#i live Across The Road from the hospital i was born in and yet everybody always thinks i moved here from abroad

[anendtopursuit]

accents r so funny. other brits ask me if i'm american or welsh or whatever other nationality because "you don't sound like you're from here" and "you don't have the accent", and then every american i speak to over voice chat lets me know how strongly, unavoidably british i sound

[boreothegoldfinch]

chapter 5 paragraph x

Of my classes, English was the only one I looked forward to, yet I was disturbed by how many of my classmates disliked Thoreau, railed against him even, as if he (who claimed never to have learned anything of value from an old person) was an enemy and not a friend. His scorn of commerce—invigorating to me —nettled a lot of the more vocal kids in Honors English. “Yeah, right,” shouted an obnoxious boy whose hair was gelled and combed stiff like a Dragon Ball Z character—“some kind of world it would be if everybody just dropped out and moped around in the woods—” “Me, me, me,” whined a voice in the back. “It’s antisocial,” a loudmouth girl interjected eagerly over the laughter that followed this—shifting in her seat, turning back to the teacher (a limp, long-boned woman named Mrs. Spear, who always wore brown sandals and earthtone colors, and looked as if she was suffering from major depression). “Thoreau is always just sitting around on his can telling us how good he has it —” “—Because,” said the Dragon Ball Z boy—his voice rising gleefully, “if everybody dropped out, like he’s saying to do? What kind of community would we have, if it was just people like him? We wouldn’t have hospitals and stuff. We wouldn’t have roads.” “Twat,” mumbled a welcome voice—just loud enough for everybody around to hear. I turned to see who had said this: the burnout-looking boy across the aisle, slouched and drumming his desk with his fingers. When he saw me looking at him, he raised a surprisingly lively eyebrow, as if to say: can you believe these fucking idiots? “Did someone have something to say back there?” said Mrs. Spear. “Like Thoreau gave a toss about roads,” said the burnout boy. His accent took me by surprise: foreign, I couldn’t place it. “Thoreau was the first environmentalist,” said Mrs. Spear. “He was also the first vegetarian,” said a girl in back. “Figures,” said someone else. “Mr. Crunchy-chewy.” “You’re all totally missing my point,” the Dragon Ball Z boy said excitedly. “Somebody has to build roads and not just sit in the woods looking at ants and mosquitoes all day. It’s called civilization.” My neighbor let out a sharp, contemptuous bark of a laugh. He was pale and thin, not very clean, with lank dark hair falling in his eyes and the unwholesome wanness of a runaway, callused hands and black-circled nails chewed to the nub—not like the shiny-haired, ski-tanned skate rats from my school on the Upper West Side, punks whose dads were CEOs and Park Avenue surgeons, but a kid who might conceivably be sitting on a sidewalk somewhere with a stray dog on a rope. “Well, to address some of these questions? I’d like for everybody to turn back to page fifteen,” Mrs. Spear said. “Where Thoreau is talking about his experiment in living.” “Experiment how?” said Dragon Ball Z. “Why is living in the woods like he does any different from a caveman?” The dark-haired boy scowled and sank deeper in his seat. He reminded me of the homeless-looking kids who stood around passing cigarettes back and forth on St. Mark’s Place, comparing scars, begging for change—same torn-up clothes and scrawny white arms; same black leather bracelets tangled at the wrists. Their multi-layered complexity was a sign I couldn’t read, though the general import was clear enough: different tribe, forget about it, I’m way too cool for you, don’t even try to talk to me. Such was my mistaken first impression of the only friend I made when I was in Vegas, and—as it turned out—one of the great friends of my life. His name was Boris. Somehow we found ourselves standing together in the crowd that was waiting for the bus after school that day.

“Hah. Harry Potter,” he said, as he looked me over. “Fuck you,” I said listlessly. It was not the first time, in Vegas, I’d heard the Harry Potter comment. My New York clothes—khakis, white oxford shirts, the tortoiseshell glasses which I unfortunately needed to see—made me look like a freak at a school where most people dressed in tank tops and flip flops. “Where’s your broomstick?” “Left it at Hogwarts,” I said. “What about you? Where's your board?” “Eh?” he said, leaning in to me and cupping his hand behind his ear with an old-mannish, deaf-looking gesture. He was half a head taller than me; along with jungle boots and bizarre old fatigues with the knees busted out, he was wearing a ratted-up black T-shirt with a snowboarding logo, Never Summer in white gothic letters. “Your shirt,” I said, with a curt nod. “Not much boarding in the desert.” “Nyah,” said Boris, pushing the stringy dark hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know how to snowboard. I just hate the sun.” We ended up together on the bus, in the seat closest to the door—clearly an unpopular place to sit, judging from the urgent way other kids muscled and pushed to the rear, but I hadn’t grown up riding a school bus and apparently neither had he, as he too seemed to think it only natural to fling himself down in the first empty seat up front. For a while we didn’t say much, but it was a long ride and eventually we got talking. It turned out that he lived in Canyon Shadows too—but farther out, the end that was getting reclaimed by the desert, where a lot of the houses weren’t finished and sand stood in the streets. “How long have you been here?” I asked him. It was the question all the kids asked each other at my new school, like we were doing jail time. “Dunno. Two months maybe?” Though he spoke English fluently enough, with a strong Australian accent, there was also a dark, slurry undercurrent of something else: a whiff of Count Dracula, or maybe it was KGB agent. “Where are you from?” “New York,” I said—and was gratified at his silent double-take, his lowered eyebrows that said: very cool. “What about you?” He pulled a face. “Well, let’s see,” he said, slumping back in his seat and counting off the countries on his fingers. “I’ve lived in Russia, Scotland which was maybe cool but I don’t remember it, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, Texas for two months, Alaska, New Guinea, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Ukraine—” “Jesus Christ.” He shrugged. “Mostly Australia, Russia, and Ukraine, though. Those three places.” “Do you speak Russian?” He made a gesture that I took to mean more or less. “Ukrainian too, and Polish. Though I’ve forgotten a lot. The other day, I tried to remember what was the word for ‘dragonfly’ and couldn’t.” “Say something.” He obliged, something spitty and guttural. “What does that mean?” He chortled. “It means ‘Fuck you up the ass.’ ” “Yeah? In Russian?” He laughed, exposing grayish and very un-American teeth. “Ukrainian.” “I thought they spoke Russian in the Ukraine.” “Well, yes. Depends what part of Ukraine. They’re not so different languages, the two. Well—” click of the tongue, eye roll—“not so very much. Numbers are different, days of the week, some vocabulary. My name is spelled different in Ukrainian but in North America it’s easier to use Russian spelling and be Boris, not B-o-r-y-s. In the West everybody knows Boris Yeltsin…” he ticked his head to one side—“Boris Becker—” “Boris Badenov—” “Eh?” he said sharply, turning as if I’d insulted him. “Bullwinkle? Boris and Natasha?” “Oh, yes. Prince Boris! War and Peace. I’m named like him. Although the surname of Prince Boris is Drubetskóy, not what you said.”

“So what’s your first language? Ukrainian?” He shrugged. “Polish maybe,” he said, falling back in his seat, slinging his dark hair to one side with a flip of his head. His eyes were hard and humorous, very black. “My mother was Polish, from Rzeszów near the Ukrainian border. Russian, Ukrainian—Ukraine as you know was satellite of USSR, so I speak both. Maybe not Russian quite so much—it’s best for swearing and cursing. With Slavic languages—Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, even Czech—if you know one, you sort of get drift in all. But for me, English is easiest now. Used to be the other way around.” “What do you think about America?” “Everyone always smiles so big! Well—most people. Maybe not so much you. I think it looks stupid.” He was, like me, an only child. His father (born in Siberia, a Ukrainian national from Novoagansk) was in mining and exploration. “Big important job—he travels the world.” Boris’s mother—his father’s second wife—was dead. “Mine too,” I said. He shrugged. “She’s been dead for donkey’s years,” he said. “She was an alkie. She was drunk one night and she fell out a window and died.” “Wow,” I said, a bit stunned by how lightly he’d tossed this off. “Yah, it sucks,” he said carelessly, looking out the window. “So what nationality are you?” I said, after a brief silence. “Eh—?” “Well, if your mother’s Polish, and your dad’s Ukrainian, and you were born in Australia, that would make you—” “Indonesian,” he said, with a sinister smile. He had dark, devilish, very expressive eyebrows that moved around a lot when he spoke. “How’s that?” “Well, my passport says Ukraine. And I have part citizenship in Poland too. But Indonesia is the place I want to get back to,” said Boris, tossing the hair out of his eyes. “Well—PNG.” “What?” “Papua, New Guinea. It’s my favorite place I’ve lived.” “New Guinea? I thought they had headhunters. “Not any more. Or not so many. This bracelet is from there,” he said, pointing to one of the many black leather strands on his wrist. “My friend Bami made it for me. He was our cook.” “What’s it like?” “Not so bad,” he said, glancing at me sideways in his brooding, self-amused way. “I had a parrot. And a pet goose. And, was learning to surf. But then, six months ago, my dad hauled me with him to this shaddy town in Alaska. Seward Peninsula, just below Arctic Circle? And then, middle of May —we flew to Fairbanks on a prop plane, and then we came here.” “Wow,” I said. “Dead boring up there,” said Boris. “Heaps of dead fish, and bad Internet connection. I should have run away—I wish I had,” he said bitterly. “And done what?” “Stayed in New Guinea. Lived on the beach. Thank God anyway we weren’t there all winter. Few years ago, we were up north in Canada, in Alberta, this one-street town off the Pouce Coupe River? Dark the whole time, October to March, and fuck-all to do except read and listen to CBC radio. Had to drive fifty klicks to do our washing. Still—” he laughed —“loads better than Ukraine. Miami Beach, compared.” “What does your dad do again?” “Drink, mainly,” said Boris sourly. “He should meet my dad, then.” Again the sudden, explosive laugh—almost like he was spitting over you. “Yes. Brilliant. And whores?” “Wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, after a small, startled pause. Though not too much my dad did shocked me, I had never quite envisioned him hanging out in the Live Girls and Gentlemen’s Club joints we sometimes passed on the highway. The bus was emptying out; we were only a few streets from my house. “Hey, this is my stop up here,” I said. “Want to come home with me and watch television?” said Boris. “Well—” “Oh, come on. No one’s there. And I’ve got S.O.S. Iceberg on DVD.”

[pagingevilspawn]

A New Life

currently trying to create a masterpost for all of my one-shots and now fic, so this isn’t anything new if you guys have read my wattpad stories. basically, it’s just something i never posted on here and only on wattpad. read on ao3 here

____

TW// domestic violence/ abuse, abortion

She could hear the sound of her alarm clock beeping loudly, signaling her to wake up and face yet another day. She doesn't feel anything quite yet, her sense of where she was at in the world was still in a dream state. Oh, what a great dream she was having. She was at a hospital, a big- no- huge one. She was in the middle of her surgery- an appendectomy she assumed- when she looked up, catching the eyes of someone, someone she couldn't quite put a name to, but she knew that this person was smiling. And that smile? Oh, she really liked that smile, even though she couldn't remember it, nor had she ever seen it before.

She was really liking her dream.

She finally decides that it was time to open her eyes, but she couldn't.

Well, one of them at least.

It's then she feels it.

The pain.

The uncontrollable ba bump ba bump she feels throbbing behind her right eye. The pain was cursing through her, her blood, her systems. She felt it everywhere.

It was then she realizes that the pain was coming from another source as well. Her back.

Kick

Kick

Kick

She feels the tip of his expensive shoes barrel into her spine again and again as she cries out, begging him to stop.

"Paul please!" she pleads, trying to scramble her way into a sitting position before her husband can do any more damage.

But she struggles, because she forgot about the fracture of her right wrist. "Shit" she hisses out, a whole new round of pain surging threw her body from putting pressure on that one limb.

It was then that Paul stopped, towering over her broken figure, grabbing both of her wrists and pinning them above her head, so she had no way to escape his hold. "You know damn well what you did Brooke." he says venomously, little traces of spit flying onto her face.

He looks at her, his gaze so full of pure hatred and jealously. His eyes scan over her broken body. Bruises covering her stomach and back, some on the inside of her thighs. The marks make him feel a sense of pride. He was winning.

Brooke shakes her head, tears coming down her cheeks so quickly she wasn't sure is she would ever be able to get them to stop. "N-no I don't. Im sorry Paul. I-im sorry f-for whatever I did." she stutters out, choking on her own words as she feels the lump in her throat grow more and more form trying to keep her sobs at bay.

"You lying whore!" he exclaims, roughly pulling her wrists from the headboard and pushing her to the ground, causing her to let out another cry of pain as she lands on the fresh bruises on her back.

The woman whimpers, trying to crawl into the corner of the room, bringing her knees up to her chest and putting her head between them, hoping that this was just nightmare.

She hoped that the past three years were just a nightmare, and she had just yet to wake up.

But to no luck, it wasn't. It was reality. The cruel, cruel reality that she lived in.

"Who the hell is emailing you Brooke? Huh! Who the fuck is Brody?" he sneers at her, referring to the email he saw on her computer earlier that morning,

Oh no, she thinks to herself. How could she be so stupid? How could she forget to delete the email?

Brooke swallows, trying to get her breathing under control. Paul didn't like it when she stuttered. He said it made her sound too much like a little girl. "H-he is a new guy from work. He wanted to get to know everybody better, so he sent out some emails." she tells him, speaking to him the truth.

A new guy named Brody started at the Crab Shack a few days ago and was super friendly. He was a few years younger, having just turned twenty-one and was trying to get to know his fellow co-workers better. She liked him, he was nice and didn't ask her questions when she asked if he could take a few of her tables the previous day.

But she knew why she couldn't wait on those tables. It was because they were full of men. Men a few years older than her. And if Paul were to walk in on her after a long shift of his and see her taking these guys' orders, being friendly, she knew it wouldn't be pretty.

Her husband scoffs at her, looking at her like she was a piece of trash on the side of the road. "Is that so Brooke? Are you sure it wasn't just you he's trying to get to know?" he leans in closer to her face, watching with a victorious glint in his eyes as he sees her try to form he thoughts.

"Y-yes." she squeaks out. "H-he's nice. He's just trying to make friends Paul." she explains.

She watches as a new flame of anger appears in his orbs, making her curse to herself once more.

Shit, Brooke you stupid idiot.

"Oh yeah? Is he nice Brooke?" he asks harshly, picking her up off the floor and throwing her onto their bed, the grey comforter bouncing up and down as she does too.

She couldn't believe that there was a time when hearing her name roll off his tongue was a peacefully feeling. Like everything way okay when he said her name. Now, it was like someone lured ice cold water every time he spoke the six letter word.

"Is he so nice you want to screw him? Huh Brooke? Do you want to screw Brody?" he picks her up from the bed and pushes her into a wall, knocking the wind out of her.

"N-no!" she yells out, squeezes her eyes shut as she crosses her arms over her body.

Over her stomach.

Her stomach, which held her seven week old fetus. She didn't know how her baby was still alive at this point. She truly didn't know. She had somehow been able to avoid being hit in the abdomen for the past two months, since Paul seemed to enjoy kicking her in the back more recently.

"Good Brooke, because you are mine. You hear me?" he asks, physically dragging her into the living room. "Mine." he hisses at her, covering her face in his disgusting spit.

Please let me wake up. Please let me wake up.

"You owe everything to me Brooke!" he yells, practically throwing her across the room because of how harshly he shoved her. The woman crashes back onto the floor, falling into a coffee table.

Crack.

Her ribs.

"Look at what you've done now!" he roars, referring to the books and papers now spread out all over the floor of the room. He walks over to her again, grabbing her waist, ignoring how she winces at his harsh movements, "This house you live in? You owe it to me."

He traces the nightgown she had on. It was what he wanted her to always wear to bed. He wanted her to 'look like a woman and not like a homeless person'. The lace of the short, skimpy nightgown wasn't something she would prefer to sleep in, but she wore it anyways because he wanted her to. He didn't want to have to remove much when he wanted to have sex with her. "The clothes you wear? The nice, expensive clothes? You know why you have them?" he asks, tracing the thin lace with his long fingers.

"Me, Brooke." he pulls his fingers away, going to her hair and combing his hand through it. "And your food? Me. Your bills? Me. Everything you have is because of me. Don't you forget that Brooke." he stands up and shoves her to the ground, leaving her in a ball of her own pain, crying her silent tears.

Today. Today was the day she would make a change.

She waits until Paul is gone for yet another long shift at the hospital. She gets in the car, making sure to keep track of exactly how many gallons were in it. She would make sure to fill up to that amount before Paul got home. Otherwise he would know.

She drives to the hospital fifty-five minuets from their house, since the one closer is where he worked at. She cries as the OB performs her abortion, knowing that she made the right move when she schedule the appointment two weeks ago. No matter how much she had already loved this baby she knew it couldn't be born. She couldn't raise a child in a home where the father hit their mother, and potentially the children too.

She drives again. She fills out the documents. She does everything she needs to do based on a google search, making sure to clear her history. She couldn't risk him finding out. He couldn't. This was her chance. Her one chance to make it all stop.

