#i totally just had a dream that john and reader were divorcing but it was like…not something bad

[johnsbleu]

hiii! just wanted to pop in and say that if you didn’t know, i’m a manager at a movie theater and if you know anything about movies right now, this is a HUGE time for us. with wicked, gladiator, and moana, this is like our super bowl lol it’s VERY busy. not to mention it’s the holidays soon. i wanted to update sometime soon but i’m exhausted by the time i get home and i’m even working on my days off.

anyway, i definitely want to get an update out there soon but even just sitting down to edit it usually leads to me just going on youtube to watch a stupid video before i ultimately decide to go to bed bc im so tired lol. but i will update soon i promise!!!

[marnz]

2023 book post

I read 63 books this year (i do count short stories & novellas) and there were epic highs (everyone read the school for good mothers) and epic lows (y'all read this shit? for real?).

here are my top ten, in no particular order, followed by thoughts on the rest. it's so long lol okay let's get into it

top ten.

the school for good mothers by jessamine chan - a perfect commentary on the prison industrial complex and how poor, single, and mothers of color are treated set in a chilling near future. loved it. i read this book in june and think about it daily.

edinburgh by alexander chee - this book is a modern classic for good reason. gay tragedy lovers this book is for YOU. the prose is so beautiful, so dream like, that i couldn't stop reading. i read this book in one sitting, very nearly a year ago, and i was completely devastated by it.

in the woods by tana french - love this for: unreliable narrator who sucks but is compelling; prose about the woods and the 1980s mystery; cassie; a police procedure that starts off by being like 'crucially you must understand that the police lie.' i have a weakness for atmospheric books and this has that in spades.

homegoing by yaa gyasi - this book is SO good and the prose and character voices are excellent. it's extremely epic but somehow only 300 pages?!? each character only gets 1 chapter but gyasi does SO much with each chapter 😭 i read this in one day because i could not stop reading. i also read gyasi's other book, transcendent kingdom, which was also very good.

some desperate glory by emily tesh - this book is a mindfuck and is one of the few times i've seen [spoiler] done well. there are a lot of things this book talks about--imperialism; artificial intelligence; fascism; white supremacy and how it intersects with gender; queerness; eugenics. i posted about it early when i had only read like 49% and i was soooo wrong to do so. read this and just trust me.

x by davey davis - okay are you ready for this? X is queer/trans bdsm neo noir mystery set in a dystopian near future. it is dark, it is consuming, it is surprising, it is a book i turn over obsessively whenever i can't sleep. i need to reread and i only read it a few months ago.

baru cormorant series/the masquerade by seth dickinson - this is 3 books but let's count it as one book. much has been said about baru as a cringefail autistic marxist lesbian icon (affectionate) but what i really appreciate about these books, other than how fucking gay they are, is the specificity of the world building. i have a theory that modern readers are in search of detail (and cruelly denied by much of publishing rn). seth dickinson loves details. seth dickinson is going to take semi familiar narratives and tell them in a brand new way using details; math; hyper specific words. god i love it

poverty by america by matthew desmond - relatively short book, read it in a day. i also read desmond's first book, evicted, and it is also SO good but what's sexy about this book is that modern american society and esp. politicians frequently likes to be like 'oh no, poverty is so tragic but it can't be solved' and desmond is like 'watch me.' for people who enjoy reading andrea long chu take downs reviews and want concrete solutions for how to build a better world.

station eleven by emily st. john mandel - many people told me this was the best book they've ever read and i was like 'whatever. i'll get to it when i get to it.' DO NOT BE ME!! read this!! i wouldn't say this is a happy book but it was a beautiful book. i loved it. i cried for about 90 minutes afterwards. for art lovers, weird theatre kids, people unafraid of plague books, non linear timeline lovers, people who have been divorced.

piranesi by susanna clarke - okay i read this on my flight to frankfurt earlier this year and it totally bowled me over with how lovely it was and how emotional i got. just a beautiful, delicate, haunting, eerie book. for fans of mysteries, people who love oceans, gothic houses, people who earnestly believed magic was real as kids and hope it's real today, people who love academic drama they aren't involved in.

okay damn honorable mentions: in the dream house by carmen maria machado (SO good, maybe deserves my rec more than piranesi), normal people by sally rooney (mainly because it did make me insane), under the banner of heaven by jon krakauer (thorough, horrifying), honey & spice by bolu babalola (SO fun), sula by toni morrison (stunning!!), severance by ling ma (millennial alienation during a plague, amirite?), trust exercise by susan choi (who knows what really happened? you'll understand).

okay now the worst books i read this year, aka books i did not vibe with:

broken harbor & the trespasser by tana french; did not enjoy broken harbor due to the themes and did not enjoy the trespasser due to how cringefail the ending was. you can't depict ongoing harassment a woman of color is experiencing in her workplace, make her decide to leave after two years of this harassment, and then back track it in the last chapter? please. this is a problem tana french runs into a lot, but that is a different post

the witch elm by tana french; parts of this book were absolutely delicious. but a lot of it felt very tedious and in need of a stern editor. so many books these days need more thorough editing and the result is that a potentially amazing book is just like, okay. i understand the power fantasy that this book is designed to be, but i'm not the right audience for it (disabled). also, generally i need a character to root for.

amateur by thomas page mcbee; SO sorry thomas. i didn't vibe with this book mainly because i don't think i'm the target audience for it. i'm not cis and i'm not straight?? i also am not interested in narratives about trans men wanting to prove their masculinity by taking up a violent sport. i think this tension is addressed in the book but it wasn't addressed to my satisfaction. violence is often all the world gives to men as a source of power and thus serves as a solace for everything patriarchy takes from them, so i suppose i understand wanting to be able to get a piece of that...logically that makes sense. but also. why.

the late americans by brandon taylor; the thing is, i fucking love real life by brandon taylor and i enjoy brandon's criticism and read his substack (although i disagree with almost every aesthetic opinion he has). so possibly my expectations were too high, but i read this and i guess i was just...wanted to know what the point is. gay people suffering in the midwest? as a genre, it slaps. as a book, i feel frustrated. it felt loose, pointless, in great need of editing. brandon talks about this book by talking about the importance of moral fiction, and this book lacks moral urgency for many of its stories. i've read a lot of moral fiction and this isn't it? anyway I read this in July and looking back all I remember is Seamus' journey and the way brandon dragged workshopping.

the angel of the crows by katherine addison; look. if you're going to write sherlock wingfic, put it on ao3. if you're going to file off the serial numbers, please work harder so i can't tell what it originally was. and absolutely nix the author's note saying it was sherlock fanfic, because that makes me very unhappy! personally!

99% mine by sally thorne; classic second book syndrome. except the third one is also not very good. too bad!

touched out by amanda montei; okay obligatory disclaimer that i'm not a mother or parent but rather an adult who loves my friends' kids! this book really frustrated me and i think i would have enjoyed it considerably more if it was all cultural criticism instead of a memoir (other than the dworkin parts????). a memoir is an art form, a set narrative, but criticizing it feels weird because i am criticizing the author's life decisions as presented to me, in a flattened context, in a controlled narrative. if the memoir parts were instead part of a fictional book i would not hold back lol. this book is marketed as the most important work of feminist scholarship in the last 30 years and...it ain't. i also felt the focus was incredibly narrow. while montei does attempt to cite a broad range of theorists i just kept finding myself wondering, what about people from other cultures? what about disabled mothers? what about queer mothers or parents? what about this? WHERE'S YOUR RESEARCH? WHERE ARE YOUR INTERVIEWS? there is a specific kind of feminism where white women act like their specific experience is the pinnacle of all suffering and tbh it isn't. this book reminded me of that very strongly. like, if you're telling me you won't have an epidural because it was invented by a man then you are not a useful person to engage with, thanks.

books that would have been amazing if not for that one part

he who drowned the world by shelley parker chan - man i have mixed thoughts on this book. look away my beloved swbts mutuals. okay the epic highs (ouyang & zhu!! ma!!) were set off by baoxiang lmao. i'm mainly interested in queer masculinity and femininity and a femme straight guy is like. well, good for him, but i don't really care? bring me back to my loveds zhu and ouyang. but my main gripe...tbh i think baoxiang is a hugely unreliable narrator that protests about a lot of things too much. being straight for one thing; not having a thing for esen is another. AND MORE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE WITH THIS? like i honestly wish the implied incest thing, which was brought up at least twice, was more present. taking a step back, if you're like well i'm straight and i don't have a thing for my dead brother i helped kill but i absolutely will be seducing the spitting image of him while i fuck my way to the top of the throne? that should make me insane. possibly it would have in a book that didn't already have ouyang. who can tell. so i wish SPC had leaned into that a lot more, i wish baoxiang hadn't felt like such a plot instrument, i wish there was more Ma, i wish spoilery completely unbelievable storyline was better, etc.

in memorial by alice winn - damn, this book. it was so good but it fell apart at the end. i respect winn's decision to not have it be perfectly easy after living through the untold horrors of the trenches of wwi but the idea of two brits running away to brazil to live out a life of colonial bliss because being gay wasn't explicitly illegal in brazil at a time is like. what? i guess. anyway, it was good, i just have some notes.

romantic comedy by curtis sittenfeld - here's the thing, i love curtis sittenfeld and i knew going in that this is a book by the author that wrote rodham but man, this is a book by the author that wrote rodham. this is the most Online book i've ever read (derogatory) and it's very specific in its liberal i'm an Online author on twitter type of deal. the point of the book is that Not Tina Fey falls for Male Taylor Swift on Not Saturday Night Live and it was good, it was fun, i wasn't expecting [spoiler] ummm but it worked. i had a good time.

this is very long, sorry.

[freddiesaysalright]

Just Like a Woman - Part 5

A Roger Taylor x Reader Fic

Summary: You and Roger were once in love when you were young. Only, he went on to be a rock star, and you went on to be a lawyer. Now, quite against your will, you’re representing him in his divorce.

Word Count: 4.9k (a lot needed to happen im sorry)

Tag List:  @psychosupernatural, @someone-get-a-medic, @bensrhapsody, @deakyclicks, @crazylittlethingcalledobsession, @minigranger, @crazyweirdocalledfriday, @the-moving-finger-writes, @assembledherethevolunteers, @rose-writes-prose, @queenlover05, @26-7-49, @drowsebaby, @moon-stars-soul, @im-an-adult-ish, @ixchel-9275, @jennyggggrrr, @zyanmaik, @mypassionfortrash, @a19103, @madeinheavxn, @beepbeephardy, @lizawritesthings, @qweenly, @blisshemmings, @seasidecrowbar, @internationalkpoplova, @ellystone, @takemetoneverland420, @coffeexcigarette, @lookuptotheskiesandsee, @thatpunkmaximoff, @angelkissys, @rocknroll-stolemyass, @simonedk, @anotheronebitesrogertaylor, @peterquillzblog, @mrfahrenhcit, @joseph-mozzerella, @theprettyandthereckless, @flick-ofthe-wrist, @johndeaconshands, @rogerandhiscar, @queenmaracasandlove, @sunflower-ben, @cubetriangle, @amy-brooklyn99, @scorpiogemini, @kiainspace​, @itsabenthing​, @bookandband​, @makemeyourwife-loveofmylife​, @grazessa​ If you’d like to be added, let me know!

A/N: Will things finally turn around for Y/N and Roger?

Warning(s): None :)

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Part 5 here we go!!!

“He said that?!” Roger questioned, incredulous. 

“Yeah,” you sniffled. “Fucking prick.”

You sat together in the booth at the studio. Roger was making you a cup of tea. You told him everything you discussed at the therapist’s office and the things Mark said to you. He let you cry on his shoulder at the start before getting up for the tea for the finale. Now, as he handed it to you, his eyes were narrowed with confusion and hurt for you.

“That really is an awful thing to say,” he agreed. “I mean, it’s one thing to say he doesn’t feel like he can be with you but to say that love is wasted on you….first of all, it’s not true. Second of all, it’s vicious. He was trying to hurt you.”

“Maybe I deserved it,” you said, looking away. “I haven’t been the best girlfriend to him. I’ve been afraid and hesitant and….I know I’ve hurt him.”

“Doesn’t give him the right to say something like that,” Roger argued. “And you didn’t hurt him intentionally.”

“That’s true,” you conceded.

“Besides, you’re an incredible person,” he went on. “Love isn’t wasted on you. I don’t think love is wasted on anybody really, but least of all you.”

You forced a smile. “Thanks.”

He sipped his tea and looked at you. You simply stared at yours, eyes fixed on the steam rising out of the cup. 

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” he said. “You’re hurting and it’s not fair. And it’s partly my fault.”

“It’s not your fault, Rog,” you replied softly. “I wouldn’t take back a single moment with you. Not for anyone or anything.”

He paused at that, taking it in. A part of him had always wondered if you regretted being with him after the way he hurt you. It was a relief to know you didn’t. 

“Me neither,” he said.

Another beat passed. He watched you drum your fingers against your mug. Then he got an idea.

“I know what’ll cheer you up,” he said, offering his hand. “Come with me.”

Your brow furrowed. “Where?”

“We’re not leaving the building, we’re just going to the keyboard,” he said.

“Okay…” you agreed hesitantly.

He helped you off the couch and led you into the studio. Holding Roger’s hand felt familiar, but in that odd way where you think it was something you must have dreamed. You reached the keyboard and sat down beside him. You both placed your beverages on the table to the side.

“I might be rusty, so apologies in advance,” he said.

You nodded. Then, he began to play an old, familiar tune.

“Lida Rose, I’m home again, Rose,” he began to sing. “To get the sun back in the sky. Lida Rose, I’m home again, Rose. About a thousand kisses shy…”

You nearly started crying again. The Music Man was your father’s absolute favorite, and he had taught you and Roger almost every song from it. There were enough duets for you two and it was fun to play and sing together. As Roger sang through the first part, your eyes watered. He looked at you and smiled gently.

“So here is my love song, Not fancy or fine, Lida Rose, oh won’t you be mine? Lida Rose, Oh, Lida Rose, Oh…”

He finished, picked up the tempo and looped back around. He began again, and this time you joined him. 

“Dream of now,” you sang shakily. “Dream of then. Dream of a love song, That might have been. Do I love you? Oh, yes, I love you. And I’ll bravely tell you. But only when we dream again….”

As the song progressed, you and Roger’s smiles widened as you held each other’s gaze. You were back in your parents’ living room, just barely teenagers and singing together while your father watched you behind a cup of tea and a cigar. 

“Forever. Oh, yes, forever. Will I ever tell you? Oh, no…”

“Lida Rose, Oh, Lida Rose, Oh…”

You each finished your parts. A real, genuine smile claimed your lips now as you looked at him. Then you heaved a sigh and rested your head on his shoulder. You fit there like a missing puzzle piece. It hit him all at once just how much he had been missing it.

“Thank you, Roger,” you said. “You always did know how to cheer me up.”

“Well, it’s always been that song, how could I forget?” he joked.

You hummed lightly. “You’re not rusty, you know. I don’t think you missed a note.”

“Do you sing The Music Man much anymore?” he wondered.

“No,” you said wistfully. “Not since Dad died.”

