#never feel it again has insidiously wormed its way into my brain

[urbanfiltered]

😬

[creativebrainrot]

another open journal entry (#3)

less venting and more just kind of musing on where im at in my "mental health journey." i guess. also much less heavy than my journal entries and vent posts usually are. mild mentions of abuse.

I need to be kinder to myself. and I need to let myself trust again. Its hard to unlearn though, because its a defense mechanism from when I was 12. maybe younger. it kept me safe for 9 years, probably longer. its really hard to let go of those habits, and they're hard for me to pin down in words. I tend to put my head down and just keep going through the pain- which at the moment I have no choice about. And I don't think thats entirely a bad thing, some people are just like that, it's what works for them. The part that I think I should unlearn is my motivation for it. The assumption that if I reach out, it will go ignored, it will be used against me, I'll become an unwanted burden, I'll show a side of myself that turns people- friends I want to keep, away from me. That post, "Humans are meant to be burdens," is something I'm trying to internalize, it's just difficult because for so long that wasn't what I was shown from my abuser. Anything that made me, me, was used against me. He treated my dad like that too.

All of that treatment has made it really hard for me to let myself feel loved, valued, wanted in any capacity, and it's hard to unlearn all that. The worst offender was all the times that I, a small, tiny child, wanted to bug my father, like a small, tiny child would want to do, and he would brush me off. invalidate me. ignore me. find a way to cut me down when I shared something I valued. give me reasons why what I thought was wrong. but in an extremely insidious way, so that he could worm his way out of being in the wrong on a technicality.

That, has stuck with me still. It's the next thing to unlearn. That the people around me, will not snap at me, for no apparent reason. They'll talk to me like a fucking adult, and tell me if they can or cannot attend something or if they have time to hangout or whatever.

This entire "thing" hinges on me being the one to reach out. because I was smacked away so many times.

and I'll unlearn it. Because I don't want to live my life with this junk lying around from a life now dead. I'm Kaleb now. I'm Theryn now. I have my own life, and my own friends, and I am an adult, I have more freedom with everyday that I live. My dad and I will make it through this month, to better years, and we'll never look back.

Clinging to the hope of a brighter future with the fervor of a god, was the most painful thing I have ever done and not regretted once.

All of my "nasty brain static" is much worse when I'm tired. Life lately has been extremely stressful, and that makes me sleep long and hard, and I wake up just as tired as I was before.

[passionate-reply]

This week, on Great Albums, we finally get around to discussing an industrial album--and we’ve started with one of the best there is, from the OGs themselves: Throbbing Gristle! (No, it isn’t jazz funk, I promise.) As always, full transcript under the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about one of the most important albums in the history of industrial music, and certainly one of the most...infamous. If you’ve ever noticed this album hanging on my wall in my other videos, you may well have wondered how an album that looks like this fits in with the rest of the stuff that’s up there. This record is the pioneering industrial group Throbbing Gristle’s classic 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and it’s essentially a bait and switch. It looks like a dorky, “family band” record from the bargain bin, but when you put it on, it sounds like this:

Music: “What a Day”

...well, not really. I’ve fibbed a bit here, much like Throbbing Gristle lied to you with this album cover. “What a Day,” one of the most sonically abrasive tracks on this album, is actually the second to last track! They take a little time to warm you up to the heavier stuff, actually. The first two tracks, the title track and “Beachy Head,” are still not really “jazz funk” by anybody’s standards, but they ARE decidedly softer than some of the other stuff you’ll encounter here.

Music: “20 Jazz Funk Greats”

Things arguably don’t start really heating up until we reach the third track on the album: “Still Walking,” which introduces us to ear-splitting distortion, rapid, disorienting percussion, and buried, albeit deeply ominous vocals, sounding like the first “typical” Throbbing Gristle track. It’s dense and almost comically busy, almost exhausting to listen to--and yet we have only just begun.

Music: “Still Walking”

So, where do we go from here? 20 Jazz Funk Greats wouldn’t be the legendary album that it is, if it was a one-note knock-knock joke, a jack in the box that emerges fully within the first few minutes of the album. What I think it really excels at is its ability to keep us on our toes throughout its entire runtime--it goes back and forth between showing a slightly friendlier face, and peeling back the skin of that face to show us the gory skull underneath. The whole thing vibrates along that contrast. Side two of the album, for instance, opens with one of Throbbing Gristle’s best-known tracks: “Hot on the Heels of Love.”

Music: “Hot on the Heels of Love”

Positioned squarely in the middle of the track listing, and at the crucial point of opening the second side, “Hot on the Heels of Love” certainly seems crucial to the album. It reads as a sort of dark parody of Giorgio Moroder’s famous “I Feel Love,” in which the voice of Donna Summer stands nakedly alone in a sea of pulsating synthesisers. It’s a pretty quick rebuttal, too, given that “I Feel Love” was released just the year before! Despite those sultry, breathy vocals, courtesy of Cosey Fanni Tutti, there’s no mistaking this one for a disco hit--not with its harsh hi-hats and gritty, highly textural synth scrapes. “Hot on the Heels of Love” features minimal lyrics--and they’re almost insultingly vapid--but 20 Jazz Funk Greats also features two prominent tracks that are much heavier in lyrical content, which I like to think as complementary to one another: “Convincing People” and “Persuasion,” which appear on the first and second side of the LP, respectively.

Music: “Convincing People”

Taken alone, “Convincing People” is weird, but it’s so vague and disorganised that it’s hard to come to a firm conclusion about what’s going on the first time you hear it. Unlike “Still Walking,” the fairly minimal instrumental accompaniment makes it easy enough to make out what the words are, without the sleeve handy. But it’s also so repetitive that it’s bound to infect you with semantic satiation, and fog up your brain’s ability to pay attention to those lyrics. The clearest statement “Convincing People” seems to be making is that you’ll never convince people when you come across as someone who’s trying to be convincing...well, alright, I suppose. But what really gives this song a darker significance is its counterpart on the flip, “Persuasion.”

