#looked out through the fan in the window and saw the metal ironing board that was in the trailer yesterday was now behind the trailer and

[ghostsinthecellar]

just saw my first real live not-in-a-zoo bear which was very exciting but what wasn't exciting it I saw him in my driveway stealing a snack from the bags of trash our neighbor has been piling up in a trailer

[misc-headcanons]

Can I have a scenario for Law saving a girl who is wanted dead from the marine/world government. Law fallen in love with her at first site. Her injuries are really bad that Law and his crew are surprised she's even alive. She acts like Law, but she slowly starts to show some emotions towards Law. Law wants to earn her trust and to know more about her and how she got all of those scars. Law makes a move on her but she backs away (unsure) but she moves towards Law. Rough Dirty NSFW please.

(I decided to split this up into two parts, one containing the setup and the second part featuring the actual NSFW. So no smut in this one, but it’s coming! ;3)

Word count: 1354

Law had confidence in his abilities as a doctor, but when Bepo had pulled this woman from the water...he knew the chances of her surviving her injuries were slim. When the crew had stumbled across the ruins of her ship, she had been pinned to a large piece of floating wreckage by an iron beam that had pierced through her arm. The Heart Pirates had immediately rushed her to the operating room, and Law got to work trying to assess and tend to her injuries. Alright: remove the pole from her bicep and keep her from bleeding out, then remove the shrapnel in her left leg and right thigh, then focus on the large burn on the back of her left thigh...

It had taken six straight hours of work to get her into a stable condition. Shachi and Penguin had insisted they work in shifts so that their captain to rest, but Law had refused. When she was breathing steadily and he knew he'd done all he could, he tossed his gloves into a medical wastebin, washed the blood off of his hands, and collapsed into a nearby chair next to her cot. Bepo went to the kitchen to give him a bottle of water, and Law kept an eye on his sleeping patient. 

Her chest rose and fell, and her lips were slightly parted as she slept. Her hair was fanned out behind her, and every once in a while, she would quietly mumble something in her sleep. Law was used to seeing patients at their worst, but she didn't look that terrible despite everything she'd been through. Some of her features were rather unusual though: her fingernails were long and unnaturally pointed, and when she'd she'd first spoken in her sleep, Law had noticed that her canines were sharper than the average human. When Bepo had turned her over to check for other injuries, her back had been covered in multiple scars that looked years old. Law found himself staring at the bruises and cuts that littered her body, and the bits of dried blood under her fingernails.  She frowned in her sleep, and something about the way her lips pursed together made Law's breath hitch. She looked surprisingly graceful--a word he'd never associate with the people he'd treated on the Polar Tang. Hell, she almost looked...beautiful.

Law clenched his jaw and forced himself to look away from her. Where the hell did that come from? He always had a level of detachment when he was operating on someone. He'd never in a million years think about someone he'd treated...well, like that. Hell, he didn't even know this woman!

His eyes slowly drifted back to her. Something about her left him feeling almost lightheaded and airy when he looked at her. He sighed and rubbed the bags under his eyes before letting out an exhausted yawn--maybe these feelings were caused by sleep deprivation. Yeah, that was probably it. Law wasn't the kind of man to believe in love at first sight, after all. He leaned back in his chair and let himself fall asleep. When he woke up, he would feel normal again and he could check on her progress after a few hours of rest.

He entered a dreamless sleep and when his eyes opened again, he saw a few rays of sunlight peeking through a window in the hallway outside the operating room. He blinked sleepily and turned his head to check on the mysterious woman. She was still sleeping, and she was still beautiful. Law's gaze was soft, and he got up to set up an IV to give her nutrients in case she wouldn't be able to eat.

The sound of his feet shuffling on the metal floor caused her to stir, and her eyes slowly opened. Law froze and saw her look up at him, her eyes glazed over with exhaustion and confusion. She shifted up to sit in her cot, wincing as she moved her injured limbs. "Where...Where am I?" Her voice was groggy, and the raspy tinge to it sent a shiver up Law's spine.

"My ship," he replied, his voice gentler than usual. "We found you pinned to some wreckage and treated your injuries. It'll take a while to fully recover, but you're safe, for the time being." 

The women's eyes narrowed. "And what," she said suspiciously, "You rescued me because I was a damsel in distress?" She smiled mirthlessly. "Good samaritans don't make very successful pirates, you know." 

Whoever this woman was, she definitely wasn't naive. Not that he minded, he appreciated people who had a healthy level of cynicism. "Do you think I would've made it this far into the New World if I was a bleeding heart? I could've let you bleed out and become food for the Sea Kings, but I thought I could get some information about who attacked you." His gaze hardened a bit. "There are plenty of pirate crews in these waters that I don't know about. Any bit of insight I get can give me an edge."

The woman shrugged and winced at how her shoulders ached. "Well, it wasn't any crew that attacked me," she replied. "It was a Marine ship." She scowled and curled her lip. "Those government lapdogs have been following me ever since I was a child."

"If they're that desperate to kill you, you must be powerful," Law remarked. "That, or an especially sharp thorn in their side." 

"Both, actually," she replied coolly. "They hate prophecies, especially about 'a witch born with a hunger for the flesh of the Men Draped in White.' " Law raised an eyebrow at her morbid words and she chuckled softly, revealing a small set of fangs. "Don't worry, it's just a figure of speech. I wouldn't ever eat something as filthy as a Marine." She subtly looked up and down Law's body, trying to get a proper look at her rescuer. 

Law felt a bit of heat rush to his face, but he managed to keep his cool. "Since you have such a large target on your back--and you've already come close to dying once--I have a proposition for you." 

She raised an eyebrow.

"I'll give you shelter on my ship, and once you've fully recovered from your injuries, you can repay me by joining the crew."

The woman crossed her arms. "I'm not someone who enjoys being tied down," she said bluntly. "Alliances, friendships...It rarely ends well. Why would I want to spend the rest of my life in the crew of a man I just met?"

Law shrugged. "It doesn't have to be a lifelong pact or anything," he replied. "Think of it as a mercenary contract; in exchange for room, board, and medical attention, you'll fight alongside the crew for a reasonable length of time that we can negotiate on." 

The woman considered his offer for a few moments. She wasn't fond of being stuck on someone's crew, but she had to appreciate his practicality. It was refreshing to be around someone who was as sensible as she was, not easily swayed by pesky emotional impulses. Maybe this wouldn't be totally unbearable…

"Alright," she said finally, giving Law a small nod and holding out one of her bruised arms to shake his hand. "We can go over the details later, preferably after I've gotten some more rest. Is that acceptable, Captain…" She trailed off, expecting him to finally give her his name.

"Law," he replied, clasping her hand and shaking it. Her skin was soft, albeit a bit bruised in some spots. "Trafalgar Law."

"Law," she repeated. "Just out of curiosity, do you have an epithet as well?"

He nodded. "The Surgeon of Death," he said with a low rumble. Her voice already intrigued him, but hearing her say his name was almost intoxicating.

"Ah," she said with a smirk, "We should get along just fine, then." She tilted her head and lightly brushed one of her claw-like nails against Law's wrist as she held his hand. "I'm ____ ____, otherwise known as...the Mistress of Death."

[galahadwilder]

The Agreste Letters, Ch. 10

The Agreste Letters Archive

Her whole walk home, Marinette couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody was watching her. It was a tingle along her spine, running right up the back of her neck to where her skull met her vertebrae; ever since she’d put on the earrings, she’d learned to trust those kinds of instincts. They were usually Tikki trying to warn her of danger, even if Tikki herself didn’t know what the danger was.

Marinette kept turning, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was following her, but picking someone out from the normal Parisian evening crowds was an exercise in futility.

"Tikki," she whispered as she drew closer to the bakery. "How long have they been following us?"

"Five blocks after Fu's," Tikki whispered back.

Marinette relaxed. A little. Adrien was safe, and so was her identity, but the same couldn't be said for her physically. She didn't know who was following her, or why, but she could tell that the only thing keeping them from just attacking was the crowd.

She couldn't transform, either. Not in this crowd, and if she were to slip away, whoever was following her would be able to deduce when Marinette went into an alley and Ladybug came out. She was stuck as a civilian—but Hawkmoth didn't have the brooch, did he? So who was following her? And why?

Her palms shook the entirety of the last two blocks to her place, her breath stuck in her throat as she forced herself not to run. She approached the door, nearly collapsed against the blackened window as her legs began to wobble (she noticed, offhand, that the sign was flipped to Closed, which was unusual at this time of day—had something happened?). She gave a last, desperate glance around, hoping to catch her stalker before she walked into the bakery, but... nothing.

She swallowed, ducking through the front door, her head down, hoping whoever it was wouldn't follow her inside.

Her parents were leaning over the bakery counter, in animated conversation with Alya and Nino and gesturing to Alya's phone. At the jingling sound of the door, all four of them looked up. "I'm sorry," her father said. "We're... closed...?" He blinked. "Pumpkin?"

They all stared at each other, before Alya rushed to tackle her.

"Oh my god, you're okay!" she cried, crushing Marinette between her arms. "We were all so worried about you!"

"How'd you get cured?" Nino said, hanging back, twisting the cap of his bubble wand on and off, on and off.

"We saw on the news," her mother said. "When Ladybug didn't show..."

Her father chuckled. "My little pumpkin," he said. "The first Akuma to ever beat Team—Team Miraculous." His voice cracked, his mustache drooped. Marinette could see, suddenly, how much weight all four of them were carrying. Unlike nearly every other Akuma up to this point, Ladrona had simply vanished partway through the day; they had no idea where she was, or even if she was still alive, and with no Ladybug, they must have feared they weren't getting her back.

"I'm fine," Marinette whispered. "Ladybug—Ladybug saved me."

Alya nodded, burying her face into Marinette's shoulder, as Sabine placed a comforting hand on her husband's bicep. "We're glad you're alright," she said, softly. "When Alya came into the shop..."

Her father choked again, his arms trembling.

Marinette squeezed Alya tight. She hadn't expected them to react like this—since Ivan, most Akumas had been understood to be beatable. Aside from that first battle, nobody had reacted like this to their loved ones getting corrupted. Paris had faith in Ladybug. But with the pattern broken...

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Nette," Nino said. "You weren't in con—"

The sound of glass shattering. The feeling of blades across her skin.

Ladybug's instincts, honed from a year of battling supervillains, drove her to the ground, dragging Alya under the spray of broken glass, narrowly avoiding the violet-clad knee that drove through the air where her head had been just moments earlier. The blue-skinned woman planted her feet, skating on heels across the bakery floor in a splay of peacock-feather dress, fans akimbo for balance.

"Mayura!" Nino breathed, trying to pick himself off the ground from where he'd been thrown against the counter.

"YOU." Mayura's red eyes locked on Marinette's, her blue face contorting in rage.

Marinette felt fear spike in her chest as Mayura—Nathalie Sancoeur, she realized—stalked forward. No no no no NO NO NO—she couldn't transform, Alya and Nino didn't have their Miraculouses, Adrien was halfway across the Arrondissement—

Sabine dashed around the counter, swinging a baking peel like a staff, the way she'd done when Fill My Shoes had invaded Marinette's room. "Get away from my daughter!" she screamed, bringing it down on Mayura's head.

Mayura didn't even budge as the board struck her skull, the staff snapping in half. Sabine froze, horrified, staring down at the ruined peel... and then, with a twist of her hips, Mayura backhanded her across the room.

"Maman!" Marinette screamed, reaching out, helpless as her mother struck the back wall.

Mayura turned back to Marinette, charging forward, slamming her against the outside window with a glassy crack. "Where is Adrien?" she hissed, pressing the razor edge of her fan against Marinette's throat.

"Nathalie, don't—" Marinette croaked, only to feel the blade bite into the flesh of her neck. She screamed.

"WHERE," Nathalie growled.

Alya and Nino tried to charge her, while Tom tended to his wife. Mayura's foot snapped up, taking them both in the chest—both grunting as they took bone-cracking force to the ribs. Mayura turned back to Marinette. "Ladrona."

"I don't—know—" Marinette managed, before Mayura's fist broke the brick next to the window.

"You know something," Mayura said. "A voice. A name. You have to remember—remember something. ANYTHING!"

Marinette shook her head, her eyes wide. Sweat trickled down her forehead, and she swallowed—painfully, the blade sliding along the tear in her skin.

"Then you're no use to me," Mayura growled, pulling back a fan to strike.

Marinette closed her eyes. I'm sorry, Chat.

Mari? his voice said in her mind. I'm right here. I'm with you.

Mayura's fan crashed against her skin with the sound of metal striking metal. Sparks flared behind Marinette's eyelids.

She opened her eyes to see Mayura staring in shock and horror... and her own vision lined in purple. She looked down. Her hands—her skin—had gone silvery. Metallic. Iron.

"Greyling?" Marinette said.

Kick her ass, Princess.

Marinette grinned, bunching her fingers into a fist as her heart rate began to slow. "Get the hell away from my family," she snarled, driving her fist into Mayura's chest.

The Agreste Letters Archive

[thegremlinofransei]

Welcome to the Family | Ch. 6

Resident Evil 7 AU

Fandom: Split, Glass

Rating: M (strong language, intense violence)

Word Count: ~3K

Summary: Casey narrowly escaped death at Dennis’s hands. Now, she must puzzle her way out of the Smith house of horrors—but not without some help.

———————

Casey sprinted as fast as she could to the iron doors of the main hall, crest in hand. She was still operating on the adrenaline from the skirmish with Dennis, guided by the promise of some sort of reprieve in the next room. The gilded body of the centaur fit neatly into the indentation, hitting every trigger, and she stepped back as the crest spun on its axis, pulling the enormous slide bolts from their locked positions. 

Kerrrrrr-chunk! Creaaaak…

Casey pushed the door open and stepped into the main hall, which seemed to be but a shell of its former glory. Tiles and litter were strewn over the worn floorboards, and a dusty table with a crooked lamp, shining sporadically through a running fan, lit the large room. Two staircases, one on either of the walls parallel to the girl, ascended and met at a balcony above. On the perpendicular walls were, to the right, one open door with a golden light streaming out and, to the left, a closed door with an entryway.

She scavenged the nearest side of the room for materials, finding only a small bag of aloe leaves on the center table and a magazine of bullets under a dresser. Before she could heave her sigh of frustration, that taunting electronic ringing sounded from near the door that presumably led outside. Snapping her gaze up from the floor, she could make out a faint orange flashing from the entryway, causing her to leap to her feet and rush to the faded desk where it sat. Casey lifted the phone’s receiver, awaiting her next instructions from Jade.

“Did my daddy give you a hard time?”

While she had expected this revelation, Casey still couldn’t believe there was any connection between the immortal man in the garage and the calm girl on the phone. “That’s your father?”

“He used to be.”

“I’m sorry, but…he’s, uh, he’s dead now.”

Jade let out a small, intrigued chuckle. “Hm, you just might be able to pull this off.”

“What? Pull what off?”

“There’s something I need you to do, but I can’t explain it right now. You may need some sort of keys to do it, but find a way out of the house. I’ll be in touch.”

Beeeeeeeeeeeep.

Casey gently replaced the receiver and looked up to the door residing at the end of the entryway. Hand on her gun, the paranoia that any more of Jade’s disturbed family members could appear still fresh, she approached the door. A crest of Cerberus adorned it, but three indentations resided where the mythical dog’s three heads should have been.

Goddamn it.

Agitated once again by the elaborate system of triggers in the door, Casey stepped away and started toward the wall opposite of where she had entered. In the nearest corner resided a copper door, embellished with a wreath small spikes and a plaque shaped like a scorpion. She tried the door’s handle, but it was held shut by a lock with a square pit surrounded by a light circular indentation.

Next to the door was a grandfather clock. Casey noticed that the pendulum was loose and pulled it off for closer examination. The pointed end was the size of a small key, so she put it in her pocket, hoping it would lead somewhere with the missing pieces of the crest.

Trying to ignore the newspaper lying on the floor, which was emblazoned by the announcement of Over 20 Missing In 2 Years, Casey glanced in through an archway. An unfinished painting hung on the back wall, and a light shined on it from a makeshift projector across the room. At the midpoint of this contraption was an oak podium.