“Well, you haven’t lost your touch either,” he returned.

Your forehead was so close to his lips. He ached to kiss it. To feel your familiar skin against his mouth again. You always said forehead kisses were your favorite because they made you feel safe. Roger didn’t admit it, but they were his favorite too because they made him feel like he could take care of you. Now, he once again felt the sharp pang of regret that he hadn’t. To ease his own heart, he prepared to take the risk and kiss you.

But you sat up. 

He bit back a frustrated groan.

“I wanted to apologize for what I said to you outside the bar,” you said, still looking at the keyboard. “It was harsh.”

“It was true,” he said. “I understand you were feeling hurt. I just wish you’d let me explain.”

“Can I explain first?” you asked, looking at him now.

“Sure,” he allowed.

“I was so upset because when you told me you’d met Dominique so soon after we broke up, it made me feel like you lied to me when you left,” you said. “It wasn’t that you didn’t want to settle down. You didn’t want to settle down with me.”

“That wasn’t the case,” he said. “Like I told you, Dom and I weren’t anything close to what you and I were. We started off as a one night thing. We tried being together, but we broke up a hundred times. We got married on a whim sort of. We decided we wanted to have a family, so...you get it.”

“She told me that…” you trailed off, not really sure you wanted to confess this to him.

“What?” he pressed. “What did she tell you?”

“She told me that you never stopped loving me,” you admitted. You looked away from him again. “But I didn’t believe her.”

He opened his mouth to reply and closed it again. What he felt during his time without you was so complex, he hardly understood it himself. He missed you. Terribly, at first. But then, he really did fuck around and do whatever he wated. He had fun. But he still missed you. He met Dom, and she sort of took your place, but she wasn’t you. No one could ever be what you were to him.

“She’s partly right,” he said. “I always remembered you and thought of you. I had love for you throughout everything. And I always will.”

“Well, I hope you got everything you wanted,” you scoffed. “And you're satisfied with your exploration.”

“Yeah, I got it all out, I suppose,” he said. “I mean, I’ll never lose the thrill of performing, but when it comes to women…”

“Roger, can I ask you something?” you put forth. “And I want you to be totally honest.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said nervously.

“When you got through those feelings,” you said. “Why didn’t you -”

You didn’t get to finish your question. At that moment, the door opened and Freddie, Brian, and John walked in. They all seemed struck by your presence.

“Well, Roger, we wondered why you never showed up to lunch, but it appears we have our answer,” John said. “Hi, Y/N.”

You beamed at them. It had been so long, and they all looked so different now. But also much the same, especially their faces.

“Hi, guys,” you returned, getting to your feet.

Freddie approached you first. He wrapped you up in his arms as you laughed, embracing him in return.

“What brings you here, darling?” he asked. As he pulled away, he glanced over you. “What a gorgeous thing you’ve grown up to be!”

“Thanks, Fred,” you returned with a laugh. “I actually didn’t intend on coming here, I just...well, I split up with my boyfriend and on my way back to work I - quite literally - ran into Roger.” 

You hugged Brian and John as well, exchanging pleasantries. All the while, Roger’s leg bounced with anticipation. He had no idea what you were going to ask him, and he desperately wanted to give you any answers he was capable of giving. 

“I really should be going,” you said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do for Miss Thomas’s case. Mr. Broome is in court tomorrow for his annulment and I need to be prepared.”

Roger jumped up. 

“Wait, Y/N, you had something you wanted to ask me,” he said.

“We’ll talk more later, okay?” you returned.

“Okay, sure,” he said reluctantly.

You walked back over to him. His eyes were intense and longing. You were sure yours were the same. Then, you stood up on your toes, your body against his, your hands on his shoulders, and you kissed him on the cheek. His skin was warm and soft. He still smelled like he used to, only with a hint of more cigarettes. You heard him inhale deeply. His hands moved to your hips. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. You moved away, he helped steady you as you came back down on your heels. Then you locked eyes with him again.

“Thank you,” you said.

He could only nod. His heart was beating so wildly at you being close to him again. He watched you hopelessly as you grabbed your purse and coat. You waved to the guys, shared one last meaningful look with him, and then you were gone.

“Geez, Rog, what was all that about?” Brian wondered.

“Her boyfriend broke up with her because of me,” Roger answered. “We got to talking and now I….” he trailed off.

“Start from the beginning,” said John.

Roger told them. About your fight at the bar. He conveyed what he remembered you told the therapist and then what Mark said to you. They were all as disturbed by it as he was. Then he told them everything the two of you said to each other.

“Roger, this is getting complicated,” Brian said. “The two of you just need to sit down and have it all out.”

“I’d like to, but things keep getting in the way,” Roger said. “Her work or mine. Some distraction or another. We’re never together long enough to get it all out there.”

“Make time, dear,” Freddie said gently. “Ask her to dinner.”

“I dunno if we should be out in public,” Roger said. “It could get quite emotional.”

“Then have her at yours,” John said. “But you can’t go on like this, you’ll both go mad.”

Roger considered this. “That’s a good idea, Deaky. Only, Dominique still lives there.”

“I’ll have Veronica invite her to our place for the evening,” John offered.

“If she doesn’t go, it’s a large house, she can be out of your way,” Brian added. 

“But something needs to be done,” Freddie finished.

“Why are you all so adamant that I do this?” Roger wondered, looking around at them.

“Because ever since you’ve seen her again, you’ve been a bit of a dope,” John said with brutal honesty. “We think if you knew where you stood with her, you’d be yourself again. Only happier, maybe.”

“I’d definitely be happier,” Roger admitted. “Even if we were just friends again.”

“That’s a good sign, love,” Freddie said. “We all miss her. It’s natural that you would miss her most.”

“Well, it’s settled, then,” Roger said. “I’ll speak to her soon.”

“Do,” Freddie said. “You’ll be better for it.” 

That afternoon, you were grateful to get back to work. You were in court with Miss Thomas, and it was a welcome distraction from all thoughts of Mark. And of Roger. Especially Roger. There was still so much going unsaid between you and it was starting to drive you crazy. But without Mark in the picture, you felt more justified in exploring it. 

The judge dismissed Miss Thomas’s case, as you predicted, and you apologized to her. She promised to return to you for any future lawsuits, since you were the only lawyer who took her case in the first place. You weren’t sure if you were pleased or not. For Bill’s sake, you were because it meant more money. For your own, you were worried this meant more ridiculous suits based on penile psychic abilities and you didn’t want to keep losing. 

When you returned to your office from court, you got to work more on researching for Mr. Broome. Things were strictly business between you now that he thought you were a lesbian. Or at least participated in lesbian activity. In truth, you had never kissed another woman before, but there was no way you were going to admit it to Mr. Broome. 

As much as you looked at your law books, your mind kept going back to Roger. Your short duet with him was affecting you much more than your breakup with Mark. It made you wonder if maybe Mark was right. Was there no other man for you besides Roger Taylor? It seemed so illogical. Most people did not end up with their first boyfriend. Why were you so hung up on yours? 

The day wore on. Your office grew dark with the disappearing sunlight, but you had a few more things to wrap up before going down to the bar. You had already released Jane when you heard a knock on your door. You looked up eagerly, hoping Roger would be standing there. Only, it was Mark. You frowned. 

“What do you want?” you asked shortly. 

“Can we talk?” he wondered. “I want to apologize for what I said this morning.”

“Well, Mark, I don’t think I’m ready to accept that apology,” you returned, snapping your file shut and getting up from your chair. “I wasn’t lying when I said that was the cruelest thing anyone has ever said to me. And I know you meant it.”

“I didn’t mean it like you think I did,” he said. “It was the heat of the moment and I was angry. I wanted to hurt you.”

“If you expect kudos for admitting the obvious, you’ve come to the wrong person,” you said. “I know you wanted to hurt me. And mission accomplished.”

“I’m just saying that I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d like to try again.” 

“I’m not interested,” you replied. “The truth of the matter is, Mark, that you don’t love me. You don’t say things like that to people you truly love. You loved the idea of who I might be. I checked off boxes for qualities you’d like in a wife. But you don’t really know me. I think that if you did, you wouldn’t even like me.” 

“That’s not true,” he said, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than you. 

“You like me on paper,” you said. “I’m smart, successful, and attractive. But on the inside, I’m a mess. A mess that very few people could ever hope to understand. And you’re just not one of them.” 

“So, that’s it? You’re giving up just like that?”

You almost laughed. 

“Y’know it’s funny how every man who hurts me tells me I’m the one giving up,” you scoffed. “This time, it’s true. At the risk of sounding cold, it’s not worth the effort. I don’t love you, Mark. And I never will. I’m sorry.” 

“Well, if you’ve decided…” he trailed off. “I really am sorry for what I said. I wish I could take it back.”

“I’m glad you can’t,” you said. “I wish you well. But this is goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Y/N,” he said. 

“Goodbye.”

With one last look, he left your office. You meant everything you said to him. You just didn’t feel about Mark what you had felt for Roger. With a sigh, you began to pack up your briefcase. You had to be in court again the next day, and you wanted to be extra prepared for Mr. Broome’s case. You heard another soft knock on your door, and your head snapped up as you prepared to dismiss Mark again. 

Only it wasn’t Mark. 

“Mum?!” you cried, stunned. “You weren’t supposed to get here until Friday!”

“Well, I thought I’d come a bit early and surprise you!” she returned, laughter in her eyes. “And you should see your face!” 

You chuckled. “Come here!”

You went to her and embraced her warmly. It must have been her motherly instincts telling her you needed her because she was right on time. In fact, you had been considering skipping the bar and calling her. 

“How are you, dear?” she asked, pulling away and looking you over. “You look thin. Are you eating enough?”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m eating fine, Mum. Although I haven’t had much today, it’s been a rather emotional time.”

Her brow furrowed. “What’s going on?” 

“Why don’t you come down to the bar with me?” you offered. “You can meet all my friends and coworkers. And I’ll catch you up. You aren’t going to believe who one of my clients is.” 

She raised an eyebrow, smirked, and took your hand. Together you walked to the bar. 

You mother was stoked to meet your coworkers and see more of your life in London. Usually, you were the one visiting her, but you hadn’t been home since your father’s funeral. It was painful to think about. So, you invited her to see your life. She agreed rather enthusiastically, so you guessed she needed to get away as well. Now that she had done her grieving, it was the perfect time. 

She danced with Bill, who flirted shamelessly with her. He had a thing for older women. You giggled watching her flush at his praise. She deserved to feel that way again after losing your dad, and you knew he’d be happy she was having fun. You could imagine what he’d say. 

Well, he has good taste, doesn’t he?

You shook your head, clearing your father’s voice out of it. You found yourself thinking of him more often now that Roger was back in your life. Especially since you knew he named his son after your dad. Your father would have been so bashfully honored by that. It made your heart ache to remember he never would know that honor. 

Your mother returned to her seat beside you. 

“I don’t think I’ve danced like that since before your father died,” she giggled, grinning. 

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” you told her. 

“Now, catch me up, sweetheart,” she said. “Who’s this new client? And when am I going to meet this Mark you’ve told me about?”

“Oh, about that,” you said. 

You launched into the story. You told her about Roger, Mark, and everything that had happened since that fateful day you’d seen your old friend in that conference room. You left out the bit about kissing Dominique, though, since you weren’t trying to make her faint. She listened thoughtfully, taking in your every word. 

“I see,” she said when you finished. “Well, I’m thrilled that you’re seeing Roger again, I must say!”

“I’m not seeing Roger, Mum, I’m representing him in his divorce,” you reminded her. “I just...I feel strange about it. All these old feelings…”

“That’s perfectly understandable,” she said. “You two meant a great deal to each other.” 

“But it was so long ago,” you argued. “Shouldn’t we have moved on?”

“Well if you have to ask that question, I think you know the answer,” she said. 

Your eyes went wide as you looked at her. She winked and sipped her drink. 

You didn’t talk about Roger much for the rest of the time you were at the bar. When you got home, though, she brought him up again. 

“Darling, why not be with Roger again?” she asked. “He’s soon to be divorced, you’re single now. What’s stopping you?” 

“Mum, the reason he left me was because I wasn’t enough for him,” you reminded her. “How can I trust that I will be now?”

“Because time has passed,” she said. “He’s grown up. So have you. He’s gotten it out of his system.”

“No he hasn’t, he cheated on his wife,” you said. 

“Well, she isn’t you,” she said simply. 

“It’s different,” you said. “Part of me is still angry at him. How do we come back from what we went through?”

Your mother paused a moment. You watched her, patiently waiting for her to answer. Her expression hardened, as if trying to hold back emotion. You shot her a worried look. 

“When you were little,” she began. “Maybe seven or eight, you father had an affair with his secretary.”

A wave of shock almost knocked you off your feet. 

“What?” you gasped. 

“I didn’t want to tell you this because I don’t want you to think of your father any differently, but I think you could learn from it,” she said. “So yes. He began seeing her. She was young and beautiful. Bright eyed and sweet. They carried on for about three months together before I found out.”

Your eyes welled up with tears. “Why didn’t you leave him?”

“I considered it,” she admitted. “But I loved him too much. I couldn’t bear the thought of life without him. And we had you to think of. I asked him if he wanted to leave me for her. But he said no, he wasn’t in love with her. He just wanted to feel young again.”

“That doesn’t excuse -”

“No, of course it doesn’t excuse it,” she said. “And I was angry with him for months. Even though he ended it with her and he never strayed again, I was so hurt by it that I thought our marriage might really be over. I think...part of me was relieved Roger left you before he caused you the kind of pain your father caused me.”

“Mum, he still hurt me,” you said. “I was blindsided. He totally crushed me.”

“As did your father to me,” she said. “I’m not saying that Roger was right. The way he made you feel was absolutely terrible. But he was honest about what he needed for himself. And there’s something to be said for that.”

“How did you move on?” you asked. “With Dad, I mean.”

“The way I saw it, I had two options,” she said. “I could be angry with him and leave - but I had already ruled that out. Or I could forgive him. I chose forgiveness. And it allowed me to keep the love of my life. And our family together.”

“Was it that easy?” you questioned. 

“God, no,” she laughed. “It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever dealt with. Until I lost him, of course. But it was worth every bit of the heartache.” 

You still felt a bit off balance. They had hidden that struggle incredibly well. You always thought your parents had an exemplary marriage. But if you mother could move past that...couldn’t you offer Roger the same reprieve? You had to think about it. 

“I think if you want to be happy, whether or not you get back together with Roger, you need to forgive him,” she said. “Truly forgive him. It’s the only way forward.”

“Thanks, Mum,” you said. “I really needed your advice.”

“Of course, darling,” she said, patting your hand. “Now, let’s get to bed. I’m exhausted from your boss dancing me all over that bar!”

You laughed together and then showed her to your guest room.  

The next day, you went to work in the morning. You had court with Mr. Broome. Unfortunately, the judge did not see it your way and therefore didn’t grant the annulment. You weren’t too upset about it, though. With your mother in town and the afternoon through the weekend off, you felt like you had a lot to look forward to. Mr. Broome said he wanted to appeal the decision, and you advised him to call Jane and set up an appointment to meet with you again and you could discuss it.