~*~

It was time. Exactly one week after her most recent attack she knew. She knew it was time.

She waits until he leaves for work again that morning, exactly six-thirty on the dot. No later, no earlier. Always six-thirty.

She waits an extra ten minutes, making sure he wouldn't come back. He couldn't come back, not now.

It's then she packs her bags, two suitcases full of her clothes and a few of her shoes. She grabs all her necessities, her toothbrush, her hairbrush, her favorite blanket, her books. She grabs everything, shoving it into her two suitcases and large duffel bag. She goes to the kitchen and grabs some food, putting them into a backpack she found on the bottom of the hall closet.

She takes everything. She finds some his credit cards and takes those, along with the extra couple hundred dollar bills he has lying around in his drawers. She grabs her Bubby, the little tool that helped give her warm meals in her car.

If it weren't for me you would still be living in your car Brooke. That's why you don't buy the wrong milk. You owe it to me.

She shakes off his voice in her head, shoving Bubby into her bag. She didn't know why she was packing everything, but she supposed it was because she didn't know how much she would have when she got to her new home, so why not bring as much as she could and save valuable money.

She's about to grab her phone when she decides not to. She was going to leave it. He could have it tracked. Brooke puts the phone back down to the nightstand, stopping when she sees a photo.

A photo of them. Of them when they were happy. Of them before they were married. Before the beatings. Before everything. In that photo they look happy. So happy. He's looking at her like she's a pot of gold and she's smiling so wide it looks like she just found a real life unicorn.

It makes her heart hurt.

Maybe it will get better. Maybe it will stop. Maybe if you tell him, about the baby he won't do it anymore. Maybe he'll love you again.

No.

She stops the thoughts. There was nothing she could do. She used to think it would get better. Once she knew what set him off, what he didn't like. Once she knew that, it would be okay. He would have no reason to get angry at her. No reason to hit her.

No.

He wasn't going to change. No matter how much she prayed to the gods she didn't believe in, she knew. It was never going to go back to the way it was.

He said he loved her. He said the only reason he got jealous of other guys was that he loved her too much he didn't want to lose her. He said that he hit her because he loved her so much, but sometimes she just made him so mad. He just needed to hit her, to let her know why it was her fault.

No.

Today was the day. She grabbed her bags, throwing up her hair in a high, messy, ponytail as she pulls her suitcases through the front door, locking it behind her.

That day when Paul got home he would call out for his wife, only to see that she wasn't there. He would go into their room, only to see that all of her things seemed to have vanished into thin air, the only thing left being her phone, placed neatly on her freshly plumped pillow.

He would check his bank account, only to see that over $3,000 had been taken out of it total. He would be furious, throwing everything glass in the large house at the wall, knowing that his reputation would now be down the drain.

But her?

Oh no, she had never felt more free.

She was on a bus, a bus that would take her to her new home.

Seattle.

Oh Seattle, where she got accepted into Seattle Grace Mercy West's surgical intern program, one of the best in the United States. This was her new life. Her fresh start. A new beginning.

She was a few hours into her trip when she feels a presence near her. A frail old lady with a kind smile looks down on her. "Is this seat taken?" she asks.

The woman shakes her head no, signaling that the old woman could sit. The grey haired woman speaks up a few moments later. "I'm Iris, what's your name young lady?"

The woman grins brightly, a breath escaping through her lips.

"Josephine. Josephine Wilson."

[buckyreaderrecs]

So Far Away: Chapter 1/?

Summary:  Bucky Barnes doing what he does best. Saving. Loving. In this particular case, the object of both is you. (Bonus: Bucky Barnes happy, healing, doing really well!)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/reader Characters: Bucky Barnes Additional tags: mostly canon compliant (Infinity War and Endgame didn’t happen, Stark Tower still exists),  possible future smut (who knows, not me), she/her pronouns, more tags/characters to be added with future chapters, hero Bucky Barnes, canon typical violence, warzone/disaster zone setting Warnings: possible triggers for anxiety, PTSD, grief

Note: I don’t know where I’m going with The Girl With Too Much Power (ideas welcomed) so here’s my other series. Feedback always encouraged and welcome. Thank ya’ll! xo Rhi

Tag list: just @darlingtholland lel

So Far Away Chapter 1 / ?

The city was crumbling and between the crashing sounds of buildings toppling, screams and cries were painfully audible. That wasn't the most terrifying part though. It wasn't the lifeless bodies lying in the streets or the sight of your mangled hand that were causing you to panic. It was that everything was happening somewhere else. The crumbling and screaming seemed so far away. If the action was elsewhere, so were the heroes.

Nobody was coming to save you.

For almost half an hour they'd ripped through the city unchallenged; nobody really counted the unified effort of the first responders. They never stood a chance against the enemy from above. It took ten minutes for The Avengers to hear about it. They were en route within another ten. Even with all that Stark tech though, it still took them just over eleven minutes to arrive, landing and launching into action.

You'd watched the heroes bounce off buildings and fly through the sky. They represented hope, but they couldn't save everyone.

The evacuation wasn't fast enough and whole blocks of the city were wiped off the map. By the time you'd crawled out of the rubble of yours, the trucks taking people to safety were long gone. In their wake, tire tracks in the dirt and dust, and bodies left behind to save room for the living.

You could walk, but terrified that someone… something… would circle back around, you dropped down behind a car that had been violently propelled across the street. Making yourself as small as possible, pulling your legs up to your chest and burying your face in your lap, you just listened. Thinking was too hard, and your thoughts were sure to be only dark and anxiety-inducing anyway.

It all seemed so far away.

Then, the tell-tale sound of trouble. No no no no no! you screamed in your head, covering your mouth with your hands to not let the terror out.

It was moving fast, but tearing everything up as it went. The sound coming from it was alien, but it still someone seemed like speech. It was communicating with the others. Then, you realised, it was looking for something. Sitting in a pile of bricks and glass, all you could do was hope to god that creatures from literal outer space didn't come to Earth in search of an old Ford.

Bits of debris came from over the car, rejected by the creature and cast aside. First, rocks and chunks of cement - too big for any human to throw so easily. They hit the building in front of you and shattered. A bad situation got worse when it dug deep enough to find the people who had been trapped under fallen buildings. Bodies flew over you, sometimes in parts.

After what felt like minutes but was only seconds, your entire body was shaking with abject horror. On the very cusp of losing consciousness from fear and blood loss, you heard one foreign sound. It was almost like a gunshot… but more… Star Wars-esque. It was immediately proceeded by silence.

Run! the voice in your head told you, but you were completely immobile.

"This thing's too damn light… Feels like a fuckin' toy," a human voice spoke. A pause for, presumably, a reply you didn't hear. "Yeah, it worked. Not the point." Another pause. "Call me that again, Stark and I'll-" The speaker abruptly stopped his conversation.

You hadn't heard him arrive. Unsurprisingly, you did not hear him as he walked through the destroyed street to the car you were hidden behind. To any other person, you were silent. However, he could hear the slight crunching of gravel beneath your feet, the air being inhaled and exhaled from your nose, and the tiny squeaks you were making entirely subconsciously.

Moving slowly, he made his way around the side of the car using footsteps that would make noise, announce his arrival. Don't scare her. You could feel him standing just metres from you. He spoke, but not to you.

"I got a friendly… She's out of the evac zone." The pause for reply was long. "It's a ghost town here. Nobody's gonna be coming through for-" He was interrupted. "Don't care. Gonna bring her in."

Again, he moved slowly.

Your face was still buried and although you knew it was somebody good crouching in front of you, everything was all too overwhelming to respond.

"Hi… I don't need ya to move just yet. Gonna have a look at your hand, if that's alright?"

His voice was calm. Far beyond the point of being in shock, it didn’t hurt when he gently took your arm. As he tightly wrapped your injured hand, you began to unwrap yourself. Lifting your head and opening your eyes, everything came into focus. Mostly, everything you could see was war. But, there he was. Easily recognisable, Bucky Barnes was finishing first aid on you.

His eyes lingered on the bandage for a moment, and you wondered where he'd stashed it before it stopped your bleeding. Did he have pockets of band-aids?

When he looked up at you, you were already looking back.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," you replied, your voice weak.

"Reckon we should get out of here. What do ya think?" As soon as you nodded, he mirrored the response and stood, helping you to your feet. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"N-no," you told him. That wasn't strictly true, but you were mostly numb. Deep, dark bruises would bloom all across your body over the coming days. How you managed to escape otherwise unharmed was magic or a miracle.

"Stronger than you look, huh?" he said, smiling. How he could smile in an environment like that was also magic or a miracle. "I know a couple people like that, so you're in good company. Always my favourite type of people,"

"I didn't… didn't think you'd talk so much," you said. It kinda just came out, the same way the thoughts of little kids do.

Bucky's left arm was around your waist, holding almost all of your body weight. He was making carrying you through a warzone seem easy. Giving you a bit of a casual shrug, Bucky said, " I don't… Trick to keep ya conscious. Don't want you passing out on me,"

"I'm not gonna pass out," you said, more in defiance than anything else.

Bucky scoffed. "Alright. So, what's your name then? What do you do?"

He'd obviously seen them before you, so by the time you clocked the creatures scrambling through broken buildings and rubble in their search, Bucky had already taken you off the road. Backs to the wall, he didn't appear in the slight bit concerned about the situation. He even looked to you, waiting for a reply before making his next move.

"Y/N," you told him.

"Y/N. Good to meet you, Y/N. I'm Bucky,"

"I know,"

"Yeah… Everybody fuckin' knows… Alright. Gonna need you to stay here for just a second, okay?"

As he went to peel away from the wall, you grabbed him with your one working hand. "Please don't leave me!" you begged in a harsh whisper. Tears had been streaming down your face since the first building went down, but a fresh flood started to sting your cheeks.

Bucky cupped your face with his gloved hands and looked you dead in the eyes. "I'm not leaving. I promise. I fuckin' promise you."

Slowly, you nodded. As soon as you did, he swooped off the curb and brought a reckoning down on the creatures. They hadn't seen him coming. Bucky moved with grace and ease, like he was born to fight. Later, when you were safe, you'd think about that moment, about the way he moved, and it would make you sad.

Back, Bucky wrapped himself around you again. And, that's how you got through the city. It was slow, but Bucky continually refused offers of help from whoever was in his earpiece. Resources were needed elsewhere, he said. He had you, and he'd get you to safety.

Time once again warping, fifteen minutes later you could hear voices and see human movement. It felt like you'd spent hours in Bucky's arms, watching him take down threats and crack bad jokes to keep you awake.

Before you realised what was happening, people were carrying you away from Bucky, pouring water down your throat and yelling at you that you were safe. Although you understood you were safe, it felt the opposite. "No! Please, please, please," you yelled, pushing free from the helpers and clinging back onto Bucky. All your words were rammed together, scared and needy.

Bucky let you hold him, wrapping his arms around you with the perfect amount of pressure. He hushed you with soft, "Shhhh," sounds. Using his teeth as a vice, Bucky pulled the glove off his right hand, then ran his fingers through your hair. "You're okay, Y/N. You're safe. You gotta stay here and have someone look at your hand. I gotta go help."

Although you nodded into him, you made no attempt to move. You'd been safe before it all happened, but it happened anyway. There was nothing to say that as soon as Bucky left, more creatures wouldn't arrive.

"Y/N. I got Captain America in one ear and Iron Man in the other. They can't do shit without me," Bucky joked. It made you laugh, looking up at him. "I'll come back when this is done. Bring ya flowers in the hospital,"

"I'm scared,"

"Yeah. Aliens are invading. It's scary. But it's kinda cool too, right?" he said with a wink.

He gently led you to one of the makeshift medical tents set up. When you were sitting down, he ruffled your hair in a weird gesture that confused you both, then left the safe zone. As soon as he was gone, you started to cry.

Chapter 2. 

[a-supernatural-writer]

Party of Three Pt.2 (pilot)

Summary: The three end up in Jericho, following the case that John was last working on. 

Pairing: Eventual Sam x OC x Dean (polyamory relationship) 

Warnings: language, mentions of death

Words: 3310

*This work is also posted on other fanfiction sites* 

Next Part | Main Masterlist | “Party of Three” Masterlist

It was the next morning, the impala was parked in front of a gas station. Isabeau and Sam decided to wait in the car while Dean went inside to get whatever the hell he wanted. 

Isabeau and Sam were talking about whatever came to their minds. The two felt good catching up with each other. Isabeau pretty much knew what Sam was up to these past two years, and so Sam was curious to know what Isabeau was doing. She never really talked about the details of her life over the phone. 

Sam was sitting in the passenger seat of the impala with a box in his hands, rifling through them. “You hunted while in college? You must’ve been going crazy.” Sam turned to Isabeau who was sitting in the backseat of the impala. 

Isabeau nodded, leaning forward, putting her arms over the front seat. “Insane is more like it. Pulling multiple all-nighters to study for a test and my free-time was committed to hunting. Never caught a break.” 

Sam nodded. “Have you ever thought about, you know, leaving it behind?” 

Isabeau sighed and gave Sam a look. “Sam, you and I both know that I can’t leave it.” 

“Why not? No one is stopping you. You could live a safe, normal life.” 

“I’m far from normal Sam. I was a part of the supernatural since the second I was born. I can’t just shimmy my way out of this. It’s always going to be a part of my life whether I like it or not.” Isabeau explained. Sam knew that there was no fighting her on the matter because she was right. 

What she was, she couldn’t just leave. Sam didn’t want her to be right about the situation. He didn’t want her life to just be hunting. He wanted her to use that degree that she worked her ass off for. Have a family, maybe even have a couple of kids. But he knew deep down that even if she did settle down, her partner and her own kids, if she chooses to have any, would be dragged into the supernatural. 

Sam cleared his throat, going back to the box in his hands. “Sorry.” 

Isabeau scoffed. “Don’t be… let me see that.” Sam chuckled, handing her the box of cassette tapes. Isabeau took the box in her hands and began rifling through it, trying to find something good. 

“Hey, you want breakfast?” Dean called out to Sam and Isabeau. 

Sam leaned out of the passenger door to look at his brother, “No thanks.” Dean leaned over to the back seat window, holding up junk food in Isabeau’s vision. Isabeau stuck one of her hands out of the window grabbing a bag of chips from his hand. “Don’t mind if I do.” She placed it besides her, going back to her task. 

“So, how’d you pay for that stuff? You and dad still running credit-card scams?” Sam leaned over picking a few cassette tapes and giving them a once over. 

“Yeah, well, hunting ain’t exactly a pro-ball career.” Dean answered, putting the gas nozzle back on the pump. “Besides, all we do is apply. It’s not our fault they send us the cards.” 

Sam chuckled. “Yeah and what names did you write on the application this time?” Sam swings his legs back into the car and closes the door. 

“Uh… Bert Aframian and his son, Hector.” Dean gets into the driver seat, placing his soda and chips down and closes the door. “Scored two card out of the deal.” 

Isabeau gave a small chuckle. “Sounds like nothings changed.” Isabeau handed the box back to Sam. 

“I swear, man.You got to update your cassette-tape collection.” Isabeau looked at Sam like he had grown two heads. Dean was just as confused. “Why?” 

“Well, for one- they’re cassette tapes, and two- Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Metallica?” Sam listed off the names on the tapes. Isabeau wanted to grab the Metallica tape but Dean beat her to it. “It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.” 

“Well, house rules, Sammy,” Dean plopped the tape into the player. “Driver picks the music,” 

“Shotgun shuts his cake hole.” Isabeau finishes with a smug smile. Dean and her share a smile before Dean drops the Metallica box back in with the other tapes in the box. 

“Sammy is a chubby 12-year-old, it’s Sam, okay?” Sam said. He never did like that nickname. The music begins to play. 

“Sorry, I can’t hear you. The music’s too loud.” Dean said with a smirk. Isabeau shook her head, leaning back into her seat. Yeah the music was loud, but it could be a little louder. Isabeau lifted her finger up, turning it to the right. The volume button on the player followed the movement of her finger, turning the music up a tad bit louder. 

Dean looked back at Isabeau and gave a whole hearted laugh, seeing that she was using her powers to turn the music up. “That’s my Beau!” Sam shook his head with a chuckle. Yeah he wasn’t too fond of the music but seeing Isabeau use her powers for a little bit of fun, brought him back to a relatively normal part of his childhood when the three of them were together and not hunting. 

And with that Dean drove out of the gas station and on their way to Jericho. 

Isabeau was leaning against the door, holding a rose quartz pendulum in her hand over a map of Jericho. The pendulum was going around and around in circles the moment they passed by a sign that said, “Jericho 7”. 

Sam hangs up his phone, “All right, so there’s no one matching dad at the hospital or morgue. So that’s something, I guess.” Sam looks back at Isabeau, who was concentrating on her spell. “Got anything, Beau?” 

Isabeau sighed, a little annoyed. She placed her pendulum back in her pocket and folded up the map with a shake of her head. “Nothing. It’s weird, usually I can get something. A general area at least, but nothing.” 

