#the mall population is mostly groups of teenagers

[the-kneesbees]

the death of shopping malls in favor of strip malls is devastating

[morbid-n-macabre]

This one is local for me. The perpetrators are in my approximate age group, I was 16 when this occurred. Most of us locals who remember when this was going on hold a seething resentment towards this group of punks, and for good reason. Let me tell you why...

So, The Lords of Chaos were a teen militia group who did their very best to terrorize Fort Myers, Florida back in 1996. This crime spree ended with the murder of the very much loved and respected Riverdale Highschool band director, Mr. Mark Schwebes. The teacher was a truly good and decent human being who went out of his way to help the kids around him. Sadly, his killers knew this and used it to their advantage.

The Lords of Chaos lived in one of the more remote areas of Lee County, a place called Buckingham. The group consisted of teenagers with ridiculous nicknames: Kevin Foster was the leader who referred to himself as "God" (yep, the sociopath had a bit of a God complex), Pete Magnotti was "Fried", Derek Shields was called "Mob", and Chris Black was a bigger boy referred to as " Slim". Those 4 were the main members of the gang, but there were others who were less involved: Thomas "Dog" Torrone, Chris "Red" Burnett, and Craig Lesh. The only one in the group to have a criminal record was their leader, Kevin, albeit mostly driving offenses. His parents owned a local pawnshop so Kevin had access to an arsenal of weapons which he was apparently not taught to respect; the weapon which would be used to commit murder, a 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun with an equipped suppressor, had been a Christmas gift when he was just 13. Kevin is described as charismatic, homophobic, racist, and bigoted; he was enamored with the cult leader David Koresh, serials he'd seen on television like Norman Bates, outlaws such as Billy the Kid, and the homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh. Kevin wanted to do something big to catch a name for himself, he wanted a reputation; the rest of the group had no problem with following his lead.

This group's crime spree appears to have begun at the end of March when they stole a couple of Jeep Cherokees. They drove the new vehicles out to Lehigh Acres and set them on fire, just sat and watched them burn. Next, Kevin filled a Coke can with something which resembled gun powder and attached wires to it with duct tape; said can was placed on a shelf in a Walmart pharmacy. Kevin then called the store and told the employee who answered that there was a bomb inside; panicked shoppers were evacuated, police flocked to the store, it was a mess. This group did their best to destroy everything they could; they spent their time searching for things to steal, random windows to break, or places to set fire to.

On the evening of April 13th the Lords of Chaos decided to vandalize and rob a restaurant called The Hut. This restaurant happened to have an outdoor patio where customers would sit and eat, and there were two beautiful macaw parrots kept in a large cage. When Kevin heard the two macaw parrots talking, he decided to light them on fire. Macaws are not stupid animals, they're very intelligent parrots with a lifespan which rivals ours. Thankfully one of the birds did somehow survive this, but it lost its mate.

At midnight on April 20th Kevin decided to do something big, it was the anniversary of the Waco siege. The group drove to a historical landmark, our Coca-Cola bottling plant, one of the only original bottling plants in Florida. While Kevin carefully filled a soda can with gunpowder and stuck a 25 foot fireworks fuse inside of it, his buddies strategically placed stolen propane tanks all around the building; they carefully ensured that once Kevin's bomb went off, the whole building would blow. Once it was all set up, the teens sat in a safe spot across the street and watched the explosion; firefighters did their best to put out the fire, but our beloved historical building was lost.

So, it's probably obvious that all of this really upset people, by this point the entire county was beyond angry! A local reporter wrote an article about the ongoing vandalism, and said article was very insulting towards the group of punks who were responsible for these terrible acts. The group read this article, and it only added fuel to the fire, so to speak. In turn, they wrote a manifesto which they had intended to mail off to our local newspaper, the News Press. For whatever reason the manifesto was never sent; nevertheless, it read in part:

"Lee County is dealing with a formidable foe, with high caliber intelligence, balls of titanium alloy, and a wicked destructive streak. Be prepared for destruction of biblical proportions, for this is the coming of a NEW GOD, whose fiery hand shall lay waste to the populous.

THE GAMES HAVE JUST BEGUN, AND TERROR SHALL ENSUE..."

The spree continued with the robbery of a woman named Emory Shields; Emory was not only the owner of a small restaurant called Alva Country Diner, but she had been one of the teen's landlord. After robbing Ms. Shields, they stole her vehicle. At one point the gang took a trip to the Edison mall in hopes of stealing some clothing. They attempted to let off a grenade inside Dillard's, but thankfully it was a dud. Next, Kevin and his buddies decided to attend Grad Nite, which is a big deal for highschool seniors because they get to run around Disney World throughout the night. Kevin had a plan to steal one of the character suits and shoot up Disney, to kill as many teenagers as possible, but thankfully he chickened out.

On April 30th the teenagers drove to their own school, Riverdale, with the intention of trashing it. They stole several things, set off multiple fire extinguishers, then filled up a bottle of bleach with gas and threw it though the highschool's auditorium window. Riverdale's beloved band director, 32 year old Mr. Mark Schwebes, caught the group outside. He confiscated all of the items which they had stolen from the school, and threatened to tell the resource officer. Kevin knew that once the vandalism inside the school was discovered, the teacher would put two and two together and the group would be busted; he decided that the band teacher had to die before that could happen.

The teens found Mr. Schwebes phone number and address by calling 411. They dialed the teacher first, to ensure that they'd obtained the correct information; after hearing Mr. Schwebes voice, Kevin, Pete, Derek, and Chris Black all jumped in their vehicle and drove over. Kevin knew that the teacher would answer his door for a student he recognized, and since Derek had been a member of the band, that's who was sent knocking. At approximately 11:30 pm the teacher opened the door for his student, and Kevin immediately shot him in the face with his aforementioned 12 gauge. It's said that Mr. Schwebes probably never knew what hit him. When the teacher hit the ground, Kevin shot him once more, this time in the buttocks because he wrongly assumed Mr. Schwebes to be homosexual. The group didn't even bother to pick up the spent shells, they just left them at the scene.

There's really no telling what else would have happened or who else would've been hurt or killed had this group not been caught when they did; it's said that they had been planning to rob a local Hardee's restaurant when they were finally caught. Thankfully they were braggarts, and one of the teen's girlfriends couldn't keep the secret, she went to the police.

Craig and Brad faced no charges, while Tom and Chris Burnett both took deals; they plead guilty to lesser crimes and received very little punishment in exchange for their testimony against the main members of the group.

Chris Black, Derek Shields, and Pete Magnotti all pled guilty to first degree murder. Pete received 32 years imprisonment while Chris and Derek are serving life. The only one of the group to go to trial was Kevin Foster. On June 17th of 1998 Kevin was sentenced to death; he has appealed his conviction, but recently it was undecided if the penalty would stick. From what I understand there was a new trial in which Kevin blamed his upbringing for his actions and asked that his own life be spared. It was decided that Kevin will ultimately be put to death by the state of Florida.

*I think it was Dateline which aired a two hour special on this case, I would link it if I could find it. This special kinda irked me because, idk, it almost seemed like the man who covered it fell in love with Kevin. It made the small-time gang leader out to be more than he was, like he was this highly manipulative cult leading criminal mastermind, which just wasn't the case. Kevin wasn't well known, there was no big following, he was not a force to be reckoned with. In all actuality Kevin Foster was a nobody until he and his buddies came up with a menacing name, vandalized our city, burnt parrots alive, and murdered an unsuspecting teacher who would've kicked his butt had he not been ambushed. If you're interested in knowing more, there's a really decent book about the case, "Someone Has to Die Tonight" which is worth the read.

Sorry for the opinions on this one. This whole case upsets me, and if you know me at all then you are already aware that I am a parrot person. Some obsess over cats, other dogs, for me it's parrots; I have 6 of them. My husband is still ticked off about the Coca-Cola plant.

This is a link to Mr. Schwebes sibling's blog. She's a Rabbi, and these are her feelings about the murder, and the new penalty trial which Mark's family has recently had to endure-

https://barefootpreachr.wordpress.com/category/thats-life/mark-schwebes/page/2/

[taohua-shuohua]

July 16th & 17th, 2018

As the program marches on—we’ve only a week left on the Xiamen University campus; after the 26th we live with our host families for two weeks before leaving for a half-week in Beijing and ultimately a return flight to Newark—the combination of time and energy necessary to write for my blog becomes harder and harder to scrounge up. I expect many future posts will be large chunks of time rather than single days. I expect this news, while welcomed by my mother, to be slightly less-favored by my roommates, who will be hearing the clicking of my keys for the two hours.

July the 16th was buzzing with nervous energy. That afternoon was set to be occupied by our first-ever on-site oral proficiency exam, an interview conducted by a program teacher who was not our own designed to measure our grasp of the topics we’d covered so far in the class. My Chinese class timeslot of nine to eleven-fifty in the morning was spent entirely on review for the test. There were seven possible topics: self-introduction, our recent trip to Shanghai, the history of Xiamen University and its campus layout, Xiamen’s climate compared to that of our hometowns, non-academic pursuits the NSLI-Y program offered, ordering food in a restaurant, and an activity where we would be shown a four-panel comic without dialogue and have to extrapolate and dictate a story from them; we would randomly be asked about three to four of the seven. As we broke for lunch, I was feeling confident about all except food ordering.

Like usual, I attended Dr. Chen’s history lecture and my folk dance lesson. Suddenly, 3:30 in the afternoon (and thus the testing period) was upon us. Students were assigned to teachers and given an order to go in, and told to wait in the hallway. Twenty-eight students in a tight space doing last-minute preparation for an exam is never a relaxing experience. I was to be the 2nd student tested by Ma Laoshi, who normally teaches the Intermediate I class section, and, in an attempt to soothe myself, reasoned that because she taught beginners, she was more likely to speak slower and thus be easier to understand. As the testing began, chaperones called for Ma Laoshi’s first student. No one gave any indication that they had been hailed. Another call, another period of awkward silence. There was a shuffling of paper, and Ma Laoshi’s second student was invited into the room. My time to shine.

