#like most of them are extremely powerful psychics its fine. they stop the paint if it gets to close to taking someones eye out or smth

[irradiatedsnakes]

spirits & such & friends company paintball fight (to the death), inspired by that absolutely bonkers official art. reigen gets bullied, ritsu reenacts the most dangerous game, serizawa takes it far too seriously, dimple has a dimple-sized paintball pistol somehow, teru and shou get Very competitive, stuff happens, fun is had, probably, etc

bonus: the teamz

[fugitive-96]

The Witching Hour (A TG/TF story)

"Okay we all ready for this?" Trish asked.

"As ready as we'll ever be." Blake replied.

"Ted, start the tape." Trish said.

Ted walked over to the table with the tape recorder and hit record.

"You ready Angela?" Trish said over to Angela who was sitting on the floor in front of a Ouija board opposite Henry.

"The time is 03:00 AM, Halloween night 1989. We are standing in the basement of the long abandoned Hall House where we are about to attempt contact with the astral plane." Trish spoke into her small recorder.

The four friends had long been shunned in school for being interested in the supernatural, more specifically their beliefs in things like psychic powers, various forms of spirits, and other creatures from urban legends.

The group of friends was made up of two boys and two girls. Blake who was currently standing by with a camera was tall with slicked back black hair and a set of thin spectacles and was dressed in a poorly made Frankenstein Monster's costume, albeit he'd removed the makeup. The second boy was Ted who was operating the various equipment such as the speakers and the large tape recorder sitting on the table who was average height with slightly long but messy blonde hair and was dressed in a denim jacket and jeans. Henry who was slightly chubby compared to the other two and was sporting a ginger mullet matching the freckles on his face and was wearing a yellow and green high school football jacket and was operating the Ouija board along with Angela, and whilst he wasn't a member of their group he decided to tag along after Trish and Angela invited him. Angela was the quietest of the group, but was also the one with the most extreme ideas, she was dressed in what she called her usual 'gothic punk' getup with shoulder length black hair, a black tank top and jeans, along with various studded items around her thin arms and a pair of studs on her lips which along with her eyes were done up in black makeup whilst the rest of her face was pale white. Lastly there was Trish who was the 'leader' of the group with big frizzy blonde hair and large glasses, who was sporting a green jacket and baggy clothes more appropriate for the cold weather.

The five of them had decided to spend their Halloween night in Hall House, an abandoned Manor house that had stood in their town for many years as an allegedly haunted location due to its dark history, needless to say this house was the location of murders and seances over the years. Angela was the one who suggested that they conduct their 'experiment' there, as it had been 100 years since the horrific events in the house had taken place.

They had gone down to the lower levels of the house where the events took place, and after setting up their equipment on the table they illuminated the room with only candles and were now about to begin.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Ted asked.

"*sigh* You bring this up now!" Trish replied angrily, stopping her tape recorder.

"It's just we're trespassing! I'm all for discovering what lies beyond and all that, but this doesn't really feel safe, I mean I don't think the spirits here would appreciate Angela breaking the front door of their house."  

"You heard Angela, this could be our one chance to do this!" Trish responded.  

"Could we get on with this already, I'm not sitting on this stone floor all night." Henry complained.  

"Yeah Trish is right, we're here now so lets do this." Blake added.  

"You heard them." Trish said to Ted

"Fine, but I've got a bad feeling abo-"  

"Don't say it Ted, you are not jinxing this!" Trish spat.  

"Anyway, back to it." She said resuming her recording.  

"Okay Angela, go for it."

As Angela was about to begin Blake got his camera ready whilst Ted resumed the large tape recorder on the table which was picking up any background noise whilst a radio next to it was skipping through channels.

"Spirits, can you here us?" Angela said aloud looking up.

The planchet then began moving slowly towards yes.

"Holy crap is it actually working!" Henry blurted out.  

"Shhh! *At 03:04* the planchet answered yes." Trish whispered into her recorder as Blake took a shot.  

"Spirits, can you show yourselves to us?" Angela then asked

"That seems a bit direct." Blake murmured under his breath before Trish shot him a glare.  

After a few seconds the planchet didn't move.

"Spirits, can you still here me?" Angela asked but again nothing happened.

Trish looked over at Ted who was still surfing through radio channels but was receiving nothing. They waited for a few more minutes but again nothing happened.

"This blows! That first bit was totally just Angela moving it by herself" Henry blurted out.

"SHHH! Be quiet Henry!" Trish whispered angrily.

"Or what, nothing's happening! Hey spirits what color's my hair?" He asked before clearly forcing the planchet over the correct letters causing Angela's head to sink in disappointment.  

"*Chuckle* Hey spirits what's my favourite colour?" Blake chimed in as Henry forced the planchet again.  

"It says green."  

"Holy shit it really is a g-g-g-ghost!" Blake replied dramatically.

Trish then aggressively turned off her recorder and slammed it on the table.  

"You're ruining it!" She yelled at Blake and Henry.

"There's nothing to ruin, nothing's happened." Blake replied.

"We were getting something!" Trish yelled back.

"Sure we were, I wouldn't have even shown up to this if it weren't for Angela being hot, and now how's the rest of the football team gonna treat me when they find out that I spent Halloween night with losers in a dusty old basement!" Henry said.

"Technically this is- was a crematorium." Ted replied.

"Hey it's because of you we started late." Blake said to Ted who just shrugged it off and continued using the radio.

"Oh shut up, if you weren't at that stupid party we could've started even earlier!" Trish yelled at Blake.

"Last time I checked the witching hour didn't start at 02:47! How are we even supposed to see anything if the room's only lit by fucking candles!" Blake yelled back.  

"GUYS SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN TO THIS!" Ted yelled gesturing to the radio.

Blake, Trish and Henry all crowded around as Ted began to oscillate between radio channels which was creating a strange sound.

"Is that... breathing?" Blake asked, triggering Trish to quickly grab her tape recorder.

"Maybe it's just some old fart with a ham radio." Henry said.

"Between channels, is that even a thing?" Ted replied.  

"I thought you were a nerd?" Henry replied.

"Yeah ask me about comic books any day, I don't know how radios work." Ted replied.

As they continued to listen it was clear that they were hearing a voice, albeit it was very raspy and they weren't saying anything, until suddenly...

"GET OUT!" A voice yelled through the radio causing the four of them to jump away from the table, the static now sounding louder than ever.

"What the fuck was that!" Henry yelled, but the others were speechless.

The radio then started skipping sharply through channels, back and forth sounding like a knife tearing through electricity. All of a sudden the tape begin spinning faster and faster before it erupted into sparks along with all the other equipment causing the four of them to duck. As they slowly crept back up they each grabbed one of the many torches that were sitting on the table and after checking that they still worked pointed them towards the burned and blown up remains of the radio, but the sharp sound of it skipping channels was still somehow going, however after a few seconds it abruptly stopped.

The four of them sighed with relief simultaneously before realizing that the sharp sound of the radio going back and forth was now replaced with the sound of wood scraping back and forth.

All four of them slowly turned towards the direction of the sound and were greeted by the sight of Angela, still with her head hung low obscuring her face from view, as she violently scrapped the planchet against the now very worn looking board. She then abruptly stopped and crept forward slightly before looking up at the four of them, the light form their torches revealing her eyes to be nearly completely whited out aside from a tiny black dot of a pupil in each one.

"She's here." Angela said in a now deeper voice with a wicked grin.

"Oh fuck." Blake stammered.  Suddenly the furnaces in the crematorium that hadn't been used in over 100 years ignited with roaring flames behind Angela, as slowly a circular pattern formed in the floor between her and the others, which then began to rot and sink down as what looked like blood began to seep through it until it looked like a small pool of it formed.

The four stood there speechless as slowly a woman rose out of the blood. She had pale skin and white hair, with sharp black eyebrows and what looked like red makeup around her eyes and lips. Her nails were sharp and black with crosses painted on them, in fact she also had small crosses under her eyes and studs in her nose and belly button. She wore some form of  black headdress with various beads and spikes sticking from it along with angels sculpted on it. Her body was only covered by a corset that was laced in the middle showing off some of her stomach and a bra-like chest piece, both of which looked to be made from some thick leather-like material which connected down to straps holding thigh high black heeled boots onto her legs. She rose out of the floor with her eyes closed and her hands on her chest with blood dripping from her mouth down her chest and arms, her expression looking almost as though she was experiencing pleasure as she rose from her bloody gateway.

"Ooh It's good to be back here." She said as she lowered her arms from her chest and stretched her body before opening her eyes and looking at the four people in front of her.

"So, you're the two who mocked my arrival?" She said looking at Blake and Henry.

"W...we didn't mean it.. hones-" Henry began to blurt out but it was too late, the woman had pointed her finger at the two of them and purple electricity began crackling around their bodies. Their clothes were burned away as their bodies levitated as the two of them twitched and squirmed, Blake's glasses falling to the floor.

Trish and Ted backed up in shock at what they were witnessing, still speechless with their jaws hanging open.

Soon Blake and Henry's bodies were completely covered by black clouds which began swirling around them along with the electricity flashing, their screams of pain filling the room. Soon there came the sound of bones cracking and flesh rearranging and tightening as their screams turned more feminine, and during the occasional flash of electricity Trish and Ted could see their silhouettes inside the black clouds twisting and contorting as their figures became thinner and more delicate, along with certain areas becoming a lot more pronounced. During this their screams of pain shifted to moans of pleasure, then to slightly more animalistic sounds. Before long the clouds began to dissipate as their bodies became visible.

Trish and Ted stared in shock at the sight of what was formerly Blake and Henry, now in their place stood two women wrapped in black fur robes that draped down to the floor but left their bodies visible from the chest and shoulder area up. Their skin was now chalk white with pointed eyebrows and long black hair with short fringes. They had eyeliner that went off in streaks to the sides of their faces whilst black liquid dripped from their now whited out eyes. Their lips were also black and their noses were studded; their now pointed ears had circular black earrings and they each had a small necklace with a skull around their necks. They crouched there snarling with vampire-like fangs as their delicate hands with pointed black nails ran across their bodies.

"Come now my pets." The woman said causing the two of them to slink over to her crouching down behind her on each side.

"W.. what did you do to them?!" Ted yelled in a fearful tone.

"Oh them, I made them into my personal demonic hell spawn, they'll be keeping me company from now on, doing my bidding for the rest of their existence." She said as she ran her hands over their heads.

"Oh but don't worry your friends won't complain." She said with a grin.

"Now, I think introductions are in order." She said clapping her hands together.

"I am Kiniva, high ranking Demon Mistress of Hell." She announced with a grin, however noticing the lack of change on Ted and Trish's still shocked expressions her grin turned to a look of disappointment.

"Is that really how you respond to my presence!" She said angrily, before then calming down and looking intently around the room.

"Now, I believe I have business to attend to here." She continued as she very slowly began walking towards Ted and Trish, her hips swaying gracefully as she put one foot in front of the other, clearly knowing how to carry herself in the sexiest way possible with her figure silhouetted against the roaring flames behind her.

"W.. what do you want?" Trish asked nervously as she and Ted held each other fearfully as they backed up further into the corner of the room.

"Well, my loyal follower has spent many years waiting for this day." She said turning her head gesturing towards Angela.

"Wait.. what?!"

"Oh yes Ted, Angela here is the latest in a long line of followers going back over 100 years, dedicated out of shier multi-generational loyalty." She said turning around giving Angela a smile.

"Oh yeah well taste this!" Trish yelled pulling out a large crucifix and pointing it at Kiniva.

"What do you think I am, a Vampire?!" Kiniva replied angrily raising a hand to her face as she snapped her fingers causing the crucifix to erupt into flames in Trish's hand.

"Guess you didn't notice the crosses on my face." She said pointing to her face.

"But that's a holy item, it should repel you!" "Well you see Trish when you're as powerful as I am there isn't really much that can stop you, displaying that on my body wasn't enough to tell you that." She replied holding up her cross patterned nails. "Anyway enough of the small talk, I have things to do here." "What things?" Ted asked. "Well firstly I awarded my loyal follower who will now willingly accompany me back to hell as my apprentice, and those two boys were just a warmup, it's about time I had some real fun, starting with you Trish." "What are you talking about, why me!? Wasn't Blake and Henry enough?" "Oh no they were being punished for being impolite to a Demon, but you have much deeper sins." Kiniva replied with a chuckle. "What do you mean?" "You know what I mean, my follower latched on to your group due to your interests in my realm, but you didn't want to summon me to discover new worlds, new experiences, you just wanted to boost your ego."

Trish looked speechless. "It's no secret, you wanted to conduct this ritual just to prove you were right over all those other people, just knowing that I existed was enough, but you knew the danger I posed to the world and yet you went ahead without a care in the world. You didn't even show concern over your two companions over there being made into unholy creatures of hell, and that's not even the worst of it."

Trish was beginning to turn red as Ted looked at her confused.

"What's she talking about?" "Oh Ted didn't you know, she only let Henry tag along because she and Angela knew that in all of the previous rituals they had a sacrifice for me." Kiniva replied. "Is that true?" Ted asked Trish. "I...It didn't matter, he was a bully to me for two years straight back in middle school, he had it coming!" Trish blurted out through tears as she let go of Ted.

Ted stood there even more horrified and confused. "Oh Trish, it's alright. Doing something that horrible is considered admirable where I'm from." Kiniva replied as she stepped close to her.

As Trish stood there a sniveling mess Kiniva took her in her arms and held her close, running a hand over her hair.

"I'm proud of what you've done, you're officially a corrupted soul." Kiniva replied before lifting Trish's head up so they were face to face. "And you know what happens to corrupted souls." She said as her voice became much deeper before her eyes began to glow red as she held Trish in place who was screaming desperately as she tried to escape.

Trish let out a loud gasp as her waist was crushed inwards by a corset that had materialized over her torso, the binds creaking and tightening. A long black dress billowed out from the bottom of the corset covering her legs as it puffed out, and whilst it wasn't visible she could feel her feet raise as her trainers morphed into heels whilst her clothes under the dress vanished and were replaced with more appropriate undergarments. Her clothes on her upper body began to change also, with the neckline of her shirt widening and lowering down exposing an ample amount of cleavage that was being raised up by the corset, whilst her outer jacket darkened as it morphed into the upper section of the dress, with puffy shoulders, long black sleeves and dotted gloves that left her hands visible through them. An  elaborate necklace formed around her neck along with earrings whilst makeup materialized onto her lips, giving them a dark gold coat whilst  her eyebrows and eyes also became adorned with makeup. With the way she looked now she looked as though she belonged to a different time period.

Trish could barely express her shock at what she was experiencing as Kiniva held her in place by the head, forcing her to stare at her glowing red eyes as Trish could only imagine what was happening to her body. As Kiniva loosened her grip on Trish's head Trish's blonde hair began turning a dark brown as it lost it's frizzy look as it began to elegantly drape down her shoulders in a slightly curled appearance, before it suddenly began whipping around as it reformed on top of her head into an extravagant yet still elegantly styled bun.

Trish was speechless as she took in her new appearance, but soon noticed her whole body beginning to fade in colour; her clothes and skin were draining into a more washed out colour, but more disturbing was how her entire form was beginning to look old and flakey, not like an older person but rather like her skin and clothes were now made of a weathered material.

"Ted... help me.. please.." She begged but her voice was fading too, becoming quieter until no sound came from her lips, even her movements were becoming much slower and weaker, almost as though she'd fall apart if she wasn't careful. The sounds of her body stiffening and hollowing out continued as she froze in place with a vacant expression and her arms reaching up to her hair. Whilst she still maintained her shape she didn't look like an actual human anymore, instead she looked more like a paper model of herself.