The remainder of the morning was spent putting things in order for your long weekend with your mom. You were also giving Jane the time off. If you weren’t going to be in the office, why should your assistant? Any urgent business would go through Bill, who could call you at home. But you shouldn’t be needed.

You walked home, pondering where to take your mother first. Then it hit you. It was so obvious you almost laughed at yourself.

You and your mother strolled down the street. You had changed when you first got home into jeans and a jumper, and now you were comfortably on your way.

“Why can’t  you just tell me where we’re going?” your mother wondered.

“Because it’s a surprise,” you said. “And I won’t ruin it.”

You rounded a corner and pulled her to a stop.

“Close your eyes,” you instructed.

“Oh, come now…”

“Just do it!”

She smirked, sighed, and obeyed. You took her hand. Then you led her down the street and into the building.

“Yeah, I like that, Deaks,” Roger said, trying the line again. “Definitely works better.”

John gave him a thumbs up. Roger played through once more using John’s suggestion, and this time played it flawlessly.

“Well done,” said Freddie from the booth. “That was remarkably not shitty.”

Roger chuckled and flipped the singer off.

“Carry on, darlings,” Freddie instructed with a lazy wave.

They continued through and ended up liking what they ended up with. Then the door opened and all eyes turned on the new arrivals. Roger’s heart nearly burst out of his chest when he saw who it was.

“Vivian!” he cried, leaping from his stool and hurtling to the booth.

He saw her release a delighted cry and hug you quickly before turning back around to catch Roger in her arms. You laughed watching them reunite.

“Oh, Roger, dear, how wonderful you look!” your mother exclaimed, looking him over. “It’s been so long!”

“Too long,” he agreed, pulling her in for another hug. “How’ve you been?”

“I’m alright for an old lady,” she replied. “We’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you more,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she sighed, and she began dabbing at her eyes as she pulled away.

“Mum, don’t cry!” you insisted, rubbing her shoulders comfortingly.

“I can’t help it!” she returned. “It seems like yesterday this young man was just a boy hiding in my shed and now...well, look at you, Roger! A real rock star!”

“Thank you, Viv,” he said gently. “I couldn’t have gotten here without you and Felix.”

Her eyes watered even more.

“He was so proud of you, love,” she said, taking his hand between hers. “So very proud.”

Roger blinked back the tears that had formed in his own eyes. Your mother sighed again with a small laugh.

“Oh, how I wish you and Y/N hadn’t…” she trailed off. “Oh, well. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he told her. “Really. The band is doing well, I’m alright.”

“Y/N told me you’re getting divorced,” she said.

“Yeah, but it’s for the best,” he said. “Dominique and I just weren’t working out.”

“You have children?” she asked.

“Two,” he said. “A boy and a girl. My son is three, and my little girl is one.”

“Oh, you, Roger, a father?!” she gasped. “It’s difficult to imagine, you were so wild as a boy! But of course you’re wonderful. You always were when you really cared for something.”

“I love them very much,” he said. “Here, Viv, meet the rest of the band.”

You watched him introduce your mother to the rest of Queen. She was absolutely tickled about it. Even though you hadn’t kept up with Roger’s band, your parents had, which you didn’t discover until years after your breakup. They had every Queen album and record in their collection. Roger made his way back over to you while your mother spoke to Freddie.

“Thanks for bringing her here,” he said.

“Of course, Rog,” you returned. “She’d kill me if I didn’t let her see you.”

He swallowed thickly and looked between you and her for a moment.

“I always thought they hated me,” he choked out. “For hurting you.”

“Rog…”

“So knowing that they still cared after what I did...thank you, Y/N.”

“Roger, you were like a son to them,” you said, holding his gaze. “You could never do anything to make them hate you. Ever.”

“That’s a relief,” he said.

He took a deep breath and then looked at you.

“I know your mum’s here, but d’you think you could take one evening and come have dinner with me at my place?” he asked. “There’s….so much we need to talk about.”

“Yeah,” you said,a smile slowly parting your lips. “Yeah, I think we could do that.”

[hg80summer-blog]

Untitled or (The flute of Azathoth)

(This story is conceived and finished during the Fall of 2018)

Newspapers as a dying medium had struggled for a while by now, and the descent into the complete and utter abyss of extinction seemed to be accelerating in a jaw-dropping velocity. There was no wonder why her press was struggling financially, every newspaper outlet was, hers was just more severe. She was now standing in the line, waiting for her coffee, and that bastard of a teenager standing in front of her was texting on his phone while blasting loud and obnoxious music out of that headset around his neck, which kinda defeats the purpose of a headset. She was beyond annoyed, of course.

“Kid.”

The kid raised his head up, saw this middle aged red-haired woman standing right in front of him.

“What?”

“Would you mind turning off the music.” She said, tried to be as kind as possible, “This is a coffee shop, not a public park, nor it is the subway, though you really shouldn’t be doing this kind of stuff in those places either.”

The kid turned off the music, visibly fuming, but didn’t say a word.

She smiled. Proud of her own work, of talking a kid out of his annoying and selfish behavior. The line before her had shrunk, and now finally after a 20 mins long wait, which for sure would be the reason that she would be late for work again today, it was her turn to order the coffee.

The guy behind the counter was visually disgusting. Obviously of his teenage, pimples and blemishes were all over his cheeks, two bloodshot eyes suggested an intense binge the night before, or the influences of pots. Droopy nose, dull gazes, and a messily worn uniform, all permeated the sense of purposelessness and a faineant. She chuckled to herself, found that description of the cashier formed by her own head to be extremely amusing.

“Miss!” The teen was almost shouting at that point. “What can I help you with today?”

“Um...” She came back from her daze, “A cup of coffee will do. Lots of cream lots of sugar.”

As she held the hot coffee with both of her hands to help combat the chilling weather of the recent days, the front door was pushed open and a gust of breeze rushed into the store. Then the door just stayed open, and the cold air just kept pestering her scarfed neck. Finally, after a few moments of tolerance, she turned her head to see who was so irresponsible to not even close the door on their way in.

It was a sickly obese man sitting in a wheelchair, trying to get through the narrow doorway of the coffee store. The staff came to his help, but his scooter was just way too big to fit in. His oily face was filled with anger and the expression of dissatisfaction and discontent, his floppy arms were flying in the air, and his mouth was uttering the voice of complaint. Those who had suffered greater for a better cause, and now there is this fat guy standing in front of the coffee place wailing at the waiter because the door was too small for him and his enormous scooter. She tittered at the concept, took another sip of the coffee.

They didn’t put enough cream in it. It was bitter. 

* * *

“So. Are you free tomorrow?”

She raised her head.

“Hilbert.” She sighed.

“Are you that disappointed to see me?” The man languidly leaning on the glass panel of her cubicle was wearing a grey sweater, and always had been wearing a grey sweater.  Ever since the first day she met him, he was wearing a grey sweater. He pushed his glasses up with the back of his hand, “What are you working on right now?”

“Editing the report of that one ghetto.”

“How is it.”

“It’s um… it’s alright.”

“It’s interesting. It’s not… great?”

“Well, you know.” She turned her gaze back onto the screen.

“Listen, you care for a drink?”

The blue light illuminated her face, drenched her expressionless features with a somber tone. The cubicles of their publishing house were all so small and squishy, and dark as well for some reason, the light just couldn’t reach here it seemed. She often compared this place to that torture chamber in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, where a pendulum axe was hanging above the stomach of the tortured inmate, and as time run off it would slowly descent and brings the inevitable doom to the poor soul, presenting the most gruesome death to any spectator too sick to not turn their eyes away. Weren’t they the readers? The idea popped up in her head just as her gaze locked on the statistics provided in the article that she was editing. The article was riddled with grammatical errors and faulty statistics, to the point of near incoherence. The writer of the piece was this overweight old fart, who practically lived in the publishing house since he owned no property whatsoever besides all his stationeries, the old fashioned typewriter of his and a seldom working printer, along with all those borderline trash hoarded in his own dorm room. He divorced a decade ago, lost his house to his wife, estranged with his son and daughter, and had been diagnosed to be severely diabetic. Though he had one thing to be proud of -- being the oldest employee of this publishing house, working here for at least twenty-something years. She found that funny, very funny. The old fart had lost all his abilities to write an adequate article for the press, but the house would never fire him just because he was the most senior member of them all. The reader was the sick one. She realized. When the reader read that short story, they were the one expecting the axe to cut the man in two, and even though in that story of Poe’s, the man escaped, but if theoretically the axe did come down and the man did got split into two parts, the reader would not turn away from the gore, because they yearned for it.  

“I presumed you don’t have anything to do this afternoon.”

“No.” She then realized he was still there. “I am free.”

“Care for a drink in my place?”

“How is your work?”

“It’s um… it’s alright. I need to review a play before I could go any further though, so that is bummer.”

“Tea?” She pulled out her draw, “Got some bags here. I could get you a cup if you want.”

“No thanks… listen…”

“Ey.” The receptionist, April, walked to her cubicle, with a commanding tone of voice and an everlasting despise on her face, “Someone was at the door. He said he came to see you.”

Obsequious sycophant, the harlot blew our boss under the desk. But it was rather a pleasant surprise. She had no relatives around this state, let alone with this city, nor did she have any friends laying around, so someone coming to visit her during work was actually a change of pace that she was not expecting.

“He said his name was John.”

The bench in the front door bore quite a bit of history actually. This press house was fairly old after all, but before its time, the building was actually a police station for the local towns. The bench was there for those who were arrested to have a rest before being dragged into whatever room that was needed for them to be dragged into. Unlike those things, the bench remained.

“I got you some tea.” She said.

He took the cup with the coaster, took a sip, and an expression of disgust emerged on his face.

“You never liked my tea, uh?” She said. “You never liked it, not even for a day.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said that quite often, actually.” She sat down on the other end of the bench, “How is ma?”

He frowned at the question, took another sip of the tea. It was bitter. She knew it. She made it that way, and she wanted to say she made it that way unconsciously, but it really was not that convincing, not even to herself.

“She was feeling better.” He said. “She is feeling better.”

“Like how? Has she gone back home yet?”

“She is feeling better.”

“Is she still in the hospital?”

“You should be asking her that instead of me.”

“What do you mean I should be asking her?” She said, unintentionally raising and heating up her voice.

“I mean you should go ask her how she is.” He said, then he took a huge gulp of the tea, swallowing it with a painful and totally not exaggerated countenance.

“You do not like the tea. I see.”

“I did not say that.”

“You did.” Anger brewed within her, and slowly but surely she was edging on the cliff of an outburst. “You hate my tea. You always had. Now stop jumping all over the place. I know how much of a busy gentleman you are, and coming to visit me was merely the byproduct of a trip or something. How is ma doing? Answer me!”

“DON’T YOU TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!” He suddenly yelled out, almost spilling the rest of the tea, “I AM YOUR BROTHER!” Acerbate, his eyes bloodshot, and veins walled off his forehead like the defense lines from the battle of Stalingrad. He composed himself in mere seconds though, then made a deep breath, “Do not raise your voice at me.” He said, trying to be as calm as possible.

Silence dawned.

She stared out the front door. The long cold breeze blew through the empty but littered street. The press house located at the unheeded corner of the city, so of course vacancy and dead silences were the prevalent frequenter. The winter was longer than before, and harsher. The blanket in her house couldn’t even provide enough warmth for her to fall asleep without being bedeviled by nightmares and long dreams, which was why she was planning to go shopping for a quilt this afternoon to get her through the winter.

“Have you cleared the payment of your house?” He suddenly asked.

“Yes.” She said, still gazing at the street.

“So you own a house now.”

“An apartment, to be exact.”

“How is it?”

“It’s um… it’s alright.”

“It’s interesting. It’s not… great?”

She turned her gaze at him, and didn't answer.

A short pause. He looked at his watch, “Shoot, gonna go. The plane is flying in two.” He stood up. “Thanks for the tea.”

“You are welcome.”

He walked out of the building with festinate steps.

She picked up the cup he left behind, not a drop of tea was left behind.

As she was walking back to her office, or cubicle, she was stopped by the receptionist sitting at the front desk, once again.  

“Ron wants to see you. Like right now.”

She definitely swallows. She thought to herself.

“Thanks, April.” She said with a smile on her face. “I am going, right now.”

When she came back from her boss’s office, she saw Hilbert was still standing around her cubicle.

“Why are you still here?”

“Tea break. Where else can I go in this dreadful place.”

Truly it is a dreadful place. Not just this place. The city in general. What a hell hole. What an absolute hellhole. A place where gun shooting can happen so regularly it became one of the mundane. A place where sunlight was toxic and rains were acidic, umbrellas became a necessity on every day of the year. A place where morality is nothing but a piece of shredded newspaper flying across the empty blocks, so the homeless people will stab those who offer alms and helping hand, and bosses will force their female, or male who give a rat crap, force their female employees to suck their phallic one, and fat people would roam around the street while someone else starve to their lurid death. This place is dreadful. Truly dreadful. She could feel her spine split open from the middle, and raised into the sky like the skeleton of the birds' wings, so she could crash through the window of their press and leave this place once and for all.

“It’s alright.” She said, sat back down in her cubicle, and started to pack things up. “I need to finish my work now, you should get going as well.”

“Yeah… yeah… of course.” He said. After a small pause, he turned and about to leave.

“Hey. Hilbert.” She stopped him.

“Yes?”

“Where are we gonna meet for the drinks this afternoon?”

* * *

His house was as dilapidated as ever, with its shoddy door frame and chintzy carpets, molded corners and peeled off ceilings. Just like before.

"Is Bourbons on rocks okay with you?" He pulled out some glasswares and a bottle of Bourbons, cheap.

"I am alright. I don't drink no more."

He was pouring the liquor, and her words paused him, "When did that happen?"

"Happened a long time ago."

He resumed pouring a glass, clearly for himself, "Well, what can I help you with then?"

"A cup of hot coffee will be alright."

"Sugar and cream."

"Yeah."

The backyard still had that one tree in the middle. It had shed all its leaves, and what remained of it was only a wizen skeletal contour of its former self. There was a working table right underneath it, clearly, a birdhouse was in the making.

"Dickinson kept bugging me about this birdhouse. Really don't know where the obsession for birds came from." He said, walked up to the table. "It's almost finished by now."

"I can give a hand." She really did not want to, but the fact that he brought up Dickinson and the birdhouse kinda made it no longer a viable option.

"That would be so nice of you."

The squirrel on the street looked anemic, lack of food source might have already taken a toll on it. What a pathetic sight. It just oozed with dreariness, which made it quite fitting for this place. This abhorrent city, abhorrent place, where the winter is so goddamn long.

“Someone is getting laid off, let me tell you that.” He said, cutting down the pine board as he was speaking. “Someone is gone, that is all I know. The house was not profitable, they had to kick someone off. For sure wouldn’t be that geezer sitting in the back of the office all the time being as unproductive as possible. Bunch of schmucks, am I right?”

She didn’t answer. She simply helped him attach the board onto the tree with some deck screws, then she just stood aside, watching him nailing down every single one of those holes.

“I need to visit ma.” She uttered.

