#narcotics pit of despair

[schlock-luster-video]

On October 22, 2016, Narcotics, Pit of Despair: Flowers of Darkness was screened at the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival.

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Strange Books

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps) Alien: Why did this captain want to kill an aquatic mammal? Human: In a previous voyage it bit off his leg. Alien: And that is reason enough to drive them to madness? Human: I have seen boomers do it for being told to wait five minutes in a line so we set the bar pretty low there. -------------------------------------

Alien: So a man lost in the woods and being hunted by animals finds a stranger who takes him into the depths of your version of eternal torment? Human: Pretty much. Alien: Why in the name of the stars would a human follow a complete stranger who leads them into pits of darkness and despair!? Human: We hadn’t really been teaching the old “Don’t talk or follow strangers” thing to our kids as much back then. --------------------------------------

Alien: What is your people’s longest story? Human: Arabian Nights probably. Alien: What makes it so long? Human: The fact that it takes an average of a thousand and one days to finish it. Alien: Impossible! Human: I know right? Human: Filler arc writers have been trying to replicate it for years and never even get close to that kind of timetable. ------------------------------------------

Alien: So this is a novel about vampires and the solo surviving human? Human: Pretty much. Alien: How is that special? Human: Because at the end of the novel the lone human realizes that because everyone else is now a monster that has become the new norm, and as the only remaining human he is now the monster. Alien: That’s some heavy stuff. Alien: Why did the movie suck then? Human: Because it would have meant Will Smith was the bad guy, and he can never be the bad guy. ------------------------------------------

Alien: Run that by me again. Human: So there are animals on a farm that rise up against the farmer and take control of the farm. Alien: Seems straight forward. Human: And then they establish a corrupt communist state that only benefits a few of the animals and enslaves the others. Alien: ………. Alien: This is beyond bonkers. Human: If that’s too brutal for you then I would recommend watching “Chicken Run”. ------------------------------------------

Alien: I find it rather adorable how that simple human in this story likes to run his fingers through hair. Human: Oh no. Human: Which book was that again? Alien: Something about rodents and males I think. Human: Stop reading now. Alien: but- Human: Just stop while you are ahead. -------------------------------------------------- Alien: Why is this dark lord obsessed about jewelry? Human: It contains much of his power and is the one thing keeping his spirit tethered to the world. Alien: Is that not the same as that the dark lord who is incapable of murdering a small child? Human: That dark lord copied off the original dark lord who liked jewelry. Alien: Were they able to kill children at least? Human: He did have a lot of trouble dealing with four children sized men…… ------------------------------------------------------- Alien: So this story is set in the future and yet there are no firearms? Human: Well personal shields are cheap and very powerful in that universe, so having a gun is kinda redundant. Human: I would have thought the giant city sized worms that produce a space traveling narcotic. Alien: That is not as surprising as you might think. Human: Wait, seriously? ------------------------------------------------------------ Alien: So a werewolf and a vampire both want to mate with this human woman? Human: For some unknowable reason, yes. Alien: Which one wins her? Human: The vampire. Alien: Shame for the werewolf. Human: That guy’s creepy ass instead wanted to mate with her daughter. Alien: Why is that creepy? Human: She was a baby at the time. Alien: No wonder you drove werewolves into extinction. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Alien: So your planet is invaded by aliens who are so technologically advanced they cannot be defeated? Human: Pretty much. Alien: How did you defeat them in the end? Human: We sneezed on them. Alien: …………………. --------------------------------------------------- Alien: So this is a rodent that is also a vampire? Human: That drinks the blood of vegetables rather than humans. Alien: Vegetables do not have blood. Human: With how vividly they describe it being sucked out you wouldn’t know. --------------------------------------------------- Alien: These children have a magical house of tree and can travel through time? Human: They go throughout time on adventures. Alien: Wouldn’t that cause untold damage to the timeline and alter the present? Human: Oh without a doubt. Alien: Then why did they not stop? Human: Because later on an old man claiming to be a wizard said it was okay. Alien: That sounds so stupid when you say it out loud. Human: No better than a mysterious woman giving a guy a sword and telling him he is now king. ------------------------------------------------- Alien: Why does this goose have bumps? Human: I want you to know how much I am resisting hitting you with a book right now for that.

[whump-tr0pes]

Honor Bound 4 - 20

Honor Bound 4 - 20 (”I Know You’re in There Somewhere” Fight) - @badthingshappenbingo​​

Requested by @grizzlie70​​

~

This is a series. Start here, continued from here.

This is a sequel to Honor Bound, Honor Bound 2, Honor Bound 3.

AO3

Cw: Y’all, this is one really, really rough. We’ve got family members lashing out while fully dissoci@ted, so please be safe. Full list here: flashbacks, dissoci@tion, PTSD reaction, conditioning, misgendering (in a conditioned state), death discussion, mention of stitches/wounds, abusive language between family members (as part of dissoci@tion), narcotics mention, attempted gaslighting (while dissoci@ting)

~

The sky was streaked with brilliant pinks and oranges as the sun set over the lake. The trip to Crayton had taken all day: three hours there, two hours of shopping, three hours back. As Gray pulled up in front of the house, the front door opened. Finn and Isaac walked out.

Vera immediately tensed, icy panic sweeping through her. “What… they…”

“They would’ve contacted us if it was something really bad,” Gray said evenly, using the same tone of voice they had with Edrissa when she slid back into herself. Speaking like Vera was an injured animal. For a moment, it made Vera’s hackles raise.

Edrissa stared out the window, her hand already on the door handle as Gray pulled into the space for the car. “Wh-what if it’s Sam?” she whispered. “What if it’s, it’s Sam, what if they—”

“Hey,” Gray said as they put their car in park and turned it off. “Let’s—”

Vera and Edrissa both barreled out of the car and rushed to Finn and Isaac.

“What happened?” Vera demanded.

“Is it Sam?” Edrissa whimpered at the same time.

Finn held their hands out. They were shaking. Their eyes darted between Edrissa and Vera. They finally rested on Vera. Bitter fear clutched at her chest.

“Tori had a flashback,” Finn said quietly, and swallowed hard.

Vera’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh. I thought—”

“I mean…” Finn wet their lips nervously. “She’s still in one. And it’s bad.”

Vera pushed past Finn and Isaac. “Why didn’t you—” She cut herself off. It would have been useless if they had texted them on the phone they’d taken with them. What was she going to do, drive three hours to help Tori with a flashback the others could probably handle on their own?

Clearly they can’t handle it.

Don’t be a fucking asshole.

She pulled the door open and found Tori on a couch in the living room, trembling, her eyes wide, her chest heaving with sobs. Ellis sat beside her, their arms wrapped firmly around her. Almost as if they were holding her back from something.

Vera rushed to Tori and dropped onto the couch at her other side. Her hands shot out to hold her, then jerked back. “Tori,” she gasped. “Babe. Can I touch you?”

Tori turned her head towards Vera, her eyes looking right past her, unseeing. Seeing something else, somewhere else, entirely. Vera was sure of it. She looked past Tori to Ellis.

“Has she said—”

“Nothing,” Ellis whimpered. “She’s said nothing. I can’t get her to talk at all. I don’t know… I don’t know…”

“What set it off?” Vera murmured, forcing down the tears that burned in her eyes. “Why… what…?”

“She heard Sam screaming,” Finn whispered.

