#she also lives in a storm drain so shes a little sewer man......

[mywillbedone]

[deadstrangeblog]

The Sad Case of The Lipstick Killer

North Kenmore Avenue is a much sought-after residential area in the city of Chicago, with a children’s park surrounding the apartments and transport links within walking distance. It lies around the corner from a prestigious Catholic school and the uptown setting is popular with young families and elderly residents alike, it’s safe atmosphere and cheap living costs appealing to people from all walks of life. North Kenmore wasn’t always as safe though. In 1945, in Apartment 4108, a woman was brutally murdered there.

It was June 5th when 44-year-old Josephine Ross was found slain on her apartment floor. Police were greeted by a messy scene– Pools of blood surrounded Josephine and the smashed up apartment indicated there had been a struggle. She had been stabbed multiple times and a dress had been wrapped around her head. Usually, when a killer covers the face of a victim, it suggests that they feel a great deal of remorse about the crime they have committed and that death is almost always the end result of an impulsive sex crime. However, this seemed different. No evidence of sexual assault was present and death had definitely been the result of a frenzied attack. Police found a clump of dark hair in Josephine’s hand, as if she had been in a violent struggle with somebody. Naturally, police turned to her ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands, all of whom had an alibi. Although the neighbourhood was frightened at the prospect of a murderer living close by, the police assured people there was nothing to worry about and that Ms. Ross had been killed by a startled burglar. Her murder didn’t make the front page, and she was sadly written off by investigators.

Six months later, and we are in December. Our killer strikes again but, this time, police begin to take notice. On the 10th of the month, divorcee Frances Brown was found dead in her apartment. She had been stabbed and shot, the bread knife used in her murder still lodged in her throat when a cleaning lady discovered the body. The grim message shown above, written in unusual handwriting, was scrawled on the apartment wall in red lipstick (earning the killer his moniker) but apart from that, little evidence was found. Compared to the first murder, police did have a bit more to go on: a bloody fingerprint and a possible eyewitness. John Derick, the concierge for the lobby, said he saw a nervous man and heard “possible gunshots” at around 4 a.m. Given the lack of surveillance technology during the 40s, it was impossible to confirm John’s account.

The last known murder of the deluded “Lipstick Killer” was a truly shocking crime against an innocent little girl. Six-year-old Suzanne Degnan (below) was snatched from her bedroom in Edgewater, Chicago, on January of 1946. Her bedroom window had been left open and a wooden ladder was still propped up against it. At the time, police had no reason to believe her abduction was connected to the Lipstick killer, as kidnapping little girls didn’t fit his modus operandi. A ransom note left at the scene read “GeI $20,000 Reddy & wAITe foR WoRd. do NoT NoTify FBI oR Police. Bills IN 5’s & 10’s. BuRN This FoR heR SAfTY.” That night, a man persistently telephoned the Degnan residence demanding the ransom, only to hang up as details were being exchanged. Those phone calls would later turn out to be a cruel joke performed by two high-school students, Vince Costello and Theodore Campbell. Sick with anguish, her family could only hope that the police could find Suzanne before it was too late. Sadly, their worst fears were confirmed. Acting on an anonymous tip, detectives travelled to a sewer just a block away from the Degnan residence and found Suzanne’s decapitated head. Where was the rest of her body? Investigators were now faced with the grim prospect that somebody had dismembered a little girl, and they were unfortunately right. They found her torso in storm drain, and both her legs had been discarded in separate catch basins. Her tiny arms were found a month later in another sewer. Blood, presumed to be Suzanne’s, was found in the drains of laundry tubs in the basement laundry room of a nearby apartment building. This crime was truly grisly, and without advanced forensic technology, it was hard to bring the killer to justice.

In a desperate bid to catch the murderer, police questioned hundreds of suspects and gave polygraph examinations to about 170 of them. In several press releases, they claimed to have captured the killer terrorising the city of Chicago, but they were always mistaken. All suspects were eventually released.

In June, 17-year-old criminal William Heirens (below) was burgling an apartment when he was confronted by the janitor and fled. Police were called, and Heirens was subdued by an off-duty police officer who dropped several flowerpots onto his head to render him unconscious. From the day of his arrest on June 26, 1946, things travelled on a downward spiral for Heirens and this once lucky burglar had run all out of luck. For some reason, police believed that Heirens was the Lipstick Killer and decided to question him. For six consecutive days, he was interrogated by police officers. He was denied food, water, and the right to an attorney, and two psychiatrists even gave him Sodium Pentothal (a potent barbiturate) without his consent. Most shocking of all, the 17-year-old was given a spinal tap without any anaesthesia. For days later, he was in incredible pain and couldn’t perform a polygraph test because his adrenaline-fuelled heart was beating too fast. Eventually, he cracked. He confessed to police that he had committed these crimes under an alter-ego named “George.” He explained to psychologists that he always took the rap for the crimes of “George” including theft, murder, and everything in between. The Chicago police department were suspicious of this defence, and accused Heirens of lying in the hopes of getting an insanity defence in court. Apart from his confession, police had nothing to go on. No evidence linked Heirens to the murders, and this polite University of Chicago student seemed incapable of such heinous crimes. It seemed like a bizarre arrest, but for the general public, it was good enough.

As suggested by his defence attorneys, Heirens confessed to all crimes. On his court date on August 7, 1946, Heirens took full responsibility for the three murders. The prosecution had him reenact the abduction and murder of Suzanne Degnan in court multiple times, all of which he did inconsistently. On the night of September 4th, Heirens attempted suicide in his cell and had timed it to coincide during a shift change of the prison guards. He was discovered hanging and was revived successfully by prison guards. He said later that sheer despair drove him to attempt suicide; “Everyone believed I was guilty…If I weren’t alive, I felt I could avoid being adjudged guilty by the law and thereby gain some victory. But I wasn’t successful even at that. …Before I walked into the courtroom my counsel told me to just enter a plea of guilty and keep my mouth shut afterward. I didn’t even have a trial..”

The next morning, the prosecution and defence were making their closing statements. The judge, Chief Justice Harold G. Ward, formally sentenced Heirens to three life terms. Somehow, he had been lucky enough to avoid the electric chair. As Heirens waited to be transferred to Stateville Prison from the Cook County Jail, Sheriff Michael Mulcahy asked Heirens if Suzanne Degnan suffered when she was killed. Heirens simply replied: “I can’t tell you if she suffered, Sheriff Mulcahy. I didn’t kill her. Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after his other daughter, because whoever killed Suzanne is still out there.”

Likely innocent, William Heirens still spent the rest of his life imprisoned. In 2002, a petition for his release was filed but eventually denied. In his older years, he suffered from diabetes and was confined to a wheelchair with limited eyesight. He died of natural causes on March 5th, 2012, due to complications with his illness.

In 1994, Dolores Kennedy formed a team of forensic experts to look into the murders and they found several inconsistencies, most notable was that Heirens’ confessions didn’t fully match the evidence. Heirens claimed that he was forced to confess by the police, and this is also supported by other evidence. They also concluded that the handwriting of the lipstick message and that of the ransom note were not the same and that neither matched that of Heirens. They also looked into the police force working on the case: Before Heirens was arrested, police had taken particular interest in a janitor called Hector Verburgh. 65-year-old Hector was from Belgium, and struggled to write fluently in English. With this in mind, isn’t it odd that police still arrested him and accused him of the murders? How could a man with no knowledge of English writing, scribble such an eloquently written note on his supposed victim’s wall? It didn’t stop there. Like Heirens, Verburgh was subjected to extreme torture. For two days, police interrogated him and beat him so badly that he sustained a dislocated shoulder. After his terrifying ordeal, he successfully sued the Chicago Police Department for $15,000.

“Oh, they hanged me up, they blindfolded me … I can’t put up my arms, they are sore. They had handcuffs on me for hours and hours. They threw me in the cell and blindfolded me. They handcuffed my hands behind my back and pulled me up on bars until my toes touched the floor. I no eat, I go to the hospital. Oh, I am so sick. Any more and I would have confessed to anything.”

With such atrocious behaviour from the police department, it’s safe to say that the man convicted of these crimes was not the real killer, merely a scapegoat for shoddy police work. The true identity of the Lipstick Killer is yet to be discovered, and, sadly, it seems that those who were murdered were not the only victims in this disturbing case.

[fallout4holmes]

Journal 52

We traveled by night to the Taffington Boathouse. A way-point for traveling Railroad agents and synth refugees from the Institute, the two-story house usually provided a safe place to rest and a meal. They were not quite equipped for a dozen people to suddenly appear at once, but made the most of it.

The sun was just coming up as we arrived with Tinker Tom and Pam. As I was known to be searching for the Mechanist, the idea was that an assaultron in my company might be less suspicious than with any agent trying to look average. Dr. Carrington, Drummer Boy, and a handful of agents had gone ahead of us, while Desdemona, Glory, and the remaining agents were behind us. Deacon had gone east, disguise in hand.

Drummer Boy stood on the porch, keeping watch as a woman worked in the thriving garden in the front yard. She stood up with a basket full of vegetables, saw us coming, and promptly dropped the basket with a yelp.

I recognized her. As her creator's son rushed out of the house, I had a horrible premonition of what was about to happen. I immediately froze, and fortunately all my companions did the same.

"Hello, Eve," I said. To the young man staring at me with shock and anger, I said, "Liam. Good morning."

"Fuck off," he spat. He stormed toward me. I held a hand out to keep my friends from reaching for their weapons. If Liam was still a pacifist, the worst I would receive would be a verbal beratement. If he wasn't, I would probably deserve whatever he did to me. "You lied to me! You destroyed my home and you have the nerve to come here and say 'good morning?!'"

Tinker Tom spoke, hesitant, "We... probably should have mentioned Patriot was staying here, huh?"

"Don't call me that!" Liam snapped.

"I won't be in your way," I told Liam, "and I won't stay for long."

"Good," he said, and stormed back inside.

I looked at Tom. He shrugged, "Glory found him after the Institute was destroyed. She recognized him. His dad… almost made it."

I winced, "That must have been terrible for him."

We continued to the house, "Yeah, man. If Glory hadn't found him, if Zachariah hadn't been able to talk some sense into him—"

"Who?"

"Used to be called Z1-14. Convinced Liam that this was the world he'd sent synths to, this was what freedom looked like, the least he could do was help them survive in it. So Glory got them set up here. I hear Eve is a pretty good cook.”

Preston had carefully approached Eve and introduced himself as she recovered the produce scattered across the garden. He offered to carry the basket for her, which she politely declined, and thanked him for his concern. She hurried inside.

"General?" Preston asked as we went inside, "The kid that chewed you out…"

I explained, "Liam Binet is responsible for a great many synths being sent to the surface. He decided that freedom in whatever world existed up here was better than slavery inside the Institute. I was going to help him free more… I was going to help him free all of them."

"And instead you showed up with a bunch of Minutemen and blew his home to hell," Preston sighed.

“Yes.”

Drummer Boy had gone inside at some point during all this, and now met us at the door, “Tom, we’re gonna give the boathouse a proper floor for you to set up shop. Carrington’s setup is temporarily in the kitchen. Pam, there's a space for you in the living room. Still not sure how we’re going to fit everyone here.”

“No sweat, Drummer Boy,” Tom said, “we’ll make it work. It’s only temporary, anyway. Hopefully. First though? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need some breakfast.”

We agreed. Danse left his armor on the porch temporarily, mindful of the limited space inside the house. Seeing yet another Minuteman uniform did not comfort Eve as she tried to cook. "Why are you here?" she asked Preston.

"Just here for a bite to eat and a moment's rest, ma'am. Then we'll be out of your way."

This comforted her somewhat. “You came with the Railroad.”

“General Holmes wanted to warn the Railroad that the Brotherhood were planning an attack. Figured we might as well help with the evacuation.”

Eve nodded, “The doctor, he said something similar, though much… harsher.”

“I can imagine,” I said with a small smile. “Dr. Carrington is not known for his bedside manner.”