“Oh? You planning to take out the rest of your yearly vacation leave already?” He said, “You know there is still Christmas.”

“I don’t need to take out anything.”

Just as he finished cutting the corner of the birdhouse floor, he realized. “Oh my lord…” He moaned, then he drank all the remaining Bourbon in the glass in one gulp, “What have they done? How could they…”

“I need to visit ma.” She interrupted him, calmly, “Would you be so kind and drive me to the airport this Sunday?”

“Sure, when are you gonna be back?”

She handed him a bunch of finishing nails, “Nail them.”

He did. Then he just stood there, looking at her. She remained unmoved, stared back at him with a gaze just as bleak as ever. “Are you serious?” He asked.

She handed him the last bit of nails.

“You are for real. Are you just gonna leave all these behinds?”

“Like what? What will I be leaving behind, Hilbert.” She raised her voice ever so slightly, and the tone of anger would not go unnoticed.

He still seemed determined to convince her, but after a ponder or two, he stayed silent. He couldn’t even come up with an excuse. The sheer incompetence of it bemused her.

There was no proper answer besides silence, so he nailed down the floorboard with the rest of the nails.

“Would you hand me the roof?”

She did. He put the roof to the side with some more deck screws.

The birdhouse was finished. They stepped back a little, observing their work.

“Well, you would at least be leaving something behind now.” He said, tittered.

She found that humorous. She truly did, but she didn’t laugh, not even a chuckle.

On their way out, Hilbert invited her to dinner, and a play. It was the play he was supposed to do a review on, and it would be performed in the local theatre on Thursday night. He said he got two tickets from the press, but he had no one to go with, so he was thinking of selling that ticket to earn some extra cash. Now that she was leaving, he wanted this to be to their farewell event. As she was imaging burning the theatre down, she accepted the offer.

The play’s name was John.

* * *

She walked out of the theatre with a face of complete shock. It was a mind contorting catharsis. She felt sick, so she bent down and tried to puke out whatever the dirt and smut that was in her, but she hadn't eaten anything since yesterday, so she gagged on dirty airs, and choked on her own cold dark pride. Now she felt better, and her eyesight was now expanded for at least thirty degrees more than normal. Limbs felt duplicated, like many copies of them were behind each and every single move she made, shadowing her actual limbs with poor imitations. The play resonated. She could feel the play, and the storyline was giving her romantic kisses on her cheek along with the winter wind like she was being loved in the most intimate way that was possible. Making love. The play had made love with her.

She stood straight. The street was clean, people were walking out of the theatre, discussing the masterpiece they just saw.

Hilbert was standing next to her.

“Wow.” He said, seemed to be dazed by what he just saw.

“Indeed.” She answered. “I felt kinda sick.”

“Oh… I am so sorry.”

“In a good way.”

“Oh. It’s… alright.”

It's not alright, it’s great! She screamed in her heart.

“You need to head home then if you are feeling sick.”

“I will. Thanks for the play and dinner.”

“You are welcome. You have a way back right?”

“Yeah… buses.”

“I will see you around…”

She lolloped along the street for a bit, then she called a cap. Dragging herself onto the car became a harsh and relentless mission, but she did succeed at it. The taxi driver was this benign old man, with a green cap and a grey sweater on. He asked her if she was alright because she looked pale and sick. His face was furrowed beyond belief, but his voice was so mellow and chummy, and his expression so elder and kind. Befuddled by the nice old man, she told him the destination and closed her eyes shut pretending to be asleep. When the taxi got to her house, and as her feet were stepping out of her car, the driver gave her his blessing by telling her to have a good one, even though it was already two in the morning.

She got home, poured herself a glass of whiskey, and laid down her bed staring right at the ceiling. The alcohol ran through her throat like a double-decker bus operated by an inebriated Scottish man, and they burnt. She felt enlightened. The play she just saw sang songs within her head, and her mind became its backup singer. She had never felt so understood, no one had ever given her this feeling of absolute empathy, like the one who wrote this play actually knew her personally and knew her entire life up until this point. She gave a standing ovation when the curtain was drawn, and even now when she was already on her bed in her own soon to be former house, she still wanted to give the play another standing ovation. The script of the play had literally zero paid off, but the sense of loss and bloatedness and purposelessness and loneliness of life it had provided literally synchronized with her most inner emotions, like two magnets left near each other would just crash into each other with full forces, or two teens in their nonage with their unhinged hormones sucking each other’s face off in their embrace, or that one meteoroid leaped into earth during the extinction of dinosaurs.

She was drunk. She knew that, because she could see her own pallid volitant soul gyrated to the ceiling, ululating the sound of liberation. It flew all over the place, every corner of the room, and even tripped over the glass which still had some remaining whiskey in it. Elated by its presence, she cackled, then burst out in braying laughter. She would continue to lay on her bed, downing glasses after glasses of whiskey, and laugh and cry herself into sleep. She would do that because, for the first time of her life, she felt understood.

* * *

April looked just as beautiful as ever, with all the makeup and ludicrously expensive headgears. She was so young, and the blossoming youth could be seen from her ample bosom and ripe torso. She still got such a bright future ahead of her. She thought, so she walked up to the front desk. April saw her walking towards her, and gave her a giant PR smile. She smiled back, and thanked her for all the help she offered all these years.

As she cleaned out all of her belongings and cleared out her cubicle, sentimentality flooded her mind. She would miss this job, no matter how bad it may be from time to time, maybe she would miss this city as well. This job, this press house, was the epitome of a good chunk of her life, pleasant or not. Life was just too floaty and vacuous for one to insist it to be something enjoyable. All the bitterness she had gone through in this less than six feet square cubicle, now only amounts to a faint, lingering sweetness aloft her tongue. She smiled at the past, put the last of her possession, a Japanese peace Lily, into the cardboard box.

She was about to turn off the computer, and leave this house for one last time, but then she decided to read the newest draft of their newspaper, to see her final contribution to this press house. The last of her presence in this place that represented so much for her.

There was her work. The report about a slump near this area, written by that well-respected senior, edited by her.

Then she scrolled down a bit. Another article emerged.

The Cynical Banality -- A Critique of John

by Hilbert Johnson  

The latest trend among the circle of artsy, pretentious writers had slipped further into the depth of inanity it seems. The newest sensation, John, by Annie Baker, was truly the greatest piece of theatre work I have ever seen, due to how revealing it is, that through simply watching the play we can truly and intimately feel the cynicism of those writers and how little respect they held for both writing and the art form of theatre.   

The play followed a vacation of a damaged couple, and through piles amongst piles of useless dialogues and set up, we got to an ending that is so shocking, the only proper emotional response I can contribute is a simple sigh and a “meh” if I was having a good day. This is probably the most time-wasting theatre experience I have ever been through, and with my whole heart and with all my respect to anything holy above, I mustered all of my strength just to not walk out in the mid-act, and after the play had ended, I wish I could scorn myself for holding up the integrity of being an audience, because clearly, the creator of the thing has no intention of holding up anything.

Anton Chekhov’s principle of firing a gun in the third act if the gun was presented in the first act, had been defenestrated in the most violent way that is possible. The number of guns this play had thrown out was truly mind-boggling, and of course, none of them even made a spark by the end of the play, let alone firing any of it. The amount of subverted expectations become mere statistical numbers by the second act, and none of them can induce any emotional response besides simple ennui. Set up led to nothing, and half of the stuff the script had offered was useless beyond belief. The story threw out countless dots to encourage the readers to connect them by themselves, but by the end none of them had any pay-off and audiences and readers just left wondering why they wasted their time with it. It was like if there is this breadcrumbs trail in the forest, it is interesting so you follow it, and the trails just lead you to more forest, and more forest, and finally the end of the trail is just more forest and nothing else. It is an infuriating experience. 

Besides the problem of having no paid off, the story was also clogged with useless assets that have no use whatsoever. To demonstrate the point, there is this entire scene in the play dedicated to a reading of the work from HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, with no particular reasons and contributed nothing to the story. Why Lovecraft? Why not Edgar Allen Poe? Why The Call of Cthulhu, why not The Shunned House? No one would know the answer to those questions, because it doesn’t matter. It is like the writer just put some useless trash in between the actual story, just so it is different than the “normal” and “mundane” stories of the others. The play felt wider than an ocean but shallower than a piss creak, but somehow those high tier critiques now consider that quality of one that is a compliment. Maybe I am too stupid to realize the symbolism these informations, but isn’t it equally problematic when your play had nothing but symbolism?

Which leads me here. Not only the content I must criticize, but I also need to criticize the mentality of it as well. Critics say the play had perfectly captured the nature of human life, and the loneliness it had offered, praised it to be one of the best plays that year had to offer. How the play subverted the expectations of the audiences, bringing them to an emotional rollercoaster. How the play successfully captured human’s inner nihilism.

If such a story and writing concept were executed in a short story, I would not even have said a thing. But to put it in such a drag out script, was truly an insult. The play felt like it was written to subvert the audience’s expectation, for the sake of subverting the audience's expectation. It was breaking the golden rules of storytelling, for the sake of breaking the gold rules of storytelling. It was being special, for the sake of being special. It has this immunity of criticism since whenever anyone points out the flaws within the story of the storytelling techniques, it could be brushed under the rug by simply saying it was the intention of the script so it could mimic the meaninglessness of real life. It failed at every level of providing a joyful or anything remotely close to an enjoyable experience for the audience, then turned its head and said it was doing so intentionally. It felt like a work created by the most high-end writer, just so he or she could break more new ground and receive more praise from all of her also high-end colleagues, the top five percent of the population. But this play was also genius enough to pander to the bottom five percent of the population, by presenting nihilism as its topmost quality. According to anecdote, when the play premiered at Paris, viewed by normal theatre-goers, all of them walked out in protest, but when the play was put on the San Francisco Prison, all of the prisoners gave it a stand-up ovation for how close and real the play had represented life itself.

How benevolent of an idea. In that case, whenever criticisms was brought up, this anecdote would just be the last nail of the coffin for the critique. Who you would want to side with, the poor and oppressed prisoners from San Francisco, or the smug, overprivileged theatre-goers from Paris? Case closed.

Truly cynical. To make a play so intentionally abhorrent for any normal viewer, and so pandering to those who are the most vulnerable along with those who are on the very top. It is truly disgusting to see the current mentality of creating art had regressed to a point where a Pulitzer Award-winning writer would write something like this, just to poke and enrage the normal viewers, then slap them across the face and scorn them for not understanding true hardship of human life, and being a privileged arse.

Art is based on real life, and above it. Imitating real life with art in this fashion, truly could only be described as pathetic. 

If I am being as cynical as the writer, I would answer the previously asked question like this:

Who actually, wholeheartedly, wants to side, or go along with the prisoners in San Francisco, rather than those so-called fancy theatre attendees from Paris. Sure, everyone would say they would go for the prisoners, and condemn how privileged those theatre-goers are, but are we honest to ourselves? Between the Id, ego, and superego, which part of us is speaking when we said we would side with the prisoners?

I don’t want to be so cynical, I truly don’t. But when faced with a play created for the top five percent and the bottom five percent of the population and no one else, created to break all the established rules for the sake of breaking established rules instead of breaking traditions because it would help the storytelling or the style of the work, created not to express a message to or provide any entertainment to the public but rather to scorn and educate them for being one of the mundane, created to be as artsy as possible and as high end as possible, I don’t really know the way to keep my cynicism in check. I am just a mundane guy, who went to a theatre expecting something, anything that is not a cynical piece of esoteric mock, and before I can do anything about it, my money and my time were wasted into the thin air in return of absolutely nothing.

I still haven’t mentioned how western-centric this play is, how any other culture that values practicalism and collectivism instead of romanticism and individualism of the westerners would despise this play with their most core value, and how racially insensitive it is for it to be exclusively enjoyed and judged by western audiences, but I have had enough. If I keep talking about this thing, the seed of migraine in my head will be out of control.  

This is true cynicism.

It has some terrific writing techniques, and the restraint and subtlety of the writing were all beautiful, but it can’t amount to all the other issues I have with the script, not even close.

I gave it a strong two to a light three, out of ten.

John, by Annie Baker, 3/10

By Hilbert Johnson

  * * *

Look at this fat bastard. Oily and greasy, how in all the bloody but holy hell can he get a job? She thought to herself, as the waiter standing in front of her was waiting for her to order something. What a waste of resources. Truly morality had got itself into some sort of unremitting horror, just so this creature can serve in an overpriced airport cafe.

“Nothing. Thanks.” She said.

“What you two want for drinks then?” The waiter asked, clearly empty-minded at this moment.  

“Uh I would want some sweet tea, and for the lady here, a cup of hot coffee, lots…”

“Black.”

Hilbert paused for a second. “Make it black then.”

The waiter walked off, and a cup of sweet tea and coffee were put on the table.

“So that’s it.” Hilbert said, taking a sip of the sweet tea, “No way to convince you.”

“You do not have to. Nor is there a necessity for you to do so.” She said, took a sip of the coffee.

Bitter.

“How about the apartment? You just clear your debt for it.”

“Sell it. Or rent it. You don’t have to worry.”

“You sure you don’t want to eat anything before you got on the plane?”

“No. I am fine. You can get something to eat if you want.”

“No.”

“Then we can just have a drink can’t we?”

Pause. Silence. Just the noise of her sipping her coffee.

“I want to apologize.” He finally spoke.

“Not necessary.” She then followed it up with: “For what?”

“I am so sorry about that play that night. It was truly not my intention… I don’t know better.”

“It was a pleasant night.”

“It was truly awful to waste our time like that. I don���t know what the play was about. I should’ve done some more research on it before inviting you…”

“I am actually kind of hungry.” She suddenly uttered. She waved for the waiter, this time the waiter was no longer fat and ugly, but still possessed the same uninvested attitude and disgusting demeanor for a waiter to have. “May I have a slice of the cheesecake, the plain one.”

“Yea, and what the good sir wants?”

“Huh… refill my tea.”

The cheesecake tasted like anesthetic, and it was also bitter.

“I just want you to know, I did not intend for the play to be that... indescribable.”

“It is alright.” She said, finishing the cheesecake with her fork.

“So uh… this will probably be the last time we have a meal together, in a very long time.”

“You want some cheesecake as well?”

“No… thanks.”

“The play was very good.”

“You really don’t have to say that… I felt guilty enough as it is…”

“My plane is almost here.”

“I will walk you to the…”

“You still have work, Hilbert. Thanks for all these years.”

“For sure.”

“Take care.”

“Yea.”

She left, leaving him alone, sitting in the airport cafe.

The cup of black coffee she ordered was not finished.

* * *

The old man laying on the bed looking unfamiliar and strange, elder as well, like some kind of eldritch monster. The bed was made with a clean white sheet, and the flowers next to the bed were all withered and shriveled. The Filipino nurse came in and took those flowers out of the vase, and replaced it with fresh white lilies. That corner of the room looked so clean compared to the rest like it was just created out of thin air minutes ago, like no one had ever walked into that corner of the room ever before. She walked around the room, confused, walked back to the front desk. The receptionist there looked like even more of a whore than April, which was quite an achievement considering the environment they were now in was not the most casual place for one to be working in, she was expecting some kind of professionalism at the very least. The nurse pushed her away because she was blocking the hallway, she stepped back a little, asked the receptionist, who was also a nurse.