She continued on, not concerned with the new puzzle and picking up a new container of antibiotics from a chair. Finally reaching the lit door on the other side, her heart fluttered.

A metal statue of a soldier sat on a podium next to a flag, holding a shotgun. Casey ran in and carefully lifted the beautiful weapon from its resting place, grateful for the heavier firepower.

Creeeeak-chinkchinkchinkchink-CLUNK!

The podium raised through the floor about half a foot, and Casey whipped around to the heavy noise behind her. A vault door had closed her into the room. She stepped to it and, upon finding it locked, dejectedly returned the gun to its place.

Realizing her moment of solace in this room, she pulled out the pendulum key and examined it. On the back, there was a grimy piece of tape with a messy scrawl on it.

Living Room

There was another clock in the living room, she recollected. That was locked…are they hiding some keys in there?

She opted to test her theory and power walked back to the iron double doors. Pushing through them, she did a quick glance around the hallway. It was devoid of life- and the thought of even calling her gracious hosts that made Casey snicker lightly- so she trekked on.

Casey took the new shortcut through the destroyed closet and wound around to the living room, fixated on the grandfather clock. There was a small keyhole behind the bare pendulum swing, and she shoved the key in. 

Bong! Bong! Bong!

As the clock continued its choked chime seven more times, the old swing retracted upward and a new one took its place. Its end was adorned by a flat metal carving of a white dog’s head.

She took the piece of the crest and gingerly stepped back, darting her gaze around to ensure that nobody had sought the sound’s source. There was no sign of movement, so she exited through the wrecked dining room and strode back around the winding corridors to the main hall. Seeing nowhere else to search on the bottom level, she rushed to the front door, placed the dog head in the middle indentation, and hurried back to ascend the nearest side of the grand staircase.

At the top of the stairs, Casey was startled by Grandpa, who sat in a dark corner in his wheelchair, staring blankly at her. How…the hell did he get up here? It was probably when I was fighting with Dennis, but…there aren’t any wheelchair ramps…did Luke bring you up here or something?

The confusion flooded her head as she approached the elderly man and peered at his face closer. His complexion was still sickly, which was accentuated by the pale moonlight filtering in from a nearby window. He made no movements, so Casey turned to the door next to him, eager to escape his creepy gaze.

The door opened into a clean, warmly-lit hallway, and she shut the door softly behind her with a sigh of relief. Finally! A normal-looking room! she joyously exclaimed to herself, freed from the clutter of the rest of the house. She trekked forth on her excursion to find the remnants of the crest.

Casey made her way out to an enclosed veranda on her right. The boards beneath her feet were worn, but not rotted, and she could see the front yard through plywood lattice. It wasn’t much of a view, save for the wildly overgrown lawn and a white aluminum trailer. That must be where Jade is reaching me from.

A bright yellow light glinted off of the trailer’s frame, and Casey stepped back from the lattice. From behind the presumed safe shelter, Patricia teetered through the tall plants toward the house, carrying a lantern. The girl, her guard back up, tiptoed onward over the veranda, hoping the woman wouldn’t hear or see her from below.

At the other end, a few magazines of bullets sat in an open box. Casey huffed quietly, frustrated by the growing lack of room for resources, and reorganized her cargo. Her wallet went into her bra, her gun supplies into her belt loops, and the knife and ointments into her pockets. Should have grabbed Kevin’s backpack when you had the chance, she chided herself before turning to an archway, which led back into the house.

The remains of a staircase allowed light to filter into this dark segment of the hall from the downstairs area by the garage. Casey wound through the corridors, visible by this glow and a few scattered lamps, with her knife raised and ready for action. In a short while, she came to a well-kept oak door and curiously pushed it open.

A warm recreational room, sparkling from a chandelier, had awaited her, furnished by a pool table, a bar, an old television, and two other doors. One led in the direction of the veranda, and the other had windows peering into another room. Casey glanced around to make sure it was safe and crept in, approaching the door with the windows. It was decorated with the same scorpion and spikes as the identically locked door in the main hall, but she spotted a cracked shotgun leaning against a window.

Now just to find this dumbass scorpion key, she retorted internally as she circled around the room. It wasn’t until then that she noticed the VCR tape resting on the bar, picked it up, and read the neat handwriting on the label.

Stole the camera from Mama when she wasn’t looking and saw the footage on it. I hope he’s okay.

A chill ran down Casey’s spine, as she knew exactly who this note was talking about. She fully realized it was probably a dark web torture tape, but even so, she needed to see his face again. She walked back around to the TV, popped the tape into the VCR player, and leaned on the bar to watch.

A frazzled Kevin, tousled brown hair matter with sweat, stared into the camera. Prominent scars resided on his neck and face, indicating where Casey had wounded him earlier. He anxiously glanced around him, huddled behind a bush. After a few painstakingly long moments, he began to walk, keeping the camera aimed at his face as he spoke between shallow breaths and through welling tears.

“Casey, if you find this…I know I can’t expect anything from you…not after what happened. After what I did. But, I just want you to know, that wasn’t ME! I don’t…God, I don’t KNOW what happened!”

“There you are!” someone yelled from behind him. Kevin turned his head and shifted the camera, revealing Patricia standing in the distance, holding her lantern. “You gave us quite a scare, young man!”

In one swift motion, Kevin turned the camera to show his view of a boardwalk and pushed through an iron gate. He started to sprint down the wooden path, panting, “She can’t catch me again.” At the end, he came to a pair of barn doors, bulled through one side, and kicked it shut behind him. He slowly approached a white door to his right, but it drifted closed and its lock clicked.

Kevin turned around to go the other way, revealing a chasm between the ledge leading to an open door on his side and the rest of the room opposite him. He crept up to the door, careful not to get too close to the shattered support pillars.

“Over here, papa!”

The young boy’s singsong voice echoed from across the chasm, and Kevin pivoted to look at its source. His figure, outlined by curly locks and baggy sweats, stood hauntingly in the shadows, the only light making him visible streaming from a stairwell behind him. However, the young man took a deep breath and ventured forth, despite being obviously fazed by the child.

The doorway led into a long room, lit by flickering candles and turned into a maze by giant columns of hornet nests. No buzzing sounded from any of them, and Kevin continued onward. Each set of candles he passed blew out, and his racing heartbeat was now audible, even on camera. Eager to get out of that room, he made a few long strides to the opposing door, quickly and quietly passing through and closing it.

Kevin rounded a corner in time for a door at the end of the corridor to creak open. As stealthily as possible, he backpedaled behind a small cabinet and stood flushed to the wall as the lantern light and Patricia’s menacing voice drew closer.

“I am growing tired of this bullshit, boy,” she calmly proclaimed, her tone dripping with venom. “Why are you putting me through this? WHAT have I done to deserve this except open my home to you?”

Kevin watched fearfully as she opened another door and exited the confined space, pondering, “I don’t understand you at all. This! This is a gift!” Once she was gone, he took the opportunity to sprint to the other end and hustle through the door she had entered from.

Rounding a wall of crates, he came into a room equipped similarly to the projector room in the main hall. The only difference was the complex statuette resting on the podium. Kevin reached for the statuette, but his respite didn’t last, as he heard Patricia continuing her composed tirade from behind the door.

“This house…it has seen more than you can imagine, and it KNOWS…”

Kevin lightly ran out the archway on the other side onto a small porch and ducked behind open the door, gazing in through a broken window. “You just don’t understand,” Patricia continued, “or is it that you just don’t care?”

When she came into view from around the crates, he took a few steps back into the deepest corner of the porch. “I know you and Jade are plotting,” she accused her invisible target. “I KNOW you are scheming. You think I don’t know what you’re planning for that girl, Casey?”

Kevin craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Patricia, who was pacing circles around the room. As she turned back around, he crouched back, staying barely out of her sight. She began to stroll toward the archway, and he whispered a prayer that she wouldn’t come over to him. 

The lantern shone onto the long porch and started to head in the opposite direction, and Kevin took his opportunity to act. He tiptoe-ran inside as silently as he could, around the barrier and through the open door. At a hurried tempo, he glided to the doors at the other ends of the corridor, but both were locked, and he had to turn back to that dreaded projector room.

Kevin his behind the same cupboard as before as Patricia’s hushed scolds changed into frustrated shouts. “We open our home!” she spat. “We open our hearts! And what do you do?" 

She exited through the same door as she had the first time around, and Kevin returned to the projector room, firmly closing the door behind him. He lifted the statuette and began to rotate it, shifting it slightly until it made the shadow of a spider on the half-finished painting. A sea of bumps raised through the canvas in the area of the shadow, and segment of the wall behind the painting silently opened on a hinge.

A narrow passage awaited behind the secret door, and Kevin shimmied through as best as his muscular body could. Within a minute or so, he popped out on the other side of the chasm at the building’s entrance. He approached a corner by the opposite wall, but reeled back and crouched behind a crate the second he heard Patricia’s continued tirade.

"He loves you. He wants us to be a family, goddamn it.” She huffed, and her voice reached a pained scream. “All you have to do is accept his fucking gift!”

Kevin crept around the crate and glimpsed the opening he so desperately desired. Once he knew Patricia was out of his path, he sprinted for the corner. “You’re not escaping your share of the blame!” she shrieked at him, but he had already jumped into a crawl space. He tiptoed over the hard-packed mud to a hatch door at the far end, but it forcefully slid shut, and he was trapped in the cluttered cavern, lit only by a dying candle.

Kevin made sure to rotate the camera view, giving a good look around the tiny space. A tarnished crank laid haphazardly on a pile of stones, and a small photograph rested on a deteriorated cardboard box. It depicted a young man with perfectly-coiffed brown hair, wearing a polo and jeans, with a large boat in the background. Next to him stood a young boy with fiery ginger hair and prominent freckles, wearing a navy blue tracksuit.

After what felt like forever, the candle blew out, and Kevin gasped sharply. The camera view was plunged into darkness for a brief period, then cut to a close-up of Patricia’s grimacing face.

“Where do you think YOU’RE going?” she asked forcefully, holding Kevin’s arms behind his back with little effort. She wrestled him away, the last noises before the video cut out being his pleas for mercy.

Wiping a few small tears from her cheek, Casey asked, quietly yet with a newfound resolve, “What did they do you, Kevin?” She vowed that she would scour this godforsaken house for Kevin, because the man in the video was the man she loved. Not the maniac that sawed her hand off earlier, but the gentle survivor’s soul that left her a video map of another building on the property. The man whose boss had trusted him enough to let him take the executive’s beloved son- Hedwig, right? I can hardly remember the story with that…- on a zoo errand overseas.

With one last look around, she saw a book, slightly opened, sitting on the ledge of a cupboard. Casey took note of how the cover was unevenly raised and approached the book. Pulling it open to the middle, she found a blue dog’s head crest.

These people need to get better at hiding their shit, she jested drily, hurrying out of the room toward her next step to freedom.

———————

A/N: Hell yeah, procrastination nation! I’m sorry it took me so long to upload this one! I was on vacation, and then my sleep deprivation caught up to me. BUT!!! Here it is! With Normal Kevin and not Murder Kevin! Remember, folks: like, reblog, comment, and ask for tags! 😘

Tag List:

@lady-serenitty

@martina-leanza

[elizabeth-234]

Whumptober 2019

Day Six: Dragged Away 

Hi Friends. I hope you are liking all the prompts so far. Thank you for reading.

Day Five: Gunpoint

Summary: What happens when Peter can't save May or himself from a burning building?

Peter stumbled through his window and into their apartment. His left arm dangled useless at his side and the pain, which had been almost too acute before was gone now. He distantly realized this situation was serious. Their apartment complex was on fire. His arm was damaged and he needed to get to May.

Heat spread through his room. Peter strained to see through the smoke that was building. His ankle ached with pressure as he limped forward. It landed the wrong way on a fallen board and he was sent sprawling. His right arm moved forward to catch him but the other flapped as if devoid of bone. The ground slammed into his body knocking the wind out of him.  

Peter lay there for a moment, listening to the cries from his building and its occupants before pushing himself up with his good arm and continuing forward. It was difficult crawling with one arm. Sweat dripped down his face and Peter tried to blink away the droplets caught in his eye. He tried to remember the fire safety rules he learned in kindergarten but nothing was forthcoming at the moment. All he knew was Kingpin attacked his home and everyone was suffering because of it. It wouldn’t look like the man was involved but Peter knew his style. Make it looked innocent, like an accident, and no one would be any wiser. All to get vengeance against him.

May’s groans were clear from the other room and he ignored the throbbing in his joints to move faster. The fire was spreading and heat licked his body. He entered the kitchen and grabbed a damp rag from off of the dishwasher. He gagged at the rotten food smell against his nose and mouth but kept it pressed to his face. It was better than not breathing at all.

“May?” He called out but could hear no answer. “May!” He said louder this time and could hear her whisper his name from her bedroom.

The smoke made it impossible to take in a full breath. Peter was subjected to the tainted air and rotten smells with every inhalation.  Turning into the room he could see May’s arm draped over the side of the bed. He crawled forward knees burning from the exertion and gazed at her. Soot covered her face and ingrained itself in her laugh lines, making the beautiful turn sour. He dragged her onto the floor taking the damp rag from his mouth and tying it around hers. Her breathing was shallow before and Peter hoped it wasn’t his imagination that it seemed easier on the lower elevation.

Her eyes remained closed. Peter took one large breath before he stood up, legs shaking. Taking both wrists in one hand they made their way forward. Fire bloomed around them creeping closer to their bodies as Peter dragged May behind him. They passed furniture and homework all sitting out as if their world wasn’t being burned to ash.

His skin was hot. Hit throat was hot. Everything was hot and Peter couldn’t remember what it felt like to breath easy. Smoke infiltrated his lungs and burned its way into his body. He staggered against the counter, the edges digging into his stomach. His vision tunneled as he took another breath in.

The door to the apartment was only a few feet away but Peter knew he wouldn’t make it. All of his powers and he wasn’t strong enough. He dragged May forward as far as he could take her before collapsing to the ground. His chest hyperventilated in its pointless search for fresh air. Peter’s eyes fought against the temptation to close and he stared at May’s face.

Peter looked past the soot and scratches on her cheeks. She was peaceful there. Looking at her face one wouldn’t suspect they were in a burning building that they might never get out of. Peter lay there, unable to move but hating himself for giving up. His hand to cupped the side of his aunt’s face before holding her hand and with a frown Peter closed his eyes.

-

The fire truck screeched to a stop in front of the apartment complex in Forest Hills. They were exiting the truck before it was in park.  The ladders, hoses, and equipment were unloaded with practiced precision and Samuel Savel said a quick prayer to the powers that be before he and his team entered the building. Most of the families were out already but it was their job to make sure everyone was. To evacuate as many people as they could.

Samuel and his team split the building into sections and methodically searched the rooms. The fire’s plague spread throughout the building, infecting the walls and weakening its structure. This would not be a fast one. His suit was heavy on his body but he pushed through.

He raised his voice in hopes that someone would hear. He heard a muffled cry come from his right and he looked into what once was a sitting room. A young man lay trapped under a fallen board. Samuel moved quickly, pitching the board off and gathering the body into his arms.

Back and forth he climbed the stairs. The damage increasing each time and he knew they were running out of time. Most doors were open because people left in such a hurry. Samuel came upon a closed door and mentally crossed his fingers that it wasn’t locked.

The door opened and he called out but didn’t here any response. Moving further into the room he called again. Planks from the ceiling were strewn along the room and as he pushed one aside he saw something.

There were hands clasped together on the ground. He traced one and saw a woman. Her face was obscured by a cloth, making it hard to see what she looked like. The other revealed a young boy about the age of his own twins. It was only when the women groaned that he realized he stopped moving. Samuel was unusually strong even for a firefighter and with the strength of few he gathered them into his arms.

The buildings structure was irreplaceably damaged and the stairs were no longer an option. He trudged through the apartment and to the window. The ladders they set up earlier on the A-side were there and his teammates took the two burdens from him before he went down the escape. Everyone was out but there was no time to rest. They worked tirelessly to contain the fire; making certain that no other building would face the same fate.

He knew first hand how anguishing it could be to loose all of your possessions. How you could never look through old photographs when the mood struck. There was this deep pining for something long gone that would well up inside you and even though they were just possessions, they were still important. Especially the photos.