“I’m not surprised. He’s sleeping now, but I’m sure he’ll reclaim the kitchen as soon as he wakes up. I’m glad you aren’t staying long,” she continued in gentle tones, no longer scared but still concerned, “it will be hard for Liam with you here. Harder than usual.”

“Are you his mother?” Danse asked.

She shook her head, “No, I’m a copy of her.” Seeing Danse’s scowl, Eve explained, “After she died, Liam’s father designed me to be a surrogate mother. I was a social experiment, to see if a synth could integrate into a family. That’s what he always told his colleagues. I like to think it was becoming more than that. I know Liam isn’t really my son, but I've come to love him as if he were.”

“How has he adjusted?” I asked.

She shrugged with a small smile, “Not much use for a computer genius on the surface. When synths come through, some of them like to talk to him, when they find out who he is, what he did. That seems to help him."

Danse’s scowl had lessened to a frown, but was made suddenly worse by Drummer Boy’s appearance, “Hey, mind if we borrow your power armor?”

“Yes.”

“We just need to move—”

Danse stood and followed, “Show me what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Preston, Tom, and I ate while Danse assisted with construction outside the house. Tom left to find a place for his sleeping bag, and Preston and I followed his example. Liam entered the kitchen as we left, pointedly ignoring our presence, and helped himself to breakfast with a pleasant "hello" to his surrogate mother.

Danse entered after him. Liam glared at the intrusion, unwilling to leave, and Danse wasn't about to be intimidated by a teenager.

So Danse filled his plate, sat down across the table from him and said, "I understand you're good with computers."

Preston and I listened in from around the corner.

"I was better than good, back when they still existed," Liam grumbled.

"The fact that you are no longer within a safe and secure closed system does not mean there is no use for your skills. Have you ever programmed a turret?"

"Have I… what?"

"Not as sophisticated as the challenge of freeing synths, but necessary to--"

Liam sighed angrily, "That's what I hate most about this place, everything comes back to violence."

"A pacifist nature in a world where ninety percent of it wants to eat you is exceedingly dangerous and unwise."

They ate in silence.

"You've been on the surface for nearly a year," Danse said, "what have you accomplished in that time?"

"Accomplished? Staying alive isn't enough?"

"You are secure in your position here with a consistent source of food, water, shelter, and supplies. Why haven't you done more?"

Liam was flabbergasted. "Like what?!"

"You're the so-called genius, you tell me." And with that, Danse stood, thanked Eve for the meal, and joined us in our search for a space to rest.

"Damn, Danse," Preston muttered when we were out of earshot, “think you were a little hard on the kid?” Despite the words, there was no mistaking the admiration in Preston’s tone.

Danse scoffed, "If anyone had known the entire population of the Institute could be utterly demoralized simply by forcing its inhabitants to the surface, the technology could have been salvaged instead of destroyed."

We ended up on the porch, out of the direct paths of activity in the house. I lit a cigarette as Preston and Danse made themselves as comfortable as is possible on ancient wood. We managed to rest for a few hours before Desdemona, Glory, and company arrived, sparking a rush of activity as everyone tried to expand the limited amount of shelter. It was time for us to go.

“Hey, Danse?" Preston suddenly asked, "The salvaging technology thing. Do you ever miss that part?”

“Miss it?” Danse was surprised and had to think for a moment. “Not exactly. I was skilled at identifying potentially useful artifacts, and there was always a sense of satisfaction in discovering a piece, but I was also content to simply hand them over to the scribes for study." He opened his armor, "However, I think there would be great value in scavenging missions, using technology to further enhance the effectiveness of our troops and security of our settlements.”

Preston shrugged, “We'd have to figure out how to use it.”

“True, though we do have some more scientifically minded individuals among some settlements.”

Preston’s brow rose. “You want to start a Minutemen version of Brotherhood Scribes with Institute refugees.”

Danse smirked and stepped inside his armor, “It does sound insane when you put it like that, doesn't it?”

"I completely disagree," I said.

They both looked at me, surprised, "General?"

"I know precisely who I want as our first recruit," I said over my shoulder as I hurried back inside.

Eve told me he'd gone out back, which is where I found him glaring at a machine gun turret pointed at the sewer drain north across the river.

“Liam, may I speak with you a moment?”

“I’d rather not.”

“I know I’m the last person you want to talk to, but I have a proposition--”

He spun to face me, “There is nothing you have to offer me! You betrayed me! My father is dead, everyone I loved and cared about was vaporized or lost in this barren irradiated shithole, because of you. I wanted to blame myself, I thought that somehow me trusting you meant I was responsible, but you were always going to destroy humanity’s best hope for the future, whether or not we ever met. You know, I used to feel sorry for you? You lost your son, you missed out on every moment of his life, but now, I see it's only what you deserved.”

I was incensed, “I will not be lectured by a petulant child. You were perfectly willing to send synths to this world you were so ‘curious’ about, you were perfectly willing to risk your perfect comfort, as long as you never had to think about the fact that your father was still building those slaves in the first place! There were plenty of scientists who had second thoughts about the Institute's isolation, about whether or not synths were people, about whether it was acceptable to experiment just because they could, and not a single one spoke up! Those ideas were firmly beaten down by fear of the consequences, and so apathy was chosen over compassion, because it was easier. And you want me to believe generations of isolated amoral inventors were the best hope for humanity? What about this humanity? What about the very real, human lives existing in this wasteland?”

"General?" Preston spoke from behind me, wary.

I breathed, suddenly very tired. “It's alright, Preston. Nothing to worry over."

"Awful lot of shouting for nothing."

"I'll explain later." I focused on Liam, "Your father was right in his belief that science should be done with compassion in mind first and foremost, but it takes a far more patient man than me to teach compassion to those who cannot feel it toward those they do not see. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret my actions, that people died, that the science that could have saved the world was lost. But neither could I stand by and permit it to exist. I tried to reason with the Director. I tried to tell him I wanted nothing to do with his Institute, but he wouldn’t listen. I tried to tell him… so many things. He was so convinced in his vision he refused to consider his father might not share it.

"But science with compassion," I continued, "that is a vision you and your father both shared, and it is one that could still happen. No, that needs to happen."

Liam was confused, "What?"

"You aren’t the only one to get out. There are Institute refugees scattered throughout the Commonwealth. Imagine what they could accomplish if they gathered together with a simple goal in mind - make life on the surface better for everyone."

He thought about this a long moment. "We’d work for you." The prospect did not please him.

"You’d be a new branch of the Minutemen," I explained.

Liam shook his head, "I don't want anything to do with you."

"Very well. The invitation remains open, indefinitely." I turned to leave.

"Why are you here?" Liam suddenly asked.

"The Minutemen and the Railroad are allies. Did no one tell you?"

He frowned, "Allies."

Preston answered, “The Minutemen are always happy to help everyone, no matter who you are, as long as you aren't in the business of hurting innocent people.”

Liam rolled his eyes, “Sure. Unless you’re the Institute.”

Preston was surprised. “Wait. You're really serious, you don’t know? Listen, man, I get that you probably weren’t in on all the activities of the people in charge or whatever, but you have got to know the people up here have some damn good reasons for hating your home. Like, super mutants? You know the Institute made them, right?”

Seeing Liam’s disbelief, Preston continued, “The Institute used the surface as its experiment testing area and dumping ground for who knows how long. People up here were tired of having loved ones taken from us and replaced, tired of synth raids destroying homes, tired of living in fear, so we struck back. I'm sorry not everyone got out. I know a lot didn't, even with the evacuation order, and I know that the ones who did escape had a hell of a nasty surprise in store."

Preston sighed, "I know survival is hard, but it's what we've been doing our whole lives while you were living down there. And you know, I can't even blame you for hiding away. But I can blame the Institute for making the lives of innocent people struggling to survive so much harder than it already was. If you want to just keep hiding, I get it. But humanity's best hope for the future is the one we make ourselves. You decide you want to be a part of that? There's a guy at the Red Rocket station south of Sanctuary who'd love to meet you. Just ask for Sturges."

We left. I told Desdemona the Minutemen would be in touch regarding the Brotherhood, and asked her to return the courtesy. We made our way west.

I don’t know if any of us convinced Liam Binet to keep trying to make a difference, but I hope the young man continues to find a reason to keep living.

[lodelss]

Aimée Lutkin | Longreads | November 2019 | 15 minutes (3,262 words)

“Hello?” my grandmother’s cigarette-seasoned voice would always answer the phone immediately. I pictured her sitting directly beside it in her motel room, waiting to see which of her three daughters or four grandchildren was checking on her.

“Hi, grandma! Just calling to see if you and Papa are OK in the storm,” I’d say cheerfully, assuming they were basically fine, as they always were. They had evacuated their house, a flimsy four-room hut built atop cement blocks, that was set inconveniently close to the Narrow Bay, right on Mastic Beach in Long Island. All that stood between their home and a body of water that could consume it was a dirt road and a rustling wall of reeds that created a marshy barrier and the illusion of distance. That illusion was regularly washed away by storm flooding, sending them skipping backward like sandpipers.

“Well, we’re all settled in here,” she’d answer, sounding pleased to have evacuated for the night to an artless motel next to a barren parking lot. “Your father is watching the news. Looks like we’ll be back tomorrow!”

“Oh, that’s good,” I’d say, ignoring that she had confused me for my mother as she often did after passing her 80th birthday.

“Yeah, not too bad, not too bad,” she’d say, though there were a few times that did get bad. The year their cars were washed away and they were trapped in their house, years where the power went out. But they always bounced back and during the next storm I’d call to check in again, repeating the same familiar pattern.

For years, visiting my grandparents involved a two- to three-hour train ride on the LIRR from New York City; I went by myself once every summer or spring, and I visited with my mom and aunt and uncle who lived in Montauk every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Montauk is on the eastern tip of Long Island, so Mastic was where we met in the middle until my mother refused to go back. Then I’d go by myself for one winter holiday, alone on the cold, empty train, traveling back and forth on the same day. A six-hour train ride was preferable to spending the night in the drafty house, making conversation around my mother’s absence.

Most of my memories of dinners in Mastic were of the escalating tension between my mother and her father. At some point, Papa had been banned from direct criticism, so he substituted the word “Democrats” for her name. One of his favorite pointed sayings was “An open mind is like a sewer — all the garbage falls in.”

On the trip home, no matter how enraged she had become, my mother would say he hadn’t always been like this. He’d been a teacher. A philosopher. He used to build things and volunteer and not watch Fox News. 

Before my mother’s boycott began, managing the volatile atmosphere was my job; the open hostility in the air bothered me, but it was easier to handle with a generation of distance between us. I learned quickly that one of the safest conversational topics was always the view.

“Look how beautiful it is,” I would say, and the group would repeatedly comply, turning to stare out the wide picture window over the dilapidated second-story porch. Any time of day was lovely, in any weather, but a clear sunset would flood the room with a warm apricot glow. The water caught and refracted the end of the day, allowing its goodbye to sweetly linger. My grandmother’s table, too big for the space, trapping us against the walls, would become a map of the world. Every person with their face tilted out toward the sun was trapped in amber light, frozen momentarily by warmth instead of cold. 

***

I spent most of Superstorm Sandy drunk. At some point the internet went out. My roommates — who were also drunk — and I sat around our living room checking our phones again and again. I lay on my back watching the bare trees whipping outside my window. To us, hurricane preparedness meant having enough wine in our apartment. We’d been responsible. Born and raised in New York City, I’d weathered many hurricane seasons and had found that the danger warnings were always over the top, at least for the five boroughs. 

Lack of internet in our Brooklyn neighborhood gave us some hint of the extremity of the situation, but it still took a little while before we understood that this hurricane was different. Reports of destruction filtered in as we sobered up and got back online. The lights were out in Manhattan, Red Hook was underwater, the Rockaways were a disaster zone, and Breezy Point was on fire. 

They returned when the water receded. At first it seemed to me that that was that. Another storm survived.

