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joezworld · 18 days ago

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Hey everyone seems real sad for some reason. Could not imagine why.

Anyways if you squint real hard you may notice a similarity to Thomas and the Jet Engine. That is intentional.

You can also squint and notice some similarity to several Traintober prompts. That is intentional.

Also, if you notice any similarity to any of SiF's character names... that's right! That is intentional. I did that and it's on purpose and I'm making fun of them. If you're from SiF either recognize that it was a dumb name or die mad about it.

Pip and Emma at The Top

2021 - The Summer

It was the longest summer since the last one. There weren’t any tourists - obviously - but even the inter-island traffic had died down considerably. The government on the mainland was skittishly enacting and then subsequently revoking plans to allow gatherings again, and the people of Sodor were prudently trying to keep the Island’s activities out of London’s sphere of notice.

As events were curtailed and people limited their own travel, the railway cut back on services, as they’d done several times before. Pip and Emma were the first to be relegated to the yards; while they could run a much shorter train - and often did - a shortage-related spike in the price of diesel fuel meant that it was more economical for James or Henry to take the two diesels' trains instead.

Henry had tried to make sense of how the economics on that worked out, but numbers were not his strong suit, and so he instead passed along his sympathies every time he passed the twins in the yard.

James (and no-one else) thought that he was being rather magnanimous by not endlessly laughing about how he was cheaper to run than a diesel. Several cutting responses had been prepared if he ever got too full of himself, but shockingly he’d kept the snickering to a bare minimum.

As the days stretched on into a week, and then two, a bigger problem soon began to present itself:

“I’m bored, Pip!”

“Me too!”

Pip and Emma were getting restless.

“WILL YOU TWO KEEP IT DOWN?! IT IS THREE IN THE MORNING!”

And they were more than willing to make that everyone else’s problem.

A few days later, and the diesels were overjoyed when an inspector came to them with instructions to report to the works.

Equally overjoyed were the engines in the big shed.

Pip and Emma arrived at the works in a right state, having been held up by trackwork along the main line.

“Two hours! Can you believe it Emma?”

“I don’t like running light engine, they can push us around too much.”

“Right? We’re express engines, not a train of old rubbish!” “I think they prioritized the rubbish train over us, if that smell at Kellsthorpe Road was anything to go by.”

“Ugh!”

Mr. Tedfield, the Works Manager, eventually arrived, bringing an end to their complaining. “Right you two. Seems like we’ve got some work for you.”

“Here?” They chorused.

“No,” he said quickly. “But the work is going to be a lot different from your usual job, and we’re gonna have to do some modifications.”

“Oh no,” Pip cried. “It’s going to be buffers, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” The man was baffled.

“It’s the only thing it could be, sir.” Emma explained. “That’s what they said on the Eastern Region, back in the 1980’s. ‘Just some little modifications!’ and they came back from Derby with the ugliest buffers ever!”

“It was a hatchet job!” Pip agreed. “All their lower valances, gone!”

“Easy, easy!” Mr. Tedfield yelped, not expecting that sort of response. “I’m sure that we can do a better job than that!”

“Promise?” they said in worried unison.

“Promise.”

A few days later, and the twins were relieved to discover that the works were as good as their word. Unlike the Eastern Region “hatchet jobs,” they still sported all their bodywork. Holes had been drilled through the lower valances, and buffers, couplings, and air hoses now poked through. The fibreglass was a little rough around the edges, but everyone agreed that it could also look a great deal worse. (Apparently, custom fibreglass was one of the only things the works staff couldn’t do in-house, and there was a concerning amount of murmuring from the staff about how they’d change that.)

Rolling out into the sun for the first time since they were “slightly modified,” they blinked the light from their eyes to find Mr. Tedfield, the Fat Controller, and another man who they didn’t know waiting for them.

“Well,” Started Mr. Tedfield. “I’m glad to see that our concerns were unfounded.”

The twins knew he was being diplomatic in front of the Fat Controller. He’d already said “I told you so!” several times earlier in the day.

He continued. “So now we should probably tell you what we would like you to do!”

“Because somebody forgot to mention it earlier…” The other man muttered under his breath.

The Fat Controller looked from one man to the other, and shook his head slightly. “Pip, Emma, as I’m sure you’re already aware, we are not going to be running the Express to London anytime soon. So, with that in mind, you two are going to be assigned to mixed traffic work until passenger numbers allow us to put you back into normal service.”

“Mixed traffic work?” They said as one.

“Oh yes!” The Fat Controller looked quite pleased with himself. “We have quite a lot of cargo traffic coming in through the ports right now, and you two will help take the strain off everyone else.”

The man they didn’t know coughed slightly.

“Of course, how foolish of me,” The Fat Controller rolled his eyes. “I also recognize that you two have some… special abilities that the other engines lack, namely your high-speed capabilities. With that in mind, Mr. Hargrave, from the coach and wagon department here at the works, has had an idea.”

“Yes, right.” Mr. Hargrave said with pride. “So, back when we first started coming back to work after the lockdowns, the government gave us a whole pile of Levelling-Up money, to “get us back on our feet.”” He paused, bouncing on his heels. “Thing is, we’d already fixed up everything beforehand, because we didn’t want anyone locked away in the works during the end of days with their bits in pieces, so we didn’t have anything to spend it on, but we had to spend it, otherwise they’d take it back!”

“Government logic at its finest…” Mr. Tedfield said under his breath.

“Ain’t that the truth.” Mr. Hargrave agreed. “So anyways, we decided to just make everything as perfect as we could make it.”

He stopped for a moment, long enough for the Fat Controller to look at him. “Such as…?”

“Hm? Oh! Yes, the container wagons!” He said all at once. “We took all the container wagons that were sitting around idle - and some other stuff besides - and we took them and fitted high speed bogies and bearings to them.”

Pip blinked slowly. “High speed bogies?”

“That’s right! They ride like coaches now.” He said with childlike joy. “And they won’t weigh much more than them either, so it shouldn’t be much trouble for you two. High speed containers, all the way to the mainland!”

Pip looked at him, then at the Fat Controller. “Sir, why are we doing this?”

The Fat Controller looked much more reasoned. “Quite a few companies are willing to pay a premium for their shipments to arrive as quickly as possible. There’s a lot of congestion at the bigger ports in the south, and Liverpool is operating almost at capacity, so we have an opportunity to get some very lucrative traffic.” He smiled knowingly. “And if we play our cards right, some of the companies, like Amazon, might build a few warehouses just across the channel on the mainland, and then we can serve those in perpetuity.”

The twins slowly digested this. “But sir, will it matter if we can go that fast?” Pip asked. “Once we cross the bridge, we’ve got to deal with Network Rail, and they don’t know anything.”

The Fat Controller looked as pleased as punch. “But you’re not dealing with Network rail.” He said with a satisfied smile. “Our contract for this ‘express freight’ is to get it as far as Barrow-in-Furness. If Freightliner or Colas Rail happen to be tardy after that…” he made a gesture with his hands. “That’s of no importance to us.”

Pip and Emma blinked slowly. “So, you want us to go as fast as we can?” Pip said with an expression that was rapidly passing “gleeful.”

“I do.” The Fat Controller agreed, before walking away.

---

Across the Island, the trucks and wagons shuddered.

A few weeks later

Pip and Emma fit in surprisingly well on goods trains, and could soon be found on everything from trundling pickup goods to the Flying Kipper. The Works really had made every truck as “perfect” as they could make them, and so every train, regardless of what it was or who was pulling it, was rolling on new bearings and freshly-trued wheels. Bear, BoCo, James, and Henry claimed it was some of the easiest work they’d ever had, and even the trucks agreed with them!

Pip and Emma, however, were mostly focused on one thing: speed. They’d been promised the ability to go as fast as they liked, but there was a significant obstacle to it:

“Oh come on! How long can it take to re-lay one set of points!”

The Permanent Way and Signaling departments had also received a great deal of this “use it or lose it” government funding, and were furiously working to replace, re-lay, and re-wire seemingly the entire island.

Fortunately for the twins, the work was almost at an end, and as the summer began to wane, they soon found that more and more of the line was back up to full capacity. Shortly thereafter, the “Container Express” was a regularly scheduled train on the main line, running twice a day between Tidmouth Harbour and the yard in Barrow. Keen-eyed observers of the timetable would note that it was the exact same pair of slots previously occupied by the Wild Nor’Wester, which had last run in March of 2020.

The Fat Controller promised anyone who asked him that it was absolutely a temporary measure, and most believed him, save for one group in particular…

“Lads,” A voice murmured in the container yard one morning. “I think this is forever… ‘s our purgatory for whatever it is we’ve done to the engines.”

“Nah, this ain’t purgatory,” whispered another, as a two-toned horn blasted in the distance.

“Hi everyone!” “Ready for the trip?”

“This is hell. We’re in hell.”

A few days later - Barrow

The lift bridge over the Walney Channel operated very differently than it did pre-COVID. A train would arrive at the Vicarstown side of the bridge, then it would lower. It would stay down while the engines were turned round, or were uncoupled from their train and connected to a new one. Then the train would leave, and the bridge would go back up.

This happened two to four times a day, now that the lockdowns had lessened, but there was one constant - the same train that left the island would be the one to return to it.

Then, one evening in the late summer, the bridge rolled down for a train coming from the mainland.

There was a very familiar two-toned honk-honk as it rolled over the bridge and onto the Island, wheels click-clacking across the bridge joints in great numbers.

The rear power car vanished with a roar of sound and a whoosh of diesel exhaust, and then the train was gone into the distance.

The bridge slowly cycled back up. There was a new train on the Island of Sodor.

The next morning

Pip and Emma woke up much later than usual - the main line was undergoing its final “track geometry inspection”, and freight services had been curtailed for most of the day to allow the inspection to be done as quickly as possible.

Eventually, they were rolled out of the diesel shed mostly on BoCo’s urging, (“You two are not allowed to get bored in here.”) and made their way to the platforms of the big station.

“Oh, this is weird!” Pip exclaimed as she backed down onto a set of coaches. She and Emma had been coupled back-to-back for over a month now, and it seemed like nobody was in a hurry to position them “normally” for a short run down to Suddery and back.

“Not as weird as your- oh my goodness it’s you two.” James started his sentence with a considerable amount of venom, but squeaked halfway through his sentence before stopping altogether.

“What was that?” They both looked at him funny.

“Nothing!” He said quickly. “Nothing at all. I, um, I thought that you were somebody else!”

He vanished as though by magic, and neither Pip, Emma, nor the coaches had any idea of what to say until the guard waved his flag.

Making their way down the line, they encountered several other engines, each of whom gave them some kind of funny look. As they headed down Edward’s branch line, it was all they could talk about.

“Maybe it’s just how strange we look back-to-back?”

“It can’t be, Pip! You saw how Edward looked! I think he was actually upset!”

“Goodness, I hope it wasn’t anything we did.”

“I don’t think so. They all seemed to stop once they saw us.”

“...”

“What?”

“I just had a thought.”

“What?”

“Who looks like us, but can make everyone hate them in no time flat?”

“Oh no!”

Later, they arrived back at Wellsworth station with the return service. The train terminated here, instead of returning to the big station, so once the passengers had disembarked, they had to shunt the coaches out of the way. It was somewhat novel for them, and Pip took great joy in being shown how a shunter’s pole worked. Emma, on the other buffer, was busy eavesdropping; Edward was getting ready to bank Bear’s goods train up Gordon’s Hill, and he was fuming about something to the stationmaster.

“-that damn banana shows its face here again I will show them what for!” he hissed sternly, before puffing away in a huff.

The stationmaster didn’t say anything that Emma could hear, but he seemed to look very intently at the signals outside the station. There was one signal set for an arriving train.

Emma didn’t like that, it felt very ominous. “Pip, look sharp. I think we’re going to have trouble soon.”

Pip didn’t have time to respond, because at that instant, the two-tone horn of an HST rang out in the near distance. The rails hummed with the noise of an approaching train, and a 5-coach HST set pulled into the station.

The train was safety-yellow, and bristled with cameras, sensors, lasers, and measurement equipment of all kinds. Large “NETWORK RAIL” logos were plastered on every coach and both power cars, right next to the words “NEW MEASUREMENT TRAIN.”

It was glossy. It was shiny. It was freshly washed.

“Oh, must we dawdle around this dump? I know what sort of conditions this lot keeps!”

It was rude.

“Will you stop already? I would like to not be thrown off this island, thanks.”

Well, half of it was.

Pip closed her eyes to steady herself. Emma ground her teeth audibly. Of course it was them.

Quickly, quietly, they tried to reverse out of sight, but the camera-studded train saw all, and criticised everything.

“Oh I say!” The lead power car laughed mockingly. “I thought those rumours were wrong but look at that! You two really have been demoted to common shunters!”

“Hi Pip. Hi Emma.” The rear power car said, utterly defeated.

“Hi John,” They chorused, equally displeased. “Hi, Obs-”

“Do not use that name!” The lead power car snapped brusquely. On his side there was a big brass nameplate that read “The Railway Observer.” “Use my real name.”

“Not this again…” The rear power car moaned. He had “John Armitt” bolted to his side. “I know that you think it sounds better but I promise you it isn’t-”

“I’m sorry,” The lead power car snapped. “But are you undermining me in front of outsiders?”

“They’re our sisters, you numpty.”

“And they shall refer to me by the name of my choice!”

“It’s a stupid name!”

“It’s a regal name!”

Pip and Emma observed the bickering train with muted resignation. “Why couldn’t he have been at Ladbroke Grove?” Pip said to nobody in particular. “Would’ve done the world a favour.”

Emma just wanted to get this over with. The coaches had been safely shunted away, so it was just a matter of getting out of the yard - then they could go down to Tidmouth and get their next train. “And what name would you like us to call you?” She said eventually.

The lead power car puffed himself up like a self-important cockatoo. “I,” He proclaimed regally. “Am Murgatroyd. It is a noble name, with a rich history, and-”

Pip almost swallowed her own tongue from the sudden outburst of laughter, while Emma couldn’t even bring herself to look at him. “Oh my god, that is the worst name I have ever heard of,” She said, barely audible over Pip’s gale-force guffaws. “Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you do that to us?”

Murgatroyd turned red with indignation (which, thanks to his yellow paint, was actually a shade of orange) and started shouting. “How dare you, you- you- you low-class harlot! This is a regal name, chosen to signify-”

“How much of a pretentious twat you are?” John scoffed from the other end of the NMT. “Usually people can tell when you talk.”

The retort that followed was unprintable, and a vicious three-way argument soon struck up, lasting until Pip and Emma left Wellsworth for the harbour at Tidmouth.

The New Measurement Train left a few minutes after that, an argument trailing in its wake. The yard was silent after that.

BoCo, who had been trying to nap in the shed, looked around the yard. “I don’t think anyone will believe me…” he said to himself.

-----

At the harbour’s intermodal yard, Pip and Emma found their train already waiting for them… although it was slightly different from usual.

Fifteen container trucks sat mostly empty, with just a few loaded ones up at the front. Ahead of those were two low-loaders, one empty, the other… not.

“Finally!” Thomas the Tank Engine groused from atop the front low-loader. “It’s been ages!”

“It’s been two hours.” The low-loader rolled his eyes. “We left at 11:00. It’s barely past one.”

“Well, who asked you?!”

Pip and Emma were surprised, to say the least. “What’s he doing here?” They asked the yard supervisor. “Can we take him on this train?”

“As a matter of fact,” He consulted his clipboard. “You can. I spoke to the works, and they’ve “improved” some of the flatcars with the high speed bogies they had left over. Should be fine.”

“Should be?”

“That’s what they said.�� He shrugged, flipping through the clipboard to a printout of an email. “They put it in writing.”

Pip had to squint to see the small text. “I don’t like that they put “It should be fine!” on an official email…”

Behind her, Emma rolled her eyes, in the process noticing something above them. “Wait, what’s that?”

The supervisor looked up. “Oh, that’s a jet engine for an airplane. Rolls Royce rebuilds them down in Derby.”

“Why is it here? This isn’t the airport.”

“Airport’s closed for a few days because they lost their electric transformer - surprised you didn’t ‘ear about it. Rolls didn’t wanna wait, and we’re quicker than a lorry it seems.” The man smiled at the last part. Everyone in the freight division was very pleased that this “hare-brained, half-baked, absolutely ridiculous” concept (as some “industry observers” had remarked) was proving successful.

Emma watched as the jet engine was craned onto a flatcar behind Thomas. “Oh great!” He scoffed as it was chained down to the car. “Not only am I getting shuttled around this Island like a piece of lost mail, but now it’s air mail at that?”

“Oh shush!” Pip said, somewhat bemused by the whole situation. “We’ll get you to Barrow double quick!”

“Barrow?! I’m going to the works!” Thomas was irate.

“If you ever listened,” The low-loader started. “You’d know that they don’t stop there, so we’re going to Barrow, and then back to Crovan’s on the pick-up goods.”

“Oh! Wonderful! I am a lost parcel! This is all Toby’s fault, the square-”

“Thomas,” Emma cut him off kindly. “It’ll be fine. Think about it this way - you can say that you went there on the Express! Won’t that be fun?”

“I’ve been on the express before…” Thomas said darkly.

“See? Then you know how fun it is!”

Thomas looked like he wanted to say something else, but before he could, the shunters allowed Pip and Emma to back down onto the train, and connected the coupling chains and air hoses.

Emma winked at him reassuringly, something which he felt was only unintentionally patronizing.

And then the train set off for the mainland.

Leaving the port was a slow affair - the container yard was off to one side, and they had to dodge Marina and Salty as they shunted cars into the bulk terminals by the yard throat. There were a lot of low-speed switches to navigate as well, and the train rocked from side to side as they crossed over. Thomas thought about saying he was getting seasick, but chose not to tempt fate after the seventh such switch made him actually feel a little nauseous.

After reaching the end of the harbour tracks, they came to a complete stop, and waited for several trains to leave the big station.

First came Gordon, who stormed out of the station canopy with the mid-day semi-fast behind him. His expression was thunderous, as were his clouds of smoke and steam. He passed by with a roar and a clatter and vanished into the tunnel towards Knapford.

Edward was a few minutes behind, with a train of ballast from the Little Western. The expression on his face was neutral, almost intentionally so - a clear sign to anyone that knew him that he was blisteringly furious.

“Oh no…” Emma sighed.

“What?” Thomas asked, watching Edward’s brake van disappear into the tunnel.

“Not what, who.” She said, resigned. “And you’ll find out soon enough.”

Up front, Pip grit her teeth and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long - another minute, and an unusual signal dropped into place: an up-bound train cleared for the down slow line. A very familiar two-note honk-honk sounded from inside the station, and then Murgatroyd appeared, a self-satisfied sneer on his face.

He roared out of the station, New Measurement Train shining brightly behind him, John on the tail end calling apologies to someone. It would have been a rather splendid sight, had there not been a massive cloud of sooty clag hovering over the station entrance, and trailing in his wake.

Pip smirked with a hint of schadenfreude - John wasn’t trailing any sooty exhaust smoke, and five empty coaches were not that heavy, so somebody was ignoring his fitters it seemed…

She would have been content to sit there smugly, her well-tuned engine firing cleanly on all cylinders saying more than she ever could with words, but naturally Murgatroyd had to make things worse.

“Oh good god!” He bellowed in mean-spirited mirth, his mouth twisting into a cheshire-cat smile. “Look at that! They really are Valenta freighters now! And they’re slumming it with a tea kettle! I thought that I had seen it all!”

He vanished out of sight before he could say anything else, the coaches streaming by in a yellow blur.

Pip could just see her reflection in the passing windows - they moved so fast it looked like a solid mirror - and it was not a pretty sight.

Emma, who’d heard everything, reckoned that if he’d gone on for one more sentence, her sister would be spitting fire and roaring loud enough to be heard in Cornwall.

Thomas, who had said worse to Toby and Daisy just this morning, suddenly felt a great sense of unease…

A few tense minutes later, and the signal finally raised, giving the train access to the main line. Pip set off with a roar, Emma reluctantly following her lead through the multiple unit connection. Thomas choked and spluttered from the wave of hot exhaust gases going right into his face, and barely noticed as the train rocked and rolled onto the Up Fast line.

Blinking and tearing up, his vision finally cleared just in time to see Pip’s cab roof disappear into the darkness of the tunnel to Knapford. It was much closer than it usually was, and with the train rapidly increasing in speed, Thomas yelped as it cleared his funnel by mere inches. “YIKES!”

Emma laughed, eyes shining in the darkness, and Thomas knew that the sooner he got off this train, the better!

After that, for a little while, the trip continued smoothly. Knapford, Crosby, and Wellsworth stations all slid past without issue. Traffic was extremely light, and they didn’t pass any down-bound trains in the entire period. In fact, if it weren’t for the occasional blot of Gordon’s smoke on the horizon, it would have seemed that they had the entire main line to themselves.

It was just past Maron station when the trouble began.

As they crested Gordon’s hill, the first signal past the summit had fallen to “approach” almost as they passed it, and some quick shouting at “control” on the radio had revealed that the last of the permanent way crews were taking longer than usual to clear the main line near Kellsthorpe Road station.

This meant that Pip and Emma were practically at a crawl as they reached Maron, and the train eased to a stop at the signal bridge just past the platforms.

Pip, still hot under the buffers from her encounter with Murgatroyd, was not exactly thrilled at the idea of “dawdling” in stations, and audibly fussed as they came to a halt.

Her poor temper didn’t help her train handling skills any, and the train lurched inelegantly to a halt, causing the slack in the couplings to run in, and the entire train banged against her and Emma.

There was much shouting and complaining from the trucks and Thomas at this, and Pip growled menacingly.

“Oh, well.” Emma said quickly, trying to put a positive spin on things. “At least it’s a nice day out-”

CLONK

Before she could even say anything, the signals rose to the “approach slow, expect stop” aspect. This meant that they were getting moved forward exactly one signal block, to the Cronk home signals near the Hawin Ab Viaduct.

“Oh come on!” Emma cried in frustration.

It was abundantly clear what was happening now: they were going to be yo-yo-ed up and down the main line. Yo-yo-ing was what happened when a fast train was stuck behind a slow one, and had to constantly stop at each signal and wait for it to clear. It was hard on an engine’s brakes, worse on their buffers and couplings, and worst of all, was annoying as sin. This was exactly the sort of constant, low-grade irritation that she (and Pip) did not need right now.

Pip’s driver was entirely unaware of this, though, and so he increased the throttle and watched with some bemusement as Pip let her engine furiously rev all the way to the top of the tachometer right from the jump.

She and Emma lurched forwards, and the entire train crashed into motion, each car yanking the one behind it as they all set off.

Thomas rocked back and forth against his tie-down chains. “Careful!” he shouted.

“Shut up!” Pip and Emma scowled.

Thomas frowned, ready to give them a piece of his mind.

“It’s no use,” tThe low-loader sighed. “They’re in a strop right now - best you can do is make them forget that you’re here, til they calm down.”

“When will that happen?”

“That, lad, is something that the smartest trucks in all the land have been searching for an answer to for many years.”

To add insult to perceived injury, Pip’s driver didn’t bother accelerating to any real speed, since they were only going one signal down the line. Pip and Emma stewed in their own irritation at twenty-five miles an hour as they rolled up the line towards the next signal. There was very little that could be done to make them more upset, but of course when there’s a will, (and a Murgatroyd) there’s a way.

“Oh, no…” John murmured to himself.

The New Measurement Train had been caught at a signal for almost thirty minutes, as the Island’s P-Way team cleared out in front of them. The positioning of this particular signal was not ideal, as it left the tail of the train caught on the exposed tracks of a windy viaduct. Furthermore, the signal, like all signals on Sodor, was a relatively vintage semaphore design that still used colored filters over a white light. He knew this from experience, having been all over this island for the last day, however he was hearing all of it now because his royal Murgitude had been griping and whinging about it literally since the moment they stopped.

And now, look at who was coming up to the signals on the fast line…

“Hi Pip, Hi Emma,.” he said weakly.

He almost wanted to tell them to stop further back, and be near him - away from the irritating mass at the front of the train - but looking at Pip’s enraged visage gave him pause. He stilled his tongue, and let them roll up to the signal mast next to Murg.

Judging from the way that the train screeched and bashed to a halt, Emma wasn’t happy either. A smart engine (or one with a functioning self-preservation instinct) would have kept quiet at that stage, however Murgatroyd was neither self-preserving nor intelligent, and John could hear his mocking tone from five coaches back.

Pip said nothing, and at first neither did Emma, but as Moron-a-troyd went on and on and on, John could feel a shift in the container wagons next to him. It was almost like they were cringing, trying to keep themselves as far away from whatever was about to happen next.

Finally, he could take the suspense no more. “Is it bad?” he asked the nearest truck.

“SHUT UP. I AM TIRED OF HEARING YOU SPEAK,” Emma bellowed, loud enough to be heard clearly at the other end of the train.

“It’s awful bad,” the truck whispered. “You can tell he’s never dealt with real engines before. One of us acts like that and we’d be the next Scruffey within a month!”

John didn’t know who “Scruffey” was, but he understood the sentiment regardless.

Silence reigned after that… for all of ten seconds, before Murgatroyd said something about “decorum” that set off a screaming row between all three of them.

It was bad enough that the Network Rail crew inside the coaches started making a fuss on the radio, and within a minute, the container train roared away, leaving the New Measurement Train in windy silence yet again.

After a few short seconds, John felt a “poke” over the multiple unit connection. Clearly Murgatroyd wanted to say something.

“Well,” he said, voice warbling from some damage in the connection that John hadn’t ever told anyone about. “I think they said their piece didn’t they? I tell you what John-old-boy, but this island produces some of the worst examples of engine-kind that I have ever seen. I think that one was breathing fire!”

At Cronk station, Pip and Emma were idling so loud and so roughly that the stationmaster radioed the crew to ask if something was wrong.

“That damned flying banana got them in a state, that’s what’s wrong,” The driver snapped over the radio. That awful measurement train had been nothing but problems since it showed up on the island, and he was willing to do anything to see them gone. Heck, if it wasn’t likely to make his engines even angrier, he’d give that train his path to the mainland, just so it’d be gone faster.

What they really needed was a good fast run, to get them back into their usual state, but with the P-Way team taking their sweet bloody time of it, it didn’t seem likely.

“If they keep going like this, they’re going to burst a manifold somewhere,” the guard poked his head into the cab. “We’ve got to calm them down.”

“I would love to see you try!” the driver retorted. “They’re not gonna stop until they’re good and ready.”

“I can hear you, you know!” Pip huffed.

“And? Are you going to calm down?”

A slow growl that shook the entire cab was his only answer.

“Go put the radio on,” he said to the wide-eyed guard. “They need something to keep their minds occupied.”

“Radio? Like, to control?”

“No, you nit! Like the radio radio! With music! There’s a circuit breaker on the electrical panel. Bottom row.”

Confused, the guard retreated from the cab and made his way to Pip’s electrical cabinet. Opening up the “low voltage” door, he traced his finger down the rows of breakers until he found what should have been immediately obvious: a handwritten label on some sellotape next to the last of the breakers. It said “TUNES” in shaky handwriting, and was one of the only ones not turned on. Hesitantly, he reached out and switched it on.

“-and that was “No Diggity,” by Blackstreet, here on ManxPirate, the eternally annoying voice of the Sudrian Sea. Catch our sound wherever you are, on 107.9 FM, 927 AM, 13.68 Shortwave, DAB, DAB+, and online at ManxPirate.co.im.

“Oh come on!” Pip groused. “Now they’re gonna do the adverts! This isn’t any better than listening to the moron!”

“And now that brings us up to about five minutes til’ the top of the hour, so we’re gonna run some adverts so we can keep the lights on. We’ll see ya on the flipside with DJ Geordie Poppers, who’s gonna run a very special block of music for us, right here on ManxPirate.”

“How often do they listen to this?” the guard asked with some astonishment.

“Too much, if I had any say in it…” the driver mumbled.

“Are you tired of your washing up smelling like mildew? Are you sick of having to pull down the drying lines at the first sign of rain? Then the new automatic clothes dryers at B&Q are just for you…”

The radio continued on with an inane advertisement about tumble dryers, and the driver put his head in his hands. “We’ve just got to make it to a song… I hope.”

Pip and Emma continued to stew in their own irritation.

-----

Far away, at Kellsthorpe Road station, the last of the P-Way Gang hauled their equipment off of the line, sharing a celebratory high-five as they did so. There was due cause for celebration: once the NMT traveled over this section of line, their yearslong work of relaying the entire main line would be finally over. In the station’s car park, a champagne bottle was popped, and the foreman revealed that he’d brought real crystal stemware for the occasion, instead of plastic.

Presently, a radio handset buzzed. “Is that the lot of you off, then?”

It was Control, sounding less than pleased with the delay…

----

At Cronk, the signals for the down slow line rose into the “all clear” position, while the up fast signals remained red.

Pip ground her teeth noisily.

“HI, I’M BARRY SCOTT, AND I’M HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE ALL NEW CILLIT BANG UNIVERSAL DEGREASER! NOW WITH NEW FORMULATION! SAY GOODBYE TO LIMESCALE AND RUST STAINS…”

The radio continued to play adverts.

Thomas was growing increasingly fearful of the look on Emma’s face.

A few minutes later, as an insufferably bad advertisement about comparing your car insurance provider finally faded out, a two tone honk-honk sounded behind them, and the New Measurement Train roared past in a cloud of exhaust and dust. Pip and Emma didn’t say anything, or even look in the general direction, but the raucous laughter that trailed in its wake said enough.

Mercifully, the radio had begun playing something else. “All right then, got those ads out of the way. So what’s up listeners? It’s DJ Geordie Poppers in the hooo-use, coming to you LIVE from our studios on the ever so beautiful radio ship Tharos out here in the Sudrian Sea. We’ve got a very special bit of music for you coming up now in the upcoming hour - it’s a rare daylight sighting of our After-Dark Eurobeat Power Hour! I’m gonna be spinning some CDs and MP3s with the most pulse-pounding beats this side of Mount Akina - so if you’re driving right now, sorry about this.”

As John got smaller and smaller in the distance, the music began to fade in, very gradually.

“And a bit of housekeeping here - we’ve heard from the artist and they’ve had a bit of a name change. Out goes Ken, and in comes Kendra. This is the extended version of “The Top,” by Ken (short for Kendra) Blast.”

Slowly, a piano track began to fill in.

Pip raised an eyebrow, irritation momentarily sidetracked. “Is this really the Eurobeat block, Emma?”

“I think it is,” she said, starting to go along with the intro.

Thomas, who couldn’t hear Pip or the radio, had no idea what she was talking about. He didn’t like the look on her face.

The trucks didn’t either.

“Lads,” the lead container wagon said with gravitas. “We may not make it through today unchanged. It has been an honor serving with you.”

“What?” The low loader that carried the jet engine coughed as the container wagons murmured about honor. He was relatively new, and this was not how he expected his day to be going.

“Laddie,” Thomas’ low loader said gravely, understanding at once what was about to happen. “You’re about to experience something that you’ve never been through before. I’d recommend preparing yourself.”

“What?!” Thomas yelped.

---

Back in Tidmouth, the people in “Control” were staring at the “big board.” For weeks now, the section of line near Kellsthorpe road had been a mess of green, yellow, and red lights, as the P-Way gang slowly finished the banked curve on the station’s east end. Trains, represented by little markers on the computer screen, waited for a free path, oftentimes with large delays, which showed up in flashing red and white boxes.

Now, though, their frustration was finally at an end. The last of the yellow was disappearing, section by section, as the P-Way gang reported that they were clear. Three of the four lines were bright red - clear but with no train signaled through - while the down slow line was a green and yellow stripe. It was getting shorter and shorter, as the little marker labeled 1Q01 moved steadily eastward. That was the New Measurement Train, finishing its final pass of the system.

Behind it, with the box flashing red and white from the delay, was 1B07 - the “Container Express,” already twenty minutes late. More trains were lined up behind it and the NMT, and others were queuing in a line that started at Kellsthorpe Road and went all the way to the mainland.

The yellow segments were almost entirely gone, with just one signal block outside of Kellsthorpe Road left.

There was a five minute safety delay coded into the signal control computers, specifically for when crews were working on the line.

It had been four minutes and fifty six seconds since they’d reported that they were clear.

Four minutes and fifty seven seconds.

Four minutes and fifty eight.

Four minutes and fifty nine.

---

The signal in front of Pip raised with a clonk.

There was still a slight haze to the air from Murgatroyd’s exhaust. In the distance, the plume of sooty white smoke he was making stood out against the clear blue sky like a signal fire.

“Emma?” Anyone with sense would recognize the danger in her tone.

“Yeah?” Unfortunately for everyone else on the train, they couldn’t do anything about it.

“I think we should catch him.”

“I think you’re right.”

In the cab, the driver looked nervously at the rev counter, which had started to climb rapidly.

“Here goes nuthin’,” he said quietly to himself, before advancing the throttle.

The music, which had been slowly building over the last twenty seconds or so, abruptly kicked into a high gear, with a frenetic electronic beat that belted along at 160 beats per minute.

White exhaust belched from the twins’ exhaust, before quickly turning black under the load. Their engines ramped up to an ear-piercing howl, obliterating any sense of quiet at Cronk station.

Thomas once again got a face full of noxious choking clag, and his eyes watered while his hearing was momentarily deafened by the noise of it all.

The train began to pick up speed, and the container wagons groaned in fatalistic anticipation. “It’s all downhill from here!” one of them shouted.

“What?” Thomas hacked from inside the cloud. He couldn’t see anything, and his hearing was ringing like a church bell.

In front, Pip could feel the unrelenting wave of horsepower and diesel surging through her system. She laughed joyously, with Emma soon joining in.

To everyone else, it seemed somewhat maniacal.

🎶 Final lap I'm on top of the world

And I will never rest for second again!

One more time I have beaten them out

The scent of gasoline announces the end! 🎶

The train vanished from sight, on its way towards Killdane. The stationmaster poked his head out of the station door.

“There goes trouble…”

The New Measurement Train rolled through Killdane with fleetfooted ease. The rails were clear and the light train was aided by the downhill gradient. From his position on the rear, John felt like the entire consist was weightless, with barely any effort required to keep the train at speed.

“You think we should go any faster?” he called up the multiple unit connection to Murg. They usually ran at well over 120, but today they’d barely crested 90.

There was a cough over the connection. “Oh, not today. We’re still the fastest train on this backwards island!”

Ah yes. A sudden excuse. Surely that was completely unrelated to the plume of smoke trailing in their wake.

“So, how’s cylinder four feeling today?”

“Shut up.”

John smiled pettily to himself.

In the distance, Killdane got smaller and smaller. A small dot of yellow could just be seen…

---

🎶 They all said I'd best give it up

What a fool to believe their lies!

Now they've fallen and I'm at the top

Are you ready now to die-ie-ie?! 🎶

---

At Killdane, the sounds of the NMT had scarcely faded before the sound of howling diesel engines filled the air. Heads turned to the east just in time to see Pip and Emma hammering around the curve into the station at full throttle.

The curve was banked, but not nearly as steeply as the ones to the west, and there was a piercing screeeeeech of steel on steel as the train whipped past.

“Slowdownslowdownslowdownslowdownslowdown!” There was also a piercing screech coming from the train’s cargo, as Thomas the Tank Engine felt himself rock back and forth atop the low loader. It really did feel like he was going to fall off!

Pip had a very determined look on her face, eyes focused well into the distance, but those who saw Emma in the brief moment she was in view noted an almost demented smile on her face. She was laughing.

All this happened in just a moment, and then the train was gone, roaring off into the distance at just below the line speed limit. The wind from the train’s passage rattled a lineside sign. It was a white circle with several thin diagonal slashes through it.

It was an “end of speed limit” sign.

🎶 I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive... the top?🎶

John noticed that the small yellow dot in the distance was getting bigger. Squinting, he couldn’t quite see what it was.

Whatever it was, it was slowly gaining on them.

Hang on…He thought.

The cameras that were blanketing his sides were supposed to be recording the lineside for defects, but nobody ever cared about the “going away” view. Very quietly, he “looked” through the lens mounted just above his eyes. It had a nice zoom, and could see much further than he could.

What he saw made him blink and look again. Then a third time. Then a fourth. After looking for a fifth and final time. He finally wrapped his mind around what exactly he was seeing.

“Hey Murg?” he said innocently.

“Yes? What is it?” Murg sounded far more irritated than he should be.

“Think you can get us into the triple digits? Some of the boffins are worried about their readings not being calibrated right.”

“Oh damn them all.” Murg cut the connection with a pained cough. John had a distinct feeling that the Infallible and Most Invulnerable King Murgatroyd was hiding exactly how bad cylinder four really was from everyone, lest he be seen as “weak” or “mortal” by his inferiors.

Well, he thought to himself with a hint of smugness as the train slowly began to increase speed. If he wants to play the perfect king, he’ll have to deal with the locals.

Behind them, Pip and Emma continued to get closer and closer…

---

James and his coaches had been waiting on the dratted P-Way gangers for over half an hour at Kellsthorpe Road, and set off with a will when the signal changed.

Of course, the signaling was all out of sorts, and he was running “wrong main” on the Up Slow line, but he didn’t much care. There wasn’t anyone in front of him, and was making “good” time on his way to Killdane. “Maybe we’ll still make it to Tidmouth before tomorrow!” he joked to his driver, who had long since given up on making light of the situation.

They leaned into the curve heading towards Killdane, and that awful banana of a measurement train streaked by in the other direction. James whistled derisively at it out of reflex more than anything else, and was quietly grateful that the unpleasant train had nothing to say in return.

In the distance, a giddy-sounding honk-honk drew his attention back to the line ahead, and he had just enough time to make out something streaking on the next line over before something-

Honk-Honk! Honk-Honk!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

-ripped past them with a honk, a roar, and a scream.

“What was that?!” He yelped as the wind buffeted him.

“I think that was Pip and Emma!” his driver said, looking backward. “With a container train!”

“What?!”

---

🎶 One more turn and I'll settle the score

A rubber fire screams into the night

Crash and burn is what you're gonna do

I am the master of the asphalt fight 🎶

---

John watched as Pip and Emma got closer and closer. In a macabre way, he felt giddy about it. At their current speed, they were going to eat Murgatroyd for lunch and still have room for tea afterwards.

He had been paying such close attention to the rapidly-closing distance between the two trains that he completely missed the start of the banked curve until he was leaning into it. The rails bent underneath him and the ties whipped past at an odd angle as the whole world tilted a few degrees. They weren’t going slow, by any means, but the sensitive equipment in the coaches (and his years of experience) told him that they could have been going much faster.

“Oh Murg… you might want to speed up…” he sing-songed. “They’re gaining on us…”

“Who’s gaining on us? What?!” Murgatroyd was oblivious, as was his wont.

John wanted to say something else, but his voice failed him as he watched the container train, with low-loaders on the front, rocket through the curve at speeds that he didn’t even want to contemplate.

A train passed on one of the other lines, and he watched the smoke from its stack get whipped and roiled by air currents of the two trains passing each other.

Seconds later, Pip and Emma passed the train, streaking through the remaining smoke, and the force of their passage tore the cloud to ribbons.

---

🎶They all said I'd best give it up

What a fool, to believe their lie-ie-ies!

Now they've fallen, I'm at the top

Are you ready now to die-ie-ie?🎶

---

Pip was high on speed, and she was loving every second of it.

Emma was right behind her, literally and metaphorically; the sensation of pure motion and velocity was coursing through their systems like a drug.

In front of them, so close one could almost reach out and touch it, was the New Measurement Train. John was watching with restrained giddiness as they started to draw abreast of him. He said something, but the wind whipping by erased all sound. There was just speed, and that was more than enough.

Slowly, they pulled even with the coaches, and with each window they passed, another Network Rail employee could be seen looking up in astonishment.

In Pip’s cab, the driver was holding onto the controls with a white knuckle grip. Officially, he was the driver, he was in control of the train. Realistically, he was nothing more than a rider on a bucking bronco. He surveyed the line ahead, and gulped.

Behind Pip and Emma, Thomas’s eyes were right in the most turbulent part of the wake that followed the diesels. Air, superheated and filled with grit and soot from twin exhausts, poured into his eyes and swirled around his face. He couldn’t hear, he could barely see.

Behind him, the wind whipped through the turbine blades of the jet engine on the next low-loader. It had been secured for transport, so the blades didn’t move, but the wind rushing through it created a high-pitched howling noise that simply added to the cacophony.

Lost in the chaos of the wind and the noise and the exhaust, the container wagons and the low-loaders were holding onto each other for dear life.

“I’m not designed for thiiiiis!” one of them shrieked.

“None of us are!” the wagon ahead of him bellowed. “Just keep holding on a little longer!”

At the head of the NMT, Murgatroyd was trying very hard to ignore the slight off-beat throbbing coming from cylinder four. Something was amiss with it - what it was, he didn’t know for certain. Driver didn’t know either - blasted man hadn’t turned a wrench a day in his life; wouldn’t know the difference between an allen key and the keys to a house!

Of course there weren’t any fitters on board - “economic savings” kept them at home base - so he just had to deal with it.

Just so long as the underlings didn’t notice, everything would be fine-

“Oh Murgatroyd…”

“Yes, John?”

“You might want to look around...”

He looked off towards the Up lines, and was rendered momentarily speechless by the sight of Pip smiling wickedly at him.

“T-that’s not possible,” he said once he found his tongue. “That isn’t possible!”

---

🎶 I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive...

I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive... the top?🎶

----

Moments earlier

“So how late do you think we’re going to be?” Percy asked as the train rumbled through Kellsthorpe Road station.

“Oh,” Henry pondered. “We’re only allowed to do 45, and we’ve got to drop off the aluminium at Killdane, so probably two or three hours if we lose our path at all. Which we will.”

“Thomas is going to be absolutely livid when I get back.” Percy said from atop his low loader. “He was supposed to go in for his new cylinder block today, so if I’m not back, they’re going to have him stay in steam all day.”

“Oh, he won’t be thrilled about that.” Henry chortled. “I swear, he’s the only engine who likes going to the works.”

“They treat him the same way James treats himself. Of course he likes going there!”

“Hah! I hadn't considered that-oh dear…” Henry trailed off mid-sentence.

“What?”

“It appears that we’re about to go down the middle between Pip and Emma, and their favorite siblings.”

“What? The banana? Oh great.”

“Yes, they- oh goodness they’re quick-”

Anything else Henry said was lost to the deafening thunderclap made as the New Measurement Train and the Container Express roared past on the opposing lines. The wind felt like it was going to knock him clean off the rails, and Percy yelped in surprise as debris and exhaust fumes swirled around him like a hurricane. His boiler, a stout construction that could hold hundreds of pounds of pressure, felt like it was flexing and bowing from the vibrations in the air. He watched in open-mouthed shock as Henry’s cab windows were sucked out of their frames from the differential pressure, and were hurled through the air followed by every loose object in the cab, from hats and coats, to papers and even a coal shovel!

Behind and in front of Percy, open wagons of stone, and the coal from Henry’s tender sent huge plumes of dust and debris into the air, swirling and mixing into a funnel cloud that wrapped around the rear of the train. It danced in the tornadic airflow for a few seconds, before dissipating as the trains parted once more.

The silence afterwards was deafening.

“DID I LOSE A WINDOW?” Henry asked, almost unable to hear himself speak, as his driver applied the brakes and stopped the train.

Percy tried to make the ringing in his smokebox cease. Closing his eyes, he suddenly remembered seeing something in the fraction of a second before the world went topsy-turvy. “Wait a tic. Was that Thomas?”

“WHAT?”

---

🎶 What were you thinking, telling me to change my game?

This style wasn't going anywhere; it was kaput!

You want to see what I've done with this place; this whole thing?

You want to see that I changed the game?

No, I AM the game!

Before I knew where this was going, I would've listened to you

Right now, I distance myself from what you have to say!

I made this something way bigger than you're ever gonna be

I made it this far; and I'm taking it to the top 🎶

----

Pip and Emma laughed gaily as they overtook the NMT, and powered on towards Kellsthorpe Road like they weren’t towing several hundred tonnes of freight train behind them.

Murgatroyd gaped in shock as he was passed by the steam engine they were carrying as cargo.

The shock quickly turned into outrage, and he felt the red-hot sting of being one-upped surge through his system. His engine began to rev higher, urging the train to move faster damn it.

“Whoa there,” his driver exclaimed, laying a firm hand on the controls. “We want to make it to the mainland, right?”

“I don’t care!” Murgatroyd ground his teeth, watching as the container wagons slipped past him. “They can’t win!”

But no matter how he tried, his driver wouldn’t let him speed up.

He howled and roared impotently as Pip and Emma got further and further ahead.

---

On the platforms of Kellsthorpe Road station, several surveyors were getting measurements of the newly-relaid line.

Looking down the magnified optics of a theodolite, the true character of the railway could be seen. What appeared to be a straight and flat section of line was actually a ribbon of steel that undulated and flowed over the terrain. While certain sections had just been flattened and graded, it was impossible to fully eliminate the contours of the earth without starting from scratch, and so the line rolled with the small hills and invisible valleys instead of cutting right through them.

“Hey, look at that.” One of the other surveyors said from behind an optical level. “You can see the NMT from here.”

“Can you?” asked his coworker, who quickly pointed his theodolite down the line. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s just gone behind the dip. Should be back in a moment.”

He fixed his eyes on the dip in the terrain. It was actually visible to the naked eye, but its height differential - deemed to be “within acceptable limits” - and its presence directly under a road bridge - meant that it had survived the recent track relaying unscathed.

The surveyors waited for the train to reappear, the optics of their measurement devices making things appear much larger than they really were.

With that in mind, it was something of a surprise to see an HST appear two tracks over from where the NMT had been. They both looked to that line just in time for the train to crest the hill.

There was a brief moment, no longer than a breath, where both men could see daylight shine underneath the train as all the wheels left the ground.

----

Pip and Emma hooted and hollered with glee as they roared through the approach to Kellsthorpe Road station. High speed crossovers and the new banked curve meant they didn’t have to check their speed in the slightest as they charged onwards.

The station came and went in a flash, and they leaned into the new corner at unprecedented speeds. Behind them, Thomas wailed loud enough to be heard over their motors, but they paid him little mind; they didn’t realize - or understand - exactly what he was experiencing.

Behind them, now far into the distance, the New Measurement Train was just rolling into the station.

They had won.

---

🎶 I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive...

I came up from the bottom

And into the top

For the first time I feel alive!

I can fly like an eagle

And strike like a hawk

Do you think you can survive... the top? 🎶

----

Further up the line, Bertie the bus was pulling up to a level crossing, just as the gates went down.

“That was a great song on the radio, wasn’t it?” he said to his driver, who was thoroughly regretting turning on ManxPirate, thanks very much. “I feel like I should be racing something! Ooh! I know! The next train that comes by, we’ll try and chase it, huh? Just like the old times with Thomas!”

Honk-Honk

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

Whooooooooooooooooooooosh

The train passed in just a few seconds.

“Nevermind.”

-----

The song wound down to a stop, but Pip and Emma continued charging on.

The guard went so far as to pull the fuse on the radio, hoping that it would calm them down, but they were too far gone to consider dropping their speed until they reached Crovan’s Gate station. There, the speed limit dropped to 90; normally a mild inconvenience, but today it felt like they’d dropped an anchor behind them.

Still, they continued merrily along through the station as fast as was allowed (much to Thomas’s dismay) and continued east along the line.

As they cleared the station and began to speed up again, they noticed a cloud of smoke on the horizon.

There was still one more train they could catch…

-----

Compared to everyone else in this story, Gordon was having a blissfully uneventful day. He’d managed to put that vulgar measurement train almost totally out of his mind, and was making excellent time to the mainland when one considered the workmen-caused delay at Kellsthorpe Road.

There was a farm lane that crossed the tracks near Henry’s tunnel, and he whistled for it.

Honk-Honk

He was most surprised to hear a horn respond to him, and was flabbergasted to see Pip, then Emma, and then Thomas pass him like he was standing still!

“HiGordonByeGordon!” “HiGordonByeGordon!” “GORDON HELP ME!”

The train raced into the tunnel and vanished from sight.

Gordon could not believe what he had seen!

----

Eventually, the speed limits dropped, and the four track main line merged into two just after Vicarstown. Rolling over the lift bridge at a sedate twenty miles an hour Pip and Emma finally began to come down off their “runner’s really high.”

“That was great!” Pip gushed. “Just the sort of run we needed to clear everything out, am I right?”

“Uh, Pip?” Emma began to notice the state of Thomas. “I think we miiiiight have overdone this a little.”

Thomas could only whimper in agreement!

----

By the time the New Measurement Train rolled into Barrow station some thirty minutes later, Pip, Emma, and Gordon were all trying to console Thomas, to limited success.

“...Ahem!” Murgatroyd tried to slink into the station totally unnoticed, but John had no compunctions about making sure they were seen. “So, I assume that you two will be conducting all of this railway’s freight services from now on?”

“Oh,” Pip’s smile was very guilty looking as she turned away from the still shell-shocked Thomas. “Yeah. About that…” She swallowed deeply. “I’m… sorry about… y’know. All of that. The overtake.”

“What, me? Overtaken?” Murgatroyd tried and failed to play dumb. Well, a different kind of dumb from usual. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Pip’s smile grew much harder edged, and Gordon took the moment to intercede. “Look, Pip. You don’t owe that any apology of any form.”

Murgatroyd looked aggrieved. Gordon turned on him next. “And you. You are an uncouth abomination who have done nothing useful at all. Take the apology, cause no more trouble, and find yourself a better attitude elsewhere.”

Murgatroyd puffed himself up with self-righteous fury, and John regretted being an instigator.

“WELL, I-” He started.

“Oh shut up!” Thomas bellowed. “Stop talking before I come down there and peel you, you great useless banana! Everything that’s happened to me today is all your fault!”

Murgatroyd quailed under the impressive amount of vitriol Thomas was spewing, and he left in a chastised burst of soot and clag. John followed in his wake, not sure what, if anything to say. “Bye Pip. Bye Emma.”

Once the NMT had vanished from sight, Pip, Emma, and Gordon turned their attention back to Thomas.

“Great useless banana?” Gordon raised an eyebrow.

Thomas didn’t have the energy for a proper comeback, and simply stared at him knowingly.

“Fine, fine,” Gordon acknowledged the unsaid. “For an off-the-buffer moment after the day you’ve had, it was a fine jab. I’m just glad that you’re beginning to feel more like yourself.” He began to steam off towards the shed. “As such, I’ll be off.”

“Wait!” Thomas called. “Where are you going? Who’s taking me on the pick-up goods?”

“Thomas, I don’t take the pick-up goods,” Gordon called regally. “That’s what we have diesels for. I believe there’s two of them right in front of you!”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”

---------------------------------------------------------------

Post script: Low-loaders were subsequently banned from Pip and Emma's trains

#ttte #sodor #sodor shenangians #fic #trains #traintober #ttte gordon #ttte james #ttte boco #ttte henry #ttte edward #ttte thomas #ttte pip&emma #music #eurobeat #ttte percy #and just to make something clear #every aspect of this story has some kind of IRL basis #even that one

63 notes · View notes

springledongle · 11 months ago

Text

The floorboards of the dining room creak under the monster's weight, his metal chain rattling behind him. Somehow both bustling with sound and devoid of life, the dining room is prepped and ready for a party.

Multicoloured lights are strung from the ceiling, party tables adorned with platters of snacks and drinks.

Metal footsteps softened by foam, the hulking creature makes his way to the front door. Equally soft footsteps patter behind him, her short legs trying to keep up with his long strides.

"Mr Afton, sir! Is everything ready?" the rabbit asks, her voice muffled beneath two masks. The larger rabbit breathes, his fibreglass frame groaning with the movement.

"Ready as I'll ever be. I haven't seen outsiders in a long time," he muttered, flashing his unmoving sharp grin.

"Oh, neither have I! I'm excited. Are you excited? I want to make friends!" the younger one chirps, following her companion to the front door, dancing to avoid the metal chain whipping across the floor.

"Vanny, you won't make any friends. The people who come here don't like us," Springle growls, grey eyes shifting to look down at her. The bunny looks up, red eyes barely visible behind the holes in her purple mask. Her smile behind it fades, and she huddles closer to his leg.

"You'll protect me, right?" her small voice eventually asks. The monster nods, plush spines on his neck swaying.

"Of course I will. And if anyone gives you trouble, come get me. Okay?" Springle replies, his voice suddenly softer. He reaches down a massive hand, petting her head gently. Vanny looks up at him, a spring bouncing back into her posture.

"Yes sir!"

"Alright then. Let's begin."

//////

The Pizza Ball group roleplay will begin on Friday! Feel free to send asks to the blog in the meantime.

Submissions for attendance are open! If you would like to join the group roleplay this weekend, join the Pizza Ball discord server: https://discord.com/invite/Q3mUHuxp

#Pizzaball2024 #Springle #Vanny #FNAF #FNAF RP #askblog

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stevebattle · 2 years ago

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ComRo Tot TMC3000 by Jerome Hamlin (1982), ComRo Inc., New York, NY. The Comro Tot mobile programmable multilingual personal robot is fully programmable, and can also be operated using radio-control. It has a four-wheeled mobile base, both arms are functional, and its head rotates, enabling it to perform a wide variety of tasks including serving drinks. It’s based on a SYM-1 6502 computer, and like Comro 1, can talk using the Votrax SC-01 speech synthesiser. The body is fibreglass painted white. A TMC3000 was the top prize in a sweepstake run by Warner Communications, called the “GREAT Robot Giveaway” (final image); runners-up won a Comro Tot T-Shirt. Tot also made an appearance at the “Robot Exhibit: History, Fantasy and Reality” at the Avenue of the Americas in 1984. “WORDS failed Tot. It was only days before he was to usher visitors into the new exhibition at American Craft Museum 2, and all he could do was flail his arms or blurt out the wrong time. ''He's not outputting speech properly,'' said his creator, Jerome Hamlin. ''His battery must be low.'' Running out of whatever it is that passes for patience in a robot, Tot advanced - right arm raised - toward the museum's director, Paul J. Smith. ''Is he handing me a glass of water?'' Mr. Smith asked hopefully. ''No,'' Mr. Hamlin answered, ''this is an attack.'' The assault turned into a simple feint, so Mr. Smith walked off, unharmed.” – PAST AND PRESENT ROBOTS GATHER FOR EXHIBITION, by David Dunlap, The New York Times, Jan 12, 1984.

In 1984, "The Tot robot, manufactured by the now-defunct company Comro, puts a California sea lion through a series of tests during a demonstration at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island. The aquarium said at the time that they had plans to study the feasibility of incorporating a robot into its marine mammal shows." – Betamax and Chill But One of You is a Robot and the Other is a Seal, Paleofuture.

The video clip is from 'The Equalizer', Season 1 Episode 20 (1986) via Scott McDonnell's "80's Robot Revival."

#cybernetics #mobile robot #robot #1982 #ComRo

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navnir · 8 months ago

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Formwork Failure in the Projects

Formwork is the significant factor that decides the success or failure of a construction project. It is a temporary or permanent mould made of concrete or similar raw materials. Construction projects use formwork for slabs, columns, shells, beams etc., and it can be made with wood, steel, fibreglass or plastics.

Formwork affects your project time, cost, quality, and safety of the work. The study says formwork constitute around 35 to 40 per cent of the total roller compacted concrete (RCC) project budget and almost eighty per cent of the project time.

Having established the importance of formwork in the construction sector, we should not take it casually. Any lapse in planning can cause severe loss of money, human lives, time, etc. If you follow leading news channels and news portals, you can see numerous accidents happening due to faulty formwork. We will share some recent instances in the blog and the causes of formwork failure.

Formwork failure is a major reason for construction accidents. The viewpoint was underscored by Mr Kumar Neeraj Jha while delivering a lecture on the topic ‘Innovative Formwork for Construction Projects’ at a seminar held in Margao, Goa. He said, ‘formwork failure is the reason behind up to 60 per cent of the building accidents.’

Let us go through reasons and a couple of real-life accidents that happened due to formwork failures.

Causes of Formwork Failure Careless Stripping and Shore Removal

Construction is not a casual business. Improper shore removal and stripping can cause formwork failure. It can lead to deadly accidents, and multi-story buildings are highly prone to such accidents. We have seen several news coverages about a multi-story building collapse in leading newspapers & channels.

For example

The Hindu published about a building collapse in East Bengaluru on 8th October 2021. It was the third accident in a fortnight due to presumably faulty construction.

Improper Bracing

Bracing in formwork protects building or construction projects against strong winds, storms, etc. Improper bracing in formwork cause accidents with extra concrete weight, storms, and other external factors.

Other Reasons for Formwork Failure

Unable to manage the order and rate of concrete placement on the horizontal formwork. It leads to disbalance while loading and subsequent formwork failure.

Excess traffic, high headcounts of labours, hardware, and machines on the project site can cause vibrations and high impact. It also causes formwork failure and can lead to accidents.

Formwork dependability can be compromised due to out of plumb shore and shaky soils. Unstable land leads to weak settlement and is prone to collapse. We can see several bridges and flyovers collapse due to unstable ground.

Examples of Bridge or Flyover Collpase

Concrete beams of an under-construction flyover collapsed in Vizag (Times of India 6th July 2021), under-construction flyover collapses in Bandra, Mumbai (NDTV 17th September 2021), and many more.

Small missing details in formwork can cause fatal accidents. It includes improper or missing nailing, inadequate management to forestall pivot of pillar formations, improper corner tying, unable to arrange the locking gates etc.

Formwork should be planned with minute details and quality raw materials. You require a trustworthy supplier for quality formwork. Contact Nav Nirman to get the best formwork at the most competitive prices and expert help for your construction projects.

#formworksystems #constructionwork #formwork

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babydxhl · 11 months ago

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"Boats are female. Everyone knows you can’t call a boat after a man."

the talented mr ripley sentence starters | still accepting.

"Why not?" They had dragged the cushions and blankets up from the cabin and onto the prow, the fibreglass hull cold against their skin and a sharp breeze slicing through the warm night off the California coast.

"It's my boat," Mary says after a moment, a little petulant, "I can name it whatever I want."

She turns onto her stomach, peering down at the water — an otherworldly blue glow shines back. Dinoflagellate algae. Thousands of creatures no bigger than her eyelash all clinging together in the waves.

She had not bought the small — compared to the fishing boats in the Santa Clara dockyard — cruiser yacht, as yet unnamed, to come look at nature. But a bout of insomnia and a looming heatwave mean it's a nice perk.

#buying luxury boat to do crime but immediately using it to take star to see bioluminescence ofc #;;ask.#pierprincess

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rubykarelia · 2 years ago

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L'ATELIER ROUGE (short story, horror, 2021)

“With the sugar lace?”

“Please, and the candy pearls,” Vivienne replied insistently. She perused the crisp laminated pages of wedding cakes that Miss Blossom had brought as samples.

“And you said pink piping,” Miss Blossom mused as she sketched in her notebook as if she was da Vinci, the tiered buttercream her Vitruvian man. Blossom was the cake designer in Beverly Hills ever since Monsieur Sucré was disparaged after an E Coli outbreak at a Wilshire baby shower.

“No, red,” Vivienne interjected. “Please.”

“Red it is,” Blossom assured her. “And you’re sure we don’t need to call Mr. Beaumont to confirm?”

“No, he’s so busy,” Vivienne sighed, looking down at the mascarpone-frosted chantilly on page 10. “He’s been working late, taking on more cases. I’m sure he’ll appreciate any cake, as long as it’s not made of take-out Chinese.”

“Oh, I promise—nothing of the sort!” Blossom laughed a little too hard. “Perhaps the two of you are saving for a nursery?” There was something saccharine in her voice, a presumptuous upturn to her lips sugaring her words.

Vivienne quickly lifted her eyes, furrowing her brow, confused.

“Please forgive my romantic abandon,” Blossom back-pedalled. “I just

know the two of you will have the most beautiful children.”

Vivienne’s smile tempered, and the movement behind her eyes paused. “Do I look pregnant, Liza-Beth?”

“No, Ms. Beaumont, please. I wasn’t insinuating—I’m sorry. I never should have said anything. Just my imagination.” Blossom recoiled.

“I tried on my mother’s gown last night,” she began, gazing down as if she was recalling a torment from ‘Nam, “and it wouldn’t fit in the stomach. It’s funny. My mother herself would tell me I should start pilates again. Or put me on a diet. No eating before dinner, no white foods, no drinkable calories.”

Blossom’s mouth was frozen in a contrite grin. Vivienne could tell that she had nothing to say, maybe because she agreed that her stomach was swollen, and it was the first thing the woman had noticed when she had walked through the door. But Vivienne felt sure that she couldn’t be pregnant; Victor—or Mr. Beaumont as he was known around his office and oftentimes to close friends—hadn’t touched her in months.

“I’m sure you’re quite busy, too, Ms. Beaumont, just like your fiancé. I’ll let you go. I’ll see you next week for a tasting.”

Vivienne arose, smoothing the tweed fabric of her skirt with her manicured hands.

“Thank you, Miss Blossom,” she smiled, “you’re truly a lifesaver.”

* * *

Vivienne swiftly swooped into her car, a gift from Elliott’s father. She set off for home, weaving through the cobbled veins of the wedding district and towards the honeymoon of Beverly Hills. She didn’t feel very well. She hated the way her stomach felt too intimate against the steering wheel, too comfortable bridging the waist of her underwear. She suddenly felt too big for the car, her coiffed hair grazing the sunroof, legs screaming from their tight dashboard chamber. Pearls of oily sweat began to puddle on her forehead and upper lip as if her body was trying to make even more of itself. She had to stop and reach for the silk scarf in her pocket and try to pare these new extremities, wipe herself away.

A dimly lit shop caught her eye from across the street. Its brick cladding was caked with city grime, and there was an unseasonal frost speckled on the window panes. L’Atelier Rouge, the awning read in a curly, barely-legible font. A headless mannequin stood proudly in the window, trussed in a shocking 22-inch-waist girdle. Vivienne strangely felt a twinge of jealousy, gazing at that fibreglass model. She killed the motor and decided she needed to go in.

Inside L’Atelier Rouge was undoubtedly organised and thoughtfully ornamented but dusty, cramped. Each small surface—and there were many—had a film of yesterday, so concentrated in some places that it looked like ashes had been spread in the alcoves between skinny statues and lingerie racks. Curtains with parted red lips mounted bare brick walls, as if they were opening to some absurd theatre. Dress forms cliqued in beautiful armies of boasting breasts and feather boas. Even their limbs—though maimed like Greek statues that had weathered with age—were adorned in pearls and garter belts. They look beautiful, thought Vivienne, making a mental note. I’ll pick up a garter, too.

Vivienne saw no associates, feeling strangely impelled to ask a mannequin for assistance. She approached one of them, its waist wrung like a damp towel in a crimson corset. Her fingers unfurled and outstretched to the satin, tracing the strict architecture. She held the waist in both hands as if she was about to lead the form into some grand arabesque. The figure was so tiny that her fingers almost met at the small of its back.

“Welcome,” a voice said from behind her. Vivienne flinched and swivelled. She met the wired eyes of an older woman, thin and delicate. She had unnaturally vermeil hair that had been twisted into neat curls atop her wool blazer. She smiled somewhat knowingly, her thin lips painted in a severe ruby lacquer.

“Hi,” Vivienne rasped, clearing her throat.

“Mother Francine,” the woman extended her polished, ancient hand. “Welcome.”

“Vivienne,” she replied. “Thank you.”

“That’s a vintage piece,” the woman explained. She wasn’t warning Vivienne against letting her hands wander—she was bragging. “Made in Paris in 1929, completely flawless. We restored the eyelets downstairs.”

“It’s incredible,” Vivienne said earnestly, turning towards the mannequin once again. She could feel the woman’s eyes studying her.

“Are you looking for something?” she asked.

Vivienne paused. She wondered why the shop made her freeze up, unable to rehinge her jaw and exchange niceties like a normal patron.

“Yes,” she finally admitted. She shook her head inwardly, scolding herself for being so awkward. “I am looking for something. I’m getting married next month.”

“And you’re looking for a husband?”

Vivienne couldn’t move again, and confusion crept into her smile. The woman gave a guttural laugh—her throat seemed to process each sound through metal mesh.

“I’m joking, my love,” she smiled. It wasn’t funny, but Vivienne aped along. “I’m sure your fiancé is marvellous. He sure does have good taste.”

“I’m looking for a garter belt,” Vivienne confessed. “And a corset.” She almost wrapped her arms around her abdomen in a shameful embrace. The woman looked at her stomach anyway as if she noticed its prominence.

“We’ll fix you right up,” she observed.

* * *

“I think this one will suit your complexion, my dear,” Mother Francine said, carrying a cream corset in her arms like a small child. They had transitioned into the dressing room—a funhouse of mirrors and scarves and drapes. The lighting was nothing like the stringent temperature of a department store; it was honeyed and warm like her grandmother’s boudoir. She took off her blazer and blouse. “But first.” Mother Francine drew a measuring ribbon like a sheathed sword and stood behind her.

The tape wrapped around her near-naked form. She watched as Mother Francine studied her body in the mirror, her lips miming silently in some sort of calculation. Vivienne could bear the looking but cringed as the tape tightened its grasp. She had to keep herself from jumping as Francine’s fingers pinched her abdomen for a quick second.

“I’m a little bigger than I used to be,” she apologised instinctively. “I suppose I’ll need a larger size.”

“No, no,” Mother Francine insisted. She swapped the tape for the corset and began the binding process. “They’re all small. No such thing as a large corset. You have to train yourself to wear them.” She began to fasten the lace with the same vigour as a protective mother securing her child’s seat belt. “Like a wild animal needs to be tamed. Your body is trying so hard to be big, but you tell her to be small, no matter what she says.”

Finally, Mother Francine stepped back. Vivienne was surprised at how tight it was, how eerie that satin could serve as skin. Her hands found her hips, minding the exaggerated dips.

“Wow,” Vivienne laughed proudly. “I look like a question mark.” Mother Francine laughed and called her colourful.

Vivienne put a hand on her stomach and wondered where it went. For a moment, she lifted her palm to where it used to protrude—it was strange to feel air where skin was meant to be. She couldn’t suppress her smile.

Suddenly, a small man entered. Vivienne gasped and hugged her torso, now scant in both clothing and volume. She’d never felt so naked and small—she wondered if such words meant the same thing.

“Oh, child, I’m sorry,” Mother Francine sighed. “This is my son, Silas.” Though he had to be in his mid-forties, something about Silas was small, childlike, maybe even naive; he was short, and his suit draped off of his extremities like there had been a mix-up at the dry cleaners. Vivienne released herself and gathered her composure.

“Oh, wonderful,” she remarked. “How do you do?”

“He’s on vocal rest. All that singing.”

“How cool,” Vivienne smiled. Silas reciprocated with a closed-lip grin and handed his mother a garter belt.

“Marvellous,” Mother Francine sighed. “Silas, doesn’t Miss Vivienne look beautiful?” He nodded three times, his eyes staying on Vivienne’s, as if his accordance was choreographed.

“Thank you so much. I love it.” Vivienne couldn’t stop looking in the mirror.

“My pleasure. Perhaps you can return soon with your gown and try the entire ensemble,” Mother Francine rasped. “But before you go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t show you the museum.”

The three walked down a dark set of stairs leading to the basement of L’Atelier Rouge. Mother Francine flicked a switch and the room ignited with spotlights, revealing an array of dress forms. Each was adorned in an intricate, vintage piece, manned by an engraved plaque.

“Wow,” Vivienne mused, still cinched in her corset. “This is incredible.”

“It’s been a lifelong passion of mine and Father Frances, my husband,” Mother Francine contended. “He labours each day away in the workshop, right over there.” Her finger gestured towards a wooden door. White light gleamed beyond its cracks. “Lacing, sewing, boning.”

“Boning?” Vivienne asked.

“The structures that keep you nice and conformed, dear,” Mother Francine replied. “Come, come. Look at this. It’s a nineteenth-century.” Before them was a Victorian piece made of gilded brocade. Vivienne always thought that something so old would have to be in black and white, but it was in mint condition, its colours still gleaming and gems winking at her as she admired its arches. “They used whalebones, see, to maintain the shape.”

“A skeleton into a skeleton,” Vivienne mused before she could catch her words.

“Yes,” Mother Francine attested with a smile Vivienne had never seen before. “And look here, child.” She motioned Vivienne and her son—who followed in a seemingly conditioned obedience—towards another piece in her collection. The plaque read Agnes Sorel Cotte in Linen, mcdl. It was an enchanting peach hue—the same that Vivienne often tried to replicate on her cheeks. She couldn’t help but admire the impossible waist, how it made her sympathise for the mannequin’s nonexistent spine. But what struck out to her the most was the circumstance of brown lining each armpit—the vestiges of ancient blood.

“It’s a French cut from the 1400’s. A lower neckline and the smallest waist of its time,” Mother Francine explained. “Twenty inches.”

“Goodness,” Vivienne puffed. She decided not to mention the stains.

“Of course, one can really go as small as they’d like. As I said, it’s manipulation. We’ve got you at a twenty-four, but we certainly could get to a twenty if you so desired.”

“Do you get many customers with such a request?” Vivienne gasped.

“Everyone wants it, but no one wants to admit it,” Mother Francine lamented. Turning to Vivienne, she unbuttoned her blazer, and then revealed her own torso.

Her grey skin folded over the top and out from under a white corset dripping in straps and laces of all sorts. Her bosom was pruned and translucent, and below, the garment cinched her middle to a disconcerting size. Vivienne knew she had necklaces that reached a larger circumference. The valleys of her hips were defined and angular; unlike the soft arches of a question mark, Mother Francine pinched in at the waist like an ampersand.

Vivienne’s eyes opened fully, bracing for the woman to snap like a sawn redwood. But Mother Francine stood tall, her posture unflinching. It was as if the corset kept her from doubling over, serving more as a splint than a saw.

“Eighteen,” she stated plainly, then continued with a smile that showed her yellow teeth, “at eighty-one.”

The sight left Vivienne uneasy but ultimately besotted. She decided that Mother Francine was someone they should make books about, make movies about. She felt proud to have met her, better for it in some way. She supposed Francine was merely a committed saleswoman, too, trussing herself in her own garments to demonstrate their efficacy. And she did, of course, make the sale; upstairs, Vivienne paid for her garter belt and vowed to return on Friday with her mother’s gown.

“Thank you,” she said to Mother Francine, “you’re a lifesaver.”

* * *

That night, tucked in the eggshell nook of her walk-in closet, Vivienne tried on her mother’s gown once again. It still refused to zip shut in the back. She grew frustrated—she couldn’t contort her arms to reach the zipper anyhow, and Victor wasn’t home to help. For a few moments, she missed the confinement of the corset she wore earlier, the uncomfortable but cosy captivity in linen and lace.

When Friday came, Vivienne treated her appointment at L’Atelier Rouge with as much professionalism as an actress attending a dress rehearsal. She woke up earlier than required—abiding by an imagined call-time—folded her mother’s gown into a garment bag, waxed her underarms, and arranged her hair into the same updo of ringlets she planned to replicate for the wedding.

* * *

“Twenty-two,” Mother Francine celebrated as she stepped away from behind her customer. Vivienne smiled and felt her own curves with a loving hand. Once again, they were in the mirrored dressing room—there was plenty to look at, but Vivienne’s wide eyes remained fixed upon herself.

“Twenty-two,” Vivienne sighed. It hurt, of course, but numbed her ever so slightly in a way that she found almost pleasurable.

“I’ll leave you to put on your gown, dear,” Mother Francine croaked, “I’m sure I have a veil somewhere in the workshop. I’ll retrieve it, and then we can show Father Frances. He examines all of the garments—makes sure they work.”

Vivienne couldn’t look away from the mirror. There was a sentiment in her grin that only came out at charity galas and Christmas time. “Fabulous.”

She peeled the cream charmeuse out of the bag and stepped into it. Pulling it over her shoulders like a pair of suspenders, Vivienne rejoiced. She could just tell it was going to fit.

Silas appeared as if sensing that Vivienne would need a hand.

“Oh, hello, Silas,” she smiled, “Could you help me zip?” The timid fellow followed the command dutifully and delicately as if Vivienne was made of china.

“Pretty, don’t you think?” Silas nodded in agreement. “It’s my mother’s. She passed away just last February. I miss her plenty. It’s nice you get to work with your parents.” He stayed still.

“So, she says you’re quite the singer,” Vivienne remarked. She couldn’t stop letting words tumble out of her open mouth—it was as if that cinching feeling in her abdomen was slowly inching up to her throat. Silas offered a soft smile of assurance. “Could you sing something for me?”

His smile bowed and his eyebrows knit together in confusion as if his mother had never mentioned his vocal rest.

After a few moments, his lips pursed inward and he shut his eyes. Vivienne recognised this face as apologetic—the same look she assumed when her mother chastised her for cheating on her spelling test in the second grade. Silas reached for the buttons on his blazer and began to unbutton them one-by-one.

Silas was bound in the narrowest girdle Vivienne had ever seen. She didn’t know a man’s body was able to move that way, but figured such stiff, unyielding boning had been holding him in for quite some time. The condition of the piece was so poor that it quickly eliminated any allusions to sensuality; it was covered in seagreen mold and other mysterious stains, a crimson shade pooling on its edges and hardware. The lace wasn’t lace but cord—the braided polypropylene twine that Vivienne had only ever seen wrapped around Christmas trees to keep them on top of car roofs. This was not lingerie, but a cage. What was it trying to keep inside?

She froze for a long minute, a hand to her mouth. “Can you take it off?” she finally mustered.

To her surprise, Silas began to untether the cord. But when he took off the girdle, his body didn’t reset. He was forever indented. His torso was a greenish grey, wrinkled and creased as if it had pruned underwater. He had permanent bruises casting shadows on his ribs which were now recoiling into his chest. And on his sides were distinct punctures where the laces and hardware had broken skin. Some of the holes were lined in both crimson and ash—Vivienne recognised them as cigarette burns, especially the ones that left the linen and blemished his collarbones and shoulders. Some wounds weren’t as sympathetic than those that still blushed: a patch, just below where his heart should’ve been, was black as night. Vivienne couldn’t move, but if she were able to, she would’ve cringed from the scent—a coppery cocktail of mold and dried blood.

Suddenly, Silas resealed himself in his layers. He had heard his mother traipse back into the dressing room, proudly carrying a lace veil.

“How beautiful,” she said to Vivienne, still immobile, “you’re almost done.”

She placed the veil on Vivienne’s head, her eyes now obscured by its intricate weave. Silas stood plainly in the corner and resumed his habitual complacency. He was a great actor.

“Now, we must go see Father Frances.” Before Vivienne could gather her words, Mother Francine had grabbed her hand and led her towards the basement.

The procession down the stairs and into the museum had the frills of a wedding but the solemnity of a death march. Vivienne could not close her mouth nor eyes; neither were working very well. Her hand hurt, her skin woven between Mother’s skeletal fingers. And her stomach hurt, too, collapsed under steel and charmeuse.

She found herself outside of the wooden workshop door. Mother Francine primped each detail of Vivienne’s ensemble—she adjusted her veil, ringlets, and breasts as they expelled from her chest.

Behind her, the workshop door creaked open with a grumble. Still frozen, Vivienne managed to employ her neck—she met a stout man with dishevelled, greasy hair and a lit cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. He wore an apron spotted with so many stains that it appeared as if a Rorschach test was painted on his protruding gut. Sitting atop his wiry moustache, a pair of thick glasses magnified the vacancy of the man’s watching eyes.

“Father Frances,” Mother Francine called. “This is Vivienne, the bride.” Father Frances merely grunted in acknowledgement. “How does she look?”

The man situated himself before her and scanned her entirety. There was a tinge to his gaze that Vivienne couldn’t help but identify as disgust. Before she knew it, a salty tear fell onto her painted lip.

“I’m considering not wearing a corset at all, anymore,” she muttered nervously, “I’m not feeling very well.”

Mother Francine furrowed her brow. “Cold feet. That’s normal.” Father Francine, now behind her, wrapped a hand around her waist, inspecting his work.

“Tighter,” he croaked to his wife. Vivienne was aquiver and tried to still herself, though this effort only made her tremble all the more.

“It hurts,” she tried, knowing the complaint would be left unheard.

His hand still on her stomach, Father Frances paused, then lifted his eyes to Mother.

“Mother,” he rasped, “Feel this.”

The old woman pursed her puckered lips in concern and extended a hand to Vivienne’s abdomen. “Quickening.” It was then that Vivienne could feel it too—the unmistakable clamber of life as it writhed below her humming heart.

“Tighter,” Father Frances insisted once again, and he pulled the reins of the corset with such force that everything went black.

* * *

Vivienne barely awoke, folded in a dank recess of the workshop. Her lungs and lips laboured to lap at the air in arrhythmic gasps. She tried to unleash a scream, but no sound emerged. With her eyes beginning to adapt to the stringent light of the workshop, Vivienne noticed blood pooling beneath her. She moved her hands to her hips, still clothed in the corset and her mother’s gown. So much of her was gone.

In fact, the quarter was littered with discarded dresses, each sequinned with a distinct iteration of sparkle. She thought she saw the ruby of a ballroom, the bubblegum pink of a sweet sixteen, the magenta of a quinceañera.

Vivienne was weak, unmoving. Her vision began to thin into a new obsidian. Before her, Father Frances played a discordant lullaby as he worked. His instrument was an industrial file and a milky rib that he pared into punctuation.

#fiction

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treason-and-plot · 3 years ago

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“Boss, I need to talk to you,” says Spencer loudly, interrupting a spirited debate Raj is having with Lincoln about wood versus fibreglass hulls, while Lincoln’s wife Jasmine sways and hums along to the track the DJ is playing on the deck above. Raj turns and frowns, displeased by Spencer’s lack of decorum.

“I’m sorry, Spencer, I’m in the middle of a discussion,” he says. “Is it urgent?”

“Would I have interrupted you if it wasn’t?” Spencer bristles. Raj gives Lincoln a tight smile, and Lincoln laughs dismissively and says no problem, Raj had better take care of the business at hand, and he and Jasmine will head down to the bar and catch up with him later.

“What’s happened?” says Raj to Spencer after Lincoln and Jasmine have wandered away. “Were you able to complete the task I set you?”

“Yeah, it was a piece of piss,” says Spencer with a satisfied smile. “All we have to do is set up the receiver, and we should be able to hear any conversations he has in his car as clear as a bell.”

“Good work,” says Raj, his shoulders relaxing. “So what’s the urgent matter that you need to talk to me about?”

“We’ve got a gatecrasher,” says Spencer. He pauses for dramatic effect while Raj waits. “Warren the Wanker.”

“Warren Sandler is on my boat?” says Raj. “Right now?”

“Yeah,” says Spencer. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” says Raj.

“Nothing?” says Spencer, a patch of red skin flaring under his eye. “The fu-“

“Spencer, the place is crawling with journalists and other media types who would love nothing better than to be able to report on an altercation between Warren Sandler and myself,” says Raj. “I’m sure Mr Sandler himself would like nothing better than that. But I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. My revenge will be a particularly enticing dish when it is eventually served, but it will not be served tonight. We will treat Warren exactly the same as all our other guests. Is that understood?”

“Understood, Boss,” mumbles Spencer.

“Now,” says Raj, “Quickly tell me what method you had to employ to break into Lincoln’s SUV. Was it the pick, the wedge, the laser key, or the jiggler?”

“None of ‘em,” says Spence, his voice gruff with amusement. “The fucking idiot had left it unlocked.”

#Spencer #Raj #return to isla paradiso #5 years later #Lincoln #sims 3 story #ts3 story #Jasmine #sims story #Sims Stories

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vincentbriggs · 4 months ago

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Made another petticoat for Mr. Fibreglass out of a big piece of olive green fabric I found at the thrift store. It's polyester, but he has no sweat glands so he doesn't mind. It's very swishy, unlike the silk dupioni one over top of it, but sadly didn't really cause a discernible increase in skirt volume. I suppose he needs another one in a bulkier material.

I brought this project to work so I'd have something to do on slow days when I finish early, and I finished all the inside edges on the industrial serger there. The fabric was 3 and a half metres and I cut 2 long strips off one edge for the ruffle, and the rest of it into 2 large rectangles for the front and back. The waist ties are cotton twill tape and I just pleated the selvedge to them and machine sewed them down. I don't know why I made the pleats so small, and therefore much more time consuming than they needed to be.

I tried using a narrow hemmer foot for the hem. Since the fabric is so slippery and I haven't had much practice yet with hemmer feet, it came out kind of bad in quite a few places, but that's ok on a polyester undergarment for a mannequin.

#sewing #petticoats #mr. fibreglass

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slut-kiss-g1rl · 4 years ago

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geostorm <3

FADE IN:

INT. COURTROOM

GERARD BUTLER is at a COURT HEARING... in the FUTURE!

GERARD BUTLER

It is the future. Natural disasters have become alarmingly commonplace. Hurricanes, mudslides, floods, you name it. The level of destruction is catastrophic.

RICHARD SCHIFF

To be clear, this is the FUTURE you’re talking about?

GERARD BUTLER

The nations of the world have finally decided to take action. So, pooling our resources, we’ve invested heavily in environmental research and clean energy, and cracked down heavily on industrial emissions standards-

(laughs and laughs and laughs)

Just kidding! We’ve built a giant orbital platform that shoots the bad weather with space missiles and space lasers, of course.

RICHARD SCHIFF

So you’re the genius who built the space station. But instead of just making you the chief engineer, which would make sense, we made you director of the whole multi-national program, despite the fact that you have no administrative skills or political experience and mostly get what you want by yelling at people and punching them in the face?

GERARD BUTLER

That’s correct, you useless government fucks. You can all lick my sweaty gonads.

(moons everybody)

RICHARD SCHIFF

You’re fired and we’re giving your job to your little brother Jim Sturgess. At least he can do a passable American accent.

GERARD BUTLER

Och, ye dinnae hae ta be a deck abote et!

INT. SPACE STATION

Engineer RICHARD REGAN PAUL is aboard the WEATHER STATION when he notices that somebody has stuck a SMARTPHONE on an important CIRCUITBOARD.

RICHARD REGAN PAUL

Oh crap, somebody’s sabotaging this hundred-trillion-dollar space program using consumer electronics! I better draw everybody’s attention to this and alert my superiors!

(falls down and hits head very hard)

Duhhhh I mean I should hide this evidence and tell nobody yessss.

He stashes the EVIDENCE, but shortly afterwards the CORRIDOR he’s walking through is SEALED and all the WALL PANELS START BLASTING OFF!

RICHARD REGAN PAUL

What the fuck? Why would we design them to be able to do that? What possible situation could arise in a space station when we’d need to get rid of the WALLS in a hurry? This makes no-

(spaced)

The SPACE STATION then proceeds to turn a bunch of VILLAGERS in AFGHANISTAN into SNOWMEN.

INT. WHITE HOUSE

JIM STURGESS is having a meeting with the movie’s entire supply of Oscar-nominated actors.

JIM STURGESS

So yeah, we kind of murdered a bunch of innocent people with a giant ice ray like Mr. Freeze, oops. We need to send up an international team of brilliant engineers to the space station to investigate what went wrong, despite the fact that there’s already an international team of brilliant engineers ON the space station.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ANDY GARCIA

No way, Jim. As the president, I can’t have foreigners touch this station which has been funded and staffed predominately by foreigners! We’ll send up Americans.

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE ED HARRIS

ONE American. I mean if we’re going to half-ass this thing, let’s half-ass it, y’know?

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE MARE WINNINGHAM

I am also in this scene for some reason.

JIM STURGESS

Ugh fine, let’s send up Gerard. It’ll take some doing though, he and I haven’t really gotten along in the vague amount of time since you gave me his job. Seriously, the timeline is super nebulous, it could have been anything between a week and five years.

ED HARRIS

I have faith you can convince him, Jim. As your father figure and mentor, you know I support you in everything, and if you ever need somebody you can implicitly trust-

JIM STURGESS

We get it, you’re the villain, whoop-de-doo.

(leaves)

EXT. LOSER SHACK

JIM goes out to see GERARD, who is hanging with his DAUGHTER.

JIM STURGESS

Hey bro, the space laser’s been acting up. Think you could pop up to space real quick and fix it? Thanks.

GERARD’S DAUGHTER

Dad, no! You can’t go back to space! It’s too dangerous! Don’t abandon me like this!

GERARD BUTLER

OH GOD NOT THIS FUCKING TROPE. Yeah, parents should never do work that takes them away from their families for any amount of time or puts themselves at risk, no matter how important it is. I’m a shitty father because I’m agreeing to go save hundreds of millions of lives, possibly including yours. Shut the fuck up, you little turd.

GERARD immediately storms off and goes to SPACE.

EXT. HONG KONG

Suddenly the movie remembers the CHINESE BOX OFFICE and cuts to HONG KONG, where DANIEL WU is heading home with some SHOPPING.

DANIEL WU

(looks around)

Aw fuck. A famous capital city in a disaster movie? This isn’t gonna end well.

Sure enough he drops some EGGS on the ground and they immediately begin to FRY!

DANIEL WU

Holy shit the ground is apparently as hot as a stovetop! You’d think this is something the people in the street would have noticed, but uh, I guess all our shoes are made entirely of thermally nonconductive silica fibreglass?

(jumps in car, speeds off)

And our tires too, don’t forget our tires!

DANIEL drives through the streets as the pavement CRACKS and FIRE erupts out of the SUPERHEATED PAVEMENT!

DANIEL WU

Damn, the space station must have done that! Not that we ever explain how geothermal energy could possibly be controlled by space lasers!

INT. SPACE STATION

GERARD arrives aboard the SPACE STATION to meet the team of ENGINEERS.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Welcome, Gerard! I am an asshole. A smug, unlikeable asshole. The exact kind of jerk you’d think would turn out to be the saboteur. Which is kind of awkward, because I DO turn out to be the saboteur.

AMR WAKED

It’s okay, I’ll cover for you by red herringing as hard as humanly possible in every scene I’m in.

(lurks sinisterly)

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Meanwhile I’m the station’s commander. I exist to be your sort-of love interest with whom you never get beyond meaningful eye contact, and to make you seem hypercompetent by standing around uselessly while you do everything important.

GERARD BUTLER

Okay then, now that everybody’s in position let’s get this 2012-but-with-weather/Gravity-except-stupid-and-with-more-explosions hybrid on the road! Bring on the barrage of gratuitous global annihilation!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Actually there’s nowhere near as much of that kind of thing as the trailers promised. But if you like scenes where someone stares at tiny gobbledegook on a computer screen and explains what plot points it discloses, we’ve got a buttload of that!

GERARD BUTLER

(puppy dog eyes)

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Oh fine, here’s one to tide you over.

EXT. TOKYO

Giant hail in Tokyo!

INT. SPACE STATION

GERARD BUTLER

Ta! Now let’s look at that satellite that fried Hong Kong.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Uh, oops, unfortunately that malfunctioning satellite got smashed beyond usefulness because the hydraulic arm which was holding it malfunctioned!

GERARD BUTLER

Fine then, let’s look at the surveillance footage from when Richard Regan Paul got spaced.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Um well we can’t see the footage of that wall malfunction because the footage has also malfunctioned.

GERARD BUTLER

Wait though, there’s still a useable recording in a leftover bit of wall that got stuck in a solar array panel! Let’s go for a spacewalk and get it.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Sure thing WHUH OH while you’re trying to retrieve that malfunctioning bit of wall, your space suit has malfunctioned!

GERARD BUTLER

(bouncing off every part of the space station)

HEY YOU KNOW WHAT, I’M STARTING TO THINK THAT MAAAAYBE THERE’S JUST A SMIDGE OF SABOTAGE GOING ON.

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Damnit! Turns out that by the time you’re committing sabotage to cover up your sabotage to cover up your sabotage to cover up your sabotage, it starts to get kinda obvious what you’re doing.

(pause)

Nnnnnot that I have anything to do with that. Right, Amr?

AMR WAKED

(hovers creepily at the edge of frame)

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Exactly.

GERARD retrieves the DATA from the WALL FRAGMENT, but finds that he can’t ACCESS IT.

GERARD BUTLER

Oh crap, only a high-level government official could have restricted the data like this! That means that SOMEBODY extremely high-ranking is behind all this, but we don’t know who!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

It’s Ed Harris. Everybody has figured this out already.

GERARD BUTLER

I have to tell Jim about this. But they might have bugged our comms, and my message may be intercepted by whoever the traitor is.

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

It is quite obviously Ed Harris.

GERARD BUTLER

I better use a code.

(calls Jim)

Hey there, Jim! Just thought I’d stop in the middle of this deadly crisis to randomly reminisce. SOMEtimes I think about that old WHITE porch we used to have at our HOUSE, where our pathetic inbred ASSHOLE of a father used to get FUCKED up on tequila and whale on US with a wrench. Glad that’s all OVER.

JIM STURGESS

A high-ranking government traitor? Why that could only be-

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

ED HARRIS, IT’S ED HARRIS YOU IDIOTS, THERE'S NO OTHER REASON FOR HIS CHARACTER TO EXIST

JIM STURGESS

-the president! America is soon scheduled to hand control of the space station over to an international committee. The president must be causing these disasters in order to retain control!

GERARD BUTLER

Right. Because after a fuckup of this magnitude, obviously the last thing people will want to do is remove the administrators responsible for killing everybody.

JIM STURGESS

And he’s not gonna stop with these penny-ante special effect showcases, either! He’s trying to chain a bunch of them together and bring on a geostorm!

GERARD BUTLER

You mean the tiny, ugly-ass sports compact from Isuzu?

JIM STURGESS

Not a Geo Storm, a GEOSTORM! A made-up, probably impossible meteorological phenomenon where it storms everywhere on the planet at once! According to our computers, this precise sequence of weather disasters - including the ones which the space station hasn’t caused yet - will lead to a geostorm in EXACTLY the nice, round timeframe of ninety minutes!!

GERARD BUTLER

Fuck! Fine then, let’s do an emergency shutdown of the station so it can’t frag the planet. This potentially apocalyptic orbital weapons platform DOES have an emergency off switch, right?

JIM STURGESS

Well, yes... but, ha ha, it turns out it can only be activated using the president’s biometrics. So if the most dangerous thing ever made malfunctions, it can only be stopped if you can get the president into the right specific room quickly enough.

(shrugs awkwardly)

Fortunately, I have been provided with a convenient secret service girlfriend who can grab the president for us!

ABBIE CORNISH

Okay then, I’ll-

JIM STURGESS

Plot devices don’t speak, honey.

ABBIE CORNISH

Then why does this movie have any dialogue at all?

INT. DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

JIM and ABBIE go to find PRESIDENT ANDY at the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION in ORLANDO. But first they run into ED HARRIS.

JIM STURGESS

Ed, thank god I ran into somebody I can trust! We need to grab the president so we can shut down this Bond villain-esque weather scheme.

ED HARRIS

Uh, okay. I have the president right here in this gun. Stand still so that I might fire him at you.

JIM STURGESS

Wha - YOU?! EVIL?!? DWAAAHHH?!?!?

ED HARRIS

Don’t patronize me. Anyway, part of my plan is to set off a giant lightning storm here and kill everybody in line of succession ahead of me, so I become president!

JIM STURGESS

Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve gone to the trouble of pointing out it’s an election year! Do you honestly expect an administration that ran an environmental program so badly that it KILLED THEM ALL to get reelected?

JIM and ABBIE grab ANDY and run for it! Then a fuckton of LIGHTNING starts DESTROYING THE DNC!

BYSTANDER

Man, those Russian hackers have really stepped up their game.

(incinerated)

ABBIE CORNISH

Quickly, we can get away using this SELF-DRIVING cab we just commandeered! Since I’m driving it there might seem to be no reason for us to point out that it’s a SELF-DRIVING cab, so I guess now the audience has already figured out we’re shortly going to be pulling some trick where it SELF-DRIVES. We’ll still act like we’re being clever, though.

ED HARRIS

Chase that cab, my suicidally dedicated minions! Meanwhile I will teleport to the road ahead of them, so I can set up a rocket launcher ambush! Nothing screams “accidental death” like getting blown up by a fucking rocket launcher. FIRE!

MINION

Uh, you sure you don’t want to wait until we can see who’s driving? Disregarding any possible self-driving tricks, cabs are pretty interchangeable and that could in fact be entirely the wrong car-

ED HARRIS

I SAID FIRE!

They BLOW UP THE CAB! But then ANDY appears and shoves a GUN in ED’S FACE.

ANDY GARCIA

That’s right, we sent the empty cab driving towards you at sixty miles an hour! And now here we are, having caught up to it on foot within the next twenty seconds. My legs are KILLING ME.

ED HARRIS

Come on Andy, you should still let the geostorm happen! My theory is that the massive catastrophe which is going to demolish the face of the planet will handily attack only our political enemies and we’ll be fine!

ANDY GARCIA

Goddamn, how is it that each new layer of your motivations is even dumber than the last?

EXT. EVERYWHERE

Meanwhile DIRECTOR DEAN DEVLIN looks under the COUCH and finally finds the movie’s MISSING DISASTER EFFECTS, and they all start happening at once! Ice storms in Rio! Fire storms in Moscow! Tsunamis in the desert!

GERARD BUTLER

Opposite weather, is it? In that case I’m guessing London is currently having a pleasant sunny day HEY-OOOHHH!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

But we’re not doing so great here in space either. Somebody’s set off our self-destruct system, and the station’s gonna explode in [amount of time left in which the geostorm can still be averted + just enough time for a thrilling escape]!

GERARD BUTLER

Wait a minute, according some kind of plot mumbo jumbo, the only one who could have started the self-destruct protocol is... ROBERT! You little traitor, you’re working for Ed!

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Okay okay, you’ve got me, but SURPRISE I had a gun strapped to the underside of this desk and now you haven’t got me at all, HA!

GERARD BUTLER

What was your plan if I’d confronted you in literally any other room?

ROBERT SHEEHAN

Clearly I must have guns strapped underneath every surface in the entire space station.

(opens fire)

Aw yeah, no better strategy for staying alive than shooting bullets in a room which is separated from the vacuum of space by a single pane of-

ROBERT accidentally SPACES HIMSELF! The movie does not reveal whether, in his last moments of consciousness, RICHARD’S FROZEN, ORBITING CORPSE happens to collide FOOT-FIRST with ROBERT’S CROTCH, so one is forced to assume that it DOES.

INT. SPACE STATION STOPPING ROOM

Back on EARTH, ANDY arrives in the ROOM he has to be in so that he can turn off the SPACE STATION.

ANDY GARCIA

All right, we did it! I just used my biometrics to activate the thing, so now the world is saved! Right?

JIM STURGESS

Actually Gerard still has to get to another specific room on the station itself and press a big “YES” button for it to actually work.

ANDY GARCIA

OF COURSE. What was I thinking, we can’t let this emergency shutdown be activated merely by having the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED FUCKING STATES TURN IT ON WITH HIS OWN SPECIAL BODY SCAN. No, we need the extra, mega-secure step of having some engineer click “confirm”!

JIM STURGESS

Look, we wanted to do the president kidnapping scene but still give Gerard a big action climax, this was the only way.

In SPACE, GERARD and ALEXANDRA make it to the SPECIAL ROOM, shut down the SPACE STATION and SAVE THE WORLD!

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Phew, and with one second left to go! That’s right, because we turned off the weather machine when we did all the bad weather instantly cleared up; but if it had gone on for even one more second it would have become a global superstorm which would have wiped out most of humanity. What a sensible premise!

GERARD BUTLER

Unfortunately while we were able to get everybody else off the station, there’s no time left for you and I to escape. But I knew this when I stayed behind. I may not have been a good father, but I hope my daughter can at least appreciate the sacrifice I made by dying in space in order to save-

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Are you seriously copying Bruce Willis’s death from Armageddon?

GERARD BUTLER

Oh FUCK you’re right. Screw it, let’s just jump in a spare satellite and fly to safety then.

ALEXANDRA MARIA LARA

Hooray! I’m not even gonna ask why a weather satellite has room inside it for passengers!

They HOP ABOARD the SPACE EX MACHINA and fly away!

EXT. LOSER SHACK

Months later, GERARD, JIM and GERARD’S ANNOYING DAUGHTER are all hanging out and fishing.

GERARD BUTLER

Neat, our family’s come un-estranged! What a happy ending. Why if we keep the focus on stuff like this, and the fact that in Brazil the dog didn’t die, we can ignore the fact that millions of people just got horribly murdered!

JIM STURGESS

And the rebuilt space station is now in international hands as intended, and they’re gonna make sure none of this can ever-

GERARD BUTLER

Wait, what the fuck? They’re doing the space station again? After the last one turned out to be a city-destroying death ray which could be commandeered by a single nerd with a smartphone? That’s the least plausible ending this movie could have possibly had!

JIM STURGESS

Uh huh. Yeah, I’m sure in real life politicians the world over would instead start seriously committing themselves to environmental policy. Hmmm?

GERARD BUTLER

...Okay yeah this way’s more realistic.

---------------

>:(

#ur a bitch #<33 #submission

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seat-safety-switch · 3 years ago

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If there's one thing I wish my neighbourhood had, it's an auto parts store. Although the internet is delightful and my avowed preference for getting cheap new parts, your friendly local auto parts store is essential for those 4pm "oh shits" on Sunday afternoon. And without one close by, everything that breaks becomes a car drive away from getting a replacement part. Suddenly, if you've noticed two bad gaskets in one water pump replacement job, you've lost two hours of wrenching time just going back and forth.

Now, the chain that's closest to my place does have delivery, but only during the weekdays. A dude comes in a little Chevy hatchback with a giant fibreglass hat on the top bearing the logo of the store. He's used to delivering to big businesses like Ted's Car-Unfucking Salon, so when he encounters a regular house, he just doesn't know what to do. Most of the time, he leaves several hundred dollars' worth of parts on your porch right before flooring it on his way out of your neighbourhood.

Now, I haven't had any porch pirates in the last few years – Mr. Cho, who lives on my block, was very interested back in May 2016 when I went by his Friday night poker game and told him about the alternator that got stolen. In June of 2016, I was driving to work and I saw the fire department working hard to get down the body of some guy with no skin hanging off the street light. Ever since then, no problems. That might not be the case for your neighbourhood, which is not lucky enough to lay claim to a Mr. Cho or substitute good citizen thereof.

That's why I've adopted a sort of "middle-ground" policy to the entire auto parts store problem. They've got a pretty big parking lot over at the store, so why not just do the entire job out there? It's not like they can really do much to me once I've taken the front subframe out, and if I miss their closing time, I'm basically first in line for when they open.

The real genius of all this is that if I don't get my car running in time to go to work the next morning, I can just use my phone to order some parts to the office and hop into the hat-car as it leaves. Sure, a citizen riding shotgun on a parts delivery is not "allowed" by corporate, but he knows who I live near.

#mr. cho

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nobodyenjoysanything · 4 years ago

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New writing

Lord Archibald was a duck, a statuesque one with white plumage and a golden beak. His webbed feet were yellow-orange like the trumpet part of a daffodil and his eyes were perfect black circles in tufted depressions on either side of his soft face. He beheld himself in the mirror – a draftsman’s rhapsody of lines and textures, from the elegant French Curve of his back to the rough hatching of his under-feathers, to the jagged planes of his folded flight-feathers – he was the archetype, the prototype, the very planotype, of a duck. This was the thought he burnished in his mind, as he always did when adjusting his large, bicorne hat, decorated as it was with the flags of Italy and Eritrea, from his time in the old Italian quarter of Asmara, where he had served as a diplomat, heading the Italian Consulate there for a while.

Now he was surrounded by luxury and privilege, quite separated from the concerns of International diplomacy, on a large, partly artificial island off the coast of Yemen, just North of Djibouti, overseeing International trade relations and dividing his hobbies between inserting himself (largely unnecessarily and to the great annoyance of captains and port officials) in the various businesses of the shipping lanes, and the induction of his daughters into society.

Lord Archibald had two lovely, well-mannered children – the comely Isabella, who had debuted in Paris last fall and was educated in deportment with the Versaille school, having majored in ladies’ piano and polite conversation in their Montmartre department – and the heavier-set, but duskier and bigger-eyed Penelope, who studied Samoyedic agriculture, before switching to Cordon Bleu, majoring in marine gustation.

It was Penelope’s debutante ball this Spring, and the house was a-buzz with the particularities of preparations, for an army of servants would see to it that everything was arranged and polished and there was a different outfit from the finest silks and muslins and jacquard-ed cheesecloth for every hot hour of the brazen day and every cool minute of the turquoise night. Nor would any dainty go undiscovered in researching the menu for a fortnight of gentile festivities, for a swarm of chefs and wine-tasters and edible-perfumiers bustled in a spaghetti of tunnels under the family residence, and heads could be seen surfacing from cellar trapdoors and poking from outbuildings and smokehouses at all stations of the clock. Much industrious grumbling was done with hushed immediacy under sun-grizzled parasols and a keen naturalist could have spotted an entire menagerie of moustaches, twitching with muffled importance.

In these efforts, Lord Archibald was aided considerably by his giant, robot wife, who glided along, underground, on a network of subterranean monorails repurposed from the internal mechanisms of a missile silo. The bunker, concrete for the most part with fibreglass domes and glass chutes near the water’s surface, was built as late as the 1960s by a reclusive and vengeful oil tycoon. Modelled to resemble a crab, complete with claws, carapace and eye-stalks, it had been extended in the early 90’s into the body of the island, where the living, fossil-rich rock sang cavernously as Mrs Archibald hurtled through the darkness, delivering bouquets, wax-sealed invitations and cake samples, with the cataclysmic force of hundreds of tonnes of coach-built steel.

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angelaiswriting · 5 years ago

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Esme | John Shelby x Esme

[original picture: pinterest]

✏️ Pairing: John Shelby x Esme

✏️ Summary: Shot by Changretta’s men, Esme fights for her life while John slowly loses himself in a sea of pain and sorrow. (Requested by Anonymous)

✏️ A/N: I cried like a bitch :) Writing about Esme getting hurt gave me a breakdown HAHA but at least I like the end result. Also! This is different from my usual style so if you feel like it, let me know what you think of it! It’d be greatly appreciated xx

✏️ Beta-read by: @sweetvengeancee (even though she’ll hate me forever)

✏️ Warnings: angst and talks of loved ones dying, I guess ? + Esme getting shot, “fuck” and “fucking” said countless times, cursing, tears

✏️ Word-count: 3,086

The noose is tightening around his neck, choking his throat in a vicious, iron grip.

He can’t breathe – no matter what he does, no matter what he tries to think about, John Shelby can’t breathe. His lungs feel like they’re slowly drowning, veins and capillaries and cells filling with lead and petrol and fibreglass.

His fingertips have pins and needles and so do his arms, his legs, his feet, his cheeks. But he can’t feel them, because he…

He…

He can’t… feel anything.

The bullets keep on flying past him, grazing his cheekbones as they miss him by a breath even six hours after they were fired. They don’t whistle in his ears, they don’t whisper against his skin. There is no… no sound. They are silent – as silent as aunt Polly when she’s mad, as silent as his house on the rare day none of the kids is home.

He’s never heard of silent bullets. And John Shelby has seen the war – has lived the war. Survived it, even. But these are – and painfully so. And his wife’s pained gasp is the only sound exploding in his ears, ricocheting in his brain.

Even with his eyes closed, he can see her. Even when screaming, he can hear her. And it’s a sound so soft the rage of the moment should have drowned it out but it didn’t. It didn’t and now it plagues him.

It plagues him as he stares at her, motionless in her hospital bed, dressed in white.

If he managed to focus and delude himself enough, it would feel like on their wedding day, when he hadn’t exactly wanted to marry a Lee. But now he can’t – he can’t… He can’t. The dark purple under her eyes scares him, her pallor terrifies him – it stops his heart and his brain and it’s not because she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen; it’s not because he’s learnt to love her more than he loves himself, but because he-

Fuck.

He almost lost her. Today. A few hours ago. In front of their own home.

He almost lost her and while she’s there, fighting for her life like the fighter he knows she is, he can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. He can’t even feel – can’t feel the cramps in his shins, can’t feel the headache pounding inside his head, can’t feel the stings in his eyes nor the tears that have dried up on his cold cheeks.

He can’t hear Arthur and Tommy talking behind him, can’t hear the way his heart is thundering in his chest and in his throat and in his stomach.

All he hears is her pain – and the thud of her body as it hits the ground. And her whines. And the gurgling of her blood in her-

Fuck.

He’s choking. He’s choking on her blood – and on the tears he can’t shed. He’s choking on reality, that same reality that now feels worse than a nightmare. He chokes on the screams he can’t let out, not yet, chokes on the surreality of the moment, on the absurd quietness of the hospital room, chokes on the white of her dressings and on the red of her blood.

He’s seen her blood. He’s seen her blood when she accidentally cut herself while cleaning vegetables and he’s seen her blood when she gave birth to the additional two children he’s managed to bring into this world. But he… He would have never-

His eyes still see it – the blood squirting from the bullet wounds in her chest – the blood bubbling in her mouth – the blood staining the stones of the patio. The sight makes him sick. The memory makes him sick – sick to his stomach and to his heart, where it hurts the most.

But he can’t vomit. He can’t puke it out – can’t let the pain out – can’t…

He’s yelling at his brothers before he has the time to realize it. He’s yelling and cursing and bloody hell-

They make him cry, those two words. It definitely was, a bloody hell, back there, back at home, with those fucking… fucking fuckers… shooting his wife like a target at a funfair. He’s crying and screaming but he can’t hear himself – he can’t feel himself as his mind slowly drifts away, drifts into darkness and stillness and… cold.

He’s cold inside, John, even though his body is feverish with pain and rage and tears and blood. He’s cold and stale, and he can feel his limbs slowly but surely turning to stone as his possessed eyes stare into nothing.

Esme, she…

She knew it was coming. She has always known.

He’s nauseous as he thinks this is on him – whether his wife lives or dies, those bullet wounds are on him, her blood will always be staining his hands and his clothes and his soul.

It’s on him and on the Peaky Blinders. The Peaky fucking Blinders. They should have protected her – he should have protected her – protected her from this life and from their enemies.

He has vertigo as he sits there, on the cold floor of her hospital room, exactly where doctors and nurses don’t want him to be.

Your wife needs to rest, Mr Shelby.

If she makes it through the night, she might make it.

They never say it. They never say survives. Just like they never say death or life or she’ll live. Or she’ll die.

They say if we’re lucky – we, like they have shit to do with his wife, with his Esme. They say we like they’ll have to share his pain if she fucking dies. They say we like they’ll have to go home and explain to their kids that their Mummy is not… is never… that she’s fucking gone and that she’s never coming back – she’s not coming back because love didn’t save her, because all love did to her was put her in danger, shoot five bullets into her chest, cover her in her own blood in the only place that should have been safe – for her, for them, for the children – the only place he had promised her and his children would be their secret heaven.

They say all we have to do is pray – we again, like they are leaving her room to join hands in the corridor and pray to fucking God to spare her. Spare her because I don’t know what to do without her. Spare her because I love her more than life. Spare her because she’s a mother. Spare her because she loves life like nothing else – because she’s able to create life – because she’s given me new life. Spare her and take me – fuck, take me instead.

Take me. Take me. Take me.

But no one takes him, no one takes his life. And God is not going to help because God doesn’t give a fuck. God has taken Martha first and if He decides he wants Esme to join him, too, there’s shit John can do to stop Him.

He should have loved her more. Or, better, he should have proved to her how great his love for her was and the lengths it went. He should have taken her away from Birmingham – from England – take her to the other side of the fucking world. Somewhere where Shelby means nothing, where the Peaky Blinders have never been heard of. He should have taken her and the children to safety, should have listened to her and her gipsy witchcraft when she told him something was coming – and that it was coming for Shelby blood.

And she is Shelby blood, too, now. They have joined hands on their wedding day, they have mixed their blood and she is now Shelby as much as he is Lee. And blood means everything – to the Shelbys, at least.

And yet…

And yet, he has disregarded it. He has put her in danger and-

Fuck. He’s choking again. He’s choking on his own tears and on his own sobs because he’s never seen her like this – he’s never even thought he’d one day see her like this. And there’s nothing his hands can do to give him a break from this sight of her because even with his eyes closed, with the heels of his hands pressing against his eyelids, all he sees is her.

Her ashy skin. The dark circles under her eyes punching her. Her dry lips. Her hair – always so soft and curly and shiny now spread over a grey pillow.

He wants her to live.

Fuck, Lord, she doesn’t deserve this.

He wants to scream it – he desperately wants to scream it but his body can now take only one thing at a time and now – now he’s crying, he’s tearing at the seams and he feels thin and scattered everywhere. And he’s made of paper – Bible-thin paper, so delicate and fragile he could break at any given time. Head heavy, heart heavier, there’s nothing else he can do – not even when he runs out of tears, not even when his voice cracks and breaks and gets hoarser and hoarser the more he cries.

Where is that we now that he’s alone? Now that his wife is fighting the fight of her life alone? Where is that we now that he needs it? Now that his body has gone limp against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him?

There’s blood on his left shoe. It turns the brown leather darker and there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can conjure up to stop himself from staring at it. From getting lost in it.

He’s numb. He’s been numb on love so many times, but now… Now there’s nothing. Nothing worth feeling, at least.

Days bleed into nights and nights bleed into days and-

Bleed.

The word makes him scream as he hurls a glass of whiskey across aunt Polly’s living room. It centres the mirror – the mirror shatters – he doesn’t care about those seven years of bad luck because his bad luck is now. His bad luck is Esme fighting to live in a hospital bed. His bad luck is his children without a mother – again. His bad luck is a silent house and a weeping heart and a dead mind.

His bad luck is now. And now has such an abstract meaning, for he doesn’t know how much time has passed. He doesn’t care – he doesn’t care because he doesn’t have the strength to care. He doesn’t know it’s been twenty-seven days and eleven hours – well, part of him does know, at least.

It’s the part of him that doesn’t scream. The part of him that hides in the back of his mind and remains silent, waiting and hoping and praying.

But his children have been asking questions.

Where’s Esme?

Where’s Mummy?

When’s Mummy coming home?

Does Mummy not love us anymore?

He doesn’t know. But he doesn’t know how to tell them – how to tell them he doesn’t know when Mummy’s coming home. If. If she’s coming home. But he’s certain she loves them all – both her and Martha’s children and she loves them all so much that she’s been begging him to go away, to leave, to take the road together and see where it leads them.

But he can’t talk, he can’t form words – not in his mind, not in his mouth, not even in his heart. He cracks and breaks and he crumbles down to the floor like flakes of plaster in an old house.

And he feels that way – like an old house. Abandoned and empty and cold. The fireplace is freezing, the kitchen is silent. Weeds grow in the garden where roses and hydrangeas used to bloom. And he feels as dry as a potted flower forgotten inside, on the dining table, petals fallen and colours lost a long time ago.

And there are echoes in that house. Screams. There are screams tumbling down the dusty walls, ghosts that refuse to leave their mansion, their nest.

But he doesn’t want to become that. Doesn’t want to become a ghost. Doesn’t want for his house to turn empty and cold and silent. He wants his children to shout and Esme to sing and he wants to sit there, in the midst of that chaos, because only there he feels at home. Only then he feels alive.

Esme’s silent, though, and the children weep. They weep when they fall asleep and they weep when they wake up. Their teacher hasn’t seen them in almost a month and while she has come to check on them, she has found no one to open the door.

His brothers are the only ones who talk – Tommy and Arthur, that is; Finn is just as absent as John is. Michael hasn’t spoken much since leaving the hospital, scars on his chest and a cane in his hand. And Polly…

Polly has lost so many people that by now she knows what to do – and what not to do. She knows he doesn’t want to talk. She knows he only needs contact, even if nobody – not even John – knows how he needs it.

I’m sorry, John-boy.

We’re getting revenge for what they did to Esme.

That fucking wop will see who the Peaky fucking Blinders truly are.

I feel your pain, John.

No!

He wants to scream that word, wants its weight to leave his lungs.

No, Tommy doesn’t feel his pain. Tommy might have lost his wife, but this… No, he doesn’t know what this feels like. Doesn’t know how quickly and slowly at the same time you die, watching your unconscious wife – the fucking love of your fucking life – lie in a bed that isn’t hers. Doesn’t know how colours fade around you, how even the walls of Polly’s house bleed, how the wind howls and whines and moans through the leaves.

The ticking of the clock hanging over the mantlepiece is killing him. It’s driving him insane. It’s taking what’s left of his sanity.

And it makes him see ghosts.

He sees Martha, lives her death again, just a few hours after their daughter’s birth. He sees her youth, that same youth that used to sparkle in her grey eyes.

And then he sees her, sees Esme. Sees her maturity, sees the weight of a vagabond life in the lines of her face, in the expression wrinkles that appear when she smiles.

It’s the memory of her smile that gives birth to that thought.

I don’t want you to die.

He doesn’t want her to, doesn’t want to think of a life without her. Doesn’t want to stop and imagine all the ways he’ll have to rebuild himself and his children once she’s gone. If, he reminds himself. If she’s gone.

Polly brings him closer to her chest when he falls on his knees, whiskey still trickling down what’s left of the mirror. She brings him closer to her in her motherly embrace and his sobs intensify, his tears turn into a sea. And-

Please, don’t die.

God, please, don’t take her away from me. Away from us.

He can’t feel his body. His soul is leaving it through his tears. Here. And there. First left. Then right. Then right again. A salty tear sneaks into his mouth, the other stains Polly’s dress. Then, he loses count – not that he’s ever kept it.

Once she comes back home and she’s back to health, you’ll be free to go wherever the heart takes you.

Polly doesn’t say if. She says once.

Once she comes back home.

It sounds good. It feels good.

It’s almost real.

John can almost feel her skin under his fingertips – Esme’s. Esme’s skin. Like when they hold hands, or when he grabs her chin to kiss her, or when he makes love to her. It feels like hope – greater than that bloody all we have to do is pray.

Do some of your gipsy magic, aunt Pol.

He doesn’t say it, though, he doesn’t ask for it. It would mean deluding himself with lifeless hopes – lifeless rituals. He doesn’t ask Polly to do some trick just as he doesn’t pray to God.

If God truly cared, He wouldn’t have let Esme get shot.

She was innocent.

She is innocent.

He is the sinner. He should have got shot. He should be in that bed fighting for his life – or bleeding his life out just a step outside his home.

Days bleed some more, and nights shed their tears.

John is restless – he doesn’t know when it’s day and he doesn’t know when it’s night. The house is quieter than a cemetery – the children are at Polly’s – he can’t even bring himself to look after himself, let alone after a dodgeball team of kids.

Everyone else is there, though – Tommy, who’s left Charlie at Polly’s; Arthur and Linda, who have done the same with Billy; Finn and Ada; and even Michael. They feed him, they force him to wash and get dressed, and they give the illusion of a life still being lived.

Even though John still feels like that dry potted flower in that abandoned house.

Life starts again one Tuesday morning, though, and it does so just as unexpectedly as Esme got unexpectedly shot thirty-three days ago.

There’s a phone call, and its ringing noise throughout the empty house makes John curse and scream and wail as anger bubbles up again. And anger turns to rage and then to fury when Tommy forces him downstairs, pushes the receiver in his hand.

“Mr Shelby?”

He doesn’t recognise the voice – doesn’t even want to. The light of day burns his eyes and he’s not drunk enough to cope with today, not yet. So he just groans and then there’s that what the fuck do you want? that makes his sister Ada cringe – no one’s ever heard his voice so broken and cracked and lifeless.

“Your wife has woken up.”

The receiver falls to the floor and before it has the time to touch the somewhat dusty parquet, John is out of the door.

Are you crying yet or is it just me? For some reason, the mere thought of my bby Esme getting hurt pains me to no end haha

Feedback and PB requests are welcome! ❤️

TAGS (to be added to or to be removed from any list, shoot me an ask)

Everything: @idhrenniel @saibh29 @fuckthatfeeling @aya-fay @pebblesz892 @mblaqgi

Peaky Blinders: @whimsylavender @thethyri @friendleyneighbourhoodvillain @oddsnendsfanfics

People that might be interested: @sweetvengeancee @flowers-in-your-hayr @kellydixon01

#john shelby #john shelby imagine #john shelby x esme #peaky blinders #peaky blinders imagine #angelaiswriting #esme shelby #esme lee

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