The receptionist spent forever going through her computer, then she pulled out a bunch of paperwork and asked her to sign.

She was confused, she asked her the question again. The nurse stared back at her with the most intense gaze like she had just accused her of murder.

Murder.

Like an unclogged sink, she now realized why.

* * *

Rustling leaves and moaning sky, darkening the land with argentine clouds, screaming winds and blinding rainstorm. Somehow the moving company was still working even under such harsh conditions. Laborers and workers carried out those old familiar pieces of furniture and threw them onto the truck with the most apathetic attitude one could have ever have, but who could blame them, not a single person would be glad to work amidst an incoming storm, but uncultured man do uncultured job, who could blame anyone for it? She walked past those people, walked directly into the house. One of the workers stopped her, said the house was under construction and unrelated personnel should stay away, she said I am more related to this house than I would ever want to admit to myself and the police would be on their way if you keep blocking my way. The worker, of course, stepped back.

He was sitting on one of the wooden antique chairs of theirs, in the middle of a practically empty living room, seemed like the movers were doing their job quite efficiently. He was reading a book. Atlas shrugged. What a surprise. Men love it. They goddamn love it. Hilbert once read that book as well, and he wouldn’t shut up about it for the next three months. Truly one has to treat themselves with godhood to think of themselves worthy of the position of Atlas where he could have just shrugged away all of his weight. She had never read the book.

He rose his head and saw her standing at the door, with a black bedraggled umbrella on her hand.

“Holy moly! Why are you here?”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“When are you back? You should have told me about it.”  

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Why would you be here anyway? I really didn’t expect you to come.”

“Answer me.”

“You want some tea?”

“John.” She was gnashing. “Answer me.”

“There is still some coffee lying around.”

A short silence.

“A cup of coffee would be nice.”

“I don’t have much sugar though, and I think those creams have certainly expired…”

“Black.”

There were two wooden antique chairs in the living room now, and a small wooden teapoy between the two. A cup of coffee and a cup of sweet tea were placed on the teapoy, along with the book Atlas shrugged.

“When was ma gone?”

“Two weeks ago.” He took a sip of the tea. “Ah… perfect for a rainy day like this. A cup of hot sweet tea.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Do you know ma was extremely proud of us?”

She didn’t answer.

“Of course you don’t. Why would you? She kept telling me not to bother you. She didn’t want to bother you. She said to me, don’t bother her because her job working for that international trading company must be straining.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“She said not to bother you.”

“What?” Truly enraged, she was progressively getting angrier as the conversation continued, “You didn’t tell me ma is gone, because she told you not to bother me?”

“Well, she didn’t want to bother you! You have a busy job.”

“So you didn’t tell me my mom is dead!? When exactly did she die again?”

“Uh… the funeral was this Monday…”

“Funeral? What funeral?”

“Funeral for ma. Everyone was there…”

“And you didn’t tell me my ma is dead! And you didn’t tell me about the funeral?”

“She said not to bother you… I listened to her.”

“What are you, mad?” She stood up in rage. “You didn’t tell me my mom is goddamn dead because she told you not to bother me?”

“Yes exactly!” He was vexed as well, for some reason, he was clearly in the wrong here so god knows what could possibly be fueling his fury. “Exactly, I didn’t tell you ma is dead because she told me not to! And by god! It took some amount of repetition to get this across that thick goddamn skull of yours!”

“We met on Tuesdays! We talked in the press house! And even then you still lied right to my face!”

“I didn’t lie to you. She told me not to bother…”

“You lied to me! You sultry little squid piss lied! You told me…”

“I DIDN’T LIE TO YOU! SHE WAS FEELING BETTER! SHE IN ALL HELL GODDAMN WAS!”

The scream was ugly, intense, and truly horrifying. Every other screams before this one shivered in its presence.

“I couldn’t drink tea no more.” He sat back down. “They all tasted bitter.”

“Me neither. I couldn’t drink coffee, because sugar and cream just make it more bitter…” She sat back down also.

Silence. The storm outside bellowed.

“I enjoyed some theatre art recently.” He suddenly voiced. “Have you heard of a play called ‘John’?”

Just when she was about to answer, a mover walked in.

“Sir, the furniture is all loaded on the truck now.”

“Sure, have a break, wait till the storm blows over.”

The worker gave her a gaze, then walked out of the house.

What a fat piece of trash. She thought.

The End 

[idthellyeah-blog]

How I Lost My Virginity

(Originally written in 2009. This was definitely in my phase of oversharing and wildly exaggerating about my sex life, which most young comics go through for their first few years. I did a few edits, but this is the tale, of how I first had sex with another human. I definitely read this and some of my other weird open letters on stage at a show where Tim Kasher from rock and roll band Cursive agreed to play the mandolin with me. Pretty sure he regretted that choice but the evidence may or may not still live on Youtube. Enjoy!)

   The Summer of 1996…the Olympics were taking place in Atlanta, Georgia….the Nintendo 64 was released in Japan…Princess Diana and Prince Charles signed their divorce papers…and the Spice Girls were tearing up the charts…but this is not the story of boring sports no one cares about in a state full of backwards redneck Christians, awesome video game systems that would control my life (fuck yes Ocarina of Time), ugly people with bad teeth falling out of love, or the greatest song writers of our generation….this is the story of a young future entertainer and raconteur finally making love to a woman.  This story is about me, as all stories should be…and how my grandiose sexually misadventurous lifestyle began.  This is Issue # 0 of my sex life, or how I lost my virginity. When I was 15, I was not the charismatic force of nature you see before you now…no.  I was a skinny young man with bad skin, a gigantic head, and hot pink hair.  I was a punk rocker in a small Nebraskan town where having stupid hair and listening to Green Day was super cool.  I thought I was rebellious and avant garde…unfortunately for me the majority of 15 year old small town Nebraskan girls thought I was a homosexual weirdo.  They were half right…  This, however, made losing my virginity a truly daunting and frustrating task.

   Back in those days I did not have the experience, the knowledge of women’s fragile psyches, the self loathing, and the manipulative state of mind needed to sleep with women who hated me as a person…all I had was the passion, the belief in myself that I no longer have, and a raging 15 year old boner.  Since I discovered masturbating two summers prior by watching scrambled pay-per-view pornography, I knew that I had finally found, as every red blooded male had done before me, my calling in life.  Irresponsible sexual intercourse. Up until that Summer I had a very tenuous grasp of sex and foreplay.  All of the fake pillow humping “self-discovery” was driving me insane.  In 7th grade I was convinced that the blow jobs my girlfriend was giving me in her parents’ creepy basement while watching Forrest Gump were making my penis bigger.  In 6th grade I had to jump out of a girl’s window when her terrifying step father came home while we were engaging in what gentlemen refer to as “fingering”…the resulting phone call between our parents was truly hilarious.  All of this led up to one of the most glorious years of my life…8th Grade.  Middle School girls liked young men who dressed and acted differently…I would later learn much to my increasing teenage depression and angst that High School girls did not ...at all, they were terrible….but 8th Grade was my personal Renaissance. 

  Earlier in the year I dated my dream girl, who was far too pretty and popular to be messing around with a dick like me.  She had rejected me until my band, The Neutered Chickens (yes I was in a band called The Neutered Chickens, it was PUNK) played the school dance…and the second we were done playing the worst music ever created, she asked me out and we proceeded to do the kind of 8th Grade Dance “dancing” that dry hump fans across the globe would have been jealous of.  She dumped me about a month later because I was obsessed with grabbing her boobs.  Nevertheless, I was doing well and “dating” lots of girls…but had yet figured out how to get them to “go all the way”.  I tried rubbing my penis on their jeans…no dice.  I tried saying “Hey, we should do it”…no go.  I even tried using peer pressure, every teenage girl’s downfall…no way.  I was beginning to think it would never happen, until I discovered….girls that went to private school. Private school….the breeding grounds of the biggest dickheads I’ve ever met in my life…and the biggest babesI’d ever have the pleasure of dealing with.  Catholic God bless it.  I’d finally found my salvation.  Her name isn’t important…what was important was that this girl liked me…and she had already “done it”.  This was considered a John Stockton lay up in the teenage sexual NBA. I was in.  We made a solid profession of going to third base in my best friend’s basement/band practice space when we decided it was time to bang it out, teenage style.  My parents were not divorced and actively cared about me and my life…so my house was out of the question.  Fortunately for us, her parents had split up and were in the process of giving her the kind of mental issues that would benefit horny dudes for years to come…so her house it was.  Tries 1 through 5 resulted in what I like to call “Pre-Emptive Strikes”…I think we all know what that means.  Back in those days it nary took a pretty smile and a dry hand job to get this dude off.  These days it takes an extremely elaborate series of visual, audio, and hardcore fucking to get me remotely close to an orgasm….ask anyone, its awful.  So there we were…two frustrated teenagers who just wanted to have terrible protected sex.  That is, until the night we were in a public park drunk off of Two Dog’s lemonade flavored beer.  I had found my Excalibur, my life compass…alcohol.   

  Alcohol would not only make existence bearable throughout my life…but it would make sex easier and more enjoyable.  I was in love….with the alcohol. So here it was…the first time I would finally have sex….laying on top of a girl in some trees in a public park.  Me, wearing a sweet Screeching Weasel shirt…her, wearing whatever because I don't remember those type of details.  I clumsily put the boner killing condom on and it happened…………….the most intense minute of my life.  I had finally done it.  I was so proud of myself and overjoyed.  I wanted to climb a mountain and shout to the world…I wanted to sing at the top of my lungs…I wanted to slap a basketball out of a smaller child’s hands and call him a dork.  She had the same look on her face that I would see on every single woman I would ever sleep with.  Slightly amused disappointment.  We dated for a while until I moved onto other things.  I'm assuming that she grew up and became an adult. She more than likely settled down and had kids….I’m not sure, we are not Facebook friends.  So that’s the story, dear reader/listener.  The beginning of what would become the epic, if not interesting, waste of time that is my sex life.  I still maintain a record of being responsible for zero pregnancy scares and for having zero STD’s (editor's note: you totally got Chlamydia like four years after writing this)…and I will take that to my grave. Love,  Ian Douglas Terry

[letters-from-paradise]

The Revelation: a love story

The book of Revelation …

Is the great climax, the crowning glory of the entire Bible. Its central magnificent character is the Lord Jesus Christ! It is a stunning and dramatic love story!

From eternity past the Triune God has been moved by love, desiring to usher His creation into a love relationship with Himself – God is love. [1]

Mankind would be his own dear children [2], wonderfully embraced by the Father through the redeeming work of the Son [3]. We would be the Son���s bride – the Lambs wife [4] – eternally intimate and dwelling together with Him.

The other-centered nature of God’s love meant that we were not created to be alone, but to be a community like the Father, the Son and the Spirit of love … therefore, the Trinity always purposed a family in heaven and earth [5], a community of utter joy, unconditional love and naturally supernatural.

God would foreshadow His heart’s desire in a people He declared would be a special treasure to Me above all people [6] - with Israel, God would enter a covenant relationship, call them His bride (Beulah [7]= Married), and lavish His affection upon them. Eventually they would be caught up in the Father’s original intent, that all mankind experience His eternal embrace, not just a single nation – that all the nations of the earth be blessed [8].

But Israel, disdaining the love relationship, became bound to the consequences of the law by continually breaking the law. Furthermore, when their God-husband sought to draw them back into a love relationship, they murdered the very messengers He sent, and turned their hearts to other “lovers”.

Israel became an unfaithful wife [9] – indeed, a harlot – prostituting themselves with other gods. Divorce seemed inevitable (in fact the prophets foresaw and declared it).

Then their long-suffering Lord sent His own Son – He came to His own but His own received Him not [10] – in fact they seized the Son and murdered Him too [11].

Then turning upon the new covenant of grace, love and freedom He came to offer them, they opposed it at every opportunity and continued their murderous persecution against those who had received the Son and had been set free by His covenant of grace [12].

All this time, the cup of wrath of broken law [13] was filling against Israel. Jesus warned that it was about to overflow [14] – not so much as a warning to the reprobate Temple Priests and Pharisees, but to the lost sheep of Israel that He’d come to save. Flee this city when you see these things beginning to happen [15]– Jesus warned.

A time-bomb was ticking. For forty years they treated the blood of the new covenant as common and unholy, and insulted the Spirit of grace [16]. At every turn, they sought to destroy the community of those who loved the Son [17].

But in the midst of this community, the family on earth, was One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. Everything about His appearance announces that the Son is being revealed as a judge. (Revelation 1)

He writes to the community – they are love letters in which he reveals how much he is intimate with their circumstances, concerned for their well-being, and longing to see them free from all that oppresses them. (Revelation 2 & 3)

The Judge sits upon a throne radiant with His glory and authority. A scroll – a legal document – is in His right hand, and as it is progressively unsealed, judgments pour out upon the land that had trampled the Son. (Revelation 4, 5 & 6)

The martyrs of the past forty years ask how long will it be before their blood is avenged. In a little while, comes the response. (Revelation 6)

Soon trumpets would sound and even greater destruction would rain down upon the land. But in the midst of this tumult the Lamb’s faithful ones come out of the great tribulation – the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of water. (Revelation 7 - 10)

With the bride of the new covenant safely out of the city, Jerusalem and it’s temple – those who trampled the Son underfoot, are now themselves trampled for forty two months. Not one stone remains upon another. (Revelation 11)

Six characters stand out in the unfolding drama. One is a harlot – unfaithful Israel. She is associated with two beasts: a beast coming up out of the land (the Temple hierarchy who had persecuted the bride of the new covenant); and a beast rising up out of the sea (the Roman beast who dominates the ‘land beast’ but also persecutes the bride). Behind these three is the enemy of God, the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan. (Revelation 12 – 14)

The harlot – this one in whom was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth – this now divorced wife is now utterly put away - her plagues will come in one day  -  death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her. (Revelation 15 – 19)

Following the harlot’s destruction, two glorious characters fill the scene: the victorious Lamb and His new covenant bride – a New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 20 – 22)

She is the fulfilment of the Trinity’s dream from eternity past. She is the new creation of God whom He had raised and made to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

She has been delivered from the oppression of the harlot and the beast. This bride, this new covenant people, this community who love one another,  this new city, well … The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all …

© 2020 David Collins davidgcollins@mail.com

_________________________________________________

References

1 John 4:16

Acts 17:26-28

2 Corinthians 5:13-14

Ephesians 5:1, 25-30

Ephesians 3:15

Exodus 19:5

Isaiah 62:4

Genesis 22:18

Hosea 2:2

John 1:11

Matthew 21:38

Hebrews 10:29; 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15

Romans 4:15

Matthew 24:2

Matthew 24:16-17

Hebrews 10:29

Acts 8:1-3

_________________________________

Appendix One

What is the Meaning of 666? by Hank Hanegraaff

Unlike today, transforming names into numbers (gematria) was common in ancient times. For example, in the Lives of the Twelve CaesarsRoman historian Suetonius identifies Nero by a numerical designation equal to a despicable deed. He urges, “Count the numerical values of the letters in Nero’s name, then in ‘murdered his own mother’ and you will find their sum is the same.” In Greek the numerical value of the letters in Nero’s name totalled 1,005, as did the numbers in the phrase ‘murdered his own mother.’ This ancient numerical code reflected the widespread knowledge that Nero had killed his own mother.