Kiniva grinned as she drew a rectangle in the air with her finger, which morphed into a large old fashioned picture frame that floated behind Trish and lay on the floor. She then blew Trish a kiss that caused her hollowed out form to fall backwards. Ted tried desperately to catch her before she hit the frame but didn't make it in time, however instead of just hitting the frame she was absorbed into it, melting through until she was but a two-dimensional image, with the canvas  taking in the weathered appearance that her skin had. Ted backed up in horror at what he'd just witnessed.

Kiniva lifted the frame from the floor as she inspected it with a grin.

"Well Trish you did like to use people like they were objects, now let's see how you like it being one." She said before propping the frame up against the wall.

"Oh God." Ted said shuddering in shock after what he'd just witnessed. "Sorry God's not here right now, you're stuck with me." Kiniva responded turning her attention towards him. "Oh don't worry about her, she's in a dimension where well... let's just say she's not going to want to leave anytime soon." "So are you gonna kill me now?" Ted asked nervously. "Well I would, or I'd turn you into another hell spawn, but unfortunately you've got something that's too valuable to waste." "What?" Ted asked fearfully. "An uncorrupted soul and genuine curiosity in what lies beyond, unlike that other mortal I just dealt with." She Replied. "Her name was Trish." Ted said with a hint of anger. "See, there it is! Even after knowing that she was willing to sacrifice another human life you still feel pity for her after what I did to her, plus you showed compassion for your other friends that I dealt with, that's the sign of an uncorrupted soul." Kiniva replied sounding impressed.

"But I can see you, what you want to know. You want to know what it's like where I'm from, and not to boost your ego or to get some rush out of it, you're just genuinely curious aren't you? You're not even really afraid of it, you tell yourself you are but you know you're not." Kiniva continued as she got closer to him. "I can show you. You can experience what it is like to be a being not of this realm, to be like.. me." She said now being right in front of Ted. "What do you say?" "I.. what will I be?" Ted asked. "Something very familiar." She replied before wrapping her arm around his head and pulling him in for a kiss.

Initially Ted was taken aback, but something was beginning to happen to him, and whatever it was felt really.. really good. The two of them began to become more passionate as they kissed each other, but as they kept going Ted's hair began to turn white as it slowly stretched down his head until it was identical in colour and style to Kiniva's.

His whole body started changing with his torso, arms and legs thinning out as his skin turned very pale and less blemished than before, in fact his skin was now incredibly smooth. As he reached up an arm to Kiniva's head his hands became more delicate and petite whilst his nails turned darker and sharper.

As they continued making out Kiniva began to slip Ted's clothes off his body revealing it to now be completely pale and rather delicate looking, but as she held him close she ran her hands up his legs to his waist, causing his thighs to bulge out along with his hips whilst his waist pulled in and his stomach flattened. His feet also looked much more feminine. She ran a finger along his spine which was followed by slight popping noises as his spine repositioned itself as his height shrank, causing his thickening thighs to jiggle.

Kiniva then started to kiss Ted more passionately, but as she stuck her tongue down his throat it travelled down even further into his body as it began reworking his insides, pushing and squishing them into new forms, with Ted seemingly being completely oblivious to what was happening to him.

"This is the best part." She whispered as she ran one hand over Ted's chest and another over his crotch, before she began running her hand up and down his shaft.

Ted moaned as he felt ripples of pleasure all throughout his body. "That's it, let it out." Kiniva said as she continued running her hand up and down, Ted completely oblivious to the shrinking of mass in his crotch.

As Ted stood there with his head back in complete bliss Kiniva's other hand began squeezing his chest, causing slight lumps to plump out.

By now Ted's penis was nearly completely gone, but as the pulses of pleasure ran through his body each pulse caused his penis to shrink whilst the mass on his chest built. "Oh yes, YES! DON'T STOP!" Ted yelled passionately, his voice raising slightly.

Kiniva grinned as she watched as the last traces of Ted's manhood fade, and began rubbing his flat crotch as a slit formed.

"OH... OOH!" Ted's moans were now completely feminine as he placed his hands over his chest as he welcomed the way they began to be filled with his rapidly expanding breasts, which continued to expand with each pulse of pleasure that ran through his body. Kiniva once again pulled him in closer causing Ted's forming breasts to squish up against hers.

As this was occurring the pulses of energy had reached his face, with it audibly cracking and stretching as it became slimmer and softer with each pulse whilst his breasts continued expanding. Whilst most of his facial features were thinning out like his nose and head shape in general, his lips plumped as his eyes grew larger along with his eyebrows becoming sharper and more defined. His eyebrows and eyelids darkened as though they were coated in makeup, whilst his sharpening cheekbones began to glisten slightly along with his lips becoming coated in black. Small cuts in the shape of crosses formed under his eyes as a pair of crosses morphed onto his face, along with a stud on the rim of his nose and on his tongue.

By now he had a pronounced set of breasts on his chest as his facial changes finalized, leaving him looking almost completely identical to Kiniva.

"One last touch." She whispered into Ted's ear who sounded as though he was about to reach climax, before she then pushed her hand into his chest, fazing through his skin which glowed orange as she grabbed his heart and turned it cold.

Ted moaned loudly in release, marking the end of his changes as Kiniva removed her hand from his chest, which was now adorned with what looked like a tattoo of a heart.

"There, now you have the identifying symbol of our type of Demon." Kiniva said to the slightly dazed Ted.

"How's it feel?" Kiniva asked her now doppelganger.  

"This is, oh wow!" Ted replied looking down at his new form, still in shock at what he just went through but he strangely felt very accepting of his new situation. "I knew you'd like it."

"But I still don't understnad, why give me this but not Angela?" "Well Angela is a corrupted soul, so she will one day join our ranks, but she has to take the long way round in hell, but as my loyal follower she'll welcome it." "So, what am I going to do now?" Ted asked, a hint of excitement in his feminine voice. "Oh, I've got some ideas." Kiniva replied before her eyes glowed red as red beams shot from her eyes into Ted's.

She then began flooding Ted's mind with new knowledge, the inner workings of hell, the new powers this form allowed him to have as well as a Demon's lust for souls, as well as adjusting his mindset slightly to accommodate the intensity of this new knowledge that he'd, or more accurately she'd be needing, for now she was one with Kiniva. Once the beam had stopped her eyes turned black as a pair of red pupils flashed before returning to normal, signaling the completion of the process.

"Oh, now that feels so much better!" She said grinning with devilish energy as she lay her head back running her hands through her hair. "Thought you'd feel that way." Kiniva replied heading back over to Angela and her pets. "I must be off now, more souls to claim, more carnage to cause."

"Have fun Kiniva." "You too, Kiniva." The original Kiniva replied with a grin as a large black cloud swirled around her, consuming her, Angela and her two pets. It had nearly filled the whole room before it vanished, the fire in the furnaces having died, the hole in the floor that Kiniva rose from having repaired itself and the original Kiniva, along with Angela and her pets had vanished, leaving the room looking exactly as it did when Trish's group first entered it.

The new Kiniva stood there naked now completely silent and alone, before noticing the picture frame propped up against the wall which she picked up and inspected.

"Oh Trish, and to think I used to have a crush on you. Hope you like the view in there, don't worry I'll find a good place to display you." She grinned as she made her way out of the crematorium.

"Ooh, this place looks homely." Kiniva said as she headed off into the darkness of the house.

A few decades later..

"You sure this is a good idea?" David asked. "C'mon David, this house has stood here completely abandoned for years, people are too afraid to go near it because apparently some people went missing here back in the 80's." Brad replied. "So remind me why we're going in again?" "Because there's all the rumors about 'something' still occupying the house, so this is our chance to prove it, plus even if there's nothing this place was abandoned, so there's probably stuff in there worth millions, and seeing as it's 3:00 AM no one's gonna see us take anything." "Fine okay okay I'll go in with you." David replied reluctantly. As the two friends began making their way along the path towards the front door of the house, they were taken aback when the front door creaked open revealing the decrepit inside of the house along with the sight of a beautiful tall pale faced woman in a black dress with white hair.

"Hello boys, why don't you come inside, it's been years since anyone's visited."

The end?

[thedragonslibrary]

Is it possible to be blocked like magick or energy wise? I do not know how to put it in words but sometimes I feel like there is something that i should connect to or should be able to do but I am not. Maybe I am not idk well practiced enough but it sometimes feels like I am running against a glass wall. Maybe I Idk man. I am just really frustrated. I cant really give examples just everytime I do something magick related it feels like running against a wall and it makes me wanna cry. Sorry

Yes, of course it’s possible to be blocked!  

To clarify, your first statement about feeling as though you should be able to “connect” to something is a common beginner issue.  It may simply be that you haven’t found the thing you’re supposed to connect to yet - whether that’s opening your third eye and being able to talk to your guides, finding the deity and/or pantheon you connect most to in a religious manner, or simply opening your psychic awareness fully enough to feel the energies around you.  The best advice I can give is to experiment.  Try everything, and don’t hold yourself back!  

When I was a beginner witch, I tried everything from Wicca to demonolatry to Christian witchery, from reiki to hexing and cursing, from psychopomp work and shadow work and light work and everything you can imagine.  If you can think of it, I probably tried it in some way.  Only by putting yourself out there in as many avenues and paths as you possibly can, will you find what works for you.  If something doesn’t work, doesn’t fit or “feel right,” put it away and move on.  Read everything you can - on Tumblr, in books, in every single resource you can find.  It took me probably five or six years of exploration to figure out what generally “worked” for me, and I still feel like I’m learning and discovering new outlets for my magical expression.

An extra “something” is not for everyone.  Often in magical practices, you are the source of your own power.  Sure, crystals and herbs and grounding and gods help, but ultimately the magic is coming from you.  You might not necessarily need an extra “thing.”  Let your magic be intuitive, don’t let books or Tumblr bloggers tell you how to do your thing step-by-step.  Take spells or rituals and modify them to fit your needs - that is how they’ll be most powerful and useful for you.

But back to the topic of blockages, if you have already had magical abilities previously: I have gone through blockages myself, and they are exactly what you described here: frustrating, like hitting a wall.  Sometimes it feels as though all your “power” has been taken away, and you’re left without your previous magical agency.  You might have the thought that perhaps you were just making everything up all along, that maybe you’ve been deluding yourself.  Trust me, you didn’t, and things will get better!  

In my experience, there are two general types of blocks you can have.  I’ll outline them for you and how they can be worked through.  

The first is a bit simpler, and is more like an art block.  Lots of magic-users go through periods of this softer, mental blockage at some point or another on their path.  It can be sometimes referred to as a Fallow Period, which comes from a similar phrase in farming used to refer to when a partition of soil is meant to rest for a season or two to regain its fertility.  

A Fallow Period can arise from burnout, especially from outside sources creating stress in your life.  

Magic, especially psychic and spirit work, is infinitely more difficult when you are stressed, going through a rough mental health period, or when you are physically ill.  

Fallow Periods can also be caused through divine intervention - your spirit guides or deities may have decided that you need to take a break to focus on real life, or to focus on taking care of yourself for a little while.

Blockages of this nature eventually right themselves, but it can take time - it can last anywhere from a few months to over a year.

The best thing to do when you’re experiencing a fallow period like this is to not force it.  You are only going to frustrate yourself if you continue to attempt to perform magically and have little to no results.  Additionally, you’re going to create a deadly cycle of feeling disappointed in yourself, and eventually burn out so hard you won’t want to do magic at all anymore.

Instead, take some time to create: write poetry, draw, or paint.  Write devotional poetry.  If you want to do magical work, work on your grimoire or book of shadows.  Focus on practical magic you can do with your hands - cooking, creating items with intent, cleansing and clearing your home.

Take time to meditate and perform self-care.  Perform practical, easy meditations like the simple, free ones in the Headspace app, or find guided meditations for free on YouTube that bring you into fun, brightly colored astral spaces.  Take baths and imagine all of your troubles washing away down the drain when you’re finished.  Give yourself room to heal and just feel good about yourself.

When you feel ready to move out of your Fallow Period, it will come very naturally.  Like an urge to pick up a witchcraft book or to astral travel suddenly.  Don’t worry about easing back into it - while taking it slow might be good for some, it’s not for everyone.  If you’re really excited to get back into magic, and you’re being urged to do it right now, go ahead and do it!

The other type of blockage is a physical, energetic blockage.  These are usually sudden-onset conditions.  If one day you are performing just fine magically, and the next you wake up and you can’t feel any of your sixth senses, and you are not physically sick or particularly more stressed out than normal, you probably have a physical energetic blockage.

Ensure first that it’s an energetic blockage.  Perform a reading on yourself, check your energy centers, figure out how you’re feeling physically.  Meditation goes a long way here, as well as visualizing your energy moving through your body.  Does it seem to stop anywhere?  Likewise, do you feel extremely hopeless and drained energetically for no discernible, tangible reason (i.e. depression or a recent traumatic experience)?  Can you not even muster up the motivation to check yourself?  Then you probably have an energetic blockage.

Find an energy healer in physical proximity to you.  Trust me when I say that it is not enough to go to the local Hand & Stone and ask for a reiki massage (I have tried this for you already, and please believe me when I say it’s not going to solve your problems).  Distance healings do work and are worth it, but in my personal experience physical healings tend to be much more powerful when it comes to dismantling blockages in this way.

Ask around at your local metaphysical stores.  Find someone who is a reiki master or another type of energy healer, who has great reviews outside of what’s posted on their website and who has a great deal of experience.  Ask them if they have unedited testimonials anywhere they can share with you (such as Google reviews).  

Ask what their process is, ask to see their healing space, ask them what physical tools they use in their session.  Ask them if they’d be willing to charge a small fee for them to examine you and figure out what’s going on (don’t expect them to do something like that for free).  Remember that they should never suggest that they can heal physical ailments or claim that their services replace allopathic medicine - they should only focus on your energetic issues.  

Explain to them that you feel blocked energetically and that this is exactly what you are looking to be treated for - psychics and healers are not mind readers, and they cannot help you if they’re not told what they need to fix.  

Pay attention to your gut and what feels right.  Even in a blocked state, you always have decent access to your intuition.

I won’t lie, you will likely need to shell out a good amount of money for this.  A good healer worth their salt most likely won’t charge you less than $60 for an hour session.

If you don’t feel some kind of energetic release during your healing session, mention that to your healer.  Since you’ve already told them about your issue, they may be able to give advice as to why you didn’t feel any specific change, as everyone’s process is different and the healer you’ve chosen to work with is going to have the best understanding over the situation, after you.  Again, pay attention to your gut.  Give the healing a couple of days to set in, and make sure to drink plenty of water and pay attention to how you feel.

When I personally dealt with my own physical energy blockage, when it was finally healed it felt like a dam breaking and all of my energy flowing back into my body.  It felt like I had had one of my senses shut off, and for the switch to finally be turned back on.  Not everyone is going to feel this way, but if you’ve been blocked for a particularly long time, it may feel very strong and overwhelming to have yourself be un-blocked.

Whatever your situation is, I hope this post was helpful!  Good luck on finding your solution!

[sell-our-skins]

Day 4 of Paradise Motel Week Post Canon AO3 Link ~ Hum Hallelujah “Trying to honor the dead is really difficult when the person who killed them is *right there*”

The Girl was struggling to close her backpack. It was a fairly cheap thing, recently bought by her mom. The shade reminded her of apricots, and all of the times she used to steal fruit flavored candies with Ghoul. Actual fruits were impossible to come by in the zones, or at least they used to be, but with BL/ind being gone, she supposed that she could try a real one now.