Music: “Persuasion”

Abrasive numbers like “What a Day” and “Still Walking” are physically uncomfortable to listen to, but “Persuasion,” like the earlier Throbbing Gristle number “Slug Bait,” unnerves you with its lyrics instead. It takes up the mantle of a narrator who’s clearly a predatory, sexually violent character, and once again, a fairly simple instrumental makes us confront this vile subject matter head-on, as though we are alone in the room with this creep. “Persuasion” and “Convincing People” are actually extremely similar, but the biggest difference between them is that “Persuasion” is the escalation of their shared basic idea, with its much more explicit lyrics, and use of dissonant, unpredictable human screaming sounds. It’s actually a great metaphor for understanding how this album works--it gradually pushes our boundaries as we listen, worming its way into our consciousness like some masterful manipulator. And it dovetails with how Throbbing Gristle frontman Genesis P-Orridge would later style herself as a charismatic cult leader, with varying shades of irony, in later projects related to “Thee Temple ov Psychic Youth.” As we’ve recently been told, you don’t convince people by coming across as someone trying to be convincing. Or do you?

As I alluded to in the beginning, the name and cover design of 20 Jazz Funk Greats are a sort of musical booby trap, to hopefully ensnare innocent victims. It’s not jazz or funk, it doesn’t have twenty tracks, and its seemingly quaint cover photo, featuring the band in sunny surroundings, actually has a dark secret: the spot it was taken at, Beachy Head, is the most popular suicide destination in Europe, and one of the most popular worldwide. It’s Britain’s highest sea cliff, a stark, sheer wall of chalk that looms over the English Channel, and just a few feet away from where Throbbing Gristle are standing, people regularly throw themselves off of it. It’s a place where delicate natural beauty meets the profound human sickness sown by our twisted, exploitative industrial world. It’s just one more insidious detail, that heightens the cruel spirit of the album’s visual identity. It’s worth remembering that Throbbing Gristle were, first and foremost, provocateurs. I think that may be a better way to think about them overall, compared to thinking of them as “musicians.”

In my day, I’ve often seen 20 Jazz Funk Greats recommended as a good introduction to Throbbing Gristle, and to industrial music as a genre, more broadly. Industrial is one of the very few genres of music that was given its common name by an artist and not an outside critic--and we have Throbbing Gristle to thank for coining it, so they’re inarguably industrial royalty. Their catalogue remains indispensable to understanding what industrial is about--like so many acts we consider seminal or foundational, the seeds contained here inform a great deal of subsequent music. The problem, though, is where to begin, since they were arguably more of a jam band than a studio act, with legendary live performances that probably influenced other artists much more than anything they ever pressed on wax. Their discography is hairy, peppered with live recordings, non-album A-sides, and releases whose official vs. bootleg status is unclear. If you’re looking for a traditional album listening experience--as many music enthusiasts often are--it’s hard to do better than 20 Jazz Funk Greats.

At the same time, though, I think there’s something to be said for respecting the fact that Throbbing Gristle were never trying to offer anyone a traditional listening experience. Just the opposite! 20 Jazz Funk Greats is a Great Album, for sure, and it’s also a bit more of a softball than some of their other work, which arguably makes it a bit more accessible. But is it really all that fair to try and wring an “accessible” experience from a band like Throbbing Gristle, when it isn’t particularly representative of their work? Or is it better to meet them head on and try to tackle them on what appear to have been their own terms? If you’re new to them, but want to understand Throbbing Gristle and feel literate in their work, I think I might recommend their 1981 “greatest hits” compilation, Entertainment Through Pain, better than I would any of their proper albums--particularly if you’re like me, and prefer their more aggressive cuts to the ambient ones.

Music: “Adrenalin”

I think my favourite track is “Walkabout,” even though I would argue it’s one of the least “industrial” sounding tracks here. It isn’t heavy, rhythmic, or sludge-textured, but instead serves as a sort of “breather” between “Persuasion” and “What a Day,” a brief, floating melody that drifts by like a cirrus cloud. It’s both playful as well as devious, wedging itself between some of the hardest-hitting stuff, looking like it might be a reprieve, but ultimately leading right back into harsh musical territory--like an abuser love bombing you between some of their worst behaviour. Perhaps “Walkabout” is something like a masochist’s after-care, a moment of healing and cooldown after the excesses of simulated abuse. Or perhaps it’s the stillness and disquiet peace of the grave, for those who meet their end at the hands of “Persuasion”’s narrator? Ambiguity and possible irony are an integral part of Throbbing Gristle’s particular danse macabre...so I’ll leave the rest of the interpreting up to you. Thanks for watching!

Music: “Walkabout”

[sang-the-sun-in-flight]

My Speech of Darkness for UK secular solstice.

I suffer from seasonal affective disorder - somewhat pithily abbreviated as SAD. When winter rolls around and the days get short, I suffer for it. My emotions are vacant and muted. I find it harder to care about anything, to do anything. I’m lethargic, despondent, and barely capable of keeping myself fed if there’s food available, but I’m no use to anyone else.

I exist in a world made of ice, my thoughts and feelings and wants all chilled and numb and frozen.

As a teenager, I didn’t understand it - winter was so much worse for me in a number of ways, but I could never explain how or why to anyone who wondered at my mood and behavior, including myself. My schoolwork suffered when autumn ended, and picked back up again in spring, just before the summer vacation, and it took me until high school graduation and a lot of missed essays and angry teachers *baffled* by this disparity before I realized it.

I hate it. Loathe it.

Or well, I would if I felt much of anything when I’m like that. Perhaps the worst part of SAD is the way it sucked away my ability to care about solving the problem itself. It robs me of my agency on the bad days, leaving me either uncaring or full of despair, unwilling to try something new.