Of even greater interest to us, while “Nero” in Greek totalled 1,005, the reader of John’s letter familiar with the Hebrew language could recognize that the Greek spelling of “Nero Caesar” changed (0r transliterated) into Hebrew equals 666.

Moreover, the presence in some ancient manuscripts of a variation in which 666 is rendered 616 lends further credence to Nero as the Beast. The Hebrew transliteration of the Latin spelling of “Nero Caesar” totals 616, just as the Hebrew transliteration of the Greek is 666. Thus, two seemingly unrelated numbers lead you to the same doorstep — that of a beast named Nero Caesar.

Multitudes today assume that 666 is a number representing a modern-day beast about to be revealed. Placing the beast in the twenty-first century, however, poses insurmountable difficulties. John, the author of Revelation, told a first-century audience that with “wisdom” and “insight” they would be able to “calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666” (Revelation 13:18).

Obviously no amount of wisdom and insight would have enabled a first-century audience to calculate the number of a twenty-first-century beast. It would have been cruel and dangerously misleading for John to suggest to first-century Christians that they could identify the beast if, in fact, the beast was a twenty-first-century individual or institution.

Twenty-first-century believers, like their first-century counterparts, can be absolutely certain that 666 is the number of Nero’s name and that Nero is the beast who ravaged the bride of Christ in the first century that included three and a half years of horrific persecution. In the end, Peter and Paul themselves were persecuted and put to death at the hands of this Beast. Indeed this was the only time in human history in which the Beast could directly assail the foundation of the Christian Church of which Christ himself was the cornerstone.

_______________________________

Appendix Two

The Mark of the Beast

An online teaching from Rob Bell, the Former Pastor of Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, MI. In the video Mr. Bell shared the following convincing information (I will paraphrase).

Regarding the “mark of the beast,” it is important to note that in the ancient cultures of Rome, the public market was the main source of trade and retail. For people to enter the public market, they had to pass through the main gate. It was required of all who entered the main gate to pay homage to the idol of the Emperor. Once homage was paid, ashes were placed on the hand or on the forehead of the individual, and then they were allowed to pass through the gates and buy and sell merchandise. This was taking the mark. The parallels between this and the “mark of the beast” are stunning, and they further confirm the reality that the beast was Nero and the Roman Empire.

[foursproutwealth-blog]

Money story: Return of the frugal jerk

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/money-story-return-of-the-frugal-jerk/

Money story: Return of the frugal jerk

This guest post from the Frugal Jerk is part of the “money stories” feature at Get Rich Slowly. This is a continuation of the story Frugal Jerk started last week. Some stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. These stories feature folks from all stages of financial maturity. Today, the Frugal Jerk — who has asked to remain anonymous for now — shares the second half of a story about going from internet entrepreneur to busted and broke.

Welcome back to the saga of Frugal Jerk. You might want to read the first part, if you haven’t already.

Here’s a quick a refresher:

I’m a lifelong entrepreneur. In my best year I earned more than $300,000. In my worst year, I earned about $1000. On average, my income is above average but not extraordinary.

I purchased a too-large home just before the peak of the economic meltdown a decade ago. I was “very smart” and put 20% down. (That’s sarcasm.)

About seven years ago, due to a combination of my home’s value dropping by $200,00, my income falling into a prolonged funk, and me experiencing clinical depression, I decided to give up the house to foreclosure.

The decision to foreclose possibly saved my life; it definitely saved my balance sheet.

Some Quick Notes on Depression

When I left you last week, we’d just discussed depression. It’s not something I want to dwell on, but it’s something I want to explain due to lack of understanding in the world at large.

Depression is not sadness. Depression is not logical. You can’t think your way out of depression. You can’t “nature” your way out of depression. Depression doesn’t hit only when times are bad. The reality is, in the words of Ben Goldacre, “I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that.”

This is a financial blog so I’ll move on in just a few seconds, but I thought it was important to address the stigma around this disease. It’s okay to get help and it’s okay to take medicine. I waited twenty years before getting professional help and that was twenty years too long. For me, a norepinephrine-dopamine re-uptake inhibitor (NDRI) helps significantly and the more commonly known selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) does not.

Don’t feel bad about medication and don’t feel bad if you need to take it for a long time.

J.D.’s note: I too suffer from depression. I can attest that there’s neither rhyme nor reason to it. Even when my life is going great, I can be knocked on my ass by anxiety and a sense of impending doom. During my divorce, Kris asked me to see a counselor about my depression — so I did. It helped. I don’t take prescription drugs for it, but I’ve been using things like St. John’s wort and 5-HTP for over a decade to cope with the problem.

Why Things Went Wrong

So, how did this all happen? Why did my income fluctuate so wildly? Why did I make so many “right” decisions (a 20% down payment, for instance) that turned out to be so wrong?

My income fluctuated wildly because I wasn’t building a business. I was building business projects. Perhaps that’s a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one.

A business is generally stable. You can make forecasts about next month’s bills and revenue.

But business projects? Sometimes I’d make $5000 in one day and sometimes I’d lose $3000 the next. And then lose $5000 the next. And then $2000 the next. And then make $10,000 the next. Honestly, I was addicted to the thrill, much like stock traders or gamblers get addicted to their respective thrills. On the whole I was net positive, but it wasn’t at all comfortable or predictable.

In those days, I mostly did two things for income: SEO arbitrag and Google Adwords arbitrage. I won’t go into the details, because it’s too “inside baseball”. But if you’ve ever been involved in either game, there’s a smart way to build a business with arbitrage and there’s a dumb way. I took the dumb route, living for the day instead of building for the future.

Combine those income fluctuations, a tanking economy, and clinical depression together and it makes for some difficult days and decisions.

Foreclosing on My Dreams

Foreclosure became the rational decision. I forced myself to take my emotions out of it. What kind of advice would I give a friend if she were in my situation?

This will probably get me a lot of flak (I can take it!), but I could actually still technically afford my home before (and after) getting the foreclosure process started. For me, it was purely a business decision.

At the time I decided on foreclosure, I was no longer living in the home and had no plans to ever move back. I had it rented out at a loss of $10,000 per year and I had $50,000 in the bank.

My income was no longer anywhere near $300,000/year as it had been in the heyday. It was, however, often somewhere between $20,000 and $100,000 per year. (There were two years with no income or negative income.) Not always good, but not always bad.

The problem, again, was that it was difficult to make forecasts about income when it fluctuated constantly. In the past, I would convince myself of the best case scenario. Now I decided to take the opposite route.

I asked myself some questions:

Assuming, worst case, that I’d earn $20,000 per year would it be smart to keep a home that was costing me more than $10k,000 per year? That answer was easy. Of course not.

What if I made $30,000 per year? No, still not smart to keep the home.

$40,000 per year? Doable, but still not ideal.

And on and on.

The rational business decision was to take the foreclosure, ruin my credit, lose my down payment, and save at least $70,000 by the time the foreclosure fell off my credit report. (It’d stay on my credit report for seven year — seven years where I’d lose $10,000 annually if I kept the home.)

In total, this home cost me well over $100,000 (down payment, opportunity costs, etc.) and today the home is “valued” at roughly 75% of what I paid for it over a decade ago. By most accounts, I made a smart decision.

I did try to work with the bank to avoid foreclosure, but the numbers didn’t work. I even tried a deed in lieu but they didn’t accept it. I probably could have figured something out, but once I’d made the foreclosure decision, I stopped caring. I accepted the consequences and moved on years before the foreclosure was completed. (As I mentioned last week, the foreclosure process took 3 years!)

Life after Foreclosure

What was life like with terrible credit and a foreclosure on my record? Good, actually.

I kept open two credit cards that didn’t have annual fees. Those were never closed by the banks. I still paid my bills in full every month. Four years into the foreclosure, I opened a secured credit card because I couldn’t get anything else and I thought it might help with my credit score. (It didn’t.)

My credit is still bad. According to Capital One’s CreditWise, I have a score of 720 and my FICO score is 654. (The foreclosure is still on my record for a few more months.) A FICO score of 654 is pretty poor. It’s in the bottom third of all Americans.

But you know what? Your credit score doesn’t mean as much as some people want you to believe. It’s much better to have a high credit score than a low credit score, obviously, but life without a high score is just fine.

Paying for everything in cash (or with my low-limit credit cards) has made me more appreciate folks who are in worse situations than mine. Sometimes it’s annoying (“Am I going to get approved for this apartment lease?”), but because I didn’t wait until I was near bankrupt to foreclose, I’ve never had any real money issues again. Even in the lean years.

A Happy Ending?

My net worth would be well over a million dollars if I hadn’t bought a home (and a luxury car and other silly stuff) but had put that cash into index funds instead. Regardless, my net worth is back into multiple six figures nowadays, and I’ll still be able to retire early, if I want.

I still travel when I feel like it. I still buy things I need or want. (Which isn’t much. My yearly spending is about $30,000.) I own a late-model used car (paid for with cash). I don’t plan to buy a home again anytime soon, but I’m not completely against it at some point. (That said, I’m generally of the GoCurryCracker “renters for life” mindset.)

I never did learn my business lesson, though. My income still fluctuates wildly. I had a terrible 2016 but managed to earn $80,000 in 2017. I’m still addicted to the thrill, I guess. Maybe someday I’ll learn.

The post Money story: Return of the frugal jerk appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

[gossipnetwork-blog]

Hugh Hefner, 'Playboy' Founder, Dead at 91

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/hugh-hefner-playboy-founder-dead-at-91/

Hugh Hefner, 'Playboy' Founder, Dead at 91

Hugh Hefner, the founder and original editor of Playboy, which plopped the post-war sexual revolution onto countless coffee tables around the world, died of natural causes Wednesday. He was 91. Playboy confirmed their founder’s death.

Hugh Hefner: Blows Against the Empire

‘Playboy’ publisher created one of America’s most successful magazines out of his adolescent fantasies. Today, some people are saying his dream is all wet

“My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom,” Cooper Hefner, Playboy Enterprises’ chief creative officer and Hugh’s son, said in the statement.

“He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history.”

The leading men’s magazine of its age, Playboy helped bring explicit photography, embodied by its famous nude centerfolds, into the mainstream. Its iconic logo – a bunny sporting a bow tie – would eventually be emblazoned on nightclubs, a record company and TV series. And with his trademark smoking jackets and pipes – and the silk pajamas he would often wear to work – Hefner became the embodiment of a sexually adventurous yet urbane image and lifestyle, a seeming role model for generations of men.

Hefner wouldn’t have been the first person anyone would have expected to launch such an empire. Born in Chicago on April 9th, 1926, he was the son of Methodists, served as a noncombatant in World War II, earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Illinois and didn’t lose his virginity until he was 22.

His career, however, was foreshadowed by two events: In high school he published his own comic, “School Daze,” and after college, he studied the sex-research work of Alfred Kinsey, the scientist who published the controversial book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. “I was raised in a truly typical Midwestern home with a lot of repression,” Hefner said later. “My life, and the creation of Playboy, were a response to that repression. I tried to make some difference, and I think I managed to do that.”

In the early 1950s, Hefner officially entered the publishing world with a job as copywriter at Esquire, then based in Chicago. When the magazine declined to give him a raise, he opted to stay in town when Esquire moved to New York. Hefner sensed another destiny for himself, tied in with the post-war repression of the Fifties. “I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, Great Gatsby and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss,” he later explained. “After World War II, I expected something similar, a return to the period after the first war. But when the skirt lengths went down instead of up, I knew we were in big trouble. It turned out to be a very conservative, serious period – socially, sexually and politically.”

Raising $8,000 – including $1,000 from his mother – Hefner published the first issue of Playboy, originally called Stag Party, in late 1953. As Hefner wrote in his first editor’s note, his vision for Playboy was “mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” The cover featured Marilyn Monroe, who was even more prominently presented inside – in a nude centerfield taken several years before.

The issue sold an impressive 50,000 copies, and Hefner’s idea of tapping into the yearning for an alternative to Eisenhower-era blandness struck a chord. “I just thought there was another way of living a life,” he said. “Under all the conservatism and the repression there was this yearning for something different. That’s the reason the magazine was successful, why people embraced it from the very outset.”

In 1963, Hefner had his first major brush with infamy when he was sued for publishing nude photos of actress Jayne Mansfield. (The jury couldn’t reach a decision and Hefner was spared.) That same year, a young Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny at one of his Playboy Clubs and wrote a stinging inside critique of the magazine’s ethos and chauvinism in an article, titled “A Bunny’s Tale,” which was published in Show magazine.

Over the following decades, the magazine published nude photos of its Playboy Bunnies along with shots of stars Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss, Madonna and Cindy Crawford. But Hefner envisioned Playboy as more than a nudie magazine. It was also home to a pantheon of prestigious writers, including John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip Roth and David Mamet, among many others. The iconic “Playboy Interview” feature launched in 1962 with future Roots author Alex Haley interviewing Miles Davis (Hefner was a huge jazz aficionado and later founded the Playboy Jazz Festival) and would eventually feature many luminaries, setting the stage for the ongoing joke, “We really read Playboy for the articles.” During his own “Playboy Interview” in 1976, Jimmy Carter notoriously confessed that “committed adultery in my heart many times.” Hefner’s late-1960s talk-variety show, Playboy After Dark, hosted musical guests such as the Grateful Dead, James Brown, Linda Ronstadt and an early, pre-Buckingham-Nicks edition of Fleetwood Mac.

“Playboy was not a sex magazine, as far as I was concerned,” Hefner once said. “Sex was simply part of the total package. I was trying to bring sex into the fold of a healthy lifestyle.”

Of course, it was Playboy‘s lush photography of naked women – and the free-wheeling sensibility he allowed his readers to revel in – that ultimately made Hefner and his magazine a massive, ground-breaking success. By the early Seventies, Playboy was selling seven million copies a month and Hefner’s globe-trotting lifestyle was abetted by his private jet, the Big Bunny, that contained a circular bed, an inside disco and a wet bar. In the Seventies, he moved into the Playboy Mansion West in Holmby Hills, California, home to seemingly ongoing parties. (He also owned a Playboy Mansion in Chicago.)

Hefner first married fellow student Mildred Williams in 1949 and the couple divorced 10 years later. In 1989, he wed Playmate Kimberley Conrad, a marriage that ended in 2010. In 2013, he married his younger girlfriend, Crystal Harris, with whom he was still wed at the time of his death. Yet he was unapologetic about his freewheeling lifestyle. Asked in 2013 how many women he’d slept with, he replied, “How could I possibly know? Over a thousand, I’m sure. There were chunks of my life when I was married, and when I was married I never cheated. But I made up for it when I wasn’t married. You have to keep your hand in.” For the most part, Hefner’s female companions all adhered to the same mold: twentysomething, bosomy and blonde. “Well, I guess I know what I like,” he once said when asked about his preferences.