Dean glances at Isabeau and then back at the road. There’s a bridge ahead of them, with police cars and officers. “Check it out.” Both Sam and Isabeau lean forward to get a closer look. 

Dean pulls over the impala across from the bridge and officers and turns off the engine. Isabeau leans on the open window of the backseat, brow furrowed. Dean leans over to the glove compartment and pulls out a box filled with fake ID cards with his and John’s face on them. He picks one out and smiles at Sam. 

Sam looks back at Isabeau, and pauses once he sees that she took out her own fake ID from her pocket. “Let’s go, Stretch.” Both Dean and Isabeau get out of the car with Sam sighing but reluctantly following them. 

On the bridge, what Isabeau could only assume to be the deputy, leans over the bridge, calling down to two men in wetsuits. “Did you guys find anything?” 

“No! Nothing!” One of the men called back. The deputy turns back to a lone car in the middle of the bridge, sighing as he leaned down to take a look inside. “No sign of struggle, no footprints, no fingerprints- spotless.” The other deputy responded. “It’s almost too clean.” 

Isabeau,Sam and Dean walked into the crime scene like it was a walk in the park for them. They listened as the deputies spoke, not noticing them yet. “So this kid Troy, he’s dating your daughter, isn’t he?” 

“Yeah.” 

“How’s Amy doing?” 

“She’s been putting up missing posters downtown.” The other deputy nodded. 

That’s when Dean spoke up. “You fellas had another one like this last month, didn’t you?” The deputy who was leaning over, straightens back up as Dean talks to him. “And who are you?” 

Isabeau and Dean both hold up their ID’s. “Federal Marshals.” Isabeau responds and the two put them away after a few seconds. 

“You three are a little young for Marshals, aren’t you?” Dean laughs. “Thanks, that’s awfully kind of you.” Isabeau and Dean walk over to the car. “You did have another one just like this, correct?” 

“Yeah, that’s right, about a mile up the road.” The deputy responds. “There have been others before that.” 

Sam stepped up. “So this victim, you knew him?” 

The deputy nodded. “A town like this, everybody knows everybody.” Dean circled the car as Isabeau stood beside the drivers side tilting her head at the car. 

“Any connection between the victims besides that they’re all men?” Dean nudges Isabeau when he stops next to her. Isabeau took a breath, placing one of her hands on the car. Flashes of images crossed her mind, it was nighttime, Troy was running, running from someone who was after him. Everything became blurry, Isabeau saw the outside of his car on the bridge, his screams echoing out from the car and then blood splattered on the windows. 

Isabeau sighed, blinking away the images and shaking her head at Dean. She got nothing concrete. Dean patted her shoulder, his way of saying that it was okay, she tried. Psychometry was something new she was working on. Touching objects and looking into it’s past was a tough thing to do. 

“No. Not so far as we can tell.” The deputy answered. Sam walks over to Isabeau and Dean. “So what’s the theory?” 

“Honestly, we don’t know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?” 

“Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I’d expect out of you guys.” Sam stomps on Dean’s foot from the comment while Isabeau slaps his outer thigh. He couldn’t just shut up sometimes? 

Isabeau politely smiled at the deputy. “Sorry about him, thank you for your time.” Isabeau grabs Dean’s upper arm and guides him to walk away with Sam. 

“Gentlemen.” Sam says one last time as the deputy watches them go. Once they’re a good distance away, Isabeau let’s go of Dean’s arm only for him to wack the back of Dean’s head and slap Isabeau’s ass. Yeah, she glared at him for that one. 

“Ow! What was that for?” Sam exclaimed, annoyed by his brother's actions. 

“Why do you have to step on my foot? And you! Slapping me?” Dean asked Sam and Isabeau just as annoyed. Isabeau rolled her eyes. She’s hit him harder than what she just did before. 

“Why did you have to talk to the police like that?” Sam countered back. Dean looks at Sam, “Come on.” He steps in front of the both of them, forcing them to stop. “They don’t really know what’s going on. We’re all alone on this. I mean if we’re gonna find dad, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves.” 

Isabeau’s eyes widen as she sees who's behind Dean, She clears her throat telling Dean to turn around and for the both of them to pay attention. Dean turns, it’s the sheriff and two FBI agents. “Can I help you boys? Lady?” The sheriff asks. 

“No, sir. We were just leaving.” He looks over at the two agents walking by them. “Agent Mulder, Agent Scully.” The three of them head past the sheriff, who turns to watch them walk away. 

The three headed into town, trying to find the girlfriend of Troy, Amy. They spotted her while walking down the street in front of a movie theater putting up missing posters with Troy’s face on it. 

“I’ll bet you that’s her.” Dean said. Sam agreed as they approached her. “You must be Amy.” Dean asked. 

“Yeah.” Amy said. 

Isabeau gave her a small smile. “Troy told us about you. These two are his uncles and I’m his aunt. This is Dean. This is Sammy, and I’m Isabeau.” 

“He never mentioned you to me.” Amy said walking away. Dean chuckled, the three of them walking with her. “Well, that’s Troy, I guess. We’re not around much. We’re up in Modesto.” 

“So we’re looking for him,too. And we’re kind of asking around.” Sam interjected. 

Just then a young woman comes up next to Amy and places a hand on her arm. “Hey, are you okay?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Do you mind if we ask you a couple of questions?” Isabeau asked softly, hoping her calm nature would help them get answers. And it did. 

They went to a local diner, all five of them sitting in a booth. Amy and her friend whose name they found out was Rachel on one side and Dean, Isabeau and Sam on the other. Isabeau was slightly squished between the two, but her somewhat small stature made it work even with the two brothers being giants sitting next to her on both sides. 

“I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and he never did.” Amy explained. 

“He didn’t say anything strange or out of the ordinary?” Sam asked. 

“No, nothing I can remember.” Amy says, shaking her head. 

“Here’s the deal, ladies, the way Troy disappeared, something’s not right.” Dean said as Isabeau took a sip of her tea. Isabeau agreed with him silently. Yeah, blood splattering on his car windows was not right at all. “So if you’ve heard anything…” 

Amy and Rachel look at each other. “What is it?” Dean asks, knowing something was up. 

“Well, it’s just… I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk.” Rachel says. 

“What do they talk about?” Both Sam and Dean speak in chorus. Isabeau smiled into her drink, she loved it when they spoke at the same time, it almost made her burst into giggles because of how cute it was. 

Rachel explains. “It’s kind of this local legend. This one girl, she got murdered out on centennial like decades ago.” Dean looked at Sam and Isabeau as they listened intently. “Well, supposedly, she’s still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up… well, they disappear forever.” 

Isabeau set her tea down, the three of them glancing at each other form the story. 

To get more information on this local legend that Rachel was talking about, they went to the local library. Dean took to the computers, going onto the Jericho Herald and typed in “Female Murder Hitchhiking” into the search box and hit go. Unfortunately he came up with zero results. 

Dean goes back and replaces “Hitchhiking” with the word “Centennial Highway” as Isabeau and Sam watch. Still nothing comes up. 

“Let me try.” Sam goes to touch the mouse but Dean smacks his hand away. “I got it.” 

Sam shoves Dean’s chair away and takes his spot in front of the computer. “Dude!” Dean hits Sam’s arm. “You’re such a control freak.” 

Isabeau sighs, putting in her input. “So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?” 

“Yeah.” Dean agrees with her. 

“Then maybe it’s not murder.” Isabeau suggested. Sam caught onto her thinking and replaced “Murder” with “Suicide”. He hit go and ended up with only one result, “Suicide on Centennial”. 

Sam read the details of the result. “This was 1981.” Clicking on the article. “Constance Welch, 24 years old, jumps off Sylvania bridge, drowns in the river.” 

“Does it say why she did it?” Dean asks. 

“Yeah.” Sam answers with a furrowed brow. “What?” 

“An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute,” Isabeau closes her eyes and clenches her teeth, she knows what is coming next. “And when she comes back, they aren’t breathing. Both die.” 

Isabeau opens her eyes again and takes in a breath. She can’t imagine what that must have felt like. 

Dean hummed in response. Isabeau leaned forward taking a closer look at the article. “‘Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn’t bear it, said husband, Joseph Welch.’” Isabeau read the quote from the article and noticed the familiarity of the pictures. 

“That bridge look familiar to you?” Dean noticed it too. Isabeau nodded. Back to the crime scene they go. Isabeau had a bad feeling about this. 

They went back to the bridge during the night, Troy’s car was gone and so were any official officers. The three walk along the bridge, then stop in the middle to lean over its side. Isabeau placed her hand on it’s ledge, images of a woman in white flashing in her vision. She pulled away. “So this is where Constance took the swan dive.” She told Dean and Sam. 

“So you think dad would have been here?” Sam asks, looking over at Dean. 

“Well, he’s chasing the same story, and we’re chasing him.” Dean and Sam walked away from the side while Isabeau stayed, looking down at the rushing water. She left the two brothers to talk among themselves, they needed it. There was too much pent up tension between them. It was a family problem, one that she didn’t need to get involved in unless she needed to.

She could hear the two bickering, Sam saying that he needed to get back by Monday for his interview and Dean mocking Sam’s attempt of having something normal. Isabeau sighed. She never knew why Dean couldn’t just let it go. Let Sam be happy, even if it meant not being with his brother and Dad. 

In a way, Isabeau wanted out too. Not to be a part of the things that she hunts. To be human, but she knew her life wouldn’t be exciting. Hunting gave her a sense of adventure, a fucked up sense of it, but she was saving people, making a difference. She knew she could never settle down with a human as well, it wouldn’t take too long for them to find out who she is and in doing so would put them in danger. She tossed out those dreams a long time ago too. The apple-pie life was a dream that was never going to happen. She thought that maybe she could find a relationship like her parents but as time was going by, her chances were becoming slim to none. 

She looked over at the brothers the moment that Dean shoves Sam up against a railing on the bridge. Her eyes widened, jogging over to the two. Now is when she steps in. “Hey! Hey! Dean let him go.” 

Silence fell between the three of them, Isabeau was ready to pull Dean off of Sam if her tried to do anything stupid. “Don’t talk about her like that.” Dean releases Sam and steps back. Isabeau lets out a breath that she didn’t know she was holding, she then froze as she saw what she only guessed to be Constance standing at the edge of the bridge. 

“Guys.” Isabeau stepped forward in front of the boys, gesturing towards Constance. The brothers come to stand next to Isabeau, all of their gazes were on Constance. 

Constance tuned towards them, then fell forward off the bridge. The three break out into a run and look over the railing, seeing that she disappeared. “Where’d she go?” Dean asked. 

“I don’t know.” Sam whispered out in confusion. Behind them, the engine of the impala suddenly roars to life, and the headlights turn on. 

“What the…” Dean mumbles. 

Isabeau could feel her chest tighten. “Who’s driving your car?” Sam asks. 

Dean digs into his pocket, pulling out his key and jingles them. The car jerks to life, heading straight towards them. Isabeau’s flight instincts kicked in, turning and running away from the oncoming car. Dean and Sam close behind her. 

“Go! Go!” Sam shouts at the two of them. Their running wasn’t fast enough as the car was becoming closer and closer. Just when it gets too close, Isabeau, Sam and Dean dive over the railing and the car comes to a screeching halt.

Next Part | Main Masterlist | “Party of Three” Masterlist

[fck-inspector-m]

Their first date

Good and Elle had been officially together for almost a week now. Before that, Good had been trying to court Elle since the very moment the not-so-human stepped back into his life, but it had not been an easy road. They had had to overcome some issues, including Elle not being... well, Elle, in a way. He had been studying at a university. The same one as Guide and his two friends, actually. Damn had he been surprised to see Elle there, when he came to pick up Guide. He had barely managed to make a sound.

It was similar to his response when he saw his flat mate that looked exactly like Kafe. Or was Kafe, or maybe her reincarnation? Yeah, they hadn’t figured that out yet. That was all for a later time, though. Now he just wanted to spend time with Elle. Something he should have done much sooner, instead of going after someone that looked like his ex-lover.

It had taken Good forever to get Elle to agree to date him. Later on he found out, that that was because Elle hadn’t understood what he had meant. He probably should have figured that out by the fact that Elle only gave him confused looks and no actual rejection. But, what happened happened, and in a way he’d deserved to have to put some effort into being with Elle. He put Elle through that whole Kafe thing, as if Kafe meant more to him than Elle. She didn’t. Not anymore. 

The reason they hadn’t gone on a date before actually getting together, though, was because Elle didn’t know what a date was. Again, something he probably should have guessed, but perhaps he was still learning things about Elle each and every day. He didn’t mind that. He liked getting to know him, just but by bit. Elle’s mind was beautiful, but if he took it all in at once he’d probably end up at the hospital. And not for his work. 

But, now, it was finally time for their first date. It was a cold day, so he had told Elle to dress warm. He himself wore a brown sweater, with simple jeans. Elle, on the other hand, wore a white hoodie with white jeans. The entire white attire made Elle look quite adorable, if Good were honest. He couldn’t let but smile.

“Where did you buy those?” Good asked. “The mall.” Elle replied with a smile, before walking to the door and giving him a look that asked ‘shall we go?’. Elle was always capable of expressing whatever he wanted to say, in simple expressions. Good found that that was one of the things he liked most about Elle. His need for little words while still always getting his point across. 

He walked to the door and opened it for Elle, who walked through. They both went downstairs together. There was a silence in the elevator, but not an awkward one. It was a nice one, in which they both stole many looks of the other. At least, that’s what Good did. Elle just stared at him with a sweet smile. Perhaps the man didn’t even know how to be subtle.

They came out of the elevator together, walked to Good’s car and started driving. This time they did talk, but only about trivial things. Mainly things like favorite animals, favorite shows and so on and on. Though, Elle beamed when he spoke of cats, his favorite animal, and it lit up Good’s world. 

They were almost at the destination. Only now did Elle ask where they were going. But Good stayed silent, and only smiled secretively. He didn’t look at Elle, but if he had he would have seen Elle’s usual resting smile grew a little bit bigger. 

They arrived at a small cafe. It had a pink exterior, and looked exactly like the perfect cafe to take a girl to on a first date. He knew Elle wasn’t a girl, far from, but he loved pink and Good thought this little cute cafe would fit Elle’s taste regardless of how feminine it may look.

And he was right. Elle was beaming, you could probably put all lights out and his smile would be enough to light up the whole city. Maybe even the country, honestly. But, most certainly did his smile once again light up Good’s world. 

The way his eyes lit up made that there were no words were needed about wether he liked it or not. He was glad he picked this over the expensive restaurant one of his coworkers had recommended. Someone with expensive taste might have preferred that, but Elle? Give him a dandelion and he’d think the world of you.

But all Good had to do was ask, and Elle would be willing to move the planets out order and create a second sun. They hadn’t said it out loud, but their feelings definitely went further than just liking. It took Elle disappearing for Good to realize that. Hopefully he learned his lesson, and it wouldn’t take another disappearance for him to say it out loud.

They walked inside and sat at a table. Soon, they were talking about everything and anything. Elle liked to talk about his cooking, and told him all about Jamie Oliver, his favorite cook. Good had no idea who that was, but listened with enthusiasm regardless.

Good complained about work, but also told Elle what it exactly was what he did. He told his about what studying medicine was like, the positive, but also the negative aspects. Elle listened and asked questions, and he was truly interested. 

And like that, they got around to cover almost every topic you could think of. And all that over the pleasure of a few americanos for Elle, and a few black coffees for Good. Considering both their personalities, it wasn’t surprising that those had been their order. 

After 3 hours of talking, a few cookies, and even more coffee, Good checked his watch and realized they had to leave.

“Hey, we’ve got some other places to go to, shall we?” Good asked. Elle nodded, and so they got up. While Good went to pay, Elle followed him, almost like a duckling following his mother. He heard the barista chuckle when they walked away, and Good couldn’t let but do the same. It must have been a funny sight.

They got in the car, up to the next destination: dinner. It was already 7 PM, and Good could hear Elle’s stomach growl. He really was one to easily get hungry, they just ate all kinds of things at the cafe! But alright, if Elle were hungry he were hungry. Good wouldn’t be able to say no to him anyways.

The sun had already set, and their table was at the window. As they ate, they talked, but Elle also kept looking outside. Elle liked to watch people. He’d told Good that he liked it, because all these people also had lives off their own. He liked the way it made him feel, like he belonged here. Like he wasn’t so different from everybody else.

Good couldn’t imagine how that could make you feel anything but small. When he remembered everyone around him had lives, lives of their own, had their own pains and their own happinesses, it freaked him out a little bit. It felt weird. 

But that just made Elle more special. He really was special, in every way. To Good, at least.

After dinner, they went to their last destination. It was 8:30 PM already, but that wasn’t a big problem. They went to the harbor now, and even just in the car Elle started smiling. Elle loved every single thing about the world, but it seemed he loved water the most. 

Elle looked out on the harbor with that adorable smile of his, and Good couldn’t let but smile at him.

