#shes very very tired of randys crap

[pinkdinkydoon]

Sup buddy

Im a curious creature (you can not answer, no worries ^^!!) Sooo, what context or story you did for you SP s/i??

How they met Randy and how their relationship started?? (Also if they have something to do with Kyle&Kenny or they were just fillers on the drawing)

Hi!!! I have some previous posts where I talk about her and the kids!

Character Ref / S/I Facts / Adoption / Post-Covid Stuff / Post-Canon Art

- While living in NM, she really wanted a family! Where she lived didn't really have any adoption centers, so she went to Colorado and adopted Kyle and Kenny out of CPS. After the adoption, she fully moves to Colorado so that the boys could be more comfortable.

- She meets Randy by parent association. Stan is Kyles best friend, plus all the boys have baseball together. So they just kinda. Meet there.

- Randy divorced Sharon a couple of years before. Sharon took Shelly to Denver and Randy took Stan.

- First proper interaction they have together is when Randy invites her and Kyle to the jeopardy event. Stan wanted his BFF to go but Lici didn't trust Randy enough to let him go alone. Obviously the whole... jeopardy incident happens. Not a good first impression at all. It all spirals from there

TYSM FOR ASKING!!! I have like so much written and thought about for them and the whole south park area...

[okwritingandpain]

The Connors Problem Chapter 4: The Shadow of a memory

“You can’t be serious.” Curt glanced at Y/N. Luckily, she was still asleep. 

“I’m afraid it is true. I trust you with this information…you are me afterall.” Connors said as he glared at Max and Flint, hoping they couldn’t hear their conversation. Connors had pulled Curt under the table to try to protect them from unwanted ears. 

“Just like two of us…one a lizard, one man…one a spider, one a woman…” Curt inferred. 

“No Crap Sherlock! Had to make it obvious.” Connors growled.

“The sad part is that I have to say it like that for my students at the college! The only people who could understand me most of the time were Peter Parker, Gwen Stacey, and Connor-”

“You had a Peter and Gwen too?” Connors’ eyes widened. 

“I did. I guess that makes sense, Connors…should I call you Connors…or Curt…or Curt 1…Curt 2…” Curt trailed off. This was an interesting predicament. It is understandable for there to be two Curts in a room…but two Curt Connors…who looked nothing alike…who somewhat don’t even share the same personality…were together…in one room…for what could be forever.

“Call me Connors…that’s what Y/N calls me.” The Lizard smiled.

“I’ll be Curt then I guess.” He returned the smile. Connors nodded, a sorrow falling over his face. Curt fiddled with the jacket he was wearing. A silence, an uncomfortable silence, fell over them. Curt looked over at Max. He was surprised that the very stuck up man had joined Randy and Sandman to play games. He could hear the three laughing in front of the T.V. He also saw that Norman and Otto were waking up from their encounter earlier. 

“Can I ask you something?” Connors said. Curt turned his head.

“Of course.” His eyes met Connors. 

“Your wife and kid…do you miss them? Even if one of them…left you?” Connors' eyes were swelling with tears. 

Curt hesitated. It had been years since he had seen Martha and Billy. 

“They left…7 years ago. I miss them…sometimes. I know I have to move on, but it’s so hard. The day they left it felt like my whole world fell apart. I had no one. Later, I thought Peter and Gwen were people who I cared about and who cared about me…but that wasn’t true. Peter changed and Gwen…she passed. To be true, I miss them more at this point. I hope Connor is okay. He was my prodigy…I hope he didn’t end up here.” Curt held his knees with his arm. 

“I guess we're not as different as I thought.” Connors smiled, “Also you have a prodigy named ‘Connor’...Connors.” He laughed. Curt smiled and giggled. They smiled at each other. 

“Why are you two under a table?” Randy asked. He had walked over to them while they were talking. 

“We were playing hide and seek.” Curt climbed out from under the table. Randy looked confused.

"You guys are really bad at this game." He snickered and ran off to see Flint. Connors squeezed out from under the table. Curt turned to see Y/N being to stir awake. 

“Should we tell her?” Curt asked. 

“No.” Connors said firmly as he walked away towards the kitchen. Randy followed him. He kept jumping on his tail. Curt walked over to Flint and Max. 

“Hey, guys!” Curt said. He sat on the floor next to them. Flint smiled at him. 

“Nice of you to finally join us.” Flint remarked as he took the T.V. remote from Max. “He’ll be back, Dillion. I wouldn’t change it if I were you.” Max glared at him and electrically changed the channel himself. 

“WHO CHANGED THE CHANNEL!!!!!” Randy screamed. 

“I told you.” Flint said. Max changed the channel back as Y/N got off the couch. 

“Good Morning, Y/N!” Curt greeted her. She still looked tired, but seeing how she had slept four hours or so was refreshing. 

“Morning, Curt.” She smiled, “Is it still morning?” She asked. Curt shrugged and looked at Flint. 

“Probably not.” Flint said finally. 

“Gee thanks, anyways I have to see if Peter is ready to pick you guys up.” She got out her phone checking text messages. Connors in the kitchen turned his head at her words. Flint frowned as Max shocked Randy a little. Curt was fascinated with meeting this other Peter Parker, but was more worried about the other versions of everybody else. 

“Does he know about me?” Curt asked suddenly. He covered his mouth a little as if he hadn;t meant to say that. 

���No, not yet. It was a hectic morning. He seems to need more time. I guess one more night won’t hurt us.” She remarked and got up to go to the kitchen. 

“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED OVER HERE!!!!” She suddenly shouted. She had noticed the pile of super villains caught in a web. 

“Oh that…” Curt trailed off. 

“That was the result of a revolt from two masterminds.” Connors emerged from the kitchen. Y/N raised an eyebrow as he came closer. Something was wrong and of course it happened while she was asleep. 

                                                                            *

Why in the world did this have to happen? I had not expected them to fight so quickly. The summary they told me was…interesting.But I still was happy that Billy was okay. He was luckily saved by Peter. After that I had to clear my mind a bit. I told them I was going for a walk and that I wanted Norman and Co to be dealt with. I hadn’t expected to be gone so long. Especially since everything that could go wrong did. First off…

“Well if it isn’t my old friend?” A man in a long dark purple coat said. He smiled as he came closer to me. 

“Who are you?” I asked. I was nervous but tried not to show it. He wasn’t that menacing. He didn’t look strong. He mostly looked like a rip off version of Dr. Octavius minus the tentacles of course and his brown combed over hair. 

“You really don’t remember me?” He asked with a sly grin. Shadows danced around him. We were in the middle of the street. News stations surrounded us. 

“Why would I remember you? I mean if I did, I’m sure I would remember someone like you!” I snapped. To be fair I was really tired. I had almost no sleep, there were super villains in my house, and now this random super powered guy wanted to pick a bone. 

“Well, my name is Contour Hues.” He smirked, “But you may know me by Connor Hughes.” 

I froze. Connor? My old friend, but how could he be here? He was…

“Do you have a reason for being here?” Connors growled as he jumped off the side of a building in front of me. He looked back at me and smiled. “Hi.” He said. 

“Hi?” I replied. 

“How pathetic. You of all people Y/N need a bodyguard?” Connor remarked. 

“I’m no bodyguard. I’m the next step in human evolution.” The lizard smirked. 

“What?” Connor replied. 

“It means I'm a distraction.” The lizard laughed.

Suddenly Sandman appeared punching Connor with a sandy fist. Max smiled as he shot electricity at Connor. I was shocked (no pun intended) at what I was seeing. Though the victory was short lived as Connor suddenly let out a burst of energy all around him. Max was shot back against a building as Sandman lost his solid form. Connor’s eyes were glowing purple as he looked at me. I had never seen him this mad…nor had I ever remember seeing him this mad. I saw Connors look at the top of a building. Another purple figure stood atop the building with what I thought was a boy. Billy? But it couldn’t be. He was with Peter. Whoever it was was not a threat to Connors at least. He charged at him fighting against a shadow beam that Connor shot at him. He rammed into him, pinning him to the ground. Connor struggled at first before saying…

“Dr Connors?” He said.

“How do you know my name?” The Lizard accused. 

“I’m very lost it seems.” Connor replied as he looked at the ledge where the purple figure stood with the boy. “I messed up.” 

“Huh?” The lizard replied. I stood there astonished. More versions of Curt, another version of Connor, and maybe even another version…of me? This was starting to get confusing. The Lizard let go of Connor who looked at me. 

“I’ve missed you.” He said to me,

“I missed you too.” I smiled. He stood up and hugged me, believe it or not. I wondered if Peter knew about all that was happening, but I couldn’t even bring myself to leave Connor’s grasp. There was something I never told people about Connor. I mostly tried to avoid talking about him. I let go of Connor. He wasn’t the Connor from my universe…but he was the closest thing I had. 

“I wish I could stay with you both…but there is someone I have to talk to. Two people actually. I will keep in touch as much as possible. For now I will keep an eye out for anybody else who found their way here.” He smiled.

“You’re leaving already?” The lizard asked, “You just tried to kill us and now you’re on our side?”

“Don’t be so serious. It could be the death of you.” He smiled.

I looked at the Lizard. “Our side?” I smirked. 

“Oh shut up.” He growled. Connor nodded at the two of us before he ran off onwards the purple figure. I had many questions to ask Connors…but I was silent. I just saw someone I haven’t seen in years. This was the second time ever that I had to watch him leave again.

[sapphicsandscience]

Growing Pains - Susan & Kerry ER fanfiction (1/1)

When Susan needs a little help, Kerry is the unlikely one who steps up. However, the two women struggle to get past their fractious relationship.

(read below the cut or on AO3)

Patients filled the hospital corridors from top to bottom. A group of intoxicated wedding goers from the previous night and the sweltering temperatures had blessed County with a dose of chaos. No one seemed to be moving anywhere apart from into each other, including Kerry who had returned from examining a patient to find it somehow worse than fifteen minutes previously.

“Sir, take a seat. Someone will see you when it’s your turn,” she said, strategically maneuvering her crutch between herself and a man in a fancy suit drunkenly stumbling around. The last thing she wanted was his bloody nose spilling all over her clothes.

Her white coat was an object of desire to the frustrated and uncomfortable patients as she attempted to move through the hoards of people. Her petite frame made it impossible to see the admit desk, her target destination, over what seemed like hundreds of heads. However, the sound of an infant crying from that direction managed to pierce through all the noise. Using the cries as a guide and her crutch to give some individuals a ‘gentle nudge’, Kerry finally managed to break through to the admit desk.

She was greeted by an upset-looking little Susie in the hands of a wired-looking Randi. The baby girl was all but being thrown around reception in the clerk’s arms as she answered phones and Susie evidently was no longer enjoying the ride.

“Where are all our doctors?” Kerry said with a brash tone. She immediately switched her demeanor as she leaned in closer to little Susie and stroked her damp cheek, which momentarily distracted Susie from her wailing. “There is no room to swing a cat out there.”

Randi stopped searching through the pile of charts in front of her and looked at Kerry. “That would be animal abuse,” she deadpanned.

“It’s a figure of speech.”

Randi tried to contain her smirk. “Mark is in CT with a patient and I don’t know where Doug is.”

“It’s unprofessional for an ER to be in such a state, never mind dangerous.” Kerry increased the volume of her voice as Susie began to cry again. “What about Susan? I’ve barely seen her all morning.”

“She had to take a phone call,” Randi said, preoccupied trying to soothe Susie by dangling around a small blanket in her face, the only thing she had been able to pull out of the diaper bag quickly. “Something about some lawyer I think.”

“No, I just saw her going to take a nap in exam four,” Connie interrupted as she walked over to the admit desk. “What are you doing to the poor girl?” Her brows raised as she watched Randi’s method of comforting the baby.

“You’re kidding! I can’t look after her all day!” Randi threw the blanket onto the desk in frustration. “She said she would be back in ten minutes.”

Kerry sighed. As much as it displeased her to see a doctor's personal life interfering with their work (and the running of the department), she couldn't help but have some sympathy for Susan. It hadn’t exactly been her choice to wind up looking after her sister's child. The majority of Kerry’s frustration with Susan came from the fact that Kerry hated seeing a doctor with such talent and potential distracted by things out of her control.

But it wasn’t just a distraction. It was a baby. Little Susie was her family.  

Family. Something Kerry did have much left of anymore.

Deciding not to go and wake Susan up, Kerry glanced up at the clock. It was nearing twelve and the morning hadn’t made much of a dent in the crowd that was in chairs. However, she was due a break and none of the cases appeared particularly emergent. Mark and Doug could take care of it when they decided to return to the trenches she thought.

“I’ll take her for a bit,” Kerry offered, reaching out her arm towards Susie.

Randi and Connie simultaneously looked up at Kerry, disbelief written on their faces.

Kerry rolled her eyes back. “What? I don’t bite, no matter what rumors you have heard.”

The phone began to ring and Randi gratefully passed Susie to Kerry, ignoring the fact that Susan probably wasn’t going to like this. “Just take her, please. I'm pretty sure she needs to be changed.”

Kerry expertly maneuvered the infant up against her chest with one arm, so the girl's rosy cheeks gently rested on her shoulder. “I think Randi is right, isn't she little Susie?” Kerry felt the heavy diaper as she rested Susie on her arm.

“You look like you have done that before.” Connie pried not so subtly, watching as the young girl almost immediately calmed against Kerry’s touch, Susie’s wet eyes wide as she gauged this new person holding her.

The personal life of Kerry Weaver was, of course, under the scrutiny of the gossip mill. And while none exactly saw her as the maternal type, Connie wanted to see her reaction.

But she got none.

“Is this her diaper bag?” Kerry indicated to the bag on the desk.

“Yep, all her stuff is in there.”  

Kerry scooped up the various baby paraphernalia into the bag and hung it over the handle of her crutch for the short journey. “Connie, I’ll be in one of the exam rooms if anyone needs me,” she called back as she walked away.

Avoiding the crowds, Kerry carried Susie into a nearby exam room. She switched on the overhead lights but Susie brought her little fists up to her face in discomfort. Apologizing to her, Kerry quickly turned them off again and instead turned on a less intense lamp that provided enough light for her to do the job.

“It’s okay, here we are. Nice and quiet here,” she rocked the girl on her hip. “Away from all those yucky sick people.”

Kerry walked over to the bed, collecting a sterile sheet before placing Susie down on her back. Susie was sporting a cute one-piece ensemble, with a matching sun hat and socks. The diaper was very full and wet and Kerry checked for any leakages before sliding the girl’s clothes off. Satisfied that there were none, Kerry opened the bag that was sitting beside Susie with her free hand and collected the required items to change her.  

“I can see why Susan is so attached to you,” Kerry patted Susie's little stomach as the baby happily squirmed on her back, enjoying her new clean diaper. “You’re a gorgeous girl aren’t you? You must have your aunt’s genes hey,” she said and Susie babbled back in agreement, a cheeky smile falling on her face. Kerry leaned down closer and shook her head excitedly. “Yes, you are.”

It took a while for Susan to regain full control of her limbs as she clawed herself out of the sleep-deprived coma that she had entered in exam four. Her call with her now ex-lawyer had left her wishing she could just disappear from existence for a bit.

__

Not quite ready to lift herself up, Susan stretched out with a yawn as she studied the ceiling. Little Susie had been up every couple of hours the last few nights, the young girl perhaps feeling the unrest that was in her aunt's life at the moment. Between that, work, and the amount of stress she was under, Susan couldn't remember the last time she had a moment to herself.

Though this moment to her herself had not left her feeling particularly rested or rejuvenated. Instead, she awoke from her ‘short nap’ uncomfortable. Everything was hot and cloudy and she felt like she had awfully overslept.

Which was odd, considering Susan could swear she had only been in here for 10 minutes. 20 Max.

Reaching over to the side table she picked up her watch and squinted.

“Crap,” she muttered. It had been at least an hour.

The realization that she had left Susie with Randi along with a certain chief resident's voice in the back of her head berating her for missing work, sprung Susan into action and she quickly collected her stethoscope and pager before running out of the exam room.

“Randi, I’m so sorry!” she called out, fixing her hair and clipping on her pager to her lab coat as she made her way towards the admin desk. “I just thought I’d close my eyes for a few minutes and then -” her apology ended abruptly as she looked up and noticed something was wrong. “Where’s Susie?” her voice went cold.

Randi frowned in confusion as she tried to decipher Susan’s questions while simultaneously trying to control the rowdy crowd that had somehow spilled into the admit area. “Oh the baby, Dr. Weaver took her,” she replied.

“Took her?” Susan tried to quell any panic and come to a logical conclusion. “Like to the daycare?”

She struggled to fathom any reason as to why Kerry had taken Susie. But perhaps Kerry had grown tired of Susie’s cries and shipped her upstairs to prevent any further distraction in the department.

But why had no one come to wake her first?  

“I’m not sure...” Preoccupied, Randi brushed her off and resumed yelling at the man that was opposite the desk. “Sir, you need to sit down. Otherwise, I’ll turf you out of here myself!”

“Lady, you can’t talk to me like that!”

“I’ll talk how I like,” Randi spat out and smiled as she watched the man retreat back. “I think she is still down here though. She said something about an exam room,” Randi focused her attention back on Susan and answered calmly.

But Susan was gone before Randi had even finished her sentence.

“Move please!” Susan pushed herself through the crowded ER corridors, not bothering with any pleasantries.

It had been over an hour since she had left Susie to go and make her phone call. Over an hour that little Susie had been left alone with a stranger. Left alone with Kerry Weaver of all people. Randi would have been better passing her off to the LOL in curtain three, Susan thought.

With every empty exam room she found, Susan’s heart rate climbed. And with every extra beat, Susan’s mind became less sound.

What if they had left the hospital? Susie could be anywhere.

“Mark! Thank god,” Susan burst into the suture room.

“I’m a little busy right now,” he replied, getting ready to begin a suture on a passed-out patient, presumably another victim of last night's wedding party.

“No, it’s Weaver you have to -” she continued breathlessly.

Mark let out an exasperated sigh and swung around on his stool. “Susan, I thought we had been through this. You two need to learn how -”

“Weaver has abducted little Susie!”

Bewildered, Mark and Malik stared at Susan.  

“Umm...Malik, wash this wound out again, will you? I’ll be back shortly,” he took off his gloves and stood up, leaving a curious-looking Malik behind him.

“What on earth are you talking about?” he ushered Susan into the corridor.

Susan raised her hands to her forehead. “I went to take a break...Susie...she was with Randi and then she wasn’t...I -” she rambled, running her shaking fingers through her hair.

“Slow down. What does Kerry have to do with any of this?”

“Randi said that Kerry took her and I can’t find them anywhere.”

Mark frowned. “I’m sure there is an explanation,” he comforted, as the pair walked to somewhere more private where they could talk.

“Mark, I don’t care if there is an explanation,” she said, as they entered the doctor’s lounge. “I don’t want her near little Susie!”

Susan’s words ricocheted through the doctor’s lounge, clearly making themselves heard to the occupants. Kerry and Connie were both seated on the couch along with Susie who was happily perched upon Kerry’s lap. The young girl smiled as she stole both of the women’s complete attention. That was until Mark and Susan had arrived. An awkward air swept through the room as they all stared at each other.

“Good Susan, you’re here.” Kerry was the first to break the silence and she stood up, ready to pass the baby over to Susan. “I think she is getting a little hungry, but I wasn’t sure what formula she takes.”

Kerry quickly gave the baby to Susan, which was slightly hindered by the fact that Susie had a firm fist wrapped around one of Kerry’s fingers. Kerry managed to pry her tiny fingers from her own and Susie was then in her aunt's arms, which immediately allowed Susan to breathe again.

“There is already some made up in the fridge,” Susan said offhandedly, the events of the last fifteen or so minutes washing over her as she stroked her niece's cheek. Susie was fine. “The formula.”

Kerry shuffled on her feet for a few seconds before committing and turning around to go and collect the bottle. Susan sighed as she took a seat at the table. She hadn’t meant for Kerry to go and get the formula. Truly she wished they all would leave. Kerry especially. Only so she didn’t have to look at her in the face after what she had just said.

Mark laid a hand on her shoulder. “If everything is alright here, I have to get back,”

“I should be getting back to work as well,” Connie lifted herself up from the couch. “Bye-bye, little Susie,”

Further tension spilled into the lounge as the two buffers departed. Susan glanced over to Kerry who had located the bottle and was warming it up. Kerry’s movements were deliberate and slow as if she was trying to extend the time she could have her back to the other woman in the room.

Susan swallowed. “Kerry I-”

“Randi was getting swept under, so I offered to take her for a bit.” the redhead interjected. Her voice was shrill, though not in its usual acerbic manner. More as if the voice was hitched in the chest and its owner was desperately trying to mask it.

Susan nodded, watching as Kerry collected the bottle from the microwave and tested the temperature of the milk on the inside of her wrist.

“I should have said something. Left a note.” Kerry continued as she turned back around. “Here,” she smiled, placing the bottle on the table.

Susie’s eyes immediately lit up and she reached out for her meal. She couldn’t quite hold her own bottle up yet, but that wasn’t going to deter her from trying.

“Thanks,” Susan replied and picked up the bottle. Susie grumbled as her milk was delayed when Susan splashed some of the milk onto her own wrist.

“Oh, I already did that,” Kerry pointed out, the intonation falling at the end of her sentence as she realized Susan wanted to check for herself. “Nevermind.”

Kerry uncuffed her crutch from her arm and gently rested it against the table before sitting down. Both women smiled as Susie latched on to her bottle and drank feverishly. Susie was something for them to focus on rather than themselves. And it was working. The mood lifted.

“She is a good little drinker,” Kerry commented.

“Kerry...I’m sorry,” Susan said.

Kerry stretched her neck from side to side as Susan waited for a response. Apologizing to Kerry Weaver was not something Susan had ever planned to do. Yet, here she was. Apologizing. Giving Kerry the upper hand.

However, the chief resident was as good at accepting apologies as she was offering them and she ignored the crumb of a peace offering that had been placed in front of her.

Susan pressed her lips together and looked down at little Susie, who was contently enjoying her milk, to quench the anger she could feel rising inside.

Kerry couldn’t even acknowledge it. Which made apologizing in the first place feel even worse.

Despite her apparent inability to make things easier for herself and Susan, Kerry didn’t show any signs of leaving and leaned forward. “I think you are doing a very admirable thing. Looking after your niece,” she said softly, but Susan couldn’t help but hear it in a condescending tone.  

“It probably won’t be for much longer,” she replied bitterly.

Susie chose this moment to start making some ominous gurgling sounds and Susan reached towards the bag to find a blanket. The last thing she needed today was another shirt decorated with baby spit-up. Her laundry pile was growing and little Susie was ‘customizing’ them faster than she could wash them.  