Hefner and Playboy Enterprises, the magazine’s parent company, took a number of hits after its 1970s heyday. “When Penthouse and Hustler came along, they confused what I was trying to do,” Hefner once commented about his magazine rivals. Those competitors ate into Playboy‘s business, and the magazine’s circulation eventually dropped to just over one million. Hefner himself had a stroke in 1985, possibly tied to the stress he felt after the murder of Playmate Dorothy Stratten and a book about her life by Peter Bogdanovich that harshly criticized Hefner.

Well into his 1980s, Hefner kept apace of the culture even as his grown children began running different parts of his empire. For several TV seasons starting in 2005, he was seen in the reality series The Girls Next Door, in which women competed to live in the Playboy Mansion. During the last few years of his life, Hefner and his business went through several seismic shifts: In August 2016, the mansion was sold for $100 million to a co-owner of Hostess (although Hefner was invited to continue to live there), and that same year, in a bid to go more legit, Playboy published its first non-nude cover (model Sarah McDaniel in a bikini).

In the fall of 2016, Hefner was the subject of rumors about his health. As per his wishes, he was to be buried in a crypt next to that of Marilyn Monroe, who’d unwittingly helped launch Playboy into the multi-million-dollar business it became.

For all the raunchiness of his product, Hefner remained an unusually complex figure. His Playboy Clubs were open to all races – unheard of at the time, the Sixties – and in 1964, he launched the Playboy Foundation to fight censorship. “No, I’ve never gotten enough credit,” he once said of those parts of his legacy. “But, as I’ve said many times, my life is like a Rorschach test. People project their own dreams, fantasies and prejudices onto my life. So people are either fans, or jealous or disagree. Everybody marches to a different drummer. If I hadn’t courted controversy, I wouldn’t be here today.”

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[on-the-wings-of-hope-prose-en]

Bureau

This particular day of Anton Pavlovich’s life went awry from the start.

At first his lawyer for divorce proceedings called him by phone and with affectedly false regret in own voice notified Anton Pavlovich that the second apartment in a center of Moscow, which Anton Pavlovich has honestly acquired by not-so-honest work can’t be kept in any way because it’s considered a shared property, acquired by him along with his nowadays almost ex-wife. Then some sort of fool from Godforsaken insurance company called him and offered “new unique property insurance package with fire-protection included” – and this, together with a sad fact of his country house, which has been burned almost to ashes by a lightning strike about a month ago, sounded almost like professional, even though accidental mockery. In a doorway of this exact Moscow apartment, which has been bought on money from pension system fraud, his new mistress Jessica has been already waiting for him and with a languid voice she inquired, when her “sweetie daddy” is going to buy her a new promised mink fur coat instead of an old one, given to her by a former lover. And this new mistress, to be honest, was quite a black sheep – but his previous unmarried concubine Victoria demanded such thorough and capital investments, that it was much easier and cheaper to hire some east harem than to continue satisfaction of her growing not by days, but by wallets appetites. And at this moment Anton Pavlovich could do nothing better than to form a false smile on his tense face and go together with Jessica to a new boutique.

What can we say? That regrettable for Anton Pavlovich day was destined to come to a failure from the start. Anton Pavlovich was pressing on his car’s accelerator pedal so hard, trying to get rid on the way to the boutique of one thousand of annoying thoughts, which have been importunately biting his raging mind, that he didn’t notice how he has exceeded allowed in the urban environments speed limit of sixty kilometers per hour. Or maybe just this last hour became like a whole life, stretching into its own eternity?

Fuel truck drove into a cross lane absolutely unexpectedly. It’s, however, quite possible that it, along with its driver Vasily Ivanovich, who has become quite drunk after a recent quarrel with own wife, along with Anton Pavlovich and aforementioned Jessica have all been waiting for this year, day, hour, minute and even second of this most fatal meeting? Alas, the answer to this uneasy question is hidden from us in faraway informational archives of the universe, and we are unable to satisfy this possible curiosity of our faithful readers. No matter what, but the moment when Anton Pavlovich and Vasily Ivanovich synchronously pressed on brakes, and Jessica stridently cried, hands of invisible to them clocks stopped for an instant, as if forever imprinting it inside a memory of the world, and then a second hand made its last “tac!” and stood still. Black tinted jeep crashed into the middle of a fuel truck at such a speed that fuel track rolled sideways – and followed explosion muffled even agonal shout of Jessica. Shockwave threw away two nearby cars and three pedestrians without inflicting them too much damage – for it was yet not their year, day, hour, minute and second. Huge fiery mushroom sparked over a place of tragedy – and then everything sank in a roar of a storming flame…

***

Anton Pavlovich opened his eyes, greedily grasping autumn air, which has been flowing along with sun rays through slightly opened windows into his bedroom. He slowly wiped his eyes with own fists, trying to get rid of a recent dreadful nightmare, and sat down on the edge of a bed. “What an awful dream!” – he was thinking, having not yet come to his senses. “Swindles, frauds, mistresses, road accidents… what our mind is capable of creating! Well, never mind, – the good news is that all of this wasn’t for real, it was just a dream, a simple dream…”

That way, continuing to calm down himself, Anton Pavlovich was gathering for work. Having already had breakfast, having already put on his crimson jacket and sat down into a black tinted jeep, parked near a house, already ready for new honest and not so honest feats, he suddenly caught himself on a thought that it has become somehow unusually deserted in a yard of his high-rise building – no signs of cars, or pedestrians, or even some kind of stray dog, which wasn’t traveling here anyway. “Perhaps, it’s a day off?” – an afterthought flashed in still slightly sleepy brain of Anton Pavlovich. “Precisely, day off! No further than yesterday I have finally got divorced with my silly spouse and was going to celebrate that moment today in a bar with my friends!”, – he remembered. “All because of that foolish dream! It totally drove me out of life!” Having repeatedly glanced over an empty yard of his house and having once again hemmed to himself, he struck pedals of his car and rushed through the gates.

Rare street pedestrians completely didn’t fit into an overall image of populous capital – they, having slightly stooped, were slowly moving on streets and, it seemed, didn’t look on each other at all. No sign of agiotage or any business turmoil and haste, so common for Moscow citizens… it seemed as if the city has become extinct – or have massively moved beside that distressful MKAD in a single incomprehensible instant of time.

There was no sign of a bar in the habitual address, as well as no waiter, who has been obligingly opening doors before visitors. Instead of familiar three-lettered word an updated sign said – “Bureau”, while the first two letters of it have been written in black, and subsequent two – in white colors; and slightly below the following text has appeared: “Salon of comprehensive otherworldly services” – and in this inscription white and black letters were going in turn. “Madhouse of sorts”, – Anton Pavlovich muttered to himself, slowly parking his jeep near bureau-bar. “What sort of bullshit these fucked marketing idiots do invent to attract more visitors”.

“We are glad to see you in our salon. Welcome to the Bureau!” a good-looking young man in a strange suit welcomed Anton Pavlovich once he stepped over a spinning glass door of this building.

“Tell me, man, are all of you, folks, dressed like that here?” Anton Pavlovich questioned with a jeer in his voice, while fixedly looking into the eyes of this newly appeared waiter.

“You must be talking about my wings, right?” showing no sign of confusion, he replied in return. “Frankly speaking, I have been in that form since the time of my birth – which, it should be noted, has happened several eons before your own. And, answering your next upcoming question, – this combination of colors in our poster symbolizes Free Choice – a very useful for mortals trait, which is, unfortunately, hasn’t been given to us. What else would you like to learn about the Bureau, my former workmate?”

“Workmate in what sense?” Anton Pavlovich was taken aback for a mere second, silly looking first at the waiter, and then deep into the hall of the unusual salon.

“In most direct and every day,” quietly answered the man with snow-white wings behind his back. “A companion for all of your past life, which has been taking place recently. Absolutely, by the way, unnoticed by you,” he added as if with a small piece of grief in his voice.

“Young man, are you even in your mind? To me you a total stran…”

“Then it’s a pleasure to get acquainted once again!” young “waiter” smiled and stretched his hand, which was shining with some kind of nacreous glow, to Anton Pavlovich. “All of our services will be completely free of charge for you today! Just follow me!”

“No kidding?” Anton Pavlovich strictly raised his eyebrow.

“No desire to do so,” the young man answered routinely. “I still have to bear responsibility for your course of life.”

“So, what kind of entertainments do you offer?” Anton Pavlovich continued to pursue his own goals. “I was planning to meet here with my friends, by the way.”

“With Jessica? Never worry, she is already expecting you here. I would even tell that she is exhausted from impatience,” smiled White-Winger. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and make it all right and in a correct order. According to our current action, we can offer you three of our most popular attractions completely free of charge.”

“Wait, what – you even keep a circus in your pocket?” Anton Pavlovich burst out laughing from own unsightly joke.

“No, no, may the Lord be with you! The circus is on the Earth, and we are different. What Lies Beyond, so to speak. We are currently carrying out an unprecedented action – we are telling all our future clients what is awaiting them in advance.”

“How’s that?” Anton Pavlovich showed a sincere surprise on his face. “In advance?”

“Well, you see… sometimes we are given permission to act that way. We already created similar actions… for example, about two thousands of years ago. We passed information regarding this action to you through one remarkable individual. What was his name… John, it seems. And his second name was so sonorous, as far as I remember, the… Evangelist, right! And today… well, you can see for yourself to what strange methods we should resort today.”

“So it turns out that your action is almost termless?”

“Well, you are certainly correct in some way. We just need to remind humankind about it from time to time. But let’s get straight to business! You surely haven’t got in touch with art for a long time, am I right, Anton Pavlovich?”

“I have pictures on walls in my home, modern kind. And bookshelves with some… classics,” answered Anton Pavlovich, trying to remember which classics were there.

“Then it’s a due time to get in touch with what is nowadays eternal. Welcome to the Cinema of Memoirs! Allow me to open a door for us…” and the White-Winged young man waved his hand, drawing something in the air. In a couple of seconds, a most real gateway appeared just in front of Anton Pavlovich’s stunned physiognomy – it was casting a same nacreous light like the one coming from hands of his unexpected interlocutor. “Follow me!”

“That’s how technology advances…” Anton Pavlovich hemmed to himself with astonishment. “What sort of inventions can scientists-physicists create. All thanks to western sanctions, no doubt!” he assured himself and stepped into the portal.

***

The room, in which both of them have appeared, indeed reminded of some sort of big Moscow movie theater – except for the audience, which consisted only of him and his mysterious fancy-dressed colleague.

“Fourth row, eighth place,” White-Winger noticed with satisfaction, taking a seat near Anton Pavlovich on a next chair. “Your place.”

“Why are we sitting so close? Let’s take places far away from a screen to better see all demonstrated events, there is nobody here except for us anyway!” Anton Pavlovich muttered discontentedly.

“Unfortunately, all other places are already reserved. They just seem as empty only now and only for you. Everything is actually much more complicated,” replied White-Winger. “And this place is just yours, for exactly when you were forty-eight those events, which you have recently ‘seen’ in a dream, have taken their place in your life.”

“And how did you learn about my recent dream…”

“Pay attention to the screen!” young man interrupted him. “Movie of your life is already starting!”

Large screen in a cinema hall, which reminded with its carved decorated edges some mirror from Middle Ages era, lit up with nacreous light, showing a small bed with protective partitions, where a small child was sleeping peacefully, smiling in his own dream.

“Memoirs of your life, beginning from the time when your consciousness has started awakening. You were about half a year, apparently. At that time, you were totally innocent, Anton Pavlovich,” young man commented on scenes.

…Meanwhile scenes continued to replace one another. Here the child uncertainly takes his first steps, stumbling and falling on a bottom. Here he diligently pulls a spoon into his mouth, being afraid to miss, eating porridge “for the father and for the mother”. Here he embraces a kitten, which was a gift in his childhood, and his eyes shine brightly with sincere children’s joy. Here he plays on a playground along with other children with steam locomotives toys, and here he takes a ride from a top of icy winter hill. Here he sails ships in autumn pools, which reflect a sky in themselves. Here he lays down together with a mother on a bed and hugs her in a sleep…

“They say that all children are precisely like Angels,” with a grief in his voice noticed White-Winger. “And adults are more like demons. These are the purest and sincerest memoirs of your entire life, Anton Pavlovich,” he continued, observing how a tear crosses a cheek of his former “workmate”.

…Pictures continued to lead their own life, replacing each other as in a kaleidoscope. Here the young “mean” man is being accepted into the Institute on protection. Here he goes to night parties with fellow students. Here parents present him with a luxurious expensive car and he uses it to the full to shine and flaunt before girls of easy behavior. Here he visits night bars and striptease clubs…

“It’s hard to tell the exact moment where everything has started falling down into the abyss,” White-Winger commented on scenes once again. “Whether it was my personal oversight, wrong education of parents, false life values of society or first and foremost your personal vital choice, Anton Pavlovich? The court knows that for certain – and I, to my own regret, don’t. I am left only with a hope that both of us will be given one more chance.”

…Images continued to float and move one after another, creating a unique feeling of repeated presence on own antecedents. Here an adult graduate of legal academy becomes an official. Here he runs roughshod over other’s feelings, deceiving and profiting on human laziness, stupidity, and fear, – believing sincerely that he lives only a single life. Here he brings a mistress – first, second, third, yet none of them is capable to bring him back that long-lost feeling of life’s joy – the one which has been living side by side with him only during a faraway childhood. Here he desires to tear all of this false life apart and become a hermit – but strong, too strong are now for his weak will his former affairs and ties…

“We demonstrate here only the brightest of your memoirs, which have been imprinted in a memory of your soul instead of a brain – and therefore became potentially immortal, having transformed into some kind of déjà vu. All other life’s nonsense, monotonous and gray life, boring and disliked job, frequent and repeating quarrels with your wife, which have brought both of you to a divorce – all of this was forced out from your brightest memoirs and therefore hasn’t been included in that movie. It was all kept in your personal record in Archives where we will soon go,” commented White-Winged “waiter”.

…Now pictures almost fly, promptly replacing each other just like years of life, rushing aimlessly before their owners, drenching them with the dust of life’s roads. New financial swindles, new “none will be the wiser” deeds, new quarrels with his wife, a new mistress – Jessica. Day of their meeting in a second Moscow apartment, trip on a jeep. Fuel track, which has appeared on the intersection of roads, pressed against the stop brakes, the terrified soul-tearing squeal of his new passion… TV screen suddenly went black and light in a hall turned on as if symbolizing the end of the movie session.

“Why… why has my movie ended on this shot… the very same from today’s dream. Why, may demons tear you apart, is that so?!” Anton Pavlovich angrily seized his white-winged interlocutor and started shaking him.

“Let’s not use the collective name of these spiteful beings in this place and context, Anton Pavlovich. You may happen to meet them face-to-face a bit later,” calmly answered white-winged young man, dexterously freeing himself from a grasp. “Let us better proceed into the Library of Fates, or, as some of us briefly call it, – the Archives. I do believe that your stay there will be able to shed some light on this question that torments you so. Shall we go?”

“All right, we go,” muttered Anton Pavlovich. “And then to my friends and Jessica.”