It was hot in the car. She was sitting in the passenger seat and the sun was beating down on her through the windshield. Her door was open, occasionally giving a short gust of wind. ‘Mom’s getting the keys,’ she told herself. Soon she could crank up the air conditioning and try to relax. That was, if the bag would actually close.

The zipper refused to budge. She gave it another exasperated tug, “Motherfucker,” she hissed out. Stupid zipper. Stupid backpack.

“Motorbaby?” Maya poked her head into the front seat of the van. Her dark hair, which was streaked with the occasional grey, was pulled up into a loose bun and a leather jacket thrown over a plain green tank top, “You need help?”

The Girl sighed, silently handing her mom the backpack in defeat. Maya smiled warmly, opening up the glovebox in front of the Girl with a gentle click. It was filled to the brim with trinkets from their adventures so far. The older Killjoy pulled out a half melted blue candle and began to carefully rub it over the zipper lining.

The Girl arched one of her eyebrows.

“Don’t question me, child of mine,” she warned with a chuckle, setting the candle down on the dashboard. Maya firmly grabbed the stubborn zipper, and closed the bag with ease.

“I take back my eyebrow raise. You’re clearly a deity in disguise,” Maya rolled her eyes, handing the Girl her bag and buckling herself up. The Girl carefully set the fruit-colored-bag in the backseat.

Maya started the van, and she started to head towards Route Guano. It was only now sinking in, what they were doing and where they were going. The Girl could feel her stomach flip with anxiety and her head filling with doubts.

It was apparently visible in her face, since her mom commented on it, “You know, we don’t have to do this. We could… make an altar for ourselves. Just a family thing.”

She actually considered it for a second, but no. She wasn’t going to let some asshole ruin her day

“I’ll be fine.”

--=+=--

The two Killjoys pulled up to the Ultra V hideout, which was formally some type of restaurant. A fast food place, most likely, but it was nearly unrecognizable. It was covered in spray painted tags and other interesting looking ornaments. However, today, it was also decorated with different types of desert wildflowers.

Pretty much as soon as the car had stopped, a teal haired Killjoy burst through the front of the restaurant, followed by their pink haired twin.

“KIIIIIIID! KID KIID!” the twins called out, running towards the car as fast as they could. The Girl felt a little smile appear on her face as she opened the door and hopped out of the van. Instantly, Vaya had pulled her into a tight hug and loudly exclaimed, “I can’t believe you actually came!”

“Yeah, glad you could make it, tumbleweed,” Vamos tried to play faer previous excitement off casually. Fae leaned against the van, a caricatured version of looking cool. Though they somehow made it work.

“Don’t scratch the paint, pup,” Maya piped up, hopping out of their car with a bag slung over her shoulder, “Can ya’ lend me a hand?”

“‘Course, Ms. Psychic,” Vaya called out, letting go of the girl and rushing to the other side of the van, their sibling following closely behind.

Merely a few seconds later, Vinyl came walking towards the group. The Girl gave him a wave, grabbing her apricot backpack from the backseat. Vinyl pointed at her backpack, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, uh, I got it. You can see if mom needs help, though,” he nodded at her words and travelled around the vehicle. The Girl glanced over at the doorway. The last member of the Ultra Vs was just standing there. Staring back at her and leaning against the doorway. His hair had faded slightly, turning a sort of pinkish red.

She sighed and looked up into the sky. Probably around 4.

‘You’ve been through hell and back you can deal with this,’ she ran a hand through her hair and made her way into the Ultra V hideout. Val’s eyes were practically staring right through her. Like a snake watching its prey. The Girl just tried to not acknowledge it.

She looked around at the now decorated restaurant. There were a handful of wildflowers in a variety of colors in cans and petals on the ground. A desk had been pushed out into the front room, making a makeshift altar. It was extremely plain, the only things on it being a faded polaroid of Volume in a soft yellow frame, a couple bad luck bead bracelets placed on the corners of the picture frame, a bag of chips, most likely stolen from Tommy, and a hair dye kit in Electric Frankenstein.

She opened up her bag and began to pull things out of it. Beads, photos, and other precious items. The Girl started to add things to their shared altar, making sure everyone had a section. Her family, her friends, no one was left out.

“Surprised you’re even here, halo head,” Val finally piped up, after what quite possibly could have been the most awkward silence.

‘Halo head,’ she mused to herself, ‘haven’t heard that one in a minute.’

“I’m here to help, don’t get sour,” she said with a sigh, carefully setting out both the battery powered and real candles.

“Help with what? None of this even… matters,” he moved away from his spot in the doorway and towards the altar she was working on.

She didn’t even dignify his sentence by turning to look at him, continuing to set out the picture frames. Val was just trying to get a rise out of her, she knew it.

“I mean, what deity is this for, again?”

“The Phoenix Witch,” the Girl strung a string of bad luck beads around the top of the desk.

“Yeah, the humanoid in a feather coat.”

She gave Val a somewhat annoyed look from over her shoulder, “Just a few months ago you saw me explode into a ball of green electricity,” she went back to what she was doing.

That seemed to set him off, really make him flare up, “I’m not gonna let some bomb with a silver tongue make my crew-”

“Heyyyyy!” Vaya announced their presence as they burst in through the front door. When they noticed how tense Val was, they cleared their throat, “Hope I didn’t interrupt your little get together.”

“Nope, we’re fine,” the Girl put on a fake smile. Apparently it was believable enough, because they let it go with a shrug.

Vaya was followed in by the rest of the Killjoys, all holding different bags filled with goodies.

Val’s anger seemed to fizzle out, since he practically slunk back into the background. It was like a sparkler, going from loud, bright, and fiery to silent in a matter of minutes. A sparkler in Poison Red hair dye. It still made her frown when she thought of it.

--=+=--

The altar was almost completely done, and Vamos was helping with the finishing touches. It was packed full of gifts and photographs, all meant to honor the ghosted. Maya, Vinyl, and Vaya were all in the restaurant’s kitchen, cooking both for the altar and for all of the other Killjoys. There was laughter coming from the kitchen. Well, Vaya and Maya were laughing, Vinyl was trying to fight the smile that wanted to appear on his face. The others were able to hear due to the openness of the restaurant. Val was hunched over on the couch, scribbling in his notebook.

“Lookin’ pretty shiny,” Vamos adjusted one of the frames near the back, since the glare of the lights had made it difficult to see. In it was a photo of Dr. Death Defying and Cherri Cola that the Girl had stolen out of Dr. Death’s station. Faer smile faded almost instantly.

“Christ, I kinda miss the old man,” fae mumbled, tone somewhat sorrowful, maybe even regretful. Fae brushed some of their neon hair out of faer eyes and continued to stare at the frame for a moment. Val shifted on the couch, no longer hunched over. No, now he was listening.

“Yeah, but, I guess… it happens… in a way?” the Girl struggled to find the words, she could feel herself getting somewhat choked up.

“It wasn’t his time,” Maya added, her tone laced with bitterness, “It’s a damn shame, but he’s with the witch now”

“God can you hear yourselves? He was a broken record. A dust angel. What’s the point of all of this?” Val’s voice snapped through the conversation. Everyone was tensely staring at Val, now. A stiff silence having come over the room.

“You wouldn’t know a broken record if you were hit over the head with one,” the Girl snapped back, after what felt an eternity, “The hell is wrong with you? Why can’t you just enjoy something for once?”

Val wrinkled his nose at her, storming out of the building without another word. Fuck.

“Guess you really blew up on him,” Maya tried, her joke falling flat.

--=+=--

It had only been around 15 minutes. The Girl hesitantly poked her head out of the door, looking at Val, who was sitting on the stairs.

“What?” he didn’t look up at her, like he thought the pavement was the most interesting thing in the zones. The stars were just starting to pop up in the sky, the sun sinking behind its spot in the hills.

The Girl just plopped down next to him and stared up at the sky, “You don’t have to like me, Val.”

Val looked up from his pavement, staring at the Girl with a look of mostly confusion.

“We just can’t keep pretending like we aren’t bothered by each other,” she ran a hand through her hair, focusing on a particularly bright star.

There was a beat of silence, “And I know you’re too stubborn to agree. It’s fine,” she hoped that her words came off as lighthearted. The last thing she needed was Val snapping at her again.

“You like the stars?” he finally spoke up.

She broke her staring contest with the bright star to glance at her fellow Killjoy, “Yeah, uh…” The Girl ran a hand through her hair again, debating whether to share what just popped into her head.

“Party, they used to tell me that when you got ghosted you would get turned into a star,” Val looked over at her, his face unreadable, “It always made me feel better, when I would hear people talking about claps going South on the radio. Made me feel like they were just… turning into stardust.”

He looked like he was processing her words, struggling to find the right response.

“Shiny,” is what he finally landed on.

“Yeah, shiny.”

[phantompsychic]

((So, having realized I never really have discussed much about Will’s whole secret thing as a phantom thief, I figured I’d make a headcanon post about it here. This hc post will probs be pretty long, as most of my hc posts tend to be, and I will use it to cover his phantom thief MO, how his methods/career evolved, etc. So, without further ado...))

((So, as I discuss in his bio, Will first intended the whole phantom thief thing as a one time event. Initially, he only meant to expose the corruption in his circus group to ensure his coworkers got what was rightfully theirs and to stop the slander on his own name that the higher-ups were trying to push on him.

For a while afterwards, as he began traveling, Will did not use his alter ego. He never even thought to revive it--until he arrived in Kalos. Lumiose City’s corruption was particularly bad when Will visited, and the more he traveled and acquainted himself with people in the region, the more disgusted he felt with the level of corruption going on. It was, naturally, on a much higher level than what his little circus group was involved in, which gave him pause. Could he could do something? Should he do something?

A part of him still insisted that, unlike the circus, this was not his business, so he should stay away, and he agreed with it for a bit. Despite this, though, it didn’t stop Will’s curiosity from getting the better of him, and he did a large amount of research to understand the level of corruption he was seeing hints of sprouting up around him from below. Xatu, with her selective omniscience and illusionary skills, was extremely helpful. One could say, though, he dug too much, that his curiosity dragged him too far down, for he eventually stumbled upon an active plot that some of the corrupt elements of the people he’d been looking into were planning. It was a white collar level scheme, and some parts of the plan seemed like the same kind of stuff he encountered with his corrupt managers in the circus, but a fair deal larger in scale. Still, as disturbing as this information he stumbled upon was, he still didn’t want to get involved himself, so he turned over what info he had to the Lumiose police as an anonymous tipster...

...and then they promptly disposed of it.

In hindsight, it was obvious that there was a good chance part of the police force was compromised, but it had honestly slipped his mind, one that was already so wrapped up in just gathering the information of the scheme itself. But now all of that information was gone. He could regather it with Xatu’s help, but to what end? The police had rats in it, and he didn’t have the time to sort them out to find a safe person to give the info to so that they could properly investigate and stop the crime before it went full steam ahead. And what about himself? With all this investigating he had been doing, he was bound to start looking familiar to people. He also certainly couldn’t count on his identity staying ‘anonymous’ for long now, either.

So, again he took up his alter ego and planned a theft of the evidence himself. He sent a note to the corrupt police, his first calling card, really, urging them to reconsider and properly investigate the corrupt heads of this scheme. Then, when there was no response, Will went and exposed it himself by stealing the appropriate evidence.

The evidence reveal itself was not quite enough to completely stir action, given the depth of the corruption, but it did give several surviving witnesses the strength to come forward, setting a snowball of events that halted the scheme and led to the corrupt group scattering.

Given the larger scale of this whole thing, Will’s ‘name’ as Itsuki became cemented, partially because of the corrupt police who were still hanging onto power in the city at the time. They wanted this guy’s head, so they blasted him on the news and so on, trying to paint him as a dangerous anarchist so that normal people would be on the lookout too. Eventually, the manhunt did fade somewhat, but his reputation lingered. Thanks to the bad press by the police, he had his fair share of detractors, but it also gave him a small group of fans. People were grateful for his exposure of this corruption, though his methods as a phantom thief were questionable.

Will, however, chose to focus on the positives his alter ego brought out of this, and they were enough that it convinced him to continue to be a phantom thief.

Out of these two incidents, moreso the second than the first, Will began to create his MO and assemble a team.

For his behavior, he tends to not actively seek out criminals to expose, believe it or not. Usually, with his curiosity and constant traveling, they come to him. He tends to pick up all sorts of interesting stories and leads to pursue. Xatu and Delphox always help fill in the details and point him in the right direction when he shows interest in a lead. When he has a lead, he feverishly investigates it, again abusing Xatu and Delphox’s powers to help him search efficiently. He will sneak into places, listen in on people, disguise himself with illusions, and so on to get the information he seeks. Oftentimes this is done at night just for ease, but he will adjust if need be. Then, when he’s gathered enough and settled on his target, he will send a calling card. Originally, in another hc, I said his cards just say ‘Look forward to my arrival on xxx’, but now I think his card would say just a bit more than that. In addition to that bit, he would also probably first preface with asking the target to voluntarily give themselves up to law enforcement and publicly admit their crimes.

And just to be clear, yes I mean CRIMES. He does not go after people for petty shit--nothing short of egregious violations of law. For Will, his only targets are those ‘whose corrupt power has transcended that of the law’. Admittedly, these targets are rare and hard to find, and when he does find one, they take quite a bit of research and planning for Will to infiltrate. Now that he is an Elite, it’s even harder to find the time to do this stuff, but he still makes do. The rarity of his targets helps for sure.

Back to his behavior, Will tries not to wound people severely or use brute force when doing his heists. He practiced with his powers to specifically learn how to use them in nonlethal ways to assist his thievery. Eg using his Psyshock attack, which is meant to be a wild flurry of defense-piercing psychic shrapnel, as simple, single dagger-like attacks. Now, while he may not rely on brute force or anything, that doesn’t exclude other forms of attack, such as illusion, trickery, hypnosis, etc. He’s also quite fine with using other people’s attacks against them, too, like using his illusions to trick some bad guys into attacking each other and cause mass confusion for a time. Pokemon, also, are completely fair game.

And that is why he assembled a specific, small team of Pokemon to assist with his heists. He’d already encountered his Delphox and Reuniclus before he made his second heist in Lumiose, but now he mad them proper parts of his team. Eventually, he would add Malamar before his travels in Kalos were done. I’ve covered in a previous hc how all their powers help Will, what they can do, etc., so I won’t get into that here. In total, though, the most he ever uses in a heist is 5 Pokemon: Delphox, Malamar, Reuniclus, Xatu, and Gardevoir. Will dislikes using more than the first 3 for the sake of easy management and fear of associating his League team with his thief team, but if things get down to the wire he will.

Lastly, I’ll talk briefly about his outfit as a phantom thief. Unfortunately, I suck at costume and clothing design, so Will’s thief outfit has never been concrete. The most I can say with certainty is that his outfit would use dark colors, a different kind of mask, and gloves. Adding to that, his outfit would be symbolic in its design. That is, this all started because of that one incident at the circus. Now, I don’t think I mentioned it before, but another part of the circus incident was that Will was very possibly going to be made the new ringleader soon. His performances were one of the few that consistently attracted a large crowd, and plenty of his coworkers supported the choice. So, when all that mess with the circus cheating him and his coworkers out of money and slandering him, he felt a little more than miffed. So, he reflected his spite in his costume he chose: one that looked similar to a ringleader, though perhaps a little more exaggerated or ‘elegant’. So if I had to sum up his thief outfit, it would be ‘dark, masked ringleader’.

And for now, that’s about all I got. I think I covered a fair bit of my hc’s relating to his phantom thief behavior and origins/career evolution, anyways. I hope I made it clear enough. I’m always open for questions on anything relating to this ofc. And, honestly? Given the nature of his phantom thief MO, how secretive he is about it, etc., none of this phantom thief stuff ever has to come up in a thread if you don’t want to.))

