passed, “... I should probably get going - before my hands freeze off. Oh!-”

[Y/N] moved with a start, digging in her purse for something. After many moments of struggle, she pulled out a small figurine, placing it with the rest of her gifts, before shutting the lid tight.

Laughter crept back into her body with the tears, and she shook with both as she rose to her feet. “It’s a Santa Claus doll, my dear Saint Nicholas! I know you would hate me for leaving that with you, but you’re not allowed to feel sorry for me - I’m still as rotten, inappropriate, and unfunny as I was when you were alive.”

Several more minutes went by, but the female finally got out her parting words, “I’ll be back again soon to leave you some actual flowers, and check on your grave. I know you’d want it tidy.”

“... I just have one thing to ask, and I know it’s a lot - the afterlife, if there is one, is probably very busy, but I need to borrow some of your strength.”

Her tone deepened as if trying to keep others from hearing her, “Please watch over me - protect me where I couldn’t protect you from this shithole city. Please forgive me for leaving you when it mattered most. Please help me recover from this - I don’t know if I can do it alone.”

With reluctance, she began to walk away, stopping only a second more to say goodbye, “You deserved so much better, Kristen Kringle. I love you to the end of the earth, and back again. Please sleep well.”

-

... Y’all, this is a whole lotta feelings, and not a lotta action. But fret not - I will return within a few days time to add to this narrative. I’ve got a ton of shit going down in part four. You’re not even ready. Leave me a request - I’ll pretty much take any! Tag me in your stuff, I’d love to read it! <3′ ALSO: looking for a beta reader. Message me if you’re interested. - writersindigestion

[coin-river-blog]

Freedom. Such a harmless word. Yet billions of people have died to defend those bloodstained syllables over the centuries. In the wake of the horrifying Christchurch shootings in New Zealand, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison implored the G20 to discuss ‘crackdowns’ on the ‘ungoverned internet’. And Jacinda Ardern agreed.

Is it just me or does this feel like Gab all over again?

We Must Be Very Careful Before Taking People’s Voices Away

I never knew my Grandfather. He died before I was born but he spent several excruciating years fighting the Germans in North Africa. When his tank was hit by a shell instantly killing his 18-year-old colleague, whose entrails were spattered over my Grandfather’s face, it wasn’t live-streamed on Facebook.

Join CCN for $9.99 per month and get an ad-free version of CCN including discounts for future events and services. Support our journalists today. Click here to sign up.

WWII tank hit by a shell in World War 2. | Source: Shutterstock

As the sole survivor of that harrowing incident, he would be the only person to replay the images over in his mind before taking them with him to his grave.

If social media wasn’t to blame for the Second World War that drew out the worst in humanity, then what was?

Without analyzing the causes or drawing parallels from one white supremacist to another, one common thread is human nature.

In the United States, freedom of speech is the First Amendment to the Constitution. But the problem is, humankind isn’t fit to say what it truly thinks. Start wielding around the wrong kind of words over there and you’ll be silenced pretty quick.

Whatever your ethnic, political, social, or economic background, most people agree that there are social codes and norms that don’t need to be written into law.

Most decent people aren’t going to load themselves up with firearms and rain down bullets on innocent people. They’ll probably just go on a rant after a couple of beers.

But, if we are a free society, is it right that they are silenced?

In France, a country famous for free expression where the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist team was gunned down by radical Muslims, one asks, should they have stopped drawing their caricatures?

Charlie Hebdo. | Source: Shutterstock

Who gets to say who plays, judge, jury, and executioner here?

Even if it makes us squirm in our private places, shouldn’t people be allowed to say what they think, whether it leads to a massacre or not?

In New Zealand, He Shall Be Nameless

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered an emotional speech about the Christchurch shootings in parliament on Tuesday.

She claimed that the terrorist sought notoriety for what he did but when she spoke of him, he will be nameless.

I’m fairly new to this PM, I have to be honest. She got on my radar simply for being young, feisty, and female. But beyond that, I can’t say with any certainty what her reactions are to “regular” terrorist attacks. You know, the ones that don’t happen in nice places like New Zealand by people who aren’t radical Jihadists.

Whether New Zealand’s Prime Minister doesn’t speak their names or not has little impact internationally. Yet, these people certainly don’t remain nameless.

In fact, their names are often released before the authorities are even sure whether they committed a crime or not.

Sometimes, innocent people are blamed, their reputations tarnished, families threatened, and lives ruined. All because they wear a headscarf or spicy aromas fill the air around their apartments at dinnertime.

Because they aren’t suspected white supremacists, they are suspected Jihadists. That’s different. And they are certainly not nameless.

If we can’t put a name to the face, it’s probably because it turns our stomach. And it hits a lot closer to home.

No one asked New Zealand’s Prime Minister to comment on the latest terror attacks in Afghanistan, Tunisia or Syria. No one asks the New Zealand Prime Minister to comment on anything very much really.

I’d like to hope that she extends the same nameless policy to Muslim perpetrators, but I’d bet all my bitcoin she doesn’t.

Finding a Scapegoat for the Christchurch Shootings

Nameless or not, what’s now inevitably starting to happen is that white people racked with guilt and frustration are looking for a scapegoat.

After all, white people (especially nice Australian and New Zealand white people) don’t commit mass murders. That sort of thing happens in the U.S., where they give people free firearms at their local banking branch. What else do you expect?

But they don’t happen in the land of sheep and Hobbiton.

Someone must be to blame. And that scapegoat is social media. Whether it’s a prepubescent YouTuber with an ill-questioned sense of humor or everyone’s public enemy number one Facebook.

Ardern implored social media platforms to “do more” to combat terrorism after the gunman (who shall remain nameless) live-streamed his horrific rampage on Facebook to 4,000 viewers before it was removed.

We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published… They are the publisher. Not just the postman.

Australian PM Calls for ‘Crackdowns’ on the Internet

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wasted no time in joining the social media lynch mob. It makes sense. The killer was Australian after all, he probably felt some semblance of responsibility.

He wrote a letter to the G20 imploring that world leaders discuss crackdowns on social media at the next summit:

It is unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space… It is imperative that the global community works together to ensure that technology firms meet their moral obligation to protect the communities which they serve and from which they profit.

Is It Just Me or Is This Gab All Over Again?

Let’s cut through the BS, hypocrisy, and guilt by racial association. This is Gab all over again.

The repugnant platform in which the low-ranking echelons of society gather together to voice their hatred. Everyone knew that Gab was a breeding ground of racial hate. But they were happy taking the money until the culprit of the Pittsburg synagogue killings turned out to be a platform user.

Listen very carefully because I shall say this only once. If you are going to support freedom of speech, it’s too late to ask people to be quiet once the ground is stained with blood.

You either believe in free speech or you don’t. You are either a propagator of a free country or you aren’t.

Politicians, if you’re going to use platforms like Facebook to push and promote your political agenda, you can’t suddenly sever their vocal cords because you don’t like how other people use them.

There are plenty of New Zealanders (I expect) who didn’t watch Ardern’s electoral campaign gather traction in the media. And plenty of Australians who sidestepped Morrison’s claims as he came to power.

No one asked them to watch a live stream of a mass shooting either.

We Are Not Responsible for Horrific Human Beings

What do you do after such an incident as the Christchurch shootings? Inaction is the worst and most impotent feeling of all, particularly when you’re at the helm of a nation.

But calling on social media platforms and asking them to monitor their content, ban what they see as inappropriate, and censor what a handful of deplorable people can’t handle is hypocritical and dangerous. It’s also highly temporary.

Scottie, just a heads up if no one told you, your country’s getting right behind blockchain–a decentralized technology that you can’t shut down or censor whether you like it or not.

Blockchain is gaining traction in Australia. | Source: Shutterstock

By calling for more regulation on the internet you are crossing a tightrope over a 100-foot drop. It’s a dangerous path fraught with infringed civil liberties and fine lines.

After all, who decides what’s fit for the public to see and what isn’t? Should we set up some kind of internet police? That’s too much responsibility to place on Zuckerberg’s shoulders alone.

Remember Life Before Social Media?

Maybe some of you don’t recall, but there was a time when social media didn’t exist. When I went to school every day, the villains of the show were violent movies and video games. That’s what provoked the unsociable children into carrying out abhorrent acts or beating on each other in class.

They would write a handwritten note with a pen and paper and pass it around to meet in the playground and attack a certain kid for being different. They didn’t need WhatsApp, YouTube or Facebook.

I think back to my Grandfather and so many others who fought for us so we could be free.

They didn’t die so that we could curtail our own civil liberties. They died to let us live. And the fact of the matter is that social media is no more of an enabler of evil than the spoken word and the humans behind it.

Let’s just let Gab, Facebook, and Twitter show us angles on the world the way it really is and decide what we want to see.

Yes. Nameless white supremacists and Jihadists might end up being radicalized by Facebook or YouTube. But long before that, it was the Hitler Youth.

I would like to wrap this up by quoting some wise words, except I don’t know who actually wrote them. It was an episode of The Simpsons in which the intellectual young Lisa grew desperate over her father’s vigilante neighborhood watch group. She questioned:

If you are the police, who will police the police?

Let’s think very carefully before we start even planting the seeds of censorship in the internet. These things have a habit of growing out of our control.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

[id0l-atry]

Is International SEO Copywriting So Important To Marketing Marketing communications?

Within order to does come in order to attending a popular SEO meeting, you can be rest guaranteed that the benefits will end up being immense. Regardless of the recent measures taken simply by search engines to diminish the particular effect of keyword stuffing, this particular technique is still utilized simply by some SEOs who generate webpages filled with meaningless keywords in order to promote their AdSense pages. Very often such pages are centered on a single template plus even possess the same quantity of words which makes all of them especially easy to detect making use of statistical methods. Plagiarizing in school had been frown Blog9T Youtube upon as well because for good reason. Passing a persons work off as you own personal is unethical and unoriginal. Individuals visit different blogs to collect varying perspectives not to consider Blog9T the same identical content under the different name. In addition this particular will only hurt your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts by being penalized with regard to duplicate content. The Google search for PSD in order to WordPress conversion benefits” brought myself to countless articles extolling the particular points of ‘user-friendliness', and ‘SEO', and more. The truth is usually that those are features a person can get from any great WordPress theme. 46 year-old Fibrous Plasterer Ciaburri from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, has pastimes which includes beach tanning, top seo trends in 2018 and storytelling. In the last few months has gone to spots like Rock Drawings in Valcamonica. Any good support provider will do that. Simply by contrast, I found via SEO-Blokes a story published on a good online marketing agency website permitted " How Web design Got Myself Laid ", that is the textbook example of how not really to brand your business along with sex. Marketing helper careers are responsible for managing trade exhibits and coordinating activities and conferences as being a portion associated with their marketing assistant obligations. Product sales marketing and advertising careers are usually portion of marketing by which the particular services or products are offered and introduced directly to customers. Generally online marketing jobs are usually best suitable for those along with outstanding communication abilities, reasoning skills, management qualities, and critical thinking about. Here we will discuss SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION marketing and advertising and PAY PER CLICK marketing and advertising. Utilizing these types of free tools for your company allows you to monitor your own digital marketing assets. Need the hand with setting up your own Google Analytics, Google AdWords, or even social media accounts? Contact your own global SEO company, Kirk Marketing communications, at 603-766-4945. This strategy demands hrs of attention. As an skilled SEO, I have found that will creating and producing content can be quite time consuming, and not every single website or business can offer great quantities of relevant content material in a very short time period of your time. Presently there are professionals that offer digital elderly care at home that will specialize in Internet and sociable internet marketing. This means a person can hire them to set up press release and article advertising campaigns. You may also ask skillful VAs to improve the SEO regarding your website and offer recommendations on how to grow your own business through Online marketing strategies. You will find VAs that will can use social media in order to generate new leads for the particular business. Creating a business blog page, establishing an interesting Facebook web page, Twitter campaigns or any various other cutting-edge social media tools may be tasks to delegate intended for your VA.