“What?” Vera looked up at Isaac as he stood in the doorway, frozen with horror. “Sam… screaming? Why didn’t you—” He looked towards the hall to the bedrooms and took a shaky step. Edrissa followed right behind, her hands pressed to her mouth, closer to Isaac than Vera thought she had ever been.

“Don’t,” Finn hissed, and stepped in front of Isaac. Edrissa lurched to a stop and fell back a step. “They’re sleeping. They’re sleeping for the first, first fucking time in, in weeks. Don’t wake them up.”

Isaac’s hands clenched into fists and he drew himself taller as he glared down at Finn. His body was lined with tension. Vera’s stomach lurched as she recognized the look in Isaac’s eyes: mission mode.

Finn grimaced and squared up with Isaac, shorter but so packed with a sort of exhausted desperation that they met his intensity. Edrissa’s eyes flicked between them where she stood, shivering and silent.

“I had to clean their wound,” Finn said raggedly. “It hurt. It’s getting infected. Then I gave them an extra morphine and now they’re sleeping. For the first time in—” Finn bit their lip, a flush creeping over their face. “You were out walking the lake with Gavin, so I didn’t feel the need to come, come get you and tell you that… So don’t… don’t wake them up, please…”

Tori shivered in Ellis’s arms. Vera leaned closer, her gaze still fixed on Isaac and Finn.

Isaac stared Finn down for a long moment, trembling with tension. Gray moved to his side and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Isaac…”

Isaac blinked and looked up at Gray. His shoulders slumped. “G-Gray, I…”

“It’s alright. Breathe. You’re safe.” That same low, even voice.

We’re all torn to pieces, and Gray feels like they have to put every single one of us back together. Vera swallowed despair mixed with bitter shame.

Isaac’s gaze flicked back to Finn. “Finn… I… I’m s-sorry…” He opened his hands and took a quavering breath.

Finn stepped back and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “It’s okay. Just… please, they just need—”

“I know,” Isaac said, dipping his head. Shame lined his face.

“Where is Gavin right now?” Vera said. “He—”

Tori flinched and whimpered softly. Vera’s gaze snapped to her and she closed her mouth with a click. She just wanted to hold Tori, just wanted to hold her, but… god, if her touch made Tori beg not to be hurt… Vera shuddered and blinked back her tears.

“He left,” Finn said, gentleness returning to their tone. “Maybe to walk again, I don’t know. He’s nearby. This—” Finn glanced towards Tori. “—wasn’t his fault, but he didn’t want to make it, um, worse,” Finn said miserably.

Isaac took a step around Finn, towards the back of the house. He paused and turned back towards Vera. “Vera, do you— I wanted to wait until you got home before I went to check on him, but…”

“I can handle this,” she said, her voice shaking. “Go.”

Isaac stood frozen for a moment, his weight shifting towards the kitchen, but his eyes fixed on Tori. “Are you…?”

“Yeah,” Vera said, and jerked her chin towards the back of the house. “Go. He’d appreciate your company.”

Isaac flushed a painful-looking red. He wet his lips, nodded, and walked through the kitchen to the back of the house.

Edrissa stood frozen, looking down the hall to the bedrooms. Finally, she shot a glance at Finn. “I’m not going to wake them up,” she mumbled. “Just going to… to my room.” She disappeared down the hall before anyone could say anything.

Vera turned back to Tori, her gut twisting at the look of terror on her face. She sat huddled in Ellis’s embrace, her hands clenched into fists and her arms pulled against her chest, as if bracing for something.

Bracing for a shock.

Vera pressed her lips into a hard line to keep them from trembling. “Tori—”

The black cat trotted out from the hall. Edrissa was right on his heels.

“I didn’t wake them up,” she gasped, shivering, holding her hands out in front of her like she was pleading. “The cat was in their room and meowing so, so I let him out, but I didn’t wake them up, they’re still sleeping…” She turned and dashed down the hall. Vera heard a muffled thump as her door closed.

For a moment, Vera felt crushed under a landslide. There wasn’t a one of them that hadn’t been shattered, broken so deep they’d never recover. There wasn’t a one of them who wasn’t exhausted, terrified, always one wrong word away from disappearing into themselves. She felt the drag of it, sucking at her limbs like she was trying to climb out of a bottomless pit of mud. Just disappear. Just disappear. You know that nothingness is waiting for you, it always is…

Vera shuddered and clenched her jaw so hard her head throbbed.

No. Not again. Not now.

She forced herself to meet Ellis’s eyes. “Did you try… her… her r-rules?” The word scraped her throat raw like she’d swallowed a knife.

Ellis bit down hard on their lip and vigorously shook their head. “N-no,” they murmured. “No. I don’t… I don’t like that… I didn’t want to, to say it…”

“That’s okay,” Vera said, her voice dragging with bone-deep exhaustion. “That’s okay.” She moved closer to Tori, close enough that Tori leaned against her side. “Tori,” she said, feeling like she was spitting out poison, “You can speak.”

“Th-thank you, sir,” Tori gasped, sounding… relieved.

Vera wished she could tear those words right out of her brain.

I’ve made her hear me say these things for… for almost a year. I can take this for her.

“Tori, where are you—”

Tori’s gaze flicked to Vera’s, desperate and wild. “W-we need to kill Gavin,” she rasped.

Vera’s head dropped forward. Her face screwed up in pain. “Tori—”

“He’s not here,” she whispered, and clutched at Vera’s hands. “He’s not here. We have to, to make a plan. We have to get out, have to kill Gavin.”

Vera’s eyes smarted. She glanced at Gray across the room, standing with their arm wrapped around Finn’s shoulders. Finn stared at Tori, wringing their hands, tears running down their cheeks.

She turned back to look at Tori. “No, babe,” she murmured. “We’re safe. We’re out. You remember getting out? You remember making it north?”

Tori’s eyes shone with a fevered light. “No,” she said, licking her lips and shaking her head. “No. He… he was hurting Sam. He made them, them scream. He was hurting Sam, I heard it, I heard it, and you can’t…” She heaved a sob and cringed back, into Ellis. “You can’t… tell me it didn’t happen, I heard it, please, Vera, I’m not crazy, please don’t tell me that…” She whimpered and burst into tears, wrapping her arms around herself, rocking forward with each sob.

Vera lurched forward and gathered Tori into her arms. She pressed a kiss to Tori’s hair, focusing on the curls against her lips, on Tori’s smell, sour with fear, and tried so, so hard not to hear the hitched sobs, the gasps, as Tori trembled in her arms.

“That happened, Tori,” Vera said gently. “Sam was screaming. You didn’t imagine it. But it wasn’t Gavin. It was…” Vera shot a glance at Finn. Finn cringed away from her gaze, turning against Gray’s chest. “Sam’s wound opened. It hurt them. Gavin didn’t lay a hand on them. Gavin wasn’t even here. But Sam’s sleeping now, babe. Sam’s safe. We’re all safe.”

Tori trembled and raised her gaze to Finn. Her eyes flashed, and her lips pulled back over her teeth as she snarled at Finn. “Then why didn’t you… why didn’t you help them?”

Finn squeezed their eyes shut and covered their face in their hands. “I did,” they whimpered. “I, I did, Tori. I cleaned them up and fixed them and gave them more morphine. They’re sleeping. I did my best, I, I did my best…” They raised their head and fixed Tori with a glare. “I did my best.”