They stepped out of the car. He told Elle to stay behind, and went to see an uncle at the harbor. This uncle would sail them around on the water. It wasn’t uncommon for people to take their partners out on dates on boats, but perhaps most wouldn’t rent out the entire boat for the evening. There were a few advantages to being born into a rich family and having a well-paid job.

He signaled to Elle to come over after he settled everything with the shipper. They were one and a half hour late, so he wasn’t too happy but now that Good paid him enough to make up not only for his loss, but double of that and even some more, he seemed to be in an excellent mood. 

Though Elle barely paid mind to the uncle. He behaved as if he had never been on a boat before. That idea startled Good a bit, but considering Elle hadn’t known what a date was before he explained it, he probably should have expected it.

“You’ve never been on a boat before, have you?” He asked for certainty. Elle nodded yes, and the cute and innocent fear in his eyes made Good chuckle. 

“It’s okay. I’m with you. Nothing bad will happen.” He attempted to calm Elle down, and it seemed to work. He took Good’s hand he had extended to help him get on. But the boat’s sudden movements surprised Elle, and he fell against Good. He hugged Good tightly, looking around him as if the boat were about to attack.

“Hey, it’s alright, that’s normal.” Good said with an amused smile. Elle still held on to him, hands wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Good couldn’t say he minded.

He eventually did get Elle to let go, and they both sat down on one of the benches. But when the motor started, Elle grabbed onto Good again and hid his face in his shoulder. Though he was scared, he was also absolutely adorable. It made Good’s heart melt. 

He ticked him on the shoulder to indicate they were safe a bit later, but only when the boat laid still on the water and the motor was off did Elle look up again. 

And when he did, you could read the amazement of his eyes. Good had thought about going somewhere and lighting up fireworks or something similar to that, but he soon had already realized Elle would be just fine with something simple. And perhaps fireworks were too overboard.

So, going out on a river and watching people on the embankment was perfect for him. There were lights everywhere and you could see people walking, some running to make it home, some simply strolling, going to God knows where. Most would be heading home though, as it was already 9 PM. Elle watched them with amazement and true happiness shining in his eyes. 

“It’s so beautiful...” Elle said with an amazed voice. 

“Yes. It is.” Good said. But if Elle had looked at Good, he would have seen it wasn’t the scenery he found so beautiful.

- I finished this 2 minutes before 2019 and finished editing exactly 12 hours later. I hope everyone likes this little story. It’s my first 2019 posted story, so I hope that makes it a little bit special. I thought of that last scene in my head yesterday and just had to write it. I hope I did it justice.

[siconetribal]

Fortune

Pairing:Jumin Han/Layla (I named the MC for ease of writing, you can change the name in your head since it is just MC)

Warning:Angst with happy ending

Note: This was a request, I hope you like it Anon!

Life was a balance. There were those born with nothing while others are born with everything. Some feel with all their heart and others pragmatically walk through life. There were those who would do anything for nothing and those who would do everything for what matters. Jumin Han fell in the latter of each categories and many more for that matter. He knew that, though he had his shortcomings, he was the first to always say he had the great fortune of luck. He was everything he needed to be for the position he was meant to fill and that was all that mattered until he had met a certain someone who showed he so much more. She was the epitome of warmth and kindness, a goddess in person that fit him so perfectly. The cliche of two puzzle pieces, soulmates, or two halves of a whole and any other romantic notions suddenly made sense to me and now applied to his life. The number one person in his life was his darling wife who could do no wrong and yet how did it end up like this?

The buzzing of the fluorescent lights and occasional rush of squeaky sneakers were the only sounds that broke the steady and shallow breathing-his breathing. Everything was so sterile, clinical with white walls and giant tiles with bespeckled print divided by thin bold black grout lines. There was no life in these halls, which he found oddly ironic at this moment. A place which was dedicated to rescuing life reeked of austere detachment to life. It was cold and hollow, the shell of life desperately clinging to reality.

The heir of C&R International stood out like a sore thumb on the uncomfortable bench, hunched over with his elbows rested on his knees. His Italian leather shoes which normally shined to the point he could see his own reflection were scuffed and dirty. His tailor-made perfect suit was soaked through and the coat missing while his shirt clung to and crinkled on his body. He stared at his bandaged hands, the wrapping dyed red in places from his blood. They were trembling. Gritting his teeth he clenched his sore hands into fists, tearing his eyes away as if he was unable to withstand the sight of himself. How could he? He was out here irritated by the ticking of the clock across the wall while she was not. She was alone surrounded by strangers.

How could this happen to me? He wondered, sitting in empty hallway. Try as he might, he was not able to make the pain go away. The bile in his stomach churned, threatening to to climb out of him as the acrid taste burned at the back of his throat. It all had happened too quickly. There was no explanation for what had happened just a few hours ago. He hid his face in his hands as he forced himself to remember it.

They were enjoying a lively conversation in the car, on their way home from dinner. An anniversary dinner he had planned to perfection and she had loved every minute of it. From the perfect dress for her to wear with the best accessories to amplify her natural beauty all the way to the evening plans of revealing her actual anniversary gifts once they reached home. Everything had gone according to plan. Her cheeks were a little flushed, he knew not whether from the champagne or the fact she was adorably flustered by his lavish attention to her. She was always so modest, deserving of only the best. He particularly was not too concerned to the secret of the blush since that beautiful small had not fallen once more her face since the moment she woke up to the surprise of him being there with her instead of away on the business trip.

As usual, their driver Kim was chauffeuring them to and fro with expert precision. They barely felt any bumps on the road as he took extra caution to avoid any discomfort as Jumin requested for this day. If only that caution was applicable to the world. The joyous atmosphere was shattered by the sound of a horn blaring as their bodies were thrown to one side and the screeching of tires. The sickening crunch of metal on metal was the last sound he heard before he was swallowed into darkness as his head smacked against the glass with such force.

Fluttering his eyes open, he was greeted by blinding white lights and pouring rain. His head seared with pain and something sticky. His body felt like led and ached all over. Why was he out in the rain? He wondered as he felt himself being lifted by something underneath him. He could not remember why he was lying there. The sound of the world slowly returned to him, making his head throb from the shouting voices and flashing lights. His vision was fuzzy, black around the edges, and the world seemed to move so slowly around him. Everybody was screaming and he wanted to understand what was going on. As his sight returned, he rolled head his to the side only for his heart to stop.

There she was, covered in blood. The cream colored dress he had gotten her was now stained red. One of her shoes was thrown off to the side as figures in the dark reached out to her. Her engagement ring glittered in the dark next to her wedding band on her hand that now lie there lifeless. Her arm was twisted in a way it should not be and her leg curved where it should be straight. He tried to fight the forces that held him down. He opened his mouth to shout, call out to her. He needed to head to his darling but his body was taken further away. No one seemed to hear him as he tried to get them to understand as a mask was placed on to his mouth. He was slipping off the edge once more, helplessly watching her body get covered and carted to another car. The last thing he saw was her hand unceremoniously plopped back on to the gurney.

He had woken up to the painful sight of the tube lighting, his clothes were intact expect he was bandaged around his head and on his hands. Slowly he had stirred and forced himself to sit up as nurses rushed to his side and urged him to stay in bed.

“Where is she? Where is my wife? I need to see her!” He demanded, his voice was hoarse and his throat hurt.

“Sir, calm down. Who is your wife? Please get back in bed.” Someone urged, the tug of something on his arm making him wince. He looked to see his sleeve was rolled up and tubes ran to his body. He noticed the blipping machine next to it.

I’m in a hospital? How? Why? No-Layla! “Layla Han, her name is Layla Han! Where is she? Take me to her now!” He demanded, unable to just sit there waiting while his beloved was somewhere where he was not. He looked up as the door was opened and in came his doctor.

“Mr. Han,” he sighed and rubbed at his chin for a moment. “Do you remember what happened today?”

What do you mean what happened? “I don’t like these sort of games doctor. You know this.” He curtly spoke as he kept his eyes set on the man that seemed to want to be anywhere but here at this moment. He easily noticed the tells as the man in the white coat took another deep breath.

“This is no game Mr. Han...you were just in serious car accident. You and your driver were able to come out safely with minimal injury aside from some muscle spasming and minor abrasion. Your head hit the window pretty hard, but you show no signs of any severe damage.” The doctor paused and waited for Jumin to process this all first.

“And my wife? You’ve spoken more than enough about myself or driver Kim, where is my wife?” He demanded, a sick sinking feeling starting to grow inside of him at each word that passed the doctor’s lips and into his ears. He kept a sober-faced expression but his eyes were narrowed in a glare were not to be tested at this moment.

“Your wife, Mrs. Han, was not so lucky. The car you were hit by hit her side of the car. She is currently in the ER. We’re trying to revive her as we speak.” The words that followed fell on to deaf ears as the doctor went on in detail about how they were warned the instant thanks to his car’s security system. Driver Kim had been able to press the button just in time to signal the dispatch. None of this stuck in Jumin’s mind as he replayed the information about his wife. He searched around the room for some sort of answer. What answer, he was not entirely sure. All of it seemed to surreal until the doctor walked up to him and fished something out of his pocket. Something small clinked on his palm-three rings. Their wedding rings which they rarely ever took off.

The world was suddenly devoid of any sound or feeling as the nurses and doctor kept working as they always did. Somehow the words had sunk into his mind and he was discharged to the hall where he could wait for his wife. He was not sure what was said, but that hardly mattered at the moment. It felt as if his body was hurled against the wall and his heart ripped from his chest, leaving a gaping hole. Everything good in his life was suddenly ripped away from him.

No, I can’t let it be like this! He grabbed the doctor by his coat and looked him dead in the eyes once more with such determination. “I don’t care the cost, make sure everyone does everything they possibly can to save her. You know money is no issue for me, I will pay whatever the price. She is the priority always, even above me. You will also have the police hand over that heathen’s information to me so that I make sure that this is handled properly.” The doctor had given him his word he would do his best and the cruel waiting game began.

For the first time he was shaking with such blinding rage and terrified out of his mind. Logic made no sense to him at this moment since logically this night should not have ended like this. They should be back home and she was supposed to be surprised by the gifts he had set out for her while they were gone. She was supposed to be smiling and he was supposed to be hugging her as he kissed her tears away. Elizabeth the 3rd would be curled up on her sofa, lounging in her usual carefree manner as they enjoyed the rest of the evening in bliss. Reality was far from that and he cursed himself and everything around him. He cursed his body for being so weak. He cursed his luck to not be the one there instead of her. He cursed the fact they had even gone down that road to encounter such a driver.

The sound of footsteps made him jump and he looked to see if anyone was coming to him. Again, it was no one. He relaxed back into the bench, boneless yet taught with tension. Pulling the rings out of his pocket, he noted the engravings of love they had on the inside of their bands.

Forevermore...I will love you. His eyes sting as tears threatened to fall from his eyes as he kissed her ring. Please...come back to me my love. I am nothing without you. Closing his hand as tightly as he could around them, he rested his forehead against his fist when there was the sound of footsteps. He let it be as someone passing by, however the sound of someone calling his name had him looking up to find a nurse standing there. His throat constricted as his worst fears waged war inside of him. Tearing up his insides in preparation for the emptiness that would be his future at the loss of her. He tried to think otherwise, but logic was not on his side at this moment.

“Mr. Han, your wife is now in recovery. She has a dislocated shoulder, multiple bruises, and a few fractures. Overall she is safe. There were no fatal injuries and it will take time to heal. We will be admitting her a private room shortly, but you may come see her now if you so like. She will not be away and she will look a lot worse and will be constantly monitored. Would you like to see her?”

“Yes,” he nodded his head as he stood up and pocketed the rings once more. Though his face had not shown it, he was utterly relieved by the news. It was as if he was born again, a new breath of life filling where his heart was torn out. He was grateful for her return, no matter how badly injured she may be. Layla was his darling wife and nothing would ever change that. He silently followed behind the shorter woman to the back area where patients were sectioned off by curtains. He kept his eyes glued to the nurse as he followed her to the back and she motioned to a drawn curtain. He paused a moment, his palms a little clammy all the sudden. Taking a few practiced breaths, he nodded to the nurse and stepped through to find his beloved wife in a state as the nurse had described but to him it was a sight so beautiful the tears finally fell. Crumpling into a chair next to her bed he grabbed her good arm and kissed the back of her hand. Jumin Han was a man with the fortune of great luck and he was never more grateful for that.

[fibula-rasa]

You’re traveling through another dimension…

The place is New Jersey, the time is 2001, and the journey into the shadows that you’re about to read is my journey. My journey in committing myself to see every episode of The Twilight Zone.

I grew up watching Twilight Zone reruns on TV; loving the style, imagination, and colorful characters. In or around 2001, as a high-school freshman, I saved up to buy The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree. It shocked me to learn how many episodes of the show I hadn’t seen after years of faithfully watching reruns and the bi-annual marathons.

Yes, this is that same copy of The Twilight Zone Companion.

Setting a goal for myself to see every episode, checking them off in the book as I went along, was a daunting task back then. Not only were there no streaming services, but also no complete home-video release. (For the longest time CBS Home Video only released collections of episodes in no discernible order on VHS and DVD.) On top of that, a few of the episodes were not in syndication. Praise be to Serling, my parents owned one of the compilation tapes that included one of these episodes (The Encounter). Of course, I then understood why it wasn’t in syndication… It has since returned to the airwaves for some reason.

In the end, it took me a little over a year to see all of them with the help of timed recording on my VCR.

I wasn’t lying about checking off the episodes...

It’s great that The Twilight Zone is now available on multiple streaming services in addition to The Scifi Channel still playing reruns. Now none of you need to have my single-minded dedication to seemingly pointless tasks to discover television shows that were cancelled forty years before you were born.

Over the next two days, in honor of the marathon, I’ll make a series of posts to help all of you make the most of your first journey into imagination of 2018.

Below the jump, you’ll find a little bit about each of my favorite episodes. That’s the signpost up ahead--

--your next stop, The Twilight Zone!

The Invaders

Season 2, Episode 15

Director: Douglas Heyes | Writer: Richard Matheson

A woman living in an isolated cabin spends a terrifying night with tiny spacemen.

Agnes Moorehead is undoubtedly one of the best and most under-appreciated actors of the last century. The Invaders is a great episode from a technical and stylistic standpoint, but Moorehead’s performance still stands out. What a wonderful stroke of genius it was to take a woman so known for her radio work, for her inimitable voice, and cast her in a role with no dialogue. It’s a testament to how well this episode is made that the titular invaders are honest-to-goodness hand puppets but it’s one of the series’ most tense and terrifying entries.

A Stop at Willoughby

Season 1, Episode 30

Director: Robert Parrish | Writer: Rod Serling

A harrowed Madison Avenue ad man, dissatisfied with his life, begins to dream about another, quieter life in a town called Willoughby.

Nostalgia is a common theme throughout the entirety of the series and this is examination of sehnsucht the best execution of the theme. Gart Williams (James Daly) isn’t wistful about his own past (as with the simpler, but also great Walking Distance). Instead he yearns for some nebulous summer in the late 19th century, some nebulous place in America, unknown to him but relaxed enough that he’d have all the time in the world to “live his life full measure.” James Daly portrays Gart as someone who is too tired to continue functioning professionally or personally. His turn to nostalgia is driven by depression and the exhaustion that depression always seems to have at the ready in its handbag.

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

Season 2, Episode 28

Director: Montgomery Pittman | Writer: Rod Serling

When a UFO crashes into the woods on a snowy night, two state troopers track footprints to a roadside diner filled with bus passengers stuck by a bridge gone out. Will they be able to figure out who doesn’t belong?

Serling takes a classic mystery premise and adds a science-fictional spin with Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? It’s a lively episode with well-limned character work. Serling loves karmic retribution, especially when it takes the form of a twist on top of a twist. This episode illustrates the concept in spades, though I won’t elaborate further in case you haven’t seen this one yet!

Where is Everybody?

Season 1, Episode 1

Director: Robert Stevens | Writer: Rod Serling

A man arrives at a small town with no idea how he got there or who he is. Unfortunately, there’s not a single soul in town to clear things up for him.

The origins of The Twilight Zone lie in a TV drama Rod Serling wrote called The Time Element (which is on the complete series home video release btw). That story certainly contains the necessary ingredients we’ve now come to associate with the show, but it’s with the pilot Where is Everybody? that Serling hammers out exactly how he plans to approach short speculative stories: Human dramas that often deal with the interior life of a person when they’re faced with extraordinary circumstance. Earl Holliman’s acting is often rightfully lauded as well as Serling’s writing. The camera work by Joseph La Shelle is incredibly artful for TV photography of the time, using camera angles and movement to reflect the feelings of the main character or to emphasize the feeling of being watched by an unseen observer.

Nothing in the Dark

Season 3, Episode 16

Director: Lamont Johnson | Writer: George Clayton Johnson

An elderly, fearful woman is faced with a conundrum when a young police officer is wounded on her doorstep.