I didn’t end up having to talk about ordering food. In fact, I pretty much hit the jackpot. After a self-introduction (name, hometown, grade, family members, past Chinese experience), I spoke for about a minute and a half each on tourist spots in Shanghai, buildings and landmarks in XMU, and my visit to the Xiamen Foreign Language School. Overall, I was feeling excellent about my performance. The best part? Once each student had completed their exam (which, for me, was by 3:45), they were free to enjoy the rest of the day at their own discretion. The only other scheduled activity was a shopping trip to Zhongshan Road, a popular commercial street near the university, and that was reserved for the groups that had won “Group of the Week” through a system of points awarded or taken away based on behavior. A few days prior, program officials had announced that Groups 4 and 5 had won for that week and should meet in the lobby at 5:30 on the 16th. I was in Group 1, so I was already planning a quiet evening in, possibly writing another blog post. My plans were (welcomingly) shattered, however, around 5:50, by my group leader’s frantic yelling in the corridor outside my room, alternating between my name and “小女儿” (xiǎo nǚér; little daughter, a nickname I received as part of an elaborate inside joke). Once I opened the door, he hurriedly informed me that there had been an error—it was us who had won Group of the Week, not Group 4, and the group needed to assemble in the front of the building in the next five minutes so we could reap our reward. I was mostly-prepared, and was able to hustle down to the bottom floor and join my cohort. People were overjoyed—we had previously mused that Group 1 (the official name of which is 黑龙 (hēi lóng; Black Dragons) had been completely robbed of our title after consistently performing in group activities. And now we were vindicated.

I spent the ride on the public bus—around twenty minutes—chatting with another group member. Once we arrived, an issue became apparent—since none of us had known we were going until it was time to leave, none of us had seen any reason to eat so early in the evening. Luckily, there was a McDonald’s right across the street from the bus stop. There’s simply no better way to remind oneself of the beauty of American culture. After our meal, we elected to make a detour through a few smaller streets before hitting a central shopping mall. I purchased some souvenirs for family and, once we reached the mall, three eyeshadows palettes that cost almost twice what they do in the U.S., but came with three free hats. Our final stop was a Chinese department store. I was able to find jeans that fit me—good news, as I had neglected to pack any long pants, as well as a dress and two shirts. My one hiccup was that the store, despite our having been told that stores in malls would generally accept credit cards, didn’t accept American cards. I had almost enough in cash in my wallet, and Ren Laoshi paid the remainder through WeChat Pay, which seems to be the largest component of China’s day-to-day economy. Concerned that the public buses’ schedules wouldn’t be able to accommodate the time we needed to be home, chaperones divided us into groups of three and sent us, each group accompanied by a chaperone, onto a series of taxis. I arrived back on campus a little before ten, and spent the night in a gossip session with my roommates. I went to bed late—a poor choice, especially given the agenda for tomorrow, but it would’ve taken a lot more than falling asleep at 12:30 to bring my mood down.

On the morning of the 17th of July, NSLI-Y students boarded a bus to the city of Quanzhou, about an hour-and-a-half’s ride out of Xiamen. The theme for the excursion, as our tour guide impressed upon us, was Quanzhou’s status in China as a cultural melting pot. The now-metropolitan city’s origins lay in the fact that it was the eastern end of the Maritime Silk Road. As a result of this, it had a lot of exposure to non-Buddhist religions, notably Islam; Dr. Chen informed us that Quanzhou is home to a large amount of Muslim Chinese, most of them descended from Arab traders who originally settled there during the time of the Silk Road. Our first stop, however, wasn’t a mosque—it was Kaiyuan Buddhist temple, intricately large and dotted with phoenix trees, the official city tree of Xiamen. Incense was free, three sticks per person; after exploring the area, I joined Song Laoshi and Wu Laoshi, two chaperones, in praying to the Buddha. It went significantly better than my first time using incense in Shanghai’s Jade Buddha Temple, where I burned my hand by accident. Flesh intact, I extinguished my sticks in the ash provided and joined the rest of the group, which was assembling to depart for lunch.

Lunch was served banquet style at a round table, a refreshing change from Xiamen cafeteria’s ever-crowded buffet. After its conclusion, we boarded the bus once more, this time headed to Guandi Temple and Qingjing Mosque, the latter a house of worship for the city’s aforementioned Muslim population and the former specializing, we were told, in fulfilling the prayers of those seeking love.

Guandi Temple is directly adjacent to a market area where people were selling the usual jade bracelets and Mao Zedong busts, as well as some more eccentric caged birds and porn magazines. Once again, I joined Song Laoshi in praying. Afterwards, the two of us made our way to Qingjing Mosque, where the rest of the program had already clumped outside the entrance. They weren’t going in, however—the short shorts and sleeveless tops worn by the majority of the students, while useful for fending off Quanzhou’s heat, meant we were barred from entry to the mosque. It made sense in retrospect, but was still a bit disappointing, and I was surprised no program coordinators had realized it beforehand. We boarded on the bus once more, this next ride lasting not even ten minutes. We’d reached our final pair of destinations, the Quanzhou Maritime Museum and the separate but closely-positioned Arabic Museum. The Maritime Museum featured a beautiful collection of maps and early ship designs that originated from or docked in Quanzhou. The caveat, however, was that once you had spent about fifteen minutes walking through the small exhibit hall, you had seen the entirety of the museum. By some combination of fate and good fortune, the museum was also hosting two other student groups at the time: similar but unrelated programs where teenagers of Chinese descent could enjoy a “roots-finding” trip to the country, one based out of Canada and the other out of Australia. We intermingled for a bit; I learned that Australians call cantaloupe “rockmelon”, which is easily the biggest dose of culture shock I’ve received so far in the entire experience. Following the Maritime Museum, we visited the Arabic Museum, where we were greeted by a statue of Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta and a large amount of grave stones. Once again, however, the museum didn’t house enough materials to keep us occupied for the allotted hour and a half, and my peers boarded the bus while I was in the bathroom. I wasn’t left behind, thankfully, and didn’t even lose my team any points, so perhaps another shopping trip is in our near future. I’ll be sure to pen an update if I do.

[ndrv3ultimateimagines]

NDRV3 Boys reacting to their S/O giving an angry rant.

I apologize for getting this out a bit later than I usually do, as I was a bit busy over the weekend but I hope you enjoy this imagine nonetheless!

-Mod Saihara

Korekiyo Shinguji

As the weather was nice that day, Korekiyo suggested that you both take a short walk around the park as you both had nothing to do that day. You two were both having a nice chat when a young boy came up to you both and asked you both could find his mother.

Feeling pity for the lost child, he agreed as you both walked around the park in an effort to find the boy’s mother. After a few minutes, the boy’s face lit up as he began to shout for his mother. A woman in a distance suddenly came towards you and as she came closer you noticed a look of fury on her face.

She had quickly come up you three before pushing the boy behind her back, calling Korekiyo a creep and to stop messing with her son. When he merely mentioned that he was trying to help him, she simply insisted on calling a creep and telling him to stay away. At the same time, she was trying to hush her son who was trying to explain the situation.

Soon enough you burst out, telling to the woman to listen to your boyfriend as he was trying to help the boy find her. You began to rant, mentioning how it was his kindness that had reunited her with her son and how she should be thankful rather than call him a creep. Soon your words became less about the situation and more about how amazing Korekiyo was and how you would never trade him for anyone else.

By the end of your rant, the woman looked fluster, grabbing her son by the sleeve before telling him to leave you both alone. However, the boy had shot you a sympathetic look before he was dragged away, eyes conveying the apology he would never be able to say.

Korekiyo looked at you for a second, admiring the one he loved the most. Despite how angry you were with the woman, he couldn’t help but find your willingness to defend him so amazing. The raw emotion that had taken over your senses when you ranted towards the woman only caused him to fall in love with you further, knowing that you were willing to do such an act for him

After you had calmed down, he had expressed his love for you, mentioning how he appreciate what you said to the woman. He mentions how he thought that you were the most beautiful person, both appearance and personality wise, he had ever met, thankful to have a significant other just like you.

Kiibo

As you had run out of groceries, you were heading to the supermarket to buy more food for the week. Kiibo had also decided to tag along, wondering what it was like to be looking for food despite being unable to eat himself. Mostly this trip was just Kiibo pushing the shopping cart around while you inspected for anything that appealed to you.

You both were heading down the fresh produce section, you heard a shout. The shout had come from a group of teenagers, who pointed and laughed at Kiibo who was by your side. They had taunted him with “robophobic” words, mentioning how a robot shouldn’t be grocery shopping and instead of working as It didn’t take long for Kiibo to try to shoot back a response but in return, the teenagers’ comments only grew more vicious.

Suddenly you just snapped, immediately raising your voice mentioning how Kiibo was more civilized and human than people who would be willing to put down a robot simply because he was aiding you with human tasks. You then began to talk about how human Kiibo truly was and how he was able to feel love and care for you, and how he was very considerate compared to most humans, adding in several comments of how much he means to you.

As you continued to rant, you felt a hand on your shoulder and had heard Kiibo telling you that your rant had driven those teenagers away. You soon found yourself drawn into a hug as you heard your boyfriend thanking you for standing up to them. Kiibo was growing more frustrated with his inability to stop the taunting and was touched by your actions.

At that moment, he truly felt human as you mentioned all of the characteristics that had distinguished him between a mindless robot and one with a growing AI just like him. Kiibo was happy to be seen as a human being by someone other than Professor Idabashi, and it had strengthened his sense of confidence.

Once he let go of the embrace, he took your hand in his and asked if you still wanted to go grocery shopping with him. As if this encounter had never happened, the two of you continued your shopping hand in hand.

Kaito Momota

On your birthday, Kaito had taken you to a nice restaurant for dinner as a special treat. The atmosphere was nice and calm as you two enjoyed your meals on the patio, with the dim light of the candle softly illuminating your faces. As both of you were talking, you heard a loud commotion coming from the other side of the patio

A very large and drunken man had just stumbled into the patio from the bar and was causing a disruption. While you were both trying to ignore the man, it was clear that Kaito was getting a bit annoyed. After a few moments of the man stumbling and generally being a pain, he got out of his seat to talk to the man.

Unfortunately for him, the man’s drunken mind merely caused him to curse out at Kaito. He had called him several insulting names. After hearing how the man mentioning something insulting about his dating life, you had enough. Heading in their direction, you confronted the man yourself after pushing Kaito behind your back.

While your argument would have possibly been stronger if you were calm, your mind was too clouded with rage to even consider the possibility as you introduced yourself to his significant other and had emphasized upon how much you loved him. You had begun to talk about all of Kaito’s positive traits while listing the multiple times he had contributed to your life.

The words the drunken man was not spewing to you barely reached your ears as you continued ranting. However you weren’t the only one who got annoyed, Kaito too had joined in before trying to defend you from what the man said. By the time the manager came, you both were yelling about how much you loved each other to the man.