“Why does everyone keep hurting Sam?” Tori wailed. “They didn’t, didn’t do anything, but they keep screaming and hurting and no one helps them and…” She turned to Vera, desperation making her eyes wide as they darted between Vera’s. “Why won’t you let me kill Gavin?” she whispered. “Or, or you do it, or, so Sam stops hurting? Why won’t you, I mean, he might let me do it, he, you’ve seen how he is, why, Vera, why, why…?” Tori lurched forward, clutching her chest. “You won’t… nobody will… why won’t someone help Sam, they were screaming, and I, I don’t… Vera, please…”

“Okay,” Vera murmured, and wrapped her arms around Tori, squeezing tight. “That’s enough. Come on, Tori, breathe with me. I’m getting you out.”

“I am out!” Tori shrieked, and shoved Vera away. “I’m out, and, and Gavin hasn’t paid for what he did, and you—” Her hand shot out to point an accusing finger at Finn. “—you won’t help them, and they were… were screaming, and I can’t… no…”

“Tori stop,” Vera snapped, and grabbed her shoulders. “Stop. This isn’t… this isn’t you. Please, just…” Vera couldn’t hold back her tears anymore. One escaped down her cheek, then another. “…stop. Come back to me. Please.”

“This is me,” Tori spat through her teeth. “This is me. Gavin hurt me, hurt Sam, and this is me. Are you you?”

Vera leaned back, paling. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Tori snarled at her. “Are you conditioned? Did Gavin make you think he’s good? Has he�� brainwashed you, too? You think he’s brainwashed me.”

“Tori…” Vera’s breaths came faster. “Tori, no…” A chill poured down her spine. “Please…”

“You won’t kill Gavin,” Tori growled, her face twisting in rage and hate. Vera’s stomach dropped, and she was falling through space. She knew what Tori was going to say the moment before she did. “He brainwashed you, just like Joseph.”

Vera shot to her feet, her chest heaving with a furious sob. “Tori—”

“Vera, come here,” Gray said, their voice sharp and carrying the tone of an order. “Now. Don’t engage. Step away.”

Vera turned her furious gaze on Gray. Her world was crumbling. Everything she and Tori had was blown apart by the words that had just come out of Tori’s mouth. She felt sick. She felt destroyed.

“Vera,” Gray snapped. “Now.”

Tears of rage burned on Vera’s cheeks. “Why are you telling me what to do,” she sobbed. “When she just said—”

“Because I don’t want you to say anything you’ll regret. She’s under right now. You’re not. You can leave. I’ll stay here and help her. You go with Finn. Walk this off. You know she doesn’t mean this.”

Vera looked down at Tori on the couch. Tori glared up at her, her eyes streaming and tight with rage. Vera’s chest ached like she’d been punched – like she’d been shot. The one person she wanted to turn to for comfort right now, the one person, was Tori. She wanted Tori to pull her into her arms and kiss her and comfort her and tell her everything was going to be alright…

I don’t know if she’ll ever want me to do that again.

Grief crushed her and Vera heaved a sob.

Finn appeared at her shoulder and she jumped. “Come on,” they said, their voice twisting. “Let’s go outside. Gray and Ellis can handle this.”

Vera shoved her fist against her mouth and forced down the desperate wail that was climbing up her throat. “Okay,” she gasped, and threw a look back at Tori as Finn guided her towards the kitchen. “Okay.”

Continued here

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[fcb4]

Prayers for all those in Addiction Recovery and Sobriety Support Services and groups like Celebrate Recovery, AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) & NA (Narcotics Anonymous), Detox and Treatment Centers, UGM, Etc.

Prayers for all marriages, families and churches caught up in the struggles related to loving and caring for those in addictions.

Psalms 138:3

“On the day I called, You answered me; my strength of soul, You increased.”

Psalms‬ ‭142:1-7‬ ‭

“I cry out to the Lord; I plead for the Lord’s mercy. I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn. Wherever I go, my enemies have set traps for me. I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought! No one will help me; no one cares a bit what happens to me. Then I pray to you, O Lord. I say, “You are my place of refuge. You are all I really want in life. Hear my cry, for I am very low. Rescue me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me. Bring me out of prison so I can thank you. The godly will crowd around me, for you are good to me.”

Father,

We call upon Your power to deliver, heal, repair and restore. We ask that You would save all those in the pit or on the path related to recovery, addictions and the afflictions that visit those using or struggling to walk in increasing freedom, healing and health.

Jesus,

Visit those in need of Your touch and truth right now. Lift them out of the darkness, depression and despair. Guide them to Yourself through all the trials and tribulations that fall upon those who tear their own houses down upon themselves. Drive out and drive away any devils and the deceptions that bind and batter. Let the abused and abandoned find Your love in these difficult times.

Holy Spirit,

Counsel, comfort and help all involved in these matters. Give spiritual drink and food to those connected to care and recovery, may all involved grow stronger through the battles being fought. Equip and empower those that ask and rescue those who are blind and deaf to the truth they need to encounter to walk in greater freedom. Lift up those serving and caring for any dimension of these challenging realities, may they have renewed faith and hope during this season.

In Jesus name, Amen.

[trashmenofmarvel]

Devil’s Backbone - Chapter 5

Pairing: The Winter Soldier x S.H.I.E.L.D. agent!Reader

Summary: With your team dead and your mission failed, you’ve been taken by the assassin to an unknown location and are at the mercy of your cruel tormentors. (This fic is explicit, 18+ only, mild dubcon)

Chapter Warnings: Dubcon, anxiety attacks

Word Count: 3.8k

Tag List: @pandalandalopalis @insidethemindoftrent

AO3

The next time you opened your eyes, you had the sense you hadn’t slept for a full night. Regardless, you felt… better. Your fever had broken, your arm no longer throbbed, and you were alert and clear-headed.

The assassin hadn’t injected you with anything harmful. He had given you a shot of antibiotics.

You pressed your lips tight together as your eyes burned again, shame creeping through you at the pathetic reaction. He had been instructed to keep you alive, that was all. It didn’t mean anything, and it certainly didn’t make up for all of your dead teammates. It didn’t erase Mr. Kartal’s grisly death, or the fact the assassin had brought you here in the first place.

But… his actions didn’t make sense, either. The lab coats had been more than happy to let your wound rot. Or had that been a hallucination? A combination of fever and pain and narcotics? Sometimes you wondered if the torture in and of itself wasn’t a delusion. Nothing in that room felt real.

But he did. The assassin felt very real.

The seconds and minutes and hours ticked by, unmarked and discomforting. You remembered learning about the psychological effects of captivity from Rumlow’s grueling training. He had taught you how to escape bindings—everything from cable ties to handcuffs to rope cords. You knew how to disable a stronger, armed opponent using only your hands and legs. You could hotwire pretty much anything with an engine. Or navigate through rough, remote terrain to find your way back to civilization.

But with all of that training, Rumlow had made it clear there was no way to truly prepare for this. When you were taken by the enemy, it wasn’t the pain or degradation or fear that was the true opponent. It was time. The passage of it was like a constant pressure on your thumbnails and eyeballs. It kept you suspended above a pit of vipers. It held you down on a bed of nails. There was no respite to be found from the constant, innumerable seconds that drew out your misery like the grim note of a funeral dirge.

Aside from time, isolation was the most effective tool in a torturer’s kit. It was cheap, easy, and worked surprisingly fast. The human mind was not built to withstand long periods of separation from the world, and it was tantamount to psychological destruction to keep someone in an isolation cell for more than a few hours.

By your guess, you were beginning day three. The need for human interaction was pushing up against your terror of the guards who would drag you out of your cell, and the doctors who treated you as nothing more than a scientific curiosity. At this point, it might have been a relief to be taken back to the white room just so you could see that life went on outside your tiny prison.

You curled into a tighter fetal position, despair penning you in, threatening to consume you. Where are you? The silent prayer was meant for the remaining members of the team that hadn’t been part of the convoy. But mostly, it was for Rumlow. Your mentor, your guide. The one who was supposed to protect and keep you safe. Why haven’t he found you yet? Why was he letting this happen to you?

You squeezed your eyes shut, forcing the tears at bay. You knew Rumlow would be doing everything possible to find you, but if he had been able to rescue you… he would have done so by now. There would be no extraction, no last minute stay of execution. You were going to die here. Alone. Forgotten except for a small plaque at the Triskelion Memorial. It would be the only legacy you leave behind.

You had no family outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. No one left to mourn you but your team. And most of them were gone, too.

Oh, God. How did this happen? How had it gone so wrong? A small wail escaped your throat as you curled your fingers in your hair, digging your nails into your scalp. I don’t want to die like this. I don’t want to die. Please. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

As if in response to your desperate prayers, the door to your cell opened with a loud clang. Peering out from your protective cocoon, you watched as a broad silhouette filled the doorway, the assassin stepping forward into the bland light. You flinched despite your best efforts not to, watching as he stopped just inside the cell and closed the door behind him.

He was holding a plastic food tray. No one had bothered to feed you since your arrival, probably because you could barely keep down water let alone anything else. But now your stomach rumbled as you took in the scent of peas, corn, and mashed potatoes.

You quickly rubbed your stinging eyes and pulled yourself into an upright position, your cramped muscles protesting at the movement. You studied him warily; suspicious of his intentions despite the fact he was only armed with the tray of food. His expression was unreadable behind the dark mask covering most of his face. His eyes were as cold and intense as before, making you feel small and insignificant.

Your gaze flickered down to the plastic tray in his hands. A part of you retained hope that he hadn’t come for a nefarious purpose and was simply trying to keep you alive. Another part of you prepared for this to be a wicked trap.

But the assassin came no closer. He set the tray on the floor and toed it with his boot, sending it across the cell and directly in front of you. After he straightened to his full height and didn’t move from his spot or retreat from the room, the message he sent was clear.

I’m going to stand here until you eat.

The presumption of his presence and your complete lack of control in this situation turned your previously wary gratitude into humiliation and anger.

You grabbed the edge of the tray and threw it as hard as you could, hurling it across the cell to smash into the wall right next to him, splattering food all over the concrete bricks. Childish satisfaction curled in your chest. You might not have had control of much, but you could choose whether or not to eat.

“Fuck you,” you snapped. The assassin hadn’t moved a hair, even when the tray had hit the wall just a few inches to his right. Not so much as a flutter of his eyelashes.

“They’re going to kill me anyway,” you spat as you rose to your feet, leaning against the wall to help your weakened muscles. “Or worse. So fuck your food and fuck your medicine and fuck your fake-fucking-compassion.”

You were panting now, unable to get enough air as your heart was racing in your chest. The anger felt empowering and it burned away your fear.

“If you had any actual mercy, you’d end it. Right now.”

He didn’t respond, or move, or even blink. He was a masked statue, observing you through his curtain of hair. But his eyes were focused and they stared intently at your face. He gave every indication that he could hear you, but he didn’t say a word. His nonverbal, looming presence was starting to become really fucking aggravating.

“Say something!”

You winced at the sound of your scream, ragged and too loud in the cramped space. It also hurt to hear yourself sounding so shaken and unhinged, but you were well past the end of your rope.

The assassin remained silent.

With a cry, you sprang from the wall and pulled your fist back to jab it at his throat. He easily dodged your blow and looped his arms around your waist, and in the blink of an eye you traded places as you crashed into the door.

He pinned you against it, both flesh and metal arms equally unyielding in their grip around your torso. You snarled and fought like a rabid animal, banging your knee painfully against the steel door. He pulled you away before you could hurt yourself again, and dragged you further into the cell.

You cried out between your teeth as your injured arm throbbed, but you refused to surrender, digging your fingers into his arms and trying to hook your feet around his calves.

His response was swift and decisive; the assassin pinned down both of your arms with his right arm, and curled his cold, metal fingers around your throat. He applied pressure and you stilled immediately, your muscles going completely rigid. It wasn’t a full-body lock, but your limbs behaved as if it was, the dangerous pressure on your throat very effective at ending your struggles.

You panted harshly, unable to control the tremors as adrenaline, exhaustion, and pain racked your muscles. And there was fear. Your rage had been short-lived, dying before it had fully matured, and now you were as helpless as that moment he had first hooked his metal arm around your neck after the convoy attack, choking you unconscious.

His metal fingers cradled your throat—cool to the touch except in the places where the fingerless glove covered its surface. It felt almost pleasant against your flushed skin; a fucked up dichotomy to feel towards something that could crush your neck in an instant.

But he didn’t squeeze any harder. He wasn’t cutting off your air. It was almost as if he were taking deliberate care not to hurt you. Perhaps that should have told you something, but at the moment, all you could focus on was trying to breathe while trapped in the jaws of the beast.

He kept your arms pinned with the arm wrapped across your chest, but the metal appendage at your throat moved very slightly. So slowly at first you thought he was simply readjusting his grip. But then the breath caught in your throat when you realized his thumb was gently stroking the side of your neck.

You flinched, tried to wrench yourself away, but his right arm bore down on you to hold you in place. He needn’t have bothered, really. You weren’t going anywhere. All you could do was stand there, trapped in a steel grip of metal and muscle.

The feel of his unwanted caress on your skin was having an effect. Your cramped muscles began to loosen and your breathing became easier. It was like… an odd calm washing over you. You were unable to move, held securely in place, but instead of feeling trapped or claustrophobic, you felt… almost relaxed.

You had no control; the illusion of that was gone. It was all his, and he could hurt you however he wanted.

Except… he wasn’t hurting you. Whatever he was doing was weird and strange and probably would have scared any normal person, but you were more confused than afraid. Your heart rate was starting to even out, though it did pick up again when his flesh arm loosened its hold across your chest. His metal hand remained around your throat so you didn’t move, at least voluntarily; you gave a start when you felt his fingers trail across your stomach, sending gooseflesh across your arms and legs.

The fuck?

When he slipped his fingers under the hem of your shirt, you balked. The tender touch was so sharply different than the pain and misery you’d experienced that your brain couldn’t grasp it and your body resisted. But he held you firmly in place, rendering your struggles inert, and soon they stopped altogether. His fingertips ghosted across your skin, a feather-light caress that sent a thrill through your gut.

You closed your eyes, almost overwhelmed by the simple gesture that left you feeling warm and liquid in his arms. In response to your relaxing muscles, his touch became heavier, his fingers now tracing over your ribcage and down your abdomen.

At the same moment your body relaxed further, warning sirens sounded in your head. The klaxon urged you to run, to fight, to do something other than stand there like a deer in the headlights. But your body didn’t listen, as if he were holding you under a spell.

He lifted his hand higher and paused. His breath, muffled behind the mask, seemed to catch and then start again at an uneven pace. You weren’t the only one affected by what was happening, and that thought made your body react just as surely as his fingers did. The relaxation of your muscles turned into an aching heat, traveling over your skin and leaving you awash in goosebumps.

When his fingers finally ghosted over your nipple, it was erect and aching. A small shock went through your body at the warm contact, straight between your legs, and you had to trap the moan at the back of your throat before it could escape.