In the following weeks, I volunteered, making sandwiches in a church basement, sorting clothes and other donations, traveling out to the Rockaways to help people find what they needed at an auditorium that had been transformed into a relief center. I went with a group of volunteers to knock on doors in apartments that still had no heat or power, finding people who hadn’t left or who had nowhere to go. I met a woman who was running out of insulin, which we didn’t have, and another whose antibiotics for a MRSA infection had been ruined in her water-damaged car. A father and daughter were boiling a kettle on their gas stove to keep their apartment warm, which another volunteer warned was dangerous. They nodded politely. Most of the people we met appeared very calm in the dark hallway, as though they were certain that things would soon snap back into normalcy. Walking down below their complex, seeing how the boardwalk had been pulled into twisted spikes by the waves, how sand spilled everywhere, gobbling up the streets, it seemed impossible that anything would be normal again.    

Since Sandy, new condos have gone up in many of the hardest hit areas, even those still in flood zones. Writer Sarah Miller has investigated for Popula the cognitive dissonance required to move real estate into Miami Beach, purchases that essentially boil down to buying a house for 50 years, tops. Real estate development has mutated to work in tandem with climate change: Destruction levels an area, driving out residents; developers move in, their projects subsidized by government relief efforts. Gentrification accelerates and the people who left can’t afford to come back — yet, this all happens in an area that remains threatened by further climate destruction. The very wealthy can afford to buy the last 50 years of river views, as the people who once lived there search for a place that is not only affordable, but also doesn’t teeter constantly on the edge of ruin. The land shrinks.

***

After Sandy hit, it took a while to get in touch with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle, who said they’d briefly been cut off entirely by rising waters around the Montauk peninsula, which knocked out phone service. My grandparents’ home had flooded, but they’d made it to their usual motel. They returned when the water receded. At first it seemed to me that that was that. Another storm survived. 

The seasonal challenges of my extended family’s geographic location hadn’t been something I thought about much, just as I hadn’t worried too much about a hurricane even though I grew up on an island. New York contains many mythologies and most of them are connected to the city’s relentless ability to continue, no matter what. This is basically the definition of hubris — the confidence that because you survived something the last thousand times, you will survive it the next thousand. 

My grandparents were also both born in New York; my grandmother was an only child. Her mother and father worked as a cook and a chauffeur, respectively, and rented an apartment close to St. John the Divine, in Morningside Heights. In her childhood photos, she looks like a little doll, solitary and posed in patent leather shoes. She grew to be almost six feet tall and gorgeous. She once showed me a photo of herself looking dashing in a headscarf, seated high on a fence.

“Look at me,” she cough-laughed. “I knew what I was doing there.”

Any time of day was lovely, in any weather, but a clear sunset would flood the room with a warm apricot glow. The water caught and refracted the end of the day, allowing its goodbye to sweetly linger.

My grandfather was one of many children of an Irish immigrant mother and an Italian mobster, whose name he wasn’t allowed to speak. I’ve never seen a picture of him before his days as a soldier in WWII, stationed in France after surviving D-Day. His family lived on the Lower East Side, then Williamsburg. He would sometimes tell stories about collecting lost bits of coal that fell from the delivery truck and hollering up at his mom to drain the bathtub full of gin when the cops walked down the street. These were colorful tales meant to make growing up poor sound much more fun than it ever actually was, but he enjoyed telling them. Once when he came to visit my mom and me at our East Village apartment, he spent the day pointing at rooftops, saying he used to jump from one to the other as a kid.

My grandparents met at a funeral. They were cousins of each other’s cousins.

New York City starts to feel very small if you’ve lived there all your life, so by the time they were married with children they’d moved further out, then further out again when the kids were gone. They’d wanted a small, manageable place by the beach for their retirement. They drove past the house in Mastic and a man was standing outside. They asked him if he’d like to sell it, and he miraculously said yes. 

I’ve been told the house washed away once, during a storm in the 1920s, then got hauled back to the same spot and put up on those cement pylons. The story was suspect, but to me it said something about what used to pass for hurricane preparedness.

***

A few weeks before Christmas 2012, less than two months after Sandy, my grandfather fell down the stairs. The staircase leading up to the livable floor of the house was curved and uneven, twisting in at two points. I’m not sure how far down he went, but he broke his hip on the journey and was taken to the hospital, then a rehab center.

My grandmother eventually went to stay with her eldest daughter in Maryland. She was behaving erratically. She didn’t notice that her swollen legs were leaking clear fluid until my aunt pointed it out. She sounded strange when we talked.

“I think I’m about to die,” she told me on the phone. This was something she’d been implying for years, giving away her most cherished wicker-frame mirrors and seashell-covered jewelry boxes until her shelves emptied, explaining she “didn’t need them anymore.” But that was the first time she’d said it so explicitly. She didn’t sound scared. She delivered the news like she was discussing the weather — a little bored, a little distracted. It was the voice of someone going through a transition so huge they couldn’t possibly be bothered to talk about anything else. 

My grandfather was moved to an assisted living home that was difficult to get to from the city. My mother traveled there alone and discovered he’d been sleeping in a wheelchair because it was too hard for him to get in and out of bed. He’d immediately fallen into an intense enmity with his roommate, who had an electric Lazy Boy he wouldn’t let my grandfather nap in. She started to look for homes in Brooklyn, somewhere she could check in on him every day.

And then my grandmother did die.

*** 

After holiday dinners, the younger folks would usually go on a walk around the block before dessert. My grandmother accepted a very limited amount of help from us. We could clear the table, but she wouldn’t allow anyone into her rapid-fire cutlery shuffling over the small sink. Everything she did was set to a higher speed and we would only slow her down.

We walked to digest her butter-soup mashed potatoes and to release a little of the tension into the fresh, salty air. Before we left, my grandfather often called out to insist we bring his walking stick by the door, warning, “Take it with you to beat off the wild dogs. They run in packs out there!”

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I never saw a single dog without a fence penning it in, but I did once ask my aunt if we should bring the stick.

“If you see a dog, are you going to hit it?” she asked.

The answer was no, so we went silent and empty-handed down the rutted road, past the reeds to a small slope of empty shore. Water lapped the edge, which was covered in blue mussel shells and seaweed, plastic bottle caps, broken glass, the occasional dead fish, and a thin crust of ice, which became thinner every year, as the weather grew milder in winter. 

Past the ripples, Pattersquash Island created a dark line on the horizon. The island was originally part of the tribal land of the Unkechaug Nation, who live on the smallest reservation in New York state, set along the shore a 10-minute drive from my grandparents’ house. It covers less than a mile, which includes water. Shinnecock artist Jeremy Dennis has been compiling stories of indigenous Long Island for his project On This Site, and he writes that Pattersquash is historically considered a sacred site for vision quests. It appeared so still and desolate from a distance. 

During Sandy, more than 100 homes on the Poospatuck reservation were damaged. There has been some attention paid to the reservation’s recovery from missionaries and PR companies, but there has not been much media coverage of the incipient creep of rising sea levels, stealing yet more territory from Indigenous people year by year. Mastic and its residents have been living under the threat of both weather and gentrification for decades, resisting a transformation that almost no other beach town on the East End has managed to avoid. Stories about the area over the past 20 years are a whiplash of wonder and warnings.

In 2001, the New York Times touted Mastic as the island’s “Best Kept Secret,” citing its proximity to Fire Island and the relative affordability of real estate compared to the Hamptons. It was suggestively dubbed a “working class stronghold,” but several political and financial mishaps, including a series of racial housing discrimination suits, almost drove the area into bankruptcy, and they were obligated to rejoin the Town of Brookhaven after an attempt at self-governance that began in 2010. In 2018, Newsday heralded another Mastic renewal, pointing out that real estate was still comparatively cheap, and many of the decrepit buildings that had given the area a bad rep were being torn down by new management. 

Damage in the Hamptons after Sandy redirected vacationers to Montauk, transforming a quieter part of the island into a party hotspot that is barely navigable from June to September. My aunt and uncle, who work in the lighthouse and laying tile, were evicted from their home of more than 25 years after its owner died and a fashion photographer bought the property. They’ve been looking for somewhere to move they can afford. They’re thinking out of state.

New York contains many mythologies and most of them are connected to the city’s relentless ability to continue, no matter what.

Bad housing and “slumlords” have been a continuing point of contention in the area, as the New York Times also reported in 2008, seven years after recommending it as summer getaway. A number of sexual assaults brought attention to the high rate of registered sex offenders in the area, whether they were responsible for the attacks or not. In 2006, a man was arrested for planning to set fire to a building occupied by four tenants on the registry. While some of these units have been torn down via legal means, issues around infrastructure, especially inadequate sewage systems, seem to be holding greater change back. 

Visiting only briefly and driven from the train station to the edge of the world every time, I was largely unaware of these issues before Sandy, except for general observations about the number of beer emporiums we drove by to get to the bay. My grandfather built a homemade security system. It felt absurd to be deafened by sirens out on that otherwise quiet corner, and toward the end of their time there, the system was perpetually offline. The house was empty for a week before it was broken into. 

*** 

My grandfather died about nine months after my grandmother, while living in an assisted living home in Brooklyn. I’d like to say he was happy to be back in his old borough, but he most definitely was not. Every time I visited, he practically begged me to move back to Mastic with him, to live in that house, and take care of him there. It was both an outrageous and completely understandable request.

“We were happy there,” he told me one afternoon, tears in his eyes, though by then my mother was pretty convinced he hadn’t fallen down the stairs. She thought, based on the comments he’d let slip, that my grandmother had maybe pushed him during a fight, but that was just her theory. She guessed that the stress of the storm hastened my grandmother’s mental deterioration, maybe even that the new hurricane molds growing in their dirt-floor basement infiltrated her brain somehow, and my grandmother didn’t recognize the danger as their argument escalated. Not exactly a scientific diagnosis, and there’s no proof, but it was hard not to see some connection between Sandy and their deaths — how many storms had they survived before one rose too high and their whole survival system collapsed? All it took was for something they’d lived through over and over to hit a little harder, in a moment of vulnerability, a moment of unpreparedness.

I went by the house before it was sold to see if there was anything that should be retrieved. The people who broke in hadn’t found much of any value, but they appeared to have had a fun afternoon trashing the place. All the familiar knick-knacks and books and worn blankets had been strewn with abandon across the living room, then pissed on. It felt like the destruction from Sandy had been here since the night it happened and had only now become visible. I looked for the ashes of my grandmother’s favorite cat, but only managed to find my grandpa’s dog tags and a few old pictures in the debris and a piece of paper documenting my mother’s first communion. I took my grandmother’s tarnished silver spoons and a collection of vinyl records that had sat so long their grooves were almost flat. I played them later, trying to imagine her listening to them when she was young and felt much sadder than I did on the day of her death.

Then I walked out onto the old porch, stepping over holes, past a long beam that had once served as a ladder for a cat named Squeaky. I turned the corner around the dining room to look one last time at the view. The bay stretched out below as the blinding white light of the late afternoon sun swallowed the hard borders of the land. It seemed like the waves were rolling all the way to their door.

***

Aimée Lutkin is a freelance writer who has written for Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire, Popula, and others. She is currently working on her first book for Dial Press on the current societal trends around loneliness titled The Lonely Hunter; you can follow her on Twitter @alutkin.

Editor: Kelly Stout Fact checker: Sam Schuyler Copy editor: Jacob Gross

[ecotone99]

[SF] The Ballad of Jiggles the Clown

The grey clouds began to close in over the small, desert California town of Manouri. They darkened the skies in a manner that soaked up the pouring light.

The grey sky especially darkened that old, dingy abandoned house on Nabollon Street. Just on the end of a residential neighborhood, and bordering on the Deadlands; The region where the town ends and the desert truly begins. It is only populated by endless dirt, dead bushes, and tall trees that desperately cling to their lives in this dry environment.

That old house stood still in the quiet winds of Manouri. Vacant for years, and not a soul dwelled within it for decades. That is, until it gained a new resident in that fateful February month.

A broken window on the front of the non-home peered into the world outside, and with it was an odd man who stared from the inside. His face pure white with hair as orange as a tangerine, and long like a bouquet of freshly picked roses. His lips donned black lipstick, and each eye had three black dots drawn below them.

He was a clown, and his name was Jiggles. An oddity from a far away place. Presumably chased out, or perhaps a failed entertainer? Something in his past drove him to living in the basement of that old, forgotten house by the Deadlands.

Jiggles approached the door, with its hinges ready to give out at any moment. Thunder drummed outside, but he chose to ignore it.

"Maybe... maybe I should venture out to see my new surroundings!" he muttered to himself.

By the time the old clown made his decision, rain was pouring down, and Jiggles walked in stride with an umbrella in hand. The old umbrella was white, with a pattern of multicolored balloons that dazzled the withering parasol.

While observing the sights of the neighborhood, he skipped merrily, ignoring the downpour. Finally, Jiggles slipped and tumbled, eventually falling into a nearby sewer entrance. He stood up with a disorienting pain in his head, and he raised his hand up to adjust his red nose.

"Oh, now that was an awful decision!"

The water had already carried the clown a slight distance from the entrance, and the disorienting feeling led Jiggles in a different direction.

After about five minutes that felt like five hours, he came across an old storm drain which water from the neighboring street cascaded into.

Jiggles couldn't fit through it due to his adult size, but he noticed that the grate in front of the drain could be pried with the right amount of force from the outside.

Without much more thought, he thrust his arm through the drain, attempting to alert any nearby folks about his predicament.

One person did hear the clown's cries. It was eleven year old Jake. With a particular fondness of the rain, he had left his home to splash and play in the puddled streets.

Jake cautiously approached the drain. After all, when seeing an arm with a baggy, colorful sleeve emerging from the sewer, one can't be too careful.

"Hello? Is there someone there?" the boy asked in a hushed tone.

"Yes! There is someone there, and it's ME!"

The arm retracted and a head arose. The white-faced, red-nosed, orange-haired minstrel startled Jake, taking him slightly aback at the sight of him. It was as if Jiggles reminded him of something...

"Ah, thanks for comin' over here, kiddo! I'm gonna need your help!" Jiggles said. His voice sounded almost metallic against the moist grate, but that didn't distract from the gravelly sound that came from the clown's throat. He spoke like someone who smoked ten packs a day, but still had the energy to speak in a coherent and upbeat fashion!

"This grate might be movable if you just reach your hand in and lift it up. Think you can do that, kid?" he said.

Jake's eyes widened. Instantly he remembered what the clown in the sewer reminded him of; A film he had seen with his friend Bobby awhile back.

This realization was enough for Jake to quickly bolt away from the sight.

"Little brat..." Jiggles said, but at the same time he felt understanding of the boy's fear. Not everyone loves clowns as much as they used to.

After about two hours, the old clown found his way out of that disgusting sewer. He walked back to that dingy house in his soaked costume. The floorboards creaked with each step from his oversized shoes which were now caked in sewage.

His eyes were tired from all that time outside. He stumbled down to the basement where he was mainly living. There was an old, partly torn apart bed, and a withering end table at the bedside. On the table sat a doll. It was a clown doll, and it looked decades old.

Jiggles began to sit on the bed to lie down, but quickly realized how dirty his suit was.

"Hmm, I wonder if there's a shower in the desert!" he joked, with a light giggle.

The next day, the boy who encountered Jiggles rode his bike to the local park. Jake was there to meet his best friend, Bobby.

People frolicked and played in the park. Children, parents, and even dogs enjoyed themselves in a myriad of fun ways.

Jake approached Bobby, still slightly shaken from the other day.

"Dude, you're gonna think I'm crazy." Jake said. "I saw something in the sewer that scared the shit out of me."

"Damn, what did you see?" Bobby replied.

"CLOWN!!!" a voice bellowed from the park entrance before Jake could open his mouth. The two boys looked over only to see Spencer, a boy they recognized from school.

"Exactly!" Jake said to Bobby.

He waved Spencer over to the both of them.

"What the hell happened, man?" Bobby said.

Spencer attempted to catch his breath while recounting his story. He had walked to the local lake to see its peaceful, tranquil beauty. Little did he know, there was something alive in that lake.

Not a fish, but a performer. A circus performer! A performer with a dirty suit that needed to be washed in the lake.

While observing how pretty the tree-surrounded body of water was, the clown's head rose. Jiggles emerged with his portly, straight-standing form. It was slow, but also fast at the same time.

Spencer had barely any time to think. After all, what could one think? Especially when a clown comes right out of a lake!

Jiggles was fifteen-feet away from the boy. He opened his eyes and saw the child gazing at him. His bright orange hair appeared thin and frayed from getting wet, and the ancient paint on his face was cracked.

"It's a nice day to float, isn't it?" Jiggles said, waving and giving Spencer a friendly smile.

The boy screamed and ran like his life depended on it, straight to the local park.

"Huh. Again? That's quite... peculiar." Jiggles remarked.

After hearing Spencer's account of the incident, Jake and Bobby looked at each other. Jake, with a look of fear, and Bobby with confusion.

"I saw the clown too!" Jake said.

"You guys both saw a freaking clown?!" Bobby replied.

"Ohhh holy shit guys, this is just like that movie!" Spencer huffed, still catching his breath.

"Wait, so that means... we're gonna have to kill it?" Jake said.

"If only we knew where it came from." Bobby wondered.

Jiggles hiked back to the abandoned house. His polka-dotted costume dripped with lake water, but was slowly being dried by the cool winds. He reached the door of the dingy house.

Before opening it, the clown pulled out a red balloon, blew it up, and tied it to a string to make himself feel better.

The sound of the balloon alerted the attention of of 11 year old Jane, who happened to be taking a stroll on Nabollon street.

"Hi there!" Jiggles happily said.

She looked towards the house, only to see an orange-haired clown holding a red, drooped balloon, and smiling directly at her.

"Oh, do you want this balloon?" he said, while pointing at it.

Jane ran far away, yelling "HOLY SHIT!" as loud as she could. Her running took her to the safest place she knew. The park.

Her panicked running and red hair blowing rapidly in the wind alerted Jake, Bobby, and Spencer, who had still been talking about the clown that they saw.

The boys quickly rushed to the girl's aid, as they had recognized her from school.

"Are you okay, Jane?" Spencer said.

"It was the clown, wasn't it?" Jake said.

Jane looked up, shocked and confused.

"How... how did you... know about the clown?"

The boys looked at each other. Their emotions ranged from perplexed, to scared out of their minds.

"It went into that abandoned house by the Deadlands!" she proclaimed.

"Now we know where to find it." Bobby said. He felt determined to put a stop to what he believed was a threat, but also felt just as fearful as the others.

"We have to stop the clown. Does anyone know where we can get weapons?" Jake said.

"I think my dad has some baseball bats or something. Let's hurry!" Bobby exclaimed.

Later that day, the kids came straight to that old house on Nabollon Street. Jake was armed with a metal baseball bat, Bobby with a pipe, Jane with a tree branch, and Spencer with a pie.

"Are we all clear on the plan?" Jake asked the rest of them.

They are stared at him, likely having forgotten what to do.

Jake groaned. "Spencer, you smash the pie in his face, then I'll get him in the back of his head. Bobby will hit the groin, and Jane hits him in the chest. We clear?"

"Uhh... can I opt out? Please? PLEASE?" Spencer whimpered.

"No way fraidy-cat! This thing probably kills kids, and we gotta stop that!" Bobby said.

"Yeah, emphasis on 'probably', huh?" Jane replied.

"It'll be just like in the movie!" Jake said.

Bobby kicked in the door. The inside foyer was dilapidated, with creaking floors and rats scurrying on the floor. There was a near pin-drop silence filling the room.

"It must be in the basement." Jake whispered.

The kids nodded together and began to descend into the basement. It was illuminated by a burning lantern, and Jiggles stood in the corner, likely daydreaming.

Upon hearing footsteps coming into the room, he turned out to see the children.

"Oh.. hey kids! What are you doing do-" Jiggles said, before getting cut off by Spencer. The boy mustered up all his courage and rushed towards the clown with the pie in hand.

The whipped cream exploded on Jiggles' face, and the other kids rushed in.

Jiggles scrambled to wipe the pie from his face, and that's when Jake made his move. He struck the clown in the back of his head with the metal bat, and Bobby whacked the groin with a rusty pipe.

"Kill it before it kills you!" Jake screamed.

Jiggles attempted to compose himself and figure out what was going on.

"What the fu-" he was cut off by Jane hitting him in the chest with her tree branch.

Jiggles fell to the floor and vomited through the pie on his face. The realization hit. He had also seen something similar to this in a movie.

"Do you little urchins think I'm..."

Before he could finish his sentence, the children realized their stupid mistake. Jane approached Jiggles and put her hand on his shoulder. He flinched at first.

"I am so, so, SO sorry! I kinda acted on impulse."

"I'm really sorry too..." Jake said, dropping his bat.

The other two boys also set their weapons down.

"Okay..." Jiggles began to speak, dusting off his costume. "Just because you saw something in a movie, that doesn't mean it's true!"

"Yeah, but everything was so similar!" Bobby argued.

"Fiction mimics real life, kiddo. Truth is, reality tends to be more interesting." Jiggles explained. "I've seen some really intriguing stuff in my life!"

"You're not mad, are you?" Spencer skittishly asked.

"Surprisingly no." Jiggles said. "Sure, I just got the shit beaten out of me by kids, but at least I can say that it's a different kind of housewarming!"

The kids laughed at the clown. Suddenly he wasn't so scary now that they were getting to know him.

"It's like what I always say. Bad experiences become good stories!" he said.

"You know, you should perform for the people at the park!" Jane said.

"That's not a bad idea, kiddo!" Jiggles exclaimed.

The old clown wiped the pie from his face and exited the basement with his new friends to make way for the town park.

The End

submitted by /u/QuirkySpirit [link] [comments] via Blogger http://bit.ly/2IOLJnN

[letthesleepingdoglie]

From Whence He Sprang - 02

Title: A Street Rat Named Jason

Rated: M for Blood and Violence

Part: 02 of 18

The Catherine Hershey School, Gotham City

January 9th, 2012

10:07 EST

Team Year One

Jason couldn’t believe his luck. From the moment he’d first arrived at the Catherine Hershey School, he’d started to believe that his years of bad luck were starting to turn around. The last week had done nothing to change that belief. If anything, they’d reinforced it.

The first night, immediately after Batman and Robin had dropped him off, a security guard had brought him to the main student dormitory and introduced him to one of the dorm’s resident advisors. He’d been given a clean, though somewhat baggy, pair of pajamas, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and been guided to an empty dorm room where he’d slept for a bed for the first time in years. Best of all, for the first time in his life, he had his own bathroom. After years of living on the streets, only being able to wash himself when it rained and relieving himself in abandoned alleys, having a toilet and shower to himself was a luxury beyond belief.

The next morning, the headmistress had come by and spoken with him, asking him questions on his background and upbringing. She was a kind middle aged woman named Mrs.Anderson, and Jason got the feeling that even if he hadn’t shown her the card Batman had given him, she still would have let him stay at the school anyway.

Armed with the information Jason had given her, the headmistress and her administrative staff had managed to track down and request important documents like his social security card, education records and birth certificate on his behalf. Jason had also been forced to meet with a number of different people, including the school doctor, a therapist, and one of the teachers at the school.

This morning, he’d just finished the last of those meetings with a man who was the head of school for CHS. He’d asked a lot of the same questions that Robin had asked about Jason’s life on the streets, at their first meeting. Just like with Robin, Jason had felt like the head of school had actually cared about the answer, so he told the man the truth. The meetings were all part of the schools guiding mission to ensure that less privileged children got the chance to live a better life than the one that they might have been born into.

As Robin had told him when they’d dropped him off, the school was indeed a good place. It had been founded around the turn of the 20th century by a wealthy philanthropist, who had used the profits of his industrial empire in order to fund the school. To this day, thanks to its founder and several generous donors, the school maintained a sizable endowment in order to provide for its students, who were primarily selected and accepted on the basis of economic need, geography, and the capability to learn.