Due to the other customer’s bearing witness to the man’s behavior along with your own accounts, the man was thrown out of the restaurant due to causing a disruption. While the manager wasn’t too keen on both of your rants merely fanning the flames, he decided to let you go as you weren’t the ones who started the mess.

Kaito had thanked you for standing up for him, although he assured you he didn’t need help. He simply was unable to bear hearing others insult you as well and had stepped in due to his annoyance as well. Sharing a quick kiss, both of you would eventually return back to your meal which thankfully would not be interrupted again.

Kokichi Ouma

It isn’t surprising that Kokichi has many enemies considering his compulsive lies. Yet despite that, you had loved him. As he was following you around one day to the mall, you’ve noticed from the corner of your eye a person following you around, almost as if they were trying to tail you. However, you’ve ignored it, thinking it was a coincidence.

But as you left Kokichi alone for a few moments to use the restroom, you heard a gruff voice outside talking to him, and when you went outside you were greeted by the sight of a man backing him up into a corner, mentioning how he was going to make Kokichi regret ever existing. Immediately you went to his defense, placing your body in the middle of them both.

After refusing to move despite how menacing his threats were, he merely scoffed, making comments about how you were risking your life just for some lying asshole like Kokichi. As soon as those words left his mouth you began to yell at the man, mentioning how he was more than just someone who lied.

You raised your voice, almost yelling at the man about how intelligent and how much you loved Kokichi. As you began to ramble on and on, it had attracted attention from the others who had been shopping. Soon people crowded around, bearing witness to the man cornering you both. Realizing the attention you had brought, the man hastily left, mentioning how he will make you both pay one day.

After a few moments and when the bystander’s attention was moved away, Kokichi later talked you in private, mentioning how he could have defended himself and that you didn’t need to back him up. However, from the tone of his voice, you were unsure whether he was telling the truth or lying. But regardless he admits he appreciated your defense, making it clear he wasn’t lying.

Despite this small detour to your trip to the mall, you both continued your shopping. It was clear that you both were more careful now, choosing to stay near the more populated areas. For the rest of the trip, you found Kokichi clinging to your arm, claiming it was just in case the man came back so he could defend you from him. Whether that was a lie or not, you were certain that you loved your boyfriend.

Rantaro Amami

You have known that one of the more popular boys at your school had fallen for you after you had started to date Rantaro and had become a bit obsessive, outright stalking the two of you whenever you would go out for a date. While he did try to keep himself inconspicuous, Rantaro had always seemed to see through his covers.

Ultimately, one day as you were walking home with Rantaro, he had come up to you and asked you out on a date, completely ignoring your boyfriend who was standing right next to you. When you mentioned that you were already taken, he laughed before mentioning how Rantaro was a terrible choice for a boyfriend and how he could be a better boyfriend than Rantaro would be able to.

While you continued to turn down his advances, mentioning how you were already in a happy relationship he became increasingly persistent. As Rantaro had tried to rationalize with the boy, calmly asking him to stop asking you out when you had said no, his advances quickly turned into insults and mockery towards his personality and appearance. Upon seeing the distressed look on his face, you burst out.

Angrily, you began to talk about how Rantaro would be a better boyfriend than he would. You mentioned how your love for him was already set in stone, and how he had brought you happiness every single day. Finding yourself unable to stop rambling about how amazing he was, it appeared that the boy had finally understood that he stood no chance before deciding to leave in anger.

Once he had calmed you down, Rantaro had told you that you didn’t need to speak out against him and how he wasn’t bothered by his insults, but rather simply overwhelmed that he was unable to have a conversation without insults. He was greatly appreciative of your defense for him though, mentioning how what you said had made him feel as if he was the happiest man alive.

Realizing that the stalker problem had finally been dealt with, both of you continued your walk home, finally able to enjoy some alone time between you two, knowing that you no longer would have a stalker tailing the both of you.

Shuichi Saihara

You didn’t know Shuichi had a bully until you came face to face with them yourself. Both of you were talking in front of your classroom before school had started when another person your age would approach you. As you thought it was simply another classmate trying to get to your seat, you ignored it however you’ve noticed that as they were approaching he became increasingly nervous.

They interrupted your conversation, mentioning how they thought it was astounding how he found someone willing to tolerate his presences. As he shrunk back a little, he quietly asked them to leave him alone but they continued to pester him, making mentions about how he didn’t deserve his title as the Ultimate Detective and how he is simply a failure. As the bully continued to push Shuichi’s buttons, even more, he had tried to defend himself, only to have them use whatever he said against him.

As you tried to ask them to back off from him as well, they merely ignored you while making comments about how he didn’t deserve to have someone like you dating him and how you were out of his league. Despite practically making these comments to your face, they continued to ignore your comments until they outright mentioned how pathetic he was getting someone who simply dated him out of pity.

Unable to contain your rage any longer, you began to proclaim loudly about how your love for him was real and how he was one of the most important people in your life. You angrily pointed out that compared to some bully who picked on others due to their low self-confidence, Shuichi was far more successful and had deserved his title, backing up your claims with his solved case. Soon your words became praises for Shuichi, mentioning how amazing he was.

By the time you had finished with your rant, the bully had already left, although it is uncertain whether they left as the teacher was approaching or due to the fact you had driven them off. But Shuichi would later tell you that they would no longer bully him, rather ignoring him whenever they met.

He would later tell you that your rant that day had made him more confident in himself. Knowing he had your support, he was able to hold his head higher. Although he wouldn’t admit it, he did become a little scared of you knowing that you could once again get enraged like that in an instance. Thankfully he knew that your rage would most likely be directed somewhere else.

Gonta Gokuhara

You knew despite Gonta’s intimidating appearance, he was a sweetheart who wouldn’t hurt a fly (he’s an entomologist, of course, he wouldn’t hurt a fly). While it was common for other people to be discouraged to approach him due to this, it was equally common for strangers to be pleasantly surprised once they interact with him for the first time. However, some people remained unpleasant after discovering it.

You had known that Gonta had made new friends with a girl who had also shared his interested in insects. While you had thought nothing about it at first, you’ve noticed that he seemed less like his usual self, talking to others less, overhearing how he would never be a gentleman to himself and once even telling you that he wasn’t a worthy boyfriend for someone like you. Upon further asking him, you discovered the “friend” he had made was telling him all of this whenever he would meet with her.

The next time Gonta had met with the friend, he asked if you would come along. However, it was clear that while you were around, she would never say anything terrible to Gonta. But after returning from a short bathroom break, you had overheard the friend talking to Gonta, calmly reciting what he has been telling you. The last straw was when she had told Gonta that the only reason you were even dating him because you pitied him for having such a terrible upbringing

Furious, you immediately confronted the friend, telling her that what she said was a lie, making it clear you love Gonta and were dating him because of that. Then you proceeded to expose all of her comments, defending Gonta, mentioning how he would soon be able to be a gentleman if it weren’t for her discouraging comments. Your rant soon turned into one full of encouraging words, telling Gonta that it is okay if he isn’t one now but is making progress.

As your rant continued without a sign of stopping, his friend stormed off, possibly angered by what she had heard. After you both were sure that she had left, Gonta embraced you as the flow of encouraging words merely increased. You told him how she wasn’t a real friend and how there were other people unlike her that were much better friends than she would be.

Gonta found himself unable to do anything but cry at the moment. Not only had your words made him believe in himself again, but it had given him the courage to understand that despite her love for bugs, she truly was a bad person. He had needed to hear those words for a long time, and while you were a bit scary while delivering these words, it had made him happy to hear it.

It was only a few days after the incident when Gonta had found a new friend. This time, the friend was kind and gentle, treating him gently and complimenting him on his knowledge of bugs. Once you met this friend, it was clear that she would be a far better friend than the previous one would be.

Ryoma Hoshi

Ryoma was a criminal and you had accepted that knowing that he has moved on and was beginning his step towards what redemption he had via parole. However, it didn’t stop the general public, who had heard rumors, from being afraid of him. However, he had often insisted that he deserved this behavior and even encouraging it.

It had almost appeared that undercover police, typically the newer and inexperienced recruits, were tailing you both, watching him to see if he would cause any trouble despite the fact that he was on parole and there was already strict monitoring in place. While most have left you alone, knowing that under their watch he wouldn’t cause any trouble, but there were sometimes several police officers who made it clear that they were onto him if they caused any trouble.

Once when you both were heading to the animal shelter to help with the kitten adoption event that was happening that day, there was a car that was obviously tailing you both. Upon arriving at the animal shelter and beginning to help out, the same man in the car had come in and begun to audibly talk to the person in charge, asking if she knew that she had allowed a criminal to be near the cats and later kids which would come.

Tired of hearing these words, you simply faced the policeman before telling him how despite Ryoma’s criminal past, he was truly trying to change for the better. However, your rational argument soon deteriorated as you began to simply tell the officer how amazing he is and how you had loved him despite everything.

The policeman had looked flustered as you ended your rant. Unable to do anything as you didn’t commit any crime, he simply told you both that he would continue to watch you both before storming out. While Ryoma did tell you that it wasn’t necessary for you to tell him off for simply trying to be careful, it was clear he was grateful for your rant even if he didn’t make it very clear that he did.

While the policeman did keep his promise of keeping watch on you both, he no longer got into the way of your everyday activities. Both of you had learned to ignore his presence and upon confirming that Ryoma would not be involved in any crime, he would eventually leave you both be. Finally, both of you would be able to enjoy a life without being watched.

[lunaspatial400]

The expansive volume of ‘malls’. What else can they be used for? Non-commercial

Courtenay Central has been used as a smaller shopping centre type thing. Most recently being one that had mainly food trucks. Even though it isn’t a full size shopping mall, more like a galleria, arcade, shopping complex, whatever you like to call it. It still has this interesting large, indoor space. Large indoor spaces can be found within other spaces such as hospitals, libraries, museums, galleries, theatres, train stations etc.. 

There are still many issues of exclusivity within these places, but do they hold potential in becoming a public domain? Could Courtenay Central, using it’s large volume, become something like one of these places? Or some whole new kind of public domain?