[the-novelwriter]

RED.

By: Sherrieff Farrakhan

“MEOW.”

I looked up from carving my pumpkin to see what Mr. Drogo wanted. He always wanted attention when my hands were messy.

“What do you want now Mr. Drogo?”

“MEOW.”

He jumped up on the kitchen counter sniffing the innards of the pumpkin that I had just disemboweled, and that’s when I realized I hadn’t fed him yet and it had been almost twelve hours since the last time he had eaten. I walked over to the cabinet and took out a can of wet cat food. I remember when I first got him. He was the cutest little tiger striped orange kitten with blue eyes that I had ever laid eyes on. The rest of his litter had been sold and for some reason no one wanted him. He was my perfect pet though.

“Here you go baby, mommy’s sorry she’s been neglecting you today.”

I put the food in his bowl, gave him a pat, and resumed my pumpkin carving extravaganza. Halloween was one of my favorite holidays, mostly because I loved the smell of the crisp air and the mirage of colors produced by the annual death of trees. It was like the unofficial official start of Autumn. I also liked that I could be anyone but myself one day out of the year with no questions asked. It made being a plain Jane so much more tolerable, and the look on people’s faces when they saw me dressed in my sexy, insert profession here, costume was to die for.

Once I finished with my third pumpkin, an angry faced one, I took them outside and lit them. I took a deep breath and looked down at my works of art. They looked like a depressed boy band on the verge of a split. I giggled to myself and walked back inside, feeling my phone vibrating in my pocket. I washed my hands and checked it, almost missing the call.

“Hello?”

“Hey girl, me and Mark will be there in an hour at about eight-ish, I got the liquor and the Maryjane!” Nicki laughed, putting emphasis on the last word like I was too anal to know what she meant.

“Okay cool, let me clean this place up, I got pumpkin guts everywhere.”

“Alright, see you in a few!”

I hung up the phone and immediately got to cleaning. I hated having people over when my apartment was dirty, it was just a bit too small for extra people and mess. Four hundred square feet of space is just enough to have about two guests and a cat. I looked around my small apartment, the used brown couch and chair that came with it looking like they belonged to a grandparent from two generations ago. The cheap coffee table and end table set a little shinier than it should have been. It was a bit run down but it was mine. I had lived in it for two years now and I loved it.

“MEOW.”

“I know boy, just have to make sure everything is clean,” I responded to him. I hated making him uncomfortable, but sometimes I had too. He hissed and ran into my bedroom when I turned the vacuum cleaner on.

***

“Girl I cannot believe you got another picture printed out of you and that cat, we are in college and you’re already an old cat lady,” Nicki said.

“Oh, girl leave her alone, he’s the only male affection she has,” Mark chimed in. They both erupted into laughter. I don’t know if it was actually funny or if it was the weed, but we laughed for a few good minutes before I finally had a comeback.

“This is coming from a guy who hasn’t had a date since freshman year,” I responded with a sarcastic smile. “Your love life is about as dry as mine.”

He rolled his eyes and took another hit from the bowl. Me, Nicki, and Mark had been friends since freshman year of college, and we were now seniors. We had had our fair share of ups and downs but at the end of the day it made our relationship stronger. People always wondered how a black inner-city Chicago girl, became friends with me, an uptight white girl from Ohio, and Mark a flamboyant gay Asian boy from California. Nicki would defend our friendship with a ferocity whenever people asked her why she was friends with us. which happened a bit more often than I’d like to admit.  

“Because they are genuinely amazing people! It’s extremely small minded of you to think that I can’t relate to people of different cultures!” She yelled at one of her other acquaintances one day while we were out at a bar. His eyes got big and he made his way to a different crowd, not ready to face her wrath.

Me and Mark were quiet with awkward grins frozen to our faces. She looked over at us.

“I absolutely hate when other black people act like I can’t be friends with you guys because of my background, yes I’m a little hood but I am smart as hell…” She said to us as her eyes drifted to the floor. “I really care about you guys.”

“Girl we love you, fuck what small minded people have to say. We are sugar, spice, and everything nice honeeey,” Mark said to her with a level of sass that could only be topped by hers. We both laughed and gave her hugs to reassure her of our friendship. I knew she loved us, but I sometimes felt bad because her own community was a bit ostracizing

“Girl those pumpkins look like us when we’re mad at each other,” Nicki said interrupting my daydream.

“Can I hit that one more time?” I asked, reaching for the weed. “I didn’t think about it but yes they do!” I laughed almost choking on the smoke.

“Oh, I see someone is trying to get turnt up in here tonight,” responded Nicki with a smile.

“Well since midterms are over, I thought why the hell not?” I laughed. “You want me to make us some drinks?”

“Yaaaas!” Mark responded with his famous spirit fingers, the glitter paint on his nails sparkling in the dim overhead light.

“Just for the dramatics you get water,” I teased as I got up from the table.

“I have something to show you guys,” Mark said when I came back from mixing our drinks.

He was sitting there, holding his book bag with a big mischievous smile on his face. I never knew what to expect from him. He was the most unpredictable friend in our group, but it made things more exciting for the most part. Planning random road trips, throwing surprise parties, showing up to his friends’ houses without fair warning. He was the full package.  

“So, I went to visit a psychic yesterday to get my readings, and well I saw this old spell book and asked her if I could buy it from her, you know? Something spontaneous and creepy,” He reached into his bag pulling the book out. “She was reluctant at first, but after about fifteen minutes of warning me of ‘dark powers’ she sold it to me for $100. Of course, I had to convince her that I wouldn’t utter a word from the book aloud before she let me leave.”

The book was leather bound but looked like it had been through some rough days in its lifetime. He shuffled through it revealing missing and stained pages.

“You think my black ass is about to play with a spellbook?” Nicki questioned, moving her chair away from the small round table. “Especially one that you were specifically warned not to read from, Oh hell no!”

I laughed, finding myself drawn to the book. The alcohol and weed were really starting to kick in now and I felt in the mood for something spooky. I didn’t really believe in magic and spirits, so I didn’t care about the psychic’s warning.

“Let me see,” I said taking the book from Mark.

I flipped through the pages, not recognizing the language at all. I found a short spell and thought I would give Nicki a scare, I did owe her for making fun of me and Mr. Drogo. I recited the words in my head once before trying them out loud.

“Zü-rad fres-ah dor-ium khalê—”

“Oh, hell no bitch, stop!” Nicki tried snatching the book, but I moved away and stood up. I began again.

“Zü-rad fres-ah dor-ium khalê morti-ūn sherán”

I repeated it three times while running from Nicki, who unsuccessfully attempted to take the book. I eventually came back to the table and sat, out of breath. Mark had been laughing the whole time watching the two-woman production we had just performed. Nicki, on the other hand, looked visibly bothered.

“I’m sorry, I had to get you back for making fun of me and Mr. Drogo,” I said.

“Girl whatever, you know I don’t like that spooky shit. I need a shot,” She got up from the table and went into the kitchen to get more vodka.

“I wonder what it means,” said Mark, while looking over the page. “I’m going to google it.”

I suddenly started to feel uneasy and light headed. It was like the weed and vodka had started to hit me full force.

“I feel kind of light heade—”

***

“Shannon, Shannon,” I heard their voices calling out to me.

I opened my eyes and for a few seconds I couldn’t see anything. Eventually my eyes adjusted, and I saw Mark and Nicki standing over me.

“Girl what the fuck!?” Nicki half asked half screamed. “What happened?”

“I feel okay I just think I over did it on the weed,” I tried to explain.

I was a lot more scared than I let on. I had never passed out before, it makes your body feel so weak when you come back to consciousness. I was also nervous because smoking and drinking had never made that happen before.

“That has never happened to me before, maybe I shouldn’t have mixed the two,” I muttered. “I need some water.”

“Hold up Shan, I’ll get it for you,” Mark said, stopping me from getting up from the couch. Shan was a nickname they used every now and again.

“Did you look up the spell?” I asked him when he came back.

“I didn’t have time, you scared the shit out of me. You were only out for like 45 seconds, but still,” He said as he took out his phone to search the spell.

“Are you sure you’re okay? I can take you to the hospital, if you want?” Nicki asked.

“Thanks, Nic, but I think I’ll be fine just have to let myself come dow—”

“It says here that the spell is one that Satanists used back in the day to conjure parasitic demons,” Mark interrupted. “What the fuck is a parasitic demon?” He asked to no one in particular.

“Can you please stop talking about it?” Nicki asked him with the utmost sincerity. I don’t think I had ever seen her look so scared and worried. She was not lying when she said she hated spooky stuff.

“Okay after this last thing. It says that parasitic demons possess their host and make them kill other living beings and then themselves as an offering to Satan,” He Informed. “How could anybody believe this shit?” He rolled his eyes and put his phone in his pocket.

“I don’t believe it, but it is very creepy,” I responded.

Suddenly, I felt my right eye starting to twitch. I excused myself to go to the bathroom to look in the mirror feeling slightly dizzy when I stood up. The way my apartment was set up the bathroom was located in my bedroom. On my way in I looked around for Mr. Drogo who I had not seen since my friends had arrived, he was probably under my bed. I looked into the mirror and noticed that there was a black speck on my eyeball. I blinked several times trying to see if it would move but to my surprise it gradually got bigger. Fear seeped into my chest as I watched the speck grow from the size of a pen mark to the size of a dime.

“You guys!” I screamed out to them. “Somethings wrong with my eye!”

They appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. They both shared similar looks of concern that immediately turned to surprise and fear when I turned to show them my eye.

“Oh my god, what the fuck is that?” Nicki whispered as she got closer. “It looks like its spreading.”

“Maybe you burst a blood vessel?” Mark tried to console.

“Blood is red Mark! This is fucking black!” I responded feeling myself becoming livid. Not at him just in general more than likely from the panic I was experiencing. I looked back in the mirror and noticed that most of the white of my eye was now black. It was even starting to spread onto the blue of my iris.

“Woah Shan, calm down girl, he’s just trying to help. I think we should go to the hospital now,” Nicki Said, “This looks serious.”

I watched my eye turn completely black and couldn’t help but cry. I sat down on the toilet seat and sobbed for a few minutes. They stood there like two concerned parents waiting for their child to get out of surgery.

“MEOW.” Mr. Drogo walked into the bathroom and brushed against my leg purring, also trying his best to reassure me that things would be okay.

KILL HIM.

“Did you guys hear that?” I looked up at them, startled.

“I know, his little purring is so cute,” Nicki responded with a fake smile trying to suppress her fear.

KILL HIM!

I looked at them just as confused as they looked at me. There is no way they didn’t hear that deep voice. Then it occurred to me that I was probably possessed. I didn’t believe in demons until the moment I heard that voice. My fear took over.

“I need to go to a church guys,” I said, “I’m hearing voices, and I think I may be possessed. What if the spell was real? Oh my god!” I let out another sob my body shaking from nervousness. I stood up and looked in the mirror again. My right eye was completely black now, and I saw another speck forming in my left eye.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Said Nicki, looking extremely uneasy her hands starting to shake as well. “I’ll get your shoes.”

Mark hadn’t said a word since I snapped at him, but his eyes said everything. Expressing fear and concern. I was shaking now profusely now. My fear turning to horror. The splotch on my left eye was now dime sized.

KILL HIM!!!

I let out a cry of fear. Not knowing what the hell was going on, my hand clutching my chest.

“Can we hurry up please?” I asked. “The voice is getting louder!” 

I looked down at Mr. Drogo who was looking up at me with his little blue eyes. I felt my face curl into a smile.

“Shannon, you’re smiling pretty hard, are you okay?” Mark asked.

“I will be once I please him,” I responded, but these were not my words. They came from somewhere else. I suddenly felt my consciousness shift as I became a bystander to the thing that began controlling my body. “He will be so pleased with my sacrifice,” I could hear the words leave my mouth, but I could not stop them. Mark’s eyes grew wide. 

“I found a church in the area that’s open this late, let’s go,” Nicki said appearing in the doorway.

“NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” I felt the words come out. I tried with everything in me to fight this force, to get some of my own words out. I tried to move myself from my position in front of the mirror, but it was all in vain. It was very evident that I had no control. The most I could let out was a forced grunt.

“Girl fuck this, I’m calling the police!” Nicki Snapped out of fear.

Mark still stood silent, his face flushed and his eyes still wide. 

My body pushed past them and ran into the kitchen. I tried so hard to stop my it from moving. I could see, feel, and hear everything. I just had zero control. I fought so hard for control physically that it began to hurt all over. The pain was like fire, it felt like my blood was boiling, but I couldn’t even scream out in pain. In the kitchen I watched myself grab the largest knife from my drawer. I immediately knew where this was going, and used prayer as a last resort. I prayed hard in my head as my body walked back towards my bedroom where I heard Nicki talking to dispatch. As I prayed the physical pain intensified. 

GOD CAN’T SAVE YOU NOW!

“She’s got a knife!” Mark screamed.

They both cowered in the corner of my room. My body approached them slowly. I could still feel the grimace on my face, it stretched further making my face hurt. Nicki pulled out her key ring that had a bottle of mace on it.

“Shannon please, the police are on the way. I know you’re in there!” Nicki pleaded. I felt my eyes burn as tears ran down my face. I tried with all my might to get a word out. The burning inside me intensified but I still fought hard. It burned so bad that I finally was able to let out a scream. My tears intensified as I struggled to get the words out. My chest heaved as I stood there with my mouth open.

“I-I-I’m s-s-sorry,” I managed to get out before the pain forced me to give in and remain silent.

KILL THEM NOW!!

I approached them slowly. Nicki raised the mace and sprayed me, tears running down her face. I felt the burn of the mace, but it didn’t stop the demon controlling me. I lunged at her first wrapping my left hand around her throat. Mark grabbed my arm with the knife and tried to get it from my grip.

“Shannon please! You have to fight this!” Mark screamed after he failed to get the knife. Whatever was in control had inhuman strength so all of their efforts to fight back were futile. I felt my arm drive the knife into Nicki’s stomach, she didn’t make much noise because the hand around her throat was gripped tight. The most she managed was a few grunts, and then she began to gargle as blood spilled from her mouth.

“NOOOO!” Mark screamed, tears running down his face. He tried to make a run for it but before I knew it, I had him against a wall too, in the same way that I had Nicki.

“You think you can escape the wrath of my father?” I heard the question come from my lips, but this time it was the same voice I had heard in my head, powerful and deep. Mark whined as he tried to escape my grip. I heard Nicki gargle her last breath and momentarily forgot what was happening. I remembered all of the good times we shared. The love, the laughter, the tears, the secrets, Nicki. I felt my arm move and in an instant blood was flowing from his lips too. My grip on his neck released and he slid down the wall. He gurgled for about three minutes before he died, and the demon in control of my body made me stand right above him and watch until he took his last breath. I felt more tears coming from my eyes.

“MEOW.”

My head turned sharply, and my body ran full speed in his direction. He hissed and tried to run under the bed, but my hand gripped his tail before he could get away. I wanted so badly for him to get away, but in a matter of seconds I was holding him by the scruff of his neck. I really tried to close my eyes when the knife slit his throat, but all attempts were in vain. I felt his blood splatter on my face. My heart broke, it felt like it literally broke, and all I could do was silently cry. My chest began to heave. I was sobbing but I couldn’t Let it out. I watched as the demon used my body to lay my dead friends and dead cat on my bed.  I watched as it forced me to lie on the bed next to their cooling bodies.

“Father will be so proud,” The words left my mouth.

YOUR TURN NOW.

I watched myself pick up the knife and walk into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror. I was covered in the red blood of my friends and cat. I then heard a knock on the door.