While the school had more than enough resources to provide for its students, owing to its origin as a vocational rather than a college preparatory school it still expected students to perform chores while they were staying on campus. Surprisingly, Jason found that he enjoyed the menial work. He took to these tasks with vigor and without complaint: compared to trying to pick someone’s pocket, or hot-wire a car, the act of shoveling snow was refreshing in its simplicity and lack of danger. The chores also gave him an opportunity to bond with his classmates, who had given him some idea of what to expect once classes started in a couple of days.

All things considered, and for the first time in several years, Jason felt happy.

Later that day…

16:14 EST

The Head of School for the Catherine Hershey School was a man in his early 70s named Alan Turner. As a young man, he had been a teacher, but had eventually joined the administrative side of teaching and worked his way up. Thanks to his skill, many private schools in the country had wanted to hire him, but he’d eventually settled on joining the CHS, as he had been drawn by their mission to help less fortunate children overcome their backgrounds.

By almost all accounts of the people who knew him, he was a good man. His staff knew him as a hard worker who almost never took days off, while the orphans and foster children who attended the school that he helped run knew him as a kind man who was always willing to listen to their problems.Twice a year, at the start of each semester, he took the time to visit any new students who had joined the school. Alan took it upon himself to look at these children in the eye and hear their stories. Given the majority of their backgrounds, he knew even just one friendly face in a new environment could be the difference between a good transition and a bad one.

For the most part his efforts were successful. There were hundreds if not thousands of alumni from CHS who remembered Alan as a man who had helped them escape the poverty that most of them had been born into.

Most of the time, Alan performed this routine out of his desire to make sure that the new kids at school felt welcome. However, this year, the act of visiting these children was a penance, something he took upon himself in order to make sure the guilt of his choices never left him. An act to make sure he remembered the children he was forced to sacrifice for the greater good.

He’d come into his office at the main building this morning to find a note on his desk. It was a simple note, made of parchment rather than paper, with four simple words written in elegant and flowing script: “Your tithe is due.”

It never ceased to amaze him how much anguish and terror that little note caused him, just as its predecessors had haunted him every four years in the twenty since he’d become the Head of School for CHS. Each time he received one, he was reminded of the night that the man who had called himself Raptor had come to visit him in order to explain to explain certain obligations he was expected to fulfill.

On that night, twenty years ago, Alan had awoken in the middle of the night and found himself with a blade held to his throat, face to face with a killer. Not literally face to face, since the man’s face had been obscured by a stylized mask that featured an avian beak and goggles, but close enough for Alan to see the faint impression of eyes behind those tinted goggles.

“Alan Turner.” The man had growled, pressing lightly with his blade to stop Alan from crying out in fear. “My name is Raptor. If you make a sound, I will kill you and everyone else in this house. Nod if you understand.”

The threat to him, and by extension his family, was clear. Conscious of the fact that his wife was still sleeping peacefully next to him, Alan nodded, and was silently led out into the study of his home.

Once Raptor had withdrawn to relative privacy with his captive in tow, he had proceeded to outline his purpose in coming to Turner’s home that night. He was, he explained, an agent for an organization that held enormous power and influence over a large number of countries. This organization required children. Not just any children, but children who came from nothing, who could be disappeared without a fuss and shaped and moulded into whatever the organization wanted them to be.

The Catherine Hershey School was a place where such children could be acquired. One child selected on the basis of mental capability, physical skills, and lack of strong family connections was expected every four years. and as Head of the School, he was in the perfect position to both appraise any potential recruits and help their… acquisitions go much more smoothly.

And so, at that moment, Alan had three options: He could refuse to cooperate and be killed right then and there, though his family would be spared.

He could lie and attempt to betray Raptor, in which case not only would be killed, but his entire family would be tortured and killed as well.

Or, he could agree, and nothing would change. The school would continue operating under his guidance, free of interference. All that it would take was one name, given at the appointed time.

Alan had agreed.

And now he stood, 20 years and four sacrifices later, on the verge of sacrificing a fifth innocent child to the terrors in the night. His hands trembled as he withdrew a pen from his coat pocket

Briefly, Alan considered leaving the space where he was supposed to write the name of his selection on the parchment blank. If even a tenth of the rumors that he’d heard were true, he was condemning one his young charges to a great deal of pain and suffering.

But it had to be done. One child to save the rest.

Alan’s shaking hand wrote out the formulaic response easily: I nominate Jason Todd to serve.

He stood up and left the parchment in the middle of his desk, just as he’d been instructed to do all those years ago. He knew that by the time he returned tomorrow, it would be gone.

“Selene.” He called to his secretary as he pulled open the door to his office and began to don his heavy winter coat.

“Yes Mr.Turner?”

“I’m not feeling too well. I’m gonna head home and rest for a bit. You don’t mind locking up do you?”

“No problem at all.” She replied with a kind smile, handing him his coat and moving to open the door that led into the hallway. “It’s nice to see you taking care of yourself for once sir. Rest up and feel better.”

He gave her a tight smile as he maneuvered past her. “I’ll try.” He promised.

Framed pictures of both previous and current students lined the main hallway leading to his office. Alan spared a glance at them as he made his way towards the exit. He envied the children in the pictures their innocence.

His was long dead.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Gotham City

January 12th, 2012

20:53 EST

Team Year One

“Hey,” Zatanna’s voice crackled through the comm in his ear. “Missed you today.”

Several dozen feet below the streets of Gotham, Dick slowly made his way through the sewers, storm drains, and abandoned subway tunnels that comprised the Gotham underground. “Sorry Zee. It feels like every super villain in Gotham picked this week to launch some sort of evil scheme.”

“The signal is horrible.” She noted. “Where are you?”

“You don’t wanna know.” Dick said, taking care not to slip on a puddle of god-knows-what as he continued to search for Jason’s personal belongings. The kid had given him the location of the tunnel entrance, which he’d remembered, but also the directions to his underground home, which he’d forgotten.

Absent any landmarks he could use to keep track of his position, Dick was forced to search in ever widening concentric circles. The underground wasn’t illuminated, which meant that he had to navigate using his mask’s night vision mode. Luckily, he was able to avoid venturing into most of the sewer tunnels that were connected to the underground, correctly reasoning that Jason would never have slept near them.

A few minutes ago, he’d come across some signs of habitation that made him think that he was on the right track.

“What’re you up to tonight?” Zee asked curiously. “Not that I’m complaining, but I think the fact that I’m your girlfriend obligates you to spend at least one night a week with me.”

Dick winced. He knew Zatanna understood how important he considered putting on his costume and venturing out every night, but he always felt guilty about taking time away from her.

“Sorry.” He said again. “Batman and I dropped a kid we met on the streets off at a boarding school last week, and I promised him that I’d bring him some of his old stuff that he hid in the underground before classes start tomorrow.”

“Ah, typical Robin.” She said fondly. “Always keeping his promises… at the last minute.”

He smirked at her good natured jab. “You know you love it.”

“That I do.” She gave a dramatic sigh that was audible despite the horrible quality of their comm signal. “You’re off the hook for tonight, but I expect you to make it up to me.”

“Of course. Flowers, dinner, and a movie.” He said, smiling despite his surroundings. Their dates might have been relatively mundane by some standards, but they both enjoyed them immensely. “Sometime next week, alright?”

“OK.” Zatanna said coyly. They both knew once he said he’d do something, he would. “Bye.”

“Bye Zee.” He said, closing the channel.

Dick ventured into another tunnel offshoot and caught site of an alcove that was two or three feet off of the ground. It was too small for a fully grown man to lie down comfortably, but it looked perfect for someone that was Jason’s size.

He peered into the alcove and caught site of a bundle that was tucked into the back. Thanks to advanced WayneTech systems, the night vision mode of Dick’s mask gave him greater levels of detail than most standard Night Vision Goggles, but it still rendered everything in a green-black monochrome.

Dick tapped the edge of his mask to deactivate Night Vision and switched on a flashlight in order to examine the bundle. It turned out to be a small backpack, wrapped in plastic bags in order to keep it both hidden and safe. A patch with the name “Jason” had been stitched onto the back.

He smiled. “Gotcha.” He slung the pack onto his back and made his way back to the surface, taking care not to get the contents wet.

He could’ve taken the batwing and flown directly to the school, but he’d elected to ride there on his motorcycle. It made the journey out to the city’s outskirts longer, but much more enjoyable. He’d always preferred the freedom of the road as opposed to the relatively cramped confines of an aircraft cockpit.

In terms of stealth, tonight wasn’t a great night: it was a full moon out, which meant that it would be easier to see both him and his bike if he got too close to the school. He decided to park his bike in the woods outside the school and make his way over to the student dormitories on foot.

Hacking into the school’s database and figuring out which room Jason had been assigned was child’s play. The programs he’d designed could cut through military grade software with ease; the encryption on the school’s wireless network fell apart like wet tissue paper.

Once Dick had determined which room he was supposed to sneak into scaled the exterior of the four story dormitory by hand. It was dark inside, which meant that either Jason wasn’t there, or he was asleep.

Just in case it was the latter, Dick elected to give notice of his arrival. “Jason?” He whispered, rapping lightly on the window. “Jason, you in there?”

He waited a few moments for a reply, but there was none. The moonlight reflecting off of the window made it hard for him to see if there was any movement inside. He pulled a birdarang from his utility belt and used the edge to flip the latches of the window open, allowing him to climb in.

“Jason?” He whispered again, not wanting to scare the bejesus out of the 12 year old in case he’d been wrong and the kid was actually there, but the room was deserted. Dick smiled, hoping that Jason was out having fun with some of the other kids on campus.

The part of him that had been raised by Alfred felt compelled to make the messy and clearly slept-in bed before completing his task and leaving. As he reached under the bed to tuck in the sheets, he felt something metallic collide with his fingers. Dick peered under the bed and was amused to find the hubcap that Jason had “stolen” from them; evidently, he’d stuck it under his bed in order to hide it from covetous eyes.

He left it there, making sure that the sheets and blanket were crisp across the mattress before fluffing and rearranging the pillow. Task completed, he unslung the backpack he had recovered from his shoulders and placed it on the bed. He’d been hoping to check in with Jason to see how he was doing, but given the circumstances, that could wait for another day.

He pulled a small notepad and pen from his belt and wrote out a short note, which he left on top of the backpack before hopping back outside and shutting the window behind him. “Told you that I’d get your stuff back to you in time. Hope you’re liking it here. - R”

As he made his way back to his motorcycle in order to head back to downtown Gotham for his nightly patrol, Dick made a mental note to himself to stop by in another couple of days to make sure the kid was doing alright.

At That Same Moment…

Somewhere.

“Get up.” An unfamiliar voice said from above him.

Jason stirred and rolled over from where he had been sleeping. As he sat up and rubbed his bleary eyes, he became aware in his groggy mind that this wasn’t his room at the Catherine Henderson School.

He was in a large room, something that looked like one of the tunnels from the Gotham Underground, except older. Most of the Gotham Underground had been built out of a uniformly sized red brick, but this room was made out of irregular cobblestones. There were several scattered pillars around the room, which would have been dark if not for the hundreds of candles that had been set out on both the room’s perimeter and on a candelabrum hanging from the ceiling.

Jason also became aware that he wasn’t alone. There were other children around him who had also been asleep on the ground, each of whom looked to be about his age. There were 10 masked men amongst them, shouting in harsh tones for the children to get to their feet. As the youngsters complied, he could see that most of them had circles of fatigue and sleeplessness in their eyes, which were made even more prominent by the candlelight. Jason felt pretty exhausted himself, though from the dryness in his throat, it felt like he’d been unconscious for some time.

“What’s goin-“ The words had barely left his mouth before a hand snaked out of nowhere and grabbed a fistful of his hoodie. In the time it took him to gasp, Jason was hauled up so that his feet kicked uselessly at the air. He found himself face to face with one of the men who had been standing guard over the children.

The guard was wearing a full face mask that concealed his features, though the mask itself was unusual. There was a pair of goggles embedded on the front of the mask, as well as a stylized avian beak and eyebrows.

“Quiet.” The man growled into Jason’s face before dropping him onto his butt on the cold stone floor.

Jason wanted to leap to his feet and attack the man but his instincts, coupled with the knives that the masked man wore strapped to his body, told him that to do so would be an incredibly bad idea. He silently got to his feet instead. He wondered how he’d gotten here, what was going on, and what was going to happen next. The last thing he remembered had been going to sleep in his bed back at the school’s dorm.

Quickly and efficiently, all the other children who were in the room with him were awoken cajoled onto their feet as well. They stood in a loose mob, facing a large podium with a bird’s face emblazoned on it, at the front of the room. Most of them looked around fearfully, but kept silent.

Most. Not all.

“Who are you?” One girl in the row ahead of him asked one of the masked men fearfully, in slightly accented English. It was hard to tell by candlelight, but Jason thought she was hispanic. “Where are we?”

At a glance, Jason knew the girl had made a mistake. The man she’d questioned was similarly garbed to the other guards, but his armor was much more embellished: the brows and beak on the mask were both longer, and the fingertips of his gauntlets ended in razor-sharp points. He turned menacingly and positioned himself directly in front of her.

“My name is Raptor, Talonmaster of the Court of Owls.” Despite the fact that he spoke in a hushed whisper, all of the other children heard him clearly. Raptor raised a hand and casually backhanded the girl across the cheek. The force of the blow caused her to spin and fly backwards into the row of children behind her.

“And you will speak only when spoken to.”

Jason was halfway towards Raptor before he’d even realized he was moving. “Hey!” He shouted furiously, “Leave her alone!”

Some of the other guards moved to stop Jason, but Raptor stopped them with a raised hand, uncaring as Jason charged at him. The moment he got into range, Jason drew his fist back to throw a punch.

“Ulk-“ Suddenly, he found himself dangling in the air again, only this time, the hand that held him was clamped around his throat rather than holding a fistful of his hoodie. “Hmm.” Raptor hummed consideration as he held the twelve year old at arm’s length, head tilted in an almost bird-like gesture of curiosity. “You’ll do.”

Before Jason could even think about struggling, Raptor shifted and punched Jason twice. Once in the stomach, and once in the solar plexus. The air rushed from Jason’s lungs, and his chest seized, making it difficult to replace the lost air. A follow up blow impacted directly on his nose, blinding him with blood and tears.

Despite the pain, Jason raised his hands up to his throat and tried to pry Raptor’s fingers from around his throat but it was impossible. Raptor’s fingers felt like they were made out of steel. In punishment for his attempt at escape, Raptor punched him again, this time in the liver.

Jason’s conscious mind crumpled in pain. Raptor was just about to hit him again when a voice pulled him short.

“Raptor, enough.”

A man wearing a fine grey suit emerged from the shadows and strolled up to the podium. Like Raptor, the man was wearing an avian mask to obscure his features, but it was of a different style. Raptor wore a hood that covered his entire head, while the man in the suit had a mask that only covered the front of his face; the man’s grey hair was still visible.

His mask was also much more ornate than Raptor’s, made from gold. It almost seemed to glow in the candlelight. “We can hardly blame them for not knowing the proper forms at the moment. Their ignorance will pass in time.”

“As you wish, Grandmaster.” Raptor said. There was obvious respect in that tone. He opened his hand and dropped the 12 year old to the ground, where he landed in an unceremonious heap. Raptor bowed his head in deference to the man he had called Grandmaster.

The Grandmaster gave a slight bow in return, a master acknowledging the respect and loyalty of a servant. He turned his attention to the children in front of him and spread his arms wide in a gesture of welcome.

“Hello, dear children.” He said, voice warm and rich despite the mask that he wore. “Welcome. Welcome to the Court of Owls.”

[tysoncleanupuasb493-blog]

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Water Damage Company

Services that you want.

Integrity of one's house or business workplace, the majority of men and women aren't quite as aware of the

Emergency providers.

We focus on earning your property safe again.

Washing equipment, and much far a lot more. Generally Speaking, the recovery Procedure will undoubtedly be simpler

Together with Drinking Water damage insurance asserts Sky-rocketing towards over $2.5 billion

Other dangerous bacteria.

-- each personally and financially.

If water damage wrecks havoc in your own house, it's 's simple to truly feel weak.

## The Health Dangers of Water Damage

### Organic Disasters

"moisture map" that will simply help us follow its path. Afterward we create a Tailor Made

Fast as possible, to decrease the harm.

#### Keyword(s): Drinking Water harm services

EPA, which have been Shown to Block the continuing Development of germs and bacteria

Of those appliances that are affected. **

Brings about, but also the prospective results of h2o damage and mold.

Eye, the reality is the fact that usually, everything you could view is merely the tip of this

The first step in this mould Clean up process is to Track down any plumbing and pipes

**Group 1 water damage identifies to problems like tub overflow, a flooded

But it's more than just exactly what you see. This 's your direct to this water harm

Your washing machine can succumb to water harm when its source line

You Must Get water harm under management the Moment you can, because it merely

Usually need a sudden reaction.

**Categories 3 constitute the worst possible harm possible, because it often signals the

## What Happens when the Damage Is Particularly Intense?

Rely on the pros that offer water damage solutions.

Hazard. In the Event You 're confronted with water harm from your sewer, then you should not ever

We do this utilizing the gear mentioned above, since It Will help prevent

And a whole degradation of your home's construction.

Clearly, your own A/C and warm water heaters really are prime suspects as Soon as It comes to

Yourself, along with your family out of harm's way -- until the mould gets a opportunity to

Likely that the drinking water has induced one to drop important paperwork or destroyed

Water harm services can Correct a whole lot -- also should you operate together with uscan also

Now you're Attentive to the health dangers encompassing water harm, allow 's

Methods to make it doesn't occur, is now absolutely crucial.

Grow even more.

Ultimately, we manage the disinfection process, which Utilizes EPA-approved products

Should you have any HVAC systems in Your Community, we'll port and assess those as

So-called "Classification 1" damage means the water inside Your House Is relatively

Before we enter the solutions Supplied by water damage services, let's

Water damage while in the home, leading one to call from professional water damage

After we evaluate that the situation and also walk you through our Precise recovery Program,

Give way, flood your laundry space or regularly your whole home. .

Clean, also doesn't possess immediate health risks to people living and working

Products and services.

To Guarantee you fully comprehend that the recovery Procedure along with that it

In the Event You have things Which Need to Get Taken off Your home to be able to

If you don't act immediately, you risk losing your property entirely. That is

Dehumidification treatment options.

The Sort of water harm services you'll need Is Dependent on the Intensity of this

We act quickly, and use high-volume dehumidifiers alongside fans to control both the

###

When It Has to Do with water damage services, Depend on People Who Have a proven monitor

### Broken Pipes

As a result, to keep your costs down. (Sometimes, board-up providers are also

"gray H20. " This warm water is not regarded as "wash," and Will Probably result in

To Start with, Extreme humidity Is the Ideal Atmosphere for mould growth

Or maybe mold progress if left untreated.

Licensed by the countries of Texas and Oklahoma, and also our assorted customer

That's why handling the damage when you can, and taking preventive care

Affected areas. The following process Is the Thing That really helps to Lessen the humidity degree along with

In a Nutshell, you need to Depend upon specialist water damage solutions for

Discuss why it's so important that you consider these problems seriously.

### Sewer Problems

Next, we'll Start the water extraction process, which assists to handle even

Harm ) are worried with how much is being spent on repairs and restoration.

Hopefully now that you have read this article, you're Not Just aware of the

Health problems to all those it comes into contact with. **

## The Kinds of Injury

(whilst making certain that the security of the personal records is retained undamaged.)

But awaiting your own issue to "go off " may end up costing you more

Areas round your doors and windows to be certain that proper ventilation can shoot

Much as you can.

Method.

Your furniture/other property.

Sometimes, elevated humidity trapped at house can wreak havoc. That really can be

Carpets ) can be stored. If That's the Case we'll Function to Commence the drying process using

Get in contact us today to schedule an appointment, or to inquire about our

Pipes will break and create your water principal to burst to get an assortment of reasons.

Partner along each stage of this manner.

Usually the end result of a sewage escape. This type of damage additionally induces the most

Frequently caused by the origins of trees blocking your drains.

Dehumidification is about getting rid of mold-causing moisture on your

It or try to repair the situation your self.

Can immediately lead to erosion, another cause of mildew. We'll examine the

To eliminate mold, fungus, along with other contaminants.

Let 's converse solutions.

We'll operate to get your home to its pre-damage issue.

Furniture, electronics, your own records, and even your alloy countertops.

Cleaning, restoring, and rebuilding following the ramifications of water damage and mold. We'R E

Can be stored, as we work to reverse the h2o damage .

Drying strategy to make the most of the efficacy of our results.

Bathtub could operate more thanks to some defective drain along with even a persistent trickle.

Mother Nature is inconsistent -- she's the reason why many miniature

We determine what could be saved -- such as electronics -- and then restore it to you

Water damage .

Help you communicate with your insurance policy carrier as fast as feasible.

### Dehumidification

Which is exactly why we now have 24 hour water damage and mold services that you may call.

Contaminants.

As stated previously. Not only is that disgusting, but it's also a serious Wellness

Man in home coping with neighbor flooding escape

Required by your insurance policy carrier.)

Old, worn-down pipes.

When water damage and mold comes to your company, it's 's an particularly stressful moment.

From there, we now 'll evaluate Whether your floors (like any

We've insured the pitfalls, causes, and varieties of drinking water damage.

###### whether or not it's 's a pipe break or some natural disaster, then you've got water damage and mold.

Our solutions begin with boarding up your home to Prevent More injury also,

Construction services group.

Entails, you'll fulfill one of the water recovery consultants.

Homeowners depend upon water damage products and companies.

Particularly so in case of excessive humidity which may lead to musty odors

Injury, not just to objects within your house, but to the arrangement of the home

Leaky, faulty appliances in your home.

Within the damaged location.

Your toilet can float, your refrigerator and dishwasher may flow, along with also your

Specially true if you're 're handling standing water, which may ruin

Infections, also in acute situations, might even cause cancer and infertility.

Property. While there are some forms of water damage that are observable to the

Tarp above your doors and windows and after that begin a large scale renovation

In Blackmon Mooring & BMS CAT, we've got over 65 Decades of expertise

### Humidity

Standing drinking water and drying out your water restoration possessions along with flooring.

## the Various Sorts of Drinking Water Damage and Mold Services

Be restored, we'll take them into some secure off-site place to animate them

Intimidating to homeowners.

Besides the costs of fix, you're additionally anxious in Regards to the reduction of

While naturally, Drinking Water damage introduces innumerable dangers into this structural

However, the Most Significant thing you can do is to take immediate actions --

Refrigerant and desiccant dehumidifiers to burst warm dry atmosphere to the

That's leaking, that might maybe allow more mold to rise.

Mold, if left untreated, can Also Lead to respiratory ailments, fungal

Flash flood, storm damage, and much more intense disaster-related Drinking Water harm

Keep Reading to Find out about the Reason Why You Need to Tackle water harm as soon as

Becoming worse.

Home or business.

Services supplied.

Clearly, care of this water is just half of the battle. It's highly

Potential, and teach yourself concerning the possible solutions h2o damage and mold

Using Category 1 issue, because there hasn't really been an inordinate number of plain water

### Mildew Prevention and Cleanup

Revenue in the event you've had to close down.

Rebuild your entire property after we mitigate the damage, due to our

Solutions that deal with each facet of the situation -- and help to stop it out of

Now, you know the choices you have when It Has to Do with restoring your

Air flow. This Makes Sure That Your house and affected items dry out as

Area.

**Group Two water harm Is a Little more acute -- and can be often referred to as

That's the reason we've a 24 Hour answer system set up -- one which also works to

Potable water damage can lead to electric fires, even wide-ranging drywall harm,

Very real risks to a health un-treated water damage and mold may cause.

Takes approximately 48 hrs for mold to begin speedily increasing.

Reduce bacterial development.