His own home was taken about ten years back to a gas leak. All of the photos from his childhood and of his children before age five were burnt away. He could still remember one from a beach day they took when they turned five. All of his family gathered around a sandcastle and a nice lady took the picture for them. Last he saw it was hanging on his fridge.

Samuel leaned against the truck and stared up at the blackened building, his face unreadable. His teammates left him alone knowing he needed time to think after a mission.

He straightened suddenly and got up to check on the survivors. Some of them already went to the hospital but the last two were still there. Samuel stopped when he saw the famous red and gold suit standing to the side.

He swallowed before moving to stand beside the suit. The helmet came off and he saw Tony Stark’s face for the first time in person.

“You pulled them out?” He said and Samuel nodded with a knit brow.

“Is there something I can do for you?” He asked, wondering why Iron Man was here in Queens.

The man didn’t answer but looked over to the boy resting on the gurney. For the first time Samuel took note of what the boy looked like.

His brunette hair was matted down onto his face and his eyes were sad despite the smile directed at the EMT. He looked far younger than Samuel first thought. His breath left him when the blanket covering him moved and he saw what the kid was wearing. The red suit iced with black lines peeped out from under the blanket. A large arachnid was prominently on display. The same symbol Samuel had seen thousands of times on the news. Samuel found his head whipping to the side, staring with wide eyes at the man next to him.

It was known throughout New York, probably the world, that Iron Man took the New York based superhero under his wings. Samuel’s sons were huge fans. He was a huge fan. Spider Man helped the firemen countless times before but he hadn’t known he was so close to home; someone so young.

Metal fingers curled around his shoulder and he looked away from the young boy to glance at his mentor. Gone was the man he was used to seeing in the news. The Tony Stark that stood in front of him was vulnerable. He was real.

His eyes glistened and he spoke quiet and sure.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Samuel nodded and watched as the pair met eyes. A smile that was so like his boys crossed Spider Man’s face and Stark walked away from him toward the boy. His hand came up to settle on his shoulder. Spider Man looked up and Samuel could see the tears forming. The boy’s face was covered when Stark leaned forward and gripped him in a hug. Samuel turned away not wanting to invade on their privacy and made sure there were no reporters around.

He couldn’t wait to get home and tell his twins whom he saved that day.

Thank you!

Taglist (send an ask if you want to be added):: @verdonafrost

Day Seven: Isolation

[gingerandwry]

Montgomery, Alabama

After Birmingham my next step was 1.5 hours south, the state capital Montgomery, another historically-charged city in the South. I read it was pretty sleepy (truth) so I decided I would just spend a few hours there but my time did not disappoint. Even more so than Birmingham, Montgomery is a step back in time with important lessons for the present. If only they would learn....

My first stop off I-65 was the brand new National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It opened last year to commemorate victims of racially-motivated violence, from slavery to police killings, but its primary focus is lynchings. Atop a grassy hill under a low slung roof hang 400 rectangular iron slabs, one for each county where lynchings took place (mostly in the South, but parts of the midwest too). On each slab is engraved the name of the county and the people who were lynched there (tho only a fraction of the victims and their stories are known). The pathway slopes downward in a loop until the slabs’ hanging effect becomes unmistakeable. Along the sides are engraved inspirational quotes and the shocking stories of some of the victims (one man was lynched after a coat went missing). The horrific details of torture and death are not spared. Outside this roofed area an identical set of 400 slabs lie on the ground like a field of coffins, waiting for each county to pick theirs up and display it, in an attempt to create a truly national memorial and a semblance of accountability. It’s deeply saddening and moving, a truly provocative, moving, overdue addition to our country’s national monuments. But unlike, say, the Vietnam Memorial, here you must have your bags inspected, pass through a metal detector and be told not to take selfies with the statues of tormented slaves in chains. How awful that those precautions are still needed.

From there I moved to Montgomery’s most famous institution, the Rosa Parks Museum. It has two halves: a children’s wing that tells a very simplified version of black history from slavery to Jim Crow (all while sitting on a “time machine” bus with hydraulics driven by the robot Mr. Rivets); and a wing focused on Parks’ protest and the ensuing bus boycott. Annoyingly the ticket person didn’t tell me that the first part was for children when he sold me a ticket, so I wasted 30 minutes riding this Magic School Bus. At least I was all alone (except for Mr. Rivets) so I didn’t have to give up my seat to anyone.

I decided to postpone the second half of the museum and walk through downtown Montgomery to the capitol building. The main street, Dexter Ave, has not changed much since Parks was arrested there almost 65 years ago. Most of the storefronts are deserted and judging by the signage left behind, they have been empty for decades. Some of the structures are quite beautiful and historic, such as the fountain at Court Square (originally a slave market and later the bus stop where Parks boarded that bus) and the Winter Building (where the Confederate leaders sent a telegram to their generals permitting them to fire upon Fort Sumter, which started the Civil War). But mostly it’s pretty bleak. Even the more modern government buildings at the end are really unattractive smorgasbords of too many architectural styles.

The capitol building itself is fairly nice. The grounds are well-maintained, and they had the decency to remove the Confederate flags from their massive monument to the Confederacy.... (Fittingly I had the disgust of seeing Jeff Sessions pass by as I was photographing the monument.) The building has undergone several expansions and renovations and even tho there has been some attempt to restore original details, it still looks like the interior came from Julia Sugarbaker of “Designing Women.” The walls are mostly painted pink and lavender, and the carpeting and chandeliers are quite... ornate. The original Senate chamber is where the Confederacy was born, and the front steps are where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president. (Over one hundred years later, MLK would address 25,000 supporters from those steps after they walked in protest from Selma, the first attempt ending in the police severely beating the marchers.) Weirdly I think I saw maybe three people working in the entire STATE CAPITOL, not to mention the dozen I saw walking around the city for an hour. It is sleepy there....

Montgomery has an interesting way of addressing its dual history as the birthplace of both the Confederacy and the Civil Rights Movement. The public signage is notably impassive: “This happened here. This happened there.” Of course true objectivity doesn’t exist-- they use “secede” and “secession” a lot, rather than, say, “rebel” and “traitor”-- but I do think the state has struck the right chord. They know how divisive their history continues to be. They clearly just want to acknowledge historic events and keep the government neutral in these heated discussions, a wise lesson for Alabama. (My biggest gripe is that I saw nothing acknowledging that Montgomery began as an important port for slave trading. Even the sign at the riverfront only mentioned that the port traded a lot of cotton, grain “and other commodities”.)

The non-state sites, such as the Rosa Parks Museum and the Lynching Memorial, stir enough passion to make up for the official indifference. My next stop was the National Civil Rights Memorial, an homage to 40 people who died as martyrs during the Civil Rights struggle, Some of them were active protestors; others were bystanders whose deaths helped propel the movement. Some are familiar, like Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and MLK; others are unknown. The terrifying, harrowing personal stories hit hard. Outside of the museum is a water sculpture designed by Maya Lin (of the Vietnam War Memorial) that is solemn and dignified, while its flowing water and circular design suggest the struggle has always been happening and continues to this day.

After this it was time for lunch at Dreamland, a small Alabama BBQ chain that was as delicious as it was friendly. It’s in an area just northwest of downtown by the riverfront that is undergoing a promising, well, gentrification. It’s full of beautiful old brick factories and warehouses that are being restored and converted into lofts, galleries, restaurants, bars, etc. It sounds tragic to coastal ears, but I think Montgomery could really benefit from development that draws in young people. And the restorations look remarkable.

After lunch I walked to Old Alabama Town, a collection of small old homes spread across several blocks that display what the city used to look like (I’m not sure when exactly). It was cute and charming but not architecturally noteworthy and hardly worth the walk over. I went back, past the Hank Williams statue, and popped over to the riverfront, also not worth the walk (at least not on a grey winter day).

My last stop was back at the Rosa Parks Museum to see the “grown-up” wing I missed before. It’s one of these museums that makes you sit through various presentations rather than proceed at your own pace. I’m not a fan of that, especially when I’m tired and trying to get to Mobile before the rain and dark arrive. The first video describes life for blacks under segregation and explains how the bus segregation was the most hated of all, which was actually pretty interesting. It tells Rosa Parks’ backstory as well, but although it explains how she worked with the NAACP, it glosses over how much of her protest was plotted in advance so that the museum can stick to the “just a tired lady on the bus” narrative. Once that video ends, some doors open and lead the viewers into a room designed to look like a bus stop, complete with the shell of an old bus. In the windows a video is playing, and for the next ten minutes actors in the video recreate the scene when Parks wouldn’t give up her seat. It sounds weird-- and it was-- but somehow it works. (Fun fact: under city law Parks was allowed to sit where she was and did not have to give up her seat, tho neither she nor the driver was aware.) Unfortunately I had to skip the self-guided history of the boycott (which is really the best part) because my meter was running out. I also decided to skip the Lynching Memorial’s sister Legacy Museum. It sounds amazing, but I wanted to get on the road and frankly, it sounds really depressing, and I had had enough for the day.

I then left for Mobile (to be continued) and while I was having dinner there I caught up on the news of the day. It turns out that while I was touring Montgomery’s and Alabama’s tortured history of discrimination, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Domenique Rey. Rey is a Muslim man on death row in... Alabama. After exhausting his appeals, he asked that an imam be allowed to pray with him during his execution. The state told him that only the officially sanctioned (Christian) chaplain would be allowed. Rey appealed, citing the Constitution’s anti-establishment clause which forbids the government from favoring any religions. The Eleventh Circuit stayed his execution but the US Supreme Court decided against him. The new conservative majority of five thought that because his petition arrived just weeks before the execution, he was only trying to delay it (nevermind that he filed as soon as he learned the imam would not be allowed). Even many conservative commentators think this will go down as one of the Court’s worst decisions, along with Dred Scott and Plessy (which I learned about on the time machine bus tour!). Curiously, after the Eleventh Circuit stayed the execution, Alabama figured the jig was up so they changed the rule so that no clergy of any faith would be allowed to comfort the condemned during an execution. This echoes the state’s tactics during the fight against segregation, when they closed parks, pools, schools, etc. rather than integrate them. Alabama, will you ever grow up?!

[greetingfromthedead]

Ultron – Evolution

Reader gender: neutral

Warning!: I’m a drama queen, so don’t expect anything less from my writings!

Summary: You are a brilliant scientist on human evolution so naturally Ultron takes an interest in your work while on the mission of world peace so he chooses you to build the new world with him.

When you start to slowly come back to your senses you feel that you are on something soft. It’s probably your bed. Another pretty morning. But you can’t remember last night. You were at work and then… nothing. You try to turn, but your body won’t listen. You slowly open your eyes and see that you are indeed in a bed, but not yours. The sheets are white and the bed is meant for only one person. You look up from the sheets and see the room. It’s dimly lit and there are no windows. The walls aren’t uniform and the room looks more like a dungeon. You start to regain control over your body so you sit up. You are still wearing your lab coat and yesterday’s clothes. It confuses you even more. “Oh, good, you finally awoke,” says a male voice. You look around to see who it is, but find no one. You stand up and walk to the doorway. You see that there are iron bars, but the cell isn’t closed. You carefully step into the huge room and look around. It’s filled with wires and foreign technology. You hear heavy steps and turn your head. It’s a very tall metal man. You didn’t expect to see anything remotely like that and he scares you. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m a huge fan of your work. I know everything about it, dr. [Y/L/N]!” he says. “Who are you? What are you?” you ask as you step away. “Of course. Where are my manners? I’m Ultron. I’m an artificial intelligence peacekeeping program… or at least that’s what I was supposed to be. I’m here to bring permanent peace to Earth,” he says. You are scared. You have never seen anything like that. “How? How are you going to bring peace?” you ask and look around. “I’m glad you asked. You see, doctor, you and me, we aren’t that different. You believe that the human race hasn’t reached its final form. I believe the humans have to evolve to survive. They have to change,” he says and you hear a note of anger in his voice. “They are evolving. The changes don’t occur overnight, you don’t see them. The human body is constantly becoming more efficient, with every generation, little by little. The mind expands, people get smarter,” you say with passion. “But they’re out of time. They will destroy themselves and take their world with them,” he simply says and turns away. “What do you suggest then? There’s nothing we can do,” “We can start again,” “I don’t quite follow,” your voice shakes a little and your eyes look for a way out. “You are a smart person, [Y/F/N], don’t you get it? The people are out of time, if we wait any longer for them to evolve, their planet will die and them with it. The humans are the troublemakers, they are destroyers and there’s only one way to peace – their extinction. I’m going to reshape the world… and I want you to do it with me,” he turns towards you. “You want to kill off everyone?” you stare at him in shock. “No, of course not, only the weak. The humans will have every chance to change, to evolve,” “Then how can they, you’re going to kill them! It makes no sense,” you step up to him. “I’ve seen it been done. The strong will find a way. The Maximoffs did,” he says. “The twins… I’ve heard of them. They didn’t evolve; they were the result of illegal alien experiments. You’ve lost your mind,” you look for a way out not even caring that he sees you do it. Suddenly a realization hits you, “You said… that you want me to help you shape the new world… How could I possibly do that? I won’t have any chance to evolve and even if I did. Rebuilding the world… reshaping the human race… it could take thousands… millions of years if you kill off everyone. I will die. Everyone will die. You would be the king of no one, there will be no one left to rule except some rats and moles!” you are freaking out cause there seems to be no way to escape. “I’m glad you asked about yourself… You are a genius… it would be a shame if you wouldn’t make it… so I took it onto myself to help you evolve… I’ll make you indestructible, immortal. May I introduce you…?” he says in a calm manner. He steps to a table in the middle of the room and pulls away the black cloth. Under it was a body… it looked human. You step closer to examine it. You realize it’s just like Ultron’s, made of metal, but it looked more like… you, "This is Jocasta," “And how do you plan to put me in it? Like Ironman? It’s a suit? Are you a suit?” you ask. “Don’t ever compare me to Tony Stark!” he charges you and you fall to the ground, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you, but I did mean it,” he pulls you up again and you step away, “I will turn your mind into a program, I’ll download your consciousness and upload your cerebral matrix into that new body,” Ultron says as he gently strokes the new body’s arm. “I won’t let you. You can’t!” now you’re angry. “Maybe I can’t… But he can,” the robot says and points to someone behind you. You see a young doctor. You recognize him to be one of your colleagues, an expert in brain activity. His eyes are like ice and he injects a syringe into your upper arm. You quickly become limp and fall to the ground before you lose consciousness.

You feel strange. Everything is blurry, you feel like you’re broken into millions of pieces. You’ve lost connections between memories and knowledge. You feel the straps over your arms, legs, torso, and forehead. You see everything, but you don’t understand what you see. You’ve been like this for days. You feel empty: no worry, no fear. Only one thought echoes through your mind: Kill me! You just are. Rogue pieces of memories bombard your mind, but they never last long enough to really watch them. You see something moving in front of you. Two figures step closer. Kill me! Pietro and Wanda Maximoff stand in silence and watch your limp body hang on the upwards table next to a robotic body that looks just like you. You are bald and have wires on and under your skin that connect you to the body next to you. Wanda can look inside your head, but finds nothing but pieces and the desire to die. She doesn’t understand it until she sees a fraction of a memory where Ultron shows you Jocasta. You don’t understand anything. You see the figures, you can hear them, but you don’t understand. For a brief moment a realization hits you, but it’s already gone. “Pietro…what should we do? We can’t just leave…” Wanda says after explaining to her brother what she had seen. Pietro steps closer and frees you carefully from the board and wires. “Someone’s coming,” whispers Wanda and his brother picks you up. Everything in your head went silent. No memories came flooding over you, but everything was still fragmented. You feel your body being moved by an outside force. The temperature changes and everything you see is different. You’re laid down. “(S)he’s broken. I can barely read (him/her). No connection between the memories, but the death wish is gone… I think,” Wanda says. “Will (s)he be all right?” Pietro asks. “I don’t know,”

The truth that you never did recover. Half of your mind had been transferred into Jocasta, but in the battle the body was destroyed. You spent the rest of your life in a state with no clear path. Your memories were inaccessible, you couldn’t talk or move. You couldn’t even remember. You saw everything without it leaving any traces.  You didn’t evolve like Ultron hoped, like you hoped in the deepest darkest corners of your heart; you digressed into nothingness.