Kerry quickly went to help her, unzipping the bag further and making it easier for Susan to pull the blanket out with her free hand. “Randi said you were speaking to a lawyer?”

“Chloe wants to play mom again and apparently me being the only constant fixture in this girl's life for the last few months means nothing,” Susan lifted the girl up onto her blanket-covered shoulder and gently burped the baby. “I have a meeting with another one tonight. But I can’t bring Susie along.”

“Can’t your parents help?”

“They don’t want to get involved,” Susan replied, eyes downcast. “And maybe, I shouldn’t either. Just let Chloe get what she wants. She is her real mother after all.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Biology doesn’t dictate love, Susan. Not like that.”

Susan shook her head. “I’m no better than Chloe. My first response was to get rid of her. Adopt her out. You don’t do that if you love someone. You don’t do that to your child.” her words were less of a statement and more of a sad pleading question. She knew the answers. That nothing was as black and white as that. That people give away children they love all the time. She knew she was holding herself to a higher standard than she would anyone else.

But she just wanted someone to tell her what to do. Tell her what was the right thing.

And deep down. Tell her she could be a mother.

A good mother.

She wanted it so badly that she’d even take it from Kerry Weaver.

Or maybe Kerry Weaver’s opinion meant more to her than she was willing to accept.

Kerry remained silent for a few moments, fiddling with a ring on her finger. Susan furrowed her brows, she could see the light reflecting in Kerry’s damp eyes. Her words had evidently had some sort of emotional effect on Kerry.

Since when was Kerry Weaver so invested in my personal life?

Kerry cleared her throat. “Susan, I’m sure, whatever happens, it will work out,” she sat up straighter, regaining an air of authority. “But still, I think you should go tonight.”

“How?”

Kerry looked down nervously. “I...I can be with her,” she offered quietly.

“Kerry-“

“I’m serious. I’ll watch over her for an hour or so, while you go and meet this new lawyer,” she said. “It will be fine, me and Susie have already gotten to know each other haven’t we?” Kerry lent forward and rubbed Susie's back.

“Kerry,” Susan sighed, leaning back further against the chair and away from Kerry. “It’s nothing personal, but I don’t like the idea of leaving her with someone we don’t know.”

“It’s okay Susan, I understand.” she nodded with a pained smile and Susan could see how her face had fallen ever so slightly. “It was just a suggestion.” Kerry stood up and collected her crutch. No further words were exchanged between the pair as Kerry walked to the door.

“Wait Kerry,” Susan called out with a regretful grimace. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She picked up a stray piece of paper from the table and started writing. “Umm...this is my apartment address, come by at 6:30 and I’ll go through what she needs?”

__

Susan gently inserted her key into the lock and turned the mechanism, careful to make as little noise as possible. With Susie being so difficult to settle these past few weeks, she doubted that Kerry would have had much success putting her down for the night. But on the off chance that she had, Susan didn’t want to wake her as she arrived home.

She was eager to get inside and see Susie, still not entirely comfortable with the idea of Kerry in her apartment and taking care of her. Logically she knew she didn’t have many reasons to be overly concerned. Kerry was a responsible adult and a doctor. And much to her shock, quite good at dealing with young children. However, the difficult relationship between them didn’t do a lot to settle her nerves.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected when she walked into her apartment, but to her surprise, everything felt overwhelmingly normal. The sheer presence of Kerry Weaver hadn’t turned the place into a cold and disturbed environment.

Not that Susan thought that of course.

It still felt like home.

She found herself smiling as she closed the door behind her and unwrapped the scarf around her neck. There wasn’t much to smile about, she thought; her life was still in shambles and she was going to have to deal with what was likely going to be another awkward Weaver interaction before she could even think about her head hitting the pillow. However, the day hadn’t been a total disaster.

There was a light on in the kitchen but the lounge area was dimly lit. A single lamp illuminated Kerry who was seated on the couch and absorbed in the book she was reading. Susan bounced up onto her tiptoes as she hung her scarf up. Raising her chin up she could just make out a peaceful Susie sleeping in her bassinet over the other side of the room and she let out a breath of air.

“Susan,” Kerry stirred and placed her book onto the coffee table. “How was it?”

“It was good,” She replied.

In fact, the meeting with this lawyer had gone far better than expected. Though Susan wasn’t keen to elaborate further right now. She had opened up herself enough to Kerry for one day. Arguably enough for a lifetime.

But this lawyer was ready to fight. The only question left was, if she was.

“I’m glad,” Kerry smiled.

Susan wandered over to the bassinet, the innate need to see her niece overpowering the fact that the girl was already settled and asleep. She placed a gentle hand on Susie’s front and stroked her cheek lightly with a finger. Susan had grown to hate missing bedtimes with Susie. The girl moved on her back ever so slightly, a little hand coming up to Susan’s that was now resting on her cheek. Susan stilled as her breath hitched in her throat.

Of course, she was going to come home and wake the baby in front of Kerry.

But Susie’s face remained content as she continued to sleep and her arm fell back down.

“She had been like that for the past hour or so,”

Susan jumped as she heard Kerry’s voice over her shoulder, not having noticed the redhead come up behind her. The women had a way of creeping up on you. Figuratively and literally.

“Took me long enough,” Kerry continued with a smile. “But she hasn’t woken since, so fingers crossed, she might sleep through for you.”

“I can’t tell you how much of a relief that is,” Susan let herself relax. “Thank you, Kerry.”

Kerry nodded stiffly before turning back and using the various pieces of furniture to balance as she returned to her crutch that had been resting against the back of the couch. Susan instinctively looked away, not having realized until that point that she wasn’t using her crutch. She never really thought about it, Kerry’s leg, but seeing her grimace as she walked across the apartment made her internally cringe as she remembered the incident in the lounge.

How she had managed to create such a complex relationship with Kerry she didn’t know.

Never in her life had Susan had so many painful interactions with the same person. And the worst of it all was that she didn’t actually dislike Kerry. Sure, the woman could drive her up the wall on a daily basis but she didn’t hate her. There had been far worse bosses in her life. And yet, the two could never seem to have a normal conversation. Sometimes they’d laugh together, Kerry would feel like one of them, one of the team. And then it was like she was an alien from another planet, sent here to obsessively pick over their every move.

And Susan let Kerry get to her, more than anyone else.

“I guess I better be going then,” Kerry fluffed up the cushions where she had been sitting and picked up her bag. “Umm...there is also some takeout for you in the fridge.”

Susan looked over surprised and walked into the kitchen. Though before she made it into the fridge, she noticed that the kitchen had obviously been cleaned and she immediately felt embarrassed. She had made sure that the apartment was in somewhat of a presentable state before Kerry arrived. However, it was now clear that Kerry hadn’t thought so.

But still, Susan tried to focus on how it was nice of her.

“It’s Chinese. I’ve seen you eat it at work. Not that I watch you eat or anything. I just knew that it was something you liked. Anyway...” she stammered.  

“Kerry, you shouldn’t have.”

“Oh, it was nothing really.”

Susan was about to thank her again when something caught her eye in her bedroom. There were three freshly washed and folded piles of clothing sitting at the end of her bed.

“You...you washed my clothes?”

There it was, Susan thought. Kerry Weaver could not help herself. Had to go and interfere in her life once again. And now she was micromanaging her in her own home. The thought of Kerry seeing her baby vomit-covered shirts and god knows what else sent Susan into overdrive. This was too much of a personal infringement for her.

Not picking up on the sudden change in Susan’s mood, Kerry continued as she put on her coat. “Susie was a bit grizzly and I thought a trip to the laundry room may help. She surprisingly likes it down there.”

“I didn’t say you could do my laundry!”

Kerry stilled, her face palling at the sudden acidity in Susan’s voice. “I just thought you might appreciate the extra help.”

“I don't want your help, Kerry! Not at work and definitely not in my own home.” she spat out. “I’m not useless you know?”

Susan lent heavily against the kitchen counter with her arms forward and closed her eyes. She needed Kerry to leave now.

Kerry, however, walked over to her with a look of concern in her eyes.

“Susan, I don’t think you are useless.” She reached out to place a hand on Susan’s forearm. But, Susan dramatically flinched away from her and Kerry stumbled back.

The redhead visibly tensed and straightened into her usual demanding posture. “I overstepped. It won’t happen again.”

“Kerry-” Susan began as Kerry began to walk to the door but she was distracted by the sudden cries from Susie who had awoken with the commotion. Quickly she rushed over to her, picking her up and rocking her against her chest. “Shhh, I’m sorry, it’s okay Susie.”

But Susie continued to cry.

“I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Don’t be late,” Kerry said as she was leaving. “It..it has been happening far too frequently of late. It doesn’t look good for your application for Chief Resident.”

Susan’s apartment did feel cold that night.

[scaryscarecrows]

Moral Support

AN: Pits were once known as ‘nanny dogs’. Our Edgar, for what it’s worth, is a lousy nanny, but we’ve all got faults and that’s okay.

* * *

Jason stumbles through his window at two in the morning, left hand clutching his side. Somebody got lucky with a knife, nothing awful-awful, but it needs stitches. He’s going to have to be careful stretching any which way for a little while, maybe no tug-of-war with the dog.

Lemon tries to follow him into the bathroom, bumping at his leg with that big head of hers, and he manages to nudge her back and lock her out. Last thing he needs is fur in the cut, or slobber, or whatever. And the bathroom is small. They don’t both fit without a bit of Tetris.

He tosses his jacket into the shower, followed by his hoodie, and starts working at getting his body armor off. Outside, there’s snuffling and a few hesitant scrapes at the door.

“M’okay, baby,” he says. “Just be quiet, okay?”

Almost got it…

There’s a sudden howl from outside. SHIT NO--

“Lemon!” Oh, that does look nasty. “Shh!”

More scraping. Jesus, okay…

He opens the door, just a little so she can’t smash into his side. Not that it stops her from trying; she sees the crack and promptly tries to wedge her head through.

“S’matter, sour girl*?” Frantic whining and more pushing. “You can’t come in, I gotta fix this up. Be quiet, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

He tries to shut the door again and she starts howling. Crap. Okay. This...this is a little bad. His neighbors will come for him with mops, he’ll be distracted, she’s clearly miserable...um…

Oh! He got a baby gate, when he was still telling himself she wasn’t permanent, to keep her out of the kitchen. The cast made her a little slippery. It should be under his bed or something...maybe that’ll be a happy medium.

He nudges her out of the way and shuffles, slowly and painfully, into the other room to get it out. It takes him a minute, and it takes him another two to get it so she won’t just knock it down, but finally, finally, she can see him without getting in the way.

It’s unnerving, he decides. She’s literally sitting there, staring at him and periodically nudging the gate to see if it’ll fall down. A task that has once been done in tired silence is now being done in awkward silence. 

“Somebody just got lucky,” he explains, only feeling a little silly about trying to justify himself to a dog. “I was distracted and they came at me with a knife. Nothing to worry about.”

Yeah, he might actually stay in tomorrow, or at least keep it light. Grappling is already kinda painful-his shoulders don’t like it too much-but now? Ngh. He’s ground-bound for a few days at least.

“I’m not gonna die,” he continues. “I’ve had worse. Electricity? That hurts. This’s a. A paper cut compared to that.” More whining. Another nudge. “Almost done, sour girl, then I’ll take you out for the night. Maybe have a smoke.”

There. It’s not pretty, exactly, but honestly, he can’t bring himself to care. What’s one more scar in all the other ones, huh? No one’s going to see it except the dog, and she doesn’t care.

“Lemme just get a shirt on, okay?” He’ll shower when he gets in. It’s always a damn production when he’s got stitches. “It’s cold, I don’t want to go out like this, nobody else wants me to come out like this, it’s just better. And we gotta get your coat on too...and your hat…”

Ten minutes later, he can go outside without frightening the children and Lemon’s bundled up like Randy from A Christmas Story. His side’s still numb, but the rest of his body’s aching and he hopes, he really hopes, that this isn’t gonna take a year. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes she has to sniff fifty rocks, gaze at the sky like it holds the answers to life, and try to befriend a beetle. She’s an idiot. He’d fight Bane for her if he had to.

Tonight, it does not take a year. It’s too cold, apparently, because she sulks the entire time and gives him a filthy look when they finally go back in the elevator.

“Don’t give me that look. I told you it was cold,” he says. She huffs at him, tired and wet because everything she does is wet. He’s gotten very good at shielding his food when she shakes her head. “Well, you don’t have to come back out now. Happy?”

After the earlier fiasco, he doesn’t even bother shutting the bathroom door. He just gates her out so she doesn’t try to come into the shower-and she will, given half a chance-and spends a good half hour warming up.

He’ll be honest. It’s kinda nice to come out and find her still there, staring worryingly at the bathroom. Makes him feel fluffy inside.

He feels a little less fluffy when she ignores her fancy-ass dog bed in favor of taking half of his, but at the same time, she’s very warm and there’s something comforting about her settling between him and the window. Nothing’s ever come through it-though there was one time that she woke him barking at it like someone was gonna try-but still. There’s a measure of security there.

“G’night, Lemon,” he mumbles. “Sweet dreams, big girl.”

All in all, he’s had worse patch-up nights.

THE END

*While ‘Sour Girl’ is the name of a Stone Temple Pilots song-and Jason knows that-he’s using it here because Lemon, well, eats lemons. She’s not bright. :p

[squidprinceofwinterfell]

Stick of Truth Commentary

Intro

Intro cut scene is a nice touch! The animation is nice, and it adds story and stakes to the game the boys are playing. Reminds me of “Lord of the Rings.”

I like how the boys see the stick as a golden staff, but it’s literally just…a stick.

Create your character

Fighter, Mage, Thief, Jew – which is the best and why?

Intro to New Kid and family

Dialogue between parents creates an ominous backstory. Who is looking for New Kid and why?

New Kid is a mute weirdo and I love it.

The first quest (making friends) reminds me of “The Sandlot.”

The shitting feature is awesome.

New Kid meets Butters and is brought to KKK

What exactly is the power of diabetes?

Chekov’s Clyde!

It’s cute how cool everyone is with Princess Kenny.

I like that every player is called Douchebag, but I wish every player didn’t have to play as a boy.

Elves attack

Funny how Cartman’s alarm is just Butters yelling “Alarm!”

Cartman has pretty good commentary when New Kid is fighting. I actually miss that later on.

How did the elves snag the stick? Either Clyde is a bad watchdog or Kyle is super strategic. I choose both.

New Kid must find Token, Tweek, and Craig

Token

I never knew Token was so rich that he had security! It’s probably to keep Cartman out.

I love that Token’s property is calling Dark Meadows.

Token: “The elves took the stick again?” Haha!

Tweek

Tweek is the only employee at Tweek Bros.? That’s called child labor!

I love that Mrs. McCormick thinks the meth heads in her garage are just nice renters. Is she being paid in meth?

Why would a 10-year-old boy be an undercover cop? Only in South Park.

Tweek was totally named after the word “tweeker.”

Craig

Craig is in detention for (of course) flipping off the principal. Is Principal Victoria still principal at this point?

Craig’s alias is Feldspar the Thief? I refuse to believe this isn’t a reference to Malcolm in the Middle.

On the “thief” option at the beginning, Cartman says he’s never seen a white thief before, yet Craig is a thief. Hmm…

“Heeeere they come…I’ll be outta here in ten minutes.” Smug, snarky Craig is the best Craig.

I like that Mackey seems to know he’s in a video game (by referencing the boss fight). It’s very Deadpool.

The Bard

The Inn of the Giggling Donkey is just Jimmy’s house. His living room is convincing as a bar/lounge/hangout.

Twitter = carrier raven

“There once was a maiden from Stonebury Hollow / She didn’t talk much, but boy did she swallow / I had a nice lance that she sat upon / The maiden from Stonebury who was also your mom.” I love Jimmy’s songs!

Butters: “No hurry, Douchebag. The princess is just being raped.” OMG

An elf was jumping on the bed to simulate raping Princess Kenny? The boys are really committed to this game.

Cartman: “Good job, Princess Gone Wild. Double D buddy powers.” Kenny flashing his man boobs is the best distraction tactic.

The Brown Note is Jimmy’s best attack.

“Welcome to the KKK!”

Alien abduction

Cartman’s fart lessons finally come in handy! New Kid’s ass is too strong to be probed.

I love that alien abduction is viewed as just another annoying part of living in South Park.

The guy from the recordings is the hobo hidden onboard, right?

The Nazi zombie hobo is the game’s first instance of the Nazi zombie plot. It tells us that the aliens are responsible for this when the ship crash lands to Earth and green goo gets in the sewer.

New Kid crashed an entire spaceship. He’s kind of a badass. And he gets to keep the alien probe!

The big bad government is involved now to deal with “another UFO crash.” How often does this happen??

Only South Park would try to pass off a UFO as construction of a Taco Bell. And only South Park citizens would believe it.

Recruitment (pt. 1)

All New Kid has to do to get the goth kids to join is put on black clothes. I’m glad to see they still have low standards.

New Kid finally meets Stan and Kyle! I’ve been waiting for this.

According to Kyle, Cartman lied about the stick being stolen and is hiding it. According to Cartman, Kyle is lying because New Kid can’t retrieve the stick if Kyle claims he doesn’t have it. It’s a game of “he said, she said” but I’m inclined to believe Kyle. This is Cartman we’re talking about…

PTA meeting

I’m disappointed no one yelled “Rabble, rabble!” at the PTA meeting.

Is no one else alarmed that Randy lured a young boy into the bathroom alone?

“That’s all you’ve got is a sign? At least crap on a desk or something!” Mr. Garrison is speaking highly of Cartman, I see.

She-Ogre

“Give me back my iPhone, DEMON!” This is an accurate depiction of a brother-sister relationship.

It’s adorable that Stan uses Sparky in battle.

Taco Bell

I love that the big bad government agents are such bad liars that they killed a guy asking about encharidos.

“Goddamn it! I’m so tired of Nazi zombies. It’s so…overused!” Haha!

I’m surprised the adults actually took the bombing threat seriously and weren’t bummed about no Taco Bell.

Recruitment (pt. 2)

The final goth test is DDR?? That’s so conformist.

Once you win the goth kids over, you can recruit them to either Cartman’s side or Kyle’s. I always pick Kyle’s side when I play this. I’ve been itching to betray Cartman since this game started!

South Park Elementary

The huge battle scene takes place at the school because it’s where Cartman supposedly hid the stick. South Park Elementary is busted and makes a great setting for a battle scene. More “Lord of the Rings” vibes!

New Kid’s farts help Kyle’s side get the upper hand. Take that, Cartman!

Another reason choosing Kyle’s side is better: New Kid’s battle against Butters is more impactful because he was New Kid’s first friend. If it was a face off against Stan, it wouldn’t be as emotional.

The final battle gives New Kid one last chance to pick a side. Like Stan says, “I can’t believe this is even a choice.” Kyle vs Cartman is like Chanel vs Walmart.

Yet another reason choosing Kyle’s side is better: Cartman’s farting fire at the end of this fight is one of the best scenes of the whole game.

Clyde

I love the twist where neither Kyle nor Cartman was lying. Clyde really punked the fuck out of everyone.

Kyle is the only one to acknowledge he’s aware of the green goo and how dangerous it is.

Stan: “Clyde, but why?” Cartman: “I banished him to be lost in space and time and now he’s all pissed off.” Haha!

Clyde’s fortress is so badass. I can see the appeal of the dark side.

How the hell does Clyde have control over the Nazi zombies??

I love that Clyde’s power move is keeping his friends out past their bedtimes. The stakes are higher now, but this reminds us this is still a kid’s game…or it started as one.

Underpants gnomes

Gnomes: “The kid is awake! What do we do?” “Oh, fuck, I guess we gotta kill him!” Me problem solving.

Since when do underpants gnomes have warlocks?? I thought they were all failed businessmen.

For some reason, high pitched gnome voices yelling “Oh, fuck!” is really funny to me.

New Kid fighting underneath his giant parents mid-coitus is another iconic fight scene. How many times must New Kid dodge his dad’s ballsack?? The kid is hardcore.

The girls

Kyle convinces everyone to team up against Clyde. I’m continually impressed by Kyle because of his leadership, intellect (he spent all night researching), and open mind (he doesn’t balk at teaming up with the humans or inviting girls to play). I’m totally Team Kyle, if you haven’t noticed.

I love that the girls blindfold New Kid when they bring him to their lair. That’s some Mafia shit.

Annie: “He…doesn’t really talk.” Bebe: “That’s hot!” ME

Sunshine, sparkle, glitter…I wanna talk like this all the time.

Heidi Turner was the two-faced bitch! That’s very Mrs. Cartman of her.

Abortion clinic

New Kid’s abortion doctor is named Dr. Poonlover because of course he is

The big bad government is doing Plan B at the abortion clinic. Clever joke!

Where did Randy get that blonde wig from?? The men in South Park cross-dress so much.

Khloe Kardashian’s aborted fetus as a Nazi zombie is also a legendary fight.

Canada

New Kid didn’t get that his photographer was a pedophile even when he was almost butt naked?? Also, who was that guy who jumps out from behind the boxes?

The layout of Canada is clearly a parody of Pokemon games, right? Either way, I love it. The shitty jpeg videogame look is very Canada.

“They’re like wolves, but they’re dire.”

Getting trained by Terrance and Phillip makes all this back and forth bullshit worth it.

Clyde’s fortress

Of course Cartman butts in when Kyle’s trying to give an inspirational speech. What an attention hog!

It’s funny to me how easily Craig switched to Clyde’s side. Loyalty much??

“I really found myself relating to Clyde’s views about darkness and enslaving the world.” Jesus, Craig!

Cartman’s negative reaction to electricity is a callback to the chip put in his head in Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

“It’s my favorite kid!” WOW, RANDY

“Who could it be?” I love how long New Kid lets them all wonder before he steps up.

Stan: “Dude, that’s not Taco Bell sauce.” Clyde: “Then why’d I find it at the Taco Bell?” A+ logic

How dare you, Clyde! Let Chef rest in peace!

Government interruption

“Whenever aliens are spotted, vampires run amok…” Vampires exist in this universe??

I love that the boys don’t care about the big bad government’s scheme.

So New Kid’s special power is making friends on social media! I should’ve known.

Princess Kenny’s betrayal

Princess Kenny planned to steal the stick all along! This game is full of betrayals.

Kenny makes a pretty cute anime princess. Nazi zombie? Not so much.

Princess Kenny is a badass final boss. And I never saw it coming!

I’m glad the “never fart on someone’s balls” joke meant something in the end. I can see why it was banned – it’s super deadly!

End

The boys unite to save friendship and love…by chucking a stick into a lake.

New Kid stole Cartman’s catchphrase!

Why did Al Gore appear so ominously at the end?? What are you gonna do to the kids, Al Gore??

[sueboohscorner]

Wynonna Earp S3 Ep7: I Fall To Pieces (aka...you will too)

 Okay, so, some are saying they think this is just a “filler” episode.  I don’t think that is entirely accurate.  I mean, at some point, Wynonna and Nicole would have to learn to work together.  Michelle was bound to take off at some point too.  I mean it is rather surprising that the cops haven’t shown up in Purgatory looking for her yet.  We wanted some more of Nicole’s past and we got a doozie and we cried.  Wynonna finds out the truth about Doc and she reacted just like I would have and I cried with both of them.  Damn it all!  This show is stressing me the hell out this season!

I swear.  I try, I really do, to try to type a small recap / review.  However, Wynonna Earp is one of those shows that is so well written and has such good stuff going on, that I can’t.  I just can’t.  I don’t want any of my readers to miss anything and to read this and say, “Okay, now I HAVE to watch the actual episode!”  So, here we go folks!

We open with, ugh….Wynonna and Charlie in a firetruck trying to get in another…..well…I can’t put that word here.  You know what I mean. Wynonna swears that this is going to be their last time.  Yeah, right.  Charlie thinks it is good stress relief and they should continue.  They almost get all their clothes off and get going when two familiar voices are heard.  By the way, they are in a firetruck IN THE firehouse!  It is Waverly and Nicole handing out fresh coffee to the fire crew and thanking them for their service and dedication.  They don’t think so fondly of Sheriff Nedley, but Nicole assures them that it will be different when she is Sheriff. 

Inside the truck, they are getting dressed and Charlie remarks that he actually didn’t know Waverly and Haught were a thing.  He assures Wynonna when questioned, that Purgatory Pride is his favorite event every year.  She is surprised to hear they have such an event and a firetruck gets painted the rainbow colors.  Charlie also says that Nicole warned him about her….how she is a hot mess.  Wynonna thanks him for the uh….”Pump?” she says and Charlie replies with “That’s gross.” Wynonna tries again….”Backdraft?”  and Charlie questions her “Did we do that?”  “Heeeeeaaat.”  Wynonna says and they kiss and fall back and her hand hits the firetruck alarm. 

A very embarrassed Wynonna climbs out of the truck and everyone is there staring.  She says there is nothing to see here but a grown ass woman with grown up needs simply leaving a firehouse.  Because, you know, that is a totally everyday occurrence.  Nicole asks if she needs a ride.  “I had a ride.  I need a nap.”  Wynonna answers.  Then admits that yes, she needs a ride.  Waverly asks if her and Doc are no longer a thing.  Wynonna answers curtly, “We were never a thing and I haven’t seen him in a week.”

At Kate’s house Doc is lying on the floor with Kate in front of the fireplace.  He lifts his hand and suddenly jumps up as the ring of Bulshar is burning him.  He runs to a vase and ….oh, my…..I see ass cheeks.  His chaps are open.  LOL.  He takes his hand out and looks at the ring and says, “What have I done?” 

The bitch of a wife (sorry…I can’t stand her…) says that the ring is rejecting him as he is now a vampire that makes him compromised.  However, not to worry, because they are together forever like he wanted.  Ummm…..I think YOU wanted that Kate and took advantage of the situation.  Doc moves to a mirror and looks at himself, runs a hand over his chest and says, “Just like I wanted” just as his image is disappearing.

Frat boys singing it up in a jail cell at the station.  Sheriff Nedley tells Wynonna that they are from the city and their party bus was confiscated.  Waverly finds Jeremy asleep at his desk and wakes him up.  She asks what he is doing.  He has been working on trying to figure out where Bulshar might have moved his operation since they closed down the other one.  Waverly thinks that is great, but that Jeremy, not even knowing what day it is, really needs a falafel and some rest.

Nicole and Wynonna are in the Sheriff’s office and are moving a bookshelf while Nedley sits at his desk.  Behind the shelf is a door.   “We finally get to see your sex cave?”  Wynonna jokes with him.  He says it is more of a closet and hands them keys.  He explains that it is evidence and notes on cases that were a little on the supernatural side.  Wynonna asks why he didn’t give them to Dolls.  Nedley says he wasn’t sure whether to trust Dolls at first, but now he knows.  They look inside and there is quite a bit of stuff. 

Apparently, he has been collecting this since he became Sheriff.  “It’s like Hoarders meets Storage Wars.” Wynonna jokes.  It is up to Nicole and Wynonna to work together to figure out what to keep and what to burn.

Nedley checks with Nicole on how it is going getting backing from City Council on her becoming Sheriff.  She complains that Bunny Loblaw won’t return any of her calls and still reigns over City Council with an iron fist.  Nedley tells her that Bunny can smell fear and she needs to learn to hide that and take control of the situation.  Nicole runs off to make another phone call to Bunny to set up a meeting. “Bunny’s gonna eat her for lunch.”  Wynonna remarks to Nedley.

Doc is at the Earp Homestead in the barn looking for a can or container to put the ring in.  He finds one and remarks that it will have to do when he hears the cocking of a rifle behind him.  It is Michelle.  She tells him it isn’t a good idea to go sneaking around with an armed mental patient on the loose.  “I thought we were friends.” Doc remarks to her.  She laughs and says that he bailed on her Christmas feast.  He apologizes and says that very important had come up.  He turns around and Michelle “You’re gonna make it up to me. Don’t worry.  I’ll drive if you’re too tired.”  She needs to leave for a while, to get out of town and to get going or she is gonna roll him for the keys.

Nicole and Wynonna start to argue about cleaning out the closet.  Wynonna is sitting reading old notes and finds a picture of a “baby” Nedley when he was just starting out and had a kids with him. With Nicole getting mad because of lack of help, Wynonna rushes in with attitude and starts throwing things out as “crap” or “not crap”.  Nicole goes to stop her just as she has a black weird looking mirror.  They struggle over it and Wynonna lets go, making Nicole lose control of it and it falls and breaks on the ground.  “Smooth move Ginger Spice.  You just earned yourself seven years bad luck.”  Wynonna says.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Triangle, a small shed explodes (by the way there are creepy looking scarecrows on that fence) and a very ugly looking dude I nicknamed Mr. Fugly emerges carrying very large hedge clippers.  He’s a very happy, jolly sort.  If you bought that last line you have never watched this show.

Wynonna goes to the bar and meets Nedley there.  He is drinking Ginger Ale.  She orders her usual, a whiskey and leave the bottle.  She shows him the photo she found.  “It’s like your upper lip is wearing a skinny tie” she jokes with him.  He looks at it and smiles.  He asks how the evidence closet is going and Wynonna accuses Nicole of smashing stuff and complains what it is like trying to work with someone with a “pickle up their ass” and that the woman is all work and no play.  That someday she is going to snap and chop up someone with an axe.  Nedley says to go easy on Nicole and slides the picture back to Wynonna.  “You two have more in common than you think” he says as he points to the little girl in the picture.

Nicole is at home trying her best to get ready for the Bunny visit.  She turns her back for a second and hears someone behind her.  She is startled to see Bunny is there and has let herself in.  She offers to take the woman’s coat, but is told, “What.  So you can rifle through the pockets?”  Then she freaks when she sees Calamity Jane the cat and tells Nicole that either the cat goes or she does because she is deathly allergic. So, poor Nicole picks up the cat and runs her upstairs.  Bunny takes the opportunity to look around and sees a picture of Waverly and Nicole together.  She makes a face, slowly puts it down and says, “Disgusting!” as she walks away.

Michelle and Doc are at the Earp gravesite.  Michelle places flowers on the grave which has both Ward’s and Willa’s name on it.  Doc says he is very sorry, but Michelle says that Willa was Ward’s pet and was a spoiled brat with a mean streak. “She would have made a terrible heir.”  Doc reminds her that Willa was just a child. Michelle looks at the grave and touches Willa’s name and apologizes for not being there to protect her.  She suddenly gets up and walks off. Doc yells after her, asking where the hell she is going now.  “Come on. I’ll tell you which way to turn.”  She yells back to him.  Doc begins to complain, “It’s freezing out here.” And she tells him to “Stop being such a wiener. Besides, I know you have a bottle of Tequila stashed under your seat that will get us through.”

Back at Nicole’s, poor Nicole is trying to have a nice conversation with the wicked witch of the universe.  Nicole tells her that she has great plans of how to run the office more efficiently and ways to make the town safer.  “Well, that is all fine and good, Deputy Haught, but my main concern is this.  Randy Nedley is full of SHIT!  I am so sick and tired of being kept in the dark about all the strange occurrences in Purgatory.” She goes on to say that she refuses to be lied to about what is going on “in HER town under HER nose.”  Nicole asks what she means.  “Well, you tell me.  That is why I am here.  Unless, you don’t want to be Sheriff.”  She adds not to give her “that hooey” about costume parties gone out of control or escaped zoo animals.  Nicole tries to say that Purgatory is a “special” place with “special” challenges. 

Then Wynonna comes bursting in and says she needs to talk to Nicole for a minute.  Nicole says it isn’t the right time, but Bunny smiles and says that it is in fact the perfect time because she was thinking of backing Wynonna Earp as Sheriff.  Nicole can’t believe what she is hearing both her and Wynonna laugh thinking Bunny is joking, but she isn’t.  She says that Wynonna is “a straight shooter and one tough bitch”

and that the Earp family is one of the original families.  She calls Nicole nothing but “a fly-by-night outsider and a “little too…..different.”  Nicole has heard enough and grabs Wynonna and takes her to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Wynonna is laughing “Wait until Bunny learns about Purgatory Pride!"  Nicole asks what she is doing there.  Wynonna says it is about her (Nicole) and Nedley.  But before she goes on she reverts back to the Bunny situation.  Laughing again, she says “Wait.  Did Bun Buns really just say I could be….”  Nicole interrupts her, “OH, no.  You can NOT take that job.”  “I don’t want that job.” Wynonna says.  Nicole says that is good because Wynonna would have been terrible at it.  She has no police training, is terrible with authority and isn’t even qualified to work at a Chipotle’s” Wynonna takes offense and says that maybe she WILL take that job and be “Sheriff Nedley 2.0” and would be Nicole’s boss. 

They are still arguing when Bunny turns around and at the window is Mr. Fugly and she yells out and falls face first on the floor.  Wynonna is coming out of the kitchen about to “go get stuff done” and sees Bunny on the floor.  “Balls!  Bunny’s dead.”  She yells to Nicole.  Nicole rushes out and sees Bunny there and the cat sitting on top of her.  Nicole rushes over and says that Bunny is “deathly allergic” and to get her purse.  “Right!  Cash!”  says Wynonna.  Nicole yells “No, for medicine!”  They dump the purse looking for an allergy medicine and find a lot more than just that.  Wynonna finds Oxy and Nicole hits it out of her hand.  They find one and give it to Bunny with some tea which makes Bunny cough and wake up. 

They help Bunny up and out to the police cruiser.  Nicole says it will be faster to use that with the sirens on. Bunny is complaining all the way.  She tells them not to take her to Purgatory General as there are “too many immigrant doctors there”.  Nicole just shoves her in the back of the car.  She tells Wynonna to go back inside and grab Bunny’s purse.  They argue over who is going to go back inside and Nicole finally says she will, but Wynonna has to be right, so she is going to.  As they argue back to the front door, two of the frat boys sneak into the police car and take off.  Bunny is screaming in the back seat about what is going on.  Nicole runs out into the road and exclaims, “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me!”  Wynonna chuckles and says, “Look who needs my help now.”

A little bit later, Nicole comes out of the house with Bunny’s stuff and finds Wynonna trying to hotwire the car.  She tells her she actually has the keys and that she should actually drive because she is the cop and it would be seen as commandeering the vehicle for official police business.  Wynonna says there are bigger fish to fry and shuts the door.  Nicole decides she will call Waverly then. 

At the station, Waverly is on the phone with Nicole.  Jeremy and she are logging into the computer to track the GPS of the police car.  Jeremy laughs and says that they are having some super bad luck today.  “Speed it up Jagged Little Nerd.”  You hear Wynonna say through the phone.  Jeremy quickly locates the car, and it is parked.  However, Waverly says that they need to hurry.

It seems the two stupid frat boys decided to go to a biker bar run over by revenants.  They get to the police car and Bunny starts screaming at them.  She tells Nicole “Get me out of here you white trash tart.”  Yeah….sure helping your situation there honey.  Let me get right on that.  I would actually move a hell of a lot slower just to make it more amusing to myself.  Nicole finds the extra key and goes to unlock the passenger side door and guess what…..it breaks.   Bunny of course screams at Nicole calling her a freaking moron.  Wynonna pulls her gun and aims it at Bunny who backs up, but Nicole stops her saying that the bullet could ricochet and hit Bunny.  Wynonna raises her gun again thinking it is worth the risk.  “OR US.”  Nicole adds.  Wynonna puts the gun away. Nicole wonders if they could call the fire department to come rip the door off.  Wynonna thinks that is a bad idea because the fire crew would never let the Sheriff’s office live that down.  Wynonna thinks their only option is to go inside and “find Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Douche” and get the original keys.  They wander to the bar and peek inside. 

There are quite a few demons in there.  Nicole says they are outnumbered and wouldn’t want Bunny seeing them shooting anyway.  Wynonna scoffs and takes off.

Along a roadside, Doc and Michelle are leaning against his car.  She is working on that bottle of Tequila.  She tells Doc how growing up, she couldn’t wait to join the rodeo circuit to get out of the hell hole of a town.  However, she came back one August weekend, got drunk and pregnant and ended up marrying Ward Earp.  “Well, he did give you three beautiful daughters” Doc remarks.  Michelle says, no only two.  “Waverly was Julian’s, remember?”  Doc pauses then asks, “What’s it like being with an angel?”  Michelle simply answers with a question.  “What’s it like being with a demon?”  She changes the subject in a way.  She tells Doc how Julian made her feel like she didn’t have to break her spirit to be happy.  That the night Waverly was born, Ward pushed Julian out of the Ghost River Triangle.  Right where they were standing now.  Doc asks how she knows this and she says that Bobo DelRay told her.  “You talked to him?”  Doc asks her.  She says she did more than talk.  She gave Bobo the dinner Doc refused and she gave Bobo his freedom.  “Are you out of your godforsaken mind woman?!”  Doc exclaims.  Michelle stays calm as usual.  “Yes, I think we have already established that.”  Doc tells her that she has unleashed a monster.  Michelle tells Doc that Bulshar is risen and it will take monsters to fight a monster.  Doc reminds her that Bobo has tried to kill her own daughters multiple times and she doesn’t get to make these life or death decisions for them. “Who’s gonna stop me?  You, Johnny Hank?”  Michelle asks.  “If necessary.” Doc says getting closer.  Michelle smiles and says it looks like they are finally really talking, so ….”Here are my terms.”

At the Revenant Roadhouse bar, the two frat boys are tied up back to back sitting on the bar.  The demons are trying to figure out the best way to kill them.  Wynonna and Nicole manage to sneak in and almost get the keys from the one guys pocket when they are discovered.  They want to kill both of them as well.  However, Wynonna says to the one who seems like the leader that he seems like a sporting type.  What would be the sport of “ripping Dumb and Doucher to shreds”.  She says they should let the boys go and they can have a contest. 

A drinking contest.  If the girls win, they get to leave unharmed.  If the demons win….well…..they can kill them.  “You could have just offered them cash.”  Nicole tells Wynonna who realizes she really didn’t think it through to the end.

Back at the station, Waverly is getting worried because neither her sister nor Nicole are answering their phone calls.  Jeremy brings up a review of the events thus far.  How what has happened seems spectacularly unlucky.  That makes Waverly think and they rush to the office.  They find the broken mirror on the floor and hope that if they put it back together it will fix the problem.

The drinking game is on at the Roadhouse.  They have gone a few rounds already with shots.  Wynonna takes a shot and chases with a beer.  They call for another type of liquor which is gross tasting by the looks of it.  They count to three and drink.  The demon looks like he is about to puke.  He brings up the shot he just had.  Wynonna claims they have won fair and square and to uncuff them, but spills her beer bottle.  The leader demon grabs it and sniffs it and says she was cheating as she was spitting her shots into the bottle every time.  Nicole asks where she got that idea.  “I learned it from Coyote Ugly” she says.  “Oooooh!  I love that movie!” says a very drunk Nicole.  The demon says now he gets to break their necks and all the revenants shout. Wynonna and Nicole quickly get up, Wynonna pulls out Peacemaker and they make a run for it.  They are trying to run in knee deep snow with chain handcuffs on, through the woods.  Wynonna is telling Nicole to hurry up and Nicole is telling Wynonna she is too drunk to keep up.

Doc is at Kate’s house going through some of her things.  He comes across some ID’s and Driver Licenses.  “You’ve found my mementos.”  Kate says coming into the room.  Doc says they are more like souvenirs of people she has killed.  Kate says that it a vulgar way of putting it.  Doc says it is the truth.  Kate asks if he is helping Wynonna and Doc says “In a matter of speaking.”  Kate has to point out that she must be some woman if he is willing to give up one of his precious pistols as Doc wraps stuff up in a sheet.  Kate thinks it is sweet that he still thinks Wynonna will still want him.  “You know how your jealousy bores me” he says to her.  “As you are” Kate adds.  “Wynonna made me the way I am” he says and

Kate comes at him growling and bearing her teeth.  Kate suddenly does her thing of turning all sweet and says, “My Henry.  The greatest gunslinger that ever lived.  A filthy, rotten scoundrel.”  Doc slaps her hand away from his face.  She adds that how sad it is all this stuff he is doing for her.  For what?  Doc says that she (Wynonna) thinks I can be better.  “Than what?” asks Kate.  It’s beneath you.  Wynonna is breaking your spirit.  I love you.  At your worst, or even more.”  Kate says as she leans in and kisses him.  Doc pauses, then pulls away.  “Then you should know that I am a man that does not do ultimatums or likes to choose.”  Kate laughs.  “You and I are linked together forever.”  She challenges Doc to go see if Wynonna will welcome him back into her bed.

Back in the woods, Wynonna and Nicole run and then stop because they are arguing.  Nicole thinks Wynonna needs to get her head out of her ass because she isn’t the only one who has suffered through something.  Wynonna makes fun of Nicole and says in a whiny baby voice that oh, yeah, Nicole survived a massacre.  She quickly makes a face saying she regrets saying it like that.  Wynonna brings out her gun and Nicole yells how immature she is.  The damn gun is jammed.  She adds that yes, Nicole survived a massacre, but to get back to her when she is cursed.  She tries to aim the gun at the chain, but it is still jammed and then an axe comes flying out of nowhere and hits a tree nearby. 

They turn and find that the revenants have found them.  The leader says how they are “such catty little bitches” and that they are so deep in animosity that they are basting in it which will make them tastier.  Wynonna and Nicole face each other.  “You be Scott.”  Wynonna says.  “You be Tessa.”  Says Nicole and they start to fight.  Peacemaker finally after a few dead clicks decides to start working and that axe comes in handy.  The chain they still have on also is handy for breaking a neck.  However, when they think they have them all, the leader comes from behind and grabs them and bends them over backwards under his arms.  He asks if they have any last words.  They say a few, but then the revenant is killed by something behind him. 

It is Mr. Fugly.  “You owe me a wife!”  he tells them as he closes his clippers.  They both decide that this is a worse situation and make a run for it.

Back at the station, Waverly is just about done taping the mirror back together.  They are missing a piece she yells to Jeremy who comes flying into the room with it.  They have it all back together and hope that they fixed the situation.  Just then Nicole and Wynonna come running in yelling about a mountain man.  “A gross, scabby mountain man!”  yells Wynonna.  Jeremy looks at Waverly and says it looks like that it didn’t fix it.

Mr. Fugly comes marching in.  Waverly tells him to wait just a minute Gandolph but he throws her to the side.  Jeremy grabs a broom and yells, “You SHALL NOT PASS!”  and the guy just roars into Jeremy’s face and Jeremy tells him “Yeah, you just do you” and goes to help Waverly.  He looks at Nicole and Wynonna and tells them again that they owe him a wife and to choose.  Waverly hears wife and grabs Jeremy and they make their way to the office.  Meanwhile, Wynonna and Nicole are trying to tell Mr. Fugly why the other would make the best wife. 

In the office Waverly says that it must have been something else.  They find large pieces of what seems to be an oversized garden gnome.  Jeremy yells to the girls that he is a gnome, but Wynonna doesn’t see how that is helping their situation.  Waverly and Jeremy take the gnome figure to the desk to use the tape to try to put it back together.  Mr. Fugly gnome gets tired of the talking and yells at Wynonna and Nicole to stop talking and grabs them and lifts them up by the neck.  They have to choose who is going to be his wife.  Waverly says they have one more piece and it is……boobs. 

It is a lady gnome!  She tells Jeremy to put that piece on but Jeremy sees a lawsuit just waiting to happen.  Waverly goes ahead and, wishing they had a gnome bra, tapes the last piece on and turns it towards the big guy.  Lightning strikes and the figurine is in one piece.  The big guy drops Nicole and Wynonna.  “Monique!  You are okay.”  He picks her up, hugs her and walks out.

At the Earp Homestead, Doc has arrived with a car he says he found at the roadhouse with the keys still in it.  Hmmmmm…looks a lot like Bunny Loblaw’s car!  LOL!!  Michelle looks in the sheet and sees the supplies Doc has brought her. 

There is some cash and a ‘new’ ID.  She remarks that she knew an outlaw would get what is needed when she needed to get out of Dodge fast.  However, she refuses to take Doc’s pistol, as he might need it in the future.  “Otherwise, nicely done Johnny Hank!”  she tells him as she puts the stuff in the back seat.  “Wish I could say the same.” Doc remarks.  “Is this where you beg me to stay?”  Michelle asks him.  “I do NOT beg.”  Doc tells her.  Michelle goes off on that it seems to be her lot in life to have to leave to save those she loves.  She says Doc knows what she is talking about, that he recognizes her and what she is doing.  Doc answers that she is leaving and putting her family in mortal danger.  Michelle says that if Julian is outside the Ghost River Triangle and if he is still there, she needs to find him.  Doc says that from the moment she walked into that barn she knew he would make her leave and would help her do so.  “Sometimes it takes a monster” she says to him touching his hat.  He grabs her wrist.  “Wynonna will be angry.” Doc says.  “She won’t be angry with you.  She always seems to forgive you.” Michelle replies.  Doc says that she still might not escape Wynonna’s anger because she is abandoning her family for….love.  “Oh.  Like I am gonna let a vampire lecture me on love.”  Michelle quips as she gets into the car and leaves.  Okay…..how the hell did Michelle find out? 

At the station, Wynonna is startled to find Bunny standing at the counter.  She claims it was only a “fancy faint”.  “Yeah, the cat made a bed in your ass crack.”  Wynonna remarks.  Bunny tells her that the doctors say she is as healthy as an ox.  “And the cankles to go with it.”  Another wonderful remark by Wynonna.  Well, Bunny says that she is there to let Officer Haught know that despite that day’s events, she will NOT be getting her support for Sheriff.  Wynonna drops what she was holding and goes over to Bunny.  She says that despite her best interests, Nicole did what was right.  She always does what is right and that is someone who should be Sheriff.  She reminds Bunny who saved her life that day.  “Perhaps.  But she does not belong here in Purgatory.  She is not our…..people.”  Bunny says with her nose in the air.  “Are you a xenophobe or a homophobe?”  Wynonna asks her.  “Why….pick….just….one?”  the bitch replies.  Bunny tries to leave, but Wynonna stops her and grabs her wrist.  She tells Bunny that they should talk about what really happened today……what she saw.  Bunny tells her that it was all a dream…..a very bad dream.  Wynonna informs her that in fact it wasn’t a dream.  That she really doesn’t want to know all those little secrets that Nedley has been trying to hide or cover over, because that monster she saw today was just the very tip of the iceberg.  Wynonna threatens Bunny saying that if she doesn’t back Nicole for Sheriff, she will personally bring that monster and all his demon friends right to her house.  Bunny thinks she is bluffing, but Wynonna assures her she is not.  Bunny leaves, claiming she needs to go to church.

Wynonna turns and sees Nicole standing in the doorway.  She has heard pretty much all of it and thanks Wynonna and offers her a beer.  It seems she can now hear space and time with this hangover.  Wynonna is shocked about having a beer at work.  Nicole laughs and says that some rules are meant to be broken sometimes.  Nicole calls a truce, but Wynonna calls it a win. 

Wynonna tells Nicole that she used to think Nicole was an outsider too and that she would freak out and leave and Waverly would have a broken heart.  Nicole assures her that she loves Waverly.  Actually, she loves Wynonna too (not in the same way of course) and that she is often jealous of Wynonna for being….well….Wynonna.  “You’re staked to this land, same as me.”  Wynonna tells her and shows her the picture of young Nedley and Nicole.

Nicole goes and finds Nedley in his office.  She hands him the picture.  “You were so damned scared. But still so damned tough.” He tells her.  He tells her that somehow she managed to get into a canoe to safety and he found her down river.  “You’re the one.”  Nicole says quietly.  Nedley just says that he kept an eye on her afterwards and what kind of parents let a six year old go to a music festival in the woods.  Nicole smiles and says her parents were nothing but selfish and that they don’t talk anymore.  Nedley asks if it is because of who she is.  “Yeah, a cop” Nicole says.  Nedley tells her that when he heard she had joined the police academy, he couldn’t resist offering up the post.  Nicole says when she saw the post, she knew she had to take it and that is where she was meant to be.  “Everything good I have in my life now, is because I came back to the Ghost River Triangle.” Nicole says with tears in her eyes.  Nedley pauses and looks at her.  “You’re like a daughter….to me.”  He replies. 

Nicole starts to cry and gives him a big hug.  He has tears in his eyes too.  “Thank you.  You are a tough act to follow.”  Nicole tells him.  Nedley just looks at her and says, “I’m not going anywhere.  Not if you really need me.  Congratulations Sheriff Haught.  You’ve earned it.”

Wynonna returns home to find Waverly at the table crying and holding a letter.  “She’s gone.”  Waverly tells her sister.  “She’s gone to try to find Julian.”  Waverly gets up and Wynonna holds her little sister. 

Waverly cries and says that they had just had a wonderful Christmas together and it was so nice.  Wynonna tells her that they can spend their entire lives trying to figure out why that woman does what she does….and they have.  Wynonna is facing the table and sees there is a letter from Momma just for her.

Wynonna has read the letter and is headed outside.  She stops short on the porch, startled to see Doc standing in front yard.   

“Good evening” Doc says with a tip of his hat.  He comes up onto the porch.  “I come bearing gifts” he says, handing Wynonna a handkerchief with something in it.  Wynonna opens it and is surprised to see Bulshar’s ring.  Doc tells her it should protect her in the upcoming battle.  Wynonna asks him how he got it as Nicole was the last one to have it. 

“Details are a little foggy.  You know how I like to day drink” he tells her.  “Why don’t you keep it?”  Wynonna asks.  “Anyone ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Doc replies not really giving a definite answer.

Wynonna changes the subject.  “Did you spend the day with my mother?”

“Well, she essentially treated me like her Ober.” Doc says

“Uber.”  Wynonna corrects him.

“What she told me may require some explanation.” Doc says to Wynonna coming forward.

“She thought so too” as she looks at the letter and Doc reaches for it, she pulls away.  “Lemme just read it to you.  ‘Dear Wynonna, Don’t trust Doc Holliday.  He is not what he says he is.’” Wynonna looks at Doc after each sentence.

“Did she also say she set Bobo free from the well?”  Doc asks, clearly trying to steer clear of where this conversation is going.

“She does love to burn a place down before she runs.” Wynonna says, not really acknowledging the Bobo being free thing.

“The recklessness of her actions- I do not see how she could remain here and keep you safe.”  Doc says, once again trying to steer the conversation away from the inevitable.

“Just tell me what you did.”  Wynonna demands straight faced, not losing eye contact with Doc.

Doc’s face at this point is pure fear.  His eyes are wide as he looks at Wynonna. 

“Who are you?”  Wynonna asks him when he doesn’t answer about what he did.

“Who I’ve always been.”  Doc says with a hint of pleading in his voice.

“Don’t talk to me in riddles!”  Wynonna says raising her voice and getting frustrated.

“How should I talk to you then?”  Doc asks her

“Like you give a shit about me!”  she yells at him.

Then it really starts…..

“YOU refused ME!”  Doc hisses at her.  Wynonna slaps his face.  Well, Wynonna THAT IS TRUE. 

“Wynonna, I DO care….” Doc says, but gets another slap across his face from Wynonna before he could continue.

Doc gets closer to her.  “You are runnin’ out of road woman!” You can see his eyes starting to water.  More likely from the emotions running raw than the slaps.

“Tell me what you are.”  Wynonna demands.  Doc doesn’t answer.

Wynonna slaps him a third time and this time the vampire anger emerges.  His eyes glowing and his teeth bared and a deep growl.  He suddenly stops himself, covers his mouth as he calms down and backs up away from her.

“Kate.  You let her do this?”  Wynonna asks.  Doc has visible tears in his eyes.  “She had you.”  Wynonna adds.

“It was the only way.”  Doc says……a lame excuse.

“What about us?  What about….ALICE?”  Wynonna asks him now crying herself.  “What would our daughter say if she knew her father sold his soul?!”  Wynonna demands of him, digging the knife deeper.

“You, of all people, should understand the sacrifices that have been made.”  Doc says.  Again….not a great excuse dude.

“You wanted your immortality that badly, you…..selfish asshole?!!”  Wynonna screams at him tears streaming down her face.

“You watch your mouth!”  Doc yells, coming at her again without the vampire face.  Again, he quickly recedes realizing he snapped again.

“BITE ME.”  Wynonna says right in his face.

She starts to back towards the door.  “There are some…..advantages…..to you being a vampire”  she says to him.  Doc, tears in his eyes, shakes his head.  He knows what she is getting at.  “John Henry Holliday,  you’re not welcome in my home anymore.”  Wynonna says…sealing his fate of being able to step foot inside the house ever again.

Doc, tears running down his face, tries to plead with her.  “Don’t do this.”

Wynonna turns and opens the door.  “No, YOU did this” she says as she steps inside and shuts the door.

Wynonna takes a few steps inside and stops.  She is totally stunned by this, but most of all her heart is broken.

 Okay….I am crying.  My heart is broken.  I love Doc and wish he and Wynonna would work this out.  I keep praying that maybe the vampirism is reversible somehow, but unlikely.  This final outcome is BOTH of their faults.  Wynonna….I mean come on!  You keep pushing away a man you love over and over again because you are afraid and don’t think you deserve him.  His wife is back in the picture.  Where the hell do you think he was going to go if he felt you didn’t want him?  You were busy screwing Charlie to try to forget your feelings!  However, Charlie is reversible.  He can be pushed out of the picture.  Whereas Doc……Doc, you were selfish as hell.  You have always worried about losing your immortality.  Even if your tuberculosis is returning, it can be cured in this day and age.  You don’t run to your wife and the second thing your do (first thing was sleeping with her) is fall for her bullshit and let her turn you.  Wynonna reacted just like I would have.

We don’t have too many episodes left, so this is going to stress me the hell out the rest of the season isn’t it? 

Please….Please tell me what your thoughts are on this episode and the whole Doc / Wynonna dynamic!

[cecilspeaks]

126 - A Door Ajar part 3

Always keep your eyes closed during a storm. Otherwise your soul will get all wet and mildewy.

Welcome to Night Vale.

I hate sounding like a news media alarmist, but a phantom ocean has completely destroyed Old Town. I mean, destroyed. Wave after wave of cold brine has entirely swept away the Old Town drawbridge. Which is a shame, because the city made considerable strides towards its completion in recent years. Also missing: a number of cars, pets, human beings, and the teetering stack of bath tubs that granted wishes. A more complete list of the missing items has been posted at the newly reopened Pancake House. Come on down to the Pancake House, check if any of your loved ones have been affected by this horrible disaster, and enjoy free hotcakes. One free hotcake per missing loved one.

The surviving residents of Old Town have been placed with compulsory volunteer host families throughout the rest of town. Many of the survivors of the recent shipwreck have finally been placed in their own permanent housing, and are now hosting flood victims. Having experienced recent displacement themselves, The Really Tall One, Dr. Shouty, Old Wood Teeth, Rebecca, and the Captain are proving to be elegant hosts, and have been reported to supply slipper socks, steamed hand towels and all natural calamari flavored toothpaste to their guests. This generosity has put many Night Vale residents, who initially complained about hosting the shipwreck survivors, to shame. You know who you are, and so do we. There’s a list of those who should be ashamed of themselves posted at the newly reopened Pancake House.

Sometimes I get really tired of negative reporting. As the most prominent voice in local current events, I feel like what I say and how I say it does make a difference in framing the attitudes of the people who listen. That, that’s a big responsibility. So I’ve been thinking, it’s important to focus on the positive things too. I’m gonna try to do that more. Starting now.

What I said before was an exaggeration. Old Town isn’t completely destroyed. Oh yes, it’s uninhabitable, and some people who live there are now non-living. But there’s a lot of beauty left there, too! I mean, one might look over Old Town from the roof of the Earth Sciences building and appreciate the miles of pristine, shining water. Water we desert-dwellers never get to see! All of the tragedy and destruction is almost totally invisible beneath the waves, so it’s actually pretty easy to ignore. Oh, and one architectural landmark does remain. The controversial new traffic roundabout is glowing with blue light, and can be seen just below the water line, and will be ready to use again… soon.

Speaking of the roof of the Earth Sciences building, I should tell you guys what happened with Carlos the other night. It went really well, mostly. I mean, he was very open about the fact that he’s been hiding something from me, but he said it wasn’t a big deal and he doesn’t want to talk about it. I know I said all I wanted was for him to admit something was bothering him, and that him pretending nothing was wrong was really what was driving me crazy. But it turns out that wasn’t true. Now I’m being driven crazy by not knowing what it is. I mean, what if it’s about me? Even if it’s not about me directly, the fact that he doesn’t feel comfortable telling me it has to be a problem with us, doesn’t it? We’re supposed to share everything with each other, aren’t we?

I couldn’t let it go, so I finally asked him to see a couples counselor with me. The Really Tall One, who until last week had been staying with my sister and her husband, got her counseling license last week, so we’re going to see her. I even get a discount since she’s become so close to my niece Janice. We have our first phone session together scheduled for later today. I’m, I’m really hoping we can get to the bottom of this so I can stop obsessing! I mean, a-and also so Carlos can let go of whatever is distracting him so much, and then we can both get back to distracting each other. The emotional complexities of sharing a life with another are all that’s on my mind. Also, the sudden ocean which destroyed Old Town.

Oh, breaking news on that: all members of the Marine Biology Association have been reported missing. Randy lance, Girl Scouts Splinter faction leader, reports that the GPS tracking devices she secretly adhered to the biologists’ shoe heels have stopped transmitting, and no one has seen any of the biologists in over 24 hours. Members of the Tourism Board have declined verbal comment, instead offering a giddy smile while waving a giant foam number 1 finger. And with no biologists to throw a tantrum about menacing biohazards hidden in an unsecured locker, members of the Tourism Board have gone out to the storage unit in Radon Canyon to relocate their secret aquarium of semi-animate clear jelly collected from our new ocean to a more public venue.

Making our flooding situation even worse is the hard rain. On the bright side, we don’t normally get much rain around these parts. The gentle percussion of water is so soothing! It reminds me of my new sleep meditation track, Bloodstorm. More on the weather in a moment, but first an update from Radon Canyon. I’ve received word that the blobs of semi-animate translucent jelly in the Tourism Board’s aquarium have fused together to form one giant jelly cube that now completely fills the 12 foot by 12 foot storage unit from wall to wall. Horrifically unnerved by this discovery, agents from the Tourism Board who went to recover the aquarium have all left Radon Canyon and hired the Really Tall One for private therapy sessions. Head of the Tourism Board, Madeline LeFleur, released a statement which only said: “Well crap”. LeFleur was last seen in full sprint toward the airport.

And now, a PSA.

Deb: Hello friends. This is Deb, a sentient and occasionally benevolent, patch of haze. Speaking for the Department of Motor Vehicles. We’ve had some complaints about our eyeball donation program. We want to emphasize we created this program with only the best intentions. We’re sure you understand that. According to a survey, people in the donation program have been very satisfied they can retain some sort of consciousness after death. However, they have been reportedly very unsatisfied with what their eyes continue to see. This has ranged from nonconsensual television viewing in the middle of a season they’re not caught up with, to the witnessing of crimes and subsequent ethical dilemma of testifying in court against their own host bodies.

We hear your concerns. And you know what? Fine. The eyeball donation checkbox will be discontinued on all new DMV forms. The DMV itself has also been discontinued. If you need any services from the DMV, please go to another town. Please don’t call or come to the office. If you see any DMV workers around town, [tearily] please don’t speak to them or acknowledge their presents. It’s obvious you don’t like them. It will only make this harder for all of us. We think a little space would be good for us right now. But we do want you to know we were only trying to something nice. We care deeply about our DMV customers and have only wanted the best for you. We know that doesn’t make it right, but no matter what, just remember: the DMV loves you. The DMV has always loved you. That’s the important thing. If we could afford the rights to that Green Day song, we’d play. Good knowing you. Love, the DMV.

Cecil: I want to get back to the Carlos stuff, listeners. I really need to talk this all out, but I keep getting breaking news updates. We finally have word on the missing biologists. That’s good news. We found them out in the Scrublands. The bad news is we were only able to find partially eaten pieces of them. With the leadership of the Marine Biologist Association vacated, Randy Lance declared herself and the Girl Scouts Splinter Faction as the city’s foremost experts in marine biology. Lance surmises there is an aquatic creature of large tooth size and insatiable hunger living in this new ocean. Lance speculated the biologists were engaged in a heroic attempt to study the marine biology abruptly available to them, when events took a tragic turn. The biologists’ loved ones clarified that the biologists were actually fleeing town under the cover of night and got caught in the worst possible intersection of time and space, dying an agonized and terror-filled death in the exact matter that comprised their worst collective nightmare.

“He died doing what he loved,” a spouse of one of the deceased said. “Running away from his problems.”

[a song starts playing] Oh, oh look at the time! That’s Carlos and the Really Tall One calling in for our first counseling session. Um, oo, probably a good time for a weather report.

[“Clockwork Family” by Dan Warren. soundcloud.com/danwarren]

Well, that was an interesting first counseling session. Carlos apologized for being so quiet recently, and I said it was OK, I was just worried about him, and the Really Tall One said we both sounded like we loved each other a lot. And I said, well yes but that’s not the point right now, the point is I want to know all of Carlos’ secrets! And Carlos said, “Cecil, if it really means that much to you, I’ll tell you. The truth is, this isn’t my first phantom ocean. Before I ever came to Night Vale, there was an incident. It happened years ago, it was a different situation, but similar enough that I got preoccupied thinking about it these last few weeks. And sometimes I just need a little space to process things on my own first. It doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything from you. I mean, I kind of am, but if it were truly serious or was directly about us, I would talk with you about it. This is just a scientific and catastrophic phenomenon, not something to do with us.” That is verbatim what Carlos said. I wrote down every exact word, like an inexperienced journalist carefully investigating a huge story.

And then I said, “Yes OK fine, but what happened? What incident?” And – he said he still didn’t really want to talk about it and I asked the Really Tall One, “Aren’t there some sort of therapy exercised we could do to encourage Carlos to reveal every detail of his past to us immediately?” And she said “No”. And I said, “Maybe hypnosis or telekinesis?” I mean, she’s new to the counseling profession and maybe isn’t aware of all the tools available to be her yet. She said we have to accept that Carlos doesn’t want to talk about it right now, and maybe doesn’t want to talk about it ever. She said a person’s secrets are their own to keep or disclose and it isn’t necessarily an indication of the degree of intimacy in a relationship.

And I said, [chuckling] “Oh, really? Tell that to my 8th grade self!” Immediately embarrassed, I doubled down and said, “I played truth or dare and revealed to my friends that I’m afraid of mirrors and that I have a crush on someone in the room.” “That’s cute!” Carlos said. “Who was there?” And I said, “I can’t tell you!” And then I said, “I can’t remember, actually.” I don’t even remember what year I was in the 8th grade, let alone how old I am or even what I look like, because of the whole mirror thing. But I didn’t want to tell Carlos all that. It was too painful and complicated and not important. And the Really Tall One who could, I’m sure, hear all of my thoughts, smiled over the phone, which I thought was smug. I’m still not sure how I feel about any of this.

I have a lot more to say here, but there’s been some breaking news updates piling up on my desk. Let’s skim through the most interesting looking ones. Yeah. In order to protect us from the growing jelly cube and its apparent power to create random phantom oceans, the City Council decided the key to the jelly-filled storage unit in Radon Canyon will be destroyed, fed to whatever aquatic beast ate the marine biologists. A new budget line item was then approved to pay monthly rent on the unit indefinitely rather than, quote, “ever open that door again”. This cost to the city will be covered by the new tax increases on rental cars, gasoline, and dreams where you realize you’re naked in public.

A memorial service was held for the remaining body parts of the members of the Marine Biology Association. It was a beautiful service, in which each body part was given recognition for its unique contribution to the whole of who each person was. Inspired by this touching memorial, as well as the silent horror finally locked away in Radon public storage, the Tourism Board has decided to abandon plans for the Harbor Waterfront expansion project. Instead, it will shift its focus to renovating the recently destroyed Old Town. Plans for new Old Town are already underway, with some blueprints taken from the children’s redesigned Old Town drawing contest, hosted by the Girl Scouts Splinter Faction. The Captain is even slated to open a fusion restaurant there later this year. Mmmm, I love non-specific fusion cuisine.

[clears throat] Members of the Tourism Board have acknowledged that a huge amount of money and effort will go into the renovations and that all of the work, time, and expanse may or may not be destroyed by a similar incident at any moment. “C’est la vie”, they were hard to utter. It’s possible they actually said, “sepa vediare”, a protection spell that makes all sand eels harbingers of good fortune. Mm, hm.

OK, I only have a few moments of airtime left, and I just wanted to say, well… You know how if you keep staring at that one spot in the ceiling, it starts to look like a face? And the harder you look, the more it takes shape, and when you can finally see it really clearly, the face never disappears and it’s always there watching you? Or, or like how Oxyclean has those commercials where they can get blood out of everything from jeans to gloves to loaves of bread, but when you actually use the product, [angrily] those stains just never go away, reminding you day after day of what you’ve done? Or, no, OK, anyway.

[calm voice] What I’m trying to say is Carlos, if you’re listening, I’m sorry I freaked out and kept pressuring you to talk. Taking space for yourself is not the same as pushing someone away. And I guess I needed a little space too to figure that out. Whatever you need, I totally respect that. I can even go hang out at the Pancake House tonight if you- if you want some alone time. OK, I just wanted to say that before… Oh. Oh, Carlos just texted. “Come home now and I will do the opposite of push you away.” Well. Maybe what I’m trying to say is, [cheerfully] I think I’ve been on the air too long, I really should be getting home like right now.

Stay tuned next for bubble wrap being popped by rolling pins meant to simulate the explosion of fireworks.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night!

Today’s proverb: Pick a company and invest all your money in it. The absolute worst that could happen is that you’ll lose every cent and it would be terrifying and life-changing, so give it a shot.

[nglsa]

The Spirit of ‘64 - Editing Script

The Spirit of ‘64 - Script

Story about Mickey Jr. and his life in chronological order. It starts with Mickey Sr. talking about Mickey’s birth, how much he weighed, the experience having his first child.

We go into the children, how many children the family (Mickey Sr. and Francis had), things they did growing up such as playing baseball, fooling around and eventually getting into motorcycles.

Briefly discuss their interest in motorcycles,  how they were good at racing (Mickey Jr. and Ricky) but how his worst nightmare came true.

Open with Mickey Sr. describing where he was that night when he got a call to phone home, going to sacramento and visiting his son.

Maybe: discuss Mickey Sr.’s previous experience with working for a handicapped girl so he was somewhat familiar.

Discussing the issues in the hospital, what he did and how he really committed to staying with his son in order to ensure he was doing ok.

Discuss Mickey Sr. selling his car collection in order to make money and build the downstairs unit for Mickey. Go into all the work needed in order to successfully complete the place. Mickey then moves out and into his own place, doing what he wants at age 18 and moving in with Ricky. Talk briefly about their lives, what Mickey was getting into. Low point: Mickey beginning to abuse the drugs.

Mickey Jr and Sr watching Ricky at a race and Mickey Jr asking his father to build a racecar. The start of the racing. It was almost safer than on the streets since he had a cage and padding whereas he did not in his van.

Mickey struggling to meet regulations and was sanctioned by nascar to finally drive. A few racing moments, truly victorious.

Recalling his last moments alive

Remembering Mickey

Miss him a lot, wish we could be like him, happy, not blaming others for his problems, etc

I have a business on freedom blvd in watsonville, waiting and waiting, he said i’m pregnant, she didn’t show, went in and had the baby, no big deal (moved to 1)

Born in Watsonville hospital in 1958 July 20

Average, 7 pounds, average, too many kids

Very emotional having your first, very important to you and your experience, i had this dog named mopsey, micky would say dog, called ricky dog

Vicky, 18 months younger (than ricky) mick, rick, then randy and tammy (ricky talking)

5 kids, rhymes? Just happened that way, ran out of icky's

Kids somedays are good, picking on eachother, typical family stuff

He didn’t sleep, we would put him in the car and take him for a ride to put him to sleep

Fun, real fun - ricky, lot of crazy stuff

We are 18 months apart

18 months apart

Me and rick best friends

Vicky: mick oldest, middle, younger sister 8-9 years younger than mick, we were 3 years apart, 58, 59,60, they would use me to play pickle, they were trouble, pile of horse crap

Micky was good at pitching, ricky was a catcher, couldn’t reach second base, won every game

He attended south sequatis, graduated, and went to watsonville high school, things going on that i didn’t like, more gang related stuff, things that weren’t good

Even in the summertime we would hang out once in awhile did couple of things, became kind of close

Micky as a teenager was very athletic, baseball, got into racing motorcycles at a very young age, how about a dirt bike? He was very good, all three of my boys played little league

Met mick when i was a freshman in high school, a lot of fun took place, a group of us that got together and partied a lot, the kids had to drive a special car of their fathers, flipped the english taxi, i had a good time

We went to watsonville high school for a couple of years, we weren’t there so we were all expelled, ended  up at monte vista christian school, micky met this gal dolly, he was in love with this girl, he changed his life, took the christian way of life, things were good for a long time

All three of us were class clowns, mickey was a year older, who could be the most obnoxious in class, 4-5 of us in class, mike stone, a lot of guys, a lot of fun, always pranks at the school

Very good boy, a lot of friends, played a lot, it was good - father, how was he with the ladies? A lot of girlfriends, good looking guy

Micky was good with the girls, they all liked him, he liked girls, they would come to the house, you don’t get too acquainted, not too close

Micky was a very good boy

“ “ had a lot of friends, entertained himself, he had a lot of girlfriends, they all liked him, handsome boy

Motorcycle friend, watsonville hs, having a great time, bullshitting with his buddies, cut here and there, things still don’t change, he was a character

We went to watsonville hs first, my dad restored cars, had a customers car, i felt weird about it because everyone drove normal cars, we took it to the swimming pool, got all drunk and rolled it, we finished off at monte vista christian high school

When we rolled the car into the apple orchard, 7 people in it, there was a mechanics garage above the hill, used the phone to call my mom, he asked us our names, he goes i know your dad, you might as well lay on the ground and i’ll shoot ya, she handed him 3 valiums, after they wore off, wasn’t a good deal, 2 days later we were enrolled at monte vista

Last year in hs was my first year (vicky), they showed my dad their report cards, the one they did bring home had all F’s and a D minus, yanked us out of watsonville hs

I remember the hs stuff, one thing after another, dad doesn’t know how many times the boys would sneak out in the middle of the night, sneak out the cars and my dad would have no clue. My freshman year, it was a rainy day, there’s a huge mud puddle, mick is driving and says something is wrong with a back tire, roll down the window and look out as he hits the mud puddle, he wouldn’t turn the car around so i could go home and change, that was his practical jokes

He has stitches because of me, we were terrible kids, mean evil

“ “, our parents didn’t know the half of it

Frances and i talked about it, put him into monte vista christian hs, my kids brought kids over, lots of kids over here, thanksgiving, christmas, they were coming here, had large families around me all the time, some important kids, amazing they picked a school in watsonville, ended up here

Frances was a good mother, she went with us, like baseball games she was always there, motorcycle races always there, tammy did faulting on horses, tammy’s mother would always be there

Frances and I split up, she got killed about a mile from here coming down a mountain, the grateful dead played at the fairgrounds, there was a lot of traffic, they got run off the road, fell off a small cliff

Frances was involved with the kids, the girls had horses she was involved, we had a barn, the girls had horses so the boys wanted something to do so we played baseball, then we got into motorcycles, frances was involved with the horses and the motorcycles, i bought a bus, built a motor, took the seats out, painted it, made it safe, 40-passenger bus, frances, the kids and i went motorcycle racing to carson city nv once or twice a week

My mom really liked the racing, we’d have to get up at 4am sometimes, old school bus, tie downs, leather, refrigerator, stove, and drive to Placerville and nobody ever complained, we just did it, stayed all night, didn’t get home till late at night then off the school the next day

[jacquelineshyde]

10 things i hate about you w/ jackie and hyde💕💕

NICE, NICE, NICE. THANK YOU!

PD: I love your icon!

When Jackie’s mother married Bob Pinciotti, she never thought she would actually enjoy her life as Donna’s sister and so. But when Eric Forman intervenes in that happiness wanting to date her sister, she kinda hates him for it. Turns out, Donna will not be able to date until Jackie does, and with date, Bob and Pam mean somoene better than the idiot she dated before, Kelso.

She tries to convince Bob on letting Donna go out and be happy, none of them should be hold in just because one of them is single. What she never imagined is that Eric would take serious cards on the matter, asking for his own adoptive brother’s help. To which Hyde says no, especially when Eric offers him money (“she’s a human being, Forman!”), but ultimately accepts asking Jackie out… or sort of doing it, by taking her to prom, just to make his brother happy. Jackie accepts, knowing what is going on and also wanting Donna’s happiness.

Eric happily goes for Donna with Hyde that goes for Jackie, Bob almost cries as he watches his daughters go while Pam sees the guy’s clothes and realizes her daughters could do much better, Jackie and Donna left the house almost running after that. The night goes ok, it doesn’t suck– but that doesn’t mean Hyde will do it again, that’s what he tells Eric when he goes back to him asking for the same favor, since he can’t go out with Donna freely as long as Jackie isn’t dating too.

After terrible days of insisting, Hyde says yes and now has to ask Jackie out, try to not roll his eyes every five minutes and so. When she says no, he just– stares like “what did just happened? WHAT?”, to which Eric starts plotting a way to get her to say yes, even when Hyde is not here for that.

“She said no, Forman. Let it go! I’m not forcing her!”

Seeing her like this, so secure about herself and so, it makes Hyde curious about Jackie and he willingly starts going to talk to her during lunch and so, just sometimes, not that much, until it becomes that much. She asks him if he asked her out for Donna and Eric, and he commites the terrible error of saying it was for himself, she smiles and tells him she is really liking him and she will like to go out on that date then.

It’s not like if she is going to know about that little lie, besides, he really does digs her now and going out with her is actually fun. She can be so much damn fun when no one is there to judge her, it’s obvious that there is so much more about her he doesn’t know and Hyde finds himself wanting to know. Meanwhile, Eric and Donna can happily go out now.

Kelso does a party at his home, everyone is invited. Hyde is sure as fuck he wants to be with Jackie in all the meaning of it, have a relationship with her. They go together only to be disturbed by a very drunk Kelso yelling at them that Hyde is a bad friend for dating Jackie now, and that why would Jackie date a guy who is only with her so his brother can nail Donna?

She takes it as just something stupid a drunk Michael would said at first… until she notices Hyde’s nervouness at her and angriness at Michael. It makes her think about the first time Hyde asked her out and how conveniet it actually is that Eric’s brother is with her now. Jackie quickly starts asking too many questions, until Randy and Fez get in the conversation, and Randy tells Jackie Hyde did told them what Kelso said when they asked him if he truly liked Jackie. She leaves with a broken heart, while Hyde wants to breaks all his friend’s noses now.

He tries to fix things but also knows it’s not happening any time soon, he did lie to her and he did lie to his friends, too. Hyde freaked out when the guys cornered him and asked what was going on between him and Jackie. He doesn’t do relationships, alright, everyone knows that— and suddenly he is in one, with the most unlakely girl for him. And now, it all blows on his face.

Donna gets to talk to her sister, when she hears about what happened she freaks out and goes yells to Eric, telling him that if he thought she would forgive him for such thing because he thinks is romantic he did even the impossible to date her, and by impossible it meant hurt her sister, he is so wrong. It all goes to shit, and now both, Hyde and Eric, are left heartbroken, realizing they are, in fact, a couple of assholes.

Yet, Jackie tells Donna she should forgive Eric, since he truly is in love with her and she knows Donna loves him too. “I’m going to be eventually fine, but you would have lost the chance to love. I can’t let that happen, Donna. Even when you have bad taste in man.”, she says and Donna then tells her she should maybe realize her feelings for Hyde and what Hyde feels for her aren’t a farse. Yes, it was wrong how it started, but maybe it can be saved.

That’s when she does her list. She has always loved doing lists and this situation requires one. Jackie lists all the things she loves and all the things she hates about Hyde, when her hate list becomes just a bunch of painful because of what happened things that she actually loves of him, she decides he has to know. If he broke her heart like this, at least she wants him to know he is a fucking asshole and deserves all the crap.

Just as she gives him the list, Fez approaches Jackie and takes her away to talk about what happen. He tells her that what Randy and Kelso didn’t tell her is that Hyde freaked out when they asked him what was happening between them. All that Hyde tried to explain to her, Fez confirms it and she just needs Hyde to then come to her, and get this over already.

If they are going to be together, welcome. If not, so be it.

Yes, Hyde gets to her, he has read the damn list and is tired shit of this misunderstanding. They should be together, goddammit. So he kisses her, “I hate you that way, too”, he says and she just laughs on his mouth before kissing him back.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #89: A Girl and Her Dog.

Written: 4/5/2017                                                                            Music Week Song Listened to Before Writing: St Vincent - Marrow

When Norma was a young girl, her father had died of liver failure, and when it had happened she had been sitting by him, holding his hand, and had been the only one to see him pass, since her mother had to step out of the room for “just a second”, so that she could use the bathroom. The death was sort of hard on her, but while she mourned it felt like (something she would be able to articulate when she was older) she wasn’t grieving over the passing of her father, since she hardly even knew the man, and instead was grieving over the fact that she would never really know her father. Being alone with the dead man, while not fully understanding the process of death, didn’t help either. So, her mother, in order to look out for her baby girl, who she didn’t want to go crazy, brought home a puppy, a small German shepherd, so that the girl could have a companion. Sure, the mother had been a little worried when Norma had named the dog “Paul”, after her father, but she only figured that she was young, and that was just her way of healing from the pain, and, anyways, its not like she could have taken the dog back, causing the young girl to love her father (literally and symbolically) twice.

After the years passed, Norma and Paul were inseparable, they did everything together, and whenever they were apart they would both freak out. If Paul had been kicked outside for stealing food, or shitting in the house, not only would he wine and scratch at the door, but young Norma would do the same. It was as if they believed that if they were not within six feet of each other, they would die. When the mother brought home a bandanna for Paul, Norma refused to let the dog wear it until she could have one for herself, so they could match, and at one point she tried to convince her mother into buying her and the dog matching pajamas, but her mother strictly refused, claiming that dogs hate to wear clothes and its just not reasonable. Deep down she had suspicions that the dog would gladly put on pajamas, no matter how uncomfortable, only to match with the young girl, but these thoughts made the mother wonder if she was losing it. When Norma learned to read, she would make sure to read every word to Paul, so that he could join in on the story, but when she asked her mother to also teach the dog how to read, she had a surprisingly hard time explaining to the little girl why that was an impossible task.

One thing that just killed Norma���s mother inside, was she knew that the bond her daughter had with her replacement father would have been stronger than any connection she would have had with that drunk bastard, who had drank himself to death, Norma being to young at the time to remember how hateful he was in the end. Its not like things started out that way, at one point he was a really nice guy, but people change, the world keeps spinning, and happiness only lasts for a moment.

When school was coming around the corner, Norma’s mother worried about what she was going to do, because there was no way that her daughter was going to be allowed to bring the dog to school, and the young girl had a hard time understanding it, and, like plenty of children do, she believed her mother to be capable of anything, so when she was unable to find her way around a problem, Norma had thought her mother was choosing to separate the girl and the dog when she had to start school. Home school was considered, but the mother worried that her girl wouldn’t get much time to interact with other kids, and all of her important years of socialization would be spent with a dog, leading her daughter to have more in common with an animal than other children, and the life insurance money was on its last legs, meaning she would have to find a job soon. Yet, the girl was just so painfully happy with the dog that the mother had lay awake at nights, trying to figure out how to let everything work out, how to keep her daughter happy.

Now, I know you must be thinking something like, ‘Oh no, here we go again, another story about somebody bonding with a dog. I’m going to read all of this, get very emotionally attached to their relationship, the trouble they get into, all of that sappy crap, and then at the end the dogs going to die, and its going to be a fucking punch in the gut. I’ve dealt with enough dog stories to know what’s coming.’ If it makes you feel better, I can clear up all of your doubts right now, and tell you that, if I was somewhat correct, then you are absolutely wrong. This will not be one of those emotionally manipulative stories where the dog dies at the end in a depressing way, maybe with Norma having to put it down at the vet, holding its paw, symbolically losing her father a second time, everything the same, except this time she is now a teenager and is emotionally mature enough to be able to get past the death, and in a way it could give her closure for the loss of her father. Nor will there be some sort of strange, half assed twist at the end where Paul turns out to have been a girl dog all alone, and is able to give birth to a litter of puppies before she dies, which Norma is able to raise and who take care of Norma’s future children. And definitely don’t expect some sort of subversion, where it is actually Norma who dies, and Paul is the only one to be with her on her death bed, causing her to experience what her father had, and blah blah blah. Like I said, this is not one of those stories.

This is not a story about a dog.

Two weeks before Norma had to start kindergarten, she was on her front lawn one night, looking up a the stars with Paul, trying to find a way to sneak him into school. It was possible that if she dressed him up as a kid, she could pretend that he was her brother, but then she would have to hide his tail in the shorts, and she just couldn’t do that to him. Then, toying with the idea of pretending to be blind, with Paul posing as a service dog, she thought she may have found a good solution, but when she had turned to tell him, for once, he was not looking at her. Across the street was the object of his attention, which was a local tabby that Norma and Paul sometimes yelled at from inside the house, whenever they saw it outside, however, for the first time, without the mother knowing, Paul was in the front yard, without a leash (Norma had considered the dog to be more human, so she figured there would be no reason for him to run away, and the mother was unable to realize this because she was trying to figure out how to make home school work), and his instincts had kicked in.

Now, Norma’s house had been in the somewhat middle of the street, while, at the end of the street, lived her father’s old drinking buddy, who was with Norma’s old man the night he had decided to experiment with how many shots he could possibly drink within an hour, which caused his liver to give out under the pressure. The drinking buddy, one Randy Thompson, had decided to quit drinking after Paul had passed away, feeling guilty over letting him drink so much, but on that night he had decided to relapse, and not because he enjoyed it, but because he was unable to resist the urge to, and his AA sponsor had accidentally dropped her phone in the toilet when she forgot that it was in her back pocket, so when he had to be called off of the ledge, she unable to be found. So, he drank, and after he started to feel somewhat like shit for being drunk again, after a long period of sobriety, he decided that he should leave the bar while he is still somewhat conscious, and just go home, so that he could try to sleep it off. Now, as he was driving, inebriated, thanking God that he had been able to get home safety, a now unleashed Paul had decided to finally get the fucking cat that not only antagonized him, but also his companion, so in an attempt to solve his and Norma’s problem (being a dog, he wasn’t unaware of the school situation), once and for all, he dashed after the cat, while Randy had no time to react, and Paul was not only chewed and mangled by the tired of the truck, but his collar was also caught on the truck’s hitch, which caused Paul to get dragged, leaving blood and viscera trailing behind the truck for several feet, until Randy was able to react to the situation and slam on the breaks.

After Norma inevitably screamed, her mother had rushed outside, in a maternal panic, since her daughter not only seemed to be in danger, but was also outside without the mother being aware of it. After running out the front door to check on her daughter, who was screaming “Daddy died again, daddy died again”, and pointing at the dark trail that ended at the truck, and a lump that could reasonably be Paul, but was too mangled to tell from so far away. The mother decided to make sure, so she ran after the parked truck, running along the bloody trail, while Randy had believed that he left the dog behind in the road, so, trying to make things right or at least to accept the blame (he felt terrible for being drunk again, so he know he deserved some sort of punishment), he decided to back up until he was near the body, but he was too fucked up to consider checking his rear view mirror. Within a minute, Norma had become an orphan.

When Randy had felt the second thud, he thought he may have backed up too far, so he parked, and got out of his truck to check, but not only had he seen the lump of fur, bone, and guts that must have been what was left of the dog (whose collar had given way after the collision with the mother), and the other lump that was unmistakably human. Not too far away, a child was crying and screaming, as if somebody had stabbed her eyes out. After saying “no no no no no”, quietly to himself, Randy had run up to check and see if the woman was okay, if he should call an ambulance. Not only was not breathing, not blinking, but she also had her head twisted around 180°, which was a clear sign that he had fucked up more than he had believed was possible for him to fuck up.

Feeling a strange sense of unreality, Randy walked back to his car, slowly, as that young girl cried and cried, knowing that he couldn’t handle prison, he couldn’t handle knowing what he had done. After returning to his car, and feeling under his front seat, he had found a locked box, which he struggled to unlock, and, after popping it open, had produced something that seemed important, even if Norma had trouble seeing what it was. For reasons she would understand after it happened, she lost focus, for a short while, on the unbearable incident that played out in front of her, and cleared the tears out of her eyes so that she could understand what was happening. Clear eyed, Norma was just in time to hear the cracking noise, to see the drivers window shatter, to see the blood and chunks spray into the night air, to see her neighbor crumple to the road, back resting against the open driver’s door, as if he were limply sitting down, blood draining out of his head.

Norma couldn’t remember anything specific about what happened when the police came, what they may have said or what they looked like, but she could remember that they were nice. She didn’t know how she wound up in her next home, or why she had no family that could take care of her, but she remembers the feeling of isolation, the feeling that nobody cared about her pain. Most of her childhood, after she started school, had seemed to just blur together, not because she had blocked it out, it was because she had spent the entire time in a state of adhedonia, and simply couldn’t care. She was empty inside. Teachers would feel bad for her, they would think it was such a terrible thing for a young child to go through, to have to experience, and having to be empty at such a young age must have been unbearable. They believed that being a child was supposed to be a time when you could be free and happy, a time where you could run around and find amazement in the simplest games, in the most basic ideas. However, when she was older Norma had realized that she didn’t mind the depressive state, not just because she didn’t care about her empty feelings, or about anything really, but also because when it had went away, she found it to be much more bearable than the pain that was underneath.

Around the age of fifteen, it was as if Norma had come back to life, but only after the nightmares came. First, it seemed like a freak thing, she never dreamed so one bad nightmare was just bad luck, and she was comfortable with going back to sleep afterwards, even if the feeling of fear (not just because of fear specifically, but also due to the strong surge of general feeling after spending a majority of her adolescence in a state that felt emotionless) had been a shock to the system, making her think, at first, that she was dying. Then the next nightmare came, and on and on it went, one after another, every time she slept became the same experience all over again, it was as if her worst memories were waiting for her to fall asleep, so that they could replay themselves over and over, until the feeling became to much, causing her to wake up, but they were very patient, they knew that she had to go to sleep sometime. And then, after a while, as she tried to stay awake, little things started to remind her of that awful mess, and it seemed like so many small things would set her off, would cause her to relive that experience.

For a while she tried to just play sick, but her foster parents wouldn’t have any of it, they believed that she was just trying to get rid of school all together, just so that she could stay at home all day, doing nothing, like she seemed to love to do. They believed that, like many kids her age, she was just lazy. Other kids in the house had it worse than she did (their words), and they all seemed fine, so there was no reason for her to feel as if it were too much.

When she did have to go to school, often trying to keep her mind off of the incident, she would have to take frequent bathroom breaks so that she could hide away in a stall and cry in the way where you shake all over, where you want to scream, where you can hardly control your body, where you feel your sadness building and building, past any form of actual sadness, and eventually turning into agony, a feeling so strong that it had become a physical pain that she could do nothing to relieve, so she had to sob and writhe, trying to remind herself that it would have to go away, even if it felt like it never would. When it finally would pass, and she would catch her breath, relax for a bit, then return to class, she was haunted by the knowledge that it would return, that the peace was only temporary, and that the suffering was forever.

Sometimes she would blame herself for being so weak, while the effects of these spells would still linger, and it made her want to die, it made her feel pathetic, like she was to weak to handle life, and her caretakers didn’t do a thing to help her. Sometimes she would blame her nightmares, wishing that she could never sleep so that she could finally just forget about the whole thing, and spend the rest of her life, at the very least, in that numb state of adhedonia, but she knew that she would have to sleep. When she asked one of her foster siblings what she did to deal with the memories of seeing her baby brother getting drowned by her step father, the girl looked Norma right in the eyes, and told the suffering girl to follow her around the back, where she produced some strange pipe that Norma had never seen before. “What the hell is that for?” Norma had asked.

“You got nightmares, right?” Asked the girl.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I got nightmares too. Every night I have to relive it, but this helps make sure that you wont sleep for a long while. And when you finally do, you wont have enough energy to even dream. You’ll feel like people must feel when they die.”

“What the hell is it?”

Without any sense of humor, “Its fucking meth, what else would it be?”

That day Norma had learned that she didn’t really like how agitated, how jittery she had felt when she was on meth, but it also made her feel better than when she did when she was sober. Being a nervous wreck was better than suffering, and for three days straight she had avoided falling asleep, but, on the fourth day, she had realized that dreams weren’t the only problem. As she was twitching and leaving a convenience store with the other girl that had introduced her to the drug, they walked through a parking lot where Norma had seen a truck hitch that caused her to drop her soda, and made her want to tear her hair out on the spot. It seemed like the memories were worse while she was high, because not only was it like she was attached to a battery (her words to describe the feeling), but the memories had done the same. After trying to calm her down, and before running away since she the situation had freaked her the hell out, Norma’s companion had told her to try pot, but then claimed that if her problems were as bad as they seemed to be, then heroin would be the easiest way to get out of her head. The companion thought that the best solution to avoid the pain was to simply stop being yourself, to scramble up your brain’s chemicals so that you were some entirely different person,  but Norma didn’t want that, because she had hardly gotten the chance to be a person, drugging herself out of any sort of pain just seemed like a cop out.

So, deciding that she didn’t want anything to do with drugs, and coming down from the devil’s crystal, she decided to jump out of the second story window of her foster home, but the other girls (who she shared a room with) had prevented her, by pulling her away, and then keeping a watch on her all night (making sure not to tell their caretakers, who were only interested in the paycheck they received for watching the girls, and would have punished everyone for Norma’s “inability to control herself”), just to make sure that she wouldn’t get a chance to end things. When she woke up the next morning, she figured that she was at least lucky enough to not have dreamed that night, even if, later in the day, she would have seen a blind woman with a service dog, forcing her to remember the last words she had said to Paul, and after the breakdown, she had an epiphany.

Norma realized that her problem was that she wasn’t blind, like she had promised to her dog all of those years ago, and that the only way out of her miserable life, and into something even slightly better, was to make sure that she would never be able to see anything to remind her again. So, that night, as she lied sleepless in bed, one of her roommates keeping a close eye on her, she decided that she would have to waste no time, and would have to blind herself in the morning, when the other girls would be busy, getting ready for the day. As the girls got ready to start another lousy day, one of the younger ones let out a scream, and everybody rushed to the location, hoping to that their foster-father had decided to kill himself (he threatened the foster-mother with this act at least once a week), but instead saw Norma, dropped to her knees, knife at the floor, blood in her hands, and some strange chunks that nobody could identify, until one girl (the one who introduced Norma to narcotics) had put her hands on the injured girl’s wrists, trying to stop the bleeding, since she thought this was another suicide attempt, but was confused to feel that they were not the source of the bleeding, and then reeled back in horror at the eyeless girl in front of her.

The house was on lock down for a long time, the foster parents were trying to sweep the situation under the rug, worrying that if the police were involved, then it could damage their chances of getting their next check, it could shut them down for business. They kept Norma down in the basement, bandages wrapped around her head, covering her eyes, going down every so often to check the bleeding, to berate the girl for causing so much trouble, taking the self mutilation as a personal attack against her foster parents. And, for a couple hours, Norma felt pain, but of just the physical variety. She felt as if her problems weer finally behind her, that after things would cool down at the house, she would finally be able to continue through life, would finally be able to be happy again, like she was all of those years ago, in what seemed like a past life.

This feeling was only temporary, because her hope was quickly extinguished when her lack of vision gave more room to her imagination, and she started to see the events from that awful minute all over again. The death of her companion, of her mother, and then of the man who had killed them both. One, two, three, one, two, three, as if it were on instant replay. With no way to open her eyes, no way to stop seeing it, she had tried to feel her way around the basement, but she couldn’t find her way around, there was no way for her to find her way out, and she kept searching, feeling, frantically and blindly trying to find a way out of the basement, hoping that if she could get out of there then the images would stop, but it was only an act of desperation. Eventually she would leave the basement, but she would never leave her front lawn.

[msbigredmachine]

Into The Deep End - Chapter 30

Sasha has always tried to play it safe, to keep her life as simple and risk-free as possible. Things change, however, when she garners the interest of a handsome, charming, younger man from a completely different world than hers. As she starts to question her own rules, is she ready to take the biggest chance of them all? Will she let herself take that dive? Roman Reigns/OC.

CHAPTER 29

"If that bag was a person, it'd be dead by now."

From across the gym, Jon, Colby, Jonny and Trinity looked on wearily as Joe laid waste to a poor defenseless punching bag. He'd been at it for half an hour straight with no breaks, only pausing to take the occasional gulp of water. Ever since he returned from Pensacola, he'd been in a surly mood. They were back on the road pretty quickly and though he was still his solid ass-kicking self in the ring he was a different person once the cameras were turned off. He was moody and broody and talked even less than he usually did. They were shocked to hear he'd broken up with Sasha and when they pressed for more details he'd been very vague. Trinity had received the same reaction from Sasha when she texted her and they all deduced that something had gone down in Pensacola. These days Joe spent all his time moping and staring miserably at his phone, and when he wasn't doing that, he was staring into space. They hadn't seen him act like this since Andrea and it was worrying. "He's so sad," Trinity lamented. "What do we do, guys?"

"We let him be," said Jonny, already seeing his fiancée's Mother Hen feathers sprouting. "Relax, babe. He'll talk to us when he's ready."

"It's been a week!" she contested.

"It was much longer the last time, remember?" said Colby. "We just have to be there for him now like we were then. He'd do the same for any of us."

They continued to watch him like a hawk until he finished, toweling himself before picking up his things and leaving the gym without speaking to anyone. He completely ignored Randy Orton and the Big Show as they walked in. The smaller of the two men slowed down to watch the retreating, slouched form of the Samoan. "What's up his ass?" Randy asked the rookies.

Jon squared his blue eyes at the older man. "What do you care?"

"Come to think of it, your boy has been moping around a lot lately," Randy remarked. "Let me guess, trouble in Paradise?"

"None of your business so get to steppin'," Jon countered.

The Cincinnati native's defensive tone prompted the Viper's blue eyes to light up. He crossed his arms. "So there is trouble."

"Keep walkin', Orton. Trouble or not, you and Sasha ain't gonna happen."

A cold smile touched the corners of Randy's mouth. "You sound so sure, Ambrose."

"Because I am. I heard through the grapevine that she called you out in Jacksonville. You see, not every chick within a twenty mile radius of you is gonna fall for your little charm schtick. Thought you'd have learned that by now." Jon's smile was just as wicked. "Don't you got reps to botch or somethin'?"

With dangerously narrowed eyes, Randy came up to Jon, staring him right down. Of course, the man they called the Lunatic Fringe always itched for a fight. He straightened up, meeting the veteran's hardened gaze squarely. Trinity glanced anxiously between the two men, as did Colby and Jonny, standing nearby just in case.

Randy scowled at him. "Better watch it, Ambrose." Casting a warning glare at the rest of the group, he stalked off to rejoin Show.

Jon scoffed. "Ass wipe." He didn't like Orton and he never would.

Jonny tried not to laugh. "Bro, that big-ass mouth of yours is gonna get you killed, dawg."

"Do you blame him though?" Colby said to Jonny. "Imagine if you and Trin were having problems and some douchebag wanted to swoop in on her, how would you feel? Exactly," he added on seeing the Samoan's features harden.

"Besides, I've had this 'big-ass' mouth for twenty-seven plus years and I'm still standing," Jon added. "I'm helping my boy mark his territory. Sasha belongs to Joe. She'll probably knee me in the balls for saying it like that if she was here, but it's a fact."

"Who are you texting?" Jonny asked Trinity, drawn to the suddenly determined look on her face.

"I'm bringing in the big guns," she declared, her thumb skittering across the screen of her phone.

"What do you mean?" He leaned closer to her for a glimpse of her phone and lifted his eyebrow. "Wait, you want her to come here? Do you really wanna do that?"

"She's in town and she's the only one he listens to," Trinity replied.

Jonny sighed. "You know he gonna call you a snitch, right?"

"It's for his own good. I don't like seeing him like this, it's not healthy."

"This better not blow up in your face, Trin. You could end up making things worse," said Colby, with Jon nodding in agreement.

"It won't," she vowed. Putting her phone away, she looked around at the three men. "Trust me. He needs this."

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

Joe lay on his bed, glad to finally have some alone time. He was getting tired of the questions and the hovering. He knew his friends meant well but he needed space. Space to think. Which admittedly was all he seemed to be doing these days. Thinking about her. Wondering about her.

Missing her something awful.

It was only a week ago but it felt like a year since their fight. He missed the sound of her voice. He wanted to talk to her so bad right now. He missed talking with her, holding her in his arms, kissing her. Making love to her. Everything about her and with her was different and had been so from the day they first met. Spending time with her, talking about anything and everything, satisfied his need for a friend, for companionship, the need he had to protect and take care of someone. Her. Her kids. He regarded her as his equal, his confidante. Sex with her satisfied him physically as a man, as a lover. It was always hot and sensual and intimate and intense and stirred feelings inside him that he never thought he'd feel again. She satisfied him completely, physically and emotionally, something he hadn't felt in years. Because after Andrea, he'd only opted for casual, meaningless flings where no one would get attached. Even when it became boring and it made him feel emptier and lonelier inside, he kept at it because he thought it was for the best. Over the time they were together, Sasha showed him that he deserved more. He did want more and he wanted it with her. But he threw it all away in the heat of the moment and he regretted it every single day.

The moment he drove off, he knew he made a mistake. They had said some unsavory things to each other but all he wanted to do was go back to her, to pull her into his arms, to apologize and start over. Since then he'd thought a million times about calling her in the hope that they could work things out. But each time he took his phone and stared at her beautiful, grinning face, he held himself back. Because he knew it would never be that easy anymore. He'd gone over it in his head over and over and it boiled down to the same conclusion. He'd hurt her badly enough that she would want nothing to do with him ever again.

And his heart broke afresh.

There was a knock on his door. He thought about ignoring it but it quickly grew persistent. Sighing out loud, he went to open it. I swear to God if anyone asks me if I'm okay one more time I'ma break a motherfucker's face.

Alma stood at the other side of the door. "Wow, you look like crap."

Joe rolled his eyes, opened the door wider for her and returned to his bed, throwing a muscular arm over his eyes. "What are you doing here? Don't you have some conference to be at?"

"It's not until this evening, so no," she answered, "And I wanted to come visit my baby brother, my sons' favorite uncle. But don't tell Matt that, okay?"

"Trinity snitched, didn't she?"

She sat down on the bed next to his outstretched legs. "She's worried about you, Leati. We all are. And I know you're going to say you're fine but you're not. You don't even look fine."

Joe made no response, instead turning over, pulling his legs up and curling up into a ball in the middle of the bed. Alma sighed. "Ugh, you've gone into baby mode." She patted his leg. "Get up. Let's go get lunch. I have a couple of hours to kill before the conference tonight."

"Do I have to?" Joe whined.

"Dude, are you seriously turning down free food?" she asked incredulously.

He quickly jumped up. "Oh, you're paying? Give me five minutes."

Alma laughed and shook her head. "Dumbass."

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

The siblings ended up in a quaint little Italian restaurant several blocks away from Joe's hotel. It didn't take long for Alma to bust out her gentle coaxing technique that never failed to work on her baby brother, and of course he ended up opening up to her and telling her what was on his mind. Which was a lot. He always liked how she listened without interrupting, allowing him to pour his heart out. "I hurt her Al," he concluded sadly, "I said things to her I should have never said."

"You hurt each other," Alma surmised, taking a bite of her lasagna. "Yes it seemed like she was running and maybe it was bad timing. But put yourself in her shoes. You need to understand how she's feeling. She's used to being on her own and being independent and living a quiet simple life. Then she meets you and the next thing she knows she's thrust into this life and this lifestyle she's never seen before. She finds out this huge thing that happened with your ex and it's clear you're not over it. On top of that your mother doesn't show her any love. It had to overwhelm her."

"I know." He recalled the look on Sasha's face when they were in the car, the devastation in her eyes. Guilt nagged at him. "I was overwhelmed too; by Mom badgering her, Pop constantly badgering me, telling Sasha about Andrea...it was all one big clusterfuck and I'll admit I didn't handle it too well."

Alma looked up from her food. "You know Mom was only trying to protect you, right? Back at the house?"

Joe frowned. "That's no excuse. She shouldn't have treated Sasha that way no matter what. It was disrespectful of her."

"Listen. After everything that happened with Andrea, Ma felt guilty," said Alma. "She still does. She's hurt that she never saw through Andrea, that she couldn't protect you as a mother from the heartache you went through. She knows she messed up with Sasha. But my issue here is the painkillers Leati. Come on. What are you thinking? We can't be talking about drugs again, not this family. You know what we all went through with Eki and Rodney, as well as countless other wrestlers in the past several years. Need I say more?"

Joe stared down at his plate, pushing his food around. "I know. I just thought I could handle it on my own, you know? I don't want to be a disappointment again. I couldn't make it in the NFL, remember? I don't want the same to happen in the WWE."

"You know that's not going to happen. You bust your ass every single day and you've been doing that since day one and it's paying dividends. You're closing out Raws and SmackDowns and stealing the show at pay-per-views. Hell, you've already made it to a WrestleMania! You really don't need none of that shit."

"I know. I've been working on it." It was the truth. All week he had been taking slow but positive steps towards recovery, all of which he listed to Alma. Something he wished he could tell Sasha as well. She would have been proud.

"Dad didn't realize how hard he was pushing you," Alma continued. "He only wants to see you succeed, the same as the rest of us." She took a sip of her soda. "He said Sasha pretty much laid into him. Said she made him open his eyes." She smiled. "He likes her, you know. He likes her spunk. So do Matt, Cass and I. She's a good one, irrespective of what Mom thinks. When you first told me about her all those months ago I instantly knew you liked her. I'll admit I questioned whether three years was too soon for you to delve into a serious relationship but that changed when it became obvious how happy she makes you."

She did make him happy, and to know it was all ruined did not sit well with him at all. Joe bowed his head, his broad shoulders hunched and making him look even more drained and despondent. "I miss her, Alma," he whispered. "I miss her so much it fuckin' hurts."

Alma leaned back in her chair to observe her baby brother. "I know exactly how you feel about her, Leati. I think I knew from day one," she said, smiling when his grey eyes met her matching ones. "And deep down you probably do too. Set things right with her. Don't let her go so easily."

There was a hint of hope in his expression as he looked at Alma. "You think she'll come around? After everything?"

"If she cares for you the way I think she does, then yes," she replied after a moment's silence, "But it's up to you to make the right move first."

Joe absorbed his oldest sibling's words, a new determination rising within him. He knew what he needed to do. He just hoped he wasn't too late.

She could watch Mia dance all day long if she was allowed to.

Watching her glide gracefully around Pam's living room to the Goo Goo Dolls' 'Iris', pride swelled within Sasha, as it always did. She looked so beautiful. She had been dancing ever since she was a toddler and it amazed her how far she had come even at such a young age with limited resources. As much as she knew the eight-year-old had inherited her dancing skills from her, Sasha hadn't possessed half of Mia's talent at this age. Her versatility – whether it was fluid contemporary, sharp jazz or gritty hip-hop, she had a strong grasp on them all; her technique and performances, executed with a graceful crispness and maturity beyond her years. Like her older brother, Mia loved the spotlight and the attention and it was where she belonged. Her elementary school had a talent show coming up in a few weeks and Pam was assisting her with the contemporary piece she was to perform that night. Sasha saw that she'd missed out on quite a lot of prepping in her absence. She liked to be there for the development of the piece, to give Mia tips or simply provide moral support. A part of her wished she had stayed behind in Tampa the week before to oversee Mia's preparations. Perhaps if she had, her personal life would be a very different story today.

"She's amazing, isn't she?"

She looked up to see Pam settling down across from her at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee, silently awaiting her answer. "She is," Sasha agreed, facing her daughter again. "You've done so great with her. All the dance classes, the tutoring, everything."

"Naw, babe. The talent is all her. Charlie and I just tweak it a little." The petite woman quietly stirred the contents of her cup with a teaspoon. "Now that we've established that, are you finally going to tell me what happened with you and Joe?"

At the sound of his name, Sasha's chest tightened and she pursed her lips. Two weeks had gone by since she walked out of Joe's car and didn't look back. The scene replayed over and over in her head ever since. Her anger towards Joe hadn't completely subsided but it didn't stop her from thinking about him. From missing him. The silence between them was becoming deafening and she had to wonder if this was how it was going to end between them. "It's nothing."

"Child. This is me you're talking to," Pam reprimanded her. "You ain't been the same since you got back. You always look like you've been crying. Wrestling comes on and you bolt. I come over to your place and you got Mary J. Blige whining on the stereo. Mary of all people! Now that's a cry for help if there ever was one and I'm here to rescue your ass. Talk. Now."

She really didn't want to talk about it or think about it anymore. All it did was make her feel like her heart was breaking all over again. She should be used to the feeling; for some reason pain and hurt always found her. However she and Pam never kept things from each other. That was a promise they'd made to each other a long time ago. So she took a deep breath and told her everything, only leaving out the details about Andrea's misdeeds out of respect for Joe. As expected, the more she talked the more upset she got. By the time she was finished she was fighting back tears and Pam's expression was grim. "Damn," she commented, "That was rough."

"I get why he's angry and maybe he has a right to be," Sasha rambled, "He's been struggling and suffering all by himself, keeping so many things bottled inside. All I wanted was to be there for him but it was just so crazy." She fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist, the same one Joe had given her in Miami. If she closed her eyes and thought hard enough, she could still smell the intoxicating aroma of sea breeze blending with Joe's cologne like it had that day. "It's been two weeks and I haven't heard a word from him. He's probably moved on. He finally realized he was wasting his time with me all along."

"You know that's not true, Sash," Pam shook her head. "He's just upset about how everything went down. He wanted you and his family to get along but it didn't happen. All the pressure he's been feeling finally caught up to him and sadly you got caught in the crossfire. Telling you about Andrea must have taken a toll on him too. I'm not condoning what he did though. He said some pretty foul shit to you and acted like a prick. But he told you this huge thing only for you to suggest that you break up shortly afterwards. I'm sure he feels like you abandoned him."

"I didn't mean to make it sound like that. I just meant there's so much going on with him that he needs to fix on his own. The drama with his dad, the pills. That was the part I couldn't handle. You know how I feel about drugs after everything that happened with Cliff. And Joe...I kept asking and asking but he kept telling me not to worry. He got in so deep with them and I didn't realize it. His family didn't even know about it, not even his beloved mother. And her...you should have seen the way she looked at me, Pam. The way she talked to me. She doesn't want me with him. I put myself in her shoes and I don't blame her. Can you imagine if T.K. brought a twenty-five year old woman home? Hell, I'd probably not like her either." She met Pam's eyes. "Pam...Joe wants children."

Pam held her gaze, words silently exchanged between them, then blew out a breath. "I figured. His interactions with Mia was a giveaway."

Sasha ran a trembling hand over the back of her neck. "Remember what happened when she was born?"

"How could I ever forget the night I almost lost you, Sash?" Pam said, her own eyes glazing at the horrific memory.

"Exactly. And remember what the Doctor said. I'm older now. Getting pregnant is going to be just as difficult now if not more. Pam, I never thought he would want kids with me. I never thought that far ahead with our relationship. Joe deserves to have everything he wants in life and I don't know if I can give it all to him." Sasha swallowed hard, her expression one of despair. "I knew, I knew there was a reason I should have backed off from the start," she lamented. "I tried to tell him no when he first gave me his number but I couldn't resist him. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking letting things get this far with a guy so much younger than me. I'm a fool."

"Babe, relax," Pam told her, "Look, the past few weeks has been a lot for you to take in. This is new for you and it's overwhelming. Maybe this time apart is what you two really need."

But Sasha shook her head. "I don't think I'm ever going to see him again. We haven't spoken since that day. Not one word. He always texts me at least. But this time, nothing. He doesn't want me anymore. Hell, he's probably found someone new while I'm sitting here pining for him because my dumb ass just had to fall in love with him..."

Shit.

She sucked in a breath. Admitting it out loud drove it home for her and she was overcome with emotion once more. Burying her face in her hands, the tears she'd been holding in finally broke free.

Pam shifted closer and put her arms around her best friend. "Let it out, sweetie. Let it all out," she whispered, which only made the mother of two cry harder. "It's so good to finally hear you say that. It's about damn time." When Sasha looked at her, she said, "Trick, you've been in love with that man for the longest time. Either you didn't realize it or you just didn't want to admit it."

Sasha sniffled as Pam wiped away her tears. "I hate how I feel, Pam," she sobbed. "I told myself I'd never depend on any man no more and that's exactly what's happened. I can't stop thinking about him. I want to pick up the phone so badly but I don't know if he wants to talk to me. I miss him like fuckin' crazy and I feel like I can't breathe without him." She meant every word. She missed everything about him and their time together. There was so much she'd taken for granted. Like how he always treated her like a lady; how he had to touch her in some way whenever they were together, either holding her hand or putting an arm around her waist; how they would talk on the phone about nothing for hours in the middle of the night, how he would say silly things to make her laugh. How her older age meant nothing to him, or so she'd thought. How hands-on he was with T.K. and Mia. His protectiveness. The way her heart pounded when he stared at her with those beautiful eyes. The way she forgot how to think when he kissed her; the fire he ignited in her body and soul when they made love. She had one of his t-shirts and she still wore it to sleep simply because it smelled like him. She knew she was torturing herself, she did. For the first time in nearly a decade she felt lost, and she felt lost without Joe by her side. "I'm sick of feeling like this. It hurts."

"You're in love, that's why it hurts," said Pam, rubbing her shoulders. "It's perfectly normal to feel this way. And you ain't gotta worry about Joe not wanting you because he does. That boy's crazy about you. Have you seen the way he stares at you when you're not looking? The way he smiles when you talk to him or when he talks about you? He feels the exact same way about you, girl. He'll come around. Give him time. And when he does you make sure the two of you talk. Like a proper heart-to-heart, a no holds barred conversation. Tell him about the complications with you and let him take it from there. I don't even know how you didn't mention it to him in the first place."

Sasha rolled her eyes. "Um, 'hey, I almost kicked the bucket giving birth to my second kid' isn't exactly an ideal topic of conversation," she refuted. She couldn't possibly imagine looking him in the eye and saying that to him after what he went through with Andrea. "What if I tell him and he does walk?"

Pam took a long look at the younger woman. She always told it like it was and she wasn't about to stop now. "Then he walks," she said sadly. "Flaws and all, Joe is a good guy. I mean that. He's the first man you've been with that I actually like. And like you said, he deserves everything he wants in life. You have children already. He should have his own someday if that's what he wants."

The thought of Joe with another woman, making love to her, having babies with her, sent a hot wave of jealousy through Sasha. But as much as it hurt her heart, she knew Pam was right. She gave a fresh sob and leaned into Pam, savoring her best friend's ever-comforting embrace.

"Come on," Pam stated, gently sitting Sasha up before taking her hands and squeezing them. "Let's hang out this weekend. Just you and me. We can go to the spa, get manicures and facials, get our hair did. Or we could have dinner, go to a club and hit on guys even though we should know better. We'll do whatever you want. How's that sound?"

Despite her crappy mood, she sent an amused look Pam's way. "You just got paid huh?"

Pam returned her grin. "Something like that." Glancing down at her vibrating phone, she rolled her eyes. "I gotta head downstairs. The idiots at Reception finally found my missing mail. I'll be right back."

After she left, Sasha went to the sink and splashed some water on her face to wash away all traces of her sorrow. Clearing her throat, she returned her attention to Mia, who was rounding off a pirouette. "Lookin' good, baby," she praised, sitting on an armchair in the living room to get a closer look. "You're doing better with your extensions."

"Thanks." She turned off the music and began a series of body stretches, eyeing her mother all the while. "Mama, did something happen between you and Joe?"

It was a perfectly innocent question, but one that caused her stomach to knot uncomfortably. Trust her daughter to be so observant. "Why do you say that, baby?"

Mia approached Sasha, sitting on the armrest next to her and leaning into her mother's touch as she rubbed her back. "Well, you don't smile so much anymore. He always makes you smile. And he doesn't call or come around anymore like he used to. Why?" she stated, cocking her head to the side curiously. "Are you two fighting?"

Sasha's heartstrings tugged at how sad she looked. Oh dear. Her little girl had become attached. This was what she'd been afraid of. "We just had a little disagreement." That was really the only way she could explain it. "Don't worry yourself about it, okay?"

Mia wound her arms around Sasha's neck and pressed her cheek against hers. "I'm not worried, Mama. I know you'll work it out."

Sasha pulled back and gave her a feeble smile. "I hope so, baby."

The eight-year-old patted both sides of her mother's face. Her smile was as confident as the next words she spoke. "You will. You love each other."

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

Gasp! Is Mia right?!

Kindly review guys! Thoroughly enjoying the feedback!

CHAPTER 31

[johnnymundano]

She Rises (2016)

Directed by Larry Wade Carrell

Written by Angus Macfayden

From a story by Angus Macfayden and Lony Ruhmann

Music by Randy Chance

Country: United States

Language: English

Running Time: 87 minutes

CAST

Angus Macfayden as Conor

Jennifer Blanc-Biehn as Kat

Daisy McCrackin as Rosebud

Michael Biehn as Daddy Longlegs

She Rises is simultaneously a heroically low budgeted horror movie and an audio visual Angus Macfayden ego fellator. I hazard that this makes She Rises unique, it certainly makes it entertaining, but, caveat emptor, not the kind of entertaining everyone enjoys.

While driving to the next day’s shooting location Conor (Angus Macfayden), a self-obsessed actor, and Kat (Jennifer Blanc-Biehn), a cynical director, become lost and stop at the remote cabin of frail ginger waif Rosebud for directions. Tired, and sensing the opportunity for some corruptive fun with the apparent innocent, the narcissistic moviemakers decided to stay the night and get (dun-dun-DUN!) more than they bargained for. And so does any viewer unprepared for the enormous amount of smart arse buggering about She Rises indulges in. But, fret not, gentle viewer, She Rises does want you to be in on the fun. There’s an extended opening sequence in the car where Conor bloviates mercilessly as Kat drives distractedly on. This scene goes on for ages, but it goes on for ages so that you’ll pick up for yourself on the fact that Conor is quoting; that he is, in fact, acting. Yes, She Rises opens with an actor acting as an actor acting as yet another actor. And that’s the start; the concept of Uroboros is more deeply ingrained in She Rises than crap in corduroy.

She Rises is light on certainties but one of those certainties is surely that its Angus MacFayden’s show. Only a churl would begrudge him, as he is a sensationally entertaining screen presence throughout this wonky nonsense. His Conor is such an empty character that he is mostly acting, and acting as someone else acting at that. A lot of the fun for the audience, and one imagines for Angus Macfayden also, is having Angus Macfayden redo scenes from great cinema and literature. These keep the somewhat spindly script pootling along, lending weight to the surface horror trappings and throwing up some nice surprises along the disjointed way. The nature of surprises being what they are I shan’t spoil them. Except to say (he said, spoiling one of them) that the gender swapped The Shining (1980) riff was pretty outstandingly funny, with Macfayden uncharacteristically tremulous and quailing as Shelley Duvall and a butchly aggro Jennifer Blanc-Biehn giving it The Nicholson.

Obviously, all proper actors aspire to Shakespeare and so She Rises is playfully splattered with his iambic pentameter. No surprises then that Macfayden’s Shakespeare is all kinds of great, but seeing Michael Biehn get to grips with the bard is pretty surprising. True, Biehn can’t match Macfayden’s stagetastic delivery, but then Biehn is somewhat at a disadvantage; declaiming Shakespeare while sporting a faceful of latex wrinkles, with his bare arse in the air as he shakes his spear inside his off-screen wife. You don’t get that at Stratford on Avon, pal. Biehn is definitely a surprise in She Rises, scarcely there but still pivotal. More present and even more pivotal is Daisy McCrackin, who is enthusiastically shrill, never stinting on her commitment, and if her lurch from shallow naïf to malefic demonic manipulator doesn’t convince that might be down to the script, which gets as lost amongst the chunks of other people’s words as Conor and Kat do in the movie itself.

Larry Wade Carrell’s direction is underwhelming but probably deserves extra kudos for avoiding Macfayden actually physically ingesting the camera. As befits the Bad Things Happening in a Small Place premise Carrell does definitely bring a sense of claustrophobia, going mostly very close up and rarely wider in scope than the size of a room. Which pays off with the second ending which is like parting a curtain so sunshine can flood a darkened room. That second ending is the Artistic Ending. The first Ending is the Traditional Horror Movie Ending. Two endings are okay for the minnows but She Rises dares to chuck in a third ending, The Uroboros Rising Ending. Each ending overwrites the previous one. Like most post-modern, meta textual, goofing about (and flakey singletons everywhere) She Rises can’t commit at the end, trying to overcome that mundane and oh, so tiresomely bourgeois need for a conclusion.  She Rises wants to have its cake and eat it. Which is impossible. Largely because Angus Macfayden has smeared it all over his face like an edible leatherface and is making chainsaw noises with his lips. But then, he is an actor, darling. So let the damned man act! And…ACTION!

[wishingfornever]

10/11/17 – No Contact:  Meta Entry

I had a series of dreams.  The last dream, you were here and we just laid together.  I kissed the back of your neck and you were happy. Then I woke up and find I had been cuddling with Max the WHOLE TIME!!!  GASP!!!

Kidding, but that was the last dream. You had a black tank top, black underwear, and that red beanie.  I remember… a lot from that dream. I’m waiting to propose to you to carry on and continue your life.  As I said, your mom told me to look after you and I still intend to.  Of course, you don’t deserve it.  Your behavior was just… incredibly bad.  And then you justified the stupidest things.  You don’t deserve forgiveness.  You don’t deserve a second chance.

You’re lucky I’m not you.

Maybe I’m being harsh.  Maybe I’m telling myself this so I can wait the full two months to message you again.  Or maybe I’m totally justified.  You really fucked up.  You’ll see that eventually but I can’t make you see it.  Thus, this is a lesson you’ll have to learn yourself.

I hope you don’t view my offer as a safety net.  Like, seriously, if I’m trying to be nice then don’t overthink it.  I suspect you’ll avoid my offer, though.  Maybe that’s why.  Not enough pressure. What a bunch of bullshit.

My one concern is that I stop caring about you before I offer you a place.  Sort of like how you stopped caring.  See?  Like that.  You REALLY don’t deserve a second chance.  If I were a wiser man, I’d have left you for dead.  You’d be stuck with Dennis or move back. Worse yet, you’d move from man to man trying to find a place for yourself, constantly getting high and NEVER getting your GED.  Your life will stagnate.  I guarantee it will with Dennis or any other prick on the internet who says he “Totally cares, for sure.” Your two best options will be with me or with your mom.  Because unlike those other internet tools, I won’t let you get high.  I’m sick of it.  Pot is fucking stupid and you’re stupid for liking pot.

You’re getting your fucking GED.  If you’re here, I will MAKE you get it.  That is not an option. That said… you don’t need to choose me.  You can choose your parents.  I’m sure they’d be THRILLED to have you back.  Well, your mom at least. Thing is, it’s your mom.  She has two sides.  Not saying she’s a bad person, but she’s a hard person.  I know because she’s somewhat like my dad, just my dad is less hippie-ish.

Whatever… Anyways, Max isn’t eating his food.  That’s a problem.  He’s… been grumpy.  I told you I applied for a job at Starbucks.  Here’s the thing.  I wanted to go to Starbucks and apply in person.  But… I can’t.  Because Max has been very temperamental.  Like, so much. So, I’m sticking by with him.  We could use someone who will stay here with him.  Like you.  That’d be super helpful.

Anyways, I just checked with my application in Starbucks.  Turns out to… have not saved.  So, I re did it.  Not that hard.  But as of today? I officially applied for a job.  After this week, I’ll start applying at other places.  Hopefully in person.

Holy crap.  I know how to propose.  Custom banner.  In NationStates. It’ll say, “Esther’s Nation, will you marry me?” and have one of the letters replaced with a hammer and sickle.  Or put the hammer and sickle in a heart.  Gasp.  :o

Cringe now.  I know.  We won’t get together because of reasons.  Probably because you don’t want to see me again.  That’s why I wrote it here.  Because you’re not going to read it.  It’s funny though. Clever.  I mean, not romantic.  But the region will think it’s cute.  :D

Whatever.  If we do get together again, I’ll have to try to delete this.  Or maybe I won’t, idk.  Kind of ruins the authenticity of the journal to go back and delete things… so… whatever.

I need Max.  This cute Asian gal ran up and said, “Awwwww!  What’s his name!”  I was awkward at the time because I didn’t expect it. I said “Max.  Be careful, he’s grumpy.”  But she was super cheerful.  Was getting out of her car at the time.

I might be a bit socially awkward.  I have to be in control of the situation to prevent it and I have to be super confident in myself.  I put on some pounds and I did almost nothing to my hair.  I mean… I brushed it.  Kinda looks cute.  But could be better.  Breath smells of onions.  Intending to shower when I got back.  Just… not a good situation for me.  She didn’t get close enough for that.  Was cute though.

Shane isn’t doing well.  He said he coughed up blood.  Concerning.  Told him to see a doctor.  I hope he’s fine.

Meanwhile, Walter (who ADORES NationStates) wants to do a NationState scenario with me.  Like a space race.  I think it’d be super cool.  We’re doing some planning.  Won’t need that much time.  I won’t have to much time to begin with.  I’ll be working at Starbucks soon.  And, of course, my book.  Which I haven’t touched for a while.  I’ll make time for it this week.  I’m waking up earlier, if you can believe it.

I’ve been sleeping in, unfortunately.  But I’m getting over it.  I didn’t do my sets yesterday.  I didn’t run, either.  Didn’t today.  Been focusing on Max.  He just wants to walk, so we’re just walking.  Super inactive.  Eh.  :/

I want to message you.  I always do when I write in the journal.  I think because I want responses for somethings.  Or at least input. Idk.  It’ll fade.  Eventually, I’ll stop writing in this journal. That’ll either be a good thing or a bad thing.  Either it’s a bad thing because that means I stopped caring and have totally given up on you or that we’re back together and there is no need for the journal.  I guess having a journal at all is pretty desperate.  I mean… why?  This journal is more about us than it is about me.  If I keep it… idk.  The posts won’t be as long.  I don’t know what I’d put in there… or why.

Why did I begin this one? It’s helped me deal with the end of our relationship.  It also documents what’s been happening for us.  But… eh.  It’s the truth.  Maybe that’s a bad thing.  The truth often isn’t welcome. Maybe I’ll upload it to a blog next year.  For giggles.  I’ll send you a link to it then.  On 9/3/18.  Wouldn’t that be fun, eh? Idk.  Just an idea.  This would make it in there too. It’ll be weird to see me bitching about the format.  And converting it would be a pain in my ass.  Oh, I’ll make it a Tumblr thing. Set it to public.  Not to slut shame you or to shit on Dennis or anything.  I just think it’d be good to document.  Might be a fun read, idk.  ;) Anyways, Adela just came back.  I spoke with her.  Couldn’t get the scale to work.  Earlier today I was in such a good mood, I could have sworn I lost weight.  I little bit later, I felt super self-conscious and I felt like I gained weight. I need a scale to measure everything.  That way, I won’t get complacent and I won’t have to guess.  I could lose 40 pounds and I wouldn’t notice.  Though, I think I’d notice gaining 40 pounds at this point.  I’ll be honest.  Thing is, I didn’t realize I lost weight when I lost 10 pounds.  So… weird.  I guess it’s easier to see my failures than successes.  Hrm…

Whatever.

I’m thinking about when I publicize this all.  You probably won’t like it.  You’ll probably ask me to take down or not do it at all.  Or if you read this, you might ask me to do it.  I guess it depends on how I end this journal.  We’ll see.  It’d only be surprising to people who we don’t know if this is posted.  You’ll know how it ends and anyone who knows us will know how it’ll end.  And people will be surprised to know I came up with these bullshit titles before I even thought about posting any of this.

No names will be changed.  So, if you don’t like it, maybe you can sue.  So even if you hate me, you can still have a happy ending.  ;) This would be A LOT of honesty.  To just put out there.  It’ll be nice to have total strangers think I’m crazy too.  Ah, well.  Shane might have died.  He stopped responding to me.  So has Walter, actually.

Btw, I told Randy everything.  I think I mentioned that.  Might not have. Regardless, he responded.  Was very nice to me.  Kind of sympathetic. It was nice.  I had to reiterate that I had nothing against you or Dennis.  Though, I guess you’d disagree after reading all of this.

If not against Dennis, then against you.  Saying you don’t deserve a second chance.  I stand by my words; you really don’t.  And Dennis is still a piece of shit.  Thing is, I don’t have to like someone to not have a grudge.  I don’t have a grudge against Dennis.  No vendetta needing fulfilling.  And, obviously, no vendetta against you.  Rather, you piss me off and Dennis is dead to me.  He’s a slimebag piece of shit that literally EVERYONE can see but you.  You think he’s awesome, but that’s because he’s a terrible person.  You have only his word to take on it. He doesn’t talk to Shane or Jeremiah anymore for a reason.  He brought this on himself.  Everyone who used to associate with him stopped talking to him.  Walter joked about how he didn’t recognize Dennis’s name.

Gotta give him credit, though.  At least he’s dedicated to fucking up and cutting contact with everyone he’s ever called friend.  If I had known that’s all that it takes to win your heart, I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing this journal.  Sorry, but Jer and I have a relationship that you wouldn’t understand.  In High School, it was compared to Turk and JD from Scrubs by our friends.  The ultimate bromance.  Apparently the actors who play them are best friends in real life.  That’s interesting.  I wonder which one of us was Turk and which one was JD.  I haven’t seen much of the show to make a comparison.

Speaking of Jer, he REALLY wants me to download League of Legends.  I… probably won’t.  Because of reasons.  Mostly that I won’t have time for video games between a job, my book, and learning Spanish.  I haven’t begun yet but… soon.  Measuring life by the week. ;)

Anyways, I’m tired.  Also hungry.  Going to get food and watch dumb videos.  I mean, I could work on my book, but nah. I’m a terrible person with a shitty work ethic.  Don’t tell Starbucks, though.  ;)

Before I go and begin the next entry… it would appear I’m rather macabre.  I was watching JonTron’s old review for a dorky game, I was thinking his bird was going to die soon.  I don’t know why I would think that.  Birds have a lengthy life, for one… and for two, WHO THE FUCK THINKS ABOUT WHEN SOMEONE LOSES THEIR ANIMALS?!?  Ugh… I know it’ll suck to lose a pet.  Thing is, I ask this to myself a lot with people’s pets.

Jack died when I came back from Texas the first time.  I had to bury him.  It sucked.  Then there were other pets I had to bury, but he was the most recent.  It was… depressing.  He went into an old dog house outside and just slept in there the night he died.  He was old. Oof…  I’m done talking about Jack.  Later.  x.x

[unadulteratedrebelrunaway]

A SCENE AT AN A.A. MEETING

[8/23/18]

  Alexander W. Benson II

             My name is Rex.  I run a local A.A.  I'm the one who conducts the meetings.  I make sure the trains run on time.  I might be in my sixties, but don't let the grey hair fool you.  You get smart with me; I'll kick your ass.  I am responsible.  I am the go to guy when anyone needs anything.  If anybody has a problem with anyone else, come to me. I'll take care of them.

             People think I'm an *******, but I help people.  I just use tough love.  For instance, this one guy came up to ask me a question.  I cut him off because I knew exactly what he was going to say.  I happened to see the broken chair behind him.

             "Shut up.  Listen, and learn.  You shouldn't have broken that chair.  You're going to have to own up to what you did."

 ***

             The other guy tells me his side.  "I was sitting on a chair, and it broke.  I wanted to bring it to Rex's attention since Rex is always bragging about how he runs the show.  I tried explaining it to him.  I figured I would own up to it since I was sitting on it.  The bastard talked over me, accused me of trying to break the chair. When I countered, he walked away and barked an insult as he raced away from me."

 ***

             Then I am talking to Rex again.  "Oh yeah, this young, real dumb kid walked up and tried passing the buck.  I knew he broke that chair.  I called him out for it, and since I'm a real busy man, I had to meet someone else.  The bastard probably thought I had all the time in the world for his shenanigans."

 ***

             Unfortunately, I am talking to the human enema bag again.  "I like to give tough love sometimes.  Some ten year old boy walked up to me after one meeting and I saw he was crying.  I told him to knock it off.  Then the boy told me his parents died in a house fire while he watched."

             "Why didn't you save them?" says Rex.

             "I tried to but the firefighters held me back," says the boy.

             "I told him that was no excuse," says Rex.  "If that was me watching my parents, I would have thrown those firefighters across the street and my parents would have still been here today, so don't you give me any of that helpless victim crap."

             "I told him to buck up and stop it right this minute," says Rex.  "Crying won't bring them back.  The kid started bawling, so I called him a pansy because I figured if I pissed him off enough, he would get mad and stop crying.  Kids must be wimps these days because then he cried even worse.  Running out of patience, I slapped him across the face.   I called him a coward for not facing life.  Would you believe a bunch of people ran up to me and started yelling at me?  I'm a busy man, and since I had important things to do I turned around and tended to those other tasks.   The kid's uncle ran up to me and started ranting so fast I couldn't understand him. I called the other guys over and told them to remove this man from the premises because I will not tolerate name-calling.  If you can't act appropriately, you have to leave.  Same rules for everybody.  I enforce the law without discrimination.  That is one thing you can definitely say about me.  I don't discriminate."

             "I have every right to be a hard-ass because I go around helping people. I'm not an *******.  I just act like one all the time.  If they don't want it, I'll make them accept my help. If they want help, I'm going to motivate them by yelling at them.  My way works all the time.  Except for all of those cases where people want to fight me.  They have an attitude problem if you ask me."

             "Then there are all those times it doesn't work.  Nine times out of ten, the losers who come to me fail.  It isn't me because I know what I'm doing.  They're the problem.  I'm always right, and they're wrong.  They were weak so they failed.  If they listen to my advice, which is perfect, then they will succeed every time.  Just ask me. I'll tell you my way works because Rex Candy says it will."

             "I'm the law and order around this place, and I'm as tough as they come. And yes, my **** doesn't stink!  I can vouch for that, personally!"

 ***

             It is Friday night, and the meeting starts.  A former Marine is going to be the speaker.  Rex is up there, ready to puke his self-proclaimed wisdom on the masses. It is time to lay down the law with all these miscreants.  According to Rex, they are miscreants because they wouldn't be here if they were good people.

             At the beginning of the meeting, Rex stands up in front of everybody.  He sees somebody grabbing a coffee.  "Hey you, put that down.  What's wrong with you?  Sit down."

             "Everybody," says Rex, "when the meeting is going on, everybody sit down and shut up.  It isn't nice to me, I mean the speaker, and it isn't nice to anyone else.  If I catch anyone sneaking out of this room, I will deal with them swiftly.  I will swoop down on them like an Eagle.  And you don't want me to come after you because I'm your worst nightmare."

 ***

             Sometime later, Rex is seated behind the Marine.  He spots two hecklers in the crowd.  Those two look crazy.  Better not mess with them.  I know, I'll just pretend they're not there.

             A man with leg braces gets behind the podium and says, "My name is Will, and I'm an alcoholic.  I guess you haven't figured it out yet, but I'm going to be the speaker this evening. I was born into an Irish Catholic family.  I was the oldest of a litter of eleven.  Since I could remember my parents used to get into fights.  My dad was a salesman and he was always on the road.  We always seemed to have money but mother never cared about that.  He would come home drunk in the middle of the night and they would always end up in a fight. Back then the police didn't get involved.  Anyway, my mother always got on my dad for never being home, and when he was he was always drunk.  The violence didn't really bother me because I was always resentful toward the two of them for ignoring me.  The only times they didn't ignore me was when I got bad grades, or when I did something bad. As I grew up it seemed almost every year I had a new brother or sister to play with.  I loved them but I was always jealous of them because my parents seemed to hate me while they never stopped lavishing attention on them.  I seemed to be the lonely type.  At least that was the only thing I ever noticed."

             A man who looks like Mork who is sitting in the audience gets up at this point and walks in front of the podium.  He keeps bowing up and down and waving his right arm up and down like he was doing some bizarre ritual from a religion I cannot recognize.

             A kid sitting behind him yells, "Amen."

             Will does his best to ignore both of them despite looking a little annoyed. Rex doesn't do anything because he is intimidated by both of the troublemakers.

             "As soon as I was able, I started hanging out with the kids who smoked," says Will.  "I was only ten.  We started skipping class and getting into fights.  I thought it was awesome.  I also felt like I belonged with these guys so in short I stopped going home.  When I did get home my mother always gave me a beating for not being around to help out.  I hated this because I resented my mother not loving me but always wanting me to do the heavy work because my dad was never around.  Usually, I would be back on the street with my friends before dad got home.  On the few occasions we intersected he would give me the beating of my life."

             "Hallelujah," says Mork.

             "Shut up, man!" says the kid who said Amen.

             Will pauses and looks over at Rex.  "Aren't you going to help me?"

             Rex looks at him.  "With what?  Why do you need my help?"

             Will points at the two shadowboxers who were only a few drinks short of entering the shadowlands.

             "What are you pointing at?" says Rex.  "I don't see anything."  Rex says this despite the fact that everybody has been watching the two clowns for the whole meeting instead of listening to Will.  I had trouble hearing Will talk.

             "With them," says Will as he pokes his finger toward Mork and his buddy.

             "You're imaging things," says Will.  "Just shut up and keep talking."  Then he looks over at the clock to make sure things are on schedule.

             "My dad would beat me," says Will.  "When I was little I didn't do anything because I was too scared, but now that I was a little older, and although I would still curl up into a ball and take it, now I was laughing through it.  My dad would call me a no good, a no account, and some other choice nicknames.  I would finally tell him I found people who loved me.  Yeah, I said people who loved me.  At least I thought so at the time.  I got drunk for the first time that year.  Then I got laid.  I still remember her name, Jennifer.  I was in love, but she wasn't.  The next day I got in my first fight with one of my friends when I caught him screwing Jennifer.  Jennifer would later get pregnant out of wedlock, deal drugs to support herself and the kid because the boyfriend left her when she got pregnant.  As time went on all of my friends grew up and got a life, went to jail, died, or joined the military."

             Rex is still ignoring the noisemakers: however, he jumps up when he sees someone quietly exit the room.  "People, if I see one more person leave this room during this meeting I am going to be very upset," says Rex.  Then Randy turns to Will.  "Don't just stand there.  Keep talking."

             Now Will looks more annoyed by Rex than he did by the first two noisemakers. "You know, you're disturbing my speech too."

             "A poor musician blames his instrument," says Rex.  "Quit wasting time and try to wrap this stupid thing up."

             Will does a double take on Rex and looks like he's going to hit Rex. "If I go back into the Marines, remind me not to enlist at the same time as you.  I don't want to be in the same company with you, especially if we were to come face to face with the enemy."

             "I don't like you either, but I'm getting tired of telling you to finish your speech," says Rex.

             "There was a draft back then, and I didn't want to join the Army so I joined the Marines instead," says Will.  He looks at Rex and adds, "Too many backstabbers in the Army. At this point I still didn't know I was an alcoholic but I figured if I left everything behind I would start a new life.  A sober one that is.  It turns out that only worked for a few weeks, and then I got back into the drunken saddle of hooch, except now I was better at it--in a bad way."

             Will looks over at the two guys who are before him.  Mork is still doing his weird blessing ritual while the kid is dancing around him shadowboxing.  It is almost like each guy is completely unaware of the other one.  Will shakes his head at them and says, "It takes all kinds."

             "I'll fast forward to save time," says Will.  "Now I'm a Marine.  I was in Viet Nam doing the same thing my dad did in his day--fighting for my country.  I remember I took some shrapnel one time.  Ironically, it wasn't from battle.  I was cleaning latrines and some idiot was playing with a hand grenade. It blew him to Kingdom Come but I ended up with buckshot in my right hip and thigh.  I managed to limp over to the medic's tent.  I told the nurse what happened but she didn't seem to believe me. She wrote down in the report that I injured myself through horseplay.  If I wasn't in such pain from the shrapnel I would have been upset because in the Marines I could have been court marshaled for that.  They might let people get away with shooting themselves in the foot to get out of service in the Army, but never in the Marines.  I was escorted to a cot.  The doctor comes over with a needle, and it wasn't one of them small painless ones like they have today.  No, these things stung, and I didn't want the shot.  The doctor told me it was Morphine so it would kill the pain. Then he could look at it.  He wasn't taking no for an answer.  He pulled rank on me and ordered me to take the needle or else I was in trouble for insubordination.  I would find out later why he wanted to give me that needle so bad."

             Mork and his friend start pushing into each other.  They are both in the aisle in front of the podium that Will is speaking from.  Everyone was looking over at these two and then Rex, wondering when he was going to be a hero.  Somebody leans forward and taps Rex on the shoulder.  "Hey, when are you going to do something?"

             Randy hisses, "Don't touch me, you maggot."  He points his arm toward Will and prominently sticks his chest out with pride.  "That man served this country.  Show a little respect."

             One drunk in the back of the room whispers to another drunk.  "I'll bet you five bucks those two windbags tee off for real in," he pauses and looks at the clock and adds, "less than five minutes."

             The second drunk waffles a moment.  "I also have a gambling problem so I shouldn't, but you're on." They shake hands.

             "No welching when I win this bet, though," says the first drunk.

             The second drunk smiles.  "Did I also tell you I belong to a group of Compulsive Liars.  We're called Liars Anonymous."

             "I've never heard of them," says the first drunk.

             The second drunk says, "That's because I just founded the organization. Like right now."

             Rex stands up and looks past Mork and company.  He shushes the two drunks in the back.  "Quiet back there."  He does so loudly so the drunks could hear him over the hecklers.

             "It turns out the doctor was a faggot," says Will.  "He raped me while I slept.  He forgot to remove the shrapnel."

             Some members of the audience try to act surprised, but this is the twentieth century, and the shock value isn't what it used to be.

             "Well, anyway, I told myself I would find that bastard and get even with him," says Will.  "I would do my time, which was up in six months, and then I would find him.  It seemed like I was always trying to get even with somebody.  Actually, at the time if I had to get even with only one person at a time, business was slow."

             Will looks at the clock and sees he has five minutes.  Job walks up to him and says, "Sorry about the distractions but could you please wrap it up.  We need to conclude this meeting."

             Will has to think fast.  Then the idea strikes him.  "Sorry people, but I've just been informed that I need to wrap this monkey business up.  The long and short of it is I was always thinking of me, and I was always feeling resentful.  That is what made me an alcoholic.  As long as I live my life in the moment, and for other people, like my family I have now, and I keep going to these meetings, I will stay sober.  If any of you feel like you are filled with resentment, I advise you to just let it go.  Even if you don't forgive your enemies.  Just let it go, people, because resentment will literally kill you.  That is all."

             The two whack-jobs are still going at it.  The meeting adjourns and the first drunk sees five minutes ticked off with a fight.  He tells the second drunk, "Looks like you won.  Here's your five bucks."

             "Can you give me that in ones, please?" says the second drunk.

             "Sure, but I don't see what the big deal is," says the first one.

             "You'll see in a minute," says the second one.

             The first drunk hands the second one five singles, and the two of them shake hands. "It has been a pleasure doing business with you."

             The first drunk furrows his brows at this and watches the second drunk walk over to the two clowns who couldn't behave like civilized adults.  "One for you, and one for you.  Gentleman, it has been a pleasure doing business with both of you."

             The second drunk walks out the door.  The first drunk races to the door and looks out to see the second drunk climbing into a black four door sedan.  "Looks like a brand new car."  They wave to each other as the second guy passes by.

             Remember that lesson though.  LET GO OF RESENTMENT.  Resentment might seem like a good motivator in the short run, but it will eat you alive from the inside out.   Just ask an alcoholic.

 THE END

[thatfragilecapricorn30]

All Things Begin to Appear: Chapter 6

What happens when Scully starts having visions while her and Mulder are hunting a serial killer?

season 5 case file | 30k words | tw: some depictions of violence

One Two Three Four Five 

Read on Ao3

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” – Jonathan Swift

When Scully woke up, she knew it was going to be a bad day. One where, if she could, she would have rather just stayed in bed until the following day. Scully had had a terrible night of sleep, though she couldn’t complain too much because Mulder did as well. She kept having awful dreams, and when Mulder woke her up, she was trembling and out of breath. He ended up waking her up three different times until he gave up going back to his room and just fell asleep next to her. Scully, on the other hand, never really fell back asleep between dreams – she was stuck in a half sleep state until she returned to the dream and was subsequently woken up. She could never remember what she was dreaming, but a feeling of unease and fear followed her after every nightmare. Because of this, her frustration was palpable. She felt like there was something she was supposed to be seeing, something she was supposed to know, but it was just out of grasp. For the first time, Scully wished that a real vision would come to her, so that maybe things would be a little clearer.

It took some mental persuading, but Scully eventually got out of bed to get dressed. She could hear the shower running in Mulder’s room. He wasn’t there when she woke up but she didn’t remember him leaving. Maybe she did finally fall asleep for a little bit. She couldn’t tell though by the way her brain felt foggy and her body felt stiff. She just hoped that she didn’t look as horrible as she felt, even though she was sure that the dark circles under the eyes weren’t going to fool anyone. Too tired to move, Scully waited in her room for Mulder to come find her. He was ready just a few minutes after her and pushed the adjoining door open to beckon for her. He didn’t look that much better than her, his complexion more wan than usual.

“Rough night?” he asked. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or genuinely concerned. It was probably a mix of both.

“I don’t really want to talk about it, Mulder,” she said wearily and it was true. She was too exhausted for any of their usual banter.

Surprisingly, he didn’t respond but instead shook his car keys at her. She got the hint and grabbed her bag to follow him out to the car.

They were silent during the ride, until:

“Scully, you want some coffee or breakfast?” he asked through a yawn.

“No, I’m not hungry,” she answered. She had been able to eat dinner last night, but the dreams brought on a nauseous feeling. She had choked down two antacids after getting dressed and was hoping that they would calm her stomach.

Mulder looked at her strangely, but didn’t comment. She could tell that he was too tired to argue when instead he reached for the radio. The current station was a news one and they were in the middle of a report.

“…A leak from the Cleveland Police Department reveals that the four recent deaths of women across the city are being investigated as the work of a serial killer. The anonymous source tells us that both the regional FBI office and agents from Washington DC are involved, trying to apprehend the suspect before he strikes again. At noon today the chief of police, Randy Dawson, will be giving a press conference in relation to the case…”

Mulder and Scully stared at each other, eyebrows raised. “Well that’s not good,” quipped Mulder.

When they arrived at the precinct, the place was a beehive of activity: phones ringing, people walking back and forth with files in their hands, uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives answering said phones and talking over each other. It was a lot different than the usual quiet that this precinct experienced, at least while Scully had been there. The two agents stood in the lobby, slightly dumbfounded by the sheer noise level.

“What’s going on here?” Mulder asked to himself, seemingly in awe of the hustle and bustle.

Agent Callahan spotted them from behind the counter and called, “Great, you’re here! We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

“And exactly what kind of help is that?” Scully questioned. She knew they were about to be put on some administrative task and wasn’t looking forward to it.

Callahan looked sheepish. “Well we’ve been trying to keep the serial killer angle quiet so as not to scare everyone but someone leaked it to the press.”

Mulder rolled his eyes at that. Scully could only imagine what he was thinking.

Callahan went on, “Now all of Cleveland now knows that there is a serial killer running around and they’re freaking out.”

“And that’s what all the phone calls are about…?” Mulder sounded incredulous.

Callahan grimaced. “No, not exactly. Once the story broke we had to show the public that we’re doing all we can so we set up a tip line. Now the phones have been ringing off the hook for the past hour. We had about a hundred tips to go through. That’s why I’m glad you’re here.”

Scully could hear Mulder internally groan. Even though she understood how important this task could be, she wasn’t going to be excited about the tediousness of sorting through anonymous tips, a large majority of which were probably totally bogus.

Callahan continued, “I won’t put you on the phones but I’d like you two to examine the tips and set aside any that look promising and we can investigate those later this afternoon.”

And that was what they did all morning. As soon as Scully made a dent in some of the tips, there was another pile waiting for her tackle. For every one tip that seemed possibly legitimate, there were ten that were totally unhelpful: provided no useful information (a caller saw a man walk by her apartment the night of the murder but can’t say what he looked like), were obviously pranks (Scully could tell because they spouted off outlandish theories, like the serial killer was possessed by Satan. She wished Mulder would stop calling into these hotlines, she joked to herself) or got important details of the case wrong so as not to be valid (for example, wrong gun used in the crimes). Sorting through the transcribed calls was a little mind-numbing and Scully rubbed her forehead. She could feel the start of a tension headache behind her eyes. She left her hands covering her face, taking a few moments to enjoy the darkness and lack of harsh florescent lights. Something lightweight hit her on the head and she looked through her fingers to see Mulder chuckling to himself. “Wake up, Scully.”

“I’m awake,” she said through a yawn, which negated her statement.

“I’ve only got one decent tip,” he complained.

“Well I hope that wasn’t the one you just threw at me,” Scully retorted.

Mulder didn’t respond, but only waggled his eyebrows at her. He turned back to the lone paper in front of him. Scully had a couple set aside. There were a few in which people claimed their neighbor might be the killer, because he or she was out the night of the murders and “seemed the type.” Normally Scully would scoff at those kinds of assertions, gut feelings or intuition not even registering on what she considered evidence. But this case had changed her perspective and she was feeling a little more open to whatever these people had to contribute. It was better to investigate these claims than sit around waiting for the killer to strike again. She still thought most of the tips were total crap though and wondered who the whistleblower was and why they felt the need to talk to the press.

Scully turned to Mulder. “Do you think this press conference is going to change the way the killer acts? Is it going to be harder to catch him?”

Mulder looked thoughtful. “It depends,” he said carefully. “The killer might be even more cautious when he kills again, so as not to be caught. He might have thought he was flying under the radar because the victims weren’t connected yet. However, it might be what he wants and therefore embolden him. If he gets sloppy, then it will help us.”

“Your profile is coming along real well, huh?” Scully couldn’t help but tease her partner.

“Har har,” Mulder deadpanned. “You try doing a profile with what I’ve got.”

Scully kept her mouth shut, but in her opinion Mulder wasn’t trying very hard because it was obvious he didn’t care about this case.

At that point, Agent Callahan returned to where they were working. He had been at the press conference and looked a little worse for wear. She was sure that the police department got a public flogging for trying to hide that there was a serial killer in Cleveland’s borders.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“About as well as expected,” Callahan sighed. “Everyone is really worried and wanted to know what we’re doing to solve this case. Opening the tip line helped a little, gave folks an outlet and to feel like they’re doing something productive. We just really need to solve the case fast. A serial killer is bad for business: tourism drops, the economy suffers, people lose jobs.”

“Their lives,” Mulder muttered under his breath. Scully hoped that Callahan didn’t hear him.

“Want to take a ride around town?” Callahan asked. “We can check out some of the more legitimate tips you’ve come across. Please tell me there are some legitimate ones,” he smiled.

“A few,” Scully said. “Probably won’t amount to anything but work checking out nonetheless.”

A few hours later, Scully was even more tired. They drove around the city, investigating the tips that were called in. They spoke to alleged “eyewitnesses” to the crimes and talked to those who swore up and down that this or that person was the killer. At the very least, Scully got a nice tour of the city.

They had one last tip to check out, one that Scully had picked. She was in the backseat, resting her eyes while Callahan and Mulder were looking for a spot in which to parallel park. She couldn’t wait to get back, take a hot shower, and go to bed. She longed for deep and dreamless sleep. When Scully felt Callahan put the car in park she opened her eyes, ready for one final push through her exhaustion. They walked up to a brick row home, in a lower middle class neighborhood. They knocked on the door, Scully hoping that whoever answered wasn’t overwhelmed by three FBI agents. Maybe she should have waited in the car and then she could have taken a nap, she thought wistfully.

The door opened about an inch and a face poked out, clearly not wanting to open the door all the way.

“Ma’am, are you Susan Collins?” asked Callahan.

“Yes,” she responded timidly.

“I’m Agent Callahan with the Cleveland Regional FBI Office and these are two of my colleagues.” They all showed her their badges.

“We wanted to go over the details of the tip you called in today,” he continued.

“They told me that the call was confidential,” Ms. Collins stated.

Callahan glanced at the other two agents before turning back to the woman. “The call was confidential but not anonymous since you gave your name. Would you mind if we discussed this more inside?”

She shook her head, her body still mostly obscured by the door. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. What I reported earlier is all that I know.”

Scully stepped forward, since she was the one who had flagged this tip as being potentially legitimate and felt responsible for them being there. “Ma’am, you stated that you thought your neighbor might be involved somehow. That’s a very serious accusation.”

“Like I said, I don’t know much. It’s just a feeling. I know he owns a gun like the one that the killer used and he’s usually out at night. I specifically remember him being out at least one of the nights of the murders because he woke me up around one in the morning and then that poor woman was on the news the next day.”

“Where does he live?” Mulder asked. Ms. Collins nodded her head towards the house across the street. “That one, number 48.” The three turned to look. It looked just like all the other homes on the street, but when Scully saw it, she felt a buzzing start in the back of her head. Her vision doubled slightly but it disappeared when she turned back to Ms. Collins. The lack of sleep is really getting to me, she thought.

“You said that he woke you up on the night of the first murder? What do you mean by that?” Mulder asked.

“He drives a really old car and it makes a lot of noise. I could hear it rattling down the street that night,” she explained. “It’s not there now, but it’s an old Cadillac.”

“What can you tell me about him? His name would be very helpful,” Callahan asked.

“I don’t know his name. He frightens me, so I stay out of his way. I’m pretty sure he’s a renter too. Most of us are. This neighborhood isn’t very nice and most of us keep to ourselves so you’re probably not going to get much more out of anyone else. I can tell you that he’s white, maybe around 50 years old with graying hair and … about six feet tall. But that’s all I know, I’m sorry.” With that, she shut the door.

“Well that was weird,” Mulder stated obnoxiously. The three turned around to walk back to the car.

“Should we knock over there?” Mulder asked Callahan.

“I don’t know; it doesn’t look like he’s home and I want to look into him more before we unintentionally spook him if he is involved. Though, her evidence is pretty flimsy so it’s probably nothing. Don’t want to get a police harassment charge either.”

Scully wanted to say something, but she was staring at number 48 Constitution Street, her eyes drawn to the drab façade, red door and dirty windows. There was something about that house…

The buzzing sensation increased and suddenly she felt very dizzy, like the ground was spinning beneath her feet. Her vision dimmed and she felt her knees buckle. Arms grabbed her, to prevent her from falling all the way to the ground. She knew it was Mulder. It’s okay, Mulder’s here, she thought. Then the world went black.

Read Chapter Seven

[wrestlingisfake]

Rrrrrroyal Rrrrummmblllle preview

30-man Royal Rumble match - This is a gauntlet match where the wrestlers enter at 90-second intervals, and can only be eliminated under battle royal rules.  Elimination occurs when a wrestler exits the ring over the top rope, and both of his feet touch the floor before he can re-enter the ring.  The match ends when all but one wrestler has been eliminated; the last one in the ring is declared the winner.  This year’s winner will receive a title match at Wrestlemania in April, either for Raw’s WWE universal championship or Smackdown’s WWE world heavyweight championship.

So far 22 of the 30 participants have been named: Baron Corbin, Big Cass, Big E, Big Show, Bill Goldberg, Braun Strowman, Bray Wyatt, Brock Lesnar, Cesaro, Chris Jericho, Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, Kofi Kingston, Luke Harper, The Miz, Mojo Rawley, Randy Orton,  Rusev, Sami Zayn, Sheamus, The Undertaker, and Xavier Woods.  That leaves eight slots for surprise entrants, although I figure at least five of those will just be curtain jerkers.

The big story for this year’s Rumble is the continuation of the Brock Lesnar/Bill Goldberg feud.  After spanking Lesnar in under 90 seconds at Survivor Series, Goldberg decided to press his luck and enter the Rumble.  Lesnar, humiliated by the loss, entered the Rumble to seek revenge.  A lot of the hype going into the match is what might happen if these two end up in the ring at the same time.  However, since the logical Wrestlemania match for these two is against each other, it��s a safe bet that neither will actually win the Rumble.  They’re both going to lose, so the only real question is who they’ll take down with them.

The Undertaker is entering the Royal Rumble match for the first time since 2009, which has fueled speculation that he’s going to be in a title match with John Cena or Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania.  I think it’s at least as likely that Taker will be eliminated in this match under circumstances that set up some other Mania program.  If you’re thinking they wouldn’t even put him in this match except to have him win, bear in mind that Taker has been in ten Rumble matches, and the 1 in 1-9 was ten years ago.  It’s not his specialty.

One of the big traditions of modern Rumbles has been expecting someone to show up that wasn’t supposed to be in the building, or even cleared to wrestle.  Finn Balor is supposed to be set to return in March, but I would not put it past WWE to overstate his recovery time or rush him back too early for a shocking return here.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen, though, because many a Rumble match has had the air sucked out of it when people anticipate a surprise that wasn’t even planned.  Similarly, the chances of Kenny Omega jumping from New Japan to WWE on this show are not zero, but not very good either.

The winner of this year’s Rumble is hard to predict, since it depends on so many factors that are up in the air.  If I knew the winner was going to face John Cena at the top of the card, I’d go with Undertaker.  If I knew the winner was going up against AJ Styles or Kevin Owens in the midcard, I’d expect an effort to push some up-and-coming star, like Baron Corbin or Sami Zayn.  If I knew the winner could challenge the champion from the opposite brand, I might think Dean Ambrose vs. Roman Reigns was an intriguing possibility.  But there’s just too much up in the air right now, and that should make the match more fun.

Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns - This is for Owens’s universal championship.  Chris Jericho interfered the last time these two fought for the title, so this time he will spend the duration of the match locked inside a shark cage that will be lifted above the ring with some kind of crane gizmo.  Surely this will prevent Jericho and Owens from cheating!

So basically all you need to know is that around 15 minutes into the match Jericho will drop something through the bars of the cage down to the mat, and Owens will hit Reigns with it to retain the title.  Then everyone will act like Jericho is super-clever and devious for thinking of it.

AJ Styles vs. John Cena - Styles is defending the world championship.  This is, like, the third time Cena has come back from a long absence to immediately jump into a feud with AJ, and it hasn’t worked out very well for him.

I wouldn’t say this is the most pivotal match on the show, but the outcome will tell us a lot about where WWE is headed in 2017.  If AJ beats Cena again, that would seem to cement the “new era” direction of pushing fresher faces and phasing out the stars from five years ago.  It also suggests that, paradoxically, Cena will be in a high-profile non-title match at Wrestlemania, while AJ and the world title will be shuffled further down the Mania card.  If Cena wins, though, he will probably take the championship to a key Mania match, while AJ sinks down into the Mania undercard.  Either guy can recover from a loss here, but the loss would still be pretty symbolic.

I think I have to go with Styles this time, because WWE has a track record in the past few years of keeping the title off of it’s “legend”-class stars, even when it seems counter-productive.

Charlotte Flair vs. Bayley - Charlotte puts the Raw women’s title on the line.  They actually started setting this feud up at Survivor Series, but then they detoured to blow off the Sasha/Charlotte feud once and for all, so now we’re back on track.  I really don’t know why you’d have Bayley’s first title win be at this show, when you could do a longer chase to a bigger show like Wrestlemania.  I figure Charlotte retains.

Rich Swann vs. Neville - Swann’s cruiserweight title is at stake.  Neville turned heel a while back and to be honest I just haven’t been paying attention to the cruiserweights because none of it feels important.  I like that WWE is trying to do this but they’re not doing a particularly smashing job of it.  I kinda don’t care who wins.

Cesaro & Sheamus vs. Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows - Cesaro and Sheamus are defending the Raw tag team championship in the pre-show.  In order for the New Day to have that record-breaking title reign, they had to win all their matches, so now that they’re no longer champions we’re left with the Battle of Teams the New Day Beat Over and Over.  It’s tough to get worked up about this, especially since whichever team wins really won’t have anywhere to go except another match with New Day.  If we’re lucky the wrestling should be good, but it’s in service to a nothing direction.  Kudos to WWE for managing to make Cesaro versus Sheamus a tired feud, and then combine them to produce the “Cesaro versus Sheamus” of tag teams.

Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax - This is scheduled for the pre-show.  Nia is a tol and Sasha is a smol, so it’s very dramatic when Nia beats the ever-loving crap out of Sasha.  I would think this could be really fun, so I can’t believe it’s on the pre-show, as if whatever they’re going to do with, say, the Usos will be more interesting.  I’d like to see Sasha win, but Nia’s been hanging around doing nothing for a long time and she really needs to hurry up and kill somebody.  I’m gonna pick Sasha but Nia has a strongly-worded note to clubber some fools at Fast Lane or whatever.

Alexa Bliss & Mickie James & Natalya vs. Becky Lynch & Nikki Bella & Naomi - This is also for the pre-show, so I guess they think four matches can fill a two-hour undercard.  Mickie recently returned to help Alexa make Becky’s life hell.  Nikki and Natalya have been feuding over...look, at this point I think we can assume every Nikki Bella feud is about the other woman saying “U SUK CENA DIK LOLOL” and leave it at that.  Naomi’s rounding out the match because she hasn’t had shit to do for months.  I’d like to see Naomi kick some ass in this one, but I kinda feel like it’ll be the Becky and Nikki show for now.