Back in 1954 when Victor Gruen designed the ghastly ‘shopping mall’, consumer culture changed forever. Malls were to begin with, very popular. They were exciting, a place for the community, first indoor climate controlled spaces, which had things like security, laundromats, post offices, children’s playgrounds, ice-skating rinks and even chapels. The realisation of how detrimental mixing cultural, social community activity with consumerism was felt in the end. The shopping mall also began to have problems with issues like exclusivity. Elements of the shopping mall made it evident that parts of it’s design was to eliminate certain groups from these social spaces. Around this time was during the progression of the Civil Rights Movement. There was a large shift of white population to suburbs ‘suburban sprawl’, whilst more blacks were moving to urban areas. Shopping malls eradicated the need to travel downtown, or was it just as much to keep people away? Then at the malls there were extensive carparks, and although by 1970s half of Americans owns cars, less than a third of low income families did. Bus routes for visitors to the mall were minimal and the ones that did exist were mostly structured for women in close suburbs, not low-income visitors from urban areas.

As time went on came the new youth culture of shopping malls. They became a place to hang out and ‘chill’, flooded with loitering teenagers. The Courtenay Central complex kind of became this too, it was popular as a youth hangout. But what kind of space can bring other demographics in?

Reuse Strategies of Dead Shopping Malls / Ali Buğra Sarıakçalı1, Kunter Manisa

This essay was helpful in discussing possibilities of large spaces, in this case shopping malls of America. After the first shopping centre was invented, they because to vary in size, quality, space and organisation. In the case of Courtenay Central, it is more like ‘small shopping complex’, but still holds very similar characteristics of a mall. Not many windows, not many access points, consumeristic, temperature controlled, the tacky style of ‘imitating an outdoor streetscape’ with trees, tables etc. According to the ICSC (International Council Of Shopping Centers) however, it is classified as a department centre, or a specialty centre / leisure entertainment centre when the cinema is included. When shopping malls begin to decline because people stop going to them for a number of reasons (eg, newer better ones in a closely area with better shops, technology and design, new demographics, change in consumer behaviour, ecommerce, location choice, mix of retail choice) they begin to create dead spaces. In this case, Courtenay Central has not been affected much by those, it is in a great spot, it used to be quite busy, but it has become a dead space due to a history of earthquakes. However there are possible ways to redevelop the space of a shopping mall into something else.

“Continuous development process of technological, social and cultural developments generates new forms and functions, therefore building are also affected. Functions and buildings that cannot adopt the fresh development of social structures, face the danger of extinction”(Sarıakçalı & Manisa 850)

What other functions could this large volume have?

There are many ‘dead shopping malls’ in the US that have undergone successful adaptive reuse projects and taken on new functions, including hospitals, university dorms and campuses, accomodation, churches, mixed use facilities, hotels.

What could Courtenay Central’s large space function as? In the sense that it acts as a public domain?

Above is a diagram from the essay describing ways that a large space building’s can be added or subtracted to through adaptive reuse. Another simple way is by increasing access points.

The essay describes how elements of even a small/medium size mall such as their size (still very large scale, with large dimensions and volume) make them hard to repurpose into a single use function. Their volume must be considered, and this is the case for Courtenay Central. "A shopping mall that has lost its function can also be used to meet the multiple needs of the community”(Sarıakçalı & Manisa 855). In this case we can respond to the needs of the Wellington community where “repurposing” with “with mixed functions will revitalize the immediate surroundings”(Sarıakçalı & Manisa 855).

“In terms of reusing a dead shopping mall, it is important that finding a new function nearly similar zoning scenarios of existent plans. That way, there will be less interventions to the building and the costs associated with it will be reduced”(Sarıakçalı & Manisa 856).

Malls, department stores, entertainment/leisure centres and any large volume space are sometimes hard to reuse in terms of their physicality and architectural elements. However in this sense, they also provide many possibilities to contribute to the surrounding area if looked at opportunistically. Courtenay Central provides a ground floor area great for accessibility and connections with surroundings, it is at the centre of a thriving entertainment district, it is fairly modular, among other opportunities. Aspects of shopping mall adaptive reuse projects can definitely be applied in some way here to meet the needs of the Wellington community.

“Reuse of dead shopping malls should be supported and encouraged for communities useful functions. The results that schematized in this study, are designed to formulate solution proposals for future dead spaces and utilizable to create better urban areas”(Sarıakçalı & Manisa 857).

MLA:

Sarıakçalı, Ali Buğra, and Kunter Manisa. “REUSE STRATEGIES OF DEAD SHOPPING MALLS.” Adaptive Reuse of Dead Shopping Malls, 2018, pp. 849–858., http://www.ocerint.org/intcess18_e-publication/papers/400.pdf.

[scottgw62]

New Post has been published on https://coachscottworswick.com/lets-check-out-cambodia/

Let's check out Cambodia

After around 19 months in Thailand I felt it was time to look for new pastures and decided to move to Cambodia.  Some of you may be thinking, ‘What!! why would he do that’, moving from one of the most developed countries in Asia, to a very small and under developed country without the many facilities offered by a more advanced nation.

Stay tuned and I’ll let you know.

So I arrived in Phnom Penh the capital of Cambodia traveling by coach, an experience in itself!

Some of the roads were filled with deep pits and holes and it had been raining so muddy too, however we eventually arrived safely in Phnom Penh in the late evening in October 2014.

Fortunately, after only a short walk I was able to find a hotel for temporary accommodation while looking for a job and a more permanent apartment.

It did not take long to acquire a new position and I started work as a Tutor for a company run by an English owner. This involved some one on one tutoring and some small group work with local companies, again at a fairly low level. I continued working here until I met a guy in a local bar one evening and he told me about a language school run by IDP called ACE (Australian Centre for Education) and that I should apply there.

I suppose I should add a rather funny story (although not so funny for me at the time), one day my boss invited me to meet for lunch this was about 2 hours before my lesson with a Korean guy, very good in English but he wanted to improve even more and learn many of the idioms we have in English as well as converse with a native speaker. Anyway so at lunch my boss ordered some pizza and we had a pleasant time eating and drinking. However, unknown to me was the fact that this was commonly known as a ‘happy pizza’ in other words it was laced with cannabis.

I now had to proceed to my lesson with an executive client who spoke very good English and try to provide a good session. But that was not to be, I found myself feeling very drowsy and unable to concentrate eventually after about 30 to 40 min’s he ended the class. I’m sure he must have realised what had happened, but I put it down to not feeling very well. For me a terrible experience, as I would never drink or take mild drugs like that knowing I had a lesson to do, but quite funny looking back. What a boss right!!       

 This I did and after an interview, I was accepted to stat in a new branch in an area known as Toul Tom Poung. It was a brand new building with about 7 floors. This was to begin in the New Year January 2015.  

All the teachers that started in this branch were new teachers and we had induction training before we started. Very professional and although they did have classes for all ages we were able to stipulate our preferences. So I chose to teach at level 4 and above which was at an intermediate level and with teenagers and adults.

Quick note; IDP is an organization in Australia I believe its government run to encourage foreign students to study in Australian Universities. They are one part of the team that makes up the IELTS exams with the British Council.

I was very please to find this position as it was my first experience of working in a well run and organized school, it also took care of our visa’s and working permits and provided medical insurance after a 6 month probationary period.  We had all the necessary tools and equipment to plan our lessons and a structured curriculum using English course books. So whilst it was still required to make lesson plans they were developed around the lessons from the books, these included audio and video material.

Cambodia Expat Lifestyle

OK, so what about Cambodia, I found it a very nice place not too much traffic compared to other major capital cities, which made it easy to get around, here I did buy a second hand scooter rather than renting as they are very cheap here. Most of the traffic is motorbikes and bicycles not so many cars as the population is still relatively poor and cars here are very heavily taxed, they cost more here than in western countries.

The driving is not so good, they do go through red lights and drive on the wrong side of the road and you have to watch for vehicles coming from all directions, but they tend to drive quite slow, so just be careful.

About the traffic police if they stop you there will be a fine, even if you have done nothing wrong, but if you keep your eyes open they are avoidable and if you keep to the outside lane a go faster it’s difficult for them to stop you. It’s also acceptable here to ignore the police if they are flagging you down, they never pursue you.

I bought my scooter and never had a license in Cambodia, didn’t have any insurance. The only expenses were the petrol, about $1 a litre and any repairs, punctures did occur quite frequently but they have many places to repair and not very expensive.  

Cuisine in Cambodia mostly revolves around rice and noodles just like all the other Asian countries, meals could be bought at local restaurants for around a dollar, a can of beer about 70 cents in a store for the local brew or if in a bar $1.50 to $2. That’s if you wish to be on the economy side. But like Thailand being the capital city they have many different kinds of foods including, hamburgers, chips, Kebabs, Chinese, KFC and as in Thailand some western owners of bars and restaurants.

Of course if you venture into the small towns and villages you can only find the local foods.

Things to do, they had some small shopping malls and also one big AON mall that had just been built, with cinema that catered for blockbuster movies.

I also found a gym not as modern as the one in Thailand and no air conditioning which actually I prefer. But it had all the weights and equipment for me to work out a circuit for myself and it was only a dollar per visit.

Cambodia has many holidays, so the students and the school closed quite a bit and I decided to travel to the beach at Sihanouk about a 4 hour mini bus ride from Phnom Penh during any of the longer holidays. It was here that I noticed the scuba diving schools and being an adventurous person. I began by having an introductory course at a PADI diving school close to the beach at Sihanouk. After getting into the diving, I made my mind up to complete my open water certificate, this entailed buying some books and doing some study as well as the diving.

The centre I used had a place on an island, so we went by boat to this Island known as Koh Rong Sanloem and although there were some other small resorts it was almost a deserted beach, especially when it was out of the main season for tourists. However, on the other side of the Island, there were larger resorts and I occasionally took a walk over the hill to the other side, quite a steep climb and took about 30 to 40 min's, through a dense overgrown forest and a few streams to cross quite a nice little hike.  

          I got hooked on diving and went on to complete my advanced diving and also a rescue and first aid course. I thought about becoming an instructor but in the end decided against it.

I was also able to get involved with the school 5-a-side football team, we went to a local venue and played against the local teams, in my first 6 month contract we had two young guys teaching with us who were quite good footballers. So when the school had a 5-a-side competition we had a good team, even at 58, I was able to play in the side and we managed to win the competition on penalties in the final.  Not bad for an old geezer.   

    As for the cost of living, a bit less than Thailand especially for accommodation, although I have to say, I was very blessed to find a 3 bedroom two floor apartment fully furnished, for $200 a month. Most of the rented apartments were more in the region of $250 to $300 depending on what kind of facilities you were after, Oh! and with a balcony.  