Your plan to remain silent was ruined as soon as he rubbed his thumb across the sensitive skin. You let out a tiny moan, your cheeks heating with shame at the needful sound.

He froze. You did as well, afraid he would continue. Afraid he wouldn’t. You were torn in two different directions, your mind a confused mess while your body yearned for the touch of his fingers. This place had brought only misery and pain, and what was happening now was very, very pleasant. Your body didn’t want it to stop, and in fact, seemed to crave it more intensely with each passing second.

In the end, your overwhelming need for comfort and human touch won at the cost of what remained of your dignity. The tiny voice screaming in your head was swiftly silenced as you closed your eyes and surrendered. You were already held flat against the hard planes of his body, but you managed to draw closer by leaning your head back against his shoulder, arching your neck and fully exposing it to the grip of his metal hand.

It was enough.

When his thumb crested your hard nipple again, you didn’t stifle the moan but released it, a quiet, breathless sound. This seemed to encourage him and his movements became firmer, making your heart race as warmth pooled low in your belly. You wondered if he could make you orgasm just from this, but he was being careful. Almost delicate. And you needed more if you were going to chase the relief you sought.

Your ass pressed against his crotch before you could stop yourself, surprised to feel the erection there, hard and wanting.

Immediately, he pulled his hand from under your shirt and grabbed your hip, holding you still. You whined low in your throat, frustrated as you rubbed your thighs together. You should have been ashamed, goddamn horrified by your actions, but all you could think about was how your clit throbbed and you yearned for pressure on it.

When his fingers pressing into your hip bones didn’t still your movements, the metal hand on the base of your throat did. He slightly squeezed and held you firm against his chest, causing you to give a stifled moan. You flushed when you realized the same action that had scared you a moment ago now made you even more aroused.

This is so fucked up. So fucked up. But even as you thought the words you remained pliant in his grip. He was warm against your back, even through the thick leather harness, and you felt like you might burst into flame. It should have been terrifying, how quickly you were being consumed by this, and he had done barely more than touch you.

Too long, he was taking too long. You were beginning to come back to your senses, realizing the dangerous, compromising position you were in. But then he lowered his hand and all reason flew from your mind.

His fingers slipped beneath the waistband of your tac pants but above your underwear. You didn’t so much as breathe as his fingertips traced along the cloth until they reached your pelvis.

You thought you might cry from the anticipation—you ached so much for relief it was almost painful, your body responding to his fingers as if you were the strings on a guitar, plucked and quivering. You didn’t question why that was. You didn’t question anything. There was only his touch and your overwhelming need to be touched.

When he slid his hand downward and his middle finger rubbed your clit through the fabric of your underwear, you had to bite your lip to keep from crying out. He began to rub you in a slow, languid clockwise motion, and you bucked your hips in response. He pressed down hard with his forearm, holding your hips against his pelvis as he continued to rub you at a pace that was going to drive you out of your goddamn mind.

He continued to draw circles around your nub, drawing out the tortuously gradual tightening of your walls. He must have been able to feel how wet you were through your underwear, a fact that should have crushed you with shame. But all you felt in that moment was the needful desire for him to move faster.

He didn’t. He kept up his tortuous pace, so you reached back and grabbed his thigh, needing something to hold onto. Even through the thick fabric of his pants you could feel the taut, hard muscles underneath, and you gave a breathless moan that could have been a prayer or a curse.

Without warning, he removed his fingers from your mound and slid his hand down your underwear in a movement that was almost urgent. His middle finger dipped between your slick folds and rubbed against your clit, hard.

What left your mouth was definitely a curse as you bucked your hips and arched your neck. Fire licked up between your thighs, which were shaking as he rubbed fast, hard circles against your bud.

The way he held you now felt less like restraint and more like a devouring embrace. His tensed forearm kept your ass tight against his hardness and his metal hand tilted your head to the side, the hard ridges of his mask pressed against your neck. His breathing was ragged, strained, and you could feel the hot puffs of air escape through the vents onto your skin.

In a moment of illogical fantasy you wished you could tear it off, wanting to feel his lips on you. You didn’t even know what he looked like. It didn’t matter. You were coming undone, falling to pieces in his arms, and for the first time you felt something other than fear, humiliation, and anger.

He kept up the fast pace, two fingers on your bud now, slipping over your slick flesh as your walls started to tighten. It was alarming how fast he was drawing you to the edge, your skin tingling as an electric jolt sparked between your thighs.

You closed your eyes and tilted your head back, surrendering to the sensations and forgetting where you were. Nothing mattered aside from his fingers that were stroking life back into you after you had consigned yourself to a painful, lonely death.

Another electric jolt went through you, and your thighs trembled as you tried to remain steady on your feet. You were so close, but a small part of you resisted, refusing to surrender this last part of yourself.

A noise of frustration escaped your lips, one that sounded close to a sob. His fingers froze against your throbbing clit.

“Please,” you begged, your raw voice sounding absolutely wrecked. “So close…”

You felt his cock twitch against your ass, and without hesitation he moved his fingers downward between your slick folds and pushed them into your entrance. You were tight, your walls clinging to his fore and middle fingers, but with how wet you were the sensation was delicious rather than painful. He curled his fingers, rubbing against the sensitive spot inside, and you gave a soft, “oh.” His thumb rubbed against your clit as he worked his fingers in and out of you, and coaxing you to the edge with just a few rocking motions of his hand.

You didn’t last long. The electric heat traveled from your core to your clit, and your orgasm hit you like a shot. You bucked your hips, squeezed your thighs around his fingers, and released a cry louder than anything you had ever made before during sex.

His metal hand clamped over your mouth, muffling the noise. The sudden pressure on your mouth, coupled with the realization that you were being so loud, made you crest even higher. Everything went quiet and all you could see was white, and then you crashed back down, shuddering and writhing as your pussy thrummed against his stilled fingers.

All at once, he pulled his hand from inside your pants and removed his hand from your mouth. Your legs were trembling, your knees weak, and if he hadn’t kept his arms around you then you would have collapsed. Euphoria filled your limbs, but this was nothing like drugged state the doctors had forced on you. This was something else. A bubble of warmth and safety, his encircling arms adding to the feeling.

For a few seconds, frozen in time, you felt that everything would be all right.

And then it faded and reality came crashing down.

You moved away from him, jerky and unsteady, and found it was easy to break free of him now. He didn’t reach for you or try to restrain you again. He wasn’t even looking at you. The assassin held a distant look in his pale blue eyes, and strands of his brown hair stuck to his damp forehead.

Then without a word or a look your way, he strode across the cell and went through the door, his steps hasty and his head down. As if he couldn’t escape fast enough.

The door slammed shut behind him and you were alone.

You stared at the solid, bare door for a long moment, still catching your breath as your hands began to tremble. The nausea had returned, but for an entirely different reason now. You retreated to your mat with difficulty, as if you were walking through a quagmire. The post-orgasm haze was curdling into numb disbelief. And then it slowly transformed into something worse.

You managed to half-collapse, half-sit before the hot shame overwhelmed you. It stole the air from your lungs and you began to hyperventilate as you curled your knees to your chest and buried your head in your hands.

You stayed like that, trembling and curled in a protective shell, until the door opened hours later.

Next Chapter

[historicalvideos-yt-blog]

Narcotics, pit of despair part1 - vintage1967 American educational film on the dangers of drug use

A 1967 educational film from the US that discusses the evils of narcotics. It tells the story of a teenage boy who tries narcotics, and whose life subsequently spirals out of control.

Part 2 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTQIUFBK4Ms

[goldengatesroleplaygroup]

— ABOUT THEM ;

FULL NAME → Maddox Stark AGE | BIRTHDAY → 26 years old | July 29 NEIGHBORHOOD → North Beach HOMETOWN → Los Angeles, California OCCUPATION → Tattoo Artist at Leviathan Ink

— LAST TEXT RECEIVED ;

Leigh Watson: Error Code: E-1301: Your number has been blocked by the recipient.

— THEIR CURRENTS ;

CURRENTLY WATCHING → Top Gun: Maverick CURRENTLY LISTENING TO → Ghost by Confetti CURRENTLY DRINKING → Whiskey

— MOST CHERISHED ;

Maddox's most cherished memory would possibly be the time he was assigned a jet. After rigorous air force training, Madd felt more at ease and at home when they sat him in a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. Regardless of how nervous he was to fly an aircraft that pulls 9gs of G-Force, the second he was in the air, he couldn't have felt more serene. 

— THEIR LIFE STORY ;

Maddox Floyd Stark, or "Hangman" - a brand given by his comrades for the body count he racked up while fighting in the war, is an ex-fighter pilot for the US Army Air Force. Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA - Maddox mostly grew up without a father, living off a distant memory of the green army-issued attire hugging to a child frame. Two teens - Elijah and Valeria Stark, forced into a life that had no time for adolescence for sheer stupidity. At an early age, Maddox lost his father to the war and his mother to sexual desires and drugs. After losing her husband, Valeria spiralled into a pit of despair. Maddox had a revolving door of potential father figures that didn't last a whole month. Some would beat him, while others pretended he didn't exist. Few ever showed interest in Maddox but were soon cast aside due to their attention taken by his mother's lust. Valeria soon met her demise after a drug overdose, leading Maddox to be put in the system. When adopting a child, anyone can access any information about the child's history, and Maddox's history wasn't such an appealing one. A foster juvenile delinquent from poverty with two dead parents - one from war while the other met their demise from narcotics. Anyone would have to be unduly self-righteous to take Maddox into their home - which is precisely what Markus and North Manfred thought of themselves. A religious couple in the outskirts of Utah adopted Maddox, giving him a home, food and the warmth of a family so that he may better praise god for his salvation - or so he thought. Salvation came at a loss when he realised his foster parents had a very unusual and horrid way of making Maddox succumb to their religion. As soon as Maddox came of age eighteen, he signed up for the air force to serve his country, but his alliance with the US Air Force didn't last long. After serving three more years, Maddox was OTH (Other Than Honourably) Discharge - and due to the circumstances, he needed to be thoroughly evaluated for all, if any - VA benefits. And despite Madd's heroic attempts to help with the involvement of the war on Afghanistan and Syria, Maddox was let go due to his war crimes against the people. After being let go from the air force, Maddox fled to San Francisco, where he now remains working as an employee at Leviathan Games when he isn't flying tourist around the city of San Fran, or beautifying it's well-known landmarks with his street art.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/overlooked-no-more-martin-sostre-who-reformed-americas-prisons-from-his-cell/

Overlooked No More: Martin Sostre, Who Reformed America’s Prisons From His Cell

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. The project began in 2018 with a focus on women, but it’s widening its lens this year.

Martin Sostre was jailed twice on drug charges and spent nearly 20 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. In that time, he transformed himself from “a street dude, a hustler,” as he described himself, to a pioneering fighter for prisoners’ rights.

“For the first time, I had a chance to think, and began reading everything I could — history, philosophy, and law,” he once said, as quoted in a 2017 NPR report that detailed his life.

He taught himself the law, organized inmates and challenged harsh prison conditions, filing lawsuits from behind bars in the 1960s and ’70s — a decade before the prisoners’ rights movement began growing — that led to legal decisions ensuring greater protection for inmates.

He successfully sued for the right to practice Islam while incarcerated, which his jailers had denied him and other prisoners. And he protested some standard prison practices as dehumanizing, including censorship of inmates’ incoming mail, rectal examinations and the use of solitary confinement as punishment.

By the 1970s, Sostre’s activism while incarcerated on a drug-sale charge, which he maintained was a police setup, would make him an international symbol. He garnered the support of Jean-Paul Sartre, prominent civil-rights advocates and Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

“He was raising issues of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment long before anyone was even granting that prisoners have a constitutional right to anything,” Garrett Felber, a historian at the University of Mississippi who is editing a collection of Sostre’s writing, said in a telephone interview.

Martin Ramirez Sostre was born in Harlem on March 20, 1923, to Crescencia and Saturnino Sostre. His mother was a seamstress and hatmaker, his father a merchant marine. During the Great Depression he was forced to drop out of school to help his family. He was drafted into the Army in 1942 but was dishonorably discharged in 1946 after being involved, by his account, in a fight between rival companies.

Returning to Harlem with no job skills, he turned to the streets. His first arrest was in 1952 for possession of heroin. He then fled to California but was captured and ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison that October. After a short stint at Sing Sing, he was transferred to the Attica Correctional Facility and later to Clinton State Prison. There he began transforming his life.

Sostre took up yoga for its mental and physical discipline and became involved in the Nation of Islam after borrowing a copy of the Quran from a fellow inmate. He wanted others to join him in an Islamic study group, but corrections officials accused him of trying to recruit for “an anti-white movement” and dismissed his motives as not religiously sincere. He was placed in solitary confinement.

He taught himself constitutional law with books from the prison library, and he and several other inmates sued the warden at Clinton, J.E. LaVallee, for the right to practice their religion. The suit was successful: Sostre and the others were allowed to buy the Quran and hold Nation of Islam meetings. Their case preceded the landmark Cooper v. Pate Supreme Court decision, which also revolved around the right of an inmate to access Black Muslim publications and which established that people retain constitutional rights even in jail and that they are entitled to address their grievances in court.

In an interview for “Frame Up!,” a 1974 documentary about his incarceration, Sostre drew a contrast between a political prisoner and a politicized prisoner. A politicized prisoner, he explained, is “one who has become politically aware while in prison, even though the original crime that he committed was not a political crime.”

Sostre was released in October 1964 after 12 years in prison, four of them in solitary. He broke with the Nation of Islam that year, moved to Buffalo and took a job with Bethlehem Steel. The regular paycheck enabled him to save enough money to open the Afro-Asian Book Shop in the Cold Springs neighborhood. He stocked it with Communist, anarchist and black nationalist texts.

Once Sostre added jazz records to the mix, the bookstore became a popular hangout for the city’s young leftist population — both nascent black radicals and curious white college students.

Jerry Ross, a white student who drifted in from what was then the State University of New York at Buffalo, was impressed to see Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” anti-Vietnam War texts and materials on black history — “books,” he said, “you could not get in the university bookstore.”

Sostre, he said, was a willing mentor to anyone with sympathetic politics. “He treated me like he was colorblind,” Ross said. “He just completely accepted radical students into his fold.”

But the bookstore wouldn’t last. As in dozens of cities across America, racial tensions in Buffalo boiled over during the “long, hot summer” of 1967. By the end of June, many young black residents of Cold Springs, fed up with what they saw as structural inequality, police brutality and a lack of economic opportunity, took to looting and rioting.

Businesses had all but shut down, but the Afro-Asian Book Shop remained open, popular with the young and an object of scrutiny for the police. In “Frame Up!,” Sostre described feeling targeted after receiving frequent visits from the police and F.B.I. agents.