I always marvel at how beautifully executed Twilight Zone episodes are that take place in a single cramped space with a small cast of characters. This one happens to be a meditation on the nature of fear and death in a basement apartment with an old lady and a young man. George Clayton Johnson is one of the first writers outside of Serling to write for the series and Nothing in the Dark proves he was very capable of handling the tone, style, and themes of the series. Gladys Cooper stars in a few episodes, but this is her most tender and heartfelt role. She has great chemistry with Robert Redford, who plays the ailing baby-faced cop.

The Hitch-Hiker

Season 1, Episode 16

Director: Alvin Ganzer | Writer: Rod Serling (story by Lucille Fletcher)

Nan Adams starts continually seeing the same strange man hitchhiking along the roadside as she drives across the country.

The original version of this story was a radio play written by Lucille Fletcher. In the radio broadcasts of the story, Orson Welles plays the lead. It’s worth a listen after viewing the episode both because Welles is an excellent radio actor and because of how much of the mood of the story in light of the gender swap. When Serling bought the story from Fletcher to adapt it, she did not approve of gender-swapping the protagonist. It’s an interesting point to reflect on. Stevens’ Nan is instantly vulnerable as a young woman traveling completely alone; a strange man maybe stalking her is a real and common danger. Her fear is reasonable and it adds to the anxiety of the gradual revelation that the danger may actually be supernatural. With Welles, a man with such an imposing figure (that comes through in his voice) so quickly disquieted by a random man along the side of the road instantly signals to the listener that there may be more going on than meets the eye (or ear). They’re practically telling two different stories.

And When the Sky Was Opened

Season 1, Episode 11

Director: Douglas Heyes | Writer: Rod Serling (story by Richard Matheson)

Three test pilots are hospitalized after a crash landing. One by one they lose their grip on their very existence.

Speculative fiction stories dealing with space travel in the early days of manned space exploration are such a treat. They’re a window into our collective fears about the speed of our move into unexplored territory; physically, theoretically, and philosophically. This episode wastes no time getting deep into the unexplained. Rather than starting with the crash, it’s a few days later and one of the pilots (Charles Aidman) has already disappeared along with any evidence of his existence; except of course for the memories of his colleague (Rod Taylor). And When the Sky Was Opened is also a great example of what my SO refers to as a “Weird, ain’t it?” episode, where you’re presented with a concept and not given any resolution.

It’s a shame Rod Taylor wasn’t in more episodes. He’s clearly tuned into The Twilight Zone’s frequency.

The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank

Season 3, Episode 23

Director: Montgomery Pittman | Writer: Montgomery Pittman

When a young Jeff Myrtlebank wakes up at his own funeral, he’s not quite the same as he used to be.

Confession: when I was a kid, I hated the folksy episodes of The Twilight Zone. I didn’t relate to the oft idealized, fictionalized version of the American Middle West. I can’t say I relate to it exactly, but as I’ve traveled more and met a lot more people from the Midwest, the South, & Appalachia, I can appreciate it better now, albeit from a distance.

The episode begins with an homage to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and then moves into an imagining of what would happen if the devil showed up in St. Petersburg. The musical cues are often a little over the top, but the performances aren’t. All the supporting characters are very realistic* and it makes Jeff (James Best) stick out all the more. Best will go from sprightly to morose to furious in a single scene. He does great work varying his voice, facial expressions, and posture to convey that he’s not quite Jeff and it’s genuinely scary at times.

*(note: not insultingly backwoodsy or prone to superstition as stereotypes might dictate)

Eye of the Beholder

Season 2, Episode 6

Director: Douglas Heyes | Writer: Rod Serling

A woman recovering from extensive plastic surgery is hoping against hope that the procedure will make her “normal-looking” so that she can have a regular life in her repressive society.

Technically, this episode is exquisite. The lighting and cinematography turn the plainness of a hospital into a ghastly limbo. The point of the story might be a bit overwrought, but the monologues are delivered by Maxine Stuart as Janet Tyler are powerful, especially paired with the acting she does with her hands. If you already know the twist of the episode, it’s a whole lot of fun to track how the director and DP work around the reveal.

While Maxine Stuart plays the role of Janet beneath the bandages, Janet is played by Donna Douglas of Beverly Hillbillies fame post recovery. Originally this was rationalized as the director wanting Janet to sound a certain way and look a certain way and it would be easier to cast by voice and looks separately then just dub the actress with the looks. Then, when Douglas showed up to film, she insisted she could sound like Stuart and, lo, she does.

I Sing the Body Electric

Season 3, Episode 35

Director: James Sheldon & William Claxton | Writer: Ray Bradbury

When three children aren’t coping well with the loss of their mother, their father tries out a new robot grandma service.

I Sing the Body Electric has a truly unique atmosphere compared to other Twilight Zone episodes. It could be that it’s the only story Ray Bradbury wrote for the show. It could be the edge of artificiality created by the lighting in many of the scenes. Or that the presentation of a loving man-made grandmother emerging from a void is more theatrical than usual. It’s likely a mix of the three, but it’s a strange one no matter. As the grandmother emerges from a void, she retires to a room of grandmother voices. It hints at an amazing AI concept.

Honorable Mention:

The Masks

Season 5, Episode 9

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Season 5, Episode 22

The After Hours

Season 1, Episode 34

The Big Tall Wish

Season 1, Episode 27

[hutchhitched]

When Houston floods, it turns into a locked circular labyrinth. The city, my home town, is laid out like a wagon wheel: downtown sits at the center, surrounded by three concentric circles, which are bisected by highways in every direction. The first loop, Interstate 610, is thirty-eight miles long, and corrals the Inner Loop neighborhoods. Another round of suburban neighborhoods surrounds the Loop, and is bounded by the eighty-eight-mile-long Beltway 8. Then, the truly sprawling suburbs (Spring, Sugar Land, the Woodlands) surround the Beltway. All told, the Greater Houston Area is gargantuan—at over ten thousand square miles, it’s bigger than New Jersey—and, with upward of six million residents, it’s far more populous and diverse than outsiders tend to guess. Houston is also, famously, largely unregulated: zoning laws are minimal, and the unceasing outward development has, with official permission, drastically inhibited drainage. The freeway system holds the city together, keeping a huge, dispersed population connected. But in a storm this lifeline becomes a trap. Houston is flat, and it sits just fifty feet above sea level; after the bayous overflow, the rain collects on the roads. When a flood hits, driving in Houston feels like a video game turned real and deadly. There are sudden impasses everywhere; ingenuity can’t save you; once the spokes of the wheel go under, there’s nowhere to go.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in America, and right now much of it is underwater. Things will get worse this week. Tropical Storm Harvey, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, is sluggishly lingering, and will continue to pummel the flooded city. Forecasts say that Houston may get fifty inches of rain from this storm—which is the city’s average annual rainfall. Five people have died; many more will be injured. Houston’s safety-net hospital started evacuations on Sunday. The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, closed its submarine doors, designed, after Tropical Storm Allison, to protect the facility from flooding. Local news crews have struggled heroically to report out the disaster; one newscaster saved a truck driver’s life on air. The National Guard saved between twenty and twenty-five nursing-home residents in Dickinson after a harrowing photo went viral. My dad, who got stuck in high water on Saturday night, is one of thousands who have been rescued by Houston police. Harris County has been calling for citizens to help conduct rescues. All over the city, the roads have turned into rivers. Much of what’s visible looks like a nightmare; what makes me even sicker is imagining all the fear that we’ll never see.

People have criticized Houston residents for not evacuating. Plenty did, and with more understanding of the context, you might excuse many of those who didn’t. Evacuating a city like Houston, on these interlocked freeways—where a one-way commute might take two hours on a normal day—can very easily turn into a secondary disaster. The majority of Hurricane Rita deaths in Houston occurred in the evacuation, and two-thirds of flood fatalities happen in cars. Without financial resources, evacuation is a uniquely difficult experience, and 22.5 per cent of the population in increasingly unequal Houston lives under the poverty line. Official messages have also been uneven: Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, advised evacuation; the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner—likely warding off the worst-case scenario of a hurricane hitting gridlock traffic—advised sheltering in place. (In Rockport, the mayor pro tem issued a mandatory evacuation order, telling people who refused it to write their Social Security numbers on their arms.) President Trump, who has been tweeting about Harvey as if it were a thrilling reality-show finale, and who recentlyrolled back an Obama-era executive order that infrastructure projects be designed to survive rising sea levels, offered a helpful “Good luck to everybody!” on Friday, before the storm.

Eight years ago, I spent all summer driving around Houston’s endless looping freeways, passing picnic-table icehouse bars and stadium churches and the nondescript streets that birthed chopped-and-screwed. I was canvassing for an environmental nonprofit that was pushing for a long-overdue citywide recycling program, and we drove for hours to reach our neighborhood targets. The job was hard: we looked like scammers, and we were proselytizing about environmental responsibility in a city that at the time recycled less than three per cent of its own waste. But I liked the effort of trying to understand and appeal to a dizzying variety of strangers. I knocked on the doors of McMansions and decrepit bungalows, talked to immigrants and Texas-born white people, pitched liberals and conservatives and the politically averse. Houston, which is by one measure the most diverse city in America, took shape in my imagination as an enormous canvas of unpredictable, heterogeneous people who were connected, somehow, by a confusing combination of independence and generosity. As a state, Texas is fiercely individualistic—the land of bootstraps and no income tax and privatized solutions for all. Houstonians absorb this; they are loyal and responsible in a way that rarely extends across the city, which is, again, so big as to feel unfathomable—and those freeways, effectively, are our only public space.

And yet, this week I suspect we’ll mostly see another side of Houston: its scrappy sense of humor, and its extraordinary and very Texan largesse. Houston responds to disaster with fortitude: the city absorbed two hundred thousand Vietnamese refugees in the nineteen-seventies, and it currently resettles twenty-five of every thousand refugees that the United Nations resettles anywhere—that’s more than any other city in America, and more than most countries. After Hurricane Katrina, Houston took in a quarter of a million evacuees, and, aided by Mayor Bill White’s multimillion-dollar resettlement program, as many as forty thousand people stayed. Over the weekend, Houston teen-agers were out in the streets rescuing people via kayak. As Rebecca Solnit argues in her 2009 book, “A Paradise Built in Hell,” disasters create a window into social desire and potential. We’re normally encouraged to think of private life as precious and public life as a nuisance, she writes, but “disasters, in returning their sufferers to public and collective life, undo some of this privatization, which is a slower, subtler disaster all its own.” Disasters remind us that ambitious, difficult things are not just possible but necessary; in Houston, Harvey is already showing how an individualistic work ethic and a spirit of collective generosity can and have to coexist. (x)

[leftpress]

High Voltage

Lessons from Four Summers of Unrest in Armenia

02/12/2017 | CrimethInc. Ex-Worker’s Collective

As massive anti-corruption protests shake former socialist countries and NATO and Russia mass their troops along the border between East and West, anarchists are asking how best to intervene in the upheavals ahead in this contested region. Seeking a case study in resistance along the Eastern European rim, we talked with anarchists in Armenia about their experiences in recent demonstrations against corruption, the cost of living, and the current government. The lessons they pass on are instructive for participants in social movements all around the world.

Armenia gained independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. Its first years as a country were marked by war, as it fought Azerbaijan over the still unresolved territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The last two decades have seen repeated bouts of social unrest in this country torn by the consequences of war and economic hardship, but only in the last four years has the Western media paid the protests much attention.

“Leaving Armenia and joining the ranks of immigrants is currently the most widespread form of radicalization,” one comrade from this small nation in the Southern Caucasus tells us. And yet a small but committed community of anarchists has stayed, demonstrating what it means to fight against capitalism and the state in four consecutive years of protests in this post-socialist country.

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Clashes during the Electric Yerevan protests of 2015.

2013: Fulfilled Demands Spell Death for Movements

In 2013, the city government of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, tried to increase the cost of public transportation from 100 to 150 drams. This provoked unprecedented anger. It only took a week for a thirty-person campaign to snowball into a massive decentralized movement attracting mostly high school and university students. Most of the participants were taking the streets for the first time. Simple and effective direct actions helped the movement to grow quickly. “You just went to the nearest bus stop, handed out fliers, paid the same amount you paid before, and urged people to do the same. Everybody knew why we were protesting. The task at hand was very specific and real,” our comrades remember.

The movement stayed autonomous, free from the influence of political parties. Highly focused on everyday issues, it inspired people to fight and organize in various ways. Young people drove unofficial buses all day long and encouraged passengers to boycott the new fare, while others supported the riders financially. A self-organized car pool initiative spread across the city, with people sharing cars and even offering free rides to strangers. Things got serious when even some bus drivers joined the protests by skipping work or refusing to take money from passengers. Total chaos was right around the corner.

“It was a truly exciting experience, until the government did what it always does; it quickly agreed to the minimal requirements, thus preventing the expansion and radicalization of the movement,” comrades observe with disappointment. The movement’s focus on everyday issues and avoidance of a more radical agenda were initially seen as strengths, as the movement drew a wide variety of people. Yet they ultimately proved to be weaknesses as well.

As soon as the government caved in to demands, the movement dissolved. Some blamed the inexperience of protesters, while others pointed to skewed media coverage or to the lack of assemblies. In any case, the cancellation of the fare hike drew a massive amount of people to the streets in celebration. People had demanded lower costs of living, and once the government met their demand, they thought they had won. “Any argument with a more experienced activist was perceived as an unnecessary politicization of the issue. It was clear one should abandon any hope of a bigger change,” our comrades report, describing the moment they realized their movement had reached its own inborn limits.

2014: Autonomy Inspires Us, and Our Enemies as Well

The dust of the transportation fare protests had not yet settled on Yerevan’s wide avenues when the turbulent year of 2014 began. The next big wave of protests, addressing the controversial reform of Armenia’s national pension system, were dubbed the “Dem Em” (I am against) movement. The new pension system targeted young professionals born after 1973, forcing them to contribute at least 5% of their gross wages to private pension funds of a highly suspect nature until they retire. “There are examples of similar reforms, both successful and unsuccessful, in other countries. However, in Armenia the main trigger for the resistance was not economic feasibility, but distrust towards the government, both current and future,” comrades explain. “Would you lend money to a racketeer who is moving to Panama? Of course not.”

The reform particularly angered young people in the IT industry, who earn much more than the average income in Armenia. On average, an Armenian making minimum wage will earn $115 in US currency a month, whereas the starting salary for an IT specialist in Armenia is around $650 per month. “The first public discussions of the anti-reform campaign resembled a gathering of a non-existent trade union for computer programmers; the discussions were spontaneously horizontal, but at the same time they were distrustful towards outsiders, especially towards those who had participated in other campaigns.”

Programmers weren’t the only ones organizing, though. Politicians had learned the strength of the street movement from previous protests. The “I am against” initiative was soon backed by the opposition parliamentary party. The movement didn’t just gain the support of politicians, it also brought thousands of people to the streets, got a fancy sound system, and soon started to resemble trade unions in the worst possible way. “There were appointed leaders recognized by the media and police, the language of the protest became populist, and the decisions were made behind closed doors,” our comrades report. The moment when the discourse about reform was taken over by political parties was the beginning of the end.

If in 2013, the city government actually had to completely back down on a fare hike, this time the government only had to promise to postpone the pension reform. Once again, people believed they had won, and the movement dissolved. Several months later, the government went back on their word, but the movement never came back to life. Our comrades did not consider this to be their struggle: “Leftists and anarchists did not participate in the movement at the beginning, when it was narrowly focused on professionals and therefore closed [to their participation], and refused to participate when it was led by the political parties and therefore, indirectly, by the authorities.”

2015: The Electricity in Our Veins Is the Destruction of Their Power

In the summer of 2015, a completely new stream of energy drew people together on the streets of Yerevan. Things started out a lot like the previous protests: the government tried to raise electricity prices 17 percent. As before, people took the streets to march and hold discussions. But what truly got the movement going was unprecedented police violence. This opened up a completely new set of opportunities.

On a warm June day, hundreds of people gathered in Yerevan to march towards the presidential palace. They soon stopped before a scene no social movement in Armenia had ever witnessed. The police had closed down the road with water cannons, cordons of officers, and barbed wire. Yet people refused to leave, transforming the march into a sit-in—successfully occupying and blockading main avenues in downtown Yerevan.

That night, things got out of control. First, people delegitimized the self-proclaimed leaders of the protests, who tried to reduce the tension and even to get people to return to Freedom Square where the rally had started. The protesters had different kind of freedom in mind this time.

Electric Yerevan protesters behind a banner reading “High Voltage.”

“Nobody wanted to return, so the suggestion was rejected,” comrades remember. It is worth noting that the discussion was not an assembly, and people did not try to vote or reach consensus. As the night was getting late, however, more and more people left the occupation.

Police struck early in the morning, using water cannons to brutally attack and disperse the remaining few hundred protesters. The police detained about 240 protesters; 25 were injured and three hospitalized. Officers targeted people covering the protests as well, destroying their cameras and memory cards.

This attempt to crush the movement by brute force produced the opposite effect. In less than 12 hours, about 8000 people returned to the streets under the banners of Electric Yerevan. Solidarity protests took place in many other cities and towns. It seemed that another clash was inevitable.

But the police were learning fast; they did not make any further attacks. Instead, the protest turned into a standoff, with a barricade of trash bins separating police and the protesters. That was when space for radical ideas started to close down. “The barricade quickly became a stage for people with loudspeakers. In addition, artists and politicians formed a “human shield” to guarantee the security of people. Media were live-streaming 24 hours a day, and soon the protest took a more familiar and stable form.” By providing the protesters an opportunity to express a peaceful and inert disobedience, the authorities ensured that the protests would die down themselves.

At the same time, our Armenian comrades report that those who wanted to radicalize the protest or expand the range of tactics—mostly anarchists and other radicals—faced different challenges. On the one hand, police were detaining people for wearing anarchist symbols or just for spreading leaflets. That spread fear inside the movement, and the protesters themselves started to label any attempt to distribute radical material or introduce new slogans as a provocation.

But, as comrades recollect, anarchists were facing additional challenges. “Starting from the very first meetings, any attempt at public debate was immediately suppressed by the organizational group. As soon as there was any talk of expanding the protest agenda and the need to radicalize, the organizers would put on loud music, shady characters would appear to disrupt a conversation, so people were forced to leave the protest area, where police might detain them.”

As the government once again used a cheap trick, claiming they would subsidize the difference between the old electricity price and the new one, some organizers started to encourage people to stop occupying the streets of Yerevan. Although they failed to convince the majority of the people, the number of protesters was dropping day by day.

This was when the remaining participants started to organize assemblies. Yet the number of people in the streets remained small. “Media quickly dubbed the remaining protesters as alcoholics, drug addicts, and radicals.” The Electric Yerevan movement was dead. A year later, the government announced the end of subsidies as well.

2016: From (Relatively Open) Protest to Armed (Right-Wing) Insurrection

On an early morning in July 2016, the people of Yerevan woke up to an odd series of events. An armed conservative nationalist group had seized the largest police station in the capital, containing most of the specialized equipment, ammunition, and weapons, demanding the resignation of the president of Armenia. This armed group was affiliated with the political prisoner Zhirayr Sefilyan, a leader of the opposition movement Founding Parliament. Their aim was to force regime change and to build a new type of state. Some were veterans of the Karabakh war. “They have experienced political oppression, but their conservative and nationalistic agenda was not much different from the government in power,” our comrades explain.

They encouraged people to break through the police cordon with Molotov cocktails and arm themselves. On the other side of a police cordon reinforced by several military vehicles, more people gathered every hour, reaching over 5000 in the evening. However, people refused to attempt an armed uprising. Their main demand was that bloodshed be avoided. The members of Founding Parliament, who joined the protest, were detained and arrested. The most violent clashes took place between police and the residents of the surrounding area. The authorities once again adopted the strategy of wearing the armed group out, and the group eventually surrendered.

In Armenia, as in most other post-socialist countries of the Eastern bloc, it is not easy to draw a clear distinction between protests seeking regime change and demonstrations triggered by more social and economic reasons. For now, people still believe that regime change will bring about a better life. “Power is personalized, while violence is systematic,” our comrades from Armenia conclude. “Social protests that have specific, concrete, and visible demands and results are perceived as ‘small victories.’ No wonder that success in those protests practically always motivates people to strive for more, but people only return to demand the president’s resignation.”

Disobedient Voices of Freedom

“Is there a visible large-scale anti-capitalist agenda in Armenia? Definitely not. There are, however, a few affinity groups, small organizations that share anti-capitalist ideas, implement some projects, try to organize small-scale interventions,” our comrades explain. Anti-election sentiments are more widespread, speaking to widespread disappointment with representative democracy. There is also a small but fierce feminist and queer community with radical views.

Although our comrades conclude that, for the majority of people, growing despair over their inability to change their lives appears to be the only thing transferred from one year’s protests to the next, the situation in Armenia remains volatile and unpredictable. Remember, anarchism has been a force in Armenia since the 19th century. Anarchists have never been numerous, but even today they remain determined to fight for a better world.

To make contact with anarchists in Armenia, try this Facebook page.

Appendix: CrimethInc. Material in Armenian

To Change Everything in Armenian

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► WHAT’S LIVING IN FREEDOM LIKE? 1ST ANNIVERSARY OF AUTONOMY IN TILA

► #WORKERSREPORT: A #WORKERSASSEMBLE SYNDICATE

[kacydeneen]

Fire Leaves Behind Nothing but Ashes in Paradise

A mother searching for her son, a husband who lost his wife to a stroke two months ago, two roommates just trying to survive — all victims of California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire, all living in their cars in the Chico Neighborhood Church parking lot because they want to be near the only thing they have left — their dogs.

None of them know what’s going to happen next.

Toddler Towed With Car, Left in Freezing Lot Overnight

Jean Eisenbarth escaped with Sweeney, her 8-year-old Great Pyrenees and her turtle, Kelly Winslow and Tim Joyner evacuated with their dogs Hazel, Moose, March, Delbert, and their two rats, Jay Raynor drove off with his yellow lab Gus, leaving behind homes in Paradise and the neighboring city of Magalia as a wildfire tore them apart, turning everything into ash within hours.

These are their stories.

Professor Sues Over Transgender Pronoun Rebuke

____________

I Feel Like I’ve Been in a War

Wild Arkansas Shootout Caught on Camera

Jean Eisenbarth. Tuesday, Nov. 13, 12:55 p.m., The Neighborhood Church parking lot

How did you escape the night of the wildfires?

“My name is Jean Eisenbarth and this is my dog Sweeney — so if anybody sees us we’re okay. We’re from Shadowbrook Apartments in Paradise behind the DMV off of Clark. From what I hear, a lot of the apartments burned, some still are standing. There was a lot of explosions going on — it was like a battlefield, but we made it down here and there’s been a lot of donations and a lot of help. People are very kind but it was very scary. I didn’t think I was gonna make it out. I was one of the last ones in my family to make it out and I feel like I’ve been through a war. Everybody else here has gone through the same thing so I feel like I’m in the right place and hoping that we can go up and see our place sometime soon to see what we can salvage, and it’s just awful.”

Who helped you get out of Paradise?

"It was an old man and he was just walking in the neighborhood and I opened the door and I go, 'how do you get out of here,' and he goes, “It looks like everybody’s lost.” And I said, “We are,” and he didn’t even ask me to get in the car. He said, “Go to the stop sign, make a left and you’ll hit Skyway.” But he didn’t panic or nothing. I don’t know if I would have made it out if he wouldn’t have told me how to get out of there. I don’t know who he was and he didn’t seem scared, I think he was an angel, I honestly do."

Did you get any warning from anybody, or the city or anything like that?

"They were coming to warn us, but not beforehand. I didn’t get any warning through phone or anything."

"When I woke up in the morning the sky was orange and I told my friend that was staying with me, 'Pete, I think there’s a fire,' and he goes 'No, I think it was just a weird overcast.' And then we started hearing the explosions and then it got to midnight, totally dark. I had one candle and the reason I stayed so long was I was trying to catch my cats, they were scared. So I saw the police go into the other apartment complex so I ran out there and the cop car came up and I asked do we need to leave and he says, 'Oh my God yes.'"

____________

We’ll starve, the Dogs Won’t

Kelly Winslow, Tim Joyner, Tuesday, Nov. 13. 1:30 p.m., The Neighborhood Church parking lot

Where are you guys from?

TJ: "We’re from Magalia, and upper Magalia — right now we’re kind of in a flux because the fires are getting to that point so we’re kind of waiting for news you know day by day."

Are you staying here are all night?

TJ: "Yeah we have been safe here. I’m finding that people are putting aside their differences and just coming together, I think that’s what is happening. It’s incredible. Everyone’s in the same boat."

But you don’t know if the fires reached your house or what’s going on?

TJ: "We’re getting the same information everyone is online. I just found out by accident on Google. But we don’t really know … We’re just two roommates trying to survive."

Who are your other roommates?

TJ: "This is Hazel, this is Moose, March is on the floor, and Delbert, and two rats. I got them covered very well so they’re warm."

What are they eating?

TJ: "We have dog food, the dogs are eating well. We’ll starve, the dogs won’t. We’re realizing that this is going to be a long ordeal."

So what’s next?

"If you don’t own your home and are renting like we are, you’ll really have no other recourse than to go after the company. That company no longer has a home itself. So now you have to go try to find them. Actually we got a letter from our realtor and she said that it’s gonna be a while so …"

It’s gonna be a while before the electricity goes back up there. So even when we do go up there we’re gonna have to have everything in place cause we’re gonna have to have food, gas, water. It’s like camping in your own home. We’re gonna get a little propane thing, we’re already thinking ahead."

____________

Mother’s Intuition

We came across a Paradise evacuee in the parking lot of The Neighborhood Community Church who didn’t want to go on camera or be identified. She was emotional as she told us she was searching for her son. “Nobody’s seen him since two days before the fire, he was in a homeless camp in the woods. It’s devastating to see — If it hadn’t been for our neighbor who begged my husband and I to leave, we wouldn’t have left. So bless Virginia for saving us. We didn’t take anything — our computer or our meds. But it’s just things. At least we got out alive.”

Before we left she added:

“Just pray that they find my son, I'm hoping that he’s not dead, when you are a mother you have that mother’s intuition, and I can’t feel him,” she said. “The miracle out of this is that we have come together as one.”

____________

Everything’s gone but I got my car ... and my dog

Jim Raynow, Tuesday, Nov. 13. 1:45 p.m., The Neighborhood Church parking lot

JR: "What do you wanna know?"

Just your story, how you got here, how things are going.

JR: "Long story."

Are you from Paradise?

JR: "No I’m from Magalia. I lost my wife two months ago to a stroke and two months later I lose my house so I’m here."

When did you get here?

JR: "Thursday."

And you know for sure that your house is gone?

JR: "Well yeah my neighbor, it was kind of weird, he found me here about an hour ago and how he found me was that he was watching the news and saw me behind a reporter. I haven’t seen him since last Thursday but he tracked me down. He had a friend of his take a picture of his house from the street and it’s burned to the ground. I’m right next to it and at the edge you can see that my house is gone. Everything’s gone but I got my car."

Is that your dog? What’s his name?

JR: "Gus! It’s our dog, my wife’s baby. He’s 14 years old and he lost his mommy so we’re living in our car — it sucks. He’s got the backseat and I got the front. It’s funny I know everybody says that, it is what it is."

Do they have shelters inside?

JR: "They’re full. I got here Thursday and they were full. But I can’t have a dog. They do a good job, I got brand new clothes from these people it was amazing. Showers."

How long have you lived in Magalia?

JR: "Twenty-five years, I like it. I’m like in limbo. It’s like gravity and space, I’m in between."

____________

We Lost Everything

Gary Brand, Nov. 13, 3.32 p.m. The Neighborhood Church parking lot

Where did you live in Paradise?

"34 Wayland Road, Space #12. Lived there for 47 years."

Can you tell us how you escaped?

“We just got out of there the best way we could. We lost everything. I’m coping the best I can but my wife ain’t. She lost her Chihuahua. He got so scared he went under the couch and would not come out and the officers told us we had to leave, now, so we left.”

____________

Burned out of Paradise

Chris Hughes, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 3:59 p.m., Burrito Bandito, Chico

What Happened?

"Burned out of Paradise, born and raised there — Feather River Hospital — went to high school there, and drove around those streets, and it’s all gone. I really don’t know what to think about it. Just taking it a day at a time. Three dogs crammed into a car, trying to make life work."

How are they doing?

"They’re coping, but they’re all a little stressed out. It’s a crazy situation right now. Everybody’s a little dazed. But yeah, trying to stay focused."

____________

Waiting For FEMA

Terry Black, Nov. 13, 6 p.m., Wal-Mart Parking Lot, Chico

How long have you been here?

“We’ve been here about four days, I can’t remember anymore. It was like a movie at first, like you see people panicking on TV all over town, that’s how it was. The sky was red, and then I heard a boom!"

How long do you think you’ll be here for?

"We don’t know yet, we are waiting for FEMA."

____________

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Photo Credit: Jennifer Gonzalez / NBC Bay Area This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Fire Leaves Behind Nothing but Ashes in Paradise published first on Miami News

[felixidiga-blog]

An Interview with Chief Felix Idiga on www.gregnwadikeblog.com

An Interview with Chief Felix Idiga on www.gregnwadikeblog.com CHIEF (SIR) FELIX CHIDI IDIGA also known as JAFAC is the Chairman/CEO of JAFAC Group with interests in auto, winery, construction, aviation and hospitality. He was the senatorial candidate of the Accord Party in the general elections of 2015 in Imo state, but currently aspires to represent his people of Orlu/Orsu/Oru-East federal constituency in the National Assembly. In this encounter with www.gregnwadikeblog.com, he addresses issues bothering on his ambition, and sundry political matters. Excerpts. You recently declared to run for the House of Representatives instead of the Senate for which you vied for in 2015. What brought about this change of step and party? Politics, as you know goes in virtues circle. Sometimes you listen and follow the wishes of your people, and not just yourself. This is called democracy. I vied for the senate in 2015. Even as a first timer, I was able to mobilize enough supports of our people in the 12 Local Government Areas of Imo West to convince them to give me their votes at the primary election of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Some persons who saw and feared that I was going to retire them from clinching to power conspired and ensured that the primary election was taken to the headquarters of the PDP in Owerri instead of an open venue and against the rule of the game. It was there that they made sure that the will of the people was subverted. They robbed my people of their victory and ensured that I do not get the ticket. That was not what our people wanted. That was planned and executed by just few individuals out of their selfishness. My supporters were very angry and decided to protest through their votes. Your vote is your power, if you know this very well. They encouraged me to leave the party. Many of us left in protest because the PDP as at that time presented lots of fraudulent men with fraudulent activities. They never allowed free and fair elections anywhere, and they only concentrated in collecting, collecting, collecting without minding the success of the party. So, we left, and I went and completed the race in Accord Party just to satisfy my supporters. Today, the rest is history. Since then I went about my private businesses and have continued with my Foundation which has been there since, but my people have urged me on. This time, they said I should start from my federal constituency, the Orlu/Orsu/Oru-East Federal Constituency. They believe I can offer quality representation. They believe we should start at home. That is why I am where I am today. Your critics accuse you of concentrating all road projects you attracted from the NDDC only in your Amaifeke community without extending to other areas. How do you respond to this? Let’s keep politics aside here and be reasonably logical for once. You see, that allegation is not true and has no rational basis in developmental evaluations. But it also gives me joy whenever I read or hear people say such things because it means that my people expect so much from me even as a private citizen born and bred in Amaifeke autonomous community. My personality, and perhaps activities associated with my name, especially through the JAFAC FOUNDATION tend to have made people forget that I am not yet in government, and that I have been a private citizen. So, if as a private citizen of Amaifeke I was able to attract developments to my community, is that now a crime in Igboland or anywhere in the world? When has it become a crime for an individual to attract development to his community? Don’t forget that these roads in question were done as a private citizen and private businessman. I was never a Local Government Chairman hence you accuse me of diverting Orlu Local Government developments to my community only. I was never a House of Assembly member. I was never a Rep or even a senator. I was just a private person into private businesses. I went out there like many other businessmen from other communities, lobbied with my contacts for roads of my people to be repaired, got approvals and contracts awarded, then came home and executed them to specifications. Please tell me what is wrong with that? You see, when an opponent wants your fall, he will always see bad in whatever good you do. I thought that charity they said begins at home. If I can go out there and attract developments as a private citizen to my Amaifeke community as my local constituency then, does that not show you that I can do much more when the entire Orlu/Orsu/Oru-East Federal Constituency is entrusted to me? Shouldn’t this be enough reason to support me to go represent my people? Are you not aware that most contractors who get contracts of these nature end up selling off the award papers and nothing happens to them? I did not sale off mine. I came home and delivered, and even at that some people still find faults. So, when you take politics and criticisms from opponents aside, you will discover that I did nothing wrong. My critics are misguided. I only did what I should do within my smaller environment, and when I get to a broader environment I will still do better. At the last count as a private citizen, I have delivered on over 40 Roads in and around Imo State. I have also delivered on more than 22 roads in and around Orlu LGA. I could have embezzled monies meant for these roads like so many other contractors, but I did not, so how can I do that when I become the representative for my people at the House of Representatives? Some will still want to hear you mention one or two of these roads which you claimed you did around Orlu. Can you just mention one? Maybe you should have asked me earlier to prepare you records but go find out that I delivered on the last repair of the Old Orlu-Owerri Road before the ongoing one by His Excellency, Owelle Anayo Rochas Okorocha. I did that road. I did the Umuduru Internal Road and Ibenye internal roads at Okporo Community of Orlu LGA. I also delivered on Umusasa Umuna-Oleme road from the Old Owerri road, among others outside Amaifeke my community which I can’t recall here. I also did the Anunihu Amaifeke-Ihioma link road as well, and I am currently negotiating a major road that may likely go through Umuna community which I had even discussed with some of their people last year. These jobs come through personal efforts, and that is why I desire to have the enablement to attract more. My efforts made NDDC to start awarding and completing road projects hitherto sited only in Ohaji-Egbema/Oguta to non-oil producing communities in Orlu zone. If Felix could facilitate these road projects without being a federal minister, Governor, senator, House of Reps member or being in government, you can imagine then the volume of federal presence he will attract to the constituency when elected as their Rep. A na esi na mmiri nwata jiri kwuo aka a ma nwa ga eriju afo. The proof of the pudding is, surely in the eating. If every contractor delivers on his immediate environment when awarded, I wouldn’t see why we can’t make progress as a people. Yes, I tarred most of the roads and installed solar street lights, and there is nothing wrong with that. I will replicate same and even better in and around my constituency when we get to Abuja. With the number of people coming out for the same position you are angling for; do you think you have better chances of winning? I believe I have everything it takes to win if the wish of the people is not manipulated; if free and fair election will be guaranteed. My achievements as a private citizen speak for me. I believe I have given a lot to humanity, especially to my people to guarantee me their supports. I do not intend to go about this through any other way than through my people and my leaders. I also know that not everybody will be supportive of this project, but that is also what is obtainable in democracy. I will however urge my opponents and critics to judge me constructively. At the end, let the people’s will prevail. You also recently had an empowerment program for the less privileged. Can you take us through this, especially the JAFAC Foundation? The JAFAC Foundation is about 19 years today in existence and its mission has been to enhance the quality of lives of Nigerians by supporting initiatives that improve access to health and educational opportunities. Our main goals include enhancing community healthcare by providing free medical services to the rural communities which lack adequate medical facilities; improve the quality of education of children and young people; alleviate the extreme poverty in communities across the country (starting from my immediate constituency) by providing clean drinking water and encouraging the education/empowerment of men and women, promotion of sports, music, arts, skill acquisition and entrepreneurial development programmes. In line with what we have been doing these many years, the foundation doled out a Sixty Million Naira empowerment programme for the less privileged among us for the year 2018. The money will be given out to select individuals after their successful completion of training to be supervised by the Foundation. In the past we have had situations where we simply gave out cash and these people would use them for other purposes and then come back to ask for more. This time around, the cash will not just be given out. We will have to take them through formal trainings on jobs of their choices and thereafter release the cash as take-off grants. The idea is to create sustainable empowerments. That was what we just did about fortnight ago in my country home. What shall your people look forward from you when you get to the National Assembly? Quality, reliable representation. Attraction of more projects. More empowerments. This time around our focus will be channeled towards creating young millionaires. We shall concentrate on attracting contracts which will be given out to our young entrepreneurs, our women and men group supporters so that they can collectively execute and make some incomes. What is your advice to your people? To take it easy. To my fellow aspirants I must beg to go about this with open heart. Let’s not see it as a do-or-die affair. We must do this with the mindset that there must be life after politics. I want to continue to do businesses with my opponents after the elections. And to my supporters I will ask to go about our campaigns with decorum. Please there should be no insults, fowl languages or any form of attacks on people whose views and opinions are different from ours. Power comes from God, and if it pleases only Him, then we fear no one. Thank you. END Www.chieffelixidiga.com

[londontheatre]

Andrew Polec as Strat & Christina Bennington as Raven in BAT OUT OF HELL credit Specular

2017 has been a busy year with our team of reviewers attending and reviewing nearly 800 productions across London, including West End and Off-West End. These are the top picks for the year.

1. Bat Out of Hell The Musical – London Coliseum (21 June) Andrew Polec, as Strat (leader of ‘The Lost’, a collective of young rebels) leads a ridiculously talented cast with flair, energy and intensity. Polec’s vocals are outstanding, his stage presence amazing, and he was conspicuous by his absence whenever off-stage.

2. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – Apollo Theatre (22 November) Hilarious and hard-hitting in equal measure, this is a great British musical not to be missed. I don’t like this show. I love it.

3. Barber Shop Chronicles – National Theatre, Dorfman (7 June) Filled with laugh-out-loud humour as well as food for thought, this electrifying and magnificent production is theatrical heaven from beginning to end.

4. Henry V – Southwark Cathedral (3 February) I wasn’t prepared for… quite how different and spellbinding this production was from any other Henry V I’ve seen before… Powerful and poignant.

5. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Harold Pinter Theatre (9 March) The narrative unfolds over just one night, and this production is so intense and absorbing I found myself willing both the ‘interval’ of 15 minutes between Act 1 and Act 2 as well as the ‘pause’ of just five minutes between Act 2 and Act 3 to end.

6. The Life – Southwark Playhouse (30 March) The whole cast are well-drilled by veteran director Michael Blakemore, and the show is clearly influenced by more than one well-known musical theatre show […] what a magnificent and sensational production this is.

7. Hamlet – Harold Pinter Theatre (15 June) These sofas, these business suits, these sliding doors. It’s all bound to annoy the purists to high heaven. No matter. This is a surprisingly warm and inviting production, and a welcome addition to the many versions of this timeless play.

31 Hours – The Cast Photo by Lidia Crisafulli

8. 31 Hours – The Bunker Theatre (6 October) An admirable play with compelling performances, this intriguing and informative production doesn’t apportion blame or offer tidy solutions to a persistent problem. The script is poetic when it wants to be, other times flowing between characters so much it requires impeccable timing and pacing, which this cast possesses in abundance.

9. The State of Things – Jack Studio Theatre (13 September) A joyous final number sends the audience out with cheerfulness, even if all the ends aren’t tied up, loosely or otherwise. The script is tasteful and imaginative.

10. Fingering A Minor on the Piano – Soho Theatre (5 April) This is a compelling and passionate show, as much of an education into what’s really going on in the healthcare sector today as it is a fun-filled hour of hysterical anecdotes.

Chris Omaweng

*******

1. Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Bridewell Theatre This story of friendship and hope took two drag queens and a trans woman from Sydney to Alice Springs, in a big pink bus. Along the way, they met new friends, and face rampant homophobia. SEDOS brought every element of the show together beautifully, and to a standard that you would expect to see in the West End. Sold out virtually as soon as it was announced, this was the ‘must-see’ production of the year.

La Cage Aux Folles – Pamela Raith Photography

2. La Cage aux Folles, New Wimbledon Theatre This is was a touring production of a show that demonstrates the importance of family and how much a parent will sacrifice to help their offspring. John Partridge put on the stiletto heels and sequined gowns as Albert/Zaza and delivered a tour de force performance. With wonderful sets, costumes and songs like the iconic “I Am What I Am” this production hit all the right notes.

3. Richard III, Cockpit The amazing Kim Hardy led the cast in the title role of this first-rate production of Shakespeare’s play in fine style. With some extremely realistic battle scenes, the entire production brought the story to life in a really fantastic way. Richard is a role that Kim was born to play and has set the standard for anyone that wants to take on the king in the future

4. Henry V, Southwark Cathedral Another touring production as Antic Disposition visited various cathedrals around the UK this year with their version of this classic Shakespeare play. I caught the production at Southwark Cathedral where, under the watchful eye of the Bard himself. Aside from the highly impressive location, the production itself – set in a World War I field hospital – adds a wonderful poignancy to the show. Rhy Bevan was excellent in the role of Henry and led a superb cast who between them made this a very memorable show.

5. Loot, Park Theatre Back to the swinging sixties with this production of Joe Orton’s farce set around the funeral of an elderly woman. Whilst most assuredly of its time in some of its attitudes, Loot still works very well at holding various parts of society up to a critical light. The cast, set and costumes all worked perfectly to bring the sixties back to North London and overall this was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long while.

6. The Clockwork Orange, Park Theatre Another trip back to the sixties with this all-male production of Anthony Burgess’s horrific story of a dystopian future that, at times, has too many links to the present to make comfortable viewing. Stripped back in colour and set, the sho is headed up by Jono Davies absolutely smashing the lead role of Alex. An intense production that is not easy to watch but is totally engaging.

7. Lord Dismiss Us, Above the Stag Theatre Glen Chandler’s play is partially based on genuine experiences at a public school in the sixties and as such is a very well observed study of the English upper classes at a time when the world was about to change. However , instead of focussing on the outside, the play brings us into the school where a violently homophobic new headmaster decides there will be none of that business going on in his school. One of the great elements of the play is that one of the more negative characters from the start of the play turns out ot be the hero of the story. A lovely bit of writing, excellent translated to the stage.

8. Posh, Pleasance Theatre Probably one of the real surprises of the theatrical year for me. Posh was the story of an elite male dining club from one of our red brick universities on a night out. A fairly normal story you might think, but in this production, all of the roles were played by women. Retaining their femininity, the actors really brought out the roles well to the point that their gender was totally unimportant. A brave staging choice that worked extremely well.

9, Boys in the Buff – The Musical, Stockwell Playhouse and Boys in the Buff – The Concert, King’s Head Tackling the subject of body image and how we view ourselves and each other is not an easy thing to do but in these productions – the full one and the cut down version – it is done in a wonderful way. Humour, songs, dance and great writing combined to make the Boys in the Buff shows something well worth seeing. A fine cast, willing to give their all for the show, really entertain and inform and leave everyone feeling just that bit better about themselves.

Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Rd

10. Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Road, White Bear Theatre Back in January, this show showed up at the newly refurbished White Bear Theatre and completely took my breath away. The story of the inhabitants of a run-down motel and the wonderful revelations that come out, with the wonderful twist at the end, set the bar for every show from then on. Following its time the White Bear, the play transferred for a very successful run at the Trafalgar Studios.

Terry Eastham

*******

1. Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Road by Keith Stevenson at Trafalgar Studios Small town America at its side-splittingly smallest.

2. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare at The National Simon Godwin’s delicious production takes role reversal to the limit.

3. Everyone’s Talking About Jamie by Tom MacRae & Dan Gillespie Sells at The Apollo Theatre Funny and heart-warming – best new musical of the century.

4. We Are The Lions Mr Manager by Neil Gore @ Tara Arts Theatre

Girl From The North Country

5. The Girl From The North Country by Conor McPherson @ The Old Vic (transferring). 6. The End of History by Ian Hollingshead @ Tristram Bates Theatre 7. Happiness by Lily Lowe-Myers @ The Bridewell Theatre 8. Rules For Living by Sam Holcroft @ The Rose Theatre 9. The Comedy About A Bank Robbery by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields – The Criterion Theatre. 10. Reasons To Be Cheerful by Paul Sirett @ Theatre Royal, Stratford East

Peter Yates

*******

Amadeus – Royal National Theatre Hedda Gabler – Royal National Theatre Follies – National Theatre Don Juan in Soho – Wyndhams

Paddy Briggs

  Martin Freeman (David Lyons), Tamsin Greig (Jean Whittaker). Photo by Johan Persson

The Ferryman – the most superb play/production seen in London for years! Totally gripping throughout its 3 and a quarter hours – yet nothing happened! So Irish!

The Best Man – which I saw at Windsor and which has not yet opened in London: superb, a gripping play about USA presidential election: could have so easily have been trite but beautifully written and directed and co-starring Jack Shepherd as the terminally ill past president. He was superb: charismatic. I hope Bill Kenwright brings this into town in 2018. (Martin Shaw was very good too!)

Labour of Love at Noel Coward Theatre: again superbly written and acted. There have been many first-rate plays this year!

John Groves

*******

Blush at Soho Theatre The Ugly One at Park Theatre La Soiree at Aldwych Theatre

And an extra that I loved but didn’t review was The End of Hope at Soho Theatre

Roz Wyllie

*******

Rent 21st Anniversary UK Tour – this show stole my heart and reignited my love for theatre. Bruce Guthrie directed the production perfectly. It was raw, gritty and truly touching. Choreography by Lee Proud was innovative and interesting and the entire cast were outstanding. It felt like they were living their lives through the character for those 2 and a half hours each night. All cast members poured everything into each performance and everything came together to create magic on stage.

Yank at the Charing Cross Theatre, London – the story was powerful, gripping and relevant. Scott Hunter and Andy Coxon were just superb in their roles, particularly Scott Hunter who shone throughout. Staging and choreography were slick and in keeping with the story. It was also fantastic to see an audience of predominantly men, so many in fact that men were lining up for the toilet.

The Toxic Avenger at The Arts Theatre, London – the show really impressed me with its comic-timing, fantastic use of the stage and the actors were fantastic. Songs were catchy and the plot fitted well together. Certainly different from my usual favourites but I laughed my way through this show.

Amanda Reynolds

*******

Girl From The North Country: This would have been a wonderful straight play with a tremendous book from Conor McPherson but add some of Bob Dylan’s greatest songs and you have a masterpiece. It’s atmospheric and at times mesmerising. I’ve seen it twice at The Old Vic and hope to see it again when it transfers to the Noel Coward next year.

Follies: Follies has always been a difficult musical to stage due to the fact it has no real plot and a downbeat ending but the National have done Sondheim’s Magnus Opus proud. The production is wonderful and the performances from the likes of Imelda Staunton, Janie Dee and Philip Quast sublime.

Romantics Anonymous: This was the most magical piece I’ve seen on the London stage for a long time and is Emma Rice’s swansong before she leaves her post as Artistic Director at the Globe. This was a bit of surprise as being at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, it slipped under my radar. Let’s hope it gets a transfer to the West End as it deserves it.

Alan Fitter

*******

Alice’s Adventures Underground in the Vaults – a kooky, surprising and interactive take on the classic tale. Hedda Gabler by Euphonia Studio at the Drayton Arms – a stark, pared-down, psychologically compelling performance. When Midnight Strikes by MKEC Productions at the Drayton Arms – a funny and moving tale of a special New Year’s Eve.

Genni Trickett

http://ift.tt/2Dv0N4U London Theatre 1

[jjaywmac]

What’s in a Name?

My father was born Vito Anthony Orlandella, and he didn’t much care for his name. “Vito” was all right, and in fact, he named his principal business The Vito Fruit Company. No real problem with the benign Anthony, it was the last name he saw as problematic. His one foray into show business as a record producer was done under the name “Tony Vito”. I’m not certain, but I believe he thought that Orlandella was too long and clumsy for a billboard. He had another name ready but never got the chance to use it. A clever anagram made by dropping the first two and the last letters of his name. Thus was born “Vic Landell”. When it came time to name my ballplayer-turned-detective, the choice was an easy one. Call it a homage to my father.

1

Genesis

If you reside in Florida near the Ocean, you qualify as a resident of a “Coast.” If you live between Palm Beach and Miami, you are on the Gold Coast. Between Port St. Lucie and the Indian River? That would be the Treasure Coast. While the area around Cape Canaveral is, no surprise, the Space Coast. Over here on the Gulf of Mexico, we limit ourselves to just one. The stretch that runs from above Tarpon Springs all the way down to Naples is known as the Sun Coast. Now in the dead of a Florida winter, which means that the temperature has plummeted to a mere eighty degrees, I am constantly reminded of Sarah Miles’ languid portrayal of “Alice” in the film “White Mischief” and her line for the ages, “Oh, God, not another fucking beautiful day.”

As my Lotus Elise SC makes the left off Bee Ridge and merges into traffic on Interstate 75 Northbound, I am about an hour away from my destination. Here is your chance to “vet” me. I was born Victor Anthony Landell, on August 22, 1979, at the Massachusetts General Hospital. From day one, everybody called me “Vic.” My father Peter, “Pete,” was a Captain of Detectives for the Boston Police Department, and recently retired to Falmouth on Cape Cod. My mother Katherine, better known as “Kate,” was Chief Nurse at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute right up until the day a cerebral hemorrhage took her life four years ago. Her death devastated my father. My older brother by eighteen months, Thomas, or “Tommie”, is a Commander in the Navy and living out my dream, flying fighter jets off a Nimitz-class carrier.

My IQ score says I should have been a great student, but my interest level begged to differ. I was more concerned with the Red Sox and girls, though not in that order. If you look across the Charles River from Storrow Drive you can see Harvard and M.I.T. “So near and yet so far.” Let’s just say I wasn’t ticketed for either, more likely some State college or, with luck, UMass.

I didn’t get to UMass, and for one good reason, my left arm. I played baseball in high school gifted with a decent fastball and not much else. During my junior year, a coach took me aside and said, “You have the longest fingers I have ever seen. Why aren’t you throwing curve balls?” Good question. So I worked and worked to develop what ballplayers call “the deuce.” Lo and behold, by senior year my curve and I were unhittable.

Then the phone started to ring, and suddenly, college coaches who a year before wouldn’t have given me the time of day were begging me to play for them. Being a Catholic, wanting my parents to see me play, and have the chance for a quality education, I chose Boston College.

The Society of Jesus expected me to do more than just pitch. Things like go to class, study, pass, and oh yeah, graduate – concepts that USC and Texas didn’t bother to mention. A major in history was coupled with a minor in philosophy. Philosophy? Once the Jesuits have you, they never let you go. Of course, neither discipline would get me a job since philosophers are always the last ones hired. Meanwhile, my hurling was coming along nicely, and after four years, I graduated – with honors.

Now, Boston College is no one’s idea of a baseball or for that matter a football factory. If you want a centerman or a lawyer, you look here. If you want a shortstop you look elsewhere. Most scouts couldn’t find Chestnut Hill with both hands and a map. Wonder of wonders, midway through my senior year, I was being scouted by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Miracle of miracles, they drafted me. OK, so it was in the 30th round, but I was in no position to quibble. My philosophy career would have to be postponed. Game called on account of the National Pastime.

Continuing up I-75, a town appears on our left. Not just any town, it is Bradenton aka Sarasota’s ugly stepsister. Bradenton has precisely two claims to fame. It is the home of Tropicana Orange Juice, and for six weeks every winter, the home of the Pirates. This is where it all began for me, February 2000, spring training with Pittsburgh. I arrived on the afternoon of the 15th – bringing with me a glove and a dream. When a Major League team drafts you in the 30th round, your signing bonus will just about pay for a baloney and cheese sandwich. I couldn’t care less. I was a Professional Baseball player.

In all, three summers would pass toiling in the Pirates minor league system. I started playing “A” ball in Lynchburg, Virginia; the year after “AA” in Altoona, Pennsylvania; and finally, “AAA” in Nashville. While down on the farm, I played with guys on the way up, some others on the way down, and a few on the way out – has-beens and never-wases, prospects and suspects. The Pirates told me I was a prospect. So I rode the buses, slept in team motels, ate a lot of fast food, and waited. In the spring of 2003, my time finally arrived.

With Bradenton in the rearview mirror, we now transition to the I-275. The high-strung Elise is loafing along in 6th gear at 80 mph and goading me on as the road bends right. Coming into view is our local “Jewel in the Crown,” the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, according to some expert the third greatest bridge in the world. It’s the gateway to St. Petersburg, the back way to Tampa.

At the end of spring training, I was called into the manager’s office. There would be no going back to Nashville, I had made the team and would go north with the Pirates. The word I was looking for was incredulous, because some way somehow, I was headed to “the show.”

The end of the Bridge is the start of St. Petersburg. A city of two hundred and fifty thousand, it sits across the bay from Tampa and faces the Gulf of Mexico. If you are poor, you live in Tampa. Rich? St. Pete.

Further up the 275, accompanied by the wind noise around my open car and the whine from the supercharger a foot behind my head, I decide to fight back. Up comes the volume on the Lotus’ CD player. A note about my music – I was educated by parents who explained to me that modern music sucked and rap is crap – ‘60s rock and roll is the only real music. Thus, the CD changer has everything from the Beatles covering “Ain’t She Sweet” to the Rivingtons and their immortal “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.” Then mix in a dash of Francis Albert Sinatra, and since this is Florida, a dollop of James William Buffett, and presto – music.

When we arrived in Pittsburgh, I was told that my starting days were over and I was now a short reliever. In the lexicon of Baseball, a left-handed “short reliever” is the guy who arrives in the 8th inning, with the game hanging in the balance, for the sole purpose of getting out the other team’s best left-handed hitter. So, I had a role to play.

That first year in a Major League clubhouse was an education. I learned the official language of Baseball – profanity. Players are quite skilled at using modifiers: “That frigin’ ball went so frigin’ far and so frigin’ high!” They also like adding the word “mother” for emphasis. The boys are also adept at coming up with phrases to describe particular situations. If a pitcher goes nine innings and allows two hits, a player might be apt to say he “stuck the bat up your butt.” Conversely, if a reliever comes in, faces four batters, gives up four hits and allows four runs to score, he has just “shit all over the place.” Then there are the ladies. What to a rock guitarist is a groupie, to an outfielder is an Annie. Baseball Annies, like groupies, come in various sizes and shapes, some rather good, some with lots of “personality.” They have one thing – all right, two things in common. They want to meet a ballplayer, and they know the exact location of every team’s road hotel. Some players will always choose quality over quantity, but for others, “a ten o’clock two is a two o’clock ten.” And, of course, there are the bird-watchers, those drawn to the mating call of the double-breasted mattress thrasher.

The year before, Pittsburgh had opened a glorious new ballpark right on the river with a view of downtown. Unfortunately, their silk purse came with a sow’s ear – the Pirates. That summer, the team mustered just seventy-five wins to finish fourth. We outdid ourselves the following season, seventy-two victories. Ta Da!

For two years, I did my job, did it pretty well, and then awoke one morning to learn I had been traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Pirates had started yet another urban renewal project. Rebuilding was the one thing they led the league in. Desirable assets, me I suppose, were being exchanged for still more prospects. I was headed for my second team, having been swapped for the legendary “player-to-be-named-later.”

At least I was going to a winning team with a great manager in Tony La Russa. In 2004, the Cards won a stupefying 105 games to take the pennant before having their lunch handed to them by the Red Sox in the Series. The team had front row seats for the death of the Curse. 2005 looked to be more of the same as we won 100 games and swept the Padres in the first round. In the next round, however, we got swarmed by the Astros’ killer B’s. Bagwell, Berkman and Biggio sent us packing in six games.

I enjoyed my season – notice I used the singular and not the plural – in St. Louis because the fans were arguably the best in Baseball. Soon, it was moving day again. The Cardinals had some young arms ready to come up from the minors. “Young arms” is a euphemism for rookies who play for the minimum, and I was a highly paid veteran – as a result of arbitration – at over $1,000,000 a year.

There is a dirty word for what I had become, a “journeyman.”

And while we are on the subject of dirty words, now appearing on your right is Tropicana Field, by unanimous consent the worst ballpark in the world. To me, it’s the box St. Petersburg came in, a domed monstrosity full of girders, cables, catwalks, and about a million-and-a half-ground rules. All of which begs the question, what genius decided that on a summer evening Floridians wanted to be indoors?” Happily, I had the displeasure of playing there on precious few occasions.

So, the Cards shipped me off to the Atlanta Braves. Talk about your boomtown, you can feel it growing around you. In Buckhead alone, there is enough nightlife for five cities, and, per square foot, more beautiful women than anywhere else in the world. You can’t swing a fungo bat without hitting a major babe. Needless to say, my three years in Atlanta were a lot of fun, thanks in large part to a new, lucrative three-year contract.

While there, I got to play for another big-time manager, Bobby Cox. There is a problem with playing for the likes of Cox and La Russa – they are used to winning. For fifteen straight years, the Braves had made the playoffs. Well, we put a stop to that.

Not only did we not make the playoffs, we chalked up the first losing season in fifteen years.

“Oh Lord, I hope they are not rebuilding.”

The Braves were a team in transition, learning to cope without future hall-of-famers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. The next season, we somewhat righted the ship – 84 wins left us five games behind the Phillies.

In reality, all we did was rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. The win total dropped to 72 the following year. Then we were 20 games adrift of the Phils. It was time to rebuild in Atlanta and time for me to go. During the winter, I was traded again, this time to Philadelphia, and in February 2009, I reported for spring training with the Phillies in Clearwater.

“Would it have killed somebody to trade me to the Red Sox?”

Clearwater is precisely where we are now. Having exited the 275, we are now northbound on U. S. Highway 19. First stop is the Lotus Dealer where I am leaving the Elise to be serviced. Note to anyone who plans on buying a high performance British sports car – make sure you know where the dealer is. Mine is fifty-five miles from home.

I am fortunate that the appointment only takes about three hours, and the service manager gives me a loaner car lest I miss an appointment and wind-up with parts stamped “Made in England” littering the Interstate. Ten minutes later, we are back on the Highway.

Spring with the Phillies did not start well. The Club already had left-handed relievers, so, why did they trade for me? There was talk about my going back to the minors, hardly music to my ears.

After six years in the show, the thought of playing out the summer in Allentown, PA, toiling in AAA for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs – whatever they are, was almost too much to bear. Now, for the first time ever, the “R” work crept through my mind. Retirement.

That said, pitchers can be notoriously fragile. Sure enough, a ligament tear here, a pulled muscle there, some tendinitis, and surprise – once again I was invaluable. That summer, the Phillies used twenty-two different pitchers.

I hated Philadelphia – didn’t like the town or the people, and the cheese steak will never replace the sub sandwich or a slice of Regina’s pizza. The poor man’s Cradle of Liberty held no allure for me since I grew up in the real one. The Phillies had moved into a new stadium in 2004, a big upgrade over the dump they used to play in. Citizens Bank Park is many things – pitcher friendly is not one of them. It wasn’t so much a ballpark as it was a launching pad – Canaveral, without the alligators. There were precisely three saving graces. The first, the Phillies were winners. Second, thanks to my now being eligible for free agency, they were paying me over $6,000,ooo a year on a three-year deal.

The third came in June of 1910, when a Delta charter landed at Logan Airport. As a result of inter-league play, the Phillies came to Boston. The next day, I walked on the grass at Fenway Park. You can change grass to sacred soil because, to any true New Englander, this is hallowed ground as surely as the sod on Lexington Green. I got to pitch in Baseball’s Basilica.

A month later, it was well past midnight when we checked-in at San Francisco. I got to my room, and the message light on the phone was blinking. My dad had called and said it was urgent. I called his cell phone and barely recognized the voice on the other end. Through his trembling lips came two words, “She’s gone.” My mother was dead. Four hours later, I was in a cab back to SFO, with a reservation on the first flight home. I arranged for a high school buddy to pick me up at Logan, and we drove to Newton.

The view of our classic New England brick and wood home off Commonwealth Avenue was a sight for these sore eyes. My father was crushed. High school sweethearts, they had been married for thirty-seven years. Two days later, we buried her in Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden.

The Navy was able to get word to Tommie, somewhere in the Med. As for my dad, my only hope was that he would throw himself into his work, which he did. As for me, heartbroken, I went back to helping the Phillies win ballgames. And we kept on winning. Like every team, we had injuries, and like every good team, we fought through them.

We put together a solid 93-win season and in September, clinched the Club’s third straight Division Title. We rolled through the playoffs, making short work of the Rockies and the Dodgers, and landed a spot in the Fall Classic. I now had a shot at a ring, but looming in the other dugout was the team every Bostonian loathes, none other than the Evil Empire. Swear to God – I’d root for the plague if it were playing the Yankees.

The bastards had won the Series twenty-six times, and far be it from us to stand in the way of number twenty-seven. So, the Bronx Bombers took us out, four games to two. No title for the City of Brotherly Love, and sadly, no ring for moi.

Midway through the next season, while warming up, I felt a sharp pain in my elbow. There are two places a pitcher never wants to feel discomfort – in the shoulder, which usually means a torn rotator cuff, and the elbow, most likely ligament damage. I wanted a second opinion. It took one trip to the Kerlan-Jobe Clinic in Los Angeles and one exam by the great Doctor Jobe himself to confirm my own diagnosis, my elbow needed work. In the lingo of medicine, it’s known as an “Ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction.” For a pitcher who didn’t quite make medical school, it’s called “Tommy John Surgery.” On July 23, I went under the knife. The surgeons were pleased with the procedure, and two weeks later I began rehab.

I was three months into rehabilitation before I was allowed to simulate a throwing motion. One month later, they let me swing a golf club. By February, I was throwing off a mound with little discomfort. I then joined the Phillies in Clearwater to do more throwing and increase my arm strength. In April, I started throwing my bread and butter pitch – the curve ball. For whatever reason, it wasn’t breaking, or as players would say, “biting.” During August, there was a traditional rehab tour of the minors, and left-handed batters who I used to have for lunch were lining shots over me, under me, and through me. In September, when Major League Baseball teams expand their rosters to forty players, the Phillies didn’t even bother call me up. In their minds and mine, I was done.

No sad songs for me. I had put in nine seasons in the bigs and earned what in clubhouse-ese was a “shit load” of money, and in time, will receive a very generous pension. While no one’s idea of a miser, I was somewhat careful with my Benjamins. Teammates would pony up $250,000 for a Ferrari, whereas your humble servant would plunk down 50 large for a Lotus. A $100,000,000 contract usually carries with it a 10,000 square foot mansion. As you will see, I settled for less. And for good measure, I bought a ton of Apple at 100 and sold it at 600. In short, I’m loaded.

Ahead is the Florida Highway 60 exit, then a quarter-mile down the State Road, followed by a right onto Old Coachman Road. Our destination is in sight – Bright House Field, spring home of the Phillies. It is part of the new wave of Florida ballparks, with seats for 7,500 and a berm to accommodate an additional 1,500 freeloaders.

I’m here to have lunch with a good buddy, David Murdoch. Davy was the chief nuclear engineer on what is known in the Navy as a “boomer,” a ballistic missile submarine. As with so many before him, two months without seeing the sun got to be a little old. Having retired from the service, now divorced, and grossly overqualified, the Phillies hired him to be of all things their groundskeeper at Bright House.

We pitchers all loved him because he tailored the field to our liking. Ground ball pitchers got taller grass, and the foul lines were slopped away so a bunt would not stay fair. The bulb finally went on over someone’s head, and he was named chief electrician. He is a stand-up guy, an above average golfer, and one of my best friends.

Lunch is at the Clearwater Wine Bar & Bistro, a popular spot on the water. While we wait for our food, Davy brings me up to speed on what he has been doing.

“The Stadium has decided to update the lighting system.”

Good lights are crucial in Florida for an obvious reason – in the summer, virtually every game is a night game. Davy drew up plans for a new, million dollar system. He got the Phillies to go for it based on the fact that it was more energy efficient and would pay for itself…in just a hundred years.

“You’re going to do that job? I realize that you can take a reactor apart in your sleep, but this sounds like trouble.”

“Do you think I’m going up those towers and handle all that high voltage? How dumb do I look? An outside firm does all the installation work. Design? Yes. Touch? No.”

“Consider me greatly relieved. I have plans to clean your clock at Prestancia. When can you come down?”

“We’ll be on the first tee just as soon as I put baby to bed.”

Two ginger ales, a club sandwich, and a fight over the check later – which I won, I drop him off at the ballpark.

Now back to the narrative. One morning during that first spring with the Pirates, I finished my work out early, borrowed a friend’s car, and went exploring. Seven miles south on U. S. Highway 41, I was stopped dead in my tracks. This was it. The sign said “Sarasota”; it might as easily said Paradise. The town’s motto could have been: “aqua, aqua, ubique.” Latin? Seriously? In English, that translates “water, water, everywhere.” Remember, I’m the product of a Catholic education. The area includes two bays, one intra-coastal waterway, inlets, outlets, canals, a bayou, a river and one Gulf of Mexico. If you love the water, and I do, this is the place.

The little town seemed to have everything – theatre, opera, ballet, excellent restaurants although the search for someone who can make lasagna like my mother goes on, and massive snob appeal, which we call sophistication. How could I not love a place whose symbol is Michelangelo’s David? I heard a voice saying,

“Someday I’m going to live here.”

It was my voice.

After three years in the relative squalor of a Pittsburgh apartment, I was ready to make my move.

Siesta Key is a special place, a barrier island with the Intracoastal Waterway on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. Its signature feature, however, is the beach. By acclamation, the beach at Siesta Key is one of the ten best in the world. The reason? It’s the sand, which is pure white with the consistency of baby powder. It’s mostly borax, and one can walk barefoot on the hottest day of the year and not feel it. If a pitcher isn’t pitching, he’s running. What better place to do my miles than right here?

I knew what I wanted. The Key is crisscrossed with canals that feed into the Gulf. The search was on for a home that sits by a canal. My realtor lined up a couple of choices, and number two was the winner, a three-and-a-den fixer, complete with a pool/Jacuzzi combination, and – drum roll please – a dock.

The combination of needs, work, and the bursting Florida real estate bubble made it a steal. A renovation included Alabaster walls, French doors, and a large island in the kitchen since, to an Italian, the cucina is the center of the universe. It took a month, but one day I woke up and was living a five iron from the Gulf. OK, I’ve told you who I am, where I’m from, and what I used to do. The remaining question is,

“What do I do now?”

Well, for starters, I’m a Florida first responder. I signed on as a member of the shock troops when the inevitable big one, Hurricane “fill-in-the-blank”, comes roaring up I-75. In addition, I do some charity fundraising, help coach a little league team, and in my spare time, I am something of a golfer, thanks to a membership at TPC Prestancia. The membership committee was obviously drunk when they voted me in. Oh yes, there is one more thing. I am quite possibly the first ex-ballplayer ever to become a P.I. That is correct. Vic Landell, former big league pitcher, is now Vic Landell, private investigator. Why and how I got this job in a bit, right now I’m just trying to get home.

U.S. Highway 41 is also the Tamiami Trail, or better known to the locals, “The Trail.” It is the main drag through Sarasota, Bradenton, and miles beyond. Outsiders believe the summer is the worst time to be in Florida, and they would be wrong. The winter is the worst time. Why? I can answer that with one word: snowbirds. The Trail, almost desolate in August, is our version of a California Freeway in January. Ohio and Indiana license plates outnumber those that read Florida. It took all of three weeks before I grew to loathe the interlopers.

“Bastards, why don’t they just go home and leave us alone?”

I was an official resident. Normally they are a fact of life and you just put up with them. Tonight is different – I have a date.

    “BURDEN OF PROOF” – Chapter 1 What’s in a Name? My father was born Vito Anthony Orlandella, and he didn’t much care for his name.