Words can not do justice to the insidious sabotage that a depressed brain wrecks on itself. We all know we’re biased. Imperfect. Makes errors in judgement and behave irrationally in pursuit of our true interests.

And this group of people, all of us, upon learning that fact about the human brain, we reacted in the same sort of way - some surprise, some horror, but most importantly: with newfound resolve to use this information do better. That’s what being a rationalist means.

And my depression chips away at that determination. It tries to rob from me the will to take a look at my flawed self and try to fix it.

On bad days I can’t do anything at all except lay on the floor existing, despairing, and staring up at the world and feeling detached from myself and unable to move.

On the worst days, I don’t even care that it’s a bad day, and that every day after this one may be a bad day too.

And to look back at myself, and see that?

It’s not ok.

I care about the world.

I care about doing good things in it. About making things better and having an impact.

Knowing a version of me exists that doesn’t care? Knowing that I can be made to not care? It fills me with a sort of existential horror, knowing that such a thing is possible. With rage and determination and the sort of shivery discomfort in my soul that makes me want to say never again, that is not ok.

That’s one problem, for one person.

In a world of 8 billion others.

I’m not alone in my suffering, and I don’t even have close to the worst of it, as far as problems go. If a weakening of my will and a persistent despair is an awful horror that should not be, then a destruction of a person entirely is much, much worse.

8 billion people is an impossible number to understand, so I’m going to focus on a different, smaller number that’s also impossible to understand, but one that’s more traditionally a part of this speech: 55.3 million.

55.3 million people die every year.

151,600 people die each day.

6,316 people die each hour.

105 people die each minute.

Nearly 2 people die every. Second.

[looks around the room].

I want you to look at a person near you, now, and imagine them dead. Gone forever, from you and the world. And when I point to someone else, I want you to imagine the same for them.

And so on for the next person I point to.

Don’t flinch away from it, but look the horror in its eyes directly.

[pointing starts]

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

[pointing stops]

If we could shoulder the burden of humanity’s deaths for but a moment, we’d depopulate this room in under a minute. Not even a minute, and every. Person. Here. is gone. [blow out candle on “gone”]

Forever.

Every minute, a solstice worth of people are irrevocably destroyed from the world. And now, while the true emotional impact of that is fresh on our minds and in our hearts, a moment of silence.

[a moment of silence]

Even in the darkest, most horrible pits of my depression, there was one thing I always had. A small kernel of belief I’ve never once doubted, for even a moment. Even wrecked with apathy and despair and soul-sucking lethargy, I never once doubted this:

Things can get better.

Maybe in that moment, I didn’t care to try, but everyone else might one day get around to saving me, if I couldn’t myself.

Maybe I cared to try, but with no idea how. I believed humanity or I might one day learn what would work to save me.

There is no law written into nature that says we must be saved, or that we might assume we’ll be safe. The cold, hard, equations of physics have no term for humanity.

But also there is no law saying that we’ll never save ourselves. Those same equations do not lock us in a world where we cannot win. We live in one where we can.

And as a world that can exist, this has been a world I’ve never lost the hope of one day seeing myself.

[relight candle]

We’re not gone, not yet. We have hope. Hope for a world more caring and less dangerous. We may be weak in the face of death and the curses of ancient earth, but we are not powerless. We have our minds, our tools, and each other - and I’ve seen what people can do in the face of an unjust world.

Today, I rarely suffer from the effects of SAD, even here in the UK, where the darkness of winter is stronger than in my home of California. Antidepressants. Daylight tone LED bulbs (lots of them). Exercise. All things suggested by science and by my friends in the community.

All of these things were ideas I had the urge and will to try on my better days.

And gradually my bad days started happening less often, and less severely.

The sickness of my mind that sucked away my will has been beaten back - not completely, but thoroughly.

And I dream and yearn for a day where everyone is safe from the diseases and death of Ancient Earth. I dream of worlds full of brilliance and revelry - worlds where my mind can be split into billions and remerged, so that I may be able to know every person alive, and to experience joy and friendship with them.

I dream of worlds full of astounding sensations and puzzles I can’t even imagine myself - worlds full of humans changing and maturing and becoming what we want, instead of what we are. Wings, flight, intelligence. Dexterity. Unlimited endurance and incredible strength and a world made of a jungle gym, and bodies that could survive the inside of stars.

The demons of humanity are no more impossible to overcome than my personal demons are. Harder? Yes. More overwhelming? Absolutely.

But impossible? Never.

Not while we stand and we breathe and we speak and we do, will I ever say that victory is impossible.

Not while we sing and love and dance and inspire hope, will I ever say that victory is impossible.

Not while we think and create and teach and learn, will I ever say that victory is impossible.

Humanity is my tribe, and we have not yet lost!

Victory! Is! Possible!

We can win, all of us here, in this space, and on this planet.

We’ve beaten back the spectre of smallpox! 500 million, but not a single one more.

Child mortality is down below 5% globally. Less than a third of the absolute number of children are dying today as were dying 50 years ago.

Polio is nearly gone for good, at this point. In 40 years we’ve gone from 65 thousand cases to 42!

Guinea Worm Disease is down from 3.5 million cases to 22 in 30 years!

We are not powerless. Together we have slain gods of disease, and together we can slay yet more, until there are none left to defeat.

We. Can. Win.

[canaliculi]

Remember to Breathe (2/2)

Gravity Falls

Bill/Ford

NC-17: dubious consent, lots of hands, casual victim shaming and blaming

There’s more than one way to crack an egg. The egg, in this instance, being a stubborn human’s metal-lined skull.