Masterlist

[writerspink]

K-12 Words

K

dry wet shoe ten long stay yellow watch inch cup time words same six bones black child ear most page work white five arms snow main nine water head eggs rain test seven root law fall cow red doctor baby feet room rule one blue dark legs wind skin ball green two ever car body box orange gave door four europe picture wish purple ready try neck brown through sky grass air sign whether dance pink eight drive too sat gray three hit man love hand the of and a to in is you that it he was for on are as with his they I at be this have from or had by but not what all were we when your can said there use an each which she do how their if will up other about out many then them these so some her would make like him into has look more write go see number no way could people my than first been called who oil sit now find down day did get come made may part

1.1

anything syllables past describe winter even also eleven moon fruit sand apple women nose solve Math problem plus minus equals stone pants shirt starry thousand divided just train shall held short lay dictionary twelve suddenly mind race clothes learn picked probably raised finished end plaid years bill place hundred different drop came river milk beautiful square lake hole fingers flat sea type over new sound take only little work know live me back give most very after things our name good sentence man think say great where help through much before line right too means old any same tell boy follow want show around form three small

1.2

interest job because such think thirteen subject answer letter meet north length need times divide (by) times table edge soft months present energy point sound log south wide members exercise flowers set found things heart cause site brother teacher live read billion another distance written kept direction developed wall east happy million world must house turn west change well twenty felt put end does large big even here why ask went men land different home us move try kind hand picture again off dress play spell air away animal page mother study still learn should America

2.1

paragraph weather window third believe discovered simple gone paint new store form cells matter follow perhaps cannot good means around line center kind reason move forest sentence return instruments beside represent wild study back farmers sum difference product quotient remainder mother animal land region record summer general caterpillar scratch modern adjust passenger promise equal creak almost croak book dainty song high every near add food between own below country plant last school father keep tree never start city earth eyes light thought head under story saw left don’t few while along might close something seem next hard open example begin life always those both paper together got group often run

2.2

misty poor caution pest phrase life startle squirm alone centaur rise mountain above illustrator footprint temperature decorate country sweat sometimes hair smiled everything began thick compass themselves enough took although splendid crowded second act attach sly talk wonder let’s whirl someone Africa borrow beat belong blink per fasten pain begin drenched bed shell free earth tiny slippery count factors important until children side feet car mile night walk white sea grow river four carry state once book hear stop without late miss idea eat face watch far Indian real almost let girl mountains cut young soon list song being leave family it’s

3.1

drowsy bashful hatch glad copy possible wicked grin sibling shovel run verb sail polish ride young steep case Indian laughed soil appear bolts costume melody narrow behave howl example flee together lot filthy alarm spiral selfish idea conductor fight rolled middle glacier tree dizzy gather sneaky already construct every miss lively metal couldn’t gold plant mask chat nation hear either bundle section near rescue face divide sob celebrate family loosen jealous crash chimney daily own cozy ripe cut son natural serious carry care paper broken cue within body music color stand questions fish area mark horse birds problem complete room knew since ever piece told usually didn’t friends easy heard order red door sure become top ship across today during short better best however low hours black products happened whole measure remember early waves reached

3.2

being instead ache exactly hard speed buy age late artistic close affordable fraction eyes appetite complain sleep seem eat below remove rusty grow glum stormy trust enormous scale open add grab upset weed denied expensive story terrified lead jumped died basket side bear bend list tomb while batch grateful father gleaming dress light sprinkle amount exclaim result yank leave cheat whimper angle outside remain heap champion surprise dodge moment fancy squeeze pretend village shriek city thunder rapid iron striped don’t attitude bell hat tug isn’t applause children honest cross spring freezing listen wind rock space covered fast several hold himself toward five step morning passed vowel true hundred against pattern numeral table north expert slowly money map farm pulled draw voice seen cold cried plan notice south sing war ground fall king town I’ll unit figure certain field travel wood fire upon

4.1

pattern cave hope mile group travel blush killed seed bottom hide important let ticket timid pounds restart silent cranky keep real bright quite curved repeat trip without dart consonant mountains quiet apologize roar grip groan bolt food injury century exhausted cabin atmosphere floor it’s scold transportation delighted giant hill something build fog method rough left everyone obey deserve speak therefore soon french switch until pushed state knob hobby between surround collect fire I’ll arrive road happened certain top order astronomy inches club catch farm nibble color yourself received connect told gaze check wear English half ten fly gave box finally wait correct oh quickly person became shown minutes strong verb stars front feel fact street decided contain course surface produce building ocean class note nothing rest carefully scientists inside wheels stay green known island week less machine base ago stood

4.2

round award crowd slowly yet products, goods, services vowel himself strange whose draw team hold feel flood sent save stood yard notice warn enemy deep please flap coast music wrote safe blast behind island lizard figure famous garden correct whisper listen joined clear share net thus calf maybe cried piece fold seen england decided bank fell pair control clean telescope trouble glass float morning horse produce course hunting rest step statement contain shouted filled zigzag accident cents instrument fly single express visit desert seeds chew dome experiment break gravity against branch size low plane system ran boat game force brought understand warm common bring explain dry though language shape thousands yes equation government heat full hot check object am rule among noun power cannot able six dark ball material special heavy fine circle include built

5.1

mark wealthy row feeling across attention ran map students inside design art mouth ring skill hot during shelter full till log (book) blossom discard bring quickly scientists party town covered wise early cram grain harm goal pause inform heal clue fame freeze badge pimple dim missionary diet dumb rod march agree stick government bulb mall ban greed skiing poison stove image grew fact material dangerous flow gap ago stack explain didn’t strong voice true drawing surface gift corner cloud since king dawn pulled dozen friends greedy burning upon knew insect decimal nervous pay foot weak smooth aware steady serve lost nonetheless beach front atlas questions less cost slight motor banner wire area carefully separate equation local minutes fast table plan fine waves fair sing dive suppose boat thousands shape among toward gas factory birds wait understand sure ship report captain human game history reflect special brave bounce though else can’t matter square syllables perhaps bill felt suddenly test direction center farmers ready anything divided general energy subject Europe moon region return believe dance members picked simple cells paint mind love cause rain exercise eggs train blue wish drop developed window difference distance heart site sum summer wall forest probably

5.2

include cage language base red brain building feast better built demolish excess leap tower ocean plains cold claw information scholar climbed woman worry strand heavy herd common ground damp pack choose president least increase half english invent class measure dash tremble object become doubt became bare wheels continued shiver engine core couple business stars week peak numeral brought nothing touch reached uncle symbols however rumor evening inasmuch (as) force curious heat career system valley dust flock spray robber practice lonely remember luxury warm heard calm rock frighten leader difficulty best gum cheer key support universe stream bit usually fish parade balance money note cliff stand proof you’re pale machine complete cool shown street today shy easy several search unit war power caught settle itself fuel mention fresh planet plane straight period person able direct space wood seal field circle lady board besides hours passed known whole similar underline main winter wide written length reason kept interest arms brother race present beautiful store job edge past sign record finished discovered wild happy beside gone sky grass million west lay weather root instruments meet third months paragraph raised represent soft whether clothes flowers shall teacher held describe drive appreciate structure visible artificial

6.1

afraid absorb british seat fear stretched furniture sight oxygen coward rope clever yellow albeit confess passage france fan cattle spot explore rather active death effect mine create wash printed process origin rose swift woe planets doze gasp chief perform triumph value substances tone score predict property movement harsh tube settled defend reverse ancient blood sharp border fierce plunge consider terms vision intend total schedule attract average intelligent corn dead southern glide supply convince send continent brief mural symbol crew chance suffix habit insects entered nursery especially spread drift major fig diagram guess wit sugar predator science necessary moisture park ordeal nectar fortunate flutter gun forward globe misery molecules arctic won’t actually addition washington cling rare lie steel pastime soldiers chill accordingly capital prevent solution greek sensitive electric agreed thin provide indicate northern volunteer sell tied triangle action opposite shoulder imitate steer wander except match cross speak solve appear metal son either ice sleep village factors result jumped snow ride care floor hill pushed baby buy century outside everything tall already instead phrase soil bed copy free hope spring case laughed nation quite type themselves temperature bright lead everyone method section lake iron within dictionary bargain loyal resource struggle vary capture exclaim gloomy insist restless shallow shatter talent atmosphere brilliant endure glance precious unite certain clasp depart journey observe superb treasure wisdom

6.2

prepared journey trade delicate arrived track cotton hoe furnish exciting view grasp level branches privilege limit wrong enable ability various moreover spoil starve dollars digest advice sense accuse pretty wasn’t industry adopt loyal suggested blow treasure cook adjective doesn’t wings tools crops loud smell frail wisdom fit expect ahead lifted deed device weight gradual respect interesting arrange particular compound examine cable climate division individual talent fatal entire advantage opponent wouldn’t elements column custom enjoy grace theory suitable wife shoes determine allow marsh workers difficult repeated thrill position born distant revive magnificent shop sir army struggled deal plural rich rhythm rely poem company string locate church mystify elegant led actual responsible japanese huge fun meat observe swim office chart avoid factories block called experience win crumple brilliant located pole bought conditions sister details primary survey truck recall disease radio rate scatter decay signal approach launch hair age amount scale pounds although per broken moment tiny possible gold milk quiet natural lot stone act build middle speed count consonant someone sail rolled bear wonder smiled angle fraction Africa killed melody bottom trip hole poor let’s fight surprise French died beat exactly remain fingers clever coast explore imitate pierce rare symbol triumph ancient cling disturb expose perform remote timid bashful brief compete consider delightful honor reflex remark brink chill conquer fortunate fury intend pattern vibrant wit

7.1

capture remark western outcome risk current bold compare resident ambition arrest furthermore desire confuse accurate disclose considerable contribute calculate baggage literacy noble era benefit orchard shabby content precious manufacture dusk afford assist demonstrate instant concentrate sturdy severe blend vacant weary carefree host limb pointless prepare inspire shallow chamber vast ease attentive source frantic lack recent distress basic permit threat analyze distract meadow mistrust jagged prefer sole envy hail reduce arena tour annual apparent recognize captivity burrow proceed develop humble resist peculiar response communicate circular variety frequent reveal essential disaster plead mature appropriate attractive request congratulate address destructive fragile modest attempt tradition ancestor focus flexible conclude venture impact generosity routine tragic crafty furious blossom concern ascend awkward master queasy release portion plentiful alert heroic extraordinary frontier descend invisible coax entrance capable peer terror mock outstanding valiant typical competition hardship entertain eager limp survive tidy antonym duplicate abolish approach approve glory magnificent meek prompt revive watchful wreckage audible consume glide origin prevent punctuate representative scorn stout woe arch authentic clarify declare grant grave opponent valid yearn admirable automatic devotion distant dreary exhaust kindle predict separation stunt

7.2

evade debate dedicate budge available miniature petrify pasture banquet pedestrian solitary decline reassure nonchalant exhibit realistic exert abuse dictate minor monarch concept character strategy soar beverage tropical withdraw challenge kin navigate purchase reliable mischief solo combine vivid aroma spurt illuminate narrator retain excavate avalanche preserve suspend accomplish exasperate obsolete occasion myth reign sparse gorge intense revert antagonist talon aggressive alternate retire cautiously blizzard require endanger luxurious senseless portable sever compensate companion visual immense slither guardian compassion escalate detect protagonist oasis altitude assume seldom courteous absurd edible identical pardon approximate taunt achievement homonym hearty convert wilderness industrious sluggish thrifty deprive independent bland confident anxious astound numerous resemble route access jubilation saunter hazy impressive document moral crave gigantic bungle prefix summit overthrow perish visible translate comply intercept feeble exult compose negative suffocate frigid synonym appeal dominate deplete abundant economy desperate diligent commend boycott jovial onset burden fixture objective siege barrier conceive formal inquire penalize picturesque predator privilege slumber advantage ambition defiant fearsome imply merit negotiate purify revoke wretched absorb amateur channel elegant grace inspect lame tiresome tranquil boast eloquent glisten ideal infectious invest locate ripple sufficient uproar

8.1

apprehensive dialogue prejudice marvel eligible accommodate arrogant distinct knack deposit liberate cumulative consequence strive salvage chronological unique vow concise influence lure poverty priority legislation significant conserve verdict leisure erupt beacon stationary generate provoke efficient campaign paraphrase swarm adhere eerie mere mimic deteriorate literal preliminary solar soothe expanse ignite verge recount apparel terrain ample quest composure majority collide prominent duration pursue innovation omniscient resolute unruly optimist restrain agony convenient constant prosper elaborate genre retrieve exploit continuous dissolve dwell persecute abandon meager elude rural retaliate primitive remote blunder propel vital designate cultivate loathe consent drastic fuse maximum negotiate barren transform conspicuous possess allegiance beneficial former factor deluge vibrant intimidate idiom dense awe rigorous manipulate transport discretion hostile clarity arid parody boisterous capacity massive prosecute declare stifle remorse refuge predicament treacherous inevitable ingenious plummet adapt monotonous accumulate reinforce extract reluctant vacate hazardous inept diminish domestic linger context excel cancel distribute document fragile myth reject scuffle solitary temporary veteran assault convert dispute impressive justify misleading numerous productive shrewd strategy villain bluff cautious consist despise haven miniature monarch obstacle postpone straggle vivid aggressive associate deceive emigrate flexible glamour hazy luxurious mishap overwhelm span blemish blunt capable conclude detect fatigue festive hospitality nomad supreme

8.2

exclude civic compact painstaking supplement habitat leeway minute hoax contaminate likeness migration commentary extinct tangible originate urban unanimous subordinate collaborate obstacle esteem encounter futile cordial trait improvises superior exaggerate anticipate cope evolve eclipse dissent anguish subsequent sanctuary formulates makeshift controversy diversity terminate precise equivalent pamper prior potential obnoxious radiant predatory presume permanent pending simultaneously tamper supervise perceived vicious patronize trickle stodgy rant oration preview species poised perturb vista wince yearn persist shirk status tragedy trivial snare vindictive wrath recede peevish rupture unscathed random toxic void orthodox subtle resume sequel upright wary overwhelm perjury uncertainty prowess utmost throb pluck pique vengeance pelt urgent substantial robust sullen retort ponder whim saga sham reprimand vocation assimilate dub defect accord embark desist dialect chastise banter inaugurate ovation barter muse blasé stamina atrocity deter principal liberal epoch preposterous advocate audacious dispatch incense deplore institute deceptive component subside spontaneous bonanza ultimate wrangle clarify hindrance irascible plausible profound infinite accomplish apparent capacity civilian conceal duplicate keen provoke spurt undoing vast withdraw barrier calculate compose considerable deputy industrious jolt loot rejoice reliable senseless shrivel alternate demolish energetic enforce feat hearty mature observant primary resign strive verdict brisk cherish considerate displace downfall estimate humiliate identical improper poll soothe vicinity abolish appeal brittle condemn descend dictator expand famine portable prey thrifty visual

9.1

stance vie instill exceptional avail strident formidable rebuke enhance benign perspective tedious aloof encroach memoir mien desolate inventive prodigy staple stint fallacy grope vilify recur assail tirade antics recourse clad jurisdiction caption pseudonym reception humane ornate sage ungainly overt sedative amiss convey connoisseur rational enigma fortify servile fastidious contagious elite disgruntled eccentric pioneer abet luminous era sleek serene proficient rue articulate awry pungent wage deploy anarchy culminate inventory commemorate muster adept durable foreboding lucrative modify authority transition confiscate pivotal analogy avid flair ferret decree voracious imperative grapple deface augment shackle legendary trepidation discern glut cache endeavor attribute phenomenon balmy bizarre gullible loll rankle decipher sublime rubble renounce porous turbulent heritage hover pithy allot minimize agile renown fend revenue versa gaunt haven dire doctrine intricate conservative exotic facilitate bountiful cite panorama swelter foster indifferent millennium gingerly conscientious intervene mercenary citadel obviously rely supportive sympathy weakling atmosphere decay gradual impact noticeable recede stability variation approximately astronomical calculation criterion diameter evaluate orbit sphere agricultural decline disorder identify probable thrive expected widespread bulletin contribution diversity enlist intercept operation recruit survival abruptly ally collide confident conflict protective taunt adaptation dormant forage frigid hibernate insulate export glisten influence landscape native plantation restore urge blare connection errand exchange