“This is the police. Please open the door!”

I saw my face clearly for the first time since my eyes had started to turn and I looked like a demon. My eyes, an abyss of darkness. My mouth, curled in a grimace that didn’t look humanly possible. I tried to pray in my head again, but nothing worked, this thing had me, and it wasn’t letting me go until it had what it wanted. I watched as the arm, my arm, that once seemed so familiar lifted the knife to my neck and slid the blade across my throat.

RED.

[lilyemrys]

 Rules:

1. Always post the rules. 2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you. 3. Write 11 questions of your own. 4. Tag 11 people.

Tagged by: @kasumi-chou, @miraculous-katsukii, @iceprinceofbelair, and @where-his-towel-is​ 

(woah I have to do a lot but I absolutely love getting tagged in stuff omg ily guys)

——— kas’ questions

First letter of your real name  F

Age/birthday 28th November! I’m turning 18 :))))

Favourite season THATS REALLY TOUGH. I’m gonna say autumn because its cold but not too cold y’know? And the fall colors are gorgeous. 

Favourite fruit Oranges! and mangos! And strawberries! Uhhhhhhhhhh I have too many ooops

Do you have short, medium or long hair? I had long until a week ago, but now they’re medium

Hanahaki or soulmate? *googles hanahaki for this* I’m gonna say soulmates, because I like everyone getting at least one person they could spend their life with. (Tbh soulmates irl would be kinda problematic because what if they died? What if you fell in love with someone else? who knows!)

Angst or Fluff? Depends on the mood, but most likely angst. I love love love angst with happy endings. (But then I’ve also read several MCDs when I’m that kinda mood). But I also absolutely loVE fluff because CUTE.

Soundboard (help the writer with ideas) or beta (help the writer with wording/grammar)? Personally I think I’m much better as a beta (because grammar ayeee), but I can be a soundboard too! Idea bouncing is always fun (although tbh I don’t know how good I am at it)

Do you still have an active ff.net? If yes, link I never had one haha!

Would you trade one of Phichit’s hamsters to bring Vicchan back to life? ......how dare you ask me that. ACTUALLY WAIT. Yes, yes I would. Because you said trade, aka I could trade the hamster to a friend or something and still get to see him everyday. (#lawyered)

Should Victor and Yuuri both wear white at their wedding? Should they? Nah, man, let them wear whatever they want to. (I mean......they’re gonna be naked by the end of it anyways, so does it really matter is the real question)

————- andi’s questions

Spring or autumn? *sweats* I love them both oh gosh. I love autumn weather, but spring clothes and spring also means summer break is coming soon. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Classical music or EDM? *googles EDM to answer this* I like them both! Although tbh I don’t listen to either as much

Morning person or night owl? NIGHT OWL FTW. My average bedtime is 3am

Pastel or punk? I’m a pastel princess

Painting or singing? *sweats some more* HOW ABOUT BOTH. I love singing while painting, how about that. 

Piano or violin? Piano! Although I really love love love the sound of a violin. But like, nothing can beat a piano for me.

Jeans or skirts? I want to say skirts because I always feel so flowery and pretty in them (but low-key I always get hella annoyed with them)

Extrovert or introvert? I thought I was an extrovert for a second. And then I laughed at myself for thinking of such a weird thing. I’m like an Introvert™

Fantasy book or non-fictional book? fantasy yes please. need me some action. some DRAMA (also dragons)

Discovery channel or disney channel? *uses fairy wand to draw disney logo*

Hair up or hair down person? hair down ftw. My hair looks extremely poofy and frizzy when its down and I just get really annoyed with it.

————- adrian aka light of my life’s questions

What’s your favourite planet? Oh man I have so many good answers to this. okay a) Uranus, because I’m a teenager and cannot help it b) Pluto, because VIVA LA PLUTO its such a smol planet that just wants some love (also side note: I was tying smol and my laptop corrected it to smoldering and I can’t stop laughing) c) Neptune, because I love Percy Jackson’s dad Poseidon and d) Earth, because it has all of you lovely folks

Do you speak any other languages? I do! I speak English and Hindi fluently. I can understand and can speak sometimes Punjabi, and I can speak/understand Spanish to a limit.

What’s your dream job? oh mAN. *side eyes all the future career quizzes I’ve taken* Honestly, at this point I have no clue. Something with design preferably. Or a film director! That’d be fun. Yeah idk, just something I would have fun doing :)

If you were choosing a new name for yourself, what would it be? .....that is a good question. I’m gonna say Lily because thats my internet nickname and its really cute

Do you like flowers? I love flowers. Give me all the flowers

Is there a nickname you’d like people to call you but have never asked? Not particularly. I just like when people give me nicknames in general because its like a special thing y’know

What colour would you dye your hair? I just dyed my hair yesterday actually! It’s a really pretty reddish brown. I think in a couple years I might go for some non-natural hair colors like blue or something. (I also love how pretty silver/grey hair looks but alas, I could never pull it off)

What’s the best birthday you ever had? I was going to be cliché and say my sweet 16, but I’m gonna go with my 10th birthday. I had absolutely no idea we were doing anything until I came out of my room and my best friend at the time just pounced on my back. Soon a couple others came and we had a blast. (This was the night before my birthday) And then the next day my mom took us all to go watch a movie. The best part though was when used the wrapping paper from the gifts to hide away umm some provocative movie posters.

Do you play any instruments? I play the piano! But I haven’t practiced in such a long time oops

Can you swim? I used to be convinced I was a mermaid when I was a little kid. I LOVE swimming.

What are you afraid of? Our inevitable doom and destruction and the realization that one day, none of what we do will ever matter because we will be dust. No, I’m kidding. I’m gonna have to say just being completely alone and nobody liking me. Also, lizards.

————- ellen’s questions

Where is wally/waldo if you’re one of those weirdos from Across The Pond *sweats*

favourite tv show theme tune? DOO WEEE DOOOOOOOOOO. Actually I’m pretty sure that isn’t my favorite, but its fun to say.

If you could live in an AU what AU would you write for yourself? One where I am successful and happy and someone loves me as much as Victor and Yuuri love each other. (probably not the answer you were expecting oops)

Which powerpuff girl are you? Blossom!

Which ship in YOI do you think needs some more lovin by the fandom? Sara/Mila haha. (ngl I don’t really have that many ships in YOI other than Victuuri)

How long would you last in a horror movie? .0000002 seconds. Self preservation? What self preservation. I would totally just trip into the murderer’s knife or whatever

leopard print or tiger stripes? and which half of victuuri would you put in which clothes? Hmmm I’m gonna say tiger stripes. I feel like they could both rock either, but in the end it wouldn’t even matter because somehow those clothes would end up in Yurio’s closet.

how much would you pay kubo-sensei for the down low on the YOI movie? one corn chip (sorry oops I was just thinking about memes) Probably nothing because I don’t like spoilers. (but then again, I do like knowing more than other people so who knows)

favourite type of sky? (e.g. sunset, cloudy sky, overcast etc) A clear night sky when you can see all of the constellations glittering down on you

why did the chicken cross the road? It wanted to get hit by a car after those ap exams. (actually did you know “To get to the other side” was supposed to be a joke about after life because I never got that until recently)

if you could send a message to all creators with your newly acquired psychic powers, what would that message be? “GIVE ME STUFF. ALSO YOU ARE AWESOME AND MAKE GR8 STUFF (but you need to totally give me all the stuff)” because I’m a selfish butt

OKAY, now for my questions. Let’s see.

What is your favorite part of the day? (This can be a time, like the morning, or an action, like seeing your pet)

What is something you’ve always wanted someone to do for you, but never told them?

If you could do something for the rest of your life without fear of going broke/getting hurt, what would it be?

Can you describe the color blue without using the word? (I’m so ready to hear these responses aye)

Best compliment you ever received? 

What is your favorite au trope?

What is your favorite memory?

What is something you’ve always secretly wanted people to compliment you on?

Hogwarts house?

What is your favorite song at the moment? (Or your #1 played song on your phone if you don’t have one)

Do you cry during movies/tv shows/while reading books/fanfics?

FFFFFF I don’t even know if I know 11 people and most of them either a) already tagged me, or b) have already done this. But anyways

Tag: @sea-goddess-amphitrite, @cary-onmywaywardson, @islandsofjohnmontagu, @iceprinceofbelair, @kasumi-chou, @nikifirov, @where-his-towel-is, @rayrayswimusic, @miraculous-katsukii, @flowercrownyuri, @accioharo, and @overcome-chihoko (I’m tagging 12 people because fight me)

(I’M SORRY FOR TAGGING YOU BACK IF I DID and I hope its okay that I tagged all of you guys. I just really want to know what you guys would say :) also if you don’t want to answer these its totally fine. <3 you)

[trendingnewsb]

Donald Trump’s 6 Very Real, Very Insane Tips For A Good Life

Whatever you make of him politically, there’s no denying that Donald Trump has been alive for a long, long time. That is literally the least that we can give him. So it stands to reason that he must know something — that he must have some standards or guidelines by which a person can live their life. What a rich source of lifestyle advice he would be, if only he’d share this with us. If only he could find some time in his day to talk about himself.

Oh, it turns out he can.

6

Never Let Go Of Your Grudges

Much of Trump’s life can be defined by the grudges he’s held. Nobody thinks about Rosie O’Donnell that much under normal circumstances. “When people treat me unfairly, I don’t let them forget it,” he told reporters during his presidential campaign in 2016. It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s often wealthier or more powerful than the people he’s holding grudges against. That’s not the point. The point is the revenge itself. “If people screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard,” he explained in 2011.

Read Next

Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? Turns Out We Have No Idea

Media organizations he doesn’t like suddenly find themselves blacklisted from campaign rallies and press briefings. One failed business deal in Mexico, and later he’s ranting about how most Mexicans are “rapists” who “bring in drug and crime.” When he won the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he took almost no steps toward reconciliation with his former foes, instead dishing out insults left and right to people he no longer needed to attack. And when Puerto Rico was stricken by a hurricane this summer, Trump dedicated a lot more effort than “none at all, are you crazy?” to a running feud with the mayor of San Juan.

Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesHmm … theres a Puerto Rican I dont get along with. Better screw over three million of them so she knows it.

When NFL players began kneeling during the national anthem, Trump didn’t just criticize the players like most conservative commentators; he focused a lot of his rage on the NFL itself, calling it weak and out of control. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense … until you realize that Trump has long held a grudge against the league for refusing to let him buy a team in the 1980s. And when he tried to buy the Bills in 2014, only to get outbid, he reacted the only way he knows how: with shockingly petty tweets about how boring the league was.

And then there’s the massive grudge he holds toward his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump spent quite a bit of Obama’s first term cheerleading the birther movement because of, well … let’s say his passion for birth certificate formatting quirks. For some reason, he then attended the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. There, Obama lit into him. For a solid two and a half minutes, Trump could do nothing more than slowly rock back and forth, tight-lipped, while Obama dished out insult after insult. The guy’s probably never had to sit through anything like that before, and the psychic impact it’s made on him can’t be underestimated. If you’re ever in any doubt about the motivations behind Trump’s actions as president, know that he’ll always do the opposite of whatever Obama would, be that building a health plan, entering the Paris Accords, or reading.

5

Decorate Like A Dictator

Being wealthy is great. You should definitely be born into that if you can. But it’s not enough on it’s own. You have to let people know you’re wealthy, so they know you’re better than them, and to go fetch you food and pelts. You can do that by shouting at them all the time (and you should; never stop shouting), but when your voice gets tired, or they simply get too far away, you’ll need something else. You’ll need to let your surroundings do the talking for you.

Which brings us the Trumpian aesthetic. The author of a book called Dictator Style identified a number of key design traits featured in the residences of most famous dictators: overly ornate decorations, big swinging chandeliers, marble everything, mismatched French furniture, that kind of thing. Decor which shouted wealth but not class, none of it presented with any kind of design or stylistic intent. And when this author saw pictures of Trump’s penthouse in Manhattan, he saw the same thing there. Vanity Fair even ran a side by side comparison of one of Trump’s mansions and a palace used by Saddam Hussein, and the similarities were not hard to find.

Vanity FairIts the aesthetic equivalent of shouting.

But The Donald does have one decorating quirk all his own: the desire to hang up obviously fake things, like this cover of Time that was proudly framed in five of his golf courses.

Angel Valentin/The Washington PostIt seems this was during Times brief First day using MS Paint series of covers.

It is completely fake. There was no Time issue printed on the date on the cover, and Trump was never on the cover of Time during the year it was supposedly made. And that’s not the only fake thing at his golf courses. Consider this sign:

Rob Carr / Getty ImagesAnd it is our great honor to do a modest amount of research to check if this is true.

Yeah, that’s fake too. Historians who know the area have no idea what battle took place there, and have never heard it referred to as the River of Blood.

Years ago, Trump’s biographer was interviewing the man on one of his presumably marble-coated personal jets. Hanging on the wall of the plane was a painting, a Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste RenoirSpecifically, the most famous painting by Renoir, which apparently no one is keeping track of.

The biographer knew this painting, and knew that the original was in a gallery in Chicago. But Trump insisted that this was the original, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He didn’t get rid of it after being called out, either. The thing showed up on the background of an interview with his wife after his campaign victory.

Fox NewsNice to add a splash of color to the uniformly gold room of horror.

4

Eat Fast Food And Nothing But Fast Food

Every celebrity lifestyle guide is at least 50 percent bizarre ultra-healthy diet tips — exotic grains, free-range kale, and egg white omelets all prepared by their aboriginal spirit-nutritionist, Klevin. Trump’s guide would have a similar section, but y’know, the total opposite.

First, let’s discuss his taste in steaks: well-done, with a side of ketchup, which the flavor experts among you will recognize as “not optimal.” We’re talking steaks so well-done they used to “rock when they hit the plate.” Now look, elitism is shitty, in food and all other things.

Trump SteaksCase in point.

Not everyone likes their steaks mooing, so if a guy likes to eat his steak well-done, that’s fine. It’s fine.

The ketchup is a little much, though.

The other staple of the Trump diet: the 2,400-calorie McDonald’s meals he’s been known to consume. That’s multiple Big Macs, Filet-O-Fishes, and chocolate shakes. Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke reportedly make up the rest of his diet, and if that describes yours as well, congratulations on already thinking like a billionaire, I guess?

McDonandsThough maybe we should make time for the Friends dont let friends order Filet-O-Fish talk.

There’s an interesting explanation for this love for overcooked meats and salt: Trump is a germaphobe. Imagine how risky an acai root indigenous power bowl or something would look to him, all covered in fruits and grains and stuff that clearly once touched the earth, all prepared by someone with their hands. You could then see the appeal of mass-produced, pre-packaged foods. Not if you think it through at all, but if you took a cursory glance at those two options, and you were absolutely certain that the first thought that entered your head was always 100 percent factually indisputably correct for all time, forever and ever, amen, you might see where he’s coming form.

3

Be Born With Superior Genes

If you had to pick the perfect human, the one person whose intelligence, grace, and physical attractiveness surpassed all others, it’d be Donald Trump, right?

Well, there’s a reason for that. Trump has good genes, as he’ll tell you himself. It’s part of his so-called “racehorse theory of life,” which states that some people are bred to succeed, thanks to the genetic material provided by their parents. We’re not reaching here. He brings up his genes all the time. His health? Excellent, thanks for asking, and a result of his good genes. Same thing with his energy! Luck? He was born with it! He once even said he had a genetic gift for real estate development, which … scientists are not really rushing to confirm.

Pawel Marynowski/Wikimedia CommonsInvestors, either.