1 | 2

Bill doesn’t need to directly interfere with his mind for all of Ford’s thoughts, waking and dreaming, to revolve around him. At first, there is blissful, empty darkness, an escape that flashes by in the blink of an eye. Then he’s falling – Crampelter must have pushed him, Stan wasn’t there – and then he’s lying in his mother’s lap, soothing hands brushing over his sore head; soft, comforting, cooing that she had never displayed before.

And then he’s trapped, pinioned by hands, spread and pinned like an insect, another hand is reaching for him. His face is sticky, tacky. His head is ringing, reverberating with the hollow singing of sharp claws against metal, he’s being jerked around so hard he fears his neck will snap. Pain, blinding pain, the sickening, dull scrape of bone against bone, awful crunching noises so loud in his head, he’s going to be sick, his stomach is churning –

It’s not the pain – Bill has done worse to him. It’s the fear. The thought that this monster was going to crawl back inside him. It sets his limbs shaking uncontrollably. The one protection he thought he’d finally gained, about to be ripped away. Each time Bill stops tugging, insidious hope worms its way back into Ford’s thoughts. He can’t get in. It’s doused with one sharp crack. Some part of him doesn’t believe Bill will do this to him. Most of him just wonders why he didn’t do it earlier.

He dreams of Bill ripping him apart, over and over again.

He dreams of wheat fields burning and towers collapsing, and mountains that crumble in the distance.

He dreams of his brother, of the kids, of Fiddleford.

The Oracle.

Bill.

Bill.

Bill watched as the human tossed and turned, wrestling his own personal demons; he was vaguely gratified to see how many of them wore his face in one way or another. Of course, it didn’t change the fact that the only person little Fordsy over there should be blaming was himself, but it was always nice to be appreciated for your work. After their impromptu play session, Bill had mended Ford’s skull, fresh as the day he was born - sans soft-spots - and plopped him down on the cool tiles of the suite.

It would have been simple to reach into the shell-shocked and shredded fragments of Ford’s mind to rip the pieces of the equation out, but Bill chose to wait. So much time – not that that meant anything anymore – wasted, so much fun put on hold; the demon really wanted to savor finally getting his way, fully trampling the pesky mortal who thought he could stand against him. Ford had put up a decent enough fight, he supposed; really, Bill probably could have ended it a long, long time ago, but something about the human made Bill want to tear him apart slowly, force him to look at what his ego and his sniveling need for validation had cost him, had cost everyone he held dear.

If there was a deeper meaning to it all, Bill didn’t see fit to examine it. He did what he wanted, and that didn’t include introspection. His eye was fixated on Ford as the human finally began to stir. He held back a chuckle when the man’s freakish hands shot straight to his fluffy head, even before he’d dragged himself into a fully seated position. What a riot! Bill wouldn’t have even needed to remove that useless plate of scrap-metal to read exactly what was going through Sixer’s cunning little brain.

“No DREAM, Sixer – not THIS time! Though I’m FLATTERED that you THINK about me enough for THAT to be an option!” With barely more than a spare thought, a glowing blue collar snapped around Ford’s neck, a long chain stretching from his prone position to Bill’s right hand. He allowed the line to lie slack as his pet slowly caught up to the situation.

“You personally invade my dreams to torment me, what do you expect?” Ford muttered caustically in response. There was a subtle tremor to his words, and his thoughts were cold enough to burn, nothing but fear, a panic attack away from full blown breakdown. It was the most Sixer had said to him in weeks, and it felt like a victory.

“Not JUST your dreams.” Bill walked his fingers up a few links of the chain, slowly beginning to stretch it taunt. Ford gave a shudder, loathe to be near him. “But I’m GLAD you’re feeling TALKATIVE today! Finally seeing what RESISTANCE and MULISHNESS gets you?” Apparently not, as Bill lifted a rather detailed imagining of Ford ripping his eye out from the man’s mind. Well, well! Maybe he’d let him try.

“What do you want, Bill? You have the equation – you won.”

“Oh, Fordsy, that doesn’t sound like YOU!” Bill said in feigned shock. The human glowered at him. “Giving up ALREADY? I thought you were the HERO of this sad little tale! Don’t you want to at LEAST beg me for your FAMILY’S lives?”

“I know better than to expect mercy from you.” Even when they were talking about his family, Ford somehow made everything about himself. The thoughts shifting through his head had briefly flashed to his family, but were now ringing echoes of the plate’s removal. Bill pulled the chain tighter.

“You always WERE a smart one! But I’ve got a SURPRISE for you!” The human went pallid, tense as a statue. “A GOOD one this time! I DON’T have the equation; not yet!”

That seemed to really throw him for a loop. There was a derisive scoff, followed by an eye roll, Ford assuming he was just telling a stupid lie. But slowly confusion dripped in, and the painful splinter of hope, and dread. What more was Bill going to do to him?

“Why?”

“I want YOU to give it to me!” Bill laughed at the uncomprehending stare Ford leveled at him. “I know what you’re thinking – LITERALLY now – and yeah, I suppose I could SHRED your mindscape to SLIVERS and just get the EQUATION from there…” He gave the chain as sharp tug, the action causing Ford to spill over onto his hands and knees. “But I don’t WANT to!”

A low, frustrated noise came from his pet, six-fingered hands clenching into fists against the cold floor. “What makes you think that I would give it to you now? I’ve endured everything you’ve been able to do to me – nothing could ever make me help you again!”

The demon kept pulling on the chain, the collar catching against Ford’s throat as the man struggled to rebel, threw his weight back to avoid coming any closer. The feeble resistance was similar to a gnat throwing itself into a window pane. Bill didn’t even need to use his other hand to yank hard enough to drag his reluctant pet forward.

“Things CHANGE, why do I have to keep telling you PINES that?” It was hard to keep his voice free of amusement as he watch Ford floundering. The human even tried to get up from the ground, but Bill materialized an extra hand that roughly pushed him back down. Finally getting the message, Ford grit his teeth, studiously keeping his furious gaze on the ground as he crawled forward. “Anybody ELSE getting some déjà vu here?”