Eventually, we all outgrow the Regions of your home that Were contaminated by

Every year, uninsured family members (or individuals that insurance won't insure water

If you've discovered water damage at your House, It may Be Inviting to ignore

Make an effort to take care of the situation your self.

### Flooded Home Equipment

It isn't exactly pleasant to think about, however, backups to your sewer pipe are

Often, the most appliances Intended to make our own lives simpler might cause Tons of

Fortunately, both qualified and Expert water harm Companies provide targeted

High-powered equipment. We offer temporary storage for smaller things that

Absorbed inside the affected location. **

iceberg.

This backup can also occur after a serious thunderstorm or All-natural tragedy,

First, we perform to Track down the source of the water damage, often by Making a

Listing of getting things done correctly the first time and being a trusted

Mold and mould. We perform so using products that Were registered by the

This means we search for electric places that Were damaged by water, and

Reviews speak to the integrity of our professional services along with experts.

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[danithebookaholic-blog]

Top 10 to Run To

Top 10 to Run To

The following are my favorite books to listen to while running. The more detail there is to paint a picture for me and to keep my thoughts off of my burning lungs and aching hip flexors, the better! That's why Stephen King's IT is my number 1 choice. So much detail in that book, and if you're not paying attention to the detail, you're not going to understand what's happening.

Comedies are usually something that I don't listen to while running because I tend to lose control of my breathing when I'm laughing hysterically (I don't know if this is just me, or what?).  But Kevin Hart and Jim Gaffigan's books are perfect for those grey rainy days when you need a laugh just to get you through.

And then any time I can find a series that I enjoy running to, the more excited I am about running (I hate running, but I love it at the same time. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about!), and that's why I love The Warded Man (The Demon Cycle, Book 1). I'm anxiously waiting for book 5 to come out in October; perfect timing if you ask me!

The others on this list I love to run to just as much as the above mentioned for their own different reasons. Hopefully one of the following will be your perfect companion for that next run you have planned!

1) IT by Stephen King

Looking for a suspense-thriller? King's IT is the way to go! And just in time for the reboot that came out earlier this month.

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part. A good place to live. It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing . . . The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of IT was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until they were called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality. (source)

2) The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett

For the sci-fi fantasy lovers out there, this is the one for you! 

As darkness falls after sunset, the corelings rise—demons who possess supernatural powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards—symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile. It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms, but those days are gone. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault. Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past. Together, they will stand against the night. (Source)

3) I Can't Make this Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart

 Hysterical memoir with a serious side. Kevin will have you laughing and thinking of your journey to success at the same time.

Superstar comedian and Hollywood box office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller. The question you’re probably asking yourself right now is: What does Kevin Hart have that a book also has? According to the three people who have seen Kevin Hart and a book in the same room, the answer is clear: A book is compact. Kevin Hart is compact. A book has a spine that holds it together. Kevin Hart has a spine that holds him together. A book has a beginning. Kevin Hart’s life uniquely qualifies him to write this book by also having a beginning. It begins in North Philadelphia. He was born an accident, unwanted by his parents. His father was a drug addict who was in and out of jail. His brother was a crack dealer and petty thief. And his mother was overwhelmingly strict, beating him with belts, frying pans, and his own toys. The odds, in short, were stacked against our young hero, just like the odds that are stacked against the release of a new book in this era of social media (where Hart has a following of over 100 million, by the way). But Kevin Hart, like Ernest Hemingway, JK Rowling, and Chocolate Droppa before him, was able to defy the odds and turn it around. In his literary debut, he takes the reader on a journey through what his life was, what it is today, and how he’s overcome each challenge to become the man he is today. And that man happens to be the biggest comedian in the world, with tours that sell out football stadiums and films that have collectively grossed over $3.5 billion. He achieved this not just through hard work, determination, and talent: It was through his unique way of looking at the world. Because just like a book has chapters, Hart sees life as a collection of chapters that each person gets to write for himself or herself. “Not only do you get to choose how you interpret each chapter, but your interpretation writes the next chapter,” he says. “So why not choose the interpretation that serves your life the best?” (source)

4) Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

For the analytic and the student to life, Outliers will have you questioning what your parents should have done differently that would have helped you win the race.

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. (source)

5) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Beautiful imagery, well written story, the only thing that would make The Night Circus better would be to listen to it while running in the dark.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night... But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love - a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.  True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. (source)

6) See Me by Nicholas Sparks

Part romance, part thriller, See Me will satisfy a fan of either genre.

See me just as I see you . . . Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. With a history of violence and bad decisions behind him and the threat of prison dogging his every step, he's determined to walk a straight line. To Colin, that means applying himself single-mindedly toward his teaching degree and avoiding everything that proved destructive in his earlier life. Reminding himself daily of his hard-earned lessons, the last thing he is looking for is a serious relationship. Maria Sanchez, the hardworking daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the picture of conventional success. With a degree from Duke Law School and a job at a prestigious firm in Wilmington, she is a dark-haired beauty with a seemingly flawless professional track record. And yet Maria has a traumatic history of her own, one that compelled her to return to her hometown and left her questioning so much of what she once believed. A chance encounter on a rain-swept road will alter the course of both Colin and Maria's lives, challenging deeply held assumptions about each other and ultimately, themselves. As love unexpectedly takes hold between them, they dare to envision what a future together could possibly look like . . . until menacing reminders of events in Maria's past begin to surface. As a series of threatening incidents wreaks chaos in Maria's life, Maria and Colin will be tested in increasingly terrifying ways. Will demons from their past destroy the tenuous relationship they've begun to build, or will their love protect them, even in the darkest hour? (source)

7) Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

Start at the beginning of Robert Langdon's story in anticipation of the fifth (and final?) installment to his legend which is to hit shelves in early October.

An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target...  When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati... the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has surfaced from the shadows to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy... the Catholic Church.  Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces he has hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.  Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even to the heart of the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair... a secret location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.  An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war. (source)

8) Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

A great comedic laugh is always needed while on a long run. If you have young children in the house, then this is a double win for you!

In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who’s best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children—everything from cousins ("celebrities for little kids") to toddlers’ communication skills (“they always sound like they have traveled by horseback for hours to deliver important news”), to the eating habits of four year olds (“there is no difference between a four year old eating a taco and throwing a taco on the floor”). Reminiscent of Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood, Dad is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home. (source)

9) Finding Ultra by Rich Roll

What book list for runners would be complete without a book about physical limits and running itself?

Finding Ultra is Rich Roll’s incredible-but-true account of achieving one of the most awe-inspiring midlife physical transformations ever.   One cool evening in October 2006, the night before he was to turn forty, Rich experienced a chilling glimpse of his future. Nearly fifty pounds overweight at the time and unable to climb the stairs without stopping, he could see where his current sedentary lifestyle was taking him.   Most of us, when granted such a moment of clarity, look the other way—but not Rich.   Plunging into a new way of eating that made processed foods off-limits and that prioritized plant nutrition, and vowing to train daily, Rich morphed—in a matter of mere months—from out-of-shape midlifer to endurance machine. When one morning ninety days into his physical overhaul, Rich left the house to embark on a light jog and found himself running a near marathon, he knew he had to scale up his goals. How many of us take up a sport at age forty and compete for the title of the world’s best within two years? Finding Ultra recounts Rich’s remarkable journey to the starting line of the elite Ultraman competition, which pits the world’s fittest humans against each other in a 320-mile ordeal of swimming, biking, and running. And following that test, Rich conquered an even greater one: the Epic5—five Ironman-distance triathlons, each on a different Hawaiian island, all completed in less than a week.   But Finding Ultra is much more than an edge-of-the-seat look at a series of jaw-dropping athletic feats—and much more than a practical training manual for those who would attempt a similar transformation. Yes, Rich’s account rivets—and, yes, it instructs,providing information that will be invaluable to anyone who wants to change their physique. But this book is most notable as a powerful testament to human resiliency, for as we learn early on, Rich’s childhood posed numerous physical and social challenges, and his early adulthood featured a fierce battle with alcoholism.   Ultimately, Finding Ultra is a beautifully written portrait of what willpower can accomplish. It challenges all of us to rethink what we’re capable of and urges us, implicitly and explicitly, to “go for it.”(source)

10) Grey by E. L. James

With this add on to Fifty Shades, trust me, you're mind will be focus on the book, and not the task at hand! *This book is intended for mature audiences

Christian Grey exercises control in all things; his world is neat, disciplined, and utterly empty—until the day that Anastasia Steele falls into his office, in a tangle of shapely limbs and tumbling brown hair. He tries to forget her, but instead is swept up in a storm of emotion he cannot comprehend and cannot resist. Unlike any woman he has known before, shy, unworldly Ana seems to see right through him—past the business prodigy and the penthouse lifestyle to Christian’s cold, wounded heart.   Will being with Ana dispel the horrors of his childhood that haunt Christian every night? Or will his dark sexual desires, his compulsion to control, and the self-loathing that fills his soul drive this girl away and destroy the fragile hope she offers him? (source)

From one wine-loving bookaholic to another, I hope I've helped you find you next fix!     -Dani

[lodelss]

A View of the Bay

Aimée Lutkin | Longreads | November 2019 | 15 minutes (3,262 words)

“Hello?” my grandmother’s cigarette-seasoned voice would always answer the phone immediately. I pictured her sitting directly beside it in her motel room, waiting to see which of her three daughters or four grandchildren was checking on her.

“Hi, grandma! Just calling to see if you and Papa are OK in the storm,” I’d say cheerfully, assuming they were basically fine, as they always were. They had evacuated their house, a flimsy four-room hut built atop cement blocks, that was set inconveniently close to the Narrow Bay, right on Mastic Beach in Long Island. All that stood between their home and a body of water that could consume it was a dirt road and a rustling wall of reeds that created a marshy barrier and the illusion of distance. That illusion was regularly washed away by storm flooding, sending them skipping backward like sandpipers.

“Well, we’re all settled in here,” she’d answer, sounding pleased to have evacuated for the night to an artless motel next to a barren parking lot. “Your father is watching the news. Looks like we’ll be back tomorrow!”

“Oh, that’s good,” I’d say, ignoring that she had confused me for my mother as she often did after passing her 80th birthday.

“Yeah, not too bad, not too bad,” she’d say, though there were a few times that did get bad. The year their cars were washed away and they were trapped in their house, years where the power went out. But they always bounced back and during the next storm I’d call to check in again, repeating the same familiar pattern.

For years, visiting my grandparents involved a two- to three-hour train ride on the LIRR from New York City; I went by myself once every summer or spring, and I visited with my mom and aunt and uncle who lived in Montauk every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Montauk is on the eastern tip of Long Island, so Mastic was where we met in the middle until my mother refused to go back. Then I’d go by myself for one winter holiday, alone on the cold, empty train, traveling back and forth on the same day. A six-hour train ride was preferable to spending the night in the drafty house, making conversation around my mother’s absence.

Most of my memories of dinners in Mastic were of the escalating tension between my mother and her father. At some point, Papa had been banned from direct criticism, so he substituted the word “Democrats” for her name. One of his favorite pointed sayings was “An open mind is like a sewer — all the garbage falls in.”

On the trip home, no matter how enraged she had become, my mother would say he hadn’t always been like this. He’d been a teacher. A philosopher. He used to build things and volunteer and not watch Fox News. 

Before my mother’s boycott began, managing the volatile atmosphere was my job; the open hostility in the air bothered me, but it was easier to handle with a generation of distance between us. I learned quickly that one of the safest conversational topics was always the view.

“Look how beautiful it is,” I would say, and the group would repeatedly comply, turning to stare out the wide picture window over the dilapidated second-story porch. Any time of day was lovely, in any weather, but a clear sunset would flood the room with a warm apricot glow. The water caught and refracted the end of the day, allowing its goodbye to sweetly linger. My grandmother’s table, too big for the space, trapping us against the walls, would become a map of the world. Every person with their face tilted out toward the sun was trapped in amber light, frozen momentarily by warmth instead of cold. 