Anything positive that his family does is proof of the same genetic greatness. He regularly mentions his uncle who went to MIT. His granddaughter, who’s learning Mandarin, is more proof of Trumpian greatness. His kids have inherited the belief too. Here’s his son going on about his incredible genes, including his mother’s fictitious Olympic skiing background.

This kind of thinking is a little troubling, especially when we consider another famous political movement obsessed with superior genes. Yes, it’s usually hyperbolic to compare people you disagree with to Nazis. But not when they actually believe what Nazis believe. To the millions of Americans who might not have perfect genes, it is a little disturbing that their president said, “‘All men are created equal.’ Well, it’s not true.”

Remember this?

CNN

That would be the president doing an impression of a disabled reporter. It was a joke, but you know, not a “ha ha” one. And he now sets policy for disabled Americans!

2

Fill Everything With Asbestos

Asbestos was once used as a fireproofing agent, because it is extremely effective in that role. It also causes cancer, and is extremely effective at that as well. But for some reason (it’s probably money), Donald Trump has only ever really cared about that first bullet point. In his 1997 book, he suggested the drive to remove asbestos was led by the mafia, which controlled the asbestos removal business. In his view, asbestos was “100 percent safe, once applied,” which is true about undisturbed asbestos. But it does have a nasty habit of getting disturbed, which lowers the safety level a few (dozen) percentage points.

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesOf course, that assumes you take safety advice from qualified scientists. Trump is having none of that.

Which is why for a few decades now, we’ve had regulations mandating asbestos use and treatment. This makes it a giant and expensive pain in the ass for anyone who owns buildings, e.g. Donald Trump. And seeing as Trump isn’t a huge fan of spending his own money and also has a casual relationship with facts, you can probably now deduce how he’s taken this position. On that note, he was once sued in the 1990s by Polish construction workers who claimed they were exposed to asbestos dust without protective equipment. But that’s probably a coincidence.

Anyways, whether it’s science, regulations, or angry Poles, nothing has ever changed The Donald’s mind. He still loves asbestos, and is even on the record suggesting that it could have prevented the World Trade Center towers from collapsing on 9/11. He was even on Twitter about it, because he’s been on Twitter about everything. Whatever the opposite of a grudge is, Donald Trump has it for asbestos. Which means that if you want to be a winner, you’re going to need a carcinogen of your own to love.

RealDonaldTrump/Twitter#science

1

Exercise And Sleep Are For Losers

On the subject of exercise, Donald Trump has a very hot take: don’t. He believes that a person is like a battery, with a fixed amount of energy, and that unnecessary exercise uses that energy up. He’s even mocked others for exercising. When he found out that one of his executives was training for a triathlon, he told the man he’d “die young because of this.”

This lines up pretty neatly with the exact opposite of what scientists say, which is that while exercise might temporarily reduce your energy, it strengthens your body, thus allowing it to be stronger and store more energy in the future. You already knew that because you went to gym class once or read anything about food ever. But who are you going to trust? Scientists and common sense? Or a winner with confusing ideas about batteries?

And then there’s the matter of sleep. For a long time, Trump has claimed that he gets very little of it, from 90 minutes to four hours a night. You should probably do the same. And what can you expect to do with all that extra time you’ll have, being exhausted and grumpy? Well, if you want to be like Trump, you’ll makes deals and plot revenge.

New York MagazineEverybody knows 3 a.m. is the ideal time to sit awake, sharpening a dagger and reciting the names of everyone whos ever wronged you. Thats Business 101.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends seven hours or more of sleep per day for an adult, which suggests that Trump has been wrecking his body and mind for decades now. Come to think of it, that does jive with a few things we’ve seen in the news …

Get a leg up on Donald Trump’s granddaughter and start learning Mandarin yourself with Rosetta Stone.

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[caveartfair]

Frieze London and Masters Find a Common Future for Contemporary Art

Installation view of Sprüth Magers’s Frieze London booth, 2017. Photo by Tom Carter for Artsy.

Since it was founded in 2003, Frieze London has prided itself on being an art fair dedicated to the leading edge of the contemporary art conversation, a position that grew from its roots as a magazine. In the past, that made for aisles filled with still-wet paint and a focus on the newest emerging artists for most of its 15 editions in Regent’s Park. Frieze took this uber-contemporary distinction a step further in 2012, when it launched the complementary Frieze Masters fair, dedicated to artworks and collectible objects created before 2000 (and some dating back millennia) in a separate set of tents. But while the two fairs, which together welcome some 300 galleries, still played well to the extremes of their official billing during opening day here on Wednesday, much of the work on display was at the crossroads of the two, a reflection of the critical dialogue and market trends that have increasingly blurred the distinction between “old” and “new.”

Take “Bronze Age c. 3500 BC – AD 2017,” Hauser & Wirth’s thematic booth at Frieze London, curated in collaboration with hipster feminist hero and University of Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard, whose fairly tongue-in-cheek descriptions of the works are worth a look.  The mock museum brings together historic works by artists like Marcel Duchamp, Louise Bourgeois, and Henry Moore with contemporary artists from the gallery’s program (Phyllida Barlow, who currently represents the U.K. at the Venice Biennale, made her first-ever piece in bronze, Paintsticks, 2017, for the occasion). These are interspersed with antiquities Beard helped source from regional museums and around 50 purported artefacts that Wenman bought on eBay.

“Part of the irony is that it looks like a Frieze Masters booth,” said Hauser & Wirth senior director Neil Wenman. “I wanted to bring old things but the lens is contemporary. It’s about the way we look at objects,” and how a given mode of display can ascribe value to those objects.

The gallery hasn’t leveraged the gravitas of its ethnographic museum vitrines to sell Wenman’s eBay finds at a steep margin, but it is offering 80 artworks for sale (out of the roughly 180 objects on display). For those on a budget, they’ve also created souvenirs sold from a faux museum gift shop that will run you £1–£9; proceeds will go to the four museums that lent pieces for the show.

Installation view of Hauser & Wirth’s Frieze London booth, 2017. Photo by Tom Carter for Artsy.

As of Wednesday evening, the gallery had sold a Hans (Jean) Arp sculpture for $1.1 million, Subodh Gupta’s set of 13 bronze potatoes (Food for Others, 2013) for €150,000, one of two bronze panels in the booth by Rashid Johnson for $125,000, and Martin Creed’s bronze rose Work No. 1649 (2013) for $75,000.

The gallery also reported selling, among other works, a Richard Artschwager triptych for $2.8 million, a sculpture by Bourgeois for $2.6 million, and a seven-piece stainless steel Fausto Melotti sculpture for €220,000 from its booth at Frieze Masters, for which the gallery collaborated with Moretti Fine Art.

Following curator Nicolas Trembley’s recreation of seminal exhibitions from the 1990s at Frieze London last year, the fair’s special section this year drifted back even further in time from its stated post-2000 focus. Curated by Alison Gingeras, “Sex Work: Feminist Art & Radical Politics” features nine women artists —Dorothy Iannone, Marilyn Minter, Judith Bernstein, Betty Tompkins, Mary Beth Edelson, and Birgit Jürgenssen among them—who emerged in the 1960s and ’70s with practices at the far edge of feminist expression at the time, and whose works were often subject to censorship due to their sexually explicit nature (at Frieze, the section still bears a disclaimer that it may not be suitable for children).

Works within the section by Iannone and Edelson were acquired for the Tate’s collection on opening day from Paris’s Air de Paris and New York’s David Lewis, respectively. (The purchases were funded by a new acquisition fund supported by WME | IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate that acquired a stake in the Frieze fairs in April 2016.) The Tate’s first female director, Maria Balshaw, who took the helm from Nicholas Serota in July, called the section “tremendously exhilarating.”

“Sex Work” follows a strong year for female artists at Frieze last year and also inspired Sprüth Magers’s Frieze London booth. The gallery reopened its expanded London location last week, having increased its exhibition space from one floor to three. At Frieze, it is showing an intergenerational selection of women artists from the gallery’s program: Jenny Holzer, Astrid Klein, Barbara Kruger, Pamela Rosenkranz, and Kaari Upson.

“We wanted to dedicate the booth to this female perspective,” said gallery director Silvia Baltschun.

A 1989 LED from Holzer’s “Survival” series, which features her iconic phrase “Protect me from what I want” was quick to sell on opening day for $350,000. Upson’s drawing Psychic trash (2016–17) also sold for $70,000.

Holzer and Kruger have been a fixture of Spüth Magers booths at recent fairs, at least in part due to their works’ direct and indirect engagement with the Trump administration and other recent social upheavals. But Baltschun said the gallery made a special effort to bring early works from the ’70s and ’80s to Frieze to create a dialogue with Gingeras’s section. Klein, Holzer, and Kruger are part of the same dialogue as those included in “Sex Work” but found acclaim early on because their work was less sexually explicit compared to artists like Iannone, Minter, and Tompkins.

Installation view of Cheim & Reid and Thomas Dane Gallery’s booth at Frieze Masters, 2017. Photo by Tom Carter for Artsy.

At Frieze Masters, a joint booth by Cheim & Read and Thomas Dane Gallery highlighted a range of works from another artist, Lynda Benglis, who also made it into the canon despite some works that were explicit in nature. Perhaps most famous among those is the ad, on view at Frieze, that Benglis purchased in Artforum in 1974 featuring her posing nude and holding a dildo. With its works spanning 1968 to 1990, the presentation is reminiscent of a miniaturized version of the artist’s 2011 retrospective at the New Museum, and required borrowing around half of the works on view.

“It was important that we had all of the different aspects of Lynda’s work, which is so multifaceted. She really is the original material girl,” said Cheim & Read partner Adam Scheffer, listing off the media (video, bronze, welded metal, glitter, prints, and polyurethane foam) present at the fair.

He said no sales had been confirmed by midway through Wednesday afternoon but that foot traffic had been strong, in part thanks to artist Rachel Whiteread’s selection of some of Benglis’s works from the Tate Britain’s collection to be exhibited alongside Whiteread’s current show there. Gingeras’s section’s influence was less of a factor thus far, he said, and in fact he hadn’t known about it.

“Lynda is so much a generation before most of that,” he said. “Showing her within the history of 20th-century sculpture is really where she belongs. She stands alone outside of classification.”

Permeating both Frieze London and Frieze Masters was the influence of Tate Modern’s current show “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” the first major exhibition in the U.K. to highlight the role that black artists have had in shaping art in America. Eleven of the show's artists are included in Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s Frieze Masters booth, his second showing at the fair and first in its main section. Rosenfeld said that Frieze organizers had told him not to expect to get a larger booth this year but were swayed when he applied with such a large swath of artists from the Tate show, and all works from the same period.

“It’s had a tremendous impact,” he said. “Every work really is as good as the works in the Tate exhibition. We pulled out all the stops really to create an opportunity for collectors and museums to acquire some works that normally aren’t available.”

Installation view of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s booth at Frieze Masters, 2017. Photo by Tom Carter for Artsy.  

Among the highlights are pioneering abstractionist Alma Thomas’s Snoopy Sees a Day Break on Earth (1970), a large William T. Williams, Mercer’s Stop (1971), on offer for $875,000, and a series of collages by Romare Bearden from the ’60s priced at $400,000 and $450,000. Rosenfeld said that the Tate exhibition was igniting a conversation but that the artists within it are still very new to the U.K. audience, so he was not surprised that sales were still developing.

“We have to pay special attention to the education process,” he said. “What’s gratifying is that there’s a visceral reaction to the works themselves without having any knowledge of who the artist is. It shouldn’t matter that they’re African-American; they’re just great works.”

Jack Shainman said that the Tate show was the tipping point that brought him to Frieze London for the first time this year after a number of years being on the fence. He echoed Rosenfeld in saying that the exhibition was bringing “a lot of attention to artists and to ideas that maybe weren’t at the forefront here,” among them Barkley L. Hendricks, who passed away at the age of 72 this past April and whose work Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale) (1969) fronts the marketing materials for “Soul of a Nation.”

“We never imagined that Barkley wouldn’t be here with us today. That was really shocking,” he said.

The Hendricks painting on Shainman’s booth (Anthem, 2015) hadn’t yet sold by Wednesday evening, but a number of other works, including Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Bathers) (2017) for $875,000 and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s The Measures (2017) for $80,000, had. Titus Kaphar’s large, unstretched painting on canvas Shifting the Gaze (2017) sold for $80,000 to an unnamed institution.

London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery devoted its entire Frieze London stand to 80-year-old African-American sculptor Melvin Edwards. Three works from his long-running “Lynch Fragments” series are on view at Tate Modern, and 12 works from the series, for which he welds together found steel objects ranging from chains to springs to bullets, are on offer at the fair.

Gallery associate Dora Fisher noted that Edwards had three major museum shows early in his career: He was one of the first African-American sculptors to have a solo show at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and was in the second show at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which subsequently led him to a solo show in 1970 at the Whitney.

Nonetheless, “he only got rediscovered in the last 20 years,” she said, something she attributed to audiences’ too-narrow expectations of black artists. “Maybe there was a pressure on African-American artists to not be part of the abstract movement,” she said.

Installation view of Blum & Poe’s booth at Frieze Masters, 2017. Photo by Tom Carter for Artsy.

The cross-pollination between past and present, Frieze London and Frieze Masters, continued with artists like Julian Schnabel and Alfredo Jaar. Schnabel, an artist more immediately aligned with Frieze London, has eight abstract landscapes from 1994 at Blum & Poe’s Frieze Masters booth. Jaar’s early works from the 1970s and ’80s are on view in a joint Masters presentation by Goodman and Galerie Lelong. Meanwhile, a not-insignificant amount of secondary market material is on offer at Frieze London, with Sigmar Polke’s Laterna Magica (1988–96) selling from Thaddaeus Ropac’s booth there on opening day for $2.5 million.

That is a natural reflection of where the market and critical conversation is currently, with attention distributed evenly among old, young, and established (if not mid-career) artists and dealers more freely mixing among them. But it also means that treating them as two separate fairs—whose tents happen to be 15 minutes apart, necessitating a 2 p.m. jog for dealers who show at both—makes a lot less sense now than it did in 2012.

—Alexander Forbes

from Artsy News

[thebarefootbiker-blog]

Why I write, and how I came to do it

A recent assignment in English gave me the chance to examine my motives for writing novels, and how I came to write novels. This will be the focus of my time blogging, so I hope it explains some things. Enyoy!

Also, normally i won’t create posts this long on Tumble, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. To continue seeing posts like these, visit my alternate blog at https://medium.com/@TheBarefootBiker.

Who Really Tells the Stories

           It was the books that did me in, I think.

           As a child, I loved to read; I still do. I simply cannot get enough of the adventures, the mysteries, the fantasies, the exciting technology, the stories, and even the facts – I was a voracious non-fiction reader, too. But there came a time, eventually, when just reading a book wasn’t good enough. Words on a page only did so much. So at the cost of remembering the exact content I was reading, I acquired a visual reading ability. From about the age of 10 onwards, I no longer saw words on a page that told me a story. I saw the story.

           Like Albert Einstein, I began to nurture this ability of imagination that I had developed. I grew it far beyond the limited scope of envisioning what other authors wrote. Over the years, it has become my most treasured ability and my greatest talent: the power to see – within my mind, but almost as if it were in reality – everything that my heart desired, in crystal clarity. I became not a daydreamer but a world-dreamer. And then, a universe-, multiverse-, omniverse-dreamer, and many other concepts that our present astronomy has no terms for. Whole worlds of thought, law, and reason, within my mind’s eye. These were good prospects. Never would I be bored with the world around me, not when I had a multiplicity of realities to play with!

           I was about twelve years old when I realized an artistic, if not practical, use for my imagination. I could record what I saw, like some sort of psychic historian, and write entire novels from the resulting matter. My course was set, my goals determined: I was going to become an author.