Ford didn’t reply but Bill could see the tension shiver in his shoulder blades, in the rigid line of his spine. Of course he wasn’t the only one seeing familiar sights, though it was true that the last time Fordsy was crawling around on his hands and knees it had been a bit more consensual. And the human was certainly taking him time with all this, like he was enjoying stretching the humiliation out further. Bill gave short, harsh tugs of encouragement whenever he paused for too long, until the man was kneeling just in front of where he was seated, his body trembling minutely.

“I BET you’re thinking right now, ‘why Bill, my DEAR friend and LENIENT master, what could possibly have CHANGED?’ And you DO have a point! You’re KNEELING at my FEET like the obedient little DOG you’ve ALWAYS been!” Sixer made it too easy to push all his buttons, wearing his heart on his sleeve all the time. But despite all the uncharitable - and frankly, uncivilized – thoughts chasing themselves in circles through his head, Bill was sure he wasn’t about to fight back just yet.

“Is there a point to all this, Bill?” Ford ground out through clenched teeth. He lifted his head to glare directly at the offending creature, though Bill found it undermined slightly by the red flush that had yet to fade from his cheeks.

“There’s no point to ANYTHING, Sixer; I think I’ve told you THAT before, too!” Bill replied cheerfully. Playfully, he wound the glowing chain around his hand, slowly forcing Ford to shuffle even closer. With his free hand, he scratched at the stubble along Ford’s jawline. The man flinched heavily, wincing when the instinctive urge to flee caused him to jerk against his collar. “But YOU’RE the genius here, I’m SURE you can figure out what’s DIFFERENT this time around – you ALREADY said it YOURSELF!”

Ford’s brow furrowed in sudden concentration, mind turning over their conversation. These were the kind of thoughts Bill preferred to see out of his pet. Revenge fantasies, however elaborate or well-earned, were boring, the stuff that anyone could come up with if tortured and tormented long enough. The analytical workings of Ford’s mind were some of the only worthwhile features of the man, as far as Bill was concerned, and even if their current puzzle was practically a no-brainer, it was enjoyable to see that part of him churning into motion again.

The chain swapped hands, one moment coiled around his right hand and the next gone, freeing him to burrow his fingers in Ford’s hair, above skin and bone he had sliced, smashed, removed just hours ago. The action had its intended effect as Ford stiffened. He still looked confused, like the answer he’d come to didn’t make sense.

“The plate?”

“DING DING DING, we HAVE a WINNER!” Bright strobe lights sprouted from the slopes of his sides, a big ‘winner’ sign flashing in the air. Ford winced, eyes squinted like they hadn’t been prepared for such a garish display. It all vanished in an instant and Bill scratched against the human’s scalp, gently, eye curving at the shiver of fear, of pleasure that it provoked. Ford brought his hand up to Bill’s, desperate to make the strangely, falsely affection gesture stop.

“You’re insane if you think literally ripping part of my skull out is somehow going to make me more inclined to give you what you want.” Apparently feeling emboldened by sheer annoyance, Ford actually swatted at his hand. Bill laughed.

“Oh, come on IQ, think about it for, like, TWO SECONDS!” The demon ruffled his hair and then withdrew his hand, and with his left hand now pulled the man a little closer, halfway to having the human sprawled across his lap. Another good thing about Fordsy: he didn’t let the paralyzing fear that crawled up along his spine balk him for long. He must’ve learned how to compartmentalize on his multi-dimensional hitchhiking trip. “Okay, I’ll make it SIMPLE for you – you LOST!”

An ugly glare twisted up the man’s face again. It vanished hilariously quickly as his clothing suddenly unraveled around him, the loss of the protective layers prompting an almost visceral panic. “B-Bill! What are you-” The end of his question was muffled as a muzzle suddenly clamped around his jaw.

“If you’re not going to THINK for YOURSELF then DON’T interrupt!” One more sharp yank of the chain had Ford pitching forward, his hands coming up automatically to keep himself falling all over the demon, ending up with them pressed firmly against Bill’s surface. The muscles of his arms twitched as he tried to push himself away, but Bill held him there with hardly any effort.

He gazed over Ford’s shaking shoulder, at the scratched out and faded remains of a tattoo that had once been an effigy. The tips of his claws ghosted over Ford’s taunt flesh, catching every now and then against the raised and ragged edges of scars, old and new alike. Ford shivered under his touch, breath coming out in short puffs against his surface. He stroked up and down the arched column of his back.

“The way I see it, Fordsy, is that this is GAME OVER for you! You had your FUN, you did your REBELLION thing, but it’s all OVER!” Bill could feel the rising tide of fear, sharp and biting, radiating off Ford’s mind, and he laid his palm flat against the middle of his back, over his own image. “It was a nice TRY, but there’s NOTHING left to FIGHT! Regardless of whether you YIELD now or NOT, I’m GETTING that equation!”

That muzzle had been a bit of serendipitous foresight. Whatever inane thing Ford was trying to say – and he sounded angry about it – was completed unintelligible.

“Hey, I GET IT! You spent a long, long, long, loooong time fighting me. And you did MUCH better than MOST! But the ONLY THING standing between ME and the BEST PARTY this DIMENSION has ever SEEN is – WAS – you!” He lifted his hand from his faded symbol to Ford’s fluffy head of hair. “And without that PLATE, let’s FACE IT, there ISN’T A WHOLE LOT you can DO!” Ford fixed him with a glare, and Bill laughed. “Come on Fordsy, wake up and smell the FUTILITY!”

Ford’s entire body twitched, shifting against him, bruising himself against the collar tight around his neck. Bill tightened his grip on his hair, pulled his neck back, enjoyed the sharp intake of breath his action caused. Ford’s eyes were burning points of anger, frustration, betrayal above the gold and white silk cloth of his gag. Within a blink, Bill’s eye flipped into a mouth, and his tongue slithered along the side of Ford’s face.