Food to buy in the markets are cheap and varied you can get most vegetables that you might be used to, as well as many you have not seen before in your home country, unless you’re from another Asian country of course.                  

Scott Worswick

[takerfoxx]

So, I had hoped to have a new Subconscious preview up last week on my birthday, but unfortunately the one I had planned ended up being really frustrating to write and, to be honest, kind of boring. So I scrapped all twenty pages of it at the last minute and threw this together instead. Enjoy!

We've all been there, in our dreams. There's something important to you: a valuable treasure, a prized memento, or just some odd object that the dream has arbitrarily decided that you must protect and you do so without questioning. Or there's someone: a parent, a child, a lover, a friend, someone that means the world to you and you are driven to defend with everything within you.

But no matter how hard you fight, no matter how carefully you watch over them, you fail, and they disappear. You turn away for one second, and they're gone. And no matter how hard you search you cannot find them again, and you awake feeling the weight of your failure.

It isn't your fault though. That's just the way dreams are. And many would say that you are experiencing a metaphorical manifestation of…something or another, such as feelings of inadequacy or lack of ability to provide for your loved ones. Maybe in some cases that is true, but the truth is that most of the time, that thing or person that you valued so highly did not vanish at all. Rather, they had had been stolen.

The Marauders had been plying their trade for a long, long time, and they had a lot to answer for.

It really was the perfect crime: sneak into the mind of some sleeping mark, creep around until something of valuable is found, and then take it. Authentic dreams were highly prized in the world of Nod, but the four Thrones jealously guarded any access to the Unconscious, which limited how many were available. Fortunately, the Marauders paid little heed to such things, and were more than happy to saturate the black market with the fruits of their expeditions. And so their way of life continued, as they lived in their tunnels, emerging only to steal fresh dreams to exchange for food and clothing and trinkets. Meanwhile, the four Thrones had been content to look the other way. After all, it wasn't as if the Marauders were doing any real harm, and it wasn't like they could be reached anyway. Let the shadow children have their fun.

Then one day, in one unimportant man's dream, all of that changed.

The cityscape was dreary and grey, devoid of color and life. Rain came down in a constant patter from the featureless black sky, shrouding the street in fog. The endless apartment buildings were high, rectangular, and adorned with nothing save for rows upon rows of light windows, staring out at the dismal metropolis. Steam hissed off the humming white florescent lights that hung over storefronts, on billboards, and on street corners, all of them advertising jumbled gibberish. There were no trees, no plants, no animals, nothing to bring life to the world of concrete, metal, and water.

The streets themselves were empty. No pedestrians wandered the sidewalks, no cars passed under the blinking traffic lights (white on top, white in the middle, white on the bottom), nothing moving whatsoever. Nothing moved at all save for a single, solitary grey pickup truck that moved slowly in the rain, slowly passing by address, street sign after street sign. On the top of the truck was a glowing plastic cartopper that, with some imagination, might have read, "Momma Mia's Pizzeria!" But then, it also might have read, "Mozziexr Deiaxooouz." And perhaps even, "Dominuplings." The letters shifted constantly whenever focused upon.

The lonely pizza delivery man seemed to be having trouble finding his destination. He continuously circled the blocks, slowing to read addresses that made no numerical sense, always certain that the place he was heading had to be just around the corner. If nothing else, one had to admire his dogged persistence, though he had to be growing frustrated. Still, rain or sleet, the pizza had to come through, so he continued on, praying that he would find where he was going before the pizzas grew too cold.

Then, just as he rounded a corner, something new appeared. A squared hatch appeared in the sidewalk just behind him. It slid open, and a group of children climbed out into the rain.

There were seven of them, the oldest, a dark-haired teenaged boy with a wiry frame and thick glasses, looking to be fifteen while the youngest, a nervous looking blonde girl wearing a pink hoodie, was probably still in the first or second grade. The others were everywhere in between: a curly-haired black boy of eleven; a tall and stocky Hispanic boy of nine; a slim redheaded and freckled white girl of thirteen; and a pair of Japanese siblings, one boy with hair dyed green and one girl with hair dyed orange, of nine and eleven respectively. Save for the small girl's hoodie, none of them were dressed for the weather, and the first thing they did upon emerging was to look up into the sky and groan.

"Aw man, are you kidding me with this?" said Carl, the black boy, as they retreated beneath the awning of some kind of café. "It's pissing all over the place!"

"Man, we should just ditch this one, try to find another dream that isn't going to soak us through," agreed Leslie, the redhead. She looked over to Daniel, the "older" boy with glasses.

Sighing, Daniel took off his glasses and wiped them with a napkin from a nearby table. For some reason every time he went along on a raid the others always looked to him for leadership, despite him actually being the youngest member of whatever party he happened to join at the time. Well, second youngest in this case. Regardless, he was getting used to it, but it was still annoying. "Last time I was on one of these things and we tried that, we ended up in a haunted graveyard. Look, let's just look around a bit, see if these stores have anything. If it's crap, we'll bail." Then he glanced down to the small girl in the hoodie. "Hey, you all right?"

One of the most tempting reasons to join the Marauders was the eternal life and youth that came with it. Daniel might have been younger than most of the others, but he was still a good five years older than he looked. Hideo and Kyouko, the Japanese siblings, were actually well past sixty, if one were to count from their dates of birth to the present. Which wasn't to say that they were elderly people with young bodies. Marauders were frozen in time. Age had no real meaning to them, with one day meaning no more or less than the next. In upland, the world of Nod, time passed, people grew old and died, countries rose and fell, and the Marauders stayed the same.

It wasn't quite the case with little Anya though. Unlike the others, she really was seven years old, having only joined the Marauders a few months ago. She hadn't spoken much of her life in upland, but Daniel had managed to glean enough to know that it hadn't been pretty. At the very least she had been homeless, like so many Marauders were. In fact, the majority of their population started out that way. They were the unwanted children of Nod, the orphaned and the abandoned, the abused and the neglected, all of them having found their way down into the network of tunnels and lairs known as the Warrens to trade in their miserable and hopeless lives above for the freedom and acceptance the Marauders offered. Others had simply been the rebellious types, or had found their mundane lives at home to be boring. Many had just thought that being a kid forever sounded like a swell deal and had run away from home. It made no difference. The only qualifications to join the Marauders was being under the age limit, of which Anya most certainly was.

At any rate, new Marauders showed up all the time, but for whatever reason Anya had taken a shine to Daniel, and stayed close to him at all times. She had even taken to crawling into his bed at night. It had been a little weird at first, but he was getting used to it. And it felt nice to have someone actually look up to him without expecting him to be some kind of great leader. He almost didn't want to go on this raid, seeing how most Marauders stayed safe in the Warrens with their chosen clan at least a year or two before they started venturing out into dreams. But Anya had insisted, her curiosity overruling her fear, so he came along. Just their luck that her first foray into the Unconscious would be such a depressing one.

Anya peered out from under her jacket's hood at the black-and-white world around them. "It's wet," she said.

"Yup, and not in the fun way," Kyouko giggled.

"Shut up," Daniel said absently. "Carl, what's the numbers?"

Squinting, Carl peered down into the large, calculator-like instrument he held. "Uh, okay. I'm getting mostly Sahk and Kanon. Nightmare's sort of bouncing back and forth between 8 and 11%, while Desio is holding at an even 19%."

Dream levels were very important. Kanon dreams were those of the mundane variety, in which dreamers relived aspects of their day-to-day lives. Desio dreams were concerned with some kind of ambition, whether it be in terms of success, acquiring a coveted item, sexual, or literally anything else, and were thus the preferred kind for raiding. Sahk dreams were of the nonsensical variety, random places and memories jammed together in a manner that made sense only to themselves.

Nightmares were self-explanatory.

The readings that Carl reported meant that the dreamer was enacting repetitive, mundane activity in a weird world. That made sense. No doubt the dreamer's frustration accounted for the Nightmare levels going up and down. It wasn't preferable, but at least it wasn't a Nightmare. "Okay, we'll try that mall across the street," Daniel said, nodding to the wide picture windows lit with bright white light. "Carl, keep an eye on those readings. Holler if this guy decides to quit."

The gang bolted across the street, the rain soaking clothes and plastering hair to any uncovered head. The sliding doors failed to slide when they approached, but that wasn't a problem. Hideo and Kyouko slid on metal-knuckled gloves and made short work of the windows.

Inside was more of the same. It was a mall sure enough, with two stories of stores all lined up in rows. But everything was done in sterile whites, like a laboratory. White walls, white stores selling white products, a white carousel, and a white fountain that was as dry as the outside was wet.

That was disappointing. Lively, colorful artifacts stolen from dreams fetched better prices. But that didn't mean there was nothing to find. Stores were always worth investigating. If they got lucky, maybe they could find a jewelry store. Jewelry was always in demand, regardless of its color.

"This guy's life must be incredibly boring," observed Isaac, the Hispanic boy, as he surveyed their bleak surroundings.

"That or he's colorblind," Leslie said as she peered curiously into a store that sold nothing but lamps that looked to be made from white plastic. "Doesn't look like there's much worth taking here."

"Probably," Daniel said. "But we'll give it a quick sweep. Five minutes. See if we can't find a jewelry store." He glanced down to Anya, who was staring bug-eyed out at their pasty surroundings. "You okay?" he asked her.

Anya bit her lower lip. Then she looked up to him and offered a small smile.

"Don't worry," he said as he took her hand. "We'll stick together." That was one of the most important rules about dream raiding. Though dreams themselves weren't usually all that dangerous, one never knew when they might suddenly warp and change, separating the party. They were notoriously unstable. Some remained more-or-less consistent throughout their entire duration while others were in a constant state of flux, which meant that putting even one wall between one's self and the rest of the party could mean being suddenly snatched away. And unfortunately, Daniel had long learned that this was also the one rule that was the most forgotten. Marauders were nothing but curious, and more than once an entire raid had been stalled because someone had gone wandering off.

Fortunately, it seemed like this was a wheel dream, which trapped the dreamer in a perpetual loop of repetition. So long as he kept circulating the blocks they should be okay. Still, there was no point in taking chances. One never knew when a dream might morph into a Nightmare.

The seven of them passed quickly between the rows of stores, peeking in briefly before moving onto the next. Nothing they saw interested them. The furniture looked real enough, but it was too large to move. The books were probably all blank and would serve as little more than curiosities. The restaurants they ignored outright. Dream food never tasted right, if it tasted like anything at all.

"This is pointless," Isaac groused. "All the good stuff is probably up there." He nodded up, at the mall's second floor.

"If it is, then we'll just ditch this one and find some other dream," Daniel told him. If there was one rule of safety that all Marauders adhered to, it was to always stay on the ground floor whenever possible. So long as they were on the ground, they could always open a tunnel to the Warrens and escape. Any higher and they took their own lives into their hands.

"Maybe we should. I don't like this place," Isaac said with a shiver.

Carl frowned at the dream reader. "Nightmare levels are staying low."

"I don't care. Something's not right."

Hideo said something in Japanese.

"Yeah, dude. I have no idea what you just said," Daniel said. His sister spoke pretty good English, so she was the one that did the talking for them.

Scowling, Hideo looked back the way they came and pointed. He repeated what he had just said.

They looked. Then Daniel blinked. Save for Anya, who was still holding onto his hand, only the boys were around. "Hey, where'd the girls go?"

…

"This is so cool," Leslie said as she and Kyouko walked through the aisles. The two of them had found a clothing shop, which was a lucky find. Clothing in the Warrens was usually brought in secondhand from upland, so finding anything good was often left up to chance. And clothes found in dreams were, like everything that was raided, a crapshoot. As such, Marauder outfits tended to be a little slapped together, as Leslie's stonewashed jeans, black band shirt for a band that she had never even heard of, avocado blazer, and brown beanie with bear's ears attested to. Kyouko's outfit was little better, being a green-and-red plaid skirt, black stockings, a white shirt, studded bracelets and anklets, and a jeans vest. Not that either of them minded. But it was nice to find something new every once in a while, especially when one didn't have to pay for it.

Even better, the store they had discovered was downright fabulous. Fuzzy fur coats, rhinestone-studded hats, boas, glittering purses, shiny knee-high boots, designer shirts, and so on. For a people who favored eclectic fashion, it was a treasure trove.

"Hey, look at this," Kyouko said. She had put on a glittering trilby, thrown a black-spotted white boa around her neck, and slipped on a pair of elbow-length black gloves. Then, with one hand on her hip, she started strutting down the aisle like a model down the catwalk. Leslie laughed and whistled.

Leslie picked out a wide-brimmed black hat with a large white silk flower and tried it on. Then she pulled on a zebra-striped fur coat long enough to reach her ankles.

"Oooh, that looks good on you," Kyouko said appreciatively.

"You think so?" There were several full-length mirrors nearby, but Leslie ignored those, instead pulling a round makeup mirror out of her back pocket. Dream mirrors were unreliable at best.

"Of course!" Kyouko draped her arms around Leslie's shoulders and grinned into the mirror as Leslie held it out as far as her arm would allow. "You look hot!"

"Really?" The hat did look pretty cute, Leslie admitted. And the coat wasn't bad, in a Cruella di Ville sort of way. "Do you…Do you think it's something Daniel might like?"

Kyouko burst out laughing. "Daniel? Really?"

Leslie gave a sort of awkward shrug. "Well, I mean, he is cute, and…"

"I guess?" Kyouko shrugged. "But isn't he with that Anya girl?"

Leslie made a face. "Ew, no! She's like seven! I mean actually seven!"

"Is she?" Kyouko shrugged. "I do not know, I do not know them that good."

"Yeah, she's really new."

"Huh." Kyouko shrugged again. "Well, maybe?" She peered quizzically at Leslie, her head tilted to one side. "You really like him?"

Leslie blushed a bit. Then she smiled and nodded.

Giggling, Kyouko poked her with her elbow. "Then tell him!"

"I don't know," Leslie said as she fidgeted with a strand of fur.

"Oh, come on! You never know…" Then Kyouko's eyes lit up and she pointed to something behind Leslie. "Oooh, jackpot!"

It was a jewelry counter, with glittering black and white stones set into black and white metals. The two girls hurried over, and Kyouko smashed the display case with her metal knuckles.

"Oh, this is gooooood," Leslie breathed as she picked up a chain-link necklace set with a huge white stone. That alone was worth at least three full raids by itself. She and Kyouko immediately started pawing through necklaces, rings, bracelets, and pendants, filling their pockets with the loot.

Then, from far off, they heard Daniel call, "Leslie! Kyouko! Where'd you go?"

The two girls looked at each other and cringed. "Whoops," Kyouko said with a sheepish smile.

Leslie turned around and called back, "Over here! Come on, I found jewelry!"

"You found?" Kyouko mocked.

"Fine. We found jewelry!"

Kyouko gave her a look.

Sighing, Leslie rolled her eyes and called out, "All right, Kyouko found-"

Then she stopped and frowned. Her ears had just detected a very strange sound, like a high-pitched whine, one that was increasing in volume. "Hey, do you hear-"

Then there was a flash of yellow light, and she heard nothing at all.

…

Daniel, Carl, Anya, Hideo, and Isaac all froze in their tracks. "Hey, what was that?" Daniel said, his face twisting up in confusion. They had been heading over to where they had heard Leslie calling to them, and then there had been the strangest sound, like the hum of something charging up.

Before anyone could answer, a shrill, feminine shriek of terror sounded out. It was unmistakably Kyouko's.

Everyone froze for a moment, looking at each other with expressions of horror. Then they took off running toward the scream, Hideo quickly taking the lead.

He needn't have worried. Kyouko came rushing around the other way, appearing from around a corner so suddenly that the siblings practically collided.

"Kyouko, what happened?" Daniel demanded. "Where's Leslie?"

Kyouko was crying, tears streaming down her face as she clung tightly to Hideo. The pair babbled frantically at each other in Japanese.

Isaac had no patience. "Hey!" he snapped, clapping his hands in front of Kyouko's face. "Speak English! What happened to Leslie?"

Kyouko let out a choking sob. "G-Gone," she forced out.

"Gone?" Daniel pushed Isaac aside to get into Kyouko's face. "Whad'd'ya mean, gone?"

"I mean she is gone!" Kyouko wailed. "We found some jewelry, and we started grabbing it up, when there was this…this flash, and she was gone!" She started screaming. "There was nothing but dust, nothing but dust!"

There was a deathly pause in which it felt like the whole world was holding its breath. Then, without warning, Isaac bolted up the way Kyouko had fled.

"Isaac, wait!" Daniel called after him. He rushed around the corner. "You're just going to get yourself killed!"

Isaac didn't listen. He had been friends with Leslie for a very long time, Daniel knew. But if he didn't stop, he was going to join her.

"Isaac!" Daniel called again, his teeth gritting with frustration. Isaac just kept running, calling out Leslie's name.

Then, as he passed in front of one of the stores, Daniel heard that charging hum again. He briefly saw something like a golden beam of light, barely perceptible against their white surroundings, shooting right out the store and into Isaac.

What happened next was both horrible and quick. The sudden light made Daniel cringe back and shield his eyes, but in the half-second it took to do that, he saw Isaac standing in place, the beam piercing into his belly. Then it was as if his skin and clothes evaporated, as the moment there was nothing standing there save for a blackened skeleton.

Then the skeleton fell to pieces, turning to dust as it collapsed.

Kyouko screamed again, and this time Anya joined her. Daniel might have done so as well, but it was really hard to tell with all the blood pounding in his ears.

Then out of the store strode a monster. It was shaped like a tall man, but was covered with some sort of skintight black armor enforced with steel around the forearms, the shoulders, the waist, and the shins and feet. Its head was encased in some kind of black helmet, one with nothing but a blank, mirrored visor for eyes.

It peered down at the smear of dust that had been Isaac for a moment. Daniel's mouth went dry.

Then the monster looked up, turning its empty face toward the group.

Daniel snapped out of his trance. "Run!" he yelled, and the five of them did just that, fleeing before the black-clad monster that had murdered their friends.

…

They ran. And ran. And ran.

They ran and ran and ran as if the hounds of Hell were biting at their heels. They ran with a speed born of terror and grief. The white stores blurred together and seemed to have no end, the mall seemingly endless. It didn't matter. They weren't thinking of escaping the mall. They were fleeing the image of Isaac disintegrating before their eyes, as if distance alone could cancel it out. At one point, Daniel had to remember to pick up Anya and carry her on his back lest she be left behind.

Above all else, Marauders fear two things: death and imprisonment. Their dread of their lives ending was that of a child's, something that their eternal existences did nothing to blunt. And taking away their freedom was an unspeakable sin. The Marauder War had been started for that very reason, after all. As such, death was something that wasn't even joked about. And to watch one of their own perish triggered a deep, primal reaction, one of overpowering panic.

Once they had rounded the twelfth corner, they finally collapsed against the wall, crying and panting. Kyouko immediately went to her knees, slapping her palms against the ground to summon a portal into the Warrens while Hideo agitatedly paced back and forth. Anya curled up into a small ball against the wall and started mewling. Carl seemed to be in a state of shock. His mouth was hanging open, his eyes were practically popping right out of their sockets, and his hands were shaking as they clutched the dream reader.

As for Daniel, his hands were shaking as well. He licked his lips, trying to moisten them, but his tongue had gone dry as well.

What in the hell was that thing? Daniel had seen raw Nightmares before, had once been chased out of a dream by shrieking wraiths, but he had never, ever encountered anything remotely like that.

Then his trembling hands curled, and he straightened up. Turning, he focused his eyes on Carl, who was still fumbling with the dream reader.

Then his right fist lashed out, knocking Carl to the floor.

Everyone reacted immediately, with Hideo rushing over to grab Daniel and try to hold him back while Anya gasped. Carl gaped like a hooked fish tossed onto a dock. "Wha-What the hell, man?" he sputtered. "What the-"

"You were supposed to warn us!" Daniel shouted down at him as he shoved Hideo off. "You were supposed to warn us if the dream changed! Why didn't you say anything, huh? Why didn't you say anything?"

"The dream didn't change!" Carl snapped back. He straightened up and shoved the dream reader into Daniel's face.

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Oh sure, and that black monster was just part of the scenery!"

"I'm serious! I don't know what that thing was, but it ain't no Nightmare!" Carl jabbed a finger at the readout of the dream's current levels. Sure enough, level of Nightmaric energies remained low.

That made Daniel's brow furrow. "Then what-"

"No."

Everyone turned to Kyouko, who was still pressing her palms against the ground. "No," she said again, lifting her hands up to slap them back down over and over. "No, no, no, no!" She looked up, terror written all over her face. "The portal, it won't open!"

Daniel felt his blood run cold. He dropped down as well, pressing his hands to the floor. Sure enough, no portal opened in response.

"What's going on?" Anya said. "Daniel, what's happening?"

"I don't know. It's like…" Then Daniel looked up at Carl, who was frowning down at the dream reader.

"Guys," Carl said slowly. "The dream's changing."

Daniel let out a bitter, mocking laugh. "Oh, it's changing? It's changing? Wow, Carl. I never would've guessed!"

"I don't mean that," Carl snapped back. "Kanon levels are going down, Sahk is shooting up!"

Daniel swallowed. Sahk wasn't nearly as bad as Nightmare, but it still wasn't good, since it meant that things were about to get weird. "We're not on the ground floor anymore," he said.

"No," Carl said, his voice shaking. "No, we're not."

A heavy silence fell over the group as everyone digested this. Then Daniel looked around. Sure enough, their surrounding were changing, the white walls darkening to brown, and the smooth, white floor developing cracks.

We're trapped, he thought. Trapped with that monster. If this had been a normal dream, they would be free to seek out a workable exit at their leisure. But with a nameless, faceless force actively hunting them, then…

Hideo was next. While they debated and tried to open a portal, he continued to pace back and forth, muttering to himself. Unfortunately, during one of his treks, his path carried him too far past the corner.

The next thing everyone knew, there was another flash of light, and then Hideo was gone. Kyouko, however, found herself covered with her brother's ash.

Still sitting on her knees, she stared at the grey soot that now covered her hands and screamed. She screamed and screamed as she clawed at her hair and back, trying to get it off of her.

"Run!" Daniel yelled again as he seized her by the wrist and yanked her up. The four remaining Marauders again fled through the mall, which was rapidly changing to something else entirely. Everywhere color was erupting, with leafy branches growing out of the stores while the linoleum floor morphed into wooden slats. Overhead, the roof was opening up into a canopy of leaves and branches. Within seconds they were no longer in a sterile white mall, but were instead running across a wooden bridge that stretched through the treetops of some kind of forest city at night. Doors and windows were set in the trunks, cable dishes rose above the leaves, while things like potted plants and children's toys lay on the side of the bridge, as if it were an everyday neighborhood sidewalk.

Daniel peered over the side of the bridge. Down below was an asphalt street that wound through the forest floor. When the pickup truck with the pizza delivery sign passed by underneath he almost laughed. It was the dreamer, still futilely trying to find the customer's address and blissfully unaware of the carnage happening just out of sight.

"Down," he said to the others. "There's the ground. We can-"

Suddenly Anya's fingers tightened around his arm while Kyouko drew back with a gasp and Carl muttered a curse. The black-and-silver monster was there, standing at the end of the bridge, staring at them.

Daniel felt his blood run cold. He had no idea if this was the same monster that had killed Leslie, Isaac, and Hideo or if there were several of them hunting the Marauders, nor did he care. He just knew that they were probably about to die.

Without making a sound, the monster started to advance on the group, the wooden slats creaking under the weight of its steps. It lifted its right arm, its fingers squeezed into a tight fist.

Carl, who was in the lead, held up his hands. "Wait," he pleaded. "Don't. P-Please."

For a moment, it looked like it was working. The monster hesitated, its raised fist wavering a little. It looked around, as if uncertain.

But the moment passed. The monster refocused on Carl, its fist suddenly glowing bright yellow, and a beam shot out. Carl's dream reader clattered to the bridge as the smell of ash and cooked meat filled Daniel's nostrils.

This time, he couldn't tell which one of them screamed. It might have been him. He was just seized with the sudden desire to get away.

Wrapping his arms around the girls' waists, Daniel bolted for the side of the bridge and threw himself over, taking Kyouko and Anya with him.

Now, like all Marauders, Daniel knew a thing or two about how to take long jumps and falls. Parkour was one of the first skills one learned when dream raiding. But he had never been taught how to take a sharp drop while holding onto two very terrified clanmates when he himself was likewise scared of his mind.

The forest floor rushed up to reach them. He landed on his feet, one in the dirt and the other right onto the hard asphalt of the road. This proved to be a very bad thing, as his legs gave way out from under him and he fell forward with a cry of pain, Kyouko and Anya rolling away into the underbrush.

Groaning, Daniel rolled over and grabbed at his leg, which was now bent at a very horrific angle. His shin had snapped in two.

Gotta…gotta open a portal, he thought numbly, trying to force the thoughts through the veil of agony. Gotta get into the Warrens. Warn the others.

He lifted his hand to slam onto the ground. Then he heard the choking gasp.

Looking up, he found himself staring at what looked to be a the heavy boots of a suit of armor made from shining steel, the knees of which would have reached past his bellybutton could he stand. He looked up further. The metal-encased legs went up and up, leading to a humanoid torso that managed to be both sleek and bulky, conveying both immense strength and incredible speed. A pair of powerful looking arms hung from wide shoulders, ones whose forearms were inside steel gauntlets with blades jutting from every joint. And on top of those shoulders sat a curious looking long, wedge-shaped head. A black screen stretched horizontally across the long side, from which maliciously glowed two scarlet eyes.

It was a robot, Daniel realized. A goddamned nine-foot robot was standing right in front of him and glowering down at the wounded Marauder with murder in its eyes.

And one of its metal hands was wrapped around Kyouko's throat.

The robot held the girl high in the air. She choked and gasped, grasping at the steel fingers that squeezed her neck, trying in vain to pull them apart. Her legs frantically kicked at its body, each blow clanging loudly while doing absolutely no damage. The robot glowered down at Daniel for a moment longer before turning its attention to her.

Then its fingers started to glow yellow.

"NO!" Daniel cried, but it was pointless. Kyouko had joined her brother.

As the ash tumbled to pine needle covered ground, the robot then looked back down at Daniel and Anya, who was sitting with her hands clutching her side next to him, staring up at the monstrous thing with tears streaming down her face.

Then, just when Daniel was convinced that it couldn't get any worse, it did. The robot spoke.

"And what's this?" it said through some unseen mouth, its mechanical voice deep and sinister. "A pair of rats, trying to run for their holes?"

Daniel tried to rise up, but his leg flared up and he collapsed with a cry. Then, gritting his teeth, he forced himself up onto his elbows so that he could at least look the thing in the eye.

"Who are you?" he said, he voice thick with pain and fear. "What are you? Why are you doing this?"

"Why? That is obvious. It is because you are vermin." The robot let out a rasping chuckle, the sound of which made the hair stand up on the back of Daniel's neck. "And we? Well." It held up its right hand, the ash from Kyouko's body still smearing the fingers. Those fingers closed into a fist, just as the black-and-silver monster had done before it killed Carl. "We are the pest control."

It swung its fist around to point at Daniel, and he realized that he was about to die. There was no getting away from this. He wasn't going to make it.

But maybe he could at least ensure that someone else did.

"You really ought to have seen this coming," the robot continued, its tone almost casual. "Too long your kind has been stealing from the minds of gods and robbing cradles." Its metal fist pointed right at Daniel's head. "Well, today that ends."

Again the fist started to glow yellow as the air filled with that charging hum, but before the beam could shoot out Daniel twisted around and slammed the palm of his hand into the dirt. Right in front of Anya.

This time it worked. A portal opened right beneath the girl and she fell in, finally reaching the safety of the Warrens. For one brief shining moment, Daniel felt a surge of relief, powerful enough to wash away the fear that seized his heart. Anya was going to be safe. She had made it.

Then there was light.

And then there was nothing.

…

"Look, I'm not saying that they can't beat Jacob Draco if they combine their clans," Jack Ketcher said as he half-walked, half-crawled his way through the Warren tunnels. He took a big bite of the long stick of Laffy Taffy in his hands and chewed noisily. "I'm jush shayin' dat dey wont."

"Why not?" Bear demanded. Like usual, the fat kid was dressed like Elvis, if Elvis so happened to be a cowboy. "The two of them together, they'll outnumber the Silver Dragons two to one."

"No they won't," Jack retorted as they rounded yet another turn. "But it don't matter. No way in hell those two will ever stop fighting long enough-"

Then something quite unexpected happened. Directly over them a portal opened, and someone fell in. That in itself wasn't all that unusual. Marauders came and went all the time, and you just had to learn to quickly get out of the way to avoid having someone jump onto your head. No, what was weird was that she didn't drop into the tunnels, she fell in, arms and legs flailing as a hail of dirt and leaves fell in around her.

The girl landed right on top of Jack and Bear, bowling them over. "What the-" Jack sputtered as the three of them scrambled to untangle themselves from each other. "What was-"

Then on instinct he looked up. On the other side of the portal, he saw an arm outstretched, palm down as if it had been the one to open the way. The arm was there for only a second before a sharp whining made him wince.

Then the arm exploded into a cloud of dust. It fell into the portal and hit him right in the face. Jack blinked several times, his stinging eyes tearing. When his vision cleared, he caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a metal giant, standing above them just outside the portal, looking down at them with glowing red eyes.

For the first time in a very long while, Jack felt genuine fear.

The giant tilted its head to one side. Then it lifted its right hand. Jack's body went stiff, convinced that it was about to kill them all.

Instead, the giant waved at the three of them in an almost friendly manner. Then it laughed, a horrible, hoarse sound that echoed down through the tunnel.

Then the portal closed shut and they were safe. The metal giant's laughter echoed for a few more seconds though.

The three Marauders remained frozen in place, none of them daring to move. Then Jack slowly became aware of the dry taste of ash on his tongue, ash that had come from a living person.

"Bleh!" he coughed. He started spitting while Bear frantically tried to wipe the grey smear off his face.

"Wha…Who…What was that?" Bear demanded as he yanked off his white cowboy hat and shook it off.

As for the girl, she looked completely beside herself. "Gone, gone, gone," she whimpered as she curled up into a ball on the floor of the tunnel. "Gone, gone, gone, gone…"

"Who's gone?" Bear said. "What was that thing?"

Suddenly the girl started wailing. "They GONE!" she shrieked. "All of them! It killed them all! They're gone!"

Jack and Bear looked at each other, the dead guy's ash still all over their faces. Then Jack inhaled deeply through his nose and reached up to run a hand down his face.

"We need to tell the clanmasters," he said.

…

The dead Marauder's dream reader in his hand, Agent Arlington of the Unconscious Security Special Police dropped down from the bridge to the forest below. There, Lord General Scoron was standing next to the road, his arms folded as his mechanical gaze focused on where the last Marauder girl had disappeared.

"Agent," Scoron said, his voice sending chills down Arlington's back as always. "Report."

Doing his best not to look at the two piles of ash by the road, Arlington saluted and said, "Almost a clean sweep, Lord General. Looks like it was a standard raiding party. Seven members, and we got them all." He glanced down to where the Marauder portal had closed. "Save for…um…"

His tongue faltered, as he had realized that pointing out the Lord General's failure to eliminate the final Marauder was probably not in his best interests. Fortunately, Scoron did not seem at all offended. "Very good," he said, giving the private a brief nod. He gestured down toward where the portal had been. "And don't worry. That one was let go deliberately. She will spread the word of what happened here, and soon the clans will realize that they have reason to worry."

"It's about time," remarked Agent Naitos. The Desio man strode down the road toward the pair. Reaching up, he tapped the side of his neck. His helmet retracted, sliding away from his face, revealing closely cropped electric-blue hair, a scarred face, a knife's-edge smile, and the coldest eyes Arlington had ever seen. "We should've done something like this a long time ago."

Scoron chuckled in a manner that conveyed agreement. Of course he would. He had been created specifically for this purpose, after all. "Well, better late than never." Then he turned his head to peer questioningly at Arlington. "Though perhaps you disagree, Agent?"

Arlington was staring down at the dream reader in his hand. Despite all the preparation he had done for this mission, he couldn't shake the memory of the Marauder boy's terrified face, pleading with Arlington for his life before he killed him.

"Arlington," Scoron said.

Arlington's head snapped up. "Sir?"

The Lord General's lack of a face made him difficult to read, but something in the way he was staring down at Agent Arlington conveyed disapproval. "They are not children, Agent," he said. "They merely appear to be. Remember that."

Though Arlington knew that it was in his best interests not to contradict the nine foot indestructible killer robot that could fire him or crush his neck, depending on his mood, he still found himself say, "They screamed like children."

Naitos let out a dry laugh. "Died like them too," he said, his scarred smile twisting up even further.

Maybe it was because it was their first outing, but fortunately Scoron looked to be in a tolerant mood. "Yes," he said. "Just as the wild coyote looks, sounds, and dies in the same manner as you family's loyal dog. They even share an ancestor. But one you love, care for, and protect. The other you exterminate before it does harm." He reached over and tapped Arlington in the shoulder with one pointed, metal finger. "Remember this, Agent. Ours is a grim business. But it is necessary."

Arlington saluted, raising his clenched fist in the air. "Yes, Lord General."

Scoron lightly tapped Arlington's fist with his own in acknowledgement. Then he looked up. Around them the forest was starting to fade. "The dream is ending," he observed. "We best be on our way."

He started down the road, the two agents of the USSP falling into step behind him. "Ready yourselves, gentlemen," Scoron said as he gestured. A ten-foot doorway opened in the air before him to take them from the Unconscious back to headquarters. "This war is only just beginning."

[israelseen]

Steve Kramer – White Nights in Russia

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For many years, Michal and I have wanted to visit Russia during June, when the days are longest. We finally did it this month and it was beyond our expectations. While Russia casts a big shadow on the world stage, its high profile fits only its military/political profile. In other ways, Russia is more like a third world country than a superpower contender – excepting St. Petersburg and Moscow.

  Russia is huge, comprising twelve different time zones and stretching from Scandinavia to the Sea of Japan. Russia’s economy is not diversified; its major sources of income are sales of oil and gas and other natural resources, plus weapons systems and heavy industry. Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is $1.58 trillion. If Russia, the world’s largest country, were part of the US it would rank only #3 in economic output, behind California and Texas and on a par with New York State.

  Russia’s population of 147 million is estimated to sink to about 130 million by mid-century because of its low birth rate and paltry immigration. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin (b. 1952), rules Russia like an “emperor,” the description repeatedly mentioned by one of our guides. His successor will most likely rule a diminished Russia, not close to contending for superpower status. (For comparison’s sake, the US population will be nearing 440 million in 2050.)

  With all that as introduction, let me say that St. Petersburg (StP) and Moscow are fabulous, first-rate travel destinations. We and our friends flew on Aeroflot to St. Petersburg in just five hours. We stayed at an apartment for a week in the very center of town, just off of the main shopping street, Nevsky Prospekt. We were exhilarated by the “white nights,” with no real darkness at least until at least 1 am, when we went to bed. The sun dipped below the horizon but the darkness didn’t progress beyond  twilight.

  At this time of year, the historic part of StP was populated mostly by tourists. Nearly all the must-see sites were within walking distance. We couldn’t help but notice the absolute absence of litter on the streets! Nobody dropped anything except into a trash receptacle. Another pleasant fact was the cleanliness and features of public bathrooms. There was always soap, hand dryers (that worked) or paper towels, and usually hot water.

  StP was conceived by Tsar Peter 1 (the Great, reigned 1682-1725) during his travels as a young man in Western Europe,  on an incognito trip to bring back not only practical knowledge of Western Europe but also to obtain ideas to turn Russia into a modern European nation. Peter desired to connect Russia with the most civilized and gentrified capitals to the south, such as Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam, and London. His team of architects, working with Peter’s monumental  ideas, began to build on the swampy terrain in 1703. Having been greatly influenced by Venice and Amsterdam, Peter conceived a capital city for Russia connected by a system of canals and bridges connected to the Baltic Sea. The first construction was the Peter and Paul Fortress (named for the eponymous saints) enabling access to Europe’s trade routes and for defensive reasons.

  Many grand buildings and palaces were planned and some constructed by the time of Peter’s death, including Peterhof, his summer palace outside of town which rivals Versailles in its magnificence. Catherine the Great, who usurped her husband’s (Peter’s grandson) throne and became empress, completed Peter’s vision to make StP a glorious capital. (See https://www.st-petersburg-essentialguide.com/history-of-st-petersburg.html)

  The incredibly colorful and glorious buildings still standing are easily accessible from anywhere in the historic zone. In our seven days, we were able to see most, but not all, of the “must-sees.” The highlights of our visit were an introductory free walking tour of the area, a canal boat ride throughout the city, two visits to the Hermitage art museum complex, which includes the gorgeous Winter Palace, an excursion by hydrofoil to Peterhof, the Russian Museum’s early 20th century art, the Faberge Museum, a “kilometer-long” supermarket built in a tunnel on Nevsky Prospect, and the great cafes and restaurants featuring Russian food and international cuisines.

  We visited one cathedral, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, just down the street from our apartment, whose interior is decorated completely with Biblical and New Testament mosaic tableaux. We also splurged on a wonderful ballet performance in one of the several beautiful music halls originally built for the upper classes.

  Of course we had to see the Grand Choral Synagogue, Europe’s second largest. Our young guide took us all around the synagogue, which has a beautiful sanctuary and and equally striking chapel. She told us that just recently one of  her best friends had found out from her grandmother that she was Jewish.

  “The history of the Jewish community of St. Petersburg is truly fascinating. Initially banned from residing anywhere in Russia under the decree by Catherine I [Empress of Russia from 1725-1727], the second wife of Peter the Great, Jewish people gradually settled in St. Petersburg. By the 19th century, the local Jewish community grew to become very powerful. Many rich and educated Jewish people worked as bankers, doctors and entrepreneurs, and the Jewish population had higher literacy rates than the St. Petersburg average. Although almost a dozen Jewish houses of worship existed by 1870s, there was no large synagogue to serve all the Jewish community of St. Petersburg.

  “The initial construction of the Synagogue became possible following a building permit that was granted by Emperor Alexander II [Emperor of Russia from 1855 until his assassination in 1881], who had introduced a number of reforms, officially allowing [some academic and or rich] Jewish people to reside in St. Petersburg, as well as other Russian cities outside of the Pale of Settlement. Although no building in St. Petersburg was allowed to be higher than 23 meters (the height of the Winter Palace), Alexander II allowed the Synagogue to be 47 meters high, provided certain other conditions were met. A group of architects responsible for the design modeled the new synagogue after Berlin’s Oranienburger Strasse New Synagogue with its Moorish and Byzantine style.” https://www.insider-tour.com/Grand-Choral-Synagogue.html

  After spending seven days in StP we were ready for several days in Moscow. Rather than fly, we took the “bullet train” south to Moscow, a pleasant ride of four hours with little to see on the route except green fields and a few small towns. Our hotel was located in the tourist area close to Red Square. It was a renovated small palace with all the services we needed, especially very helpful people in the reception area. By the way, though English is not spoken widely, someone who knows English always approaches you to help when you’re fumbling with a map or appear lost.

  Russia’s tourism is predominantly internal, not international. Just 25% of tourists are from abroad and most of them aren’t Americans or Europeans. While the tourists in St Petersburg were mostly foreigners, Moscow’s crowds of “Chinese” tourists were more likely Asiatic Russians, not Chinese or Japanese visitors. Also, many of the workers in both cities are from now-independent Asiatic countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, which devolved into many separate countries in 1991.

  Most people are familiar with iconic, colorful pictures of cathedrals, fortresses and other buildings in Red Square: the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, GUM department store (gorgeous, upscale mall), Lenin’s Tomb, etc. That area was ten minutes from our hotel and the endpoint for the walking tour that we took the first morning. Our guide was a young man with Asiatic features who was saving money to pursue graduate studies abroad, after having received his first degree in England. During the nearly 3-hour tour, we learned Russian history, church history, political history and a lot about current life.

  After finishing the tour at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, we were directed to an excellent “chain” restaurant with terrific Russian food (borscht, blintzes, sour cream, salads, cakes, etc., which we enjoyed in many places during our trip). We then wandered around the neighborhood, which evidently has a lot of high ranking government offices and/or lucrative businesses. I say that because of the inordinate amount of chauffeured luxury cars, almost all painted black, with drivers sitting in them waiting for the important owners. Most of the cars were Mercedes, with quite a few Audis and BMWs. The most common model was the Mercedes Maybach, a fabulously expensive model which sells for about $250,000.

  That evening, we enjoyed exploring our upscale neighborhood to find yet another good restaurant, marred only by the waiter’s poor English which scrambled things a bit (this was the second instance during the trip of a botched dinner).

  The last day of our visit we spent at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre, which is currently the most high-tech museum in Russia. Since the complex is located in a Jewish neighborhood, we had to take the subway and a bus to reach it. But subway rides in Russia are a far cry from those in New York. The stations are immaculate and sometimes even beautiful, while the equipment seems to be up to date.

  Our guide in the Jewish Museