#hes an ocean man . not by choice but by the god his soul was sold to in a past life. thats how he looks at it

[freezeriafan]

Ok I'll just say it. When Robby's flipdeck said that he A.) Spent All of his money on Pizza and B.) Secured a Random Job as a deckhand on a shrimp boat to pay rent, that 100% felt like a manic episode. Like I dont know anything abt anything but also there is no doubt in my mind that that's what that was. I dont want to say that I think hes bipolar bc then when i call him Crazyass it's gonna look Rude but i think hes bipolar and I dont think hes diagnosed but he does have an old-timey sailor nickname and understanding of it all. That's what I think here on September 16 2020

[nauseateddrive]

4 POEMS by Jake Sheff

Elegy for Dog I: A Failed Acrostic

January was tired when it became king. Apples here love being red in the spring, Casting shadows against the stone architraves our Kapellmeister will never live down. You Stole Apollo’s cows, and let them graze to show me Heaven’s template. Where do failed heroes go? Eucalyptus cupolas and polar icecaps Frame the downtrodden gods. But you weren’t Freakishly wrong, as I so often am, on your

Joyride through nearly twice eight years, Á la someone far from beauty’s stepmom. Copper coin or grimacing sun? I’ve got 20,000 Kor of crushed grief on this threshing floor. Shark-sparks of sadness flood the impetiginous air… How, and why, do clouds cobblestone Entire days, and lakes, when you’re not here? Fixing every broken thing, poets go where Ferns and geraniums baptize the morning.

“Jur-any-oms,” is how you’d spell it; After all, a dog’s a dog, and wisdom knows futility. Cassations make a rusty brew, to drink the truth of truths, and Kill whatever ceases wanting to be new. Stewardship, the color of gravity’s silence, naturally Houses every “glur” (a glittery blur); go chase what plays Eternal games. I hear the swans by Rooster Rock. Your handsome Face, its happy handsomeness, in memory’s eye, goes in and out of Focus; in love’s better eye: your goodness neath its everblooming ficus.

Gravity and Grace on SW Murray Scholls Drive

“Impatience has ruined many excellent men who, rejecting the slow, sure way, court destruction by rising too quickly.” Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

The traffic lights control the people’s actions, but Not their feelings, as the limits of philosophy Collide head on with the nose of a Dalmatian.

I tell you, the day is stress-testing itself, and these Sidewalks wish that it’d just gone straight. Geese Take this sky-hairing wind for granted, as they

Land on the lake like memorable speech on The sensitive soul. Time is never sharp, but it’s Cutting something in the credit union. Maybe

It’s dancing a back Corte for the woman in line Thinking about the taste of limes from Temecula As she waits for the teller. Air Alaska and that

Haunted pie in the sky are not the only reasons For all the volatility in the air today. Rushing And perfectionism both produce a loss; behind

The Safeway Pharmacy, you’ll see the small Smells of both, sloshing around to the ticking- Sound of the ocean’s tides. I must admit, I am

Frozen in place by the sight of steam from Joe’s Burgers; it is poetry’s pale tongue, rising in And arousing the air. This neighborhood’s street-

Lights are more serious than kokeshi dolls. Lights From its windows outshine poison dart frogs. Maybe to forget about life for awhile, the lamps

Are focused on The Population Bomb? ‘Easy Tiger,’ all these incidents whisper. Each day’s A sign twirler’s dais; each corner a promise

Of something more in a different direction: it isn’t A marriageable daughter or impoverishment, But inguinal ingenuity plays a part, and that isn’t

Bad at all. What oaths and paths went here Before Walmart? What voices were voided by The liquor store? What are vague’s values

When the library shares a parking lot with a 24- Hour gym and a cargo cult? Gas stations satirize                                                                           The Queen of Hearts; I tell you, it makes every

Question seem incidental. Treaty-breakers in Pajamas swing on the swing sets. Was August That full of angst? It feels like autumn went too

Far on accident. Desertification, in a sugar tong Splint, takes a shot of ouzo and talks shit About the death of Brutus, but my Bible-thumping

Memory – on a ski hill in Duluth – is also too busy Watching some ducks on the lake to notice; and Desertification makes a face at me like a Swedish

Film. Poets make for poorly picked men to Familiarity’s paymaster-general. The Calvinistic Rain is an ill-starred attempt to make mayonnaise-

Fries just for me, but I must admit, it all seems – You know – cybernetic. And step-motherly as all Get out, if you ask the trees. They prefer “You

Can’t Hurry Love,” by The Supremes, to any Changes that take effect in one to two pay periods. Pretext ricochets; a perfect reverse promenade.

At Summer Lake, When the Vegetables are Sleeping

Cruelty drinks all the wine, and never gets drunk On these shores. When Summer Lake speaks, In every word, an introduction to the world. I am

Easily duped. The greatest duper duplicates my pride, Which always lingers, in the hallways of my heart And beneath the surface of Summer Lake. The sky is

Supplicating, it’s literally shaking. An hour passes Faster here, the hour always held too dearly dear In paranoid and ivied walls. The ducks can do

An unwise thing correctly, and it sounds more like Dusty than Buffalo Springfield to the enokitake Sold in Springfield, Illinois, which is the opposite

Effect it has on the wild mushrooms on these shores. On cables capable of love, the geese convince The weather to taste like kvass today. Basically,

Another Cuban Missile Crisis drowned itself just Now. The clouds might ask themselves, ‘Is lowliness Allowed here?’ To which the crows might ask,

‘Does omertà sound like lightning?’ The answer’s Oubliette is ten times worse than impotence. Summer Lake isn’t smart, but it stays quiet, like

Someone too smart to say all they know. ‘Whoa, Sweet potato,’ the capital gains tax mutters To itself, knowing that what matters doesn’t mean

A thing. Some say the lake bottom’s sands receive Commands from Hearst Castle, others say Its hands are King City’s hands, and still others

Maintain more sins have been than grains of sand Times secondary gains, and that explains The beauty and industry that none can see but

All can feel on these shores. (Some possibilities Play possum, or get opsonized by hate; this one snores Like Rip Van Winkle.) This orb-weaver spider is

The Milton Friedman of Summer Lake, the wind On her web is Grenache from The Rocks District Of Milton-Freewater AVA for the eyes. The day is

Stereotypical, although it feels like three days In one…But for the lake’s good counterfactual Questions, I would forget that some die young,

But most die wrong. I’ve tried to pick up Summer Lake’s reflections in three lines or less, but The hardest truth is your own impotence. Oh,

It’s hard to hand your power over to a thing No one can see. Hopped up on distinctions – not The obvious distinctions – Summer Lake is pretty;

Cold, but pretty! In the distance, with so many Intercessory prayers, hot air balloons are rising; Shaped like teardrops, upside down and rising.

This lake re-something-or-anothered me. Are first Impressions wrong sometimes? I am a season’s Golden calf, according to the sunlight, doing

A prospector’s jig on the surface of Summer Lake. If not for the Weimar Republic’s wooden- Headedness, I’d set down my heart-song and

Listen to reason on these shores. I never trust An activist guitar, if the weather is socially clumsy. The future is reflected on the lake: it always

Laughs at us – between its math and gratitude Lessons – and never thinks of (or gives thanks to) Us enough. The presence in the lake juniors

My ears. The day is not too baffling, nor is it Jane Eyre. Space-themed and spiritual, some autumn Leaves are swimming in the rain. The ducks arrest

My attention in the mardy weather, even though they Must know my attention is dying. The barbed wire Around my stated goal is an outcome out of

Their control. Picnickers picnic with acorns and apricots, On blankets covering Holy Schnikey’s death mask. My unsandaled thoughts thrive and increase on these,

And no other shores. They are pets for the days less Important than love, when Summer Lake says it’s Humble, because it knows the right thing to say.

Summer Lake gives the comfort of commonly held And seriously absurd beliefs to the blue heron. Nothing is wrong with this lake or anything in it,

Not even the ghost of Amerigo Vespucci. It’s all so Simple to the stiff-necked molecules of water, made out Of frogs and snails and puppy-dog’s tails. These thoughts

Are fine manna in a fine ditch. Post-structuralist squirrels Can tell my heart’s in Italy, and I’m in the intellectual Laity. Chivalry’s technician sees my shovel, and they say,

‘You’ve got to hand it to him.’ Neurocysticercosis Sets the bar high; it looks at this park, and thinks The smartest monkey drew the perfect landscape.

That’s this maple tree’s previous disease, its precious One. It unfurls the ferns of my firm and foremost Beliefs, I’m told, to partialize insufferable vastidity.

We Install a Sump Pump on (What Used To Be) a Holiday (Take 2)

The oppressive heat was born a fully grown Man. I admire the result of its effort, but Despise the means of achieving it. My wife Asserts her individuality in the gunk; her Body’s allegations aren’t too soft or hard today. Her self-interest seems to have drowned in the vortex.

Our little garden knows flippancy with regards To privacy is unwise. The stepping stones can Only blather, as slugs draw nomograms on Their faces. My wife’s body speaks Proto-Indo- European in the vortex and denim overalls. Marc Chagall’s The Poet studies her. He calls her

‘Innocence: The opposite of life! A criminal with A badge!’ I hand her the tools of a crude and Rudimentary faith, and she says, ‘Jill, great books Make fine shackles.’ Her arms only have An administrative objective in the vortex, but They are where good things come from.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician in Oregon and veteran of the US Air Force. He's married with a daughter and whole lot of pets. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and a Laureate's Choice prize in the 2019 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. Past poems and short stories have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).

[toomanystacksofbooks]

Achilles Was More Than A Weapon

by @toomanystacksofbooks

Achilles, in my own understanding of his tale, has been horribly misrepresented by history. Born of heaven and earth, he was told to live a certain way- to be a certain way. He is, today, viewed as a warrior of the greatest kind, which he was, of course, but I’ve noticed a great number of people who seem to believe that his entire character is diluted by that fact- to war and blood and violence. To do such, one erases every other part of him, everything else- good and bad and gray.

First, we must understand his origins. His mother was Thetis, an ocean nymph, a goddess. She had fallen victim to the will of higher gods, forced into an unwilling marriage with Peleus, who was a king. And so Achilles came, breathed his first years on Phthia, a prince. He was greatly admired from a young age and known to be light on his feet, swift, and graceful.

Here we have our first example of something that was key to his character that was not his status as a warrior. Yes, his speed and grace and precision were all what made him a great warrior, but that is not why he had such talents. He was, first and foremost, a child. Before he ever was a fighter, a soldier, a killer- he was a kid who wanted to play.

We know that Thetis was not so fond of Peleus- at least in many interpretations- but she loved her son dearly, and wished for him to be divine some day. She visited him, and told him as much, and he listened and walked away when their meetings were over. She knew that heroes such as her Achilles would be fated to, one day, make a choice. A short, glorious life- gone down in history, adored- or a long, forgetful life- a man who would be forgotten, lost in the winds of time. Achilles, I think, never wanted more than to have fun when Thetis began thinking about this. He was a child, and what child would choose a war and grief and death, simply to be remembered and revered, over a full and happy life, all for oneself? I believe that he was taught, pressured, into thinking that he desired honor. At some point, he must have lost much of his childhood confidence, and began craving other people’s approval.

I can understand, honestly, what was going through Achilles’ mind as he made such decisions. There comes a point where you’ve covered up so many layers of yourself that you simply cannot remember who you are. Not truly. It is because of this that I sympathise with Achilles. I think his tale would have ended very differently had the social and peer pressure been lifted, had his mother understood what a child needs.

And a child needs nurturing. His nature was not to fight.

Another example of his skills and character outside of war is the lyre. He was known to have played it, to have marveled at the sounds it could make. It was a hobby, but he was Achilles so he mastered it quickly. Perhaps had he not been taken to war, he would’ve picked up his lyre and written and sung the tale of those who did. Perhaps Troy would not have fallen.

He was also, supposedly, honest. He was empathetic and caring, especially to those he was close to. He did not want to fight, I don’t think, but he knew- or thought- he was supposed to. He enjoyed the fighting, but not for the pain and hurt and blood, but for the rush of adrenaline, for the way he could run and dance, the way he could throw a spear. He never once stated that he enjoyed the killing.

Patroclus, lastly. Patroclus was his mortality, that half of his soul. I do not believe in soulmates, generally, but somehow Achilles and Patroclus have me sold. Patroclus was compassionate where Achilles was emotionally confused and distant, Patroclus was a healer where Achilles was a fighter, Patroclus was a little clumsy where Achilles was sure-footed. Patroclus was mortal where Achilles was divine. It was he who kept Achilles sane, who kept his mind from spiraling to true selfishness and cruelty. Patroclus gave Achilles a reason.

When he died, Achilles snapped. In The Iliad, it is said that Achilles sobbed so loudly that the gods at the bottom of the sea could hear it. He first wanted to kill himself, but he had no weapons. He wept by Patroclus’ body for days, and when the best of the Greeks, the greatest warrior who ever lived, died, they had their ashes mingled together (The Iliad, Homer: “There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth,”).

Achilles killed, yes. He raided and fought and ran through a war he would not see won. But so did Hector. So did Patroclus. So did Odysseus, and Agamemnon, and Paris, and the Amazons. They were all fighting, because a woman was taken, or went, because she had no choice as to what was to happen to her. Achilles should never have had to fight. None of them should have. There is no “right side to this war” because both the Greeks and the Trojans did terrible things. And both of them paid the price.

“We men are wretched things,” is stated by Homer in The Iliad. And so that includes us all- men like Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector. Women like Briseis, Helen, and Hecabe. We humans are so diverse, yet we are so similar. Is it not wrong of everyone to go to war? Or just one side, the attacker? The defender? Or those which are both?

In The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Odysseus says to Patroclus: “He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

But he is not a weapon. There is so much more to the tale of Achilles than the Trojan War, than when he fought a river god and killed Hector of Troy and was killed by Paris. He was a child, free and bright as the day. He ran on the beaches of Phthia, trained with Chiron on Pelion. He was Achilles, a golden boy with a golden lyre under a golden sun. He did not exist to assist Meneleus in his nonsense, he did not exist to sail a thousand ships. He did not exist to fight, for we know he could have changed the Fates when his grief was as great. He was shaped by all of this. He was sharpened by all that he experienced, by those who he met. Patroclus and Briseis and Odysseus and Diomedes and Agamemnon and, eventually, Thanatos, who led him down to Hades to rest.

A spear is a stick before it is a weapon. Achilles is no different.

[stingslikeabee]

“i believe i should like to stay.” from Sephie

Bridgerton starters . not accepting

With time, Melissa had learned that much of what she thought to be true about Sephiroth was, in fact, incomplete at best. The idea that Shinra sold to the population, of an almost god-like war hero was not incorrect per se – his military feats had been amply documented, after all – but it was not everything that there was to him.

He was, first and foremost, a man – and a young one, who lacked experiences that anyone else of his age likely had gone through. He was a dedicated student and a faster learner, and for everything they did and for each moment she had spent with the 1st, he had rewarded her in some fashion.

Trips topside were her favorites – without the proper ID to leave the slums, Melissa only left the Wall Market when someone summoned her. But with Sephiroth, that meant that, most of the time, access to plateside was granted, no questions asked. And for every opportunity to gaze at the night sky or to eat at a different restaurant, she was always grateful for the kindness that apparently was never-ending on his side, even if it was hardly publicized.

They were also discreet – for a Wall Market self-styled queen and for someone popular enough to be Shinra’s posterboy, they tried to keep a low profile while doing all these mundane things around. And that evening, he had taken her to a different sort of outing – an aquarium. Melissa had never seen the sea, much less any of the creatures that lived in the ocean but for the ones that she was supplied with for the inn’s menu.

So visiting one of Shinra’s public aquariums had been one of her loveliest experiences – the brothel madame realized that she probably had acted (and reacted) like a child sometimes, filled with the excited glee of seeing a dolphin swimming just that close – but Sephiroth only smiled at her and never once hurried her along. Ever the perfect companion, the SOLDIER made sure to also return her home safely – after all, their first encounter many months ago arising exactly from an unsavory experience he had rescued Melissa from.

There was hardly a soul around by the time they return – the inn was a different sight without the excited chatter of the patrons and her girls, with lights turned off and whatever guests remained locked in their private rooms with their choice of companionship for the evening. Melissa sighed contently when they approached the stairs to the second floor and where her quarters were, letting go of his hands to stand on the tip of her toes to plant the softest of the kisses to his face as a goodnight gesture.

It was then that Sephiroth’s words surprised her – ‘I believe I should like to stay’. Melissa had invited him to stay the night, time and time again – but she had never expected him to accept. They were taking things slowly – and she had no idea of the commitments or the schedule the 1st needed to observe for work.

Well, that night was truly turning out to be full of surprises.

“Then please do - nothing would make me happier.”

[writingsbymarie]

Shameless Part 2: Secrets

prologue Part 1 

Word Count: 2,200

Warnings: Kissing, fluff 

A/n: i really know nothing about mobs lmao

You woke up, your eyes fluttering open. The sun leaking from the open spots of the blinds soaking your skin. You slowly sat up to see tom in front of the mirror buttoning up his shirt giving you a glimpse of his sun-kissed abs. You watched as he buttoned the shirt slowly, and all you wanted to do is go over there and unbutton it. You made eye contact with him in the mirror blushing, and looking down at the white sheets. As angry as you were in the situation you were in you couldn’t deny that your new man was gorgeous. His toned chest, strong arms, and kissable thin lips. You had also heard stories from others that he was a god in bed, and well you didn’t doubt it. 

“You're up” he noted turning to face you as he buttoned the last button on his shirt. “Did you sleep well”?

“Yeah” you mumbled rubbing your eyes and then brushing your hands through your hair. 

“So, I know this is out of the blue, but there is this ball or dance that's tonight. Its a fundraiser, and we need to be seen in public, so everyone believes this is true” he rambled playing with his hands. 

“I think I'll have to pass” you sighed. Not wanting anything to do with the mob bullshit. 

You never wanted to be part of this, but unfortunately, it was looking like you werent going to have a choice in the matter.

“Yeah that's not, really an option” he replied walking closer to you. “We're leaving at 6 pm, there is a dress in the closet for you, I am not asking you to come, I’m telling you your coming, so you better be ready to leave the house by 6 pm” he purred touching you bare shoulder dragging his hand down your arm softly giving you goosebumps. 

“You don’t control me, Tom,” You whispered standing up. You were so close to his body you could feel the heat radiating from his body. You put your hand on his chest dragging it down. Silently wishing there was no shirt blocking his chest. “But since your dad scares the living shit out of me, and I don’t want to die or get physically tortured I will come with you. You felt his body tense up at the touch of the hands making you blush, and quickly remove your hand. You walked away towards the bathroom closing the door. You leaned against it sliding down the down into a ball putting your head into your hands. Your head pounded as you thought of what your life was about to become. After the mobs know you and Tom are really together you'll have a target on your head. You slowly stood up turning on the shower. You removed your clothes stepping into the glass door. You stepped under the hot water steam rising from your body. You grabbed the soap rubbing it all over you closing your eyes taking a deep breath. This was going to be a long day.

--

It was around 5:00 when you started getting ready. You weren’t sure how you felt about the whole outfit he picked out for you though. It was a black dress that fit all your curves. You felt sexy in it, but sexy, well wasn’t your thing. You would have some bursts of confidence, but you tended to not have self-confidence when it came to being alluring or seductive. You get too nervous and you come off more like a clumsy awkward girl. You curled your hair. Applied some light makeup including mascara, eye shadow, and foundation. You added lip gloss to your lips because you hated lipstick. Every color you ever put on made you look like a clown. As you were applying the lipstick Tom appeared in the doorway putting one arm up on the frame leaning against it. You could have sworn you saw him checking you out as you glanced at him through the mirror. Your face went bright red.  

“I’m glad I picked that dress you look ravishing” he purred walking towards you. Somehow you got even redder. The heat coming from your face was making you dizzy. You were 19 and he was 23. He was older, more mature, and for some reason that made him ten times hotter. It not that you haven't had a boyfriend before. You were a virgin though. You had done little to nothing thing sexual, because your parents were crazy, and had you basically locked in your house because they didn’t want you to die probably because they needed you to be a pawn for their game. You hated that. 

“Thanks” you breathed as he came up behind you. You turned, and your chests bumped, and you took a step back looking down at your feet. 

“Turn around, I have the perfect necklace for you to wear tonight, and I have your ring, you'll need to wear this tonight,” he said lifting your hand to slide the ring onto your finger. He put his hand on your waist lightly spinning you around so your back was to him. He held a diamond necklace in his hands. He put the necklace on clipping it in the back. 

“Perfect” he mumbled, stepping back from you. He gestured for you to follow him. You grabbed your purse and placed your phone into the bag. You walked out of the bedroom trailing a bit behind Tom. You werent the best at walking in heels. That you could admit. You looked down at the ring on your finger. It was beautiful. That you couldn’t deny, but you were upset.You were tourn because you would never get a marriage proposal, never have a real wedding, and never get to experience falling in love. That was all taken from you, and it made you sick. You were stuck in your thoughts your body in autopilot when you bumped right into Tom.

“Sorry’ you sighed. Picking up your purse you dropped. You were at the front door walking towards the limo. Tom opened up the car door for you. You gave him a soft smile muttering a thank you as you entered the limo. You moved yourself to the window seat buckling yourself in. Tom was seated right next to you, and next to him was Harrison. The car rolled away from the castle making this the first time you left your prison or your home since your father dropped you off that dreadful day. As you watched buildings roll past you thought about escaping. Running away and never looking back. Starting fresh with a new name sounded like the best idea in the world, but you would never be able to live with the guilt because if you left your parents blood would surely be on your hands. You were so caught up in your dream world in your head that you didn’t realize the limo had stopped. Tom tapped your shoulder snapping you out of your daze. You opened the door of the limo stepping out feeling the fresh air on your skin. You looked up at the building. It looked like a 5-star hotel. It was gorgeous with a lit fountain liting up the garden below it. You began to walk towards the door Tom right next to you. Your hand brushed his and you blushed but tried to act casual. Harrison opened the 2 doors to the entrance, and that when Tom interlaced your fingers. At first, you pulled away but he whispered in your ear.

“Were supposed to be married just go with it” You nodded your head. Interlocking your fingers again. His hands where clammy. He seemed a bit nervous. So were you though. Anxiety was coursing through your veins. He leads you through the halls to a large ballroom. It was so crazy that although this was the mob in the public eye they were saints doing fundraisers like this. He took you to a circle table releasing your hand to pull out a chair for you. You sat down pulling your dress down over your thighs feeling overly exposed. One of your legs were bouncing up and down. Your hands shaking slightly. You were terrified that they wouldn’t believe the marriage, and that would result in the death of people on your side of the mob. Which would include your parents? The Hollands were extremely powerful and threating with death was their specialty. You had figured out in the past day that the reason your father sold you off was to save your family's life. It was either this or the Hollands would obliterate the Y/L/N mob. Tom noticed your anxiety and put his hand over yours squeezing it. He leaned over asking you a question.

“Do you want to dance” You swallowed, nodding slightly. You hoped you could make this looked convincing. You grabbed his hand and he leads you to the dance floor. He placed his hands on your back, and you lifted your hands to his neck. You both swayed to the music. 

“Are you okay?” he asked He sound genuinely concerned.

“Not really, I don’t want this Tom,” you said backing away from him releasing your hands from his neck. “All of this, always being a target, having to worry about my every move, being trapped in your castle”.

“I know” he sighed grabbing your hands putting them back around his neck. “I didn’t want to be forced into marriage either, but this is what had to be done so I can take over. We have no choice in this matter. We can't risk seeing other people, because we could ruin this all, so let's just make the most of it, I’d love to get to know you”. Your mind was racing with thoughts. Part of you wanted to slap him, and the other wanted to spill your whole life to him. You nodded looking down at your feet. It was a long silence before Tom spoke up. It was honestly a pretty awkward moment. Like when you are talking to your middle school crush and you have no idea what to say. 

“So what's your favorite color,” he asked out of the blue. You looked up from the ground giving a small laugh.

“Maroon, I like red, but I’m more of a fan of darker colors they look better on me, what about you” you responded

“Blue, like the color of the clear blue oceans, those are gorgeous” he answered, making you laugh. “What” he questioned looking at you like you were a little crazy.

“Idk I was just expecting your favorite color to be red like the color of blood, or black like the color of your soul” 

“What do you think I am some emo middle schooler who listens to screamo, I’m a future mob boss, not a psychopath” he laughed. 

“Eh, I guess I was expecting something less innocent” you trailed off. “Favorite animal”?

“Dogs, 100%, I don't think I could ever love anyone more than I love my dog”

“So you’ve got a soft spot for dogs. Noted” you giggled. “Mine is the Tiger they are fierce, majestic, and beautiful like me of course,” You said as you flipped your hair dramatically making him laugh. 

“Does that mean you're a cat person, because then we probably have to get divorced because I don’t do cats” he joked making you laugh.

“I prefer dogs over cats so I guess our marriage still stands” you smiled tucking a piece of hair behind your ear. 

“And also you are beautiful like a tiger” he interjected

“Thanks” You replied as your cheeks turned bright red. Heat radiating from yur skin like you were sunburnt. 

You and Tom talked for a couple more songs, you even danced for a bit. He spun you around, and you attempted to do the tango, but the almost lead to you falling to the ground and left both of you in hysterics. You were actually having fun with him which was the opposite of what you were expecting. So you could conclude with you and your husband actually had some things in common. You both were dancing in the middle of the dance floor when he pulled you closer to him. Your body tensed up as your foreheads touched. 

“Just go with it” he whispered, and then he placed his lips on yours. Your eyes were wide open and you froze. His lips were soft and warm. After a couple of seconds, your body relaxed into the kiss and you're melted into his arms. You slowly moved your lips against his pulling him closer to you. You tugged on the ends of his hair causing him to groan. You pulled away from the kiss to breath resting your head on his shoulder. He used his hand to lift your head up, and he whispered into your ear.

“How about we leave this, say you're sick and go have some real fun, I know the best clubs around town. And an ice cream place with the best ice cream you'll ever eat. 

“Lead the way Holland”

[imagine-all-the-fand0ms]

James Reed X OC Ch.01 /?

Hey this is my first fanfiction, So only nice comment Please

Sybil Rutter came with her sister to Jamestown to marry a man she's never met. Will it be love at first sight or a cruel twist of fate??

Prologue

Sibyl

July 1620

Sibyl’s stomach Rolled again as more waves crashed into the ship, her head leaning over the side of the ship. Hoping the cool spray of the ocean would help soothe her sickness a little. Beside her Alice, a girl her sister Verity had befriended whilst aboard the ship, patting her back. “It’s okay, it will pass soon,” reassured Alice as Sibyl stood up and Straighten her dress. Her legs struggling with what little weight her body held. At the start of the voyage, she’d been fine, but the further out to sea, they drifted the rougher became the sea had become and harder for her to keep anything in her stomach. “Aye pass, then return at supper with a vengeance,” replied Sibyl. Alice met her pessimism with a gentle smile before shifting her attention back to the sea. Alice was one of the few girls aboard the ship who has kept her optimistic views on their current Predicament of being taken to a new land to marry the men that travelled over here 12 years before build the colony. Maids to make wives as people called them, Women the men had paid to be brought over to said colony for them to wed. Her and Verity would be one of the first groups of girls to do this. Verity had joked, often joked that she felt more akin to a cow being sold than a woman being wooed by a suitor.  Although she’d say this with her usual boldness, Sibyl knew her sister and to Verity, marriage was no better than being shackled and locked away. Sibyl still herself was unsure of where she stood; It excited her to be traveling to the illustrious Virginia Colonies, Jamestown and see the new World. But another part of her a larger part of her feared this obscure place. 

This place was to be her home, a home she’d share with a man, a stranger she’d soon call husband. A man who she knew nothing about. Not his age or profession, not even a name. Will he be kind to her and allow her time to adjust to this new role to him? Or will he be cold and cruel man behind closed doors demanding she fulfils her wifely duties as soon as they’re wed regardless of whether she wanted too? These questions swirled around her head seeming to multiply, causing her sickness to rear its head again. A hand being placed on her shoulder pulled her attention from these thoughts and signalled someone new joined them.  It was Verity. “Let me guess, you’re both dreaming of your princes and their pot bellies?” She teased as she turned to lean against the ship. Sibyl sneered at her jab whilst Alice sighed and turned to Verity. “Aren’t you glad Verity? Aren’t you grateful we’re the ones to come to this new world?” Sibyl looked to Verity as her hand drifted to Sibyl’s opposite shoulder bringing her in close. “Hell’s teeth no” Grinned Verity before she let out a laugh one that neither Sibyl nor Alice could resist joining. Alice opened her mouth to counter when a ringing bell from above caught their attention. “Land!, Land!” Sibyl felt Verity’s arm tighten around her shoulder as a rush of girls hurried over to glimpse their new home on the horizon. There it was Virginia it looked like a dark grey smudge marking the end of the ocean and the beginning of the sky. As she gazed out at the distant land, she felt a cold tingled run down her spine, this was no turning back now. 

Although they had reached port before the sun completely set, they’d have to wait until morning disembarking due to an unforeseen problem much to the other girl’s dismay. Sibyl was grateful for this. Since they had seen land all the other girls had disappeared below deck to pack up their belongings and themselves presentable for the morning leaving the top deck empty except her. Verity and Alice disappear below deck not long ago. Alice went to help the other girls whilst she suspected Verity had gone to make sure no one ‘accidentally’ packed their belongings in their bags.  There were so many stars in this new world and quiet so quiet she could hear her own heartbeat in her chest. It seemed to echo in her ears. Back in London, Sybil was lucky to hear her own voice sometimes the crowd was so loud. This place would be different, she thought. No more working endlessly in her uncle’s shop to pay off her ‘debt’. Maybe her sister could find some peace here and settle a little but knowing her sister she’d be able to find mischief standing still.

Sibyl's mind drifted to her sister, Verity hadn’t been shy about her resentment towards the situation, but It was Jamestown or jail and for Verity, there was only one choice. When they were younger, Verity used to tell that even though they were the 2 sides of the same coin. Different but the same she’d say. It was true her and Verity looked more akin to cousins that siblings. A smile formed on her face; It was true although Sibyl’s dark auburn locks were curled it was no where near as wild as Verity’s fiery locks. It was the same with their eye to where Verity’s a bright blue, Sibyl’s bore a dark honey colour. A cough from behind her startled Sibyl out of the memory. She jumped to her feet pulling the shawl tighter around herself as if it was a shield and turned, stood at the top of the stairs, was a woman holding a lantern.  From what patience could see the woman older, dressed in a fine dark dress. It was the Governor’s wife, Mrs Yeardley. She was nice enough a little too god-fearing for Sibyl’s taste but nice all the same. Sibyl quickly bowed her head and addressed her “Ma’am”, Mrs Yeardley looked at her with an unreadable expression. “I thought everyone had retired. Why are you still awake, child?” questioned Mrs Yeardley as she descended the steps Sibyl was just sitting.  “I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to disturb the other, so I came up here,” which was the vague truth sibyl thought. She hadn’t been able to sleep, not with all the excitable chat of the other girls and had quietly snuck away. Mrs Yeardley stared at Sibyl moment before smiling, accepting Sibyl’s answer.

“It is understandable, but it is late and it would be best for you to return to the sleeping quarters. You’ll want to be at your best when you meet your intended.” There was something in the older tone that hinted to Sibyl that this wasn’t the light-hearted suggestion it seemed. Mrs Yeardley placed a hand on Sibyl’s arm. “To Bed with you dear, The Lord has seen fit to bless you with a prosperous new home and husband. Don't repay his kindness with Impertinence.” Sibyl gripped her shawl tighter and bowed her head “yes ma’am”. Sibyl turned and biting her tongue as she walked towards the stairs that lead to the sleeping quarters.” blessed..” thought Sibyl, "… easy to say when your husband is the governor of Jamestown. Not to mention that you probably knew his name at least” She’d wanted to turn and scream this at the woman. But the rational��side of her mind Knew better. Making an enemy of the governor's wife wouldn't be a wise move for her or for Verity’s future. She’d calmed down a little as she entered the sleeping quarter, most of the other girls had already turned in for the night, their lanterns blown out. Other were just finishing their prayers, Sibyl moved as quietly as she could to her bunk without disturbing them. S She reached into her bunk and pulled out her bag of belonging. Sibyl double-checked its content, unlike most of the other girl here she didn’t a lot to travel with. Happy that everything was as she left it that morning, Sibyl placed her shawl on inside before placing it back in her bunk to act as her pillow. She sat on her bed and looked for her sister, her eyes found sat with Alice and a blonde woman. Alice told her that the woman's name was Jocelyn Woodbryg after she’d seen them talking during a storm recently. According to Alice, she was just a lonely soul.  Feeling her weariness making its presence known,  Sibyl climbed into her bunk silently praying once last time before closing her eyes. “Please let him be kind.”

[noctiferous-fr]

can you do all the nitty gritty wb asks! :o

Oh my, sure! 

This took longer than expected and is longer than expected sooo under the cut it goes!

1. How/why did your clan get it’s name?

Sylvhurst gets its name due to the large tree that the Rulers live in. It used to house the ‘soul’ or ‘essence’ of Queen Azraea until a spell went awry and she became a dragon. ‘Sylv’ and ‘hurst’ are both tree/forest words.

2. Are there any other clans living near by? Are they friendly or are they rivals? Tell us about their interactions with your clan.

The closest ‘clan’ would be the Seelie Court, which is about a day’s travel south. The Seelie Court and Sylvhurst are allies who trade and lend eachother support in times of need. Given that the Seelie Court has a hidden entrance and is generally not entirely open to outsiders, most of the interactions between the members of both clans happens within the boundaries of Sylvhurst, or in the unowned sections of the Tangled Wood.

3. What is your clan’s main source of income? 

Probably the sale of magical goods and services. The Mage’s Quarter makes up a huge portion of the city, and there’s a good variety of magical beings each offering up their own unique type of magic.

4. What items does your clan have to import from other flights/clans/etc? Who is in charge of that?

The biggest import is building materials, despite the fact that Sylvhurst is in the middle of a forest. Because of Queen Azraea’s origin story, very few buildings in the town are made of wood, and it’s actually fairly difficult to get permission to build houses out of it. Instead, stone buildings are far more common (much to the joy of the magic users who find stone much more receptive to any spells they attempt to place on their residence). 

5. Does your clan produce any sort of item coveted by other clans? Specialty items, services, food/drink?

Sorta in relation to #3, I’d say maybe Perseus’s enchanted items would be one of the more popular items for sale in Sylvhurst. They’re notoriously reliable and he has a myriad of spells that he can place on all sorts of items. 

6. Is you clan independent or is it ruled by another governing body?

My clan is independent in the sense that Syvhurst is ruled by itself I guess?

7. Is your clan religious? Is there a single dominating religion or belief system in your clan or is it relaxed about different faiths?

All forms of religion are welcomed into Sylvhurst, though those who are fanatics may find some strange looks and whispers their way. For the festivals Sylvhurst dresses itself up and has a huge celebration for whichever God the festival is for. 

8. What sort of superstitions do many in your clan believe? Is there any merit to it, or is it just wives tales?

There’s plenty of superstitions concerning the forest surrounding Sylvhurst, and most of it actually does have merit. There’s been plenty of legends about a mysterious young hatchling with glowing eyes who guides lost hatchlings back to their parents. Or about a ghost who seems to show up before deaths or disasters, wringing his hands in worry. Or even stories about a cheerful young man who can be helpful one second and a thief the next, and what to keep on hand to give him in return for his aid. 

9. Any serious taboos?

Queen Azraea has been known to welcome all sorts of dragons into her clan, and even offer second chances to dragons who have done some fairly illegal things. The one crime that is expressly forbidden within Sylvhurst, however, is slavery or any form of trafficking. Any slavers moving through the territory are liable to be targeted and either killed or escorted out of the lands once their prisoners have been released. 

10. How is your clan operated? Is there a single leader, a council, or something else?

Queen Azraea and King Arguim (technically) have final say on decisions made for the entirety of Sylvhurst, but they employ a fair number of advisors on different matters. Trickmurk is the tactician who is technically the immediate supervisor of the Guards. Iravat, while being the main advisor is also the leader of a smaller and more elite force that is targeted to more ‘high danger’ targets (Think Emperor level danger). Undine is another important person who oversees the docks to the west and enforces import and export restrictions. For the most part these advisors are able to rule over their own sectors without the Queen and King stepping in and overriding their rulings. 

11. How is food stocked, stored and inventoried for rations during the lean times? Is there a specific dragon in charge of that?

Huh... I actually don’t have an answer for this. I would assume that the process would start with Undine at the docks, and she would begin to enforce export restrictions on anyone attempting to ship food out to make money. Then, she’d likely attempt to reach out to contacts and attempt to acquire more shipments of food. If it got really bad the treasurer, Aurelius, would most likely be brought in to sequester a portion of his vault for dried / salted portions of food. 

12. How are your clans defenses operated?

Sylvhurst has a few defenses, but not many because of its somewhat secluded location and relatively few threats that they have dealt with so far. One of the largest defenses is a ‘shield’ that is controlled by Harlequin, which essentially ‘steers’ malicious people away from Sylvhurst and sends an alert of the location. It acts as a sort of suggestion -- and it is by no means going to turn someone around who is actively attempting to reach Sylvhurst. It’s more to try and prevent random people from stumbling into town and causing trouble. 

Other than that, there are a number of guards who are stationed at the roads that enter and leave the city. This does leave the wooded areas without defenses, however, because there simply aren’t enough guards to actually surround the city.

13. How is waste removed from the clan?

Can I pull a JK Rowling and say it’s just magically vanished

I’m not sure! Waste such as packaging and trash is likely somewhat rare within Sylvhurst. Many things are reused and even bones from things like fish can be sold to vendors within the magical quarters for a small amount of money. Maybe any left over trash is incinerated? 

14. Does your clan have livestock of any kind?

Not within the walls of the city itself, no. However there are a number of farms that have carved their way along the roads leading into town and while most of them are crop farms there are a few that also have various types of livestock. 

15. How is water managed in the clan?

Water is collected for use in a number of ways. Almost every house in Sylvhurst has some form of a rain barrel (either for drinking water or for use in spells) which is the primary source for a number of people. There is a freshwater lake on the northern edge of the city which some people collect their water from as well. The ocean is another possibility, especially for those who live in the harbor area, as there are simple enchantments that can be used to turn the ocean water fresh and clean. Everyone handles their own water needs for the most part, barring of course businesses and inns which manage a much larger amount.

16. Is there a community hatchery/nursery, or do parents rear their young separately?

Parents rear young within their own homes, though there are nurseries which can look after hatchlings if something happens to their parents or if their parents cannot look after them all day long on their own.

17. Who teaches the younglings the basics?

The role of teaching is generally given to the parents, or, if they don’t feel comfortable it’s possible to find a mentor for the hatchling. The real basics of life are handled by the parents, but once they begin to branch out there are a number of tutors or mages that are happy to indulge the odd question from a child. 

18. How does your clan view Exaltation? Is it an honor, banishment, something else?

Exaltation is more personal than anything. Most in Sylvhurst form their own opinions about it from their own experiences with family members and friends deciding on it. For most, exaltation is simply a journey a dragon takes when they decide that they wish to serve their god in any capacity. It’s definitely not a banishment, and it’s also not exactly an honor. It’s simply a different choice.

19. If your clan has a diverse number of dragons of different elements, how does that affect society? Are some dragons prejudiced against certain elements/breeds? How does the clan handle this?

Sylvhurst is a melting pot of every single element present on Sornieth. While Prejudice may occur behind the scenes, it is fairly obvious that overt prejudice will not be tolerated by the people of Sylvhurst or the King and Queen. Most of the conflicts seen in the clan are actually conflicts between dragons of the same element. 

20. Are there Beast Clans near your clan? How does your clan interact with the Beast Clans?

Given the scope and mystery of the Tangled Wood I’d guess that there’s not-a-small amount of Beast Clans wandering near Sylvhurst. As of right now, no Beast Clans have taken up residence within the territory of the city, but they do stop by the marketplace or the docks more than occasionally. 

21. Are there some Beast Clans that are allies and others that are enemies?

I don’t have any actual Beast Clan OCs or anything like that, but I like to think that Sylvhurst is a bit more friendly to Beast Clans than is regular for dragon clans. Many of them know the story of Azraea’s transformation and the dryads especially feel a kinship to her that they don’t feel towards dragons often. 

22. Is your clan located near where the Emperor was sighted last? How is it preparing for that?

(I’m running on the assumption that the Emp was in Light territory because I don’t feel like looking it up lol). Sylvhurst is somewhat far from the border between Shadow and Light, so they’re not too concerned quite yet. The Queen and King aren’t doing many preparations other than the usual defenses. If it started moving closer, they might start taking preventative actions. 

[spynorth]

@northliights sent me a meme forever ago and agreed to ship with me when i asked and is now paying for all of it and no doubt regretting all of his life choices (especially sending me a fucking aurora was kidnapped meme)

Somewhere, in what sometimes still feels like another world entirely, a version of Lucas North had curled under an empty metal bed frame, pleading with words that spilled from broken lips, a raspy and whispered prayer to the unrelenting artificial sun that refused him a reprieve. Dark was where the demons are meant to hide, monsters with curled claws lingering in shadowed corners ... but the mi5 agent had spent eight years in unrelenting light, and found the absence of hope underneath it. He had promised things, sold his soul in more ways than he can possibly remember, but always there was the blinding light and the pain until suddenly there was’t ... and on nights where he watches the brilliant light that heralds the return of a welcome darkness, he sometimes wonders what last desperate thing he had promised... wonders if the devil will ever come and collect its due....

It does, eventually. Evil is a patient thing, waits like a master of its game, studying the board before each move, and the pride of believing ones self capable of out maneuvering it is ever the banner before a man’s fall. Lucas has always known this, has wondered about the price he will one day have to pay, resolved to pay it without question. But now..

Not her. God, not her.

The man that walks in front of him is trembling, shoes slipping on the blood of his friends and dark eyes glancing down at the bodies that the mi5 agent barely notices and as he gives his prisoner another shove for motivation, Lucas briefly wonders if the shorter man believes he’ll survive this. Surely he’s not that stupid. His guide stops at a door in the back of the warehouse, hands that have been steady throughout the entire past few days suddenly beginning to shake, and he tightens his grip around the gun in his hand, pressing the muzzle forward until it digs harder into the sensitive skin between the knobs of his captive’s spine. Ocean blues watch as the other man fumbles for a key, a choked foreign word that he doesn’t recognize falling between them as the door finally swings open. 

I knew you’d find me ....

The statement is a simple thing, soft and full of an affectionate relief that settles somewhere in the hollow of his chest until that cold hold around his barely beating heart begins to thaw. A smile twitches into place at one corner of his mouth, shoulders losing their tension as worst case scenarios are thrown from his mind, leaving room for a bone weary exhaustion. He wants nothing more than to gather Aurora in his arms, to find some sanctuary from the entirety of the world and never let her leave his sight again .. but first...

His gun relieves its pressure against his captive’s spine and sharp gaze takes in the way the other man takes in a short breath, relief so palpable that Lucas can almost smell it. Mistake. A quick press against the shorter man’s head chased by a shot that echoes off stark concrete walls and his guide is suddenly nothing more than a corpse at the agent’s feet, a body in perfect repose. He’s covered in blood, the sweat of fear and the smell of a desperate man that’s hardly slept and as brown boots cross the floor between them, fingers already reaching for the ties that bind her wrists and making short work of them before he trusts himself enough to speak.

“Hey, beautiful girl.”

His voice is a rough and broken thing, words hard to push past a sudden lump that’s taking up the length of his throat and for the briefest of seconds, when Aurora reaches with a gentle touch to brush against his cheek, Lucas wonders if he’s bleeding from some wound he wasn’t aware of .. but her finger lingers, swiping across a lingering wetness that doesn’t hurt and it hits him like a ton of bricks .. he’s crying. He’s too exhausted to try and stop it, doesn’t care to anyways .. instead, he simply wraps his arms around her all the tighter, unmindful of the blood and salt that paint their shadows across her clothes and baptize her hair.

Evil always collects its due .. but she is his dawn and he will gladly crucify himself again.

[romanishin]

get in the car

get in my car. lets drive, never will we push the break, until the world ends... some boy far away went to war. picked up a gun sold by another state, his green camouflage dripped off his frame, his comrades told him he must be brave. he died on the first day   before he saw the eyes of enemy which was not there before he could ask "is this it?" - battle of yester days, pride and eye to eye is dead with him; coins and land change hands... put your feet on my knees, sleep while i take us where no one remembers guilt and lies, where we change the world like bullet through still pond. they will have no choice, to learn that kiss between a man and woman is the roots of beauty and universe expands every time - universe just smiled - it is the only abstract non-existence that makes sense; how else then, the universe could have come to be?... a generation without mothers screams: "thoughts of old must be gone" a generation without fathers declares: "you were all wrong", but you and i, we know: they stopped listening to their soul. we know that parent's eyes spoke the truth: everything else is like wind around calm in the center of a storm. beauty never moves... lets drive through the desert there will be no water until we reach men chose to shallow rivers, rid lakes of depth - for ease of walking through - sun does the rest. but i will drive our car off the pier, in the ocean we will swim.... ants in colony do not comprehend their roles even if they say "i am." there is an invisible force, it plays the strings of the guitar between oxygen and stars, and laughs at our declarations of momentary cause... i will show you how to be free! just get in my car and recline the seat. love is inspiration, and inspiration is not thinking about death. passion is the glue. all three will make us envy of old gods. our parents knew: that is the only way to break through.

[bokukkokhmer]

I love pear-shaped girls so much

Name: Apolline Lycotonum

Name meaning: Apolline is a vintage French, derived from the sun god Apollo, while Lycotonum is Greek meaning “Wolf’s bane” and refers the plant of the same name.

Age: 11 (Debut Episode)

21 (Final Episode)

Birthday: May 24 1994

Family: Lucinda Lycotonum (Mother), Belphegor (Father), Atticus Lycotonum (Younger Brother), Korinna Lycotonum (Grandmother, dead), Silas Lycotonum (Grandfather), Lycotonum Coven (Maternal family)

Appearance: Apolline is a beautiful girl with dark voluminous wavy hair that reaches her hips which she often tucks under wigs, fair skin, small button nose, almond shaped eyes, one red, the other green-blue, with pupil shape similar to a typical demon, which she can disguise to appear as normal eyes, slightly plump lips, and curved eyebrows. She's noted to be tall, being 5'10" and is noted to be rather curvaceous and slightly chubby. Apolline's typical style is lolita fashion, not a specific category, she'll change it up some weeks she'll dress sweet lolita, others it'll be gothic, and she also owns "normal" clothing such as T-shirts and jeans for when heavy lifting is required, or she doesn't have the time to dress up.

Personality: Apolline is suave, but she loves to use insults, sass and banter. She uses smooth, gratuitous sexual innuendo in an effort to make people uncomfortable and therefore give herself an advantage. She is a survivor at heart, and will use any means to accomplish this goal. In fact, she tends to only lose her temper when her personal safety is threatened or when dealing with what she considers overwhelming stupidity. Apolline at times appears incredibly volatile under her smooth and charming personality, as when she has screamed at multiple people, including Andrew and Nicole Lee, when appearing calm only seconds before.

She shows tendencies that can be seen as mischievous by her mother, and devious by others, such as causing a fire hydrant to explode in order to flood a street, or causing a teacher’s car to explode. One very disturbing detail about Apolline is that she has a massive crush on Lucifer, getting flustered when she can sense his presence. The general population of the school she goes to hates her, as she remodeled the whole surrounding neighborhood, forced the principal to adapt stricter policies, and forced parents to sign contracts that made them agree that whatever their child did was their responsibility, but they can’t do much as there is the constant looming threat of her ruining everyone in the school with a snap of her fingers. She describes herself as a young lady with refined, and classical tastes, having her school rebuilt so it was a French gothic style, her room being filled with classic literature in its original language, her home being modeled after Greco-Roman architecture, etc. etc.

There are so many ways to describe this girl, but the easiest way to do so was through Apollo’s lyre, which played a tune with loud, heavy beats that almost stopped Samson’s heart, all because she touched the lyre.

Likes: Bread, embroidery, tiramisu, green, Cymbidium, earth magic, baking, alchemy, ancient sports

Dislikes: Blue, cats, when her father bothers her, tomatoes, chunky tomato sauces, when her dresses get ruined, clothing with religious ties or imagery, modern sports (such as football, soccer, basketball, baseball etc. etc.)

Abilities: Apolline was born to a witch mother, and a demon father which has numerous advantages, Apolline knows magic, to start. Her specialty being elemental-based magic, specifically earth-based magic, turning any object made from the earth to protect her and to attack for her. There’s a special place in her heart for the abilities she gained from her demonic heritage, such as telekinesis, which she occasionally uses to toy with classmates. There’s also self-healing, Apolline can heal herself from vast array of wounds, small or large, due to a self-preservation seal that her mother put on her when she was born, the seal can heal her, and can bring her back from the dead unless someone kills her with a special knife made to kill her kind.

Like most demons, full or partial, Apolline can be harmed by crosses, holy water, holy oil, or spoken passages from the bible, if someone were to try and perform an exorcism on her it would cause excruciating pain, resulting in her eyes beginning to bleed and a rash appearing on her body. It’s not just Christian iconography that can harm her, iconography from all Abrahamic religions can harm her, even once she couldn’t be in a graveyard because there was a grave marker with a Star of David on it. Other weaknesses include blood of a holy man, such as priest, monks, rabbis, etc., certain sigils and seals, angel weapons, being unable to enter holy sites, and manipulation collars. Another weakness, which considered strange by many but true for all female witches, is that if you cut off a certain amount of her hair, it causes her to lose her magic, which will tick her off, and it means she has to wait until her hair grows back for her to use her magic.

Lucinda taught Apolline many things, one of them was multilingualism, Apolline knows almost all Germanic languages, with Turkish being her first language, and some very ancient languages such as Aramaic, Akkadian, and Persian, the only problem is that due to her age and where she lives there really is no use to knowing that many languages, unless it’s for spell work. Whenever she uses her magic, her eyes begin to glow, and temperature begins to drop, the downside to using her demonic abilities is that she needs to eat souls, 50 souls to be exact, she has been able to find loopholes, eating souls of animals, but there are times when she really needs it, so she’ll eat the souls of random people.

Background: Apolline Lycotonum was born on May 24 1994, to Lucinda Lycotonum, a witch from year 1444, and Belphegor, a demon and a lieutenant in Hell. Lucinda originally planned to hide the identity of the father until Apolline was 18, but Lucinda’s mother Korinna kept pressing the matter, so Lucinda killed her before Apolline was born. Apolline was raised in Turkey, for no particular reason besides the fact that her mother liked Turkish baths, during her early childhood she remembers her mother training her to use magic, usually in questionable methods, such as throwing her into the ocean, stranding the two in the middle of a jungle, or having Apolline perform a handstand and holding that position while reading a spell book. When she was 8 her mother sold her to be a millionaire’s servant, but in reality her mother wanted to steal a grimoire from the wife, so after months of infiltration Apolline finally located the grimoire and was getting ready to steal it, but was caught by the wife who tried to kill her, with no other choice Apolline killed the whole household, and ran off with the book. After Apolline returned with the book, mother and daughter pack their bags and fled to America. When she was 10 Apolline met her father, on complete accident, Apolline was defending herself from an angel that came to smite her after she opened a spell book, she tried the first spell she set her eyes on, which was a demon summoning spell, her father Belphegor rose from the pits of Hell and killed the angel. Belphegor called her Lucinda at first, mistaking the young girl for her mother, causing Apolline to become confused, and the two slowly realized that they were father and daughter. Apolline questioned her mother, and Lucinda confirmed that Belphegor was her father.

Nothing much happens afterward, but Apolline’s debut episode begins with her being responsible for siccing hellhounds on people.

Family Name Lore: The Lycotonum Coven originally started as a high class coven known as the Ricinus Coven, that had a rivalry with Liulfr Coven dated back to Alexander the Great’s time. This rivalry was like war, it was a constant cycle of killing and robbing, until Lucinda was born in 1444, Silas, Apolline’s grandfather, married into the family from a Mongolian coven, he changed his name after marrying Korinna, and led a night time mission to end the rivalry. Silas led the coven to the home that the Liulfr Coven lived in, and ambushed the coven, killing almost all except the 5 defect children, he left those children alone so they can warn other covens not to mess with the Ricinus Coven. After Liulfr Massacre, Silas requested that the coven change the name to Lycotonum to mock the surviving members of Liulfr, as Liulfr means “Wolf” and Lycotonum means “Wolf’s Bane”.

[dfroza]

they wanted to trick Him

to sneak around and capture Him, in order to arrest and do away with our Creator, the very One who made the heavens and beautiful earth.

betrayed.

An act we read of in Today’s chapter of the New Testament in the 26th chapter of Matthew:

And so this is what happened, finally. Jesus finished all His teaching, and He said to His disciples,

Jesus: The feast of Passover begins in two days. That is when the Son of Man is handed over to be crucified.

And almost as He spoke, the chief priests were getting together with the elders at the home of the high priest, Caiaphas. They schemed and mused about how they could trick Jesus, sneak around and capture Him, and then kill Him.

Chief Priests: We shouldn’t try to catch Him at the great public festival. The people would riot if they knew what we were doing.

Meanwhile Jesus was at Bethany staying at the home of Simon the leper. While He was at Simon’s house, a woman came to see Him. She had an alabaster flask of very valuable ointment with her, and as Jesus reclined at the table, she poured the ointment on His head. The disciples, seeing this scene, were furious.

Disciples: This is an absolute waste! The woman could have sold that ointment for lots of money, and then she could have given it to the poor.

Jesus knew what the disciples were saying among themselves, so He took them to task.

Jesus: Why don’t you leave this woman alone? She has done a good thing. It is good that you are concerned about the poor, but the poor will always be with you—I will not be. In pouring this ointment on My body, she has prepared Me for My burial. I tell you this: the good news of the kingdom of God will be spread all over the world, and wherever the good news travels, people will tell the story of this woman and her good discipleship. And people will remember her.

At that, one of the twelve, Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests.

Judas Iscariot: What will you give me to turn Him over to you?

They offered him 30 pieces of silver. And from that moment, he began to watch for a chance to betray Jesus.

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the disciples said to Jesus,

Disciples: Where would You like us to prepare the Passover meal for You?

Jesus: Go into the city, find a certain man, and say to him, “The Teacher says, ‘My time is near, and I am going to celebrate Passover at your house with My disciples.’”

So the disciples went off, followed Jesus’ instructions, and got the Passover meal ready. When evening came, Jesus sat down with the twelve. And they ate their dinner.

Jesus: I tell you this: one of you here will betray Me.

The disciples, of course, were horrified.

A Disciple: Not me!

Another Disciple: It’s not me, Master, is it?

Jesus: It’s the one who shared this dish of food with Me. That is the one who will betray Me. Just as our sacred Scripture has taught, the Son of Man is on His way. But there will be nothing but misery for he who hands Him over. That man will wish he had never been born.

At that, Judas, who was indeed planning to betray Him, said,

Judas Iscariot: It’s not me, Master, is it?

Jesus: I believe you’ve just answered your own question.

As they were eating, Jesus took some bread. He offered a blessing over the bread, and then He broke it and gave it to His disciples.

Jesus: Take this and eat; it is My body.

And then He took the cup of wine, He made a blessing over it, and He passed it around the table.

Jesus: Take this and drink, all of you: this is My blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. But I tell you: I will not drink of the fruit of the vine again until I am with you once more, drinking in the kingdom of My Father.

The meal concluded. Together, all the men sang a hymn of praise and thanksgiving, and then they took a late evening walk to the Mount of Olives.

The Book of Matthew, Chapter 26:1-30 (The Voice)

and from the paired chapter of the Testaments with Matthew 26 we read in Ezekiel 33 of the way each of us have been offered the choice in life in how to conduct ourselves, for better or worse. and what humbling Oneself and repentance points to is a welcoming of grace which is clearly revealed in the New Covenant in the True illumination of the Son.

from the ancient writing of Ezekiel:

“Tell them, ‘As sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked. I want the wicked to change their ways and live. Turn your life around! Reverse your evil ways! Why die, Israel?’

“There’s more, son of man. Tell your people, ‘A good person’s good life won’t save him when he decides to rebel, and a bad person’s bad life won’t prevent him from repenting of his rebellion. A good person who sins can’t expect to live when he chooses to sin. It’s true that I tell good people, “Live! Be alive!” But if they trust in their good deeds and turn to evil, that good life won’t amount to a hill of beans. They’ll die for their evil life.

“‘On the other hand, if I tell a wicked person, “You’ll die for your wicked life,” and he repents of his sin and starts living a righteous and just life—being generous to the down-and-out, restoring what he had stolen, cultivating life-nourishing ways that don’t hurt others—he’ll live. He won’t die. None of his sins will be kept on the books. He’s doing what’s right, living a good life. He’ll live.’”

The Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 33:11-16 (The Message)

and turning to inspiration from Today’s Psalms to accompany this:

ONLY those who stand in awe of the Eternal will have intimacy with Him,

and He will reveal His covenant to them.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 25:14 (The Voice)

For the word of the Eternal is perfect and true;

His actions are always faithful and right.

He loves virtue and equity;

the Eternal’s love fills the whole earth.

The unfathomable cosmos came into being at the word of the Eternal’s imagination, a solitary voice in endless darkness.

The breath of His mouth whispered the sea of stars into existence.

He gathers every drop of every ocean as in a jar,

securing the ocean depths as His watery treasure.

Let all people stand in awe of the Eternal;

let every man, woman, and child live in wonder of Him.

For He spoke, and all things came into being.

A single command from His lips, and all creation obeyed and stood its ground.

The Eternal cripples the schemes of the other nations;

He impedes the plans of rival peoples.

The Eternal’s purposes will last to the end of time;

the thoughts of His heart will awaken and stir all generations.

The nation whose True God is the Eternal is truly blessed;

fortunate are all whom He chooses to inherit His legacy.

The Eternal peers down from heaven

and watches all of humanity;

He observes every soul

from His divine residence.

He has formed every human heart, breathing life into every human spirit;

He knows the deeds of each person, inside and out.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 33:4-15 (The Voice)

with a reflection of the lines of Psalm 33 read in Psalm 148 where all of True nature (in the heavens and on earth) is told to worship God:

[Psalm 148]

Praise the Eternal!

All you in the heavens, praise the Eternal;

praise Him from the highest places!

All you, His messengers and His armies in heaven:

praise Him!

Sun, moon, and all you brilliant stars above:

praise Him!

Highest heavens and all you waters above the heavens:

praise Him!

Let all things join together in a concert of praise to the name of the Eternal,

for He gave the command and they were created.

He put them in their places to stay forever—

He declared it so, and it is final.

Everything on earth, join in and praise the Eternal;

sea monsters and creatures of the deep,

Lightning and hail, snow and foggy mists,

violent winds all respond to His command.

Mountains and hills,

fruit trees and cedar forests,

All you animals both wild and tame,

reptiles and birds who take flight:

praise the Lord.

All kings and all nations,

princes and all judges of the earth,

All people, young men and women,

old men and children alike,

praise the Lord.

Let them all praise the name of the Eternal!

For His name stands alone above all others.

His glory shines greater than anything above or below.

He has made His people strong;

He is the praise of all who are godly,

the praise of the children of Israel, those whom He holds close.

Praise the Eternal!

The Book of Psalms, Poem 148 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for October 25, the 33rd day of Autumn and day 298 of the year:

[top40gordy]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/my-family-s-slave?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 This article was originally published on May 16, 2017, by The Atlantic, and is republished at https://getpocket.com/explore/item/my-family-s-slave?utm_source=pocket-newtab with permission. That is where this blogger viewed it on September 14, 2019 and shared it on Tumblr.com.

Pocket Worthy·

Stories to fuel your mind.

My Family’s Slave

She lived with us for 56 years.  She raised me and my siblings without pay.  I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The Atlantic |  Alex Tizon

 All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

***

At baggage claim in Manila, I unzipped my suitcase to make sure Lola’s ashes were still there. Outside, I inhaled the familiar smell: a thick blend of exhaust and waste, of ocean and sweet fruit and sweat.

Early the next morning I found a driver, an affable middle-aged man who went by the nickname “Doods,” and we hit the road in his truck, weaving through traffic. The scene always stunned me. The sheer number of cars and motorcycles and jeepneys. The people weaving between them and moving on the sidewalks in great brown rivers. The street vendors in bare feet trotting alongside cars, hawking cigarettes and cough drops and sacks of boiled peanuts. The child beggars pressing their faces against the windows.

Doods and I were headed to the place where Lola’s story began, up north in the central plains: Tarlac province. Rice country. The home of a cigar-chomping army lieutenant named Tomas Asuncion, my grandfather. The family stories paint Lieutenant Tom as a formidable man given to eccentricity and dark moods, who had lots of land but little money and kept mistresses in separate houses on his property. His wife died giving birth to their only child, my mother. She was raised by a series of utusans, or “people who take commands.”

Slavery has a long history on the islands. Before the Spanish came, islanders enslaved other islanders, usually war captives, criminals, or debtors. Slaves came in different varieties, from warriors who could earn their freedom through valor to household servants who were regarded as property and could be bought and sold or traded. High-status slaves could own low-status slaves, and the low could own the lowliest. Some chose to enter servitude simply to survive: In exchange for their labor, they might be given food, shelter, and protection.

When the Spanish arrived, in the 1500s, they enslaved islanders and later brought African and Indian slaves. The Spanish Crown eventually began phasing out slavery at home and in its colonies, but parts of the Philippines were so far-flung that authorities couldn’t keep a close eye. Traditions persisted under different guises, even after the U.S. took control of the islands in 1898. Today even the poor can have utusans or katulongs (“helpers”) or kasambahays (“domestics”), as long as there are people even poorer. The pool is deep.

Lieutenant Tom had as many as three families of utusans living on his property. In the spring of 1943, with the islands under Japanese occupation, he brought home a girl from a village down the road. She was a cousin from a marginal side of the family, rice farmers. The lieutenant was shrewd—he saw that this girl was penniless, unschooled, and likely to be malleable. Her parents wanted her to marry a pig farmer twice her age, and she was desperately unhappy but had nowhere to go. Tom approached her with an offer: She could have food and shelter if she would commit to taking care of his daughter, who had just turned 12.

Lola agreed, not grasping that the deal was for life.

“She is my gift to you,” Lieutenant Tom told my mother.

“I don’t want her,” my mother said, knowing she had no choice.

Lieutenant Tom went off to fight the Japanese, leaving Mom behind with Lola in his creaky house in the provinces. Lola fed, groomed, and dressed my mother. When they walked to the market, Lola held an umbrella to shield her from the sun. At night, when Lola’s other tasks were done—feeding the dogs, sweeping the floors, folding the laundry that she had washed by hand in the Camiling River—she sat at the edge of my mother’s bed and fanned her to sleep.

Lola Pulido (shown on the left at age 18) came from a poor family in a rural part of the Philippines. The author’s grandfather “gave” her to his daughter as a gift.

One day during the war Lieutenant Tom came home and caught my mother in a lie—something to do with a boy she wasn’t supposed to talk to. Tom, furious, ordered her to “stand at the table.” Mom cowered with Lola in a corner. Then, in a quivering voice, she told her father that Lola would take her punishment. Lola looked at Mom pleadingly, then without a word walked to the dining table and held on to the edge. Tom raised the belt and delivered 12 lashes, punctuating each one with a word. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. You. Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. Lola made no sound.

My mother, in recounting this story late in her life, delighted in the outrageousness of it, her tone seeming to say, Can you believe I did that? When I brought it up with Lola, she asked to hear Mom’s version. She listened intently, eyes lowered, and afterward, she looked at me with sadness and said simply, “Yes. It was like that.”

Seven years later, in 1950, Mom married my father and moved to Manila, bringing Lola along. Lieutenant Tom had long been haunted by demons, and in 1951 he silenced them with a .32‑caliber slug to his temple. Mom almost never talked about it. She had his temperament—moody, imperial, secretly fragile—and she took his lessons to heart, among them the proper way to be a provincial matrona: You must embrace your role as the giver of commands. You must keep those beneath you in their place at all times, for their own good and the good of the household. They might cry and complain, but their souls will thank you. They will love you for helping them be what God intended.

Lola at age 27 with Arthur, the author’s older brother, before coming to the U.S.

My brother Arthur was born in 1951. I came next, followed by three more siblings in rapid succession. My parents expected Lola to be as devoted to us kids as she was to them. While she looked after us, my parents went to school and earned advanced degrees, joining the ranks of so many others with fancy diplomas but no jobs. Then the big break: Dad was offered a job in Foreign Affairs as a commercial analyst. The salary would be meager, but the position was in America—a place he and Mom had grown up dreaming of, where everything they hoped for could come true.

Dad was allowed to bring his family and one domestic. Figuring they would both have to work, my parents needed Lola to care for the kids and the house. My mother informed Lola, and to her great irritation, Lola didn’t immediately acquiesce. Years later Lola told me she was terrified. “It was too far,” she said. “Maybe your Mom and Dad won’t let me go home.”

In the end what convinced Lola was my father’s promise that things would be different in America. He told her that as soon as he and Mom got on their feet, they’d give her an ��allowance.” Lola could send money to her parents, to all her relations in the village. Her parents lived in a hut with a dirt floor. Lola could build them a concrete house, could change their lives forever. Imagine.

We landed in Los Angeles on May 12, 1964, all our belongings in cardboard boxes tied with rope. Lola had been with my mother for 21 years by then. In many ways she was more of a parent to me than either my mother or my father. Hers was the first face I saw in the morning and the last one I saw at night. As a baby, I uttered Lola’s name (which I first pronounced “Oh-ah”) long before I learned to say “Mom” or “Dad.” As a toddler, I refused to go to sleep unless Lola was holding me, or at least nearby.

I was 4 years old when we arrived in the U.S.—too young to question Lola’s place in our family. But as my siblings and I grew up on this other shore, we came to see the world differently. The leap across the ocean brought about a leap in consciousness that Mom and Dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make.

***

Lola never got that allowance. She asked my parents about it in a roundabout way a couple of years into our life in America. Her mother had fallen ill (with what I would later learn was dysentery), and her family couldn’t afford the medicine she needed. “Pwede ba?” she said to my parents. Is it possible? Mom let out a sigh. “How could you even ask?,” Dad responded in Tagalog. “You see how hard up we are. Don’t you have any shame?”

My parents had borrowed money for the move to the U.S. and then borrowed more in order to stay. My father was transferred from the consulate general in L.A. to the Philippine consulate in Seattle. He was paid $5,600 a year. He took a second job cleaning trailers, and a third as a debt collector. Mom got work as a technician in a couple of medical labs. We barely saw them, and when we did they were often exhausted and snappish.

Mom would come home and upbraid Lola for not cleaning the house well enough or for forgetting to bring in the mail. “Didn’t I tell you I want the letters here when I come home?” she would say in Tagalog, her voice venomous. “It’s not hard naman! An idiot could remember.” Then my father would arrive and take his turn. When Dad raised his voice, everyone in the house shrank. Sometimes my parents would team up until Lola broke down crying, almost as though that was their goal.

It confused me: My parents were good to my siblings and me, and we loved them. But they’d be affectionate to us kids one moment and vile to Lola the next. I was 11 or 12 when I began to see Lola’s situation clearly. By then Arthur, eight years my senior, had been seething for a long time. He was the one who introduced the word slave into my understanding of what Lola was. Before he said it I’d thought of her as just an unfortunate member of the household. I hated when my parents yelled at her, but it hadn’t occurred to me that they—and the whole arrangement—could be immoral.

L: Lola raised the author (left) and his siblings and was sometimes the only adult at home for days at a time. R: The author (second from the left) with his parents, siblings, and Lola five years after they arrived in the U.S.

“Do you know anybody treated the way she’s treated?” Arthur said. “Who lives the way she lives?” He summed up Lola’s reality: Wasn’t paid. Toiled every day. Was tongue-lashed for sitting too long or falling asleep too early. Was struck for talking back. Wore hand-me-downs. Ate scraps and leftovers by herself in the kitchen. Rarely left the house. Had no friends or hobbies outside the family. Had no private quarters. (Her designated place to sleep in each house we lived in was always whatever was left—a couch or storage area or corner in my sisters’ bedroom. She often slept among piles of laundry.)

We couldn’t identify a parallel anywhere except in slave characters on TV and in the movies. I remember watching a Western called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, a gunslinging rancher who barks orders at his servant, Pompey, whom he calls his “boy.” Pick him up, Pompey. Pompey, go find the doctor. Get on back to work, Pompey! Docile and obedient, Pompey calls his master “Mistah Tom.” They have a complex relationship. Tom forbids Pompey from attending school but opens the way for Pompey to drink in a whites-only saloon. Near the end, Pompey saves his master from a fire. It’s clear Pompey both fears and loves Tom, and he mourns when Tom dies. All of this is peripheral to the main story of Tom’s showdown with bad guy Liberty Valance, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Pompey. I remember thinking: Lola is Pompey, Pompey is Lola.

One night when Dad found out that my sister Ling, who was then 9, had missed dinner, he barked at Lola for being lazy. “I tried to feed her,” Lola said, as Dad stood over her and glared. Her feeble defense only made him angrier, and he punched her just below the shoulder. Lola ran out of the room and I could hear her wailing, an animal cry.

“Ling said she wasn’t hungry,” I said.

My parents turned to look at me. They seemed startled. I felt the twitching in my face that usually preceded tears, but I wouldn’t cry this time. In Mom’s eyes was a shadow of something I hadn’t seen before. Jealousy?

“Are you defending your Lola?,” Dad said. “Is that what you’re doing?”

“Ling said she wasn’t hungry,” I said again, almost in a whisper.

I was 13. It was my first attempt to stick up for the woman who spent her days watching over me. The woman who used to hum Tagalog melodies as she rocked me to sleep, and when I got older would dress and feed me and walk me to school in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoons. Once, when I was sick for a long time and too weak to eat, she chewed my food for me and put the small pieces in my mouth to swallow. One summer when I had plaster casts on both legs (I had problem joints), she bathed me with a washcloth, brought medicine in the middle of the night, and helped me through months of rehabilitation. I was cranky through it all. She didn’t complain or lose patience, ever.

To now hear her wailing made me crazy.

 ***

In the old country, my parents felt no need to hide their treatment of Lola. In America, they treated her worse but took pains to conceal it. When guests came over, my parents would either ignore her or, if questioned, lie and quickly change the subject. For five years in North Seattle, we lived across the street from the Missler's, a rambunctious family of eight who introduced us to things like mustard, salmon fishing, and mowing the lawn. Football on TV. Yelling during football. Lola would come out to serve food and drinks during games, and my parents would smile and thank her before she quickly disappeared. “Who’s that little lady you keep in the kitchen?,” Big Jim, the Missler patriarch, once asked. A relative from back home, Dad said. Very shy.

Billy Missler, my best friend, didn’t buy it. He spent enough time at our house, whole weekends sometimes, to catch glimpses of my family’s secret. He once overheard my mother yelling in the kitchen, and when he barged in to investigate found Mom red-faced and glaring at Lola, who was quaking in a corner. I came in a few seconds later. The look on Billy’s face was a mix of embarrassment and perplexity. What was that? I waved it off and told him to forget it.

I think Billy felt sorry for Lola. He’d rave about her cooking, and make her laugh like I’d never seen. During sleepovers, she’d make his favorite Filipino dish, beef tapa over white rice. Cooking was Lola’s only eloquence. I could tell by what she served whether she was merely feeding us or saying she loved us.

When I once referred to Lola as a distant aunt, Billy reminded me that when we’d first met I’d said she was my grandmother.

“Well, she’s kind of both,” I said mysteriously.

“Why is she always working?”

“She likes to work,” I said.

“Your dad and mom—why do they yell at her?”

“Her hearing isn’t so good …”

Admitting the truth would have meant exposing us all. We spent our first decade in the country learning the ways of the new land and trying to fit in. Having a slave did not fit. Having a slave gave me grave doubts about what kind of people we were, what kind of place we came from. Whether we deserved to be accepted. I was ashamed of it all, including my complicity. Didn’t I eat the food she cooked, and wear the clothes she washed and ironed and hung in the closet? But losing her would have been devastating.

There was another reason for secrecy: Lola’s travel papers had expired in 1969, five years after we arrived in the U.S. She’d come on a special passport linked to my father’s job. After a series of fallings-out with his superiors, Dad quit the consulate and declared his intent to stay in the United States. He arranged for permanent-resident status for his family, but Lola wasn’t eligible. He was supposed to send her back.

Lola at age 51, in 1976. Her mother died a few years before this picture was taken; her father a few years after. Both times, she wanted desperately to go home.

Lola’s mother, Fermina, died in 1973; her father, Hilario, in 1979. Both times she wanted desperately to go home. Both times my parents said “Sorry.” No money, no time. The kids needed her. My parents also feared for themselves, they admitted to me later. If the authorities had found out about Lola, as they surely would have if she’d tried to leave, my parents could have gotten into trouble, possibly even been deported. They couldn’t risk it. Lola’s legal status became what Filipinos call tago nang tago, or TNT—“on the run.” She stayed TNT for almost 20 years.

After each of her parents died, Lola was sullen and silent for months. She barely responded when my parents badgered her. But the badgering never let up. Lola kept her head down and did her work.

***

My father’s resignation started a turbulent period. Money got tighter, and my parents turned on each other. They uprooted the family again and again—Seattle to Honolulu back to Seattle to the southeast Bronx and finally to the truck-stop town of Umatilla, Oregon, population 750. During all this moving around, Mom often worked 24-hour shifts, first as a medical intern and then as a resident, and Dad would disappear for days, working odd jobs but also (we’d later learn) womanizing and who knows what else. Once, he came home and told us that he’d lost our new station wagon playing blackjack.

For days in a row, Lola would be the only adult in the house. She got to know the details of our lives in a way that my parents never had the mental space for. We brought friends home, and she’d listen to us talk about school and girls and boys and whatever else was on our minds. Just from conversations she overheard, she could list the first name of every girl I had a crush on from sixth grade through high school.

When I was 15, Dad left the family for good. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but the fact was that he deserted us kids and abandoned Mom after 25 years of marriage. She wouldn’t become a licensed physician for another year, and her specialty—internal medicine—wasn’t especially lucrative. Dad didn’t pay child support, so money was always a struggle.

My mom kept herself together enough to go to work, but at night she’d crumble in self-pity and despair. Her main source of comfort during this time: Lola. As Mom snapped at her over small things, Lola attended to her even more—cooking Mom’s favorite meals, cleaning her bedroom with extra care. I’d find the two of them late at night at the kitchen counter, griping and telling stories about Dad, sometimes laughing wickedly, other times working themselves into a fury over his transgressions. They barely noticed us kids flitting in and out.

One night I heard Mom weeping and ran into the living room to find her slumped in Lola’s arms. Lola was talking softly to her, the way she used to with my siblings and me when we were young. I lingered, then went back to my room, scared for my mom and awed by Lola.

***

Doods was humming. I’d dozed for what felt like a minute and awoke to his happy melody. “Two hours more,” he said. I checked the plastic box in the tote bag by my side—still there—and looked up to see open road. The MacArthur Highway. I glanced at the time. “Hey, you said ‘two hours’ two hours ago,” I said. Doods just hummed.

His not knowing anything about the purpose of my journey was a relief. I had enough interior dialogue going on. I was no better than my parents. I could have done more to free Lola. To make her life better. Why didn’t I? I could have turned in my parents, I suppose. It would have blown up my family in an instant. Instead, my siblings and I kept everything to ourselves, and rather than blowing up in an instant, my family broke apart slowly.

Doods and I passed through beautiful country. Not travel-brochure beautiful but real and alive and, compared with the city, elegantly spare. Mountains ran parallel to the highway on each side, the Zambales Mountains to the west, the Sierra Madre Range to the east. From ridge to ridge, west to east, I could see every shade of green all the way to almost black.

Doods pointed to a shadowy outline in the distance. Mount Pinatubo. I’d come here in 1991 to report on the aftermath of its eruption, the second-largest of the 20th century. Volcanic mudflows called lahars continued for more than a decade, burying ancient villages, filling in rivers and valleys, and wiping out entire ecosystems. The lahars reached deep into the foothills of Tarlac province, where Lola’s parents had spent their entire lives, and where she and my mother had once lived together. So much of our family record had been lost in wars and floods, and now parts were buried under 20 feet of mud.

Life here is routinely visited by cataclysm. Killer typhoons that strike several times a year. Bandit insurgencies that never end. Somnolent mountains that one day decide to wake up. The Philippines isn’t like China or Brazil, whose mass might absorb the trauma. This is a nation of scattered rocks in the sea. When disaster hits, the place goes under for a while. Then it resurfaces and life proceeds, and you can behold a scene like the one Doods and I were driving through, and the simple fact that it’s still there makes it beautiful.

Rice fields in Mayantoc, near where Lola was born.

***

A couple of years after my parents split, my mother remarried and demanded Lola’s fealty to her new husband, a Croatian immigrant named Ivan, whom she had met through a friend. Ivan had never finished high school. He’d been married four times and was an inveterate gambler who enjoyed being supported by my mother and attended to by Lola.

Ivan brought out a side of Lola I’d never seen. His marriage to my mother was volatile from the start, and money—especially his use of her money—was the main issue. Once, during an argument in which Mom was crying and Ivan was yelling, Lola walked over and stood between them. She turned to Ivan and firmly said his name. He looked at Lola, blinked, and sat down.

My sister Inday and I were floored. Ivan was about 250 pounds, and his baritone could shake the walls. Lola put him in his place with a single word. I saw this happen a few other times, but for the most part, Lola served Ivan unquestioningly, just as Mom wanted her to. I had a hard time watching Lola vassalize herself to another person, especially someone like Ivan. But what set the stage for my blowup with Mom was something more mundane.

She used to get angry whenever Lola felt ill. She didn’t want to deal with the disruption and the expense and would accuse Lola of faking or failing to take care of herself. Mom chose the second tack when, in the late 1970s, Lola’s teeth started falling out. She’d been saying for months that her mouth hurt.

“That’s what happens when you don’t brush properly,” Mom told her.

I said that Lola needed to see a dentist. She was in her 50s and had never been to one. I was attending college an hour away, and I brought it up again and again on my frequent trips home. A year went by, then two. Lola took aspirin every day for the pain, and her teeth looked like a crumbling Stonehenge. One night, after watching her chew bread on the side of her mouth that still had a few good molars, I lost it.

Mom and I argued into the night, each of us sobbing at different points. She said she was tired of working her fingers to the bone supporting everybody, and sick of her children always taking Lola’s side, and why didn’t we just take our goddamn Lola, she’d never wanted her in the first place, and she wished to God she hadn’t given birth to an arrogant, sanctimonious phony like me.

I let her words sink in. Then I came back at her, saying she would know all about being a phony, her whole life was a masquerade, and if she stopped feeling sorry for herself for one minute she’d see that Lola could barely eat because her goddamn teeth were rotting out of her goddamn head, and couldn’t she think of her just this once as a real person instead of a slave kept alive to serve her?

“A slave,” Mom said, weighing the word. “A slave?”

The night ended when she declared that I would never understand her relationship with Lola. Never. Her voice was so guttural and pained that thinking of it even now, so many years later, feels like a punch to the stomach. It’s a terrible thing to hate your own mother, and that night I did. The look in her eyes made clear that she felt the same way about me.

The fight only fed Mom’s fear that Lola had stolen the kids from her, and she made Lola pay for it. Mom drove her harder. Tormented her by saying, “I hope you’re happy now that your kids hate me.” When we helped Lola with housework, Mom would fume. “You’d better go to sleep now, Lola,” she’d say sarcastically. “You’ve been working too hard. Your kids are worried about you.” Later she’d take Lola into a bedroom for a talk, and Lola would walk out with puffy eyes.

Lola finally begged us to stop trying to help her.

Why do you stay? we asked.

“Who will cook?” she said, which I took to mean, Who would do everything? Who would take care of us? Of Mom? Another time she said, “Where will I go?” This struck me as closer to a real answer. Coming to America had been a mad dash, and before we caught a breath a decade had gone by. We turned around, and a second decade was closing out. Lola’s hair had turned gray. She’d heard that relatives back home who hadn’t received the promised support were wondering what had happened to her. She was ashamed to return.

She had no contacts in America and no facility for getting around. Phones puzzled her. Mechanical things—ATMs, intercoms, vending machines, anything with a keyboard—made her panic. Fast-talking people left her speechless, and her own broken English did the same to them. She couldn’t make an appointment, arrange a trip, fill out a form, or order a meal without help.

I got Lola an ATM card linked to my bank account and taught her how to use it. She succeeded once, but the second time she got flustered, and she never tried again. She kept the card because she considered it a gift from me.

I also tried to teach her to drive. She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand, but I picked her up and carried her to the car and planted her in the driver’s seat, both of us laughing. I spent 20 minutes going over the controls and gauges. Her eyes went from mirthful to terrified. When I turned on the ignition and the dashboard lit up, she was out of the car and in the house before I could say another word. I tried a couple more times.

I thought driving could change her life. She could go places. And if things ever got unbearable with Mom, she could drive away forever.

***

Four lanes became two, pavement turned to gravel. Tricycle drivers wove between cars and water buffalo pulling loads of bamboo. An occasional dog or goat sprinted across the road in front of our truck, almost grazing the bumper. Doods never eased up. Whatever didn’t make it across would be stew today instead of tomorrow—the rule of the road in the provinces.

I took out a map and traced the route to the village of Mayantoc, our destination. Out the window, in the distance, tiny figures folded at the waist like so many bent nails. People harvesting rice, the same way they had for thousands of years. We were getting close.

I tapped the cheap plastic box and regretted not buying a real urn, made of porcelain or rosewood. What would Lola’s people think? Not that many were left. Only one sibling remained in the area, Gregoria, 98 years old, and I was told her memory was failing. Relatives said that whenever she heard Lola’s name, she’d burst out crying and then quickly forget why.

L: Lola and the author in 2008. R: The author with Lola’s sister Gregoria.

I’d been in touch with one of Lola’s nieces. She had the day planned: When I arrived, a low-key memorial, then a prayer, followed by the lowering of the ashes into a plot at the Mayantoc Eternal Bliss Memorial Park. It had been five years since Lola died, but I hadn’t yet said the final goodbye that I knew was about to happen. All day I had been feeling intense grief and resisting the urge to let it out, not wanting to wail in front of Doods. More than the shame I felt for the way my family had treated Lola, more than my anxiety about how her relatives in Mayantoc would treat me, I felt the terrible heaviness of losing her, as if she had died only the day before.

Doods veered northwest on the Romulo Highway, then took a sharp left at Camiling, the town Mom and Lieutenant Tom came from. Two lanes became one, then gravel turned to dirt. The path ran along the Camiling River, clusters of bamboo houses off to the side, green hills ahead. The homestretch.

 ***

I gave the eulogy at Mom’s funeral, and everything I said was true. That she was brave and spirited. That she’d drawn some short straws but had done the best she could. That she was radiant when she was happy. That she adored her children and gave us a real home—in Salem, Oregon—that through the ’80s and ’90s became the permanent base we’d never had before. That I wished we could thank her one more time. That we all loved her.

I didn’t talk about Lola. Just as I had selectively blocked Lola out of my mind when I was with Mom during her last years. Loving my mother required that kind of mental surgery. It was the only way we could be mother and son—which I wanted, especially after her health started to decline, in the mid‑’90s. Diabetes. Breast cancer. Acute myelogenous leukemia, a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. She went from robust to frail seemingly overnight.

After the big fight, I mostly avoided going home, and at age 23 I moved to Seattle. When I did visit I saw a change. Mom was still Mom, but not as relentlessly. She got Lola a fine set of dentures and let her have her own bedroom. She cooperated when my siblings and I set out to change Lola’s TNT status. Ronald Reagan’s landmark immigration bill of 1986 made millions of illegal immigrants eligible for amnesty. It was a long process, but Lola became a citizen in October 1998, four months after my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. Mom lived another year.

During that time, she and Ivan took trips to Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, and sometimes brought Lola along. Lola loved the ocean. On the other side were the islands she dreamed of returning to. And Lola was never happier than when Mom relaxed around her. An afternoon at the coast or just 15 minutes in the kitchen reminiscing about the old days in the province, and Lola would seem to forget years of torment.

I couldn’t forget so easily. But I did come to see Mom in a different light. Before she died, she gave me her journals, two steamer trunks’ full. Leafing through them as she slept a few feet away, I glimpsed slices of her life that I’d refused to see for years. She’d gone to medical school when not many women did. She’d come to America and fought for respect as both a woman and an immigrant physician. She’d worked for two decades at Fairview Training Center, in Salem, a state institution for the developmentally disabled. The irony: She tended to underdogs most of her professional life. They worshipped her. Female colleagues became close friends. They did silly, girly things together—shoe shopping, throwing dress-up parties at one another’s homes, exchanging gag gifts like penis-shaped soaps and calendars of half-naked men, all while laughing hysterically. Looking through their party pictures reminded me that Mom had a life and an identity apart from the family and Lola. Of course.

Mom wrote in great detail about each of her kids, and how she felt about us on a given day—proud or loving or resentful. And she devoted volumes to her husbands, trying to grasp them as complex characters in her story. We were all persons of consequence. Lola was incidental. When she was mentioned at all, she was a bit character in someone else’s story. “Lola walked my beloved Alex to his new school this morning. I hope he makes new friends quickly so he doesn’t feel so sad about moving again …” There might be two more pages about me, and no other mention of Lola.

The day before Mom died, a Catholic priest came to the house to perform last rites. Lola sat next to my mother’s bed, holding a cup with a straw, poised to raise it to Mom’s mouth. She had become extra attentive to my mother, and extra kind. She could have taken advantage of Mom in her feebleness, even exacted revenge, but she did the opposite.

The priest asked Mom whether there was anything she wanted to forgive or be forgiven for. She scanned the room with heavy-lidded eyes, said nothing. Then, without looking at Lola, she reached over and placed an open hand on her head. She didn’t say a word.

 ***

Lola was 75 when she came to stay with me. I was married with two young daughters, living in a cozy house on a wooded lot. From the second story, we could see Puget Sound. We gave Lola a bedroom and license to do whatever she wanted: sleep in, watch soaps, do nothing all day. She could relax—and be free—for the first time in her life. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.

I’d forgotten about all the things Lola did that drove me a little crazy. She was always telling me to put on a sweater so I wouldn’t catch a cold (I was in my 40s). She groused incessantly about Dad and Ivan: My father was lazy, Ivan was a leech. I learned to tune her out. Harder to ignore was her fanatical thriftiness. She threw nothing out. And she used to go through the trash to make sure that the rest of us hadn’t thrown out anything useful. She washed and reused paper towels again and again until they disintegrated in her hands. (No one else would go near them.) The kitchen became glutted with grocery bags, yogurt containers, and pickle jars, and parts of our house turned into storage for—there’s no other word for it—garbage.

She cooked breakfast even though none of us ate more than a banana or a granola bar in the morning, usually while we were running out the door. She made our beds and did our laundry. She cleaned the house. I found myself saying to her, nicely at first, “Lola, you don’t have to do that.” “Lola, we’ll do it ourselves.” “Lola, that’s the girls’ job.” Okay, she’d say, but keep right on doing it.

It irritated me to catch her eating meals standing in the kitchen, or see her tense up and start cleaning when I walked into the room. One day, after several months, I sat her down.

“I’m not Dad. You’re not a slave here,” I said, and went through a long list of slave-like things she’d been doing. When I realized she was startled, I took a deep breath and cupped her face, that elfin face now looking at me searchingly. I kissed her forehead. “This is your house now,” I said. “You’re not here to serve us. You can relax, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. And went back to cleaning.

She didn’t know any other way to be. I realized I had to take my own advice and relax. If she wanted to make dinner, let her. Thank her and do the dishes. I had to remind myself constantly: Let her be.

One night I came home to find her sitting on the couch doing a word puzzle, her feet up, the TV on. Next to her, a cup of tea. She glanced at me, smiled sheepishly with those perfect white dentures, and went back to the puzzle. Progress, I thought.

She planted a garden in the backyard—roses and tulips and every kind of orchid—and spent whole afternoons tending it. She took walks around the neighborhood. At about 80, her arthritis got bad and she began walking with a cane. In the kitchen, she went from being a fry cook to a kind of artisanal chef who created only when the spirit moved her. She made lavish meals and grinned with pleasure as we devoured them.

Passing the door of Lola’s bedroom, I’d often hear her listening to a cassette of Filipino folk songs. The same tape over and over. I knew she’d been sending almost all her money—my wife and I gave her $200 a week—to relatives back home. One afternoon, I found her sitting on the back deck gazing at a snapshot someone had sent of her village.

“You want to go home, Lola?”

She turned the photograph over and traced her finger across the inscription, then flipped it back and seemed to study a single detail.

“Yes,” she said.

Just after her 83rd birthday, I paid her airfare to go home. I’d follow a month later to bring her back to the U.S.—if she wanted to return. The unspoken purpose of her trip was to see whether the place she had spent so many years longing for could still feel like home.

She found her answer.

“Everything was not the same,” she told me as we walked around Mayantoc. The old farms were gone. Her house was gone. Her parents and most of her siblings were gone. Childhood friends, the ones still alive, were like strangers. It was nice to see them, but … everything was not the same. She’d still like to spend her last years here, she said, but she wasn’t ready yet.

“You’re ready to go back to your garden,” I said.

“Yes. Let’s go home.”

L: Lola returned to the Philippines for an extended visit after her 83rd birthday. R: Lola with her sister Juliana, reunited after 65 years.

***

Lola was as devoted to my daughters as she’d been to my siblings and me when we were young. After school, she’d listen to their stories and make them something to eat. And unlike my wife and me (especially me), Lola enjoyed every minute of every school event and performance. She couldn’t get enough of them. She sat up front, kept the programs as mementos.

It was so easy to make Lola happy. We took her on family vacations, but she was as excited to go to the farmer’s market down the hill. She became a wide-eyed kid on a field trip: “Look at those zucchinis!” The first thing she did every morning was open all the blinds in the house, and at each window, she’d pause to look outside.

And she taught herself to read. It was remarkable. Over the years, she’d somehow learned to sound out letters. She did those puzzles where you find and circle words within a block of letters. Her room had stacks of word-puzzle booklets, thousands of words circled in pencil. Every day she watched the news and listened for words she recognized. She triangulated them with words in the newspaper and figured out the meanings. She came to read the paper every day, front to back. Dad used to say she was simple. I wondered what she could have been if, instead of working the rice fields at age 8, she had learned to read and write.

Lola at age 82.

During the 12 years she lived in our house, I asked her questions about herself, trying to piece together her life story, a habit she found curious. To my inquiries, she would often respond first with “Why?” Why did I want to know about her childhood? About how she met Lieutenant Tom?

I tried to get my sister Ling to ask Lola about her love life, thinking Lola would be more comfortable with her. Ling cackled, which was her way of saying I was on my own. One day, while Lola and I were putting away groceries, I just blurted it out: “Lola, have you ever been romantic with anyone?” She smiled, and then she told me the story of the only time she’d come close. She was about 15, and there was a handsome boy named Pedro from a nearby farm. For several months they harvested rice together side by side. One time, she dropped her bolo—a cutting implement—and he quickly picked it up and handed it back to her. “I liked him,” she said.

Silence.

“And?”

“Then he moved away,” she said.

“And?”

“That’s all.”

“Lola, have you ever had sex?,” I heard myself saying.

“No,” she said.

She wasn’t accustomed to being asked personal questions. “Katulong lang ako,” she’d say. I’m only a servant. She often gave one- or two-word answers, and teasing out even the simplest story was a game of 20 questions that could last days or weeks.

Some of what I learned: She was mad at Mom for being so cruel all those years, but she nevertheless missed her. Sometimes, when Lola was young, she’d felt so lonely that all she could do was cry. I knew there were years when she’d dreamed of being with a man. I saw it in the way she wrapped herself around one large pillow at night. But what she told me in her old age was that living with Mom’s husbands made her think being alone wasn’t so bad. She didn’t miss those two at all. Maybe her life would have been better if she’d stayed in Mayantoc, gotten married, and had a family like her siblings. But maybe it would have been worse. Two younger sisters, Francisca and Zepriana, got sick and died. A brother, Claudio, was killed. What’s the point of wondering about it now? she asked. Bahala na was her guiding principle. Come what may. What came her way was another kind of family. In that family, she had eight children: Mom, my four siblings and me, and now my two daughters. The eight of us, she said, made her life worth living.

None of us was prepared for her to die so suddenly.

Her heart attack started in the kitchen while she was making dinner and I was running an errand. When I returned she was in the middle of it. A couple of hours later at the hospital, before I could grasp what was happening, she was gone—10:56 p.m. All the kids and grandkids noted but were unsure how to take, that she died on November 7, the same day as Mom. Twelve years apart.

Lola made it to 86. I can still see her on the gurney. I remember looking at the medics standing above this brown woman no bigger than a child and thinking that they had no idea of the life she had lived. She’d had none of the self-serving ambition that drives most of us, and her willingness to give up everything for the people around her won her our love and utter loyalty. She’s become a hallowed figure in my extended family.

Going through her boxes in the attic took me months. I found recipes she had cut out of magazines in the 1970s for when she would someday learn to read. Photo albums with pictures of my mom. Awards my siblings and I had won from grade school on, most of which we had thrown away and she had “saved.” I almost lost it one night when at the bottom of a box I found a stack of yellowed newspaper articles I’d written and long ago forgotten about. She couldn’t read back then, but she’d kept them anyway.

The site of Lola’s childhood home.

 ***

Doods’s truck pulled up to a small concrete house in the middle of a cluster of homes mostly made of bamboo and plank wood. Surrounding the pod of houses: rice fields, green and seemingly endless. Before I even got out of the truck, people started coming outside.

Doods reclined his seat to take a nap. I hung my tote bag on my shoulder, took a breath, and opened the door.

“This way,” a soft voice said, and I was led up a short walkway to the concrete house. Following close behind was a line of about 20 people, young and old, but mostly old. Once we were all inside, they sat down on chairs and benches arranged along the walls, leaving the middle of the room empty except for me. I remained standing, waiting to meet my host. It was a small room, and dark. People glanced at me expectantly.

“Where is Lola?” A voice from another room. The next moment, a middle-aged woman in a housedress sauntered in with a smile. Ebia, Lola’s niece. This was her house. She gave me a hug and said again, “Where is Lola?”

Lola’s gravesite.

I slid the tote bag from my shoulder and handed it to her. She looked into my face, still smiling, gently grasped the bag, and walked over to a wooden bench and sat down. She reached inside and pulled out the box and looked at every side. “Where is Lola?” she said softly. People in these parts don’t often get their loved ones cremated. I don’t think she knew what to expect. She set the box on her lap and bent over so her forehead rested on top of it, and at first I thought she was laughing (out of joy) but I quickly realized she was crying. Her shoulders began to heave, and then she was wailing—a deep, mournful, animal howl, like I once heard coming from Lola.

I hadn’t come sooner to deliver Lola’s ashes in part because I wasn’t sure anyone here cared that much about her. I hadn’t expected this kind of grief. Before I could comfort Ebia, a woman walked in from the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her, and then she began wailing. The next thing I knew, the room erupted with sound. The old people—one of them blind, several with no teeth—were all crying and not holding anything back. It lasted about 10 minutes. I was so fascinated that I barely noticed the tears running down my own face. The sobs died down, and then it was quiet again.

Ebia sniffled and said it was time to eat. Everybody started filing into the kitchen, puffy-eyed but suddenly lighter and ready to tell stories. I glanced at the empty tote bag on the bench and knew it was right to bring Lola back to the place where she’d been born.

Alex Tizon passed away in March. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self. For more about Alex, please see this editor’s note from The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/a-reporters-story/524538/)

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/my-family-s-slave?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[until-the-joy-drops-again]

Heart

We pulled up in front of her little house. I could hear music already playing and heard a male voice singing. My heart was in my throat, pounding so massively it was hard to breath.

"Alright man, you ok?"

I looked at Dan but I couldn't find any words.

"Hey, this is HER remember? I promise you she doesnt hate you," he chuckled slightly. "We'll just slip in, you can hide behind the people standing by the door for awhile. But once you see her, you'll be ok. And everyone in that house will be rooting for you." Dan smiled a reassuring smile at me but I didnt feel any of it.

I got out of the car and tugged at my white hat, bringing the brim down as far as I could. I heard the music stop and happy voices spilling out of the house. Then new music started and I heard her voice, singing. I froze.

My entire body fought against itself. A huge part of me wanted to run in there, grab her, hold her, and never let her go....the rest of me wanted to run as far away as possible. I realized that once I walked into that house, that little tiny glimmer of hope that i had been holding onto for years, would either die or live. That choice was my entire world...was I ready to hold it out to her? To offer my entire being to her with the chance she would destroy it...?

I was safe standing in the street outside. That tiny glimmer in me could still sit inside me and glow... and now I realized how much that small sliver of hope really meant to me.

Fuck! I'm so FUCKING dumb... I rubbed my face trying to rid my brain of these thoughts. She was always MY person. She was my best friend and she just fed my soul. Standing here was ripping me apart.

"Hey, Adam, you ok man?" I waved Dan off, "I need a minute..." I looked back up at the house, listening to her voice, her siren song, and it sliced right through me.

I gasped in air and had to turn away. I started walking to the beach just a few hundred feet away. I heard one of the other guys start to come after me but Dan stopped them, "give him a minute," I heard him say.

I tried to pick up my pieces. Tried to put myself back together as a whole. But my brain was turning too fast, God DAMN it! It was like movie clips my brain just kept shifting through. The night when our first song was picked up, we threw a party and she had pulled me away from the crowd, we were young and drinking champagne out of plain glasses. Her eyes sparkled with just a tiny bit of drunkenness but soooooo much happiness.

"I am so FUCKING happy for you! You are just so fucking amazing I know you'll go on to take over the world! I know it wont slways be easy, but I'll ALWAYS be right in your corner, waving the biggest flag for you no matter what." She was beaming, and beautiful and I knew what she said was true.

That woman stood in the darkest of corners with me, never letting me lose total hope. SHE was the one that could always put me back together. Piece by piece, no matter how long it took, no matter what it cost her. She would dust each piece off, warm it, and put me back together.

I climbed up the only dune separating the street from the ocean and stopped. The moon shone on the water, I could see little lights of boats out in the surf. I took a deep breath...

In my mind I saw her help me with my tie before some big event I had. I saw her smiling and walking towards me with 2glasses of whiskey for us. I saw her laugh at me singing a ridiculous song in the car on the way to the airport. I saw her eyes, i saw her lips, i saw her leaning in the doorway of our hotel suite for our show in Oregon. She had NO idea how gorgeous she was, just standing there in a dress she hated but was forced to wear. It was red, and fit every curve of her perfectly, and it sparkled in the hallway light. Fuck... and then...

That last night I spent with her just slammed me like a tidal wave. I was back on her couch, back fighting the same demons I was fighting back then. My sham marriage to a model, Beh. I dont know why I agreed to it, my career was taking off on its own... but I wanted more... more fame, more screaming fans..more GLAMOUR...

I closed my eyes, not sure if I was trying to will it to stop or to see it better... I was there with her, liquor bottles sitting all around us.. she ALWAYS kept my favorite whiskey on hand, just incase... she was just like that...

I had wanted her SO God dammed badly. I wanted to feel her skin on mine, wanted to taste the whiskey on her lips. I had sold my soul and I knew the only way to get it back was right in front of me. Inches away. My body screamed for it, for her... but I was so broken... I couldnt.

She saw it, she saw it the instant she opened the door. She didnt say a thing, just led me in and went and made me a drink. Then sat on the couch with me while I muddled through the thoughts in my brain.

God, I had instantly felt better. Just BEING there. She was all I needed but... I had just lost too much... I couldn't drag her through the shit that was about to go down. I knew my marriage was over, but I also knew the publicity it would generate. No matter what i needed, i needed her happiness more.

"Adam? I'm really, really sorry but... why are you WITH her? Does she really make you happy? Like soul shining, rainbows and butterflies and everything you DESERVE? Because it really doesnt seem like it..."

Her words felt like a punch right to my stomach. My mind screamed at me to tell her the truth, that no, Beh certainly didnt make me feel like that, that SHE was the only one in the entire world that did that for me. And I knew I had to leave...

I dont even remember what bullshit answer I mumbled out, I just needed to get away from her. The thought of reporters chasing her down, yelling awful things at her, the press blaming her for my divorce-BEH blaming her for the divorce. Because God knows Beh's womans intuition was on point when it came to her...

I told her I was drunk and needed to go to bed, and it just made everything worse because now she offered me the only bed she had in the house... HER bed... to share...

I felt like the universe was out to crush me, how I said no still blows my mind today, I said the couch was fine and just turned away. I laid there as she went and got me a pillow and lifted my head so she could put it down. I instinctively went to reach for her hand, to bring it down to me. To lead her into my arms, to hold her and tell her how fucking amazing she was, how I lived for her and her alone... but she was too fast and I missed my chance... she tossed a blanket over me, whispered goodnight and... paused.

All I had to do was look at her. If I had just turned my head... but i didnt, and i heard her walk away. A sob caught in my throat and threw me totally off guard. I've never in my life been a crier...it. just something I've never really felt the need to do... until right then, when I felt my world collapse...

I waited for her fussing to finally stop, to know for sure, she was in bed...then I stood up, but I couldn't move towards the door. My body turned towards her bedroom insteadand I took a step before I stopped.. i HAD to stop. My breath caught in my throat, she was RIGHT THERE! Just walk in, climb in bed next to her, my heart was pounding so loud it felt like it was trying to push me to her... but instead, i snuck out the door.... in my drunk stupor, on my staggering walk to call a taxi, I grew my piece of hope that I had held onto till... well... now, my glimmer in the darkness that was to come. I would get divorced and wait the "appropriate" amount of time, then come back. I would do something HUGE and funny and romantic. I'd sweep her off her feet, show her how incredible she was, show her what she made me feel. And live happily ever after.

But I had had no idea what a celebritie's divorce really was. The time it took to figure out how to "play" it to the public. The MONTHS of planning, of acting, of living a complete lie. By the time our agents actually let us start planting a seed of divorce, I had heard she met someone amazing and was planning to marry him.

Back on the beach I physically winced as I remembered that phone call. How, in just a matter of seconds, my life suddenly felt completely empty, and cold and I felt totally alone... SHE was supposed to be mine... what was I supposed to do?

Now I was standing here being a fucking moron again. My chance was here, was NOW... and I was fucking avoiding it with every last piece of me. I took a deep breath and willed my body to walk back, where I needed it to be.

I joined up with Dan, Adrien and Paul again at the car. They had been waiting for me. Paul clapped his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

"You ok?"

I nodded, knowing I had to do this NOW, before my brain started in with its doubts. I HAD to get into that house NOW.

Thankfully, they seemed to sense my urgency and we made our way, quickly, up to the door. Dan didnt even pause, he pushed the door open and I felt Adrien and Paul right behind me, ushering me in.

As I stepped through I saw a flash of blonde hair and my heart swelled. There were old friends crammed in ever corner of the small living room. I was able to slip behind a few guys standing in the threshold. With my hat, tinted glasses and long sleeve shirt I melded right into the crowd.

I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I drank every single piece of her in. Every movement, every strand of hair, every line that made her, her. But her smile... I gulped in her happiness, the way her eyes squinted as she sang, the way her body moved effortlessly through the song. The strength she carried, the confidence she radiated.

What if this was it? What if she told me to leave? What if she told me and called me all the things I deserved? What if this was the last time I was able to be this close to her?

I had to take as step back, to lean against the wall. My entire body felt like it was shaking. I was terrified. My heart was beating so hard and fast I was sure everyone in the room could hear it.

After all this time, nothing had changed. She still left me paralyzed. What would I do if she told me to go fuck myself? How could I go back to LA and just go on with my life if she wasnt in it?

The song came to an end and she just stood there, slightly out of breath and with happiness written over her entire body.

"Who's next?" She asked as she spun the mike around in her hand.

"Do another one!" Someone I didnt know yelled from the couch. Everyone in the room agreed with him.

"You sure? I've kinda hogged the mic all night..." her voice echoed in my head. It had been so long since I heard it but it still sounded like home, like where I was supposed to be.

She shrugged and flipped her hair over as she turned to look in my direction. Her smile lit up her whole face. She nodded hello to everyone and then her eyes reached me.

I watched her sing, and dance, and laugh through her song that I never did actually hear. All I heard was the joy in her words. I was trying to memorize her voice more than I already had. To sear it into my brain so I could hear it still if everything went badly tonight.

She finished her song and stepped aside, a guy I didnt know took the Mike from her hand. They shared a smile and a laugh and the punch of jealousy hit me like a bag of rocks. My need for her to give me the same look rendered my senses useless and I took off my glasses, willing with everything i had, for her to look over to me. I couldn't do this anymore, I needed...something, anything really..

It was like she felt it too because her head turned deliberately towards me. She gave casual nods of hello to the guys standing off to my right until her eyes caught mine.

For a second I saw her confusion...and then her eyes got huge and her smile somehow was even bigger until a darkness passed over her face. I was terrified, was this it? Was she going to come tell me and call me all the awful things that I absolutely deserved?

But as quickly as the cloud passed over her, it went away, and she rushed over to where I was standing, pushing her way through. When she got close, all the guys around me stepped back, parting like the red sea. And then she was in front of me.

"Adam." Was all she said, looking at me with questions flying through her eyes. I could see the awkwardness overtake her, her body started to move to hug me but she stopped. So I grabbed her. I didnt know if it was too hard or not hard enough. My brain shut down, my body needing to be near her took over completely. I slammed her against myself, buried my face in her hair, felt her gasp, felt her arms fly up and hug me just as hard, back. The warmth coming off of her was intoxicating. I inhaled all of it, the smell of the wine she was drinking, the lingering smoke from the cigarettes she had always smoked, and underneath, the honest smell of HER. It was all the same. Everything I remembered and dreamed about, was right HERE.

And she wasnt letting go.

We stood like that for awhile. I was oblivious to anything else around me. Her head was on my chest and my heart was beating so loudly, telling her EVERYTHING, and there was nothing I could do to hide it. Finally, but way too soon, she slowly pulled back. I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, but then realized there was music blaring and she would never hear me. I looked down at her, I know my face gave me away. I wanted so much from her now that she was here, but i had no idea how to ask it.

She met my hungry, pleading gaze and held it. Her eyes were so clouded in questions though they were impossible to read. My hands planted firmly on her back, holding her close to me for as long as I could, until she finally took a step back. Her face was dark but she smiled at me through it and it shattered my already broken soul. It was then that I knew how much I hurt her, how honestly fucking stupid I had been.

Then, all of a sudden she was gone. I blinked I surprise as I saw Dan whisk her away from me, twirling her to the music. I watched as her face relaxed but the cloud still remained. I couldn't take my eyes off of her and she would keep turning to look at me with an unreadable expression.

After s little while, dan leaned down and spoke into her ear, she turned her head so I couldn't see, but she misstepped in her dancing, which she never does. She turned to look at Dan and I saw her face drop some of the cloudiness. When she turned back to look at me, it was with a real smile, and she held my gaze until she had to turn away because of her dance.

Adrien leaned over to me, "shes going to sing next and then it's your turn." I looked at him, all my fears and doubts returning instantly, but his face was calm, but firm, "you got this." He smiled at me with excitement brimming on his face.

My stomach was in knots, my head was pounding with thoughts I couldn't even catch. My body still tingling from her touch and I felt like an addict. I needed more...

I nodded to Adrien.

[ruinousrealms]

Black Valley

Nobody came through Black Valley anymore, not since the creek dried up and the railroad passed it by. The last settlers left years ago, leaving behind nothing but a few dilapidated shacks clustered around a shallow trench where water once ran down from the Sierra Nevadas, the blue-green peaks looming over the western horizon.

It was a ghost town in every sense of the word, and that was why Elmar Rudry liked it so much. The high desert was warm and peaceful, with little more than a stiff breeze to disturb the stillness of the afternoon, or the howling of distant coyotes at night. Nothing ever moved, nothing ever changed, and that was just the way he liked it.

The old man struck a singularly pathetic figure, dressed in rags that had once been a flannel shirt and gray pants, leaning on a stick as he hobbled between the crooked, half-collapsed buildings in what had been, once upon a time, the center of the town's commercial district. His hair was bleached white from age and the hot desert sun, falling across his shoulders and mingling with an equally long beard, which blew stiffly as the breeze passed by.

His hat was ragged, his boots so full of holes that it was a wonder the old leather soles clung together at all. It was a wonder he still bothered wearing them at all, with his hardened feet used to walking long distances across the hot earth, grinding his soles like fine-grain sandpaper. Some affectations died hard, he supposed – Like his ragged outfit, a holdover from the days when men still lived in this town, when cool, clear water flowed down from the mountains like the very blood of God-

He shook his head, catching himself. He couldn't afford to get nostalgic now – He'd long ago made his choice to stay, and there was no point dwelling in the distant past. How long had it been since the last time he saw a human face? A smooth one, a fresh one, free of the cracks and scars and strange, writhing, dripping things that flowed from the mouth and nostrils of a fresh corpse? Ten years, more?

He shrugged, and a wave of sand rolled down his shoulders like a caustic avalanche, clinging to the reddish, irritated flesh on his back. Too many years of sun had first turned his skin the color and consistency of rough Apache leather, then irritated it, wrinkles cracking and splitting apart, catching sand and sending thin streams of pus down his back.

It used to bother him. Not anymore. Nothing bothered him anymore, not the sun, not the sand, not the emptiness of his stomach nor the infernal dryness of his throat. He looked up, and realizing he was in the saloon, made his way over to the counter, where an empty whiskey bottle sat alongside a row of shot glasses, cracks running across the glass like spiderwebs. He remembered whiskey, the burn as it slid down the throat, the courage, the wild, carefree abandon it inspired after a long day's march...

It was gone. He brushed the skeleton of a scorpion off the bar and watched it shatter across the floor, then made his way up the creaking flight of stairs to the rooms of the upper floor. Each step creaked ominously beneath his feet, the nails rusty, the wood cracked and warped from years of varying temperatures.

Four of the five doors were shut, and the old man paid them no attention as he made his way to the far room, whose door he could just barely remember removing from the hinges in some long-distant vista of memory.

The object of his quest lay on the bed, two hundred and six bones, thirty-two teeth – He'd counted them meticulously, during the long days in which there was nothing left to do. They were all intact, pristine and bleached the same white as his beard, thanks to the sun and ants. He was just lucky he'd found it before the scavengers got to it – As it was, all that was missing were a few pieces of skull, which he'd been unable to find no matter where he looked. Possibly, whoever made the hole had taken them with him – Why, he couldn't say, but any man who would leave such a fine corpse laying in the desert was sure to have some strange ways.

Next to the body lay a moldy old belt and a chunk of rusted-together metal that may have once been a revolver, though the make was impossible to tell. The old man picked it up, resting his bony finger on the rusted trigger, and made a motion with his thumb as if cocking the missing hammer. He held it out, fixing the shattered forehead of the skull between rust-clogged sights, then set it down again.

He opened his mouth, a single, blackened incisor hanging from frayed tendons. His first attempt at speaking sent him into a fit of coughing, as countless weeks of accumulated dust flowed between his thin lips. When the dust settled and his throat was reasonably empty, he shook his head, and began a long-practiced speech.

“I'a Cthulhu fhtagn,” He rasped, his dry, cracked tongue straining to shape the unusual syllables, “Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu-”

“Yakut shabbur Yog-Sothoth,” The corpse responded in a tone as hollow as the space within the ribcage, “Heigin tadnor Ug-Krunog.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” The old man sputtered, “The things what live beneath Snake-Hill, they'd have told me-"

“Your death approaches, Elmar,” The corpse's tone was almost apologetic, “You know they would never tell you. You might panic and flee, and then they'd have to venture out in the daytime and fight with the other scavengers to claim what belongs to them.”

“I don't, I tell you! Elmar Rudry belongs to Elmar Rudry, no matter what the buggies say.”

“You sold yourself cheap, you know. Your Christian god may not exist, but there are certain places what are warmer than others – And a damn sight colder than this desert, where even the children of Yig dare not dwell.”

“Them snakes ain't worth the lead it takes t' put 'em down,” The old man's voice grew steadier as he got used to speaking, “I always wanted t' burn their hives, or at least drop some dynamite down their holes an' seal the entrances. Keep em from gobblin' down any unwary travelers-”

“And hitch a ride out of here,” The corpse finished for him.

“It's been too long. Longer than the bargain.”

A rattling sound emerged from between the jaws of the skull, something akin to laughter.

“Bastard. I should'a left you where I found you.”

“You don't bargain with Hol-Krava, nor the Black Goat with a Thousand Young.”

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” The old man intoned, and with a sound like rustling paper, the skeleton fell silent once more.

-=-

The year was 1862, and Private Rudry was riding hard through the desert, kicking up a plume of dust that rose like smoke from one of the big factories back in St. Louis. His once-gray uniform was coated in red dust, same with his hat and the scruffy three-day beard clinging to his narrow chin. He held the reigns in his teeth as he struggled to load his revolver, but the constant rocking of the saddle made it nearly impossible to pour the powder into each of the cylinders in the revolver – And he knew he'd need them all.

The western campaign was over. New Mexico was firmly in Union hands. Sibley and Thom Green were retreating, along with two thousand of Texas' best men, four hundred of whom now lay dead in western dust. Back home to Arizona, and from there to Texas, and then what? All the way back to Virginia, to hold off the Yankee savages by digging trenches in farmyards and town squares from Richmond to Atlanta?

Rudry couldn't read, but it didn't take some northern intellectual to understand the signs – It was doomed, the whole damned war, and he wasn't going to die in some Godforsaken foxhole or catch the flu and meet the Creator without ever meeting the enemy. No, he was headed west – West, beyond the Sierra Nevada, where the sun rose above an ocean as expansive as the desert which now surrounded him in all directions.

In the chaos of the retreat, who would've noticed a soldier slipping away, stealing a horse and riding off into the night? Somebody, apparently, or they wouldn't have sent these men after him. There were four, but he shot one on the second night, when he made the mistake of making camp in the open, and the other disappeared soon after. Maybe he was snakebit and died raving and alone as his comrades pressed on – It pained him to think of any man dying in such ignominy, let alone a fellow southerner, but it couldn't be helped. He was with the Lord now, and surely reaping his just reward for loyal service to the cause.

As for himself, he knew his soul was well beyond saving. His sin was worse than murder, worse than sodomy – If he thought service to the southern cause could save his soul, he was sorely mistaken, as loneliness and isolation only drove him onward, into the depths of depravity which even the wicked men of Nineveh would find abhorrent. Even the yankee foe, for all his cruelty, would have given him a quick death just to rid the world of his sin all the more quickly.

Sodom and Gomorrah, on the plain south of what men call the River Jordan – Albuquerque and Santa Fe, south of Rio Puerco. Truly, the Lord hath granted him a taste of the fires to come, in which his deviant soul would become another morsel on the devil's own barbacoa. He was a good little sinner, though, and he wouldn't be content with simply laying down and accepting the fires willingly.

The war lay behind him, but it was catching up fast. He could hear the hoofbeats of his pursuers just meters behind him, unable to shoot or even see in the cloud of dust from his horse's hooves. It was about all the old mare was good for, after a full week of running drove the energy from the poor beast. God really did abandon this land – It was like a blank spot upon the face of Creation, an unfinished corner bereft of life save for rattlesnakes and cacti, whose moist flesh was the only reason he hadn't died four nights ago when his last canteen ran out.

The Colt's Dragoon he carried was a gift from a Union lieutenant, back at Glorieta Pass. The boy's soul had been commended to the Lord, where he only hoped the boy received mercy for his sin of fighting against the glorious Confederacy. The bayonet of his rifle still dripped with the boy's blood when he pulled the pistol from his limp fingers and delivered a coup de grace – A kindness, better than bleeding to death or dying of infection in some butcher's field hospital.

It was a powerful little beauty, but Lord, the trigger pull was a long one and the kick worse than a mule. If you weren't careful firing, you could snap your wrist clean down the middle, and if you didn't load it correctly – Too much powder, or too little, the thing could just as easily blow up in your hand and do the enemy's job for him.

“Jesus, Mary, and all the saints,” He muttered, rotating the cylinder and clicking the lock into place, “Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.”

Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the silhouettes of the riders shifting as they fanned out, one on each side and riding hard to escape the smokescreen. The one on the left came out first, his gray uniform hidden beneath a brown longcoat, and a revolver-rifle in his hands. It was a powerful weapon in the right hands, a step between a musket and one of Henry's new repeaters, but there was enough room in the breach that dirt could easily get in – Which is why, when the gunman raised the rifle and took aim, Rudry didn't bother to duck.

There was a click, and another, and then an explosion and the sensation of air whipping past his face – He turned just in time to see the other rider coming up behind him, his unbuttoned coat flapping behind him like a cape. The weapon in his hands was a Henry, and Rudry cursed to high heaven as another bullet tore past him, barely scraping the back of his collar.

Another shot cracked out by the time Rudry got his bearings, this one grazing the horse's haunch and causing the poor beast to cry out, stumbling slightly as blood trickled down its leg. It was barely a scratch, and Rudry spared the beast no mercy, jamming his spurs into the horse's bloody thighs. He could see the rider coming alongside him, rifle at the ready for a single clear shot.

The fully-loaded Dragoon felt heavy in his hand, too heavy for a man to hold – It wasn't designed to kill men, really, but Nephilim and Indians, which Rudry quietly suspected were the same thing, having never met any of either party. He didn't bother looking, he just pulled the trigger. The bark of the gun was nothing compared to the screaming of the horse as the bullet tore through its thick hide, lodging itself deep in its chest. Its legs buckled, and now it was the rider's turn to scream as he was thrown from the saddle, landing head-first with an awful crunch.

One threat down, he turned to the second gunman, but as he turned around, all he could see was empty desert, red sand and wind-blown rocks in every direction. In one direction, however, a pair of buttes stuck out against the noonday sky, and between them, a faint cloud of dust receded into the distance. The coward bolted.

Rudry chuckled, and the fallen rider groaned, southern blood trickling from a gash in his scalp and spilling across the damned Yankee sand. Hopping down from his saddle, Rudry pulled a Bowie knife from the sheath on his belt, and put an end to the poor wretch. The horse's legs were twitching, but the bullet had clearly hit something vital. He hefted his revolver and considered putting a round into it, but his bullet pouch was dreadfully light.

The Henry, on the other hand, was caught beneath the beast's belly, with only part of the now-bent barrel sticking out. It didn't take a gunsmith to know it'd be useless, even if he could shove the thousand or so pounds of dead weight off of it.

With only slight regret, he climbed back on his horse, turned, and made to follow his other pursuer.

-=-

The hunter was now the hunted. Revolver in hand, Rudry crept through the ruined stockade and into the ghost town. Black Valley was the name, according to a bullet-scarred sign hanging from the sheriff's office – He guessed it was the sheriff's office, on account of the rusty iron cage sitting in the center of the otherwise empty building. It must've been a fine town in it's day, though how long ago that was, he dared not venture a guess. It could've been built any time between last week and Coronado's first visit to the region more than two centuries prior.

Maybe the local gold or silver mine ran dry, or maybe there never was one to begin with – Some Yankee shyster selling stakes in a phony mine, stealing people's life savings while they slowly died out in some godforsaken wilderness. It wouldn't be the first time, and with the defeat of the Glorious Cause all but inevitable, it sure as shootin' wouldn't be the last.

There were a good dozen structures still standing, mostly one- or two-room shacks, along with the aforementioned sheriff's office, a small church, a saloon – The only two-story building in town, if you didn't count the upper level of the church, which Rudry didn't, as the roof had mostly caved in on top of it. In the dying light, and in light of his sin, he passed it by, scarcely turning to glance inside.

He was glad he did, however, as a shift in the darkness caught his attention – Movement. He dropped to his knees just in time for a bullet to rip past him, ricocheting off a rock just behind him. He raised the revolver and let off a round of his own, the flash illuminating the entryway to the church, and for just a moment, he could make out the silhouette of a man behind a pew, his face pale behind the sights of his rifle.

He ducked, giving Rudry time to move for cover behind the empty doorway. A volley rang out, one, two, three shots, the first two hitting the ground, and the last one slamming into the doorframe and sending out a flurry of splinters. Four shots fired in total, two left – While he still had five heavy .44 bullets loaded in his Dragoon.

“Don't come any closer!” The man in the church shouted, “Damn you! Damn you!”

He was moving around, fumbling in the dark. Rudry could hear the pews screeching as he shoved them out of his way.

“Damn yourself!” He responded, “Put it down, and we'll get our backsides outta this here firehole!”

“You killed Jim!”

“He was shootin' at me. Whaddya expect me t' do, shake his hand?”

“Damn you!”

“You said that already, kid.”

The gunman responded with another shot, but this one didn't hit near the door – There was a loud splashing sound, like a rock thrown in water, followed by a strange, half-strangled yell from the gunman.

“What in the blazes..?” Rudry muttered, peeking around the door, but he could see nothing past the small entryway, the rest of the interior cloaked in shadow. Something was definitely moving in there, but whether it was the gunman, or something else entirely, he couldn't say. There shuffling sounds, as if something very large were moving across the floor toward the back of the church.

Turning the corner, Rudry fired a shot, and the flash brightened the entire church, right to the back. In that split second, he got a good look at the interior – A few rows of wooden pews leading to a pulpit, behind which sat the remains of a large cross, the horizontal beam having fallen off, and was now leaning against the vertical one.

Between them, though – Rudry blinked, and everything was dark once more. For just a second, he fancied that he saw something faint, indistinct, standing between the pulpit and the cross, a kind of splotch of shadow – In the darkened church, nothing unusual, save that it seemed to be relegated to a single spot in midair. He didn't spare a second to think about it. More importantly, the gunman was nowhere to be seen, probably hiding behind a pew – And Rudry had just exposed himself.

Rudry leapt back behind the doorway, waiting for the kid to make his move – But nothing came, and after a few long seconds, he ventured to shout, “Hello?”

After a few seconds with no response, he grasped his pistol tightly, and slowly peeked around the corner. When no shots came, he stepped into the open and stood for a second, then took a couple steps into the church, where the light from the setting sun gave way to near pitch-darkness. As he stood there in the still silence, he noticed a faint sound coming from behind one of the pews, barely audible above the faint ringing in his ears from his previous shot.

Behind the bench lay the gunman, as white as Georgia cotton and twisted into an expression that sent a shiver down the hardened soldier's spine. The man's body was twitching, his hands and feet shaking as if in the throes of an epileptic seizure, but that wasn't it. It was as if he was struggling against something, or at least, that was the impression Rudry got from the way he thrust his hands forward, only to slam back down as if being shoved by powerful hands.

“Damn you – D-damn you!” He muttered incessantly, his tongue straining to give shape to the words as blood trickled from cracks in his parched lips. His entire lower face was covered in the stuff, like a sanguine beard. The blood was so thick he could smell it.

A quick visual inspection showed no obvious signs of injury, no entry wounds where Rudry's shot might've ricocheted and hit him. The poor fool's brain was scrambled, probably half-baked from too many long hours under the unforgiving New Mexico sun. Rudry had seen it all before, men dropping mid-march and dying on the burning sand, having never met the enemy. They were useless – Orders were to leave them where they fell, as dragging them along would only slow the column down.

It was the same for him, now. What could he do for the madman? He could splint a broken bone or stitch shut a gaping wound, that was it. Should he tie him down to keep him from gouging his own eyes out, sharing his water with him even though he was bound to die anyway? Grunting, he pulled out his knife and dug it deep in the man's throat. He hardly responded to the cut – Barely bled, in fact, for which Rudry was eminently grateful.

He didn't even gurgle as he died. Rudry felt his way through the church, stepping carefully to avoid tripping on a loose board. The moon rose quickly, filling the room with a pale light that cast queer shadows over everything. Rudry stopped and glanced around, blinking in surprise – Had he lost track of time? He'd taken a pocket watch from the man whose horse he'd shot, but he didn't have a clue how to read it.

Something moved in the corner of his eye, near the pulpit. He spun around, gun at the ready, but nothing was there. “Bats,” He muttered, and slipped his gun back into the holster.

To his surprise, there was a book on the pulpit, but it wasn't a Christian bible – Instead of a cross, the cover bore the image of a stick with five branches, three on one side, two on the other. It was cast from silver, shimmering faintly in the moonlight. Maybe that was the movement. He let out a chuckle, then stopped, as the sound seemed to profane the silence which had settled around him.

The book was strange, no doubt about it. Elmar Rudry could read no better than he could speak Dutch, and the language of the book was definitely not Dutch. They weren't letters like any he'd ever seen before, a lot of squiggly shapes with hooks, curves, and little dots sprinkled here and there like drops from a leaking pen. Every few pages was an illustration, portraying monsters of all shapes and sizes, none of which looked even slightly familiar to him.

There were things without heads, with squiggly lines spewing from their mouths – How a headless creature could have a mouth was beyond him, but that was what was portrayed. One image, to which he felt particularly drawn, appeared to be a normal human man, hands and feet outstretched to show off his body. If he were a scholarly type, he'd have recognized the outline of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

The outline was where the similarities ended, however, as closer inspection revealed certain anatomical irregularities, particularly centered around the subject's groin. Retching slightly in his mouth, Rudry flipped the page, not caring if he ripped the fragile vellum.

He found himself drawn to the strange scribbles. His eyes glazed over the longer he stared at them, the funny little hooks and curves writhing across the page like so many little ringworms in the skin of a dying sow. They were beautiful, in their own unusual way, and before he could tear himself away, he'd read the spread pages five times over.

“This ain't Christian,” He muttered to himself. But then, he was hardly a Christian anymore, and so he turned the page, the ancient vellum crinkling beneath his callused fingertips.

-=-

“Ia Cthulhu,” The old man repeated, staring down at the corpse on the bed, “Ia Cthulhu, there ain't no end for me, not on this mortal Earth.”

He repeated that same phrase as he hobbled out of the saloon, adjusting his hat to keep the sun out of his sensitive eyes. Too many years of reading alone in the dark had turned them milky and dim, even though they weren't really useful with the kinds of books he read. He could feel it in his forehead, pulsing, the little cone-shaped gland that Dee so loved to expound upon, and Alhazred harbored such a desire to caress that, in a fit of mad lust, the prophet cracked his own skull with a rock and dug through useless tissue to find the thing.

Rudry had never gone quite that far, though the dark, lonely nights did sometimes drive him to strange extremes regardless. He could taste colors now, and hear smells – The sunlight was too loud these days, pounding in his ancient ears even louder than his own heartbeat, which had recently taking up the tune of an old marching song from-

“Ia Cthulhu,” He banished the thought with another repetition of his mantra, the one he'd repeated so many times over the decades, “Death o' the firstborn, an' welcome th' rain o' frogs. Teacheth mine hands not for war, o Great Ones, but to sin and make merry until the Coming.”

He learned it from his book – The terrible book, the wonderful book, whose presence on the church pulpit was at once inexplicable and miraculous. It was as if God himself led him to it, though he knew instinctively that the mere existence of such a tome was absolute evidence against His existence. No good, orderly world could ever suffer the knowledge contained within that accursed thing.

The words never did make sense to him, but every time he looked, he felt like he was learning. New knowledge simply popped up in the back of his brain as if he knew it all along. Indeed, the only unease he felt anymore was the idea that, in some vague, ill-defined time, he [i]hadn't[/i] known these things. Shoggoth kulai, creatures of the blackest text – They lived, the words, letters, and language, they had lived and they forever would, ensnaring his soul in their web of horror and beauty from the day he first gazed upon the thing.

His body waned as his mind waxed strong, muscle fading, feebleness setting in, but it was a small price to pay for the things he learned. He learned of spheres beside our own, beings from beyond the realm of human understanding. He saw cities wreathed in flame, trains that flew through the air like great serpents – Or was it serpents like giant trains? He couldn't remember. It had been years since he'd seen that particular page. He could try and look it up again, but the pages had a tendency to change whenever he wasn't looking at them.

The vast octopoid things would rise from the deep and reclaim their land. Perhaps it had already happened – The scale of time in the book was rather strange, as was his own perception of it, born of countless decades of isolation. It could've been eons – For all he knew, men were gone and the world was ruled by rabbits who remembered the former dominant species only as a predatory bogeyman who came for disobedient little kits in the dead of night.

Well, those were all after his time. His life, unnaturally elongated though it was, was finally nearing an end. Or was it a beginning? For a man such as he, death was but a door, time but a window, and with his knowledge, there were certain ways of cheating it. Snake-Hill, for example, and them what lived beneath – His close friends and allies through all these long years, would surely be able to help, or at least give him an alternative to whatever foul oblivion into which his consciousness might be thrown upon the cessation of his heartbeat.

Snake-Hill lay just to the east of town, no more than an hour's walk, but by the time the old man arrived at the base of the low rise of earth, it was nearing nightfall. He didn't own a lantern, nor did he see fit to bring so much as a flintstone and a piece of steel; In the dark, his bleary eyes were even less useful than usual, but he knew the way to the entrance by heart, having made the trip almost weekly for countless years.

It didn't take a lot of poking around for him to find the hole, small enough to be mistaken for a rabbit's warren, and poking a toe inside, he jostled it a bit, trying to disturb the inhabitant enough to come out.

“C'mon, feller,” He rasped, “We got business, you an' I.”

Something warm and wet pressed against his toe, and he pulled it back just as a green, polypus thing oozed out. It shifted and swelled before him, swallowing up dirt and sandmites and scorpions, whatever didn't get out of the way in time. Rudry practically leapt back, landing hard on his ankle, but it didn't break, despite the cracking sound and the burst of pain. If his suspicions were correct, it didn't matter anyway. He wasn't going to be walking anywhere anytime soon.

It was as big as a fair-sized horse, covered in a kind of gelatinous outer layer thick enough to conceal whatever lay beneath. The surface was dotted with orifices with thick, almost human-like lips constantly opening and closing, gasping in air and exhaling puffs of blue smoke, whose smell wrinkled the old man's nose and stung his eyes.

The creature had no real limbs, but every once in a while, one of the orifices would open up, and a long, slender tendril would emerge to swat a fly, or capture it and drag it inside the thing's maw. It wasn't eating, of course, any fool could tell that such a beast took no sustenance upon this mortal plane.

As he stared at it, he noticed that the thing appeared to be seething, the surface rippling like an ocean in a storm, full of little air bubbles that burst as they rose to the top of the gelatinous layer. It was about as clear as mud, and the sun didn't shine on it so much as through it, getting lost somewhere in the depths of the semiliquid surface. It almost seemed to swallow the light, or perhaps, to radiate darkness; Either way, it stuck out like a sore tooth amid the ruined town.

A pair of tendrils emerged from the creature's belly, covered in thick, oily pus that hissed it dripped on the ground. They twisted into a shape like a sailor's knot, and Elmar repeated the motion, doing his best approximation with his hands. A low gurgle rose from one of the orifices in the creature's side, and a foul, greenish mist began to pump out.

The smell was acrid, even by Elmar's standards, a mixture of burnt cordite and the gas which builts up inside a corpse, only to rupture and spread its putrescence through the hot, dry desert air. Opening his arms and closing his eyes, he inhaled the foul stench and savored it like a sommelier nosing a fine wine.

“Ia Cthulhu,” He muttered to nobody in particular – Certainly not the beast, whose sensory organs couldn't possibly perceive such a mundane form of communication as speech. There was a strange sensation in his loins, and he looked down to see an erection, something he hadn't experienced in more decades than he cared to count. He smirked at the sight – Human procreation was so delicate, so fragile, so utterly limited that it was hard to describe it as procreation at all, more like cloning, or spreading the seed of some wild desert flower. Only fools cared for such things, fools and creatures so low in evolution that they were like comparing men with ants... Or perhaps, comparing an ant with the bacteria clinging to the dung it feasted on.

He was beginning to understand now what the skeleton had meant. Death – O Death, in this way, wasn't a death at all, but a transition, a Becoming. For in the arms of the Worm, ensconced within the cool, damp caverns underneath Snake-Hill, he would achieve something, attain something, and in doing so, pass beyond what fools called existence, and clung to so dearly, as if a single breath of waking life were worth the strain it put on the soul.

“Shub-Niggurath an' the Conqueror Worm,” He closed his eyes, spreading out his arms to accept his fate, “I'm home.”

Two tendrils lashed out of the thing, accompanied by a burst of gas from one of the jiggling mouths. They touched his arms, suction-feelers sinking into his skin, and he hissed as pain coursed through his arteries – The creature tasted his insides, and the tendrils retreated, leaving the ragged ends of arteries to spurt blood.

Whether the creature liked it, he couldn't say, but when Elmar Rudry felt the ends of the tendrils pressing against his closed eyelids, he understood. His eyeballs popped like ripe cherries, and the scream he let out could've woken the dead. Upstairs in the saloon, there was a rattle of bones, but that stopped along with the scream as the creature's slimy appendages dug into the old man's brain, and, finding nothing of any particular interest, withdrew its tentacles.

The old man's body collapsed, limp and lifeless, and the creature returned from whence it came. A few hours later, a coyote, flea-bitten and half-starved, came upon the corpse, but the meat was far from fresh, and the smell clinging to it stung the canine's nostrils. He took a cursory sniff and turned away in search of something more palatable.

[swipestream]

New Release Roundup, 28 July 2018: Fantasy and Adventure

Young treasure hunters, imperial legions, xian’xia cultivators, heroic superhumans, and steampunk squires fill the pages of this week’s roundup of the newest releases in fantasy and adventure.

Clansman: Invoking the Darkness (Mapper #1) – Royce Scott Buckingham

Guided by a massive clan book containing tales of their ancestors, the Hilltoppers arrive in Abrogan, pledging allegiance to their King. They have crossed a forbidding ocean to another land where birds speak messages, poisonous sleep-animals lurk, warriors struggle for power and Lords bend the truth on a whim.

Ian Krystal, leader of the Hilltoppers, becomes an unlikely leader, charged with building roads, clearing a menacing bog full of savages, chasing down bands of thieves and in the process emerges a champion of the people.

Petrich is the clan’s scribe, meant to chronicle their journeys while learning the fine art of mapping from a renegade Lord. As a child, darkness sheltered him from marauding tribesmen and he carries it with him.

The emerging City of Skye is being built in the new land. King Blackpool’s nephew struggles with his power and the King arrives determined to double his empire.

Can an honest man of integrity prevail in a land of intrigue?

Coiling Dragon (Coiling Dragon Saga #1) – Wo Chi Xi Hong Shi

Empires rise and fall on the Yulan Continent. Saints, immortal beings of unimaginable power, battle using spells and swords, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. Magical beasts rule the mountains, where the brave – or the foolish – go to test their strength. This is the world which Linley is born into, a world of mages and warriors.

Raised in the small town of Wushan, Linley is a scion of the Baruch clan, the clan of the once-legendary Dragonblood Warriors. Their fame once shook the world, but the clan is now so decrepit that even the heirlooms of the clan have been sold off. Their prospects seem dire… and yet, perhaps some power still remains within the veins of the Baruch clan. Dragons do not easily die, and neither do the dragonblooded.

Come witness a new legend in the making. The legend of Linley Baruch.

The Cross of the Last Crusade (Young Chase Baker #1) – Vincent Zandri

An ancient solid gold cross has been buried seemingly forever. Only Young Chase Baker is brave enough to dig it back up.

You know Chase Baker as an adventurer and Renaissance man who loves the ladies but who also loves finding trouble in the form of buried treasure all around the globe. But what was Chase like back when he was a teenager? Turns out, he was a younger version of his adult self.

In this, the first short novel in the new Young Chase Baker action & adventure series, Chase teams up with his two best amigos–the skinny, fun loving, Twigs, and the combative but courageous, Baily. At Chase’s urging, the three embark on a late night quest to uncover the Cross of the Last Crusade which is said to have been buried along with the body of an old Frenchman, Pierre Menands. When Chase’s “sort of” girlfriend, the beautiful Monique, joins the hunt, the band of teens face down haunted ghosts, angry cops, a speeding locomotive, rabid dogs, a murderous resurrected crusader, and finally, the zombie reincarnation of Menands himself.

The Frostfire Sage (The Landkist Saga #4) – Steven Kelliher

The Sages are dying. The gods are waking up.

Kole, Linn and their companions have survived the wilds of Center, slain another Sage and put their world on a path toward salvation.

Or so they think.

But the Eastern Dark has returned and laid claim to the power of T’Alon Rane, making the King of Ember his dark servant once more. Now, their ancient enemy marches across the frozen wastes of the north, seeking to end the life of his former ally and the last true power that can stand against him.

With the last two Sages on a collision course that could decide the fate of the world, the Landkist of the Valley have a choice to make. One between darkness and light, redemption and corruption.

For the Frostfire Sage is alive and unwell. And she has secrets to keep. And scores to settle.

Knight Country (An Adventures of Baron Von Monocle novella) – Jon Del Arroz

The Special Forces of Steampunk!

Airships, Guns, and Gadgets! The Knights of the Crystal Spire are more than ordinary fantasy knights.

Life as an apprentice knight hasn’t been easy on James Gentry. As a commoner and an outsider, he’s been ridiculed, picked on, and shunned by the other boys. But he’s determined to become one of the finest knights Rislandia has ever seen.

During his training, James stumbles upon a master knight selling information on Rislandian troop movements to a Wyranth spy. To keep Rislandia safe, he must root out the traitor and put a stop to the enemy’s schemes. Does he have what it takes?

“Knight Training” is a stand-alone sequel novella to the award-winning steampunk novel, For Steam And Country!

The Mask of Storms (Blood and Honor #1) – William Stacey

Warrior. Outcast. Hero.

Framed for theft. Hunted by the underworld. Marked for death by a dark power.

If they fail to recover the Mask of Storms, they may lose more than their lives. They may lose their souls.

When dockhand Bors is blamed for the theft of a magical artifact—the Mask of Storms—he is hunted by those who will kill anyone to recover it. But Bors is a man with a violent past and when pushed he pushes back. Now, on the run in a foreign city, his only ally is the beautiful but treacherous thief Long Tam.

But a dark power watches from the shadows.

Omega Deep (Sam Reilly #12) – Christopher Cartwright 

Name: USS Omega Deep Cost: 30 billion dollars Class: Experimental Noise Emissions: Undetectable by current sound monitoring capabilities Current Status: Unknown. Last contact 96 days ago. Presumed sunk. 192 souls lost.

The US Navy’s most advanced nuclear attack submarine, the USS Omega Deep was the first to disappear. It was followed swiftly by the loss of the Russian spy vessel Vostok, and then the Feng Jian, a Chinese Aircraft Carrier.

Sam Reilly and his unique team of troubleshooters are requested at the express order of the President of the United States of America to locate the Omega Deep and determine the cause of these unexplained tragedies, before they lead to World War III.

The Price of a Drink (Right Ho, Jeeves #4) – P. G. Wodehouse, adapted by Chuck Dixon and Gary Kwapisz

THE PRICE OF A DRINK is the fourth issue in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series, which tells of the travails of the inimitable Bertie Wooster, summoned from the comforts of #3A Berkley Mansions, London to Brinkley Manor by his imperious Aunt Dahlia. In this issue, Gussie Fink-Nottle has summoned up the courage required to address the collected youth of Market Snodsbury, but it is a liquid courage. Not only that, but he has summoned up entirely too much of it, with hilarious and humiliating consequences for everyone involved.

Adapted from the classic Wodehouse novel by comics legend Chuck Dixon and drawn by SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN illustrator Gary Kwapisz, THE PRICE OF A DRINK is issue #4 of 6 in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series.

Regicide (The Completionist Chronicles #2) – Dakota Krout

After the encounter at the Mage’s College, Joe’s name has become well-known in Eternia. While the majority of his guild is ecstatic over the bonuses that he brings them, not everyone is pleased with his rising influence. In fact, someone has been spreading rumors that Joe is unbalanced, sacrificing comrades for personal power.

As a result, Joe is forced to recruit a team of misfits and discovers that their unique abilities complement his own. With their assistance, Joe moves forward with his plans to specialize into a more powerful version of his Ritualist class. But when the dust settles, he will be forced to ask himself a simple question: was it his actions that lit the fires of war?

Rogue Dungeon (The Rogue Dungeon #1) – James Hunter and Eden Hudson

Roark von Graf—hedge mage and lesser noble of Traisbin—is one of only a handful of Freedom fighters left, and he knows the Resistance’s days are numbered. Unless they do something drastic…

But when a daring plan to unseat the Tyrant King goes awry, Roark finds himself on the run through an interdimensional portal, which strands him in a very unexpected location: an ultra-immersive fantasy video game called Hearthworld. He can’t log out, his magic is on the fritz, and worst of all, he’s not even human. He’s a low-class, run-of-the-mill Dungeon monster. Some disgusting, blue-skinned creature called a Troll. At least there’s one small silver lining—Roark managed to grab a powerful magic artifact on his way through the portal, and with it he might just be able to save his world after all.

Unless, of course, the Tyrant King gets to him first …

A Sellsword’s Resolve (The Seven Virtues#3) – Jacob Peppers

Aaron and his companions prevented the assassination of a queen but in doing so they angered an ancient evil. Angered it, wounded it, but did not kill it, for such evil never truly dies.

An army greater than any the world has ever known marches bringing steel and death with it and somewhere a thousand-year-old evil lurks in the darkness, plotting and bending its will toward revenge.

Aaron and his companions have gathered allies to help them in the coming battle and each day his bond with the Virtue of Compassion grows stronger, gifting him greater and greater power.

But if life on the street taught Aaron anything, it’s that no one is better able to stab you in the back as those standing behind you. And as his power with the legendary creature grows, so too does an uncontrollable rage that threatens to consume him.

His enemies are many, his friends few, but no matter what happens, they will all learn the truth of a sellsword’s resolve.

Spawn of an Assassin (The Dark Assassin #3) – Steve Collier

Born of war, heir to the throne of the Blue Territory, Makeo has never lived a normal life. His brutal training at the hands of the kingdom’s greatest assassins combines with his natural talent to make him an unstoppable warrior. And an arrogant one.

When word reaches the king that their enemies are planning a massive invasion, donning armor and wielding weapons beyond their power to defeat, Makeo is determined to fight to save his kingdom.

The Wisp, an ancient and evil parasite with the power to fully control its host, has laid dormant for all these years… until now.

The Wisp beckons to Makeo, filling his head with promises of glory, of victory, of peace for all Five Territories. What Makeo doesn’t know, is that all this comes with a heavy price… his soul.

Can Makeo hold himself back from the manipulations of the Wisp? Or will he succumb to its call and release it from its imprisonment, dooming the whole world?

The Street Rules (Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #1) – Chuck Dixon and Frank Fosco

From the mean streets of Moseley to the luxurious beach houses of Diamond Beach, crime affects everyone in Avalon. And the presence of the superhumans known around the city as “specials” hasn’t necessarily made life for the average citizen any better, since the local vigilantes are as apt to demand payment for their protection as they are to provide their services for free.

The crime-fighting duo of King Ace and Fazer are true heroes, not vigilantes, as Fazer explains the difference to a reporter interviewing him for the city paper. A hero doesn’t expect thanks or payment, he helps people because it is the right thing to do. And a hero doesn’t kill anyone, ever. All he and the big guy are trying to do is make everyday life better for everyone walking through their streets, living in their city.

But even heroes face temptation.

The Tiger’s Time (Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer #4) – Marc Alan Edelheit

A nobleman from an infamous family, imperial legionary officer, and born fighter, Ben Stiger is trapped in the past and cut off from everything he has known. The World Gate is sealed behind him and Delvaris the man he traveled through time to save, is dead. With this great man’s death, the future has been altered by the evil god Castor.

Stiger has lost his purpose. For the first time in a great long while, no one needs saving and no one needs killing. Stiger is a man out of his time and worse a prisoner of the dwarves.

Cast adrift in a time not his own, Stiger believes his time as a leader of men is at an end. But the gods are not done with him yet. A terrible evil looms over the Vrell Valley like a grim shadow. Castor’s dark servants are hard at work. Despite being a man out of his time, Stiger is viewed as a threat to be eliminated, for a dread destiny has been stamped onto his line from the time of Karus.

The Horde is on the march, and the Thirteenth Legion is in Vrell without a legate. There is only one man who can lead the Lost–Stiger. This is the Tiger’s Time! The question is… can the damage done by Castor’s servants be repaired and will it be enough to change his destiny?

United Cherokee States of N’America: The Knower – Bob Finley

Conner Gray gradually realized as a child that he had a unique and unsolicited gift/curse/skill: he knew things. If he’s asked a question, any question, he knows the answer. And he’s always right. And he doesn’t know how he knows.

One day Conner, now a 26 year old professional proofreader, receives an article from the Center For Disease Control in which nine experts ask what they think is an academic question: “Is it possible that a virus could sweep the world so quickly that it would annihilate up to 90% of the human population, and if so, how soon could that happen?” The wording of the question triggered an involuntary response and he ‘knew’ the answer: yes! And he knew when: just 181 days after he reads the article. BUT the experts’ answer is “no”. He ‘knew’ they were wrong. But who would believe him instead of nine experts?

He called the only friend he could trust to believe him. Together they set out on a quest to survive the coming apocalypse. 177 days. And counting.

When the Gods Fell – Richard Paolinelli

Oracle Veritas of the House of Delphi has waited for over 65 million years to tell her story to the children of Olympus. Now, in the year 2041, the first humans from Earth have stepped onto the surface of Mars. But instead of a barren world littered with long-dead probes and rovers, the crew of the Seeker will encounter Oracle and hear of a world that was once covered in seas and lakes, icecaps and deserts, plains and forests. When it was a world called Olympus, inhabited by the race of advanced immortals that called the planet home.

How Lord Zeus, head of the ruling family of Caste Olympus, was ruler of the world. But other Castes chaff under the Olympian rule. Lord Odin, of Caste Norse, and Lord Anu, of Caste Paga, have set their eyes upon the throne of Olympus. Even as the jubilee celebration of Zeus’ rule draws near, Odin and Anu recruit the leaders of the other Castes – Dine, Asiac, Afrikans and Hindi – to their cause against the mighty Zeus.

Only Caste Zion, led by Lord Yahweh, remains loyal to the throne. A loyalty proven two centuries before when Yahweh exiled his own son, Lucifer, after a failed coup attempt. But Lucifer’s treachery will not die. He waits for the rebellious Castes to strike against his father and set him free from his prison on Gaia, the third planet in Olympus’ solar system.

As the plotters move against the throne, Zeus sees the extinction of all life on Olympus as the only possible result of the looming civil war. He is left with only one terrible solution. Zeus turns to the only person he can trust to carry out his last order as ruler of Olympus.

New Release Roundup, 28 July 2018: Fantasy and Adventure published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[negativehome-blog]

This book is dedicated to my brother.

 As always, there is no proof. There is only a statement. Believe in the statement and you will sail. Try to argue with it and you will die.

 Inside of all people is one word, a courageous word that cannot die. I may as well write because art is dead, no one cares, so you have to say what you want to say then die. The Earth is not right, there’s nothing inherently good about it. Yes, there’s money. There’s children. Pretty women. But they’re all nothing compared to death.

It’s too hard to communicate what you want to say without killing yourself. Is all communication death? Is the only flavor in my mind the flavor of death? My friend Spencer told me that he’s working on a new film. He’s a filmmaker based in Sacramento. I said to send over the script and I’d let him know what I think. It’s a good script but it has no soul, it’s deeply in doubt and full of awkward lines and decent plot work but ultimately it comes up short. I don’t know what to say to him so I’m only going to text him that I’ve read it and it does reflect him well and it reminded me of him and all the good times we’ve had.

 It’s never going to end. The end is near but it’s never going to end. When the quiet comes and the simple phrases are bagged and sold, the music will never be the same. The season of time will end and all of the youth will be captivated. But no one will care.

 Am I a demon? Are all my friends disgusted by my bad habits, my addictions, my frank manner? Do I even have any friends? What is worse, being lonely or stupid? I’m choosing stupid right now, working hard to get my head right and then I’ll worry about making friends. I mean, what does anyone know really? Is there any truth? I don’t think so. So why have friends at all? They’re only there to be happy and love you. There’s no use for that in my world. I was art and hate and anger, I want death and sadness. Those are the only things that matter.

 Am I running out of time? My head hurts and I’m worried that I might lose control of my body, what if cancer overcomes me or what if my head explodes. I want to text my friend back but I’m worried I might offend him, or he might offend me. I am not honest anymore like I used to be, I try to stay hidden and become a different man than I was the moment before.

 Vagabond remorse of a plastic spoon which suffocates under the nasty sun, while Joan and I are surfing the web and listening to songs by a band she likes, a band I’ve never heard of, a band called Ground Up, they’re a rap group, I like them, they sound down to Earth and have nice flow. Decency was becoming something to me, like wine dancing with the mouth of a friend. I was once her friend and now I am her enemy. How can I explain that to my conscience?

 I don’t plan on being here long, but I do hope to have some idea of myself in the future. To see a certain star and know that there is no hope without me, that maybe I mean something. According to Bob Dylan, I’m the last great American writer. I know that is true but I also feel like a fraud. I feel like Mike Wallace of the Pittsburgh Steelers, or Cal Ripken Jr, someone with a voice and a possible dream but ultimately I have no choice but to stay too long and fight too hard, eat too much and cry too much.

 A senior year portrait of a boy with no idea where he is going, sad and scared, totally useless. He is devoid of mind and spirit, he is only laughing at the soda cans and the vibrators, he is only in cahoots with the sailors and the fragmented realities, the realness of a squirrel or a pine cone, the obvious nature of a tube of toothpaste. He is seductive and he runs when people call his name. He has no future and no past. He is only an alcoholic and an adventurer, a seasman and a logician. He tries very hard to entertain his family and friends, but they all need love instead of happiness. They all want pussy instead of food, they all want poetry instead of songs. I have nothing to offer! I am held captive by my own mind, lusting for the trust of a million women and a million men. I want to be adored by thousands! Instead I am at home watching Sex and the City, far away from the city, in a remote Texas town without any hope of reaching my dreams. I strive for a music sense of self or a time warp test or anything of value, but all I have is a glass of water and a bowl of fruit.

 I certainly don’t care about someone like Betsy DeVos. I just don’t think her narrative infiltrates mine. It makes me selfish and a man of poor taste, but I have no choice. If the shoe was on the other foot I would care, I would need to care. But I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to care for me. I certainly would have no idea what to do, and I wouldn’t argue or fight. I would simply go to work and pray, just like I do now. Nothing would change, but I would probably have something to say about Betsy DeVos.

 I’m writing a book because I need money. It may be awful, may be great. It’s up to you.

 Diseased infancy on an iconic soda can.

 Something creepy becomes something lovely, a bird of prey operating heavy machinery on top of the Empire State Building. There is a vacuum above the centerpiece and a phallic symbol on the side of the car. Dragons are calling each other names while circling the sky, a heathen is dressed like a banker and he files his paperwork and goes to school. No one is sacred and no one means anything. We are all vacuous and ugly, despondent and respected only when we repeat the phrases we are told to repeat. We are nothing but skunks and foul mouthed egoists and necessary fictions that repeat until all of God is in the eye of a young boy, who stands next to a young girl and sings a song that no one has ever heard, who plays guitar and listens as the girl taps the drum, signaling the start of a new era. We are at peace with the safety in the sky, we are at peace with war.

 Microphone hangover on the left of the vacuum, where a giant moon is calling me a cunt and hanging out with my ex girlfriend. A disguised android is walking into the captivating, abstract function and my heart has become a giant thumb. Can you help me discover my past? My friend won’t text me back because he has too much heart, and I have too much soul, and he thinks I’m better off without him. I know I’m not better off without him, I know I need him like the night needs the day or the moon needs the sun, but he is being obstinate. I am watching CNN and trying to identify with this country.

 Doubt has crippled me like a bottle of wine hitting the cement. I have become a slave to confounding truths and am only alive when my heart is sinking, when the fleshy brain I have is always on the move and turning. I have no home without song but I am too tired to play guitar or sing. I can only write this manifesto.

 Social critics are as useful as dead ends. Social critics are a useful as doubt.

 The people I love have been praying for me, but I seem to be alone always with a vacuum stuck to my chair and a thousand wishes that will never come true. My heart tingles with a giant fixation that I will never shake. Where is Karen? I called her an hour ago and she’s still not here. We were going to play video games and smoke weed but she’s still not here.

 I cannot see straight anymore, my velvet head has become a sock and her arms are trying to lift me but I feel too bogus to play along. I looked back at pictures I sent my girlfriend a couple years ago, and I come off as such an asshole. I was trying to impress her and all she could do was laugh and try to make me less self-conscious. I am a loser and I know it, all my life I’ve been one, and now I’m beginning to see.

 A Season In Hell By Rimbaud is the reason I’m writing this. I think he’s the truest writer ever and that poem is his truest manifestation. But I am not a poet and I don’t hope to be. Poets are liars and riddlers, I am more of a straight shooter. I believe in politics and evil and sex, things that poets reject. I believe in countries and law and disease, things that poets take for granted. I do not wish to be a poet, but sometimes I may appear to have a poetic grace that it merely my understanding of a past I have never had.

 Decency of poetry is starting to climb into my mind. Is poetry real? What is the written word? I don’t believe the world needs anymore words, certainly not anymore written words, but I have no choice. What else am I to do? I am not Sinclair Lewis and I am not Basquiat, I am not Warhol or Bowie. I’m not Alexander McQueen. I am not an artist. I am simply a man who wants to express his ideas. Writing is the simplest way.

 I sit pondering the wealth in my heart with a twitch and a hammer and a sneeze. My arms have become my legs and my airs are as important as my heart. My girlfriend is in Brazil. She is taking classes and trying hard to be discernable and fun. She’s not fun, she’s boring and I can’t wait until she comes home so I can break up with her. Songs are playing while I write, Animal Collective, and the dancing verses are inspiring. I like Animal Collective but don’t love them.

 Sardonic, incestual disease keeps repeating itself. I’m wondering if this song is good or not, if I’m write or wrong, if the future has no future, if lives are more important than art, if decency is the ultimate struggle. I find it hard to examine the truth. I’ll never understand the truth and I don’t want to.

 Sleeping with a girl is the most important thing. Everything else dies when that happens. Falling in love, it is eternal. I don’t see anything more important. Maybe love of family and friends. Maybe washing the dishes and combing my hair, maybe watching TV. Other than that there is nothing on Earth more important than loving another human in a romantic way.

 What if its not enough? The world is waiting with bated breath, the world is a Nazi and I am a communist Leftist who needs war in order to survive. My drum has become my fuel and my heart is as big as the ocean, but also as small as a tributary. And dust is nothing when you’re so focused on the truth! I hate the truth, it is pathetic and smarmy. I am a Nazi who is hated by his civilization. Control me and you die!

 Call me what you want, call me anything! I am nothing but the words you speak, nothing but the emails you send or the comments you post. I am nothing!