In the rioting a neighboring tavern caught fire, and water from firefighters’ hoses “wiped out” most of Sostre’s book inventory, Ross said.

Then the police accused Sostre of making Molotov cocktails in the store’s basement. He was arrested on charges of inciting to riot, arson and possession and sale of narcotics.

The trial that followed in 1968 focused on a supposed drug deal. An addict named Arto Williams, the state’s main witness, who was awaiting his own trial on a theft charge, testified that he had bought $15 worth of heroin from Sostre at the bookstore. Sostre insisted that he had been set up by the police.

It took just a few hours for the all-white jury to convict him of selling heroin, and the judge, Frederick Marshall, sentenced him to up to 41 years in prison.

At the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County, Sostre was once again put in solitary confinement — and once again he stood up for his rights. He refused to cut his beard and would not submit to rectal examinations, resulting in more time in solitary. He was also punished when he tried to mail a document to his lawyer.

“He described his protest against rectal examinations as fighting to keep the last vestige of his humanity,” Felber, the historian, said in an email.

In 1969, Sostre sued Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller; Paul D. McGinniss, the state corrections commissioner; and several prison officials for $1.2 million, saying that his time in solitary had violated his constitutional rights.

Later that year, Judge Constance Baker Motley of United States District Court (the first African-American woman appointed to the federal bench) ordered his immediate release from solitary confinement and awarded him $13,020 the following year — $35 for each of the 372 days he spent isolated.

Throughout, Sostre maintained his innocence on the original charges. And in 1973, Arto Williams recanted his testimony, saying he had lied so that he could have his own theft charge dropped.

Sostre became something of a cause célèbre, drawing the attention and support of left-leaning figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Noam Chomsky and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Amnesty International called Sostre “the victim of an international miscarriage of justice.”

The New York Times wrote that “because of his imprisonment and subsequent activities, prisons in America and particularly in New York can never again be quite the dark pits of repression and despair they once were.”

In 1975, the Soviet scientist Sakharov — winner of the Nobel Peace Prize that year — petitioned Gov. Hugh L. Carey of New York to order Sostre’s release. Carey granted him clemency that Christmas.

Sostre became an aide to Assemblywoman Marie M. Runyon, a Democrat. He married Lizabeth Roberts and had two sons, Mark and Vinny. He also continued his activism, focusing on tenants’ rights. But he always felt like a marked man, Vinny Sostre said in a telephone interview.

“We thought the place was tapped here for a long period of time,” he said of his childhood home. “I remember our whole family tearing apart things, looking for wires.”

In 1984, Sostre was managing an apartment building when he got into an altercation with a tenant he was trying to evict. Sostre shot him and then fled New York.

He returned two years later and was arrested after he was spotted in the library of New York Law School in Manhattan. He was acquitted in 1987 after arguing that he had acted in self-defense.

By the time Sostre died, on Aug. 12, 2015, at 92, he had largely been keeping to himself. His family, following his wishes, did not announce his death publicly.

Vinny said his father would have wanted “to be remembered the same way he lived, which is to inspire people to fight against injustice.”

[bettervillains]

tag yourself: video titles from the prelinger archives (part 1/4)

eat for health

one got fat: bicycle safety

breakfast pals

shake hands with danger

more dangerous than dynamite

the chicken of tomorrow

narcotics: pit of despair

6 1/2 magic hours

marriage is a partnership

blasting cap danger

drug abuse: the chemical tomb

gags and gals

traveltime: freedom land

machine: master or slave

aristocrats of fashion

junior rodeo daredevils

danger — women at work

control your emotions

[izzymizzz]

Concerts and Sobriety: A Complementary Contradiction

The Grateful Dead (not sure if you’ve ever heard of them) are a band that emerged in Palo Santo, California in 1965. Their music fused together elements of rock, folk, country, jazz, bluegrass, blues, gospel, and psychedelic rock. Jerry Garcia, the band’s frontman, used cocaine and heroin - like a lot. Many lyrics in a lot of Grateful Dead songs allude to substance use, such as, ““Drivin’ that train / High on cocaine / Casey Jones you better watch your speed”, from “Casey Jones”, and perhaps their most famous lyrics of all time, “What a long, strange trip it’s been”, from “Truckin’” (see below).

Grateful Dead concerts were heavily characterized by drug use - alcohol, marijuana, heroin, acid, shrooms, cocaine. You name it, and it’s been snorted, shot up, or ingested in one way or another at a Grateful Dead show. Drug and alcohol use at concerts is not uncommon, but what is unique about The Grateful Dead and the heavy drug use prevalent at their shows is that, out of it, something incredible was born.

In the 80’s, a small group of deadheads (Grateful Dead fans), who were in recovery from substance abuse, began gathering together at concerts to support one another’s sobriety. Within and perhaps because of the drug heavy concert scene, a new counter-scence was birthed. Yellow balloons marked with the letters AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) signified the groups table, where they held meetings inspired by the 12 Step Programs at the intermission of concerts. They became known as The Wharf Rats, which is a reference to the Grateful Dead song, “The Wharf Rat”, that tells the story of a struggling alcoholic. 

Today, The Wharf Rats have grown into a prominent group of concert-goers who have traded in drugs and alcohol for the equally euphoric and completely natural high offered from an incredible concert. Their concert attendance has expanded both in musical genre and geographic location. There is no longer an affiliation with AA, NA, or any other 12-step program. Instead, the meetings they provide at the intermission of shows focus on sharing similar experiences regarding music, life, and recovery. Drugs had brought them to their bottom, but their love of music combined with their commitment to sobriety would help bring them back from the pits of despair.

As someone who is in recovery from substance abuse and is also a music junkie, I can attest that a jarring reservation I had when I was first getting clean/sober was the inevitable fact that my relationship with concerts and music would change. How the actual fuck was I supposed to enjoy concerts with triggers such as drugs and alcohol surrounding me everywhere I turned? Perhaps due to the commonality of music and substance abuse crossing paths, there are now these incredible options for people in recovery who are also avid concert goers and music geeks. My sobriety and my love of music are two of the most important things in my life. And despite a tie between music and drugs that can seem unbreakable, I know today that I can have one without the other. I discovered that I can actually enjoy life and have fun while being sober - and damnnnn, if that wasn’t news to me. When I first got sober, it felt as if my life was completely over. But I soon found that joy was attainable, and as they often say in the rooms of AA: we’re sober -- not dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grateful_Dead

https://mountainside.com/blog/recovery/the-wharf-rats-concert-goers-drug-free-culture

[schlock-luster-video]

On March 19, 2021, Fleshpot on 42nd Street, Guru the Mad Monk, Shake Hands With Danger, and Narcotics: Pit of Despair were screened on TCM Underground.

Here's some new art inspired by all four features!

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

How Nashville fans used NHL's wildest party to push Predators

NASHVILLE – Hockey fans are usually like a mood ring.

They reflect the disposition of the game being played, whether that’s elation or tension, back at the players on the ice. A good thing happens, the arena goes nuts, and more good things happen.

Or you get a situation like that annual pit of despair in Washington D.C., where the nervous sense of impending doom on the ice is amplified by fans who are also haunted by a history of devastatingly inventive disappointment. “You feel it in the crowd. It’s in there. You tell me in that Game 7 that you couldn’t feel it,” said Capitals GM Brian MacLellan recently.

The Nashville Predators fans inside and outside of Bridgestone Arena for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, however, were something different. Sure, they’ve had playoff disappoints, but not at a volume where dread trumps enthusiasm for the first Final round game on home ice.

And so Predators fans offered something rarely seen or experienced: They were a mood-altering narcotic, rather than a mood ring; rather than reflect the vibe, they created and sustained their own, and in the process propelled the Predators to their first Stanley Cup Final victory as a franchise.

The best example: That TV timeout after Jake Guentzel converted a fortuitous rebound into the game’s first goal at 2:46 of the first period. Down 2-0 in the series, down 1-0 on home ice, knowing your goalie is struggling and knowing the Penguins are 12-2 when scoring first. What did the Predators fans do? They cheered. Loudly, and then louder than that.

They cheered with purpose, attempting to maintain the sense of jubilation that had blanketed the area since around noon on Saturday. They cheered to lift the players up, change their mood and prevent the Penguins from adding another goal or two in a few-minutes span, like they had in the previous two wins. They got on their feet during a TV timeout and they cheered because they knew, at that moment, their team needed something beyond the norm.

“That doesn’t happen every day,” said defenseman Mattias Ekholm.

No, it doesn’t. None of this does.

Nashville is otherwise known as “NashVegas.”

While there are literal comparison points between the two cities – bountiful entertainment and nightlife, flowing booze and plentiful sin, marinated in kitch – one look around in the hours before Game 3 spoke to the intrinsic shared DNA between the two.

In Vegas, at any given moment, you’re surrounded by any number of groups and individuals, with any number of reasons for being there. And so in NashVegas on Saturday, the area around Bridgestone Arena had Predators fans and Penguins fans, and day drinkers and country music fans there for CMA Fest, and about two dozen bachelorette parties and, most strikingly and somewhat hilariously, “The Walking Dead” fans flooding the streets as they left a nearby zombie convention.

So you had someone carrying a catfish to throw on the ice standing next to someone in a faux wedding dress with plastic cup full of wine next to someone carrying a barbed-wire-wrapped bat they referred to as “Lucille.”

Such is NashVegas.

The confluence of these fans, along with the necessary dedicated space for NHL pregame concerts and events, made the sidewalks of Broadway slightly more crowded than Bourbon Street during peak Mardi Gras. Gold clad, sweaty people jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, squeezing through each other to open bar doors, or simply to the next block of them. Around 3 p.m., fans started setting up lawn furniture ahead of Game 3, in order to secure spaces for the outdoor party, taking up even more real estate. At one point I saw a couple notice a woman with a stroller and then acted as her lead blocker through the crowd so she could get to her car, like two fullbacks making room for a running back.

The postgame estimate by Nashville PD was that over 50,000 people converged around the area to experience Game 3. And if you think that party vibe and sanguine support didn’t imprint on the Predators as they arrived for the game, then you haven’t spoke to Frederick Gaudreau.

“You can feel it. The energy is crazy,” said the rookie, who blew the roof off the arena with a second-period goal that gave Nashville the lead and ended up as the game-winner.

After the Predators got through those crowds to arrive at Game 3, they had NHL Network on in their dressing room, watching the carnival of enthusiasm outside. “You see all the shots of what’s going on outside. It’s pretty amazing. Pretty amazing,” said coach Peter Laviolette.

What was happening inside the arena was equally amazing.

“We were aware of how crazy it was outside. You can feel the buzz,” said forward James Neal, who also scored in Game 3. “The atmosphere in the warm-ups and the buildup was unbelievable, right through the whole game.”

They were inspired. But perhaps no one was more inspired, and supported, by these fans than the longest-serving member of the team in Nashville.

You have to understand this about Pekka Rinne: The fans here have a very personal investment in him.

He was once a member of the franchise’s holy trinity of stars, who were basically the team’s identity from a hockey perspective. He was the one to commit to Nashville with a seven-year deal that kicked in back in 2012. The idea was that his contract would solidify the foundation for the future and, in turn, keep the trinity’s other facets – defensemen Ryan Suter and Shea Weber – intact. But Suter left for Minnesota, and life was never really the same again after Weber signed an offer sheet with Philadelphia. The long-serving captain was traded to Montreal for P.K. Subban last summer.

Rinne remained. And this postseason, through three rounds, he was the reason the Predators won the Western Conference. He was the reason they’re here.

Yet he had been mediocre in the first two losses of the series against Pittsburgh, and had never won a start against the Penguins in his career. There was talk that he wouldn’t start Game 3, although coach Peter Laviolette said after the game that his status was never in jeopardy and it was the media who put his status in question, which is what the media does when coaches choose to play reindeer games with the obvious.

Still, Rinne needed a boost. And the fans provided him one before Game 3, cheering him loudly during warmups and then offering the loudest roar of the player introductions when he was announced.

“That was unbelievable,” he said after the game. “Collectively, we came to the locker room, and everybody was kind of telling each other that we’ve never seen anything like that. It was pretty cool. For sure, as players, we are really proud to be part of it, just having our fans get a chance to get recognized. Being on a big stage now. Good showcase for the city of Nashville and for our fans.”

Rinne made 27 saves and was named the first star.

Game 3 was a showcase for what the Predators have built here in Nashville.

On the ice, it’s a team that can carry play for 60 minutes against the defending Stanley Cup champions; one that has constantly surprising scoring depth; and one that can be so adept on defense that it can hold Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin without a shot on goal, the first time both of them have been held at zero shots in a playoff game.

Off the ice, the Predators showed what the greatest party in the NHL looks like.

“The fans’ support through the playoffs and all year has been great,” said Neal. “Like Pekks said, the hockey world is starting to see it here.”

The goofy traditions like the catfish being tossed on the ice and the celebrities that fire up the “battle siren” during the game and the mascot rappelling from the roof. The hilarious traditions, like trolling the opposing goalie with chants of “it’s all your fault.” The fact that they play DMX’s “Party Up” to pump the crowd before power plays, which is as amazing as when the crowd sang along with Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” in the third period. The fact that they play “Glorious Domination,” the theme song of NXT wrestler Bobby Roode, before the third period as some sort of hockey psalm.

And you know what it all led to on Saturday night, besides a Predators’ win?

Jealously. F.O.M.O. A feeling that the rest of the hockey world was outside the club, standing at the velvet rope, getting a peek inside at the dance floor. I defy you to find one hockey fan that experienced the vibe at Game 3, either on site or though their television, and didn’t yearn to be a part of something this kinetic and exhilarating, provided they weren’t a jilted Penguins loyalist or one of the few remaining dupes who think Nashville is, at best, a minor league hockey town.

“It’s the best atmosphere I’ve ever played in,” said P.K. Subban, formerly of Bell Centre.

“Our fans don’t get enough credit for knowing the game and knowing hockey. And they do know the game. And they understand the importance of these games. Regardless of what the score is, they’re going to cheer for us, because we work so hard to give them something.”

There was actually a moment when the Predators fans were like a mood ring for their team on the ice: At the end of the game, when the jubilation of the players was mirrored by the celebration in the stands.

They say you always remember your first time, and this was 19 years of constant mockery from the hockey establishment and potential relocation and playoff disappoints in the making. It was a party the city and the franchise had earned, and something they’ll always remember no matter the outcome of the series.

Although P.K. Subban believes it still won’t compare to what’s ahead for the Predators and their fans.

“You thought it was loud today?” he asked.

“I’m sure it’ll be even louder in Game 4.”

—

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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On October 22, 2016, Narcotics: Pit of Despair was screened at the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival.

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