“You’ve been fighting for your dimension, your family, right?” He tugged Ford closer, and this time there was less resistance. “Well, it doesn’t MATTER what you do from here on OUT! Either way, I’M going to WIN!” Ford didn’t reply, and Bill could smell blood in the water, kept laving against his jawline, down the crooked column of his throat. “You could GIVE IN – right now! – and NOTHING would be different!

“And I KNOW you’re tired of fighting me,” Bill said. His eye had flicked back and he fluttered his lashes against Ford. “Tired of fighting for a bunch of people that don’t even LIKE you!” Ford flinched, his eyes closed. “An entire DIMENSION full of people who REJECTED you for, what? An extra FINGER? A BRILLIANT mind? And a family that NEVER saw you as anything more than a MEANS to an END!” The anger that had been radiating off of his pet was slowly being stomped out as Bill plucked all those raw nerves. It was difficult to keep from laughing.

“We’ve had some BAD TIMES recently, but there were GOOD TIMES too!” He stroked his fingers through Ford’s hair, let them intentionally brush over the missing plate. “With that PLATE gone and the EQUATION in HAND, I don’t NEED to hurt you anymore – and I don’t WANT to! I never wanted to, Fordsy, but you really didn’t leave me much CHOICE, did you?” A second pair of arms abruptly sprouted from his sides, encircling Ford in the closest approximation to a loving embrace Bill could muster. It seemed pretty convincing, if he did say so himself.

“I won’t even hold any of that against you! It’s all in the PAST now! I won’t HURT you again, and neither will ANYONE else – I’ll make SURE of that!” Bill had always found it weird how the human mind reacted to physical and emotional pain in nearly the same way. “All those people who would THROW you away JUST for being DIFFERENT, for being TALENTED – they don’t DESERVE your SACRIFICE, Sixer!” At that, finally, Ford made a muffled reply, the muscles of his jaw tensing between the strips of leather binding him. The muzzle vanished.

“Just take it,” Ford repeated, unable to even look at him. “The equation. You can have it.”

And there it was, at last, sitting pretty at the top of Sixer’s thoughts, buoyed up on wave after wave of self-loathing and regret. Ah well, plenty of time to fix his pet’s emotional problems later. He could just scoop it up from there and be done, but Bill wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to be invited into his favorite mind. His psyche leaped out of his physical body.

“Bill! Wait!” Bill rolled his eye but paused his movements, looking down to the human. Oh, it was probably a little uncomfortable for Ford now that the form holding him in place was made of stone.

“Just gimme TWO SECONDS, Fordsy! Don’t GO anywhere!” With that, he plunged into the man’s mindscape, and the starry expanse that greeted him seemed subdued somehow. Bill didn’t pay it much mind as the shining fragments of the equation coalesced, and jeez, it wasn’t even that complex. Probably could have figured it out himself if he hadn’t been so fixated on battering it out of his pet. It was more satisfying this way anyway.

His mind was already racing with the possibilities. Finally, finally they could get this show on the road, really get the party started! Bill couldn’t wait to show this dimension a good time, to warp and bend and break it until it was the kind of disorderly mass of chaos someone could really be themselves in. He popped back into his body, laughing, and nearly dropped Ford in his excitement to get going.

“Whoa, almost LOST you there for a second!” Bill said, chuckling. Ford’s eyes were downcast, his thoughts a stuttering, swirling heap of self-derision. A little unusual coming from the man, but not unheard of. The hand still kept buried in Ford’s hair slid around to cup the back of his skull, and the extra pair holding onto the mortal slid up and down the broad planes of his back, blunted claws dragging against his skin. He gave the chain a short tug, just to remind them both it was there. “Hey, I think you deserve a reward, huh? For finally being the good pet I’ve always known you could be!”

Ford didn’t reply, but a small quiver that seemed to come from equal parts shame and pleasure rolled through his form. The fact that he was practically being ignored again was irking Bill just a tad, and it was kind of pathetic how Fordsy was wallowing in self-pity and disgust. Thankfully, Bill was decently confident that he had a surefire way to drag the human out of his boring emotional turmoil, and it started with dark hands, living shadows, dragging themselves out of the strange floor of the suite to firmly press against the meat of Ford’s inner thighs.

The human jerked spectacularly and Bill couldn’t help but to laugh. Ford’s entire body was tense, but the hands applied subtle pressure, slowly pushing his legs apart as they rhythmically squeezed the tight muscles in their grasp. If he wasn’t watching it happen before his all seeing eye, Bill wouldn’t believe that such a small action could provoke the, honestly, out of proportion response it gained. Ford’s heart was hammering in its bony cage, face bright red and eyes wide. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and Bill sprouted another arm just to have a spare hand to place one finger on the bottom of Ford’s jaw and hold it shut for him.

“Thought you weren’t in the MOOD to talk, Sixer!” His newest hand shifted positions a bit, holding onto his chin and maneuvering so his thumb could roughly drag a dull claw along the fleshy curve of Ford’s lower lip. “And I’m not going to MAKE you, even though BEGGING is the ONLY THING that smart little mouth of yours is good for!” Ford squirmed, but his tongue suddenly darted out to wet his lips, to lave against the digit still scratching at his mouth. Bill chuckled rather darkly, enjoying his complicity. “You don’t have to say anything at all, Fordsy; I already know what you want.”

Like a particularly unsettling field of flowers, more and more arms began budding from the floor, stretching like taffy or bending with sharp snaps into rigid angles to pet against his human’s flesh. One pair of hands with unnaturally elongated and thin fingers wrapped around Ford’s wrists, tugged his arms rather forcefully behind his back. Bill watched with rapt attention as Ford sucked in a sudden, quivering breath, the man’s entire body feeling heated underneath his innumerable hands.