“Without a doubt,” confirmed young man. “They are eager to meet with you as well.”

A waving of hand – and once again a familiar silhouette of a portal appeared before Anton Pavlovich, along with a shining road that was leading deep inside it. Here he takes a step into unknown depths of this strange door and…

***

The Library was astounding. While movie theater somehow resembled the similar one in Moscow, the Archives, apparently, contradicted all imaginable earthly laws of physics. Their carved regiments ascended to such high infinity, that it was absolutely unclear, how they could even stand still under a mass of all the books that were filling them. Huge shining tables from unknown material and mobile ladders were obviously created totally not by human measures. Corridors branched and twisted, connecting and disconnecting somewhere in a far distance. Some warm lilac light was shining from a ceiling that was totally hidden from human’s sight. Fragments of floor melodiously ringed if anyone was stepping on them. Somewhere in a distance a sound of murmuring springs and singing of birds could be overheard.

“Here we store the history of all ever lived and still living beings of the universe, which do have a soul,” suddenly materialized before Anton Pavlovich white-winged companion answered as though to himself. “We constantly supplement it and therefore Library continues to grow, as it’s said between us, – not by days, but by fates. As you can see, it by no means intended to be visited by humans, – but we have been allowed to prolong our action for a little bit more.”

“Wait, are you trying to tell me that here I can get an answer to any of my questions?”

“Any question, concerning the past, yes. And the future of each soul-given individual in particular and of the worlds, in general, has many possible outcomes and depends on that Free Choice, which I have already mentioned earlier. However, access for you here is denied anyway – mostly the staff of Department of Fates Control, which is located nearby, manage here the process of transfer and obtaining of information. They are frequent guests here, by the way.”

“What-what department?”

“Fates. Control. Humans included. What’s unclear? You see, Anton Pavlovich, your mortal life on the planet Earth… how should I put it more clearly… is not one of a kind. It’s just in the last time you were named as Anton Pavlovich, and before that… and how you were called before that you can learn exactly from one of the books, located in this wonderful library. The book of your destiny, which you have been writing with own deeds. You acted – and we fixed these acts, and wrote them down, and kept here. We have even shown you these books once – through mentioned John, remember? Your civilization must have kept records of his visions.”

“And… why do you write down all of this? Do you write down everything?”

“Everything that is related to Free Choice, yes. We store it for future Court, of course. So no deception can take place. Some soul-given live beings in this universe decided for some reason that they would be able to deceive us, ‘to move around a middle finger’, so to speak. Well… let them try,” White-Winger burst out laughing. “We will write down this Free Choice as well, and take it into account in the Court.”

“And what do these employees do here? Are they here now?”

“Most likely here, but they usually stay in a working wing of the Library, and we are in a guests’ section right now. You see, some of the events, taking place in your physical world, – they, how should I tell that… are already predetermined in the highest world – by chains of your previous Free Choices, and sometimes by the will of the Supreme One himself. The staff of this department carefully watches for compliance between the fate and affairs of each soul-given live being of a physical world, and if necessary verifying its accordance with a plan of his new life, created by the individual before his birth and written in his personal book, and if such necessity arises – they try to correct fates of beings so that they can manifest themselves in a best possible way and realize all their inborn potential. Unfortunately, in a case with your civilization of a Milky Way, it’s hard to achieve that goal – the beings calling themselves as humans became too willful, evil-willful, and perceive attempts of the staff of this department to correct their distorted destinies as a chain of life’s disorders and troubles.”

“And can I… see the book of my lives?”

“Now you can,” confirmed White-Winger. For an instant, he touched Anton Pavlovich’s breast with a palm of his hand, and then waved in the air – and several moments later a weighty book from a top shelf of one of the racks smoothly descended on it like a planning bird, having automatically opened itself on the first page.

“Vibration code of your soul,” the interlocutor explained to Anton Pavlovich. “It’s easy to find a necessary book by it. So, what did you want to learn?”

“Here… what sort of lines and points are these? I can barely see familiar letters in this book.”

“These are maps of your previous Free Choices. You must understand that each choice bears certain consequences along with it and opens the opportunity for new ones, and together they all form maps. Points symbolize moments of decision-making when you choose one of the options from a set of them. Numbers above arrows are probabilities with which you would have chosen one option or another at the moment of your choice. These diamond-shaped figures indicate a degree of influence of related choices on choices and fates of other people. All of this may look a little bit unclear in a two-dimensional plane – but I, unfortunately, cannot show you at present moment spaces with more than three dimensions, however, I can assure you that in such spaces these books are read much more simply and pleasantly.”

“Useless paper crap of some sort and practically everything is unclear!” Anton Pavlovich sniffed angrily, vainly trying to find the moment of his meeting with the ill-fated fuel track in an artful design of signs.

“The language available only for chosen ones,” his interlocutor smiled again. “First and foremost for the staff of the Department of Fates Control.”

“Let’s get out of here while the going is good,” Anton Pavlovich added biliously, “to my friends and Jessica.”

“Well,” sighted interlocutor. “For preliminary Hearings then!”

***

“…Okhrimenko Anton Pavlovich is to be summoned into the hall of Heavenly Court for carrying out preliminary Hearings. Guardian Angel Michel is appointed as the lawyer of the defendant, Demon-Tempter Zakhurat is appointed as the accuser. The defendant and specified companions from his last life have arrived, Hearings are to be considered open.”

These words reached Anton Pavlovich’s hearing just at the moment when a portal, opened by his “workmate”, has transferred him with a soft melodious sound into completely new surroundings, which were resembling a court’s hall that has become habitual to him in a mortal life.

“I… what… where… what for? What a foul setup is that?!” muttered a newly teleported defendant, puzzly looking around himself and having not yet come up to his senses after so hasty change of space and own role.

“I shall explain you everything later, we will have time,” White-Winger winked to him while going to the judicial stand of white color, which was intended for him. The opposite stand of black color in another corner of the hall was occupied by dreadfully looking being with a tail, horns, and hoofs.

“The accuser, what can you tell us concerning last given to the defendant’s life in a galaxy of Milky Way on a planet formerly known as Gaia and nowadays being called simply as Earth?”

“T-h-h-h-i-i-i-e-e-f-f-f…” mischievously hissed a creature, vomiting sparks of dark flame from its mouth. “F-o-o-o-r-r-r-n-i-i-i-c-a-a-a-t-t-o-o-r. K-i-i-l-l-l-l-e-e-e-r-r. T-a-a-a-a-k-e-e-e a l-o-o-o-o-k…”

Suddenly images started materializing in a center of the hall, reminding former ones from a movie of his – Anton Pavlovich’s life – they only had more than two dimensions this time. A shot was replaced by a shot, showing everyone how Anton Pavlovich gives and takes bribes, meets with mistresses, indulges in alcoholic euphoria, and so on and so forth. This demonstration was finished with the last shot of the infantile-surprised face of the fuel truck’s driver and frozen in time shouting face of Jessica which looked almost alive.

“Quite a convincing presentation, Tempter. It’s obvious, that we are dealing with violations of three precepts and commissioning of three types of mortal – I emphasize, mortal! – sins. Does the protection party wish to have a speech?”

“Yes, your honor, I do have a wish,” and, having that said, Guardian Angel waved his wings and new images started floating through a center of the hall. These pictures now demonstrated how little Anton Pavlovich gently embraces his mother before going to bed; how he shares toys with other children from his yard; how he comes to the rescue of a school friend when teenagers from nearby district try to kick him to the death; how they walk in a park together with his beloved and future wife, how they truly love each other, at least for the first time…

“We thank you for that presentation, Guardian. The episodes, which you have provided, demonstrate that despite for a chain of serious violations of Heavenly Law, feelings of human compassion, justice and love were not completely alien for the defendant, which makes his soul potentially capable of Atonement. Whether the accusing party wishes to add something else?”

“W-i-i-i-i-i-s-s-s-h-h-h-h-e-e-e-e-s-s. K-i-i-i-l-l-l-e-e-d-d-d o-o-n-n-e-e-s-s,” horned being hissed once again, having clicked a floor of the hall with its tail.

And with these words the fuel truck driver Vasily Ivanovich and mistress Jessica materialized in a center of the hall each from his own portal.

“You!” Jessica immediately cried out with rage, having hardly managed to jump out her portal. “My murderer! If I have only known that you would ruin me that day I wouldn’t ever approach you closer than for a mile! And I need no fur coats from you, ever! Rascal! Beast! Killer!”

“Brother, you what… aye? Why you drove so… to red light? Didn’t you see… you go?” Vasily Ivanovich addressed Anton Pavlovich inquiring-puzzly. “I left my children there, my wife… who will support them without me, aye? You are a fool, brother, fool as you are!”

“Are there are any witnesses from a defendant’s side?”

“Yes, his mother.”

And once again a portal opened with a melodious tune, and Anton Pavlovich’s mother stepped out from it.

“I brought him up… as I could,” she said with a whimper and pain in her voice. “In Christ’s values. My husband was drinking, even though he was a banker. He accustomed my son to… fancy living… alcohol… my poor little son. And I… as I was able… in childhood… while he was pure… not to soil his soul…”

“Does the defendant want to add something? We should remind that, according to the rules, each and every of his word – whether kind or evil – can be used both as self-justification and as self-accusation, in compliance with the uniform Heavenly Law, established by the Supreme One.”

“I… well… didn’t know… what I was doing… I promise not to act this way from now on. To live with honor and conscience… and so on. Something like it…”

“All of them speak that way,” someone hemmed from the hall of jurors. “I didn’t know, I had no idea, give me, please, one more life…”

“I request to keep silence in the hall of hearings!”

“Forgive me, your honor.”

“If both accusing and defending parties have nothing more to add, then I suggest ending the first phase of preliminary hearings. This court session is closing.”

***

“Well… it could be much worse than that,” summed up the Guardian Angel, brushing away sweat from his wings. “You still have a chance – not a bright one, but at least one.”

“And you keep calling that as attractions? What kind of setup is that?! Return me back immediately, wake me up from this foolish dream! I still have a life, Jessica, divorced wife… I still have so many things to correct on this, how was it, Gaia!” Anton Pavlovich lashed out with fists at his newly acquired defender.

“Oh, my silly Anton Pavlovich!” sighted White-Winger with a grief in his voice. “You know what’s the hitch is? You don’t have a new life anymore! You have indeed died, my dear Anton Pavlovich…”

10.07.2017

[cvagent2]

Aliens destroy U.S. nukes, Trump defeats N Korea, and Blac Chyna goes classier, in this week's tabloids

Supermarket tabloids have given us aliens in the White House, Bat Boy, Elvis lives, and the first photos of heaven, but I never thought I'd read this stunning sentence . . .

In May, a new ferry service began moving up to 200 passengers and 1,000 tons of cargo every month between North Korea and the Russian port of Vladivostok.

What the hell is happening at the 'National Enquirer?' They've gone so deep into Donald Trump's corner that its readers who crave titilating details of celebrity scandal are being fed a weekly diet of Trumped-up propaganda, which this week brings us a cover story and three pages on Trump's secret plan to defeat North Korea's Doomsday machine.

America is evidently under siege by North Korea's escalating nuclear weapons program, and Donald

Trump has taken bold and extraordinary steps to ensure America survives the siege and emerges with total victory!

That sounds like something that Kim Jong-un's propaganda machine might churn out, but it's here in the 'Enquirer,' which laboriously details tanker movements between North Korea and Russia, reporting: It could be oil - or something much more sinister. Maybe they're shipping old copies of the 'Enquirer' to North Korea - what could be more sinister that that?

At least it's not all geopolitics in this week's tabloids.

Kim Kardashian has been allegedly caught on drug video claims the 'Enquirer,' though since it was filmed in 2003, that's neither new or shocking. Dubious reporting abounds in the 'Enquirer,' which claims that Natalie Wood was raped before her death! The mag explains that a rape kit may have been used during the actress's autopsy, but no results were ever released. But since when is using a rape kit proof that anyone was actually raped? Hearsay and conjecture: the ingredients for any good tabloid story.

The 'Enquirer' fails again when exposing Michael Jackson's kiddie nude stash. But it's not Jacko's promised treasure trove of child porn. Rather it's a copy of an old magazine with the titles of nudist DVDs circled - a magazine found among "documents of Michael's management team. So the 1999 mag could have belonged to one of many people, not just Jackson. And the videos, while showing nudist families, were not pornographic. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

The 'Globe' maintains these high journalistic standards with its cover story claiming that child beauty pageant veteran JonBenet Ramsey's murder has been "finally solved! Ignoring past 'Globe' stories that have repeatedly solved JonBenet's murder by naming convict John Mark Karr as her self-confessed killer, the magazine now claims that convicted sex attacker Keith Schwinaman is her real killer. The new evidence? Evidently Schwinaman's plea deal ensured that he could not be forced to submit his DNA to see if he committed other crimes.

He's clearly hiding something . . . therefore he's JonBenet's killer! It seems obvious, doesn't it? When has the 'Globe' ever been wrong before? (Hint - ask John Mark Karr.)

Queen names William King! screams the 'National Examiner' cover headline, scooping all of Fleet Street and the world's press with this Royal Shocker! The Queen has reportedly axed son Charles from succeeding to the throne over his $250 million divorce. Only two small problems with these stories: Charles and Camilla haven't filed for divorce, and Charles is still heir to the British throne. I know, picky, picky . . .

'Dancing With the Stars' nuptials dominate the glossies this week: Julianne Hough's dream wedding occupies the cover and seven pages of

'People' magazine, while fellow cast-mate Maksim Chemerkovsky's wedding to DWTS dancer Peta Murgatroyd takes the cover and six pages of 'Us' magazine. The dresses! The dancing! The ring-bearer dogs! raves 'People.' The ring, the dress, the afterparty! rejoices 'Us.' What, no ring-bearer dogs for Maks and Peta? Couldn't they all have saved a fortune and had a double wedding?

Blac Chyna tells 'Us' mag my side of the story in her break-up with Rob Kardashian, the least interesting member of a self-aggrandizing family whose lives are fabricated for the cameras. She reveals next to nothing, proclaiming I'm taking a classier route. But where's the fun in that? And she fails to answer the question on everyones' lips: Why can't she figure out how to spell Black China?

Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at 'Us' magazine to tell us that Vanessa Hudgens wore it best (and still looked terrible), that Fred Savage's favorite place in the world is his backyard, Real Housewives of New York City newcomer Tinsley Mortimer carries hairspray, sunglasses and tanning cream in her L.L. Bean tote, and that the stars are just like us: they bicycle, eat fruit, and shop at drugstores. Shocking!

Rescuing us from dreary details of Russian-Korean trade, the 'Examiner' tries to return tabloids to their former glory with news that Dead Aliens Seen at Roswell Crash Site! Better yet, the 'Examiner' reveals that UFOs destroyed our nukes!

Apparently ten ICBMs were mysteriously switched to off-alert and could not be launched, after UFOs floated above a U.S. military base in Minot, North Dakota, in 1966. It seems a long time for such a revelation to be revealed, but witnesses were reportedly instructed to keep silent. Thank goodness someone was finally brave enough to reveal the truth.

Onwards and downwards . . .