9.2

feasible teem pang vice tycoon succumb capacious onslaught excerpt eventful forfeit crusade tract haggard susceptible exemplify ardent crucial excruciating embargo disdain apprehend surpass sporadic flustered languish conventional disposition theme plunder ignore project complaint title dramatic delivery litter experimental clinic arrogance preparation remind atomic occasional conscious deny maturity closure stressed translator animate observation physical further gently registration suppress combination amazing constructive allied poetry passion ecstasy mystery cheerful contribution spirit failed gummy commerce prove disagreement raid consume embarrass preference migrant devour encouragement quote mythology destined destination illuminating struggle accent ungrateful giggle approval confidence expose scientist operation superstitious emergency manners absolutely swallow readily mutual bound crisp orient stress sort stare comfort verbal heel challenging advertisement envious sex scar astonish basis accuracy enviable alliance specific chef embarrassed counter tolerable sympathetic gradually vanish informative amaze royal furry insist jealousy simplify quiver collaborate dedicated flexible function mimic obstacle technique archaeologist fragment historian intact preserve reconstruct remnant commence deed exaggeration heroic impress pose saunter wring astound concealed inquisitive interpret perplexed precise reconsider suspicious anticipation defy entitled neutral outspoken reserved sought equal absorb affect circulate conserve cycle necessity seep barren expression meaningful plume focused genius perspective prospect stunned superb transition assume guarantee nominate

10.1

install reticent corroborate regretfully strength murder concise cunning intention holy satire query confused progression disillusion background mundane abrupt multiple enormously introduce emulate harmful pragmatic pity rebut liberate enthusiastic elucidate camaraderie disparage nature creep profitability impression racist sobriety occupy autonomy currently amiable reiterate reproduce cripple modest offer atom provincial augment ungratefully expansion yield rashly allude immigration silence epitome exacerbate somber avid dispute vindicate collaborate manufacturer embellish superficial propaganda incompetent objective diminish statistics endure ambivalent perpetuate illuminate phenomenon exasperate originality restrict anxiety anthropology circumstances aesthetic manufacturing conventional dubious vulnerable reality precedent entity success term critical repair underscore stepmother republican hesitantly classic wary contents prediction immediate invoke notorious implicit excluding input skeptical foster element punish frank humanity profound dessert orthodox substance disappear encourage neighborhood elder superfluous naive ascertain complacent resilient deafening military tend prudent glare acceptance skillfully induce monster beam gullible conciliate vessel petty cantankerous disclose archaeology anecdote disdain electronics substantiate subjective tourism advisable joyful incredible provocative psychological ruins discipline condone indifferent misfortune judgmental industrialize tasty assume astute mission mar protective definitely escape oppress shocked virtual zealous endorse qualification hostile eccentric abstract disparate geographical scrutinize generalization tolerate activity claim dogmatic influential obsolete extol implausible subsequent resource chronic benevolent improve confidential ambiguous seriously dearth perplex hatred throughout dine contemporary evoke essentially economic flagrant obscure alleviate eloquent dreaadful clumsy sympathy victim condemn vigor condescend spontaneous quell reprehensible substantially sleeve equivocal ironic decry errand articulate progressive eradicate refreshments elicit aspiration recently exemplary bribery theoretical disingenuous partisan revere particle nostalgia self-aggrandizement debunk tyranny rhetoric hierarchy warning whimsical venerate commend assert miserable awful vibe constrain undermine explicit differentiate compliment scrupulous contempt erroneous ideal refute imply cynical rash presume insight revival vary delay renounce indignant offensive temperate circumstantial export peep logo advertise suppress distort chunk convoluted denounce overwhelming fertility rigorous acquire arrogant university antagonize profitable indulgent strategic breathing idiosyncrasy profession frugal discern accommodation adversary incredulous disturbance digress social belie roam smug continual pertinent voluntarily elite subtle blame sincerity lick horror censure involvement candid infer futile impetuous exploit bewilder sustain diligent sincere protect sealed musical empathy callous parenthetical insure acorn sarcasm seize sacrificially allege emphatic irrelevant progress diplomatic stunned improvise deride reconcile meticulous deject scientifically incontrovertible pressure justify gloomy depict supplant endurance analogous diary bolster slip contemplate pesticide glow religious advocate negligent creator lament fundamental embrace throne inherent inferior valuable thrive trivial pretense reserved capricious refresh refusal flight boost explanation coherent prevalent tenacious official royalty assassin rub poach delete

10.2

warrant circumscribed somewhat explosive optimistic mandate previously detract opinion intuitive feasible intimate persistent humble simplicity tempt deliberate painful unethical fundamentals discrepancy remorse pessimistic possibility conclusion acknowledge impregnate soberly creation paralyze suitability oblige tranquil medal arbitrate pacify illusory susceptible vibrate vengeance infection democratic stressful grave speculative sample identification stifle obligation revenge organization namely mediocre practical scream weaken consensus affectionate deficient treacherous console isolation ingenious memory melodrama despair awestruck composition regret recommendation celebrity decision devoid opaque ornamentation longevity participate dread restore interrogate aid accordingly mislead embarrassment optimism domestic apt funds virtue geography fundamentally thoroughly press despite horrible chilling rental esteemed disappointment innovative contemplation assign popularize haunt deafen serene percent estrangement suffer extravagant throng estimate comment priesthood mass dreadfully promote periphery animated saying relate clarity triple derivative succeed distortion register suicide improvement discreet inquisition probable curative incident praise convenience baffle covet dreadful genuinely weary undisturbed disgruntled humility renown nonchalant monopoly comedy vague decisive inconsequential announcement fabricated nevertheless vigilant scarce neglectful hushed attainment tedious explode snatch pslm agency sentimental tension adhere meanwhile sacred avert conformity likewise challenger accessible responsibility peril contact event roast fallible catastrophic competitor violate resolute deceive exaggeration discredit intolerable approve paste dimly novelist demeanor norm politician satisfaction obvious vehicle reservation defer involve restoration crush audible assistant backpack attain inanimate commemorate confrontation emigration parasite disperse quantitative laughter policy vulgar occasionally repay effective eulogy starvation empty therapeutic overall immortal encompass inappropriate opportune engagement illustrate turmoil observatory classification expression reminiscence comedian invention depress remedy protagonist gesture texture diplomatic election prolong conducive emotional invigorate curiosity expressive %

K-12 Words was originally published on PinkWrite

[dawnjeman]

Traditional Farmhouse-style Home

  It’s always a happy day when I have my dear friend Lisa Furey of Lisa Furey Interiors, on the blog! Lisa has been featured many times on Home Bunch and you might recall seeing her home here. In fact, that post became one of the most popular posts of the year!!!

Lisa is back today to share her newest project and I think you guys will love it as much as I do. This is a new 6000 square foot build in the Philadelphia area countryside. On the property, there is a newly raised barn, a chicken coop and a gorgeous stocked fishing pond shaded by a large, very old weeping willow tree. The traditional farmhouse style is beautifully proportioned and detailed in and out.

Get inspired and start dreaming. This home is one that will be hard to forget…

  Traditional Farmhouse-style Home

The front door opens to a breathtaking foyer with white shiplap walls, painted in Benjamin Moore White Dove, and beautiful decor.

Console – Dovetail – similar here (huge sale!), here, here & here.

Natural fiber runner – Fibreworks Siskiyou – similar here, here & here.

Wreath – HomeGoods– similar here.

Hurricanes – Pottery Barn – similar here.

Similar Mirror: here & here.

Lighting: Visual Comfort.

Kitchen

I stopped and stared at this farmhouse kitchen the first time I saw it. Take a good look at the details and ideas… This kitchen offers plenty of inspiration!

Kitchen Cabinet Details: Painted Maple Shaker inset cabinets – paint color is proprietary to cabinet shop, similar to Benjamin Moore Nantucket Grey HC-11.

Kitchen Island

The kitchen island is Driftwood, custom stained, Quarter Sawn Oak.

Kitchen Island Dimensions – 10 x 4.

Counterstools are Industry West – similar here.

Faucet: Kohler Artifacts.

Sink: Rohl farm sink.

The black window paint over the kitchen sink is Gravel Grey by Benjamin Moore.

Kitchen Lighting: Visual Comfort.

Hardwood Flooring

All wood flooring is wide plank quarter and Rift Sawn White Oak natural finish, matte sheen – similar here.

Range Hood is custom by Raw Urth – style is Creed.

Farm table is custom by family friend – Beautiful Dining Tables:here, here, here, here, here, here (round) & here.

Dining Chairs are Palecek.

Lighting: Visual Comfort Chandelier.

Brick

Backsplash is Savannah Grey brick veneer reclaimed – similar here & here (in tile).

Countertop is LG Minuet quartz countertop.

Open shelving with iron brackets is custom by family friend – Similar Kitchen Shelves: here & here.

Butler’s Pantry

Cabinetry is White Dove by Benjamin Moore painted Shaker inset cabinets with painted wood mushroom knobs.

Countertop is Caesarstone quartz countertop – Raw Concrete.

Faucet: Kohler Artifacts.

Wallpaper is Thibaut vinyl Taluk Sisal in Navy (available through the designer) – similar here, here & here.

Similar Beverage Center: here.

Similar Blue & White Ginger Jars: here & here.

Family Room

This is the type of attention to detail that brings a room to the next level. Black doors paint color is Benjamin Moore Gravel Grey 2127-30.

All upholstered furniture is custom Kravet – Mullen Chairs, Vassar ottoman, Lehigh Sofas – available through the designer.

Area rug is Masland Let’s Dance broadloom, cut and serged – similar here.

All accessories by owner.

Inspired by this Look:

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Sunroom

This is one of my favorite spaces in this house. I would love to read in this sunroom.

Daybed – English Farmhouse Furniture – Louellas Cottage Bed – Oatmeal Wash – Other Beautiful Daybeds: here, here, here, here & here.

Coffee Table – Gabby Clover.

Wicker Chairs – Palecek – discontinued – similar here & here.

Similar Tobacco basket on shiplap clad walls – here.

Pillows and textiles – a mix of owners and HomeGoods.

Paint Color

Paint color Benjamin Moore White Dove OC-17.

Cafe white plantation shutters on windows for light control.

The ceiling fan is by Maverick Fan.

Similar Rug: here & here.

Laundry Room

Cabinets are shaker overlay doors – paint color is proprietary to the cabinet shop but similar to Benjamin Moore Coventry Grey HC-169.

  Tile – Marca Corona Terra collection.

Metal Hampers: Pottery Barn.

Sink & Faucet

Sink and faucet – American Standard Country sink & Faucet.

Countertop

  Countertop – LG Minuet quartz

Hardware

Hardware – Emtek Hampton knobs.

Master Bathroom

The master bathroom is serene and it features hardwood flooring and light walls. Note the great layout and usage of space.

  Sconces – Visual Comfort Boston Loop arm sconces.

Plumbing – Bathroom Faucets, Shower & Tub Filler.

Similar Tub: here.

All stone is white carrara marble.

  Knobs are Emtek.

Custom dual vanities with inset slab drawers – similar here & here.

Mirrors: Pottery Barn.

Paint Color

Paint color is Benjamin Moore Pale Oak OC-20.

Chandelier: Visual Comfort.

Mudroom

This has to be one of my favorite mudrooms! Floor is reclaimed Savannah grey brick.

  Lanterns is Visual Comfort Darlana Aged Iron – similar here (on sale!).

Chair is Palecek.

Board & Batten

How gorgeous is this combination of board and batten walls with brick flooring? This idea deserves to be saved or pinned!

Grey Mudroom Cabinetry

Mudroom Cabinet Details: Shaker inset built ins – color is proprietary to the cabinet shop but similar to Brewster Gray HC 162 by Benjamin Moore.

Hardware is Amerock.

Similar Baskets: here, here (large) & here.

Rug is Fibreworks – similar here, here & here.

  Many thanks to the interior designer for sharing all details above.

Interior Design: Lisa Furey – Barefoot Interiors. (Instagram)

  Bring the Holidays Home!

Click on any image to shop.

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Exciting Holiday Sales!

Thank you for shopping through Home Bunch. I would be happy to assist you if you have any questions or are looking for something in particular. Feel free to contact me and always make sure to check dimensions before ordering. Happy shopping!

Wayfair: 72 Hour Blowout!!! Huge Sales on Decor, Furniture & Rugs!!!

Serena & Lily: Let’s Get Festive!

Joss & Main: Best Prices of 2018 – Up to 70% Off

Pottery Barn: 20% Off plus Free Shipping with Code: CHEER!!!

One Kings Lane: 40% Off Holiday Decor.

West Elm: 20% Off plus Free Shipping with Code: TREAT

Build: Up to 80% OFF on Kitchen, Bathroom, Hardware & Lighting!

Neiman Marcus: Up to 50% Off on regular prices!

Pier 1: Huge Christmas Decor Sales + Free Shipping – Use Code: FREESHIP49

Anthropologie: Extra 40% Off on Sale Items!

Posts of the Week:

Beautiful Homes of Instagram.

Modern Farmhouse House Tour.

2018 Christmas Decorating Ideas.

How to Decorate your Porch for Christmas.

Small Lot Modern Farmhouse.

Family-friendly Home Design.

Newlyweds Home Design.

City Lot Modern Farmhouse.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: New England Home.

Family Home Renovation with Casual Interiors.

2018 Norton Children’s Hospital Raffle Home.

Transitional Custom Home Design.

Southern Farmhouse.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram: Canada.

Beautiful Homes of Instagram.

Interior Design Ideas: Colorful Interiors.

Custom Home with Artisan Craftsmanship Interiors.

You can follow my pins here: Pinterest/HomeBunch

See more Inspiring Interior Design Ideas in my Archives.

“Dear God,

If I am wrong, right me. If I am lost, guide me. If I start to give-up, keep me going.

Lead me in Light and Love”.

Have a wonderful day, my friends and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

with Love,

Luciane from HomeBunch.com

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[junker-town]

The bloodlines of America run through the Kentucky Derby

48 hours inside the gates of America's most famous horse race

I’m in the beach and swimwear section of the basement-level T.J. Maxx on Wall Street in New York City and I’m frantic. I’m going to Kentucky tomorrow for the Derby, a strange Southern party that has always fascinated me, a Yankee from New England.

“Do you have a hat?” my editor asked me earlier today, and I realized I expected one to magically appear when I got to Louisville. That’s clearly not how things work, so here I am, trying to decide between the lesser of two straw evils. I send a picture of each to my mother. She tells me to buy the white one because the black one makes me look like I’m going to a funeral.

The next morning I get on a plane, cross several state lines, and land in the pouring rain among the lush green hills and steel gray rivers of Louisville.

Two women, who I assume are from some sort of tourism department, greet arriving passengers at the gate. Their hats match their red, rose-printed dresses, and I marvel at the feathers and curlicues cascading out from their brims.

My hat is crushed in my bag.

“I had a bunch of girls from Vanderbilt in the car wearing ponchos before you, so it smells like flowers and plastic,” says my Uber driver named Randy. We’re driving through the rain, passing boarded-up houses that surround Churchill Downs.

I’m on my way to the Oaks, the set of races held the Friday before the Kentucky Derby. Everything we pass is gray, except for the blinking red and blue lights of a police cruiser and the yellow caution tape marking off a crime scene next to it. There’s a big heroin problem in the neighborhood around Churchill Downs, Randy says. Homicides have been on the rise, too.

Inside the track, the white-washed tunnels feel like a mix of a country club and the concourse of a baseball stadium. It smells like cigars, beer, and a front yard after a heavy rain.

Everything here is pink, from people’s outfits to the banners hanging from the painted rafters. It’s Filly Day, and some of the proceeds go to breast cancer research. I didn’t realize Filly Day was a thing, so I’m wearing a black dress, my stupid hat, and black toenail polish. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I’m from New York.