“Looking GOOD there, IQ!” Not exactly a lie, either. Most of those borderline depressing thoughts had been ruthlessly shoved away, and there had always been something appealing about the stark contrast between the pale expanses of Ford’s skin against the nightmare black of his own limbs. The way Bill could mottle and bruise him simply by applying the smallest bit of pressure. Tiny beads of sweat accumulating on his pet’s flesh, red, angry trails that appeared whenever his hands got just a little too eager with the claws – not that Ford seemed to mind. “But I THINK I see room for IMPROVEMENT!”

Ford being himself, took the comment to mean something innate about himself, and Bill could literally feel the man’s embarrassment, trying to curl in on himself. The demon rolled his eye and sidestepped through reality, vanishing briefly and reappearing at Ford’s back. The various appendages directly connected to his body rearranged themselves, the hands that had been busy tracing various dimensions’ constellations across the map of Sixer’s back now raking down the man’s front side.

Slipping his hand free from Ford’s hair, he lightly drew a straight line down the bumpy contour of Ford’s spine, from the back of his skull to the tip of the faded triangular tattoo, drawing another wave of prickling skin and twitching muscle from his pet. Bill tapped his finger against it, once, twice, and without much more warning sunk the tip of it into Ford’s skin, drawing a pained hiss from the human. Following the worn and damaged pattern, Bill carved his claw through the thin flesh of Ford’s back, the wound knitting neatly behind him. Instead of crumpled scar tissue, his actions left behind smooth skin, stained a deep black.

Bill took his time, enjoying the way the muscles along Ford’s back tensed and jerked. His various hands held the man tight, didn’t allow him to twist or squirm away from his attentions, the human’s breathing shallow and panting, particularly when his claw would skip over the hard bones of his spine. Blood still spilled out, hot and thick, during the brief intermissions that Ford’s flesh was split, and by the time Bill was on the upward slant back to the point, long trails of the sticky red liquid were running in meandering patterns down the length of Ford’s back, and had thoroughly coated Bill’s hands. With a flourishing flick of his wrist, Bill completed the triangle, his mass of hands spinning Ford around to face him.

“THERE! Perfect!” Ford’s face was all twisted up with the aftermath of pain, but his eyes opened and there was nothing short of hunger, devotion, wonder in his gaze; a look that briefly shot Bill back about 30 years. As much as Ford may love getting his ego stroked, Bill loved it more, and a look like that was nothing short of intoxicating, particularly considering the stubborn piece of shit it was coming from. His gaze traveled down the bound human’s body, over his heaving chest and the long, irritated marks his claws had scratched all the way down his stomach. Past the man’s half-hard cock and down to his still forcefully splayed legs, every inch of the man trembling with dread anticipation, with barely subdued wanting.

The hands across his body, which had grown still, began to move once more, and down the central line of each palm – what shrewd liars referred to as the “life-line” – the darkness split and cracked, lolling tongues and sharp teeth revealed nestled beneath the black approximation of flesh. They licked against his pet, nibbled at all those sensitive places that Bill remembered used to cause his human to unwind, and he wasn’t disappointed by the sudden, broken moan that slipped out between Ford’s lips when his hands lapped at the sensitive junction at his hips.

One of his hands was still lingering along Ford’s jawline, as a joke Bill had it lick its way up the human’s chin, lave across the man’s lips, but to his utter surprise Ford opened his mouth, sucked the wandering tongue in, his soft lips moving eagerly against his palm. Bill’s energy briefly fluttering, the glowing light radiating off his form flickering.

“Pretty DESPERATE, huh?” Bill murmured. He drew his hand away and came forward himself, and Ford’s mouth was immediately against him, that strangely squirmy and deft tongue running against the lid of his eye before he could even transfigure it. The demon caught up quickly enough, capturing Ford’s lips with a pair of his own, their tongues tangling and sliding together in meaningless, nonsense patterns. In the middle of it, Bill wrapped a hand around Ford’s cock, drinking his moan like it was water as yet another tongue licked against the man’s firm, hot flesh.

Bill pulled away, watched as Ford whimpered and groaned. His hands pressed bruises into the mortal’s skin, around his arms, his legs, against the curving ridges of his ribcage. Various mouths licked and bit and suckled purplish marks into his devotee. The hand wrapped around Ford’s cock, twisting and lapping – and nipping, causing Ford’s heart to stutter, his breathing to catch – would pause in its ministrations, and Ford’s hips would twitch forward, mindless in his need for continual stimulation.

His pet’s thoughts were scattered, needing renditions begging for more, and his own name was breathed on every shuddering exhale, every gasping inhale. Ford was getting close, he could tell in the building tension of his muscles, the single-minded pursuit of his own pleasure. Somehow, Bill had forgotten the overwhelming need Ford would get in the mindscape – the need to be close to Bill himself, to reciprocate the affections being lavished on him.

In the mindscape, the only thing holding Ford back from his deepest desires had been the man himself, and thanks to the symbol he’d just carved into the mortal’s back, the same was true now. It wasn’t enough of a dose of the reality-warping potential that Bill possessed to actually pose any sort of threat, but if Ford was able to gather himself together enough to harness it, it would manifest as abilities well beyond any mortal was capable of. And seeing as Bill hadn’t bothered to inform Ford that he was subtly infusing him with anything extra-dimensional, the demon had barely even bothered to process the idea of Ford utilizing it any time soon.

Of course, he wasn’t too full of himself to be incapable of underestimating another creature, and Bill had to admit that he may have done so to Ford when, with wet, tearing, crackling sounds brand new arms had suddenly split the flesh along the human’s ribcage, were darting forward and sinking claws – claws! – into his form and forcefully tugging him closer, into range of Ford’s mouth that was licking against the slope of his side and then biting against him, his slim edge caught between the two rows of Ford’s teeth.