           My first “works” of fiction were mostly parody and sequels to beloved series that had stopped too short. Eventually, at about 14, I progressed to original ideas and set about writing a book about a worldwide apocalypse. As I understand it, that was a very popular genre at the time. During this period, I discovered the need to research. There was so much work to do: planning, plotting, mapping, and building – I would finish reading whole books for research before I would even finish writing a chapter. I ended up working so hard to perfect things that I never got anywhere in my writing. I burned myself out, built a castle from writer’s blocks; or maybe a dungeon. So, exhausted, I set writing aside for nearly two years.

           In my 17th year, on one cold and dreary winter morning, I woke up in terror. I had been transported back to my childhood, in the days where I had owned a plethora of stuffed animals. In the dream, my stuffed animals had been alive, and under attack by a powerful and malevolent magical force. Stuffed animals with souls, I thought. That sounds like a good book to write. But could I write again? I got up and wandered over to my paper-cluttered desk in a disconsolate sort of way. I stared down at the paper. The paper stared back, forlorn. I took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. Dare I write again? My mind wandered back over the dream. Yes, I thought. I am a writer. My inspiration renewed, I set about somewhat more carefully to write Stuffed Souls. With the help of a support network, made up of friends and family, I began to have some measure of success. I managed to create a well-defined set of characters and a good plot, and wrote several chapters.

           Along the way, I got distracted (several times) by new dreams and ideas that popped out of nowhere and demanded that they be heard. Worlds inside my mind began begging loudly, and quite insistently, to be given life and meaning. Slowly but surely, my bulging portfolio of half-finished works got wider and wider. For each story, I created a basic plot and synopsis, and tried to set them aside for later. I even went to the trouble of weaving all the stories together into an extended-universe: a series of series. It was sort of a Brandon Sanderson thing. Although to be fair, I might have come up with it before he did. He just has a more efficient way of carrying it out.

           By this time, I began to have an obvious problem. I was getting distracted by so many new ideas and trying to write so many stories (they’re like cats, you have to pay attention to all of them at once) that I began losing track of them all. I almost burned myself out again. Each story needed its own plot and set of characters (meow, feed me). I would finish a section of one story, get some inspiration for another, pick up the other story, and realize that I had to read through all my notes again because I had completely forgotten where I left off. Virtually no progress was being made on my intended first book, Stuffed Souls. To solve the issue, I did what I do best. I used my imagination to create a new story.

           That brings us to about six months ago, when the Storyteller was born. One of the books I was reading at the time, The Right To Write, recommended, as a writing exercise, the creation of an imaginary character that you could “talk to” about your ideas. In my usual way, I took it to an extreme (or maybe he did). I would go out walking, and my mind would wander with me, bringing me to new and exciting places, beautiful forestscapes, and cherished childhood locations. There, I would meet the Storyteller. We’d sit, talk, exchange some stories and riddles, and both of us would record it all on pen and paper (in the imagined world, anyway). This did wonders for my concentration. Don’t ask me how it works. It just does, some trick of the subconscious that keeps me more organized. Or maybe it’s not a trick. Maybe, in some universe out there, there is a man who gets frequent visits from a young, aspiring author. But the result is the same: the Storyteller directs the flow of inspiration to where it needs to be: into the book I’m writing. That brings us full circle: it was the books that got me into writing, and now it’s the books that are coming out of my writing.

           These days, visiting the Storyteller is simple. I sit at my desk, the cluttered workspace of my computer in the low light before me. Sometimes I’m elsewhere, and I have to resort to pen and pencil, but the results are the same. I start writing, and without warning, my eyes leave the keyboard. I stand up and head for the door. Opening it, I do not find the usual garishly painted hallway, but a long expanse of wild grass, sloping upwards to a gentle hill, on which sits a towering oak tree. I breathe in deep. The air is clear, the skies blue and filled with puffy white clouds, perfect for imaging a fair share of dragons, castles, and spaceships. I glance behind me, at the door anchored to nothing: a lone reminder of the real world, of responsibility and purpose. It calls to me now. But this world has its own pull, and maybe someday, I’ll figure out which is stronger…

           I run up to the tree, our usual meeting place, ripe with memory and nostalgia. The oak tree is an old place that carries much meaning for the both of us, even though we sometimes meet elsewhere. But if I am here now, so is he. I arrive at the top of the hill, and my breath catches in my throat. Nestled within the roots of the oak tree is a small wooden house, hand-built, warm and bright. But it is the man sitting beneath that house that catches my attention. While I am well-accustomed with the many fantastic worlds I have seen, I never get tired of wondering at this man. Many days, it seems he is more real than reality itself. Some days, I wish he was. There he sits, under gold letters on a doorframe, tending a small fire with a short stick. He wears, as is his custom, a long and beautiful trench-coat (a deep midnight blue today), adorned with a cock-eyed fedora, a single white feather in its bill. He is an older man, reminiscent of an older time. Though his longish hair is silvered, his face is clean, and his green eyes still have that bright intensity, that sense of wonderment that can only come from a child. A pair of large spectacles sit over those eyes, though, more often than not, I have seen those same glasses get perched in his cap when he needs to do fine work with his hands. The fingers of those hands are thin and nimble, dexterous and fit for writing. Or for other arts. And as always, on his shoulder sits that raven, white as snow, its head cocked in deep thought. Now, its feathers ruffle as the man shifts position, reaching behind him to pull out a battered notebook and a white quill. He gestures to the log next to me. As I have a seat and pull out similar writing implements, the once-clear sky rumbles. I look up at him in concern.

           “Nothing to worry about,” the Storyteller chuckles. “Now,” he says, turning the pages in his notebook, “Let’s begin.”

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #76: Shortcut.

Written: 3/26/2017

Ever since Camilla was young, as far back as she could remember, she always wanted to be a girl. Thirty years had been trapped inside the body of some horrible man named Conrad, who had a bland accounting job that he had fallen into in the course of his life, and never really did anything that he wanted to do, never took chances. She never liked to think about those years, which she always considered as her past life, because she had finally decided to make sure that she could finally become who she was inside, even if she was extremely impatient. Hormones, surgery, makeup, tucking, vocal practice, electrolysis, all of that just seemed so boring to her, and would cause her journey to be very similar to her past life, which was just full of bland moments and a whole lot of waiting.

Waiting was something she couldn’t afford to do anymore, because dysphoria had been coming in, full force, and every day was full of anger, hatred, and despair, like her life was some sort of melodrama that she wouldn’t even have the patience to keep watching. Money was tight, too, since she had to keep buying replacements for all of her possessions, which kept breaking during fits of intense anger, where she would grab the closest thing and make sure that it resembled how she felt inside, and then the realization of what she did would cause her to cry, she didn’t used to be this way, then the light crying would turn into full force sobbing, which would lead to despair that would cause her to go into her bathroom, with a knife to her throat or a plastic bag over her head, and a belt around her neck, but the sight of herself in the mirror would just make her angry at herself, angry at the world for having fucked up her birth, angry at herself for feeling so fucked up, and then she would go off and break something else, and the cycle would continue onwards until she fell asleep, which would usually happen during one of her crying sessions.

When one of the neighbors had dialed 911, thinking that some sort of domestic dispute was in progress, and police showed up at Camilla’s door, where they saw that the man and his house looked like they had a run in with the KGB, she knew that she had to make some changes. Therapy was considered, but she realized that she couldn’t handle to go only once a week, and couldn’t afford to do more than that, so, like many people who are desperate, and need easy solutions, she turned to the shadier regions of the internet, looking for information on black magic, an alternative that she never would have considered in her past life, when she was devoted to the teachings of the Catholic church.

However, it seemed like a lot of information online was contradictory, not very informative, unrealistic (later, she would realize that this was a strange criteria to have for magic), or seemingly made up, like the large numbers of sources that she found, boasting about the magical properties of crystals. What confused her the most, out of all of the information that she found online, was a website that claimed to sell crystals that would increase one’s luck and make them wealthier, but why would somebody sell them for $50 each? If they had so many of these magical crystals, wouldn’t they have enough money to give them away? Or did they work on a multi-level marketing system, where you had to sell crystals to get more money, but how would that work? And how could magic effect wealth anyways, since money is just a concept created by people and is really just an abstract concept more than anything. After a very long, and very confused email was sent to the store owner, she fell asleep at her desk, the first calm night’s sleep in the past month.

She never realized why she was able to sleep easy that night, even if the reason was pretty simple. In her past life, she was the type of person who had nothing better to do than to write long letters to politicians, corporations, television channels, local businesses, etc, that needed to clear up a large amount of meaningless questions, complaints, or both, and could spend entire evenings complaining about typos, or asking her mayor what his dental hygiene routine was, just because she was curious of how people in power took care of themselves. The reasons that she was placated by this was the same reason that many people go shoplifting, commit sex crimes, write hateful and anonymous comments online, because it was able to give her a sense of power that she was sorely missing in her life.

When she woke up, she found a response to her email, which only said, “If I gave them away for free, then nobody would want them.”

As she made herself a bowl of oatmeal, and slowly ate it on her couch, staring off at a distant wall, not wanting to see her reflection in the television screen, she came to the conclusion that she didn’t want to waste any more time on the internet, so she would have to go out into the world and find people who were actually knowledgeable in the occult. Yet she couldn’t really afford to leave her city, so she would have to find a local, but she had no clue where those sorts of people would congregate. Deciding that magic seemed like a more foreign thing, she figured that Chinatown would probably be her best bet, so that’s where she went.

That day was spent wandering around the streets, asking people if they knew how to perform magical rituals, making her generally feel like an asshole, she was way out of her league. On her way home, as she felt like a complete and utter failure, she decided that the internet would probably be her best bet, she just needed to hang in there, needed to stop being so pathetic. However, this idea went out the window when she drove by a palm reader’s store, did a highly illegal u-turn, parked in front of the building, and quickly made her way inside, where she found a man in a turtle neck, sitting at a table with a crystal ball on top of it, focused on a television in the corner of the room that was displaying a hockey match, or maybe it was a riot, it was hard to tell. When the psychic noticed Camilla standing there, he put a finger to his head and acted like he muted the television with his mind, but really just used the remote that was hidden in his hand that was in his lap, obscured by the table. “Welcome!” he announced.

“Hey there.”

“Well, sir, would you like to have a palm reading? I can tell your future, I can help you find true love,” swirling his hands over the plastic, crystal ball, “Or, if you are interested, I can tell you how you die.”

Pointing to the chair that was opposite of the man, “Can I?”

“Yes yes, sit down. I knew you were going to ask that. Now, what do you wish to know, I can tell you all, for a price.”

“Oh, I wasn’t looking for very much of that, I’m not interested in palm readings and could care less about who I love, or how I die. I just was wondering if you knew anybody else in the magic community, I need to find somebody who could perform a ritual for me.”

“What? A ritual?”

“Yeah, you know,” tracing a pentagram with her finger, “Black magic and all of that. I need to find somebody who can help turn me into a woman, or at least just my body.”

Worried, “I, I don’t know anybody who can do anything like that.”

“Is there at leas some sort of,” shrug, “occultists union or something like that? Do you people have conventions or something? I just want-”

“Look, pal, if you want to turn your body into a woman, then why don’t you go to therapy or something? Shoot a bunch of estrogen into your dick before you cut it off, or whatever the hell you people do. Why do you want to fuck around with black magic and all of that?”

“Well, I thought about that, but I figured it would be a lot easier to kill a goat, or whatever,” waving that idea away, “and have a real womans body, instead of going through pain and procedures for like two years just for a woman’s body that nobody treats as authentic anyways. I don’t have anything to lose, I’m okay with taking short cuts or whatever.”

Getting a little tense, a little aggressive, “Well, I don’t know anything about black magic, so you’re barking up the wrong tree here, pal.”

“What do you mean you don’t know anything about it? You have to know somebody, have to have some leads.”

Shouting, “I don’t know nothing about black magic,” and then a fist slamming down onto the table, hard, that caused the clear plastic ball to start to roll off, before the palm reader caught it and fixed it back onto its stand.

“What do you,” suddenly, a false understanding of the situation, “Ohh, okay. I get you. Nobody here knows anything about black magic,” a wink, then leaning in and whispering, “If you’re being bugged, then I can-”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Standing up, appalled, “Fine, whatever, screw you! I bet you don’t even know the first thing about magic anyways, you’re just a fucking scam artist.”

Shouting, and standing up to stare down Camilla, “Scam artist? You think I’m some kind of scam artist?”

“Yeah, that’s right, you might as well claim that you’re a Nigerian prince.”

“Well, hows this for a scam,” reaching out and snatching Camilla’s hand before she could react, then waving his free hand over it, “You’re going to drown in a pool of your own blood, that’s how you will fucking die.”

In a mix of anger, fear, and confusion, Camilla jerked her hand away from the man who smelt overwhelmingly of cigarettes and olives, then stomped out of the building, making sure to slam the door as hard as she could on her way out. “What a lousy, no good, son of a bitch”, she muttered to herself as she got back into her old car, with its peeling paint, and cigarette burns in the seats from the previous owner. Before she backed out, and decided to drive home, she sat there, trying to figure out if the man was trying to scare or threaten her. After a little while she didn’t care, and was already planning out her formal complaint in her head as she backed out and began the drive home. As she was mulling over the third paragraph of the inevitable letter, she noticed a sign of a chain coffee shop up ahead, and figured that it would probably be best to get some caffeine in her now for the long night ahead, especially since she had shattered her coffee pot.

Inside she heard lackluster acoustic covers of already lackluster songs, and decided that it would probably be best to just order her drink and leave as soon as she could, but as she waited the atmosphere of the place seemed to take control of her, allowed her to feel relaxed. As she tapped her foot to the casually predictable tune of the music, she never noticed the woman who had sat next to her, and was surprised when she had spoke, “You are in great distress, aren’t you?” The voice was aged, but youthful, and when she turned to look at the woman she could see no face, only a black veil.

“Uh, yeah, you could say that.”

“You are troubled on how to find a cure, you are desperate to try anything, even what most people would be afraid of.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“You-”

The barista at the counter called out, “Madame? Your blended white chocolate, raspberry coffee is ready.”

Holding up a finger, “One second,” then getting up and getting the drink, and returning to her seat, “Okay, so you want answers to your problem?”

Camilla nodded, “Of course.”

“Well, I can provide you with a solution. I can help you transform into who you really are inside, I can make you whole.”

“What’s the price? What do you want from me?”

“Don’t worry about that now, when I want the favor to be returned then I will ask, all I need you to do is to promise that you will be willing to do whatever I ask of you when I call in this favor.”

“You’re sounding like a mobster.”

“Black magic, the mafia, these are both groups that have to exist in the underground, so it should be no surprise that we share some similarities.”

“When can the whole, you know,” tracing a pentagram with her finger for the second time that day, realizing that the motion was very pleasing to her, “happen?”

“Allow me into your car, go where I tell you to go, and we could perform it tonight.”

“Why me? Why would you be willing to do this for me?”

“I’ve been meaning to perform this ritual for quite some time, but I have had nobody who would be willing to undergo the process. That’s one thing that is required of it, the target must be willing. When I saw you come in here, you aura was just right, I knew you would be perfect.”

After Camilla’s drink was served, they got into her beat up car, and she drove where the veiled woman, who only went by the name Madame, instructed her to drive. When she started the car, Camilla expected to be taken to the woods somewhere, where a goat would be slaughtered, they would dance naked in the moonlight, owls would flutter around everywhere, but instead Madame had led her to some run down dance studio, deep in the downtown area. Before they got out of the car, Madame handed Camilla a business car, and she had to ask, “What is this?”