The people in lines inch closer to the betting windows or booze vendors as they wait to bet or buy what’s probably their thirteenth mint julep or aluminum bottle of Bud Light. They look miserable. They should be miserable, because a steady drizzle alternates with downpours, and everyone is dressed for what they want the weather to be. Women stick it out in sundresses and rompers, bearing their shoulders, midriffs, knees. The cuffs of men’s seersucker pants are caked with mud, their sleeves wet. They’re playing pretend, wearing costumes and acting like they enjoy shivering on a 45-degree day.

A damp cold has settled into my bones, numbing my toes, tensing up the muscles in my shoulders and the back of my neck. I want to leave, but I haven’t seen a horse race yet. I’ve never seen a horse race, so as the bugle blows, I go down to the rail by the track and hold onto the wet metal.

The gates open and the race starts on the opposite side. I watch the Jumbotron set up in the infield, an open cage for drunk people which is slightly cheaper ($90) than the cheap seats in the grandstands ($175). Suddenly the horses, the purest manifestation of bloodlines, the embodiment of animal eugenics, round the corner and go from screen to flesh.

Their hooves spin through the track, which looks like frosting on a cake that’s been left out in the sun. Mud spatters the horses’ flanks and creeps up the jockeys’ legs, whose silks haven’t changed in 150 years. The jockeys strike the backsides of the beasts with riding crops.

I strain against the rail, speed and strength hurtling through my chest. I didn’t expect the race to be so visceral, to be so overwhelmed, for the horses to run right through me. I feel like someone knocked the wind out of my lungs.

What I can’t feel is my entire left foot at this point, and I’m having trouble typing notes on my phone because my fingers are so stiff with cold, so I leave. Outside the gates, I have to step through an obstacle course of soggy horse race trash that covers the stone entrance: shattered mint julep glasses, soaked betting books, cigarette butts, the runoff of American vices. It looks like a hangover.

In the middle of all of it, there’s a guy selling red t-shirts. He holds one up, and yells out the slogan stamped across the front: “Donald Fucking Trump,” he cries. “Donald Fucking Trump!”

I’m at the Barnstable Brown Gala on Friday night standing three feet away from Tom Brady. A barricade of folding chairs separates me from the football god as he holds court. His teammates Danny Amendola and Jimmy Garoppolo sit on one side of him, and an old guy I don’t recognize sits on the other.

A muscled man in a suit and a flat-billed Navy hat — clearly Brady’s Guy — swats away people wearing sparkling evening gowns and crisp tuxedos. They keep trying to sneak through the makeshift guardrail of seats. He firmly tells them, in a pronounced Boston accent, to stop.

Stahhhhp.

Brady’s Guy is raising his voice at one particularly adamant woman when all of a sudden I hear the sound of splintering wood and look over to see Brady’s chair spontaneously collapse, sending him crashing to the floor. There’s a collective gasp as Brady’s Guy springs to the quarterback’s side to help him up. Brady looks stunned at first, then starts to laugh. He stands up and brushes himself off.

“Was this your chair?” he jokes to another suited man. Brady grins. “Sorry I broke it.”

The surrounding crowd breaks out into relieved laughter.

The Gala is an annual event that the Barnstable-Brown family hosts the night before the Derby. There might not be official aristocrats in America, but if there were, the Browns would qualify. They’re the Kentucky Browns, as in Brown-Forman, as in one of the largest publicly traded companies in the spirits and wine business.

Patricia Barnstable, who was of the Doublemint twins (along with her sister Priscilla), married into the family when she wed David Brown. They started hosting this party at their home on Spring Drive 29 years ago to raise money for diabetes research. So far, they’ve donated more than $13 million to the Barnstable Brown Diabetes and Obesity Research Center at the University of Kentucky.

Sadly and ironically, David developed diabetes and died of complications in 2003. So now Patricia, her mother Wilma, and her and David’s son Chris Barnstable Brown — a lawyer and football writer who lives in New York City — organize and run the party. They don’t hire a PR firm because stars like Peyton Manning, Jeff Bridges, Brady, and Katie Couric know that if you’re going to the Derby, you can’t miss this. Patricia handles all the celebrities; Wilma sells each of the 1,200 or so tickets over the phone herself.

People are lined up along the rainy street outside the gates to watch the celebrities show up. The fans scream out names (“IT’S JOEY FATONE!!!”) as the party busses unload. They call horse racing the sport of kings, so it’s fitting that American royalty — the ones who grace the pages of the tabloids I browsed while I waited in the checkout line at T.J. Maxx — show out for it.

This party is a weird and wonderful pocket of Chris Barnstable Brown’s life, a yearly pilgrimage to pay homage to his roots. He recalls how, when he was ten years old, he danced in his backyard with Brooke Shields at the party. How his father used to shake the hand of every single guest who came through the wrought iron gates on either side of his driveway.

Which is why he’s still standing outside in the cold drizzle, two hours after the party started: to carry on his father’s tradition. From my perch on a riser in the press pen beside the red carpet area, I watch him shake the hand of each bedazzling star, moneyed Kentuckian, and guest of a guest who enters his family’s home.

Photo by author

Jesse Eisenberg poses awkwardly. Richie Sambora slides in and does a jazz hands pose. A bunch of famous people I don’t know — but who are apparently a big deal from some superhero TV show — put their arms around each other. Jeff Bridges and his wife are as sexy as you want them to be in real life; Jason Witten’s hair is thinning. Tracy Morgan jokes with the local newscasters. The cast of Vanderpump Rules, a reality show about bartenders at a Los Angeles restaurant, preen. New money oozes from their pores.

I shed my raincoat, hide it behind a catering table, and go back to the party in my evening dress and heels. The woman guarding the VIP section nods and pulls a rope aside when I flash my media badge, and I make my way up the sloping hill to the tent where I can see Aaron Rodgers, Randall Cobb, Jimmy Garoppolo, Bode Miller, Rickie Fowler, and Justin Rose hanging out.

Rodgers stands by himself away from his teammates. He’s facing the stage, where someone — maybe country singer Travis Tritt, but I can’t remember, and that seems unlikely — is covering a Ben Harper song. I introduce myself. We stand there listening together.

“Do you play an instrument?” I ask.

“Yeah, I play the guitar,” Rodgers says. “I love this song.”

“I just went to a Ben Harper concert a few weeks ago,” I say. “He played with his daughter. It was pretty cool.”

Rodgers lights up. “Really?” He says. “Ben is the reason I play. I sent him a signed jersey after I saw him in concert, and he sent me back a guitar. Can you believe that? He sent me a guitar!”

“Whoah, you should send more musicians signed jerseys,” I tell him. “You’d probably have way more guitars by now if you did that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Rodgers says.

I get the sense that he wouldn’t mind being left alone, so I leave him alone. People keep coming up to take selfies with him. He obliges, always gracious, but you can tell it’s exhausting. A few tables away, Brady — who’s secured a sturdier chair — is dealing with the same thing. This is their price of admission.

“Aaron hates this shit,” says Eric Bakhtiari, ex-NFL player and brother of Packers tackle David Bakhtiari, looking over at Rodgers. “Normally, you know who I let through? Veterans and attractive women. My brother guards Aaron on the field, I guard my brother off it.”

He pauses and turns back to me. “You can use that in your story, it’s my gift to you.”

It’s now midnight, and Kid Rock — who was recently photographed in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump and Sarah Palin — is rapping. The Packers circle up and decide it’s time to go. So do the Patriots.

I watch Julian Edelman embrace Brady, then embrace Garoppolo, and then grab a bottle of water off the table and chug it in under thirty seconds. Both crews of players get whisked away by men in suits. Our new American thoroughbreds are paraded through the crowd like horses in the paddock before the Derby.

Kentucky has so far felt like an acid trip you’d have while reading US Weekly, a prep school semi-formal, and a frat party during a monsoon. Parts of Louisville I pass going in and out of the track are so bleak, but the trappings of the Derby are so bright. A huge swath of history seems missing, like someone’s painted over a wall without stripping it first.

Photo by author

Shirley Mae Beard at Shirley Mae’s Cafe and Bar

I go searching for what it is and head over to Shirley Mae’s Cafe and Bar, where a Clinton/Kaine sign still hangs on the iron bars of the front door. Carrying my hat in my hand and shivering in my sundress and raincoat, I push it open to enter an empty front room with a few tables and a well-stocked bar. It’s dimly lit and humid in here; the bar feels sticky and soft. You could carve your initials into it using only a fingernail.

Pictures of celebrities posing with Shirley Mae Beard, the owner, hang behind the bourbon bottles. I see Whoopi Goldberg, Hillary Clinton, B.B. King, Morgan Freeman. That famous picture of Clinton wearing sunglasses and looking at her cell phone hangs on the wall, blown up to the size of a poster.

Shirley Mae’s daughter Dee Simpson comes out from the kitchen. She’s wearing a shirt that says, I’M NOT ARGUING, I’M JUST TELLING YOU WHY I’M RIGHT, and has very short graying hair that she’s growing out after rounds of chemo. Three months ago doctors finally declared her cured of uterine cancer, but she says being cancer-free is like being in AA — you go day-by-day, month-by-month. Shirley Mae and her shock of white hair shuffle around behind the counter, stirring the contents of pots and poking at frying chicken.

“Oh, look at you, you got your hat and everything!” Dee says. She smiles, and her eyes crinkle in a way that gives me the sense that she’s not not making fun of me.

“Let me see what you’re wearing, take off that rain coat,” she says. I oblige.

“You trying to catch a man in that dress?” Dee laughs. “Lookin’ all fancy for the races.”

I laugh, too, and turn what I imagine is a very deep red. I feel like an overdressed moron in this dress and goddamn hat. It all might fit in at Churchill Downs, but right now it just seems silly, like I’m an actor who forgot to change after a play.

Shirley Mae used to throw another celebrity-filled party, an antidote to the hoopla at the track. In 1988, she started the Salute to the Black Jockeys Who Pioneered the Kentucky Derby in honor of the 15 black jockeys who won the race, a piece of history that gets lost in an overwhelmingly white event. Until 2000, a black man hadn’t ridden in the race since 1921. This year, not a single jockey is black.

“There weren’t any [Derby] events that attracted the black community,” Dee says as we sit down at a table near the kitchen. “You just had to get in where you fit in. They used to have jazz in the park, and that was something we kind of clung to. So my mom came along, and there’s a lot of apathy here. She just decided that she wanted something for the Derby that the black community could get involved in and black kids could be inspired by. This event is not just something that happens to us, it’s about us.”

Celebrities — the ones whose pictures hang on the wall — used to headline Shirley Mae’s festival. They’d take the stage the family put together in the back alley behind the bar. It sits on South Clay Street in Smoketown, an approximately thirteen-by-fourteen block area of Louisville that’s cordoned off by I-65 on one side and South Fork Beargrass Creek on the other.

“Kids grow up in the projects and wind up with apartments in the projects,” Dee says. “They can’t get out. It wasn’t a jumping off point, it was just a circle.”

Eventually, the city hiked up the tax rate, residents couldn’t keep up with their payments, and authorities seized and razed the old projects that used to surround the restaurant. The city handed them to developers; developers replaced them with condos containing a few rent-controlled units the projects’ old residents could apply to live in. Many of the houses nearby bear foreclosure signs. If you go on Zillow right now, there are at least ten pre-foreclosure auctions. You can buy a three-bedroom house for $23,000. The blurbs describe the area as “up and coming.”

“So the area is gentrifying?” I ask.

Dee looks at me, expressionless.

“I don’t know what that means,” she says.

“It’s like, when, uh, well ... it’s like, when —” I fumble over my words and Dee interrupts me.

“It’s taking you an awfully long time to explain that word,” she says, chuckling. “Do you know what it means?”

I finally come up with an explanation and Dee says yes, that’s what happening.

Shirley Mae comes over and half-tosses a paper plate of food I haven’t ordered onto the table in front of me. It’s loaded up with a pile of ribs, hot-water cornbread, soft green beans topped with chopped tomatoes and onion, and mashed potatoes indented and filled with a pool of yellow, melted butter. I thank Shirley Mae. She just nods, puts a styrofoam cup of gravy down next to the plate, and then walks away.

“She knows the history well, but she’s tired,” Dee says. “We’re open 24 hours starting today, we don’t close ‘til Sunday morning. We have a liquor license and we take advantage of it.”

The liquor license is largely why the family stopped putting on the festival. They couldn’t both work the two bars they own and host the event, so they ended up missing out on the weekend, which is the biggest forty-eight hour bonanza any Louisville bar can ask for each year. The festival also got too unwieldy, and Shirley Mae didn’t want to charge or exclude anyone. Satisfied that the history was now at least out there more than it used to be, the family held the last Salute to Black Jockeys in 1995.

I ask Dee how she feels about the Derby now.

“Well, it’s a rich man’s thing, okay? And all the snobbery that goes with it. The trappings that go with being rich, that’s the Derby. The hats. That’s debutante-ish.”

She gestures to my hat that I’ve tried to hide on the floor under my chair.

“You get here from New York. You buy into the imagery of it. You get the hat. You got the hat before you got on the plane, you know what I’m saying? ‘I gotta get my hat.’”

“It was on your list.”

I go to the backside of Churchill Downs early on the morning of the Derby.

To get in, you need to either own a horse, work with the horses, or have a media pass. It’s calm among the long, low green roofs of the barns. They look like a child took all the Monopoly houses out of the box and arranged them in even rows. The hay smells sweet. A dumpster bin filled with wood chips and manure sends steam up into the cold drizzle.

The horses, physical manifestations of millions and millions dollars, wait in white-washed stalls. I’m standing in front of Patch, a Derby contender and fan favorite. He stretches his regal neck over the ropes across his doorway. Ginny DePasquale, who’s been an assistant to Patch’s trainer Todd Pletcher for about twenty years, reaches out to cup the horse’s nose in her hand. She pulls his face towards hers.

“It’s kind of quiet back here,” she says, turning back to me. “Because you can’t hear the races and you can’t hear the crowds.”

The loudest noise is the chorus of birds chirping the way they do when the weather might clear up. The cords of veins in Patch’s neck look like they’re straining to get out from under his mahogany coat. He moves his beautiful head in a sweeping arc, and as he turns to the side I see the deep socket where one of his eyes should be.

Photo by author

Vets removed it due to an infection last year, and now there’s just a crater of bone. Skin and hair have grown over it, like moss on a stone. Ginny says they haven’t been able to see a difference in him since the operation.

She excuses herself to go check on another horse, and I make my way to the workers’ cantina where they serve tacos, burgers, pancakes, and, on race day, $20 cigars. The room reminds me of an Elks Lodge.

The backside is a village — along with the cantina, there are dormitories for the seasonal workers, 80 percent of whom come from South America (Guatemala mostly) to work in the barns. They wire money back home from the local grocery store. There’s a recreation room back here, too, with pool tables and betting windows where money gets siphoned from workers’ pockets back into the racing machine. The spire of a small chapel breaks the monotony of the rectangular barns, cutting into the sky like a mirror of the spires across the track.

Four separate ATMs line the wall under four TVs in the cantina. The sun comes out and the mood lifts. A mix of English and Spanish floats up to the ceiling. Workers and people who look like they could be owners, but I’m not sure, pour over the same betting books.

The first race of the day is about to start. As the cashier hands me my change, I hear the national anthem pipe in through the television’ speakers. The cantina goes silent. Everyone — citizens and non-citizens — stands up to face the wall of televisions, placing their hands over their hearts.

Photos of the Capitol building in D.C. flash as the anthem plays, alternating with visuals of fireworks bursting over Churchill Downs. Montages of waving American flags crawl across the screen. The room sings in unison. A hispanic worker shifts his weight from foot to foot. A white guy fidgets with the cowboy hat he’s holding to his chest.

When they get to “home of the brave” everyone claps and lets out whoops that bounce off the low ceiling and linoleum floor. The patriotic cheers linger until the chatter of several languages resumes and swallows them up.

I change behind a car in the parking lot of the backside, trading my jeans and thousands of sweatshirts for a cotton sundress and a black, feathered fascinator I bought from a lady selling hats in my hotel. I face the sun. For the first time in three days, I’m finally warm.