His energy leapt, the feeling – pain? pleasure? – not something that Bill had felt directly in over a millennia. There was the urge to pull away, to punish his pet for overstepping his boundaries so brazenly, as much as there was an urge to stay still, and see how much farther the mortal could go. Bill settled for pushing rather gently, encouragingly against the man’s shoulders, and found himself surprised yet again as Ford let out an animalistic growl, and surged forward, breaking free of his multitude of hands to literally pin his form to the floor.

The sharp talons of Ford’s new appendages had speared straight though his physical body, gouging deep ridges into the hard stone underneath him. Bill wasn’t concerned, wasn’t worried, but this wasn’t going exactly how he’d thought it would anymore. The chain was long since forgotten, dissipated when they weren’t looking, but the collar still glowed and hummed around his pet’s neck. Bill reached both his hands up, hooked them around Ford’s clavicles, cutting through flesh and muscle to hold onto the slim bones directly.

Ford rutted against him mindlessly, the human’s cock, dripping precum, sliding against his front surface. It would have been hilarious if not for the twelve points of contact where his very form was breached. Still, with his two main hands, he urged the man onwards, pulled him closer, harder, rougher against him as the man rocked and groaned.

Finally, suddenly, Ford cried out his name almost wretchedly, and Bill could feel some new slickness splatter against his form, across his front, and even some of it arched up into his eye, Bill letting go of the death grip he had around Ford’s collar bones to rub at the orifice. He let the sticklike black limbs drop to his sides and he stared at the panting human above him, every blink accumulating more of the milky, sticky fluid at the corners of his eye.

They were both silent for a moment, Ford hunched and twitching over top of him. Bill’s multitude of conjured hands slowly moved over to brush against the mortal’s flesh again, though they were cautious and gentle, exposing some hesitancy that existed in the demon’s mind. As always, Bill was the one who recovered first, and he blinked away to hover in the air again, the holes Ford had carved in his form quickly knitting.

“WELL! That sure was FUN, wasn’t it?” Bill said. He didn’t sound convincing even to himself. “But ENOUGH’S ENOUGH, time to get this PARTY on the ROAD!”

He turned to leave, determined to deal with all this a little later, when he’d had some time to properly process all this muck. But a long, dripping red and sharp-clawed hand was suddenly around his edges, scratching against him, begging him to turn back, to come back to the half-ascended human he was trying to run away from.

Well. Bill had some time to spare anyway.

[stars-forever-dwell-blog1]

Eat Worms

So since my depression and anxiety have decided to start causing a ruckus in my head as of late, which is pretty par for the course this time of year, I’m finding I have quite a bit to write about (my series of posts about my indoctrination into so-called Christianity and the dude who brought it into my life is proving very emotionally difficult to write about, so I’m procrastinating on a scale of epic proportions as far as that goes).

So I realized today yet another insidious way that depression and anxiety creep into my head with their lies. I’m “in school” at the moment to become a riding teacher/generally awesome horseback rider, and as such I’m spending a lot of time watching my teacher teach other people, not to mention riding myself and doing general horsey things every day. This means being around a lot of little girls and their parents, and we’ve all kind of drawn together into a really fun, silly, passionate horsey community, which is so, so awesome.

But lately, I’ve noticed that these lies that are pouring into my head revolve largely around the thoughts that nobody likes me and everybody thinks I’m weird. (One of the keys I’ve found to weeding out bullshit is when the words “always,” “never, ” “nobody,” “everybody,” and the like are used. Because reality is never that black and white.) And so lately, I’ve been spending a stupid amount of energy trying to appear “normal.” It is, not surprisingly, exhausting.

It’s this fear that if I don’t maintain this perfectly normal, easy, palatable exterior, if I somehow let the supposed ugliness inside me slip out, even for a second, people will be baffled, shocked and horrified by what they’ve seen. They’ll draw back from me, initially puzzled, but then maintain a distance because, wow, she’s truly. . .what? Irrevocably, fucked up. Ugly. Hideous. So, so weird. And so on.

One of the things I love most about my fiance, and one of his greatest lessons for me, is how he truly doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him. He is just himself, no matter who he’s around, no matter what the situation. Me being a people-pleaser who always tried to be “nice,” (barf) and who is always acutely aware of the energy around me that emanates from other people, I’ve always subconsciously tried to keep everything smooth and balanced around me (also exhausting), even to the detriment of myself. So watching my fiance in action, tracking his game, I’ve learned so much. It took me forever to give myself the permission to stop caring what other people think of me, and to just be. And how can I even express the feeling of freedom its given me? I really can’t. There are no words.

So why, now, is all this progress I’ve made ebbing away from me? Why am I suddenly, again, so worried about what other people think of me? I guess because something inside me, fundamentally, feels like its changed. Before the depression and anxiety came a-calling, I felt good inside. There was a softness, a self-love that was growing. A clarity of who I am and what I’m about, stemming right from the seat of my soul, and my gaze was steady, because it was authentic, pure. It all spoke for itself, and I felt no need to justify any of it with words. But that’s different now. I feel cloudy, unsure, ugly, stupid. And I think its one of those what-came-first-the-lizard-or-the-egg things, because is it that I actually am different and therefore less happy with myself, or is it that I’m anxious and nervous and therefore have become less confident in myself, therefore I have changed? I don’t know yet.

So today my “higher brain,” my “adult self” if you will, took over, and I just breathed deep and reminded myself of all the work I’ve done, of who I am, unclouded by depression or anxiety or any lies this illness whispers in the darkness, that this will pass, and I just remembered who I am. To just be. To keep it simple, and to remember that there will always (yes, always, in this case) be haters who will judge and snark and be generally shitty. And it has nothing to do with me.