“Its a therapist, I recommend all of my clients to her.”

“If you’re going to be able to help me,” trying to hand it back, “then I don’t think I’ll have any more problems.”

“Just hold onto it.” They made their way into the studio, which was filled with darkness that Camilla could not see through, even though Madame kept walking as if it wasn’t something she had noticed, so the driver had to pause to turn on her phone’s flashlight, which didn’t seem to do a very good job of clearing the dark, but, unsteadily, she attempted to move onwards. It seemed like the place had been uninhabited for some time, there was a worrying amount of roaches, spiders, and rats, but there was also the occasional discarded needle, condom wrapper, doll appendage, or faded remnants of graffiti. Her guide had never looked back, and she struggled to catch up, worried that would become lost in the building, worried about what she may have gotten herself into, but she was lucky that the building wasn’t very large, and it only took her four minutes to find the main dance area, with hardwood floors, walls lined with mirrors, and a circle of candles in the center of the room, but her guide was nowhere to be seen.

“Hello?”

Moving closer and closer to the illuminated circle.

“Hello?”

When she reached the center of the circle, she could see that Madame was not too far off, blending into the shadows, lying on her back with her knees up, and her veiled head pointing at Camilla. They stared at each other for quite some time, then the guide finally spoke, “I am synchronizing my menstrual cycles to the lunar cycles, you will know when the ritual has begun. Please,” gesturing towards the circle, “take a seat.” Camilla sat and waited for some time, watching as the woman lay there, pointing her vagina towards the moon, unmoving, waiting.

After ten minutes, she noticed that blood began to pour out from the woman, and not just a trickle, but large amounts of blood began to pool out and slowly crept towards Camilla, who was starting to become worried, but decided that it would be best to repress any sense of worry, fear, or hesitation, knowing that no matter how bad this would get, it would be better than spending another day inside of a male body. It would be better than having to shave every day, to have to look in the mirror and see how freakishly masculine she was, to have to hear her deep voice, to constantly feel the discomfort of her dick, which always seemed to be uncomfortable and in the way, no matter how much she shifted it around, to never be able to wear feminine clothes, or makeup, because she would know how ridiculous it would look on her, causing hope to turn into hatred. Anything would be better than having to live like that.

So, when Madame instructed her to strip, she stood up and began to remove her clothes, then tossed them outside the ring. Then, following instructions, she stood as the menstrual blood had pooled around her feet, and when she had to she sat in it, dipped her hands into it and smeared it all over her face, placed her face into it and drank it, rolled around in it, made sure that it touched as much as her body as she could, and when she had to chant she chanted. When the blood flow ceased, Madame stood up and walked into the darkness, and Camilla remained in the circle, lying on her back, getting colder and colder as the thick substance seemed to move around her, seemed to vibrate.

Madame returned, this time carrying something bundled inside of a pink cloth, which she held up, let out an awful wail, and then brought down and held it forward so that Camilla could watch as she unwrapped it, revealing a mangled fetus, some infant in the making that had been cast out of its mother before it could even become a person, before it was even close to developing any form of thought, before it could come alive. She held up the the pre-person that had never lived, high above Camilla, and she made sure to twist and tear it in half, causing it to be a bigger mess that it already was, then she leaned down and smeared the things over the prone guy’s face, genitals, and chest, the whole time making some strange moaning noise, or at least that is what it seemed like at first. It took her a while to realize, but Madame had never made a sound since she told Camilla to sit down. However, the transitioning girl could not complain, or get worried about that, at least not in the moment, since her immediate situation was alarming enough.

The remains of the creature that was born before it could live, unable to die, into the darkness, and there was no sound to announce its landing against the hardwood, only a shriek after it had been consumed by the dark. Madame then reached inside of her jacket, and produced a large knife that she placed against Camilla’s flesh, and cut and cut and cut, as if she were giving the desperate girl a c-section, and that was the point where Camilla blacked out. She wasn’t sure if she was conscious during the whole ordeal and was just repressing it, or if she really passed out, but when she came to inside of the abandoned dance studio, freezing, completely naked, surveying the area that was now filling in with morning light, she looked inside of the mirror and was happy to see that she was what she had always known herself to be.

It was surprising that there had been no trace of blood, candles, salt, or anything related to the events of the previous night, and it was a little annoying that her old clothes now felt way too big on her, she was happy that she could live life the way she had wanted to. However, as she exited the abandoned studio, she saw the lights of a police cruiser, and to officers talking with a tow truck driver, who was placing the hook onto her car. “Wait!” she called and ran towards them, “That’s my car! Wait, stop, no, please don’t tow it, I’m here, I can just move it.”

The officers gave her a look, one she didn’t like, and one of them spoke up, “Ma’am, what were you doing inside of that studio?”

“I was just… just..”

“Can’t even think of an excuse?”

Their partner pitched in, “Maybe she’s still high.”

“Alright, I’m going to need to see your ID.” Camilla nodded, reached into her wallet, and removed her drivers license, but when the officers took it they just shared frustrated glances. “You think we’re going to buy this shit? Do you think we’re fucking stupid?”

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Donald Trump’s 6 Very Real, Very Insane Tips For A Good Life

Whatever you make of him politically, there’s no denying that Donald Trump has been alive for a long, long time. That is literally the least that we can give him. So it stands to reason that he must know something — that he must have some standards or guidelines by which a person can live their life. What a rich source of lifestyle advice he would be, if only he’d share this with us. If only he could find some time in his day to talk about himself.

Oh, it turns out he can.

6

Never Let Go Of Your Grudges

Much of Trump’s life can be defined by the grudges he’s held. Nobody thinks about Rosie O’Donnell that much under normal circumstances. “When people treat me unfairly, I don’t let them forget it,” he told reporters during his presidential campaign in 2016. It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s often wealthier or more powerful than the people he’s holding grudges against. That’s not the point. The point is the revenge itself. “If people screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard,” he explained in 2011.

Read Next

Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? Turns Out We Have No Idea

Media organizations he doesn’t like suddenly find themselves blacklisted from campaign rallies and press briefings. One failed business deal in Mexico, and later he’s ranting about how most Mexicans are “rapists” who “bring in drug and crime.” When he won the Republican presidential primary in 2016, he took almost no steps toward reconciliation with his former foes, instead dishing out insults left and right to people he no longer needed to attack. And when Puerto Rico was stricken by a hurricane this summer, Trump dedicated a lot more effort than “none at all, are you crazy?” to a running feud with the mayor of San Juan.

Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesHmm … theres a Puerto Rican I dont get along with. Better screw over three million of them so she knows it.

When NFL players began kneeling during the national anthem, Trump didn’t just criticize the players like most conservative commentators; he focused a lot of his rage on the NFL itself, calling it weak and out of control. Which doesn’t make a ton of sense … until you realize that Trump has long held a grudge against the league for refusing to let him buy a team in the 1980s. And when he tried to buy the Bills in 2014, only to get outbid, he reacted the only way he knows how: with shockingly petty tweets about how boring the league was.

And then there’s the massive grudge he holds toward his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump spent quite a bit of Obama’s first term cheerleading the birther movement because of, well … let’s say his passion for birth certificate formatting quirks. For some reason, he then attended the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. There, Obama lit into him. For a solid two and a half minutes, Trump could do nothing more than slowly rock back and forth, tight-lipped, while Obama dished out insult after insult. The guy’s probably never had to sit through anything like that before, and the psychic impact it’s made on him can’t be underestimated. If you’re ever in any doubt about the motivations behind Trump’s actions as president, know that he’ll always do the opposite of whatever Obama would, be that building a health plan, entering the Paris Accords, or reading.

5

Decorate Like A Dictator

Being wealthy is great. You should definitely be born into that if you can. But it’s not enough on it’s own. You have to let people know you’re wealthy, so they know you’re better than them, and to go fetch you food and pelts. You can do that by shouting at them all the time (and you should; never stop shouting), but when your voice gets tired, or they simply get too far away, you’ll need something else. You’ll need to let your surroundings do the talking for you.

Which brings us the Trumpian aesthetic. The author of a book called Dictator Style identified a number of key design traits featured in the residences of most famous dictators: overly ornate decorations, big swinging chandeliers, marble everything, mismatched French furniture, that kind of thing. Decor which shouted wealth but not class, none of it presented with any kind of design or stylistic intent. And when this author saw pictures of Trump’s penthouse in Manhattan, he saw the same thing there. Vanity Fair even ran a side by side comparison of one of Trump’s mansions and a palace used by Saddam Hussein, and the similarities were not hard to find.

Vanity FairIts the aesthetic equivalent of shouting.

But The Donald does have one decorating quirk all his own: the desire to hang up obviously fake things, like this cover of Time that was proudly framed in five of his golf courses.

Angel Valentin/The Washington PostIt seems this was during Times brief First day using MS Paint series of covers.

It is completely fake. There was no Time issue printed on the date on the cover, and Trump was never on the cover of Time during the year it was supposedly made. And that’s not the only fake thing at his golf courses. Consider this sign:

Rob Carr / Getty ImagesAnd it is our great honor to do a modest amount of research to check if this is true.

Yeah, that’s fake too. Historians who know the area have no idea what battle took place there, and have never heard it referred to as the River of Blood.

Years ago, Trump’s biographer was interviewing the man on one of his presumably marble-coated personal jets. Hanging on the wall of the plane was a painting, a Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste RenoirSpecifically, the most famous painting by Renoir, which apparently no one is keeping track of.

The biographer knew this painting, and knew that the original was in a gallery in Chicago. But Trump insisted that this was the original, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He didn’t get rid of it after being called out, either. The thing showed up on the background of an interview with his wife after his campaign victory.

Fox NewsNice to add a splash of color to the uniformly gold room of horror.

4

Eat Fast Food And Nothing But Fast Food

Every celebrity lifestyle guide is at least 50 percent bizarre ultra-healthy diet tips — exotic grains, free-range kale, and egg white omelets all prepared by their aboriginal spirit-nutritionist, Klevin. Trump’s guide would have a similar section, but y’know, the total opposite.

First, let’s discuss his taste in steaks: well-done, with a side of ketchup, which the flavor experts among you will recognize as “not optimal.” We’re talking steaks so well-done they used to “rock when they hit the plate.” Now look, elitism is shitty, in food and all other things.

Trump SteaksCase in point.

Not everyone likes their steaks mooing, so if a guy likes to eat his steak well-done, that’s fine. It’s fine.

The ketchup is a little much, though.

The other staple of the Trump diet: the 2,400-calorie McDonald’s meals he’s been known to consume. That’s multiple Big Macs, Filet-O-Fishes, and chocolate shakes. Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke reportedly make up the rest of his diet, and if that describes yours as well, congratulations on already thinking like a billionaire, I guess?

McDonandsThough maybe we should make time for the Friends dont let friends order Filet-O-Fish talk.

There’s an interesting explanation for this love for overcooked meats and salt: Trump is a germaphobe. Imagine how risky an acai root indigenous power bowl or something would look to him, all covered in fruits and grains and stuff that clearly once touched the earth, all prepared by someone with their hands. You could then see the appeal of mass-produced, pre-packaged foods. Not if you think it through at all, but if you took a cursory glance at those two options, and you were absolutely certain that the first thought that entered your head was always 100 percent factually indisputably correct for all time, forever and ever, amen, you might see where he’s coming form.

3

Be Born With Superior Genes

If you had to pick the perfect human, the one person whose intelligence, grace, and physical attractiveness surpassed all others, it’d be Donald Trump, right?

Well, there’s a reason for that. Trump has good genes, as he’ll tell you himself. It’s part of his so-called “racehorse theory of life,” which states that some people are bred to succeed, thanks to the genetic material provided by their parents. We’re not reaching here. He brings up his genes all the time. His health? Excellent, thanks for asking, and a result of his good genes. Same thing with his energy! Luck? He was born with it! He once even said he had a genetic gift for real estate development, which … scientists are not really rushing to confirm.

Pawel Marynowski/Wikimedia CommonsInvestors, either.

Anything positive that his family does is proof of the same genetic greatness. He regularly mentions his uncle who went to MIT. His granddaughter, who’s learning Mandarin, is more proof of Trumpian greatness. His kids have inherited the belief too. Here’s his son going on about his incredible genes, including his mother’s fictitious Olympic skiing background.

This kind of thinking is a little troubling, especially when we consider another famous political movement obsessed with superior genes. Yes, it’s usually hyperbolic to compare people you disagree with to Nazis. But not when they actually believe what Nazis believe. To the millions of Americans who might not have perfect genes, it is a little disturbing that their president said, “‘All men are created equal.’ Well, it’s not true.”

Remember this?

CNN

That would be the president doing an impression of a disabled reporter. It was a joke, but you know, not a “ha ha” one. And he now sets policy for disabled Americans!

2

Fill Everything With Asbestos

Asbestos was once used as a fireproofing agent, because it is extremely effective in that role. It also causes cancer, and is extremely effective at that as well. But for some reason (it’s probably money), Donald Trump has only ever really cared about that first bullet point. In his 1997 book, he suggested the drive to remove asbestos was led by the mafia, which controlled the asbestos removal business. In his view, asbestos was “100 percent safe, once applied,” which is true about undisturbed asbestos. But it does have a nasty habit of getting disturbed, which lowers the safety level a few (dozen) percentage points.

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesOf course, that assumes you take safety advice from qualified scientists. Trump is having none of that.

Which is why for a few decades now, we’ve had regulations mandating asbestos use and treatment. This makes it a giant and expensive pain in the ass for anyone who owns buildings, e.g. Donald Trump. And seeing as Trump isn’t a huge fan of spending his own money and also has a casual relationship with facts, you can probably now deduce how he’s taken this position. On that note, he was once sued in the 1990s by Polish construction workers who claimed they were exposed to asbestos dust without protective equipment. But that’s probably a coincidence.

Anyways, whether it’s science, regulations, or angry Poles, nothing has ever changed The Donald’s mind. He still loves asbestos, and is even on the record suggesting that it could have prevented the World Trade Center towers from collapsing on 9/11. He was even on Twitter about it, because he’s been on Twitter about everything. Whatever the opposite of a grudge is, Donald Trump has it for asbestos. Which means that if you want to be a winner, you’re going to need a carcinogen of your own to love.

RealDonaldTrump/Twitter#science

1

Exercise And Sleep Are For Losers

On the subject of exercise, Donald Trump has a very hot take: don’t. He believes that a person is like a battery, with a fixed amount of energy, and that unnecessary exercise uses that energy up. He’s even mocked others for exercising. When he found out that one of his executives was training for a triathlon, he told the man he’d “die young because of this.”

This lines up pretty neatly with the exact opposite of what scientists say, which is that while exercise might temporarily reduce your energy, it strengthens your body, thus allowing it to be stronger and store more energy in the future. You already knew that because you went to gym class once or read anything about food ever. But who are you going to trust? Scientists and common sense? Or a winner with confusing ideas about batteries?

And then there’s the matter of sleep. For a long time, Trump has claimed that he gets very little of it, from 90 minutes to four hours a night. You should probably do the same. And what can you expect to do with all that extra time you’ll have, being exhausted and grumpy? Well, if you want to be like Trump, you’ll makes deals and plot revenge.

New York MagazineEverybody knows 3 a.m. is the ideal time to sit awake, sharpening a dagger and reciting the names of everyone whos ever wronged you. Thats Business 101.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends seven hours or more of sleep per day for an adult, which suggests that Trump has been wrecking his body and mind for decades now. Come to think of it, that does jive with a few things we’ve seen in the news …

Get a leg up on Donald Trump’s granddaughter and start learning Mandarin yourself with Rosetta Stone.

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