A guy driving a golf cart offers me a ride to Gate 10 and I hop on. We tear out of the backside, joining the lines of people in pastel who are streaming towards the spires. A group of old men sit in lawn chairs and hold up numbers from one to 10 as women go by.

In his essay about the Derby that I reread on the plane, Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious.”

I see plenty of dingbats in the concourse: three separate guys dressed as Colonel Sanders, at least ten different men in seersucker suits with pink Vineyard Vines foam whales on their heads (most of them overweight, in a fratty, beer-y kind of way), a woman whose pink shoes perfectly match her date’s pink suspenders, 30,000 swooping haircuts on 30,000 different white men, and a woman brandishing a cigarette holder like she’s Cruella de Ville.

Photo by author

I also see Jax, one of the cast members from Vanderpump Rules, buying a drink. I take a selfie with him because my friends are obsessed with the show (ironically, I think, but I could be wrong), and when I turn around, I bump into a guy wearing a suit with the Packers logo plastered all over it. His girlfriend’s yellow and green hat and skirt matches. Aaron Rodgers is somewhere upstairs on millionaires row. The fan and the idol are separated by only four floors but millions of dollars. They won’t see each other today.

I’ve gotten completely lost while I people-watch, and realize I’m wandering in circles through the maze of tunnels as I look for Section 125. I attempt to get up to Millionaire’s Row just for the hell of it, but the guards aren’t interested in being sweet-talked. One of them looks at my ticket and tells me I need to go back out to Gate 1 in order to find my seat.

Gates. There are so many gates. This place exists in gates. In barriers. In lines. Some are literal, like the lines of people waiting to buy drinks or make bets. Or the line the horses cross to determine how much you’ve won or lost. Or the wrought iron gate that guards the driveway of the Barnstable Brown house on Spring Drive. Or the barricade of folding chairs protecting Tom Brady from fans. Or the white columns that pen reporters in behind the red carpets all weekend. Or the gate the horses strain against before the start of a race. Or the railing that keeps fans back from the track. Or the mechanical arm at the entrance to the parking lot of the backside. Or the ex-NFL player who decides to shield Aaron Rodgers from people at parties — except for 10s, and real life heroes who’ve been to war.

Other barriers and lines are legal, like the one the city tried to draw around Shirley Mae’s restaurant so they could demolish it for 20 extra parking spots. Some gates are metaphorical, like the one that keeps people in Smoketown from getting off the wheel of poverty.

But the most indelible lines here are the ones you can’t see. They’re made of blood, and they determine how thoroughly a beast has been bred, how deeply a family is rooted. No amount of money can redraw lineage, but wealth is a master key. With enough money, there are very few gates you can’t open.

I look around at the drunk people. Do they know we’re all being corralled? Not just here, but everywhere? Organized according to our ability to access the real American dream, in which the only path to wealth is to have money to begin with? If they know that being here at all means you’ve accessed something?

I finally find Section 125. At the entrance, a drunk guy is slumped on the ground with his back against the concourse wall. He looks up at the usher, who’s telling him he doesn’t have the correct wristband to get in.

"Trust me, I have the right one,” he slurs, showing her his wrist.

"No, you don't, sir,” she says.

"I have the right wristband,” he insists.

"No, sir. You don't,” she says again.

I show her my wrist and she nods. I walk to my seat.

On Friday at the Oaks, I thought this weekend was about nostalgia. I thought it was a pageant, a relic of an America that doesn’t exist anymore, when celebrity belonged to people in bloodlines named Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, rather than to servers from L.A. restaurants famous for punching each other in the face and sleeping with each other on a reality show.

But Donald Trump, a tacky reality star himself, is our president and the pictures coming out of the White House only feature white men. This isn’t a nostalgic America. This is our unscripted reality. How we divide ourselves is a much deeper part of our nation’s soul than how we come together. Yes, we’re all watching the same thing today, but we’re seeing it from vastly different vantage points, each determined by what we can afford and which gates our names open. By unalterable bloodlines.

Photo by author

I make my way down to the rail. I’m buzzed on bourbon and I’ve lost 26 dollars betting on horses. My throat is sore from the secondhand cigar smoke. I’m blessedly warmed (and burnt) by the sun, which has dipped below the spires and thrown our section into shadow.

The crowd — mostly made up of people who aren’t from Kentucky, but, like me, have parachuted in for the experience — starts to sing “My Kentucky Home,” a song written in 1852 by Steven Foster, a man who also wasn’t from Kentucky. The song used to contain the word “darkies.” That’s been changed to “people” now.

Between breaks in the song I hear a woman a few feet away from me yell at another woman who’s trying to squeeze onto the rail.

“Where is your seat?” she demands. “You aren't legally supposed to be here!”

“The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ‘tis summer, the people are gay,” sing the stands.

"Your ticket isn't for here,” the woman continues, getting shriller. “You can't be here!”

“Weep no more, my lady, oh, weep no more today,” the crowd sings.

“Sure, it's the right section, but it's not your seat!” screams the angry one. The other woman shrugs and doesn’t move. The angry one gives up, fuming, her elbow akimbo so that it digs into her pesky neighbor’s side.

The song ends and the crowd erupts again. Across the track, people claw at the fence of the infield. They’re stacked on top of each other. I’m pushed up against the rail by the crush of other bodies, too. Everyone around me strains to catch a glimpse of the gates where the horses are lining up.

The gun goes off.

The gates open, and the crowd roars as Classic Empire, Patch, Always Dreaming, Irish War Cry, and 16 other purebreds race by. I once again feel the thunder of the hooves in my chest, and the cold metal of the rail in my ribs. The stands seem to cheer, seem to breathe, seem to vibrate as though they were one giant body. For two minutes everyone here, from the owners on Millionaire’s Row to the drunk college kids in the infield to the workers watching from the windows of the cantina, is united by the primal experience of watching these animals run. The frenetic energy is bigger than any of us. It transcends the barriers, leaps over the gates, erases all lines. It's so loud that it becomes its own deafening silence.

And then the last horse finishes and the race is over. Always Dreaming wins. Vinny Viola — a friend Trump tapped for Army Secretary, who withdrew due to compromising business ties — owns the horse. The mud’s stopped flying, heart rates have slowed, the money’s been counted. We’re all just winners and losers again, sectioned off according to where we’re supposed to be. A man in a green suit behind me jumps up and down and screams. He had $700 on Always Dreaming.

[ttdtofi]

The Hotel Normandie Pool

I

Around the cold pool in the metal light of New Year's morning, I choose one of nine cast-iron umbrellas set in iron tables for work and coffee. The first cigarette triggers the usual fusillade of coughs. After a breeze the pool settles the weight of its reflections on one line. Sunshine lattices a blank wall with the shade of gables, stirs the splayed shadows of the hills like moths.

Last night, framed in the binding of that window, like the great chapter in some Russian novel in which, during the war, the prince comes home to watch the soundless waltzers dart and swivel, like fishes in their lamplit aquarium, I stood in my own gauze of swirling snow and, through the parted hair of ribboned drapes, felt, between gusts of music, the pool widen between myself and those light-scissored shapes.

The dancers stiffened and, like fish, were frozen in panes of ice blocked by the window frames; one woman fanned, still fluttering on a pin, as a dark fusillade of kettledrums

and a piercing cornet played "Auld Lang Syne"

while a battalion of drunk married men

reswore their vows. For this my fiftieth year,

I muttered to the ribbon-medalled water,

"Change me, my sign, to someone I can bear."

Now my pen's shadow, angled at the wrist with the chrome stanchions at the pool's edge, dims on its lines like birches in a mist as a cloud fills my hand. A drop punctuates the startled paper. The pool's iron umbrellas ring with the drizzle. Sun hits the water. The pool is blinding zinc. I shut my eyes, and as I raise their lids I see each daughter ride on the rayed shells of both irises.

The prayer is brief: That the transparent wrist would not cloud surfaces with my own shadow, and that this page's surface would unmist after my breath as pools and mirrors do. But all reflection gets no easier, although the brown, dry needles of that palm quiver to stasis and things resume their rhyme in water, like the rubber ring that is a red rubber ring inverted at the line's center.

Into that ring my younger daughter dived yesterday, slithering like a young dolphin, her rippling shadow hungering under her, with nothing there to show how well she moved but in my mind the veer of limb and fin. Transparent absences! Love makes me look

through a clear ceiling into rooms of sand;

I ask the element that is my sign,

"Oh, let her lithe head through that surface break!"

Aquarian, I was married to water; under that certain roof, I would lie still next to my sister spirit, horizontal below what stars derailed our parallel from our far vow's undeviating course; the next line rises as they enter it, Peter, Anna, Elizabeth—Margaret still sleeping with one arm around each daughter, in the true shape of love, beyond divorce.

Time cuts down on the length man can endure his own reflection. Entering a glass I surface quickly now, prefer to breathe the fetid and familiar atmosphere of work and cigarettes. Only tyrants believe their mirrors, or Narcissi, brooding on boards, before they plunge into their images; at fifty I have learnt that beyond words is the disfiguring exile of divorce.

II

Across blue seamless silk, iron umbrellas and a brown palm burn. A sandalled man comes out and, in a robe of foam-frayed terry cloth, with Roman graveness buries his room key, then, mummy-oiling both forearms and face with sunglasses still on, stands, fixing me,

and nods. Some petty businessman who tans

his pallor a negotiable bronze,

and the bright nod would have been commonplace

as he uncurled his shades above the pool's reflecting rim—white towel, toga-slung, foam hair repeated by the robe's frayed hem— but, in the lines of his sun-dazzled squint, a phrase was forming in that distant tongue of which the mind keeps just a mineral glint, the lovely Latin lost to all our schools: "Quis te misit, Magister?" And its whisper went through my cold body, veining it in stone.

On marble, concrete, or obsidian, your visit, Master, magnifies the lines of our small pool to that Ovidian thunder of surf between the Baltic pines. The light that swept Rome's squares and palaces, washing her tangled fountains of green bronze when you were one drop in a surf of faces— a fleck of spittle from the she-wolf's tooth— now splashes a palm's shadow at your foot.

Turn to us, Ovid. Our emerald sands are stained with sewage from each tin-shacked Rome; corruption, censorship, and arrogance make exile seem a happier thought than home. "Ah, for the calm proconsul with a voice as just and level as this Roman pool," our house slaves sigh; the field slaves scream revenge;

one moves between the flatterer and the fool

yearning for the old bondage from both ends.

And I, whose ancestors were slave and Roman, have seen both sides of the imperial foam, heard palm and pine tree alternate applause as the white breakers rose in galleries to settle, whispering at the tilted palm of the boy-god Augustus. My own face held negro Neros, chalk Caligulas; my own reflection slid along the glass of faces foaming past triumphal cars.

Master, each idea has become suspicious of its shadow. A lifelong friend whispers in his own house as if it might arrest him; markets no more applaud, as was their custom, our camouflaged, booted militias roaring past on camions, the sugar-apples of grenades growing on their belts; ideas with guns divide the islands; in dark squares the poems gather like conspirators.

Then Ovid said, "When I was first exiled, I missed my language as your tongue needs salt, in every watery shape I saw my child, no bench would tell my shadow ‘Here's your place’; bridges, canals, willow-fanned waterways turned from my parting gaze like an insult, till, on a tablet smooth as the pool's skin, I made reflections that, in many ways, were even stronger than their origin.

"Tiled villas anchored in their foaming orchards, parched terraces in a dust cloud of words, among clod-fires, wolfskins, starving herds, Tibullus' flute faded, sweetest of shepherds. Through shaggy pines the beaks of needling birds pricked me at Tomis to learn their tribal tongue, so, since desire is stronger than its disease, my pen's beak parted till we chirped one song in the unequal shade of equal trees.

"Campaigns enlarged our frontiers like clouds, but my own government was the bare boards of a plank table swept by resinous pines whose boughs kept skittering from Caesar's eye with every yaw. There, hammering out lines in that green forge to fit me for the horse, I bent on a solitude so tyrannous against the once seductive surf of crowds that no wife softens it, or Caesar's envy.

"And where are those detractors now who said that in and out of the imperial shade I scuttled, showing to a frowning sun the fickle dyes of the chameleon? Romans"—he smiled—"will mock your slavish rhyme, the slaves your love of Roman structures, when, from Metamorphoses to Tristia, art obeys its own order. Now it's time." Tying his toga gently, he went in.

There, at the year's horizon, he had stood, as if the pool's meridian were the line

that doubled the burden of his solitude

in either world; and, as one leaf fell,

his echo rippled: "Why here, of all places,

a small, suburban tropical hotel,

its pool pitched to a Mediterranean blue,

its palms rusting in their concrete oasis?

Because to make my image flatters you."

III

At dusk, the sky is loaded like watercolour paper with an orange wash in which every edge frays— a painting with no memory of the painter— and what this pool recites is not a phrase from an invisible, exiled laureate, where there's no laurel, but the scant applause of one dry, scraping palm tree as blue evening ignites its blossoms from one mango flower, and something, not a leaf, falls like a leaf,

as swifts with needle-beaks dart, panicking over the pool's cloud-closing light. For an envoi, write what the wrinkled god repeats to the boy-god: "May the last light of heaven pity us for the hardening lie in the face that we did not tell." Dusk. The trees blacken like the pool's umbrellas. Dusk. Suspension of every image and its voice. The mangoes pitch from their green dark like meteors. The fruit bat swings on its branch, a tongueless bell.

[junker-town]

The Georgia Dome got the farewell it deserved

Monster Jam was the last memorable event in a stadium that begged to be forgotten.

Monster Jam fills up enough of the Georgia Dome — most of the bottom bowl, and a good chunk of the mezzanines and upper deck. There is competition in town — but there also probably isn’t a lot of Sunday night overlap between the monster truck crowd and the people across town at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium watching Atlanta United lose its first game ever to New York Red Bulls.

There are mostly dads, myself included, towing kids there with the promise of monster trucks and multiple concession stand runs.

One of these runs: for a $20 Monster Jam official Grave Digger sno-cone with commemorative Grave Digger cup with molded grinning skeleton face and flashing lights triggered via a button in its plastic forehead. I bought it; one $15 commemorative non-truck-specific Monster Jam sno-cone; a $15 pair of headphones/ear protectors, with rubber tires mounted around the ear cups for one child; a $20 pair of less-elaborate ear protection for the other kid, who could not be persuaded to get the cheaper ones because, “I need different daddy”; at least $30 worth of bribes in the form of food and drink to keep them in the stands for half the show; $0 in alcohol, somehow, because two children at a monster truck show keep you so busy and running that you cannot find the time to get drunk enough to deal with the children.

While waiting, a towheaded 3-year-old behind us pointed to the beer man selling $12 oil cans of Busch Light.

“Daddy, you could get a beer.”

“You know Daddy only drinks crown.”

The Omni

The first thing I can remember about going to a live sports event involves DeBarge, and the memory is wrong. Wrong may not be the right word, actually. Better put, I misremembered because I was probably 6 years old, and 6-year-olds can’t be counted on to provide accurate testimony in a court of law or in a recollection involving the Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers.

My dad took me to a Hawks game at the Omni. The Omni was the least-lovable building ever constructed, a black cube with tented pyramids of black sheet metal jutting from the roof, weird angular corner windows, and the street presence of a giant, menacing blast furnace. I thought it looked cool because it reminded me of the doomed spaceship in Disney’s The Black Hole. Kids have bad memories and deplorable taste in architecture.

The Omni was built to rust, to be an uncherished memory before it ever happened.

The first claim there is literal. By rusting, the steel elements of the building would become even more fused to each other. In its later years, it started to look like an overturned running shoe or waffle iron left outside to the elements. The designers reportedly did not factor in Atlanta’s subtropical climate, and the Omni kept rusting and rusting until the entire building had an incurable form of architectural arthritis. Holes appeared in the building’s frame, holes big enough for people to pass through without tickets or permission. Rather than fix the gaping holes in the building designed to rust in one of the United States’ most humid places, management instead put up chain-link fences along them.

The second claim, that the Omni was designed to be an uncherished memory, is a guess. The Hawks played there either way. My dad drove me down into the city with the radio on — never the rock station, but always the R&B station with Switch, Brick, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Gap Band, Roger and Zapp, or Kool and the Gang on. I knew the Hawks had a player named “Tree Rollins.” This was enough all by itself, but I would also get to go to Burger King for a kids meal, which, for a kid who was avowedly not into sports, was a low, low bribe bar to clear.

Tree Rollins totally looked like someone named Tree. I remember the Omni very much looking like the inside of a doomed spaceship, and that everyone was very excited that someone called Dr. J was there, even though he was evidently some off-brand version of Dr. J not equal to a previous version. There were men there with giant Jheri curls and Magnum, P.I. sunglasses and mustaches indicating that they were serious, wealthy, and just dangerous enough to wear a mustache. I remember the hair across all races and genders being massive and more carefully constructed than the arena they were standing in; I remember being one of the few kids in the building, and thinking that maybe, sometimes, my dad might just be taking me to stuff he liked in order to get out of the house and have a few too many beers by himself.

Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

On the way home, I remember passing the few super-distinct pieces of the Atlanta skyline: the Peachtree Westin that Dar Robinson jumped out of for a Burt Reynolds stunt, the UFO-shaped alien cake of Fulton County Stadium where the Braves played and where my dad would later take us to sit in empty seats and pick up fiendish sunburns, the Georgia Capital that always seemed completely out of place in all that retro-futurism and brutalist forestry around it. That’s the kind of place Atlanta was and still is — a place where the past is what seems unnecessary, not the future.

The music had changed. My dad drove in silence and smoked Vantage cigarettes with the window cracked even though it was winter, I think, and cold enough to have the heat cranking. It was Quiet Storm time on the radio, and that meant Jeffrey Osborne, Marvin Gaye, Rita Coolidge, and Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Teddy Pendergrass. DeBarge’s “All This Love” came on and the nylon string guitar solo played and I looked up and thought how the streetlights were on but still looked so dark against the streets and the houses of what I now know was a decimated Techwood.

I’m pretty sure since that song came out in 1982 that we’d already moved to Tennessee by then, but at a certain point emotional memories are immune to fact-checking. The fadeout and ride in the song is endless over the background singers going say you really love me baby/ say you really love me darling/for I really love you baby/sure enough love you darlin’

At the Georgia Dome, there is some of exactly what you think should be at a Monster Jam show in the South.

There was, for example, a terrifying man in the sleeveless Confederate flag shirt eight rows below our seats. I asked him if he knew where I could get ear protection before the race. He looked at me for about five seconds before responding because he:

comes from someplace where there is a daily quota on words for interpersonal communication

thought I was a godless bearded urbanite hitting on him

or was very drunk and hearing me talking on a built-in beer-induced tape delay.

I hope he was drunk, and also that he thought I was hitting on him.

The trucks have names ranging from the super-uninspiring and corporate — the FS1 Cleatus Truck! the Team Hot Wheels Firestorm! — to the classic and menacing (Bounty Hunter and El Toro Loco). There is a truck called Obsession and its unimaginatively named partner, Obsessed. One is called Ice Cream Man, easily the least-intimidating monster truck of all time because it comes out to tinkly ice cream van chimes, or the most unsettling because it plays a song synonymous with the sketchiest non-related regular cast member of most people’s childhoods — the neighborhood ice cream man who might have lived in the van he worked in.

There is a Monster Energy truck with green neon lights built into the undercarriage. I am here to report against my will that it looks absolutely and positively sick. It is called “the Monster Energy Truck” because there are two good monster truck names in the universe, and both are taken. (Grave Digger and Bigfoot, to be specific.)

The anthem is sung while a bald eagle flaps in slow motion on the end-zone video boards.

The Georgia Dome was built in 1992, and it will be imploded in the summer of 2017. It will never see its 30th birthday, and it will not be missed because it, too, was built to be forgotten. The last event in the dome will be Monster Jam. If you are from outside of the state, you will think it is appropriate because LOL REDNECKS; if you are from here, you will probably also think it is appropriate because LOL REDNECKS, but will get mad when anyone else says it.

For the record, the Dome didn’t even try to be interesting on the level of the Omni or Fulton County Stadium. It was fine but unmemorable as something you drove past, sat in, or saw in shots of the city skyline. Take a hotel bathtub, preferably one of the cheap ones, too shallow to do anything in but sit unhappily for five minutes before giving up and draining the water. Cover it with a large golf umbrella blown inside out by the wind. Solder the two together. Paint it first teal and maroon, because someone in 1991 thought putting the bedroom color scheme from a Florida vacation rental on the outside of a stadium in Atlanta was a good idea.

When you remember the Atlanta Falcons play football there, paint it in a new scheme with red and black in it to remind everyone of their existence. Don’t do this until 16 years after you open the stadium, and only nine years before its eventual demolition.

Photo by Doug Benc/Getty Images

Monster Jam is the last event here. Other things happened before that. The Atlanta Falcons played mostly forgettable football here, unless you take out the Vick years, which you might want to given how they ended. If there were some way to keep the part where all the mostly African-American fans in the upper deck went bonkers the minute they started playing “Bring ’Em Out” for those teams, you should do that. That may be the most excited single concentration of minutes you could salvage from the team’s history at the Georgia Dome: Before the team played, but after they remembered they were going to watch the fastest player in the NFL touch the ball on every play. This is a happy memory. There aren’t a lot of those there.

It hosted a lot of college football, including the annual SEC Championship game. Tim Tebow cried on the sideline there after Alabama clipped Florida’s undefeated streak short in 2009; Les Miles in 2007 used his backup quarterback to win an SEC title there, and then a national title LSU somehow got with two losses later in New Orleans. Before that game he hustled every reporter in reach to a press conference where he denied Kirk Herbstreit’s report that he was going to take the Michigan job, and then with his chest at full inflation demanded that the room “have a great day.” I was there for that and, yes, it was just as confusing in person as it was on television.

Photo by A. Messerschmidt/Getty Images

LSU coach Les Miles after defeating the University of Miami, 40-3, in the 2005 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.

There was Wrestlemania in 2011, when the Rock returned and I nearly flipped my laptop off a table when the glass broke and Stone Cold Steve Austin ripped down the entry ramp on an ATV like the Pope of All Shitkicking Rednecks. In 1994, Deion Sanders and Andre Rison punched each other while wearing helmets in fight during a football game, an event that easily clears the hurdle to being one of the top 25 most memorable moments in Atlanta history, and was also incredibly dumb. Those two circles overlap a lot here.

There were two Super Bowls in the Dome. The first was a forgettable one in 1994 where the Cowboys beat the Bills. This beating was different from the seven other Bills/Cowboys Super Bowls in the 1990s because the pregame show featured Kriss Kross, Charlie Daniels, the Georgia Satellites, and the Morehouse Marching Band doing a tribute to “Georgia Music Makers.” Charlie Daniels is from North Carolina but did a song about an unenforceable contract between the Devil and a mentally ill violin player, so by any standard he counted.

The second is best remembered for an unseasonably brutal ice storm and Ray Lewis picking up two murder charges from the Fulton County District Attorney after a very bad night out on the town with his friends. The Tennessee Titans came up a yard short in Atlanta, but most Nashville things measured in Atlanta terms fail by much, much more than that. Feel better thinking about it in those terms, Nashville.

There was also the time the tornado struck the Georgia Dome while I was inside it during the 2008 SEC basketball tournament, rippling the ceiling like water and throwing the scoreboard around like a weight on a fishing lure. That happened, too.

Other than all that, there’s not much else. Monster Jam will close out the building’s life, if you like to anthropomorphize a stadium no one ever thought to give a personality or memory. The seats will be auctioned off or sold to high schools for repurposing. The innards will be sold in stages, right down to a yard sale of whatever’s left in the building getting gutted and gaveled out right on the sidewalk outside the Dome on Northside Drive.

Sometime during the summer it will be imploded and become a parking lot for the new stadium. It’s a corporate-sponsored metallic oculus someone will probably remember as looking like a very old future. The Falcons and Atlanta United will call it home, and the Georgia Dome will be gone and not mourned. That’s fine, and I don’t want you to think for a second it isn’t. Some things are built to be forgotten, and the Georgia Dome is one of them.

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

The trucks spend the first half of the show racing by pairs in heats. They can sort of drift a corner — sort of, as much as a 10,000-pound truck can slide on dirt. The drivers don’t hammer the gas so much as they get up to speed, and then feather the throttle to keep the trucks moving with careful blasts of the engine. It’s like watching extremely short rallycross races run by farting whales in track shoes.

Finishing fast is interesting. Finishing sideways doing something reckless and badass is better, but finishing first and flying sideways across the finish line is best. This is particularly true if you can roll the truck over, hit the throttle, catch one enormous tire in the dirt on the end of the roll, and flip the entire vehicle back onto all four tires for a save, a round of WOOOOS and applause, and a pass to the next round of racing.

This happens twice in the racing segment of the show, which is two more times than anyone should be able to pull that off in the aforementioned 10,000-pound trucks. Grave Digger sacrificed itself for the crowd’s pleasure early — it hit a massive jump while trying to speed across the finish line, bouncing sideways, blowing out one enormous tire and a mess of important-looking metal stuff in the chassis on impact, and then rolling to stop on its ceiling while soaking up the applause. Grave Digger left the arena with three good wheels, one completely destroyed tire, and the limp of a champion who’d given their all. If I had been drinking, I might have teared up a little.

The second half is the freestyle, the more entertaining part where Monster Jam ditches the entire concept of racing, and just lets drivers try to tear apart their cars for the crowd. The drivers have two minutes to run through their routine. The most popular runs don’t even make it that long, though. They end abruptly and satisfactorily when the driver rolls their truck onto its roof off an ill-advised but spectacular jump, breaks an axle or blows out a tire, or cripples the thing trying to land a backflip.

The Monster Energy truck — the one with the absolutely sick neon — whipped itself around during the freestyle event with such force that its flimsy body panels sheared off in every direction. One truck just did donuts for the last 20 seconds of their routine. If a monster truck rips donuts on dirt, there is an involuntary response from the body. “WOOOOOOOO” leaps from the diaphragm. You can’t fight it, and wouldn’t want to if you could.

The MCs yell out this or something like it repeatedly.

“DOIN’ IT ONE LAST TIME FOR THE GEORGIA DOME.”

It doesn’t have much effect, not even when a local DJ yells it out during a bike race between three audience members racing on children’s bikes. But then, the Georgia Dome is used to quiet echoing off its cavernous walls, or having fan noise piped in to ricochet between its empty seats. There is nothing more to give from this afternoon’s audience, for one: Being at Monster Jam is getting blasted in the face for three hours with engine noise, and then coated with a gentle drizzle of dirt floating down between runs. Maximum audience participation is clapping and yelling just loudly enough to be heard over engines that burn a gallon of fuel a minute. There is no 11, or giving it up any harder than one is already giving it up.

Very few people seemed to realize this was the end, or at least attached any significance to it, or cared whether anyone would begin gutting the building the instant the last earth-mover carried out the dirt.

We had to leave three trucks into the freestyle when both of their attention spans wore out, and were unrecoverable. We left before the Georgia Dome paid one last tribute to itself: A grease fire broke out in a concession stand, which was quickly put out only after filling a concourse with smoke and scaring the hell out of a few patrons. Remember that on the way out: that the building tried to save everyone the trouble of demolition by burning itself down.

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

A tear in the ceiling of the Georgia Dome is visible after severe weather passed over the building during the SEC Men's Basketball Tournament on March 14, 2008.

Walking out with my kids, they were about the same age I was when I left the Omni with my dad at the Omni in 1982, or 1983, or whenever it was in fuzzy kid-time. They saw the new stadium next door and thought it looked pretty much like a spaceship, or like someplace where Skylanders would live.

That is exactly what the Omni and Fulton County Stadium looked like to me as a kid —so much so that later, when my dad and another dad would awkwardly hang out for the benefit of their sons’ juvenile need to socialize with other dudes, my friend Jim and I would sit in the backseat as they drove and point out the buildings we would own in the future. He’d take the Westin, and keep all his Legos there. I’d take Fulton County Stadium, and reserve it exclusively for my collection of helicopters. A city was a place to be had, a thing to be purchased for your convenience.

Kids, weirdly enough, understand that a city is just something to be bought and sold.

Later, weirder, less-tenable ideas creep into your head: That it could be home, that the buildings you can name mean something beyond the names, that there might be some kind of resonant harmony between you and this random system of properties and spaces. Sometime someone might superimpose a sports team into that imaginary relationship, making this city not just a place, but a place for you, and people like you, and that all of you can thrive here. It is special. You are special, and the team, its players, and all the spaces they pass through and live in are special and remarkable and unlike anything else in the world.

There is a magic you can believe about a place as an adult that children do not even begin to believe or accept. A 7-year-old would laugh you out of the room, probably while telling you that the new place was much better, both because it looked like a place where Skylanders would live, and also because it was new. New things are better, and you should always take the new thing.

Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

That shouldn’t be hard to accept. Take the new thing, even if the nagging, haunting feeling of living somewhere boils down to a problem with you, with that thing where you’re looking for something in tangible space to consider a landmark, a guidepost. To consider something significant, if only so that you, in relation to it, can have a bit of that significance. The city I live in makes that hard to do, though there’s an honesty in that constant self-digestion and auto-demolition. Do not get attached. It, and everything in it, will eventually move, just like the teams and the people who call it home.

That’s the rational, reasonable thing to think, yet even with an intentionally blank, mostly unmemorable empty space like the Georgia Dome I want something to be there, to definitively have happened there. There should be a definite something there, thinks some deeply schizophrenic part of my brain that doesn’t want so much as a garden shed to collapse around me without some memory attached to it. Otherwise it’s just a thing — and by extension, so is the city, and the very personally important me I’ve attached to it.

I have a definite thing to attach myself to here. After all, I thought for a few seconds on March 14, 2008 that I was going to die on the floor of the Georgia Dome on press row at the SEC men’s basketball tournament.

I thought Kentucky fans were stomping their feet in unison on the bleachers at first, but the noise swelled, and swelled more, and grew so loud and limitless all at once. It felt limitless in the sense of being infinitely powerful with no range or end to the noise, so loud and yet so obviously just getting started on the way to a theoretical full volume. What do you think a tornado at pace is? It’s actually just clearing its throat and warming up, volume-wise. It’s whispering, holding back. You just hear it as a roar.

There wasn’t even a shudder from impact. There was just the sensation that the entire building was next to an immense floor buffer, spinning and vibrating at thousands of RPM. When that vibration turned into waves the roof flapped like a subwoofer, the air vents started spitting out pieces of insulating foam, and for one second I weighed the options of dying standing up and being crushed by the falling roof and lighting, or taking my chances ducking under a table, only to be crushed by all that plus one flimsy plywood table. The lights swayed 10 to 15 feet in either direction. The waves got stronger, and the entire overturned bathtub of the stadium was now being thumped by a very pissed off janitor pushing that giant floor buffer into the side of the Georgia Dome.

I was sitting next to Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery. That would have been memorable for me, at least, getting crushed next to a legendary announcer, in the few seconds I had to have a last memory. If I’d heard Verne say “oh my” as it collapsed, it would have been my last tweet, and the RTs and favs would be infinite.

Instead of bearing down at full speed and colliding with the Dome, though, the tornado drunkenly staggered into the Georgia Congress Center next door, then down Marietta Street and into Cabbagetown before dissipating into the night. Not knowing what else to do, I walked out and took pictures of holes in the walls of the Congress Center, and thought about how great I felt about not dying in the Georgia Dome that night.

Leaving the last event at a building that was designed to be forgotten, I didn’t even really think about the one thing I should remember and attach to the spot.

Instead I thought about the only song I think about when I think about the irrational need for a place to give me something only a human can — especially this place, the first place I did so many things, like leaning my head against the window listening to DeBarge after a Hawks game. That need will never make sense, no matter how many games you watch there, or how many moments you spend there. It won’t make sense, not even after years of silently asking a place to just talk back to you once after you spend years monologuing to it. To look at a place that eats its own every day, and buries its stadiums and buildings and places under like daisies beneath a plow, and ask it, as if you were some exception to the rule, to sing the outro to you:

say you really love me baby

say you really love me darling

for I really love you baby

sure enough love you darlin’