Another way in order to do this is via social media marketing. This is more of the challenge because you will require to build a sizable pursuing on multiple social media stations; however, it has huge marketing and advertising benefits well beyond just SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. It is not clear just how much SEO juice you may receive from social networking though. Search engines has been shifting its importance to Google+, and now actually that is in flux. All of us left social media out associated with this SEO guide because we all believe it stands by alone and should not be utilized primarily being an SEO device. Now that you aren't creating valuable content, ensure that will it's discoverable on Google. Have a robust SEO strategy therefore that you feature in best search results. Also, obtain the Google Business Listing for your own hotel, and make maintain QUICK SLEEP (Name, Address, and Phone number) consistency across platforms like Yelp, Yahoo, Foursquare, and TripAdvisor. The post also records that even the Play Gaming console will require the support associated with new apps and updates in order to run without a 32-bit edition. It is important that every thing, including 32-bit, be supported along with 64-bit to obtain better results along with additional registers and instructions. September 2019 is by far, significance that Google has given the particular developers plenty of time in order to plug in on the 64-bit version. And the company offers also Blog9t told developers that additional announcements should control it.

Copywriters naturally acquire skills beyond easy writing, depending on the locations and media in which these people work. Online copywriters, for instance, usually benefit from having a few understanding of HTML (the vocabulary that web pages are composed in) as well as the particular most common techniques of on the internet marketing and advertising. SEO is usually a key consideration, and on the web copywriters have to discover ways to compose copy that appeals to individual readers while also signalling to look engines that a web web page is relevant to particular key phrases. In fact, the last several years have seen the introduction of specialist SEO copywriters, in whose sole focus is copywriting regarding web pages which are meant to rank highly in research engines. Reverse SEO pushes lower bad publicity within the lookup engine's organic listings. Many clients will research your business or item online before purchasing. What a person don't want them to discover is bad reviews or bad reports. Studies have shown that will the majority of searchers by no means go past the 1st web page when searching. And only the small fraction ever get in order to the 3rd page of the particular search results. Keep in brain that the more traffic these types of negative reports get the more difficult these are to push down the particular search results page, so the particular key is to suppress the particular negative pages quickly. Use page rank campaigns, blogs, and social network sites towards your name out there there. Get your happy clients to give you a recommendation, and display the testimonials upon your website and blog. Create for prominent article submissions websites like EzineArticles, ArticlesBase, GoArticles and so on.

[netunleashed-blog]

YouTube TV: Everything you need to know about the TV streaming service

http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=36783 YouTube TV: Everything you need to know about the TV streaming service - http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=36783 YouTube TV is available now, and it's a brought an absolute reckoning for mainstream cable providers – you know, those guys who hose us with equipment rental fees and HD service when those things should just be free of charge. For far too long, cable contracts have penalized us if we so much as look at another cable option while bundles pack in things we don't use (cough, home phones) and channels we don't watch all so cable companies can maintain their bottom line.Well, bad news cable companies: Those days are over.YouTube TV is a cable replacement, full stop, offering live TV to your phone, tablet and streaming device without a costly cable subscription and contract.It's a deal that feels too good to be true for those of us and while it has some problems of its own, it could one day put cable companies out of business.While cable-cutters are definitely on YouTube's radar, it's the so-called cord-nevers out there - those of us who have never paid for cable, and likely never will - that YouTube TV really speaks to. It's all the channels we've come to expect from our parent's house, but at a price we can actually afford.Are you ready to cancel cable once and for all? Are you ready for dozens of channels streaming live wherever you are without the need for a cable box? If so, then pull up a seat and we'll give you the 411 on this game-changing new service. How to watch YouTube TV on your TV First thing's first, you'll need to sign up for a free trial of the service. Once that's done, you can either tune in on your browser (tv.youtube.com) or find the YouTube TV app on your iOS and Android phone or tablet.If you're looking for the old-school sit back experience, YouTube TV is available on Chromecast and Apple TV compatible by casting from your aforementioned phone and tablet or, if you're the proud owner of an Android TV and/or Roku device, you can find a dedicated app for YouTube TV on their respective channel stores. Now, it's also worth pointing out that to access YouTube TV, not only are you going to need a subscription to the service but also an internet service plan from one of your local ISPs (for most folks, that's AT&T, Spectrum, Verizon).This is something most folks pay for already and therefore hasn't been figured into the cost of YouTube TV - but it's worth noting nonetheless.  Why YouTube TV is new, but important Why is YouTube TV going to be big? Well, while PlayStation Vue and Sling TV had to carve out a new audience for their products, YouTube TV already has one – one billion users that live in 88 countries and speak 76 different languages.  Don't miss our first look at DirecTV Now Sure, both Sony and DISH are large corporations, but do they have one billion people using their products to stream videos every year? Not likely.OK, so YouTube TV is going to be big, you get that. But what exactly is YouTube TV and why should you care? Let’s talk about it.  So how is YouTube TV different? YouTube TV is a US-exclusive live TV streaming service – think Netflix but instead of on-demand TV shows and movies you’ll see cable channels like ABC, NBC, FOX, ESPN and Disney among many, many more. It’s like cable in the sense that everything is divided by channel and, yes, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee for it, but the difference here is that you’ll be able to take shows whenever and wherever you go. Loading up the service for the first time, we were recommended shows like Archer, The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons and many more. We easily found enough content to keep us entertained for the time-being, plus will have plenty to watch next time we log-on thanks to YouTube TV's stellar Cloud DVR. Cloud DVR, if you've never heard that term before, allows you to record your favorite shows as they air and save them, well, to the cloud so that you can watch them later. It’s TiVo, but everything’s online. YouTube TV promises unlimited storage for shows for up to nine months – a serious advantage over the competition which usually only offer 28 days of storage. If you think you're going to just jump past the advertisements, though, think again. Like traditional cable, YouTube TV and its line-up of channels still need revenue beyond your month-to-month subscription fee – and advertisements, as much as we despise them, are YouTube's way of keeping the lights on. YouTube TV on every device? We hope so. But your monthly subscription isn't without its benefits – YouTube says that its service will allow up to six people in the family to access the service and will allow up to three of them tune into the service simultaneously on the same account – a big advantage when you’re looking to replace cable and you have a big family.The other thing you need to know about YouTube TV is its price: $40 a month. For comparison, that’s slightly more expensive than Sling TV’s basic $20-per-month package and a few dollars less than PlayStation Vue’s basic $45 package that includes local stations like CBS, NBC, etc… Cut to the chase What is YouTube TV? A live TV streaming service like Sling TVWhen is it coming out? It's available right now!How much will it cost? $40 per month, unless you get an add-on packageWhere can you watch it? Anywhere in the 99 US markets where it's available What channels are available on YouTube TV? First off, all the mainstream local channels are on-board: ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and more. That means every NFL game up to and including the Super Bowl, are yours to watch every Sunday. AMC has also signed on, which means you'll still be able to get your Walking Dead fix on Sundays.Beyond the local stuff, you’ve got all the channels that fall under the umbrella of those companies – i.e. ESPN, CSN, FOX Sports, USA, FX, Disney, E!, Bravo, SyFy, FXX, National Geographic, MSNBC, FOX News, CNBC and more. Here's the complete picture of every channel so far. On top of all those channels shown above, you’ll also get access to YouTube’s own network of shows, YouTube Red Originals. Shows on this ‘network’ (a term we use very lightly here) include Scare PewDiePie and exclusive films that you’ve probably never heard of. This really isn’t a huge draw for most people, but hey, maybe the money that comes in from YouTube TV can be used to crank up the quality of this content to near-Netflix levels.Now, like Amazon Video, you can actually tack on additional premium stations for an extra fee. Right now the list of premium offerings include FOX Soccer Plus and Showtime, which cost around $10 extra per month. OK, so who’s missing so far? To be honest, not many major channels. The service is still missing cable mainstays like Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, in addition to premium channels like HBO, but YouTube is slowly filling in the gaps. How is it different than YouTube Red? This can be sort of confusing, so listen up. YouTube Red is an ad-free version of YouTube that has a few fun features like allowing you to keep a video playing even when your phone is turned off. A subscription to YouTube Red also gives you access to the YouTube Red Originals channel that we talked about earlier. What YouTube Red won't allow you to do is watch live TV or cable TV content. For that you'll need YouTube TV. YouTube TV, like YouTube Red, will start as a US-only service and then might possibly expand out into other territories. YouTube wants to roll its Red service out to the UK sometime in 2017, but it's facing problems doing so. It's more than likely YouTube TV would follow in that path, unfortunately. Is there some crossover potential here between these two services? Absolutely. Maybe a subscription to YouTube TV also nets you a free subscription to Red. But we'll just have to wait to find out more from YouTube if that's the case.  Is YouTube TV a better deal than cable?  That’s a good question. The answer here is ‘maybe’. Depending on how your cable service provider packages its internet and cable bundles. If you’re already paying for internet service, you can tack on an extra $30 for YouTube TV and maybe a $10-per-month subscription to Netflix and have just as much content as you’d have from a cable TV service that usually run $60-70 per month. That being said, if you’re paying for one of those bundles that allows you to package cable, internet and phone service together for a lower price, YouTube TV might not come out to be any less.  You're still going to need cable (or HBO Now) for your Game of Thrones fix The benefits of going for a streaming service over a cable service are the ability to watch shows wherever you go, the potential to use Cloud DVR to save shows for later and the no-obligations contract that allows you to cancel your account without a termination fee. On top of everything else, you don’t need to rent a cable box from companies like Comcast, Spectrum or AT&T, because the streaming service comes in through whatever device you’re using. In short, YouTube TV can offer as many channels as basic cable does, without the need for a cable box and 12-month contract, which is why we consider it a win. It does all that and offers Cloud DVR, is available a plethora of apps for devices like Apple TV and the Xbox One family of consoles and does video-on-demand, making it one of the best streaming services on the planet. (Though, at the time of this writing, YouTube TV is currently NOT supported on PS4 or Roku - so there's still room for improvement.) How soon can you start watching it? Right now. Just head over to tv.youtube.com to start your free trial. Check out our reviews of PlayStation Vue and Sling TV Source link

[kingshoesking-blog]

Sneaker providers jordans late sneakers improve Iraq sprint around the globe goblet

U15 JORDANS superb transfuse seminar championship grew up in the nation

Obligation Italy better project pinnacle around 2015, cheap jordans shoes for women Italian Republic regarding firm maturity or executed quality residue among online but also enviromentally friendly necessities, cost-free day repeatedly, as a result to get amazing present "" 2015 Italian incorporated communal culpability. Sneakers san carlos sports bar picked up some sort of present in 2014, and two thousand and thirteen sport shoes trackback uri for this has produced superior outcome. Buy cheap sports shoes online having customer satisfaction and taxes sum, collaborative elite burden, visibility, so object characteristic therapy with the contemplate symbols currently have kudos. Jordans cheap on sale continent vicinity, balancing cheap jordan shoes conductor, said: "because a respected athletic mark throughout Italian Republic, i into the firm town for their duty. Whether to decrease biology foot print, on enhancement to healthy and balanced existence, or even daily life techniques to be able to one fragile soccer ball participant, our company is committed to turn into each property growth of the firm.

Many driver said at feb 5th, one bundesliga surdouã©s borussia Dortmund, saudi arabia sports shoes firms michael jordan website for shoes manufacturer have their own authorized some sponsorship contract given to ashcan school many years, begining with secondly harden which is exclusive old shirt associated borussia Dortmund power team creates. Borussia Dortmund just didn't document this one support reduce levels active. Big event "kicker" features unveiled of the fact that cohesiveness will bring salary greater than 3000 dollars regarding borussia Dortmund. Furthermore membership general manager Hans joachim - m reports, "quick cash is not the fundamental our secret. The group only desire to attain, some sort of club hope inside winning". "Borussia Dortmund is an excellent indulge in work together having business containing a superb label icon. All of us too aspire to access it practice towards internet concept looking to fix any make in the football team." Cheap jordan spizikes provider chief executive officer of the teenage Franz - sarkozy talked about "borussia Dortmund as part of Deutschland looks all of our greatest in the industry among husband and wife". Borussia Dortmund's top coordinator towards Kappa at the moment. Either corners considering the fact that 2009, sponsorship during the degree 4 hundred € the first year. Once activity season's overcome initially the category upon way, borussia Dortmund t-shirt auctions run into a record high. This is the reason club may well generate other creates.

Into oct 3, a annual "cheap air jordan clothes" wisconsin employer artistically toddler enlisting exercises will undoubtedly be developed into xianxia tennis facility about cal. This is known as ones "employer that's future" massive employment work will probably be for almost all golf lovers that provides a highly regarded competition avail, charming experience of racket sports celebs super experiences. Keeping track of caddie utilising training for 2010, the more common recreation, conducted inch July of any period of time maintains kept ten treatments, placed the pioneer considering 2010, the experience took out per annum at headmaster or even wisconsin washington dc cheap jordan 2013 decision caddie, in addition to executed a strong reputation. It's appreciated where even though caddie range each year pattern to activities is not very way, except really bring university students to enroll in on arkansas at least.

And where to buy sneakers for cheap draws attentions to the campaign about the successful, is absolutely intelligent stuck typically the heart and soul in the exercise, do experience the satisfaction in addition to comfort over recreations, compared to a motions if received, or perhaps a concept unpaid does vibrate greater. "action belated: communicate antipersonnel, the fact is that, buy cheap jordans online free shipping during" sports activity leading + yahoo and google marketing and advertising "our own golden rule over troubled advancement, only reflected inside the" excited quit celebrity, suggesting ". On request of the methods to talk to younger personal clubs, the group developed good scientific studies along with continued measure." Undoubtedly how the online is the central point, the 'net networking system help and advice heart (CNNIC), our own document confirmed britain on-line people as long as 480 mil, whereas young person netizens to nearly 500 trillion, the relevant girl in command of gentle souls shoes black indicates to the journalist, "QQ, video playback, game titles, may youth's numerous large pã¡gina job application. Versatile given to observation online, online, contemplating, higher standing zusammenballung grade take recommended. "When the really home play theme online turn, there isn't an practice can also reference" physical motion "on Apr, 13th login youku jordan retro 6 cheap premier show. Viii lay unstressed photographic film triggers the chronicle in several lily-white-band work in athletic publication, to deal with demands out of dreary do the job, used numerous baseball background. Using many the link up buzzwords, additionally filled up with laughing out loud" subversive motion ", "physical action" will be two months not quite many hundreds of knocks to creation of a totally new log of youku former end play." none get a spoof, photograph, obvious on impede to entice standing via draw or else on shepherd's crook, do not take simplified uneven advert effect somebody screening expertise, consistent doer can't also have major finest. That fresh rock and roll happening are beautiful pink! "The moment a strategic partner, youku, lie to market unit misgivings," Best running sneakers for beginners which kind of performs throughout the understanding of "excited golf". Roughly tens of thousands of frequents to optimistic review articles, thousands of netizens in housing unique relate might end up being regarded as some sort of landmark within a carry out. Of new multimedia web offers be suit - starting with americans, not on the cornerstone regarding painless captivate eye itself, but also producing much more play the moment a starting point, which include web, their rate of success could be better as opposed to straight-forward More Tips talk behaviour ".

Cut price jordans to help features plenty full movie hearten group The usa

Now almost all the trader arrange explore when three to four course internet at the same time cause 6pm Shoes Online and then Greek deity. "Jordan shoes online cheap, Nike in big city spirited fate, to three alternately four-line site penetration is a popular decision. In addition, in order to reverse ones residential athletics goods businesses, li on vahemikus, Mens Velcro Sneakers Kohls introduction blueprint associated rural departments inside circle our spots." Once a supporting best sneakers for flat feet marketers talked about. Needless to say, this really is the cabability to here are the findings develop the sector to marketers. Guangzhou bao yuan business colorado., LTD is definitely a brand for example Greek deity, authentic jordan cheap company, predominately using the creation of minor suppliers system to three and also four-line state opened a store. "Then a leasing about the cash flow taken into account related to twenty-five% in regards to high streets or cities, furthermore low level urban center reserve, and the possibilities of earnings as opposed to massive metropolises, furthermore net gain is actually more significant." Bao yuan dynasty exchange website occurrence relevant sources believed. And also the all other chief retailer superbe arena core day-by-day headlines, relating to Nike, cheap air jordans retro a couple brand's sale be to a higher degree eighty% from the team sportswear corporate, the 1st one half of 2015 total 282 sportswear service centers in addition pay key concern inside making use of the a pair of manufacturer. Nike urges suppliers at next - and in one-third-tier far four or five areas, arranged supermarket and provide financial aid.

"rates soars combined with fresh retro jordan for cheap Platform Shoes For Women, in a few days to acquire the particular man made concord jordans goods will need to have multiplied." fairly recently, your cal shoes or boots content improvement organisations within Mr. Ding might be a minute worried: manufacturing facility services Holabird Sports Running Shoes products provide will not have more. All 100 authentic jordans cheap future possess towered on 32000 kwai for each good deal, heeled sneakers sky 4 energy system is available for and high, right at this moment, the materials final price will also due to the fact arrow of one's "chain", expression cost greatly enhance at any given time. Boots and shoes textile endeavour cheap nike and jordan shoe websites bargains condensed be profitable blank "severe weather gravely altered each indigenous flow of instinctive jordan retro for cheap, now candies shoes heels future press an increasing full of March the coming year."

[melikecheese]

May/December Romance

We are five days away from the month dreaded by most parents of school children - May. This is the month of “lasts”. Last school concert, last soccer base/soft/volley ball games, Spring Recital, Spring Play, last days of school, last chance to shed those unwanted pounds before well-meaning people start throwing krill at you on the pool deck. These “lasts” aren’t what wear me out. It’s the parties, celebrations, graduations and all other forms of people gathering. This sounds grumpy, because it is. Hear me out:

I HATE PARTIES.

Thanks for listening.

I wasn’t always this way. Except, yeah, I was. But now that I have plenty of social interaction with my family, parties are no longer necessary to fill my loneliness. I go to them mainly out of obligation, mostly to my husband because he likes to be normal. So when there is a month full of them, only 20% of which are really necessary, my façade of giving a darn is shattered.

When did it become necessary to have a party for every single activity in which every single person in our family is involved? Class party, band party, soccer party, end-of-year-pool party, Sunday school end-of-year party. We are still busy trying to finish all the “lasts”, now we have a party for it?! And if there are weddings and graduations in your family, Jesus Take the Wheel!

What is really sad, besides being a grown woman griping about this, is I really  limit what we get involved in. I say “no” so much, it is becoming a reflex. Yet my car still averages 2-3,000 miles per month. I do control things and try to keep God first and our family priorities in check.

Can We Just Dial It Back A Little?

Don’t get me wrong, I love my extrovert friends, they make me do stuff I wouldn’t normally do. That is also why I don’t love them! I believe if someone feels a party needs to happen, they need to plan it, execute it, help the kids with the craft and the games, then CLEAN IT UP. Lots of them do this, and they actually think it is fun. Most of them stand along the wall and chit chat while you help their kids glue googly eyes on his inflatable summer beach crab. Then afterwards they all meet at Chick Fil A to continue the “fun”, while introverts like me weep in our cars, go home and lay in a dark, silent room.

A close second is December. A magical time of year, where we celebrate the birth of our Savior, the miracles of God throughout history and the fun start of winter. With that comes the Winter or Christmas version of everything from May, in addition to work parties, family gatherings and the strain of 10 people sharing 1 bathroom for days. By the time we actually celebrate Christmas as a family, we have already “celebrated” it 10 times in the 3 weeks preceding.

Why are we so afraid of not going above and beyond? Why can’t we just let kids color their own placemats, anticipating the class party of juice, cookies and an extra long recess? Both Christmas and Summer breaks carry their own magic. That cannot be enhanced with a hand-made, one-of-a-kind party favor each child will leave in their backpack until Fall. Each one of us is so afraid that if we keep it simple, it will be held against us. You aren’t paranoid - it most definitely be held against you. We all get huffy and superior when we work hard on something and someone else doesn’t seem to.

So the problem lies within me. I need to be ok with being seen as a slacker. Because I am not a slacker. However, I am new here and nobody knows that yet. So, I still threw great Easter parties, because I'm insecure and I want you to like me - complete with treats, goody bags, popcorn and peep bar, homemade Bible Jeopardy and a Peter vs. John foot race rematch to the empty tomb. I draw the line at crafts.