***

I spent most of Superstorm Sandy drunk. At some point the internet went out. My roommates — who were also drunk — and I sat around our living room checking our phones again and again. I lay on my back watching the bare trees whipping outside my window. To us, hurricane preparedness meant having enough wine in our apartment. We’d been responsible. Born and raised in New York City, I’d weathered many hurricane seasons and had found that the danger warnings were always over the top, at least for the five boroughs. 

Lack of internet in our Brooklyn neighborhood gave us some hint of the extremity of the situation, but it still took a little while before we understood that this hurricane was different. Reports of destruction filtered in as we sobered up and got back online. The lights were out in Manhattan, Red Hook was underwater, the Rockaways were a disaster zone, and Breezy Point was on fire. 

They returned when the water receded. At first it seemed to me that that was that. Another storm survived.

In the following weeks, I volunteered, making sandwiches in a church basement, sorting clothes and other donations, traveling out to the Rockaways to help people find what they needed at an auditorium that had been transformed into a relief center. I went with a group of volunteers to knock on doors in apartments that still had no heat or power, finding people who hadn’t left or who had nowhere to go. I met a woman who was running out of insulin, which we didn’t have, and another whose antibiotics for a MRSA infection had been ruined in her water-damaged car. A father and daughter were boiling a kettle on their gas stove to keep their apartment warm, which another volunteer warned was dangerous. They nodded politely. Most of the people we met appeared very calm in the dark hallway, as though they were certain that things would soon snap back into normalcy. Walking down below their complex, seeing how the boardwalk had been pulled into twisted spikes by the waves, how sand spilled everywhere, gobbling up the streets, it seemed impossible that anything would be normal again.    

Since Sandy, new condos have gone up in many of the hardest hit areas, even those still in flood zones. Writer Sarah Miller has investigated for Popula the cognitive dissonance required to move real estate into Miami Beach, purchases that essentially boil down to buying a house for 50 years, tops. Real estate development has mutated to work in tandem with climate change: Destruction levels an area, driving out residents; developers move in, their projects subsidized by government relief efforts. Gentrification accelerates and the people who left can’t afford to come back — yet, this all happens in an area that remains threatened by further climate destruction. The very wealthy can afford to buy the last 50 years of river views, as the people who once lived there search for a place that is not only affordable, but also doesn’t teeter constantly on the edge of ruin. The land shrinks.

***

After Sandy hit, it took a while to get in touch with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle, who said they’d briefly been cut off entirely by rising waters around the Montauk peninsula, which knocked out phone service. My grandparents’ home had flooded, but they’d made it to their usual motel. They returned when the water receded. At first it seemed to me that that was that. Another storm survived. 

The seasonal challenges of my extended family’s geographic location hadn’t been something I thought about much, just as I hadn’t worried too much about a hurricane even though I grew up on an island. New York contains many mythologies and most of them are connected to the city’s relentless ability to continue, no matter what. This is basically the definition of hubris — the confidence that because you survived something the last thousand times, you will survive it the next thousand. 

My grandparents were also both born in New York; my grandmother was an only child. Her mother and father worked as a cook and a chauffeur, respectively, and rented an apartment close to St. John the Divine, in Morningside Heights. In her childhood photos, she looks like a little doll, solitary and posed in patent leather shoes. She grew to be almost six feet tall and gorgeous. She once showed me a photo of herself looking dashing in a headscarf, seated high on a fence.

“Look at me,” she cough-laughed. “I knew what I was doing there.”

Any time of day was lovely, in any weather, but a clear sunset would flood the room with a warm apricot glow. The water caught and refracted the end of the day, allowing its goodbye to sweetly linger.

My grandfather was one of many children of an Irish immigrant mother and an Italian mobster, whose name he wasn’t allowed to speak. I’ve never seen a picture of him before his days as a soldier in WWII, stationed in France after surviving D-Day. His family lived on the Lower East Side, then Williamsburg. He would sometimes tell stories about collecting lost bits of coal that fell from the delivery truck and hollering up at his mom to drain the bathtub full of gin when the cops walked down the street. These were colorful tales meant to make growing up poor sound much more fun than it ever actually was, but he enjoyed telling them. Once when he came to visit my mom and me at our East Village apartment, he spent the day pointing at rooftops, saying he used to jump from one to the other as a kid.

My grandparents met at a funeral. They were cousins of each other’s cousins.

New York City starts to feel very small if you’ve lived there all your life, so by the time they were married with children they’d moved further out, then further out again when the kids were gone. They’d wanted a small, manageable place by the beach for their retirement. They drove past the house in Mastic and a man was standing outside. They asked him if he’d like to sell it, and he miraculously said yes. 

I’ve been told the house washed away once, during a storm in the 1920s, then got hauled back to the same spot and put up on those cement pylons. The story was suspect, but to me it said something about what used to pass for hurricane preparedness.

***

A few weeks before Christmas 2012, less than two months after Sandy, my grandfather fell down the stairs. The staircase leading up to the livable floor of the house was curved and uneven, twisting in at two points. I’m not sure how far down he went, but he broke his hip on the journey and was taken to the hospital, then a rehab center.

My grandmother eventually went to stay with her eldest daughter in Maryland. She was behaving erratically. She didn’t notice that her swollen legs were leaking clear fluid until my aunt pointed it out. She sounded strange when we talked.

“I think I’m about to die,” she told me on the phone. This was something she’d been implying for years, giving away her most cherished wicker-frame mirrors and seashell-covered jewelry boxes until her shelves emptied, explaining she “didn’t need them anymore.” But that was the first time she’d said it so explicitly. She didn’t sound scared. She delivered the news like she was discussing the weather — a little bored, a little distracted. It was the voice of someone going through a transition so huge they couldn’t possibly be bothered to talk about anything else. 

My grandfather was moved to an assisted living home that was difficult to get to from the city. My mother traveled there alone and discovered he’d been sleeping in a wheelchair because it was too hard for him to get in and out of bed. He’d immediately fallen into an intense enmity with his roommate, who had an electric Lazy Boy he wouldn’t let my grandfather nap in. She started to look for homes in Brooklyn, somewhere she could check in on him every day.

And then my grandmother did die.

*** 

After holiday dinners, the younger folks would usually go on a walk around the block before dessert. My grandmother accepted a very limited amount of help from us. We could clear the table, but she wouldn’t allow anyone into her rapid-fire cutlery shuffling over the small sink. Everything she did was set to a higher speed and we would only slow her down.

We walked to digest her butter-soup mashed potatoes and to release a little of the tension into the fresh, salty air. Before we left, my grandfather often called out to insist we bring his walking stick by the door, warning, “Take it with you to beat off the wild dogs. They run in packs out there!”

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I never saw a single dog without a fence penning it in, but I did once ask my aunt if we should bring the stick.

“If you see a dog, are you going to hit it?” she asked.

The answer was no, so we went silent and empty-handed down the rutted road, past the reeds to a small slope of empty shore. Water lapped the edge, which was covered in blue mussel shells and seaweed, plastic bottle caps, broken glass, the occasional dead fish, and a thin crust of ice, which became thinner every year, as the weather grew milder in winter. 

Past the ripples, Pattersquash Island created a dark line on the horizon. The island was originally part of the tribal land of the Unkechaug Nation, who live on the smallest reservation in New York state, set along the shore a 10-minute drive from my grandparents’ house. It covers less than a mile, which includes water. Shinnecock artist Jeremy Dennis has been compiling stories of indigenous Long Island for his project On This Site, and he writes that Pattersquash is historically considered a sacred site for vision quests. It appeared so still and desolate from a distance. 

During Sandy, more than 100 homes on the Poospatuck reservation were damaged. There has been some attention paid to the reservation’s recovery from missionaries and PR companies, but there has not been much media coverage of the incipient creep of rising sea levels, stealing yet more territory from Indigenous people year by year. Mastic and its residents have been living under the threat of both weather and gentrification for decades, resisting a transformation that almost no other beach town on the East End has managed to avoid. Stories about the area over the past 20 years are a whiplash of wonder and warnings.

In 2001, the New York Times touted Mastic as the island’s “Best Kept Secret,” citing its proximity to Fire Island and the relative affordability of real estate compared to the Hamptons. It was suggestively dubbed a “working class stronghold,” but several political and financial mishaps, including a series of racial housing discrimination suits, almost drove the area into bankruptcy, and they were obligated to rejoin the Town of Brookhaven after an attempt at self-governance that began in 2010. In 2018, Newsday heralded another Mastic renewal, pointing out that real estate was still comparatively cheap, and many of the decrepit buildings that had given the area a bad rep were being torn down by new management. 

Damage in the Hamptons after Sandy redirected vacationers to Montauk, transforming a quieter part of the island into a party hotspot that is barely navigable from June to September. My aunt and uncle, who work in the lighthouse and laying tile, were evicted from their home of more than 25 years after its owner died and a fashion photographer bought the property. They’ve been looking for somewhere to move they can afford. They’re thinking out of state.

New York contains many mythologies and most of them are connected to the city’s relentless ability to continue, no matter what.

Bad housing and “slumlords” have been a continuing point of contention in the area, as the New York Times also reported in 2008, seven years after recommending it as summer getaway. A number of sexual assaults brought attention to the high rate of registered sex offenders in the area, whether they were responsible for the attacks or not. In 2006, a man was arrested for planning to set fire to a building occupied by four tenants on the registry. While some of these units have been torn down via legal means, issues around infrastructure, especially inadequate sewage systems, seem to be holding greater change back. 

Visiting only briefly and driven from the train station to the edge of the world every time, I was largely unaware of these issues before Sandy, except for general observations about the number of beer emporiums we drove by to get to the bay. My grandfather built a homemade security system. It felt absurd to be deafened by sirens out on that otherwise quiet corner, and toward the end of their time there, the system was perpetually offline. The house was empty for a week before it was broken into. 

*** 

My grandfather died about nine months after my grandmother, while living in an assisted living home in Brooklyn. I’d like to say he was happy to be back in his old borough, but he most definitely was not. Every time I visited, he practically begged me to move back to Mastic with him, to live in that house, and take care of him there. It was both an outrageous and completely understandable request.

“We were happy there,” he told me one afternoon, tears in his eyes, though by then my mother was pretty convinced he hadn’t fallen down the stairs. She thought, based on the comments he’d let slip, that my grandmother had maybe pushed him during a fight, but that was just her theory. She guessed that the stress of the storm hastened my grandmother’s mental deterioration, maybe even that the new hurricane molds growing in their dirt-floor basement infiltrated her brain somehow, and my grandmother didn’t recognize the danger as their argument escalated. Not exactly a scientific diagnosis, and there’s no proof, but it was hard not to see some connection between Sandy and their deaths — how many storms had they survived before one rose too high and their whole survival system collapsed? All it took was for something they’d lived through over and over to hit a little harder, in a moment of vulnerability, a moment of unpreparedness.

I went by the house before it was sold to see if there was anything that should be retrieved. The people who broke in hadn’t found much of any value, but they appeared to have had a fun afternoon trashing the place. All the familiar knick-knacks and books and worn blankets had been strewn with abandon across the living room, then pissed on. It felt like the destruction from Sandy had been here since the night it happened and had only now become visible. I looked for the ashes of my grandmother’s favorite cat, but only managed to find my grandpa’s dog tags and a few old pictures in the debris and a piece of paper documenting my mother’s first communion. I took my grandmother’s tarnished silver spoons and a collection of vinyl records that had sat so long their grooves were almost flat. I played them later, trying to imagine her listening to them when she was young and felt much sadder than I did on the day of her death.

Then I walked out onto the old porch, stepping over holes, past a long beam that had once served as a ladder for a cat named Squeaky. I turned the corner around the dining room to look one last time at the view. The bay stretched out below as the blinding white light of the late afternoon sun swallowed the hard borders of the land. It seemed like the waves were rolling all the way to their door.

***

Aimée Lutkin is a freelance writer who has written for Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire, Popula, and others. She is currently working on her first book for Dial Press on the current societal trends around loneliness titled The Lonely Hunter; you can follow her on Twitter @alutkin.

Editor: Kelly Stout Fact checker: Sam Schuyler Copy editor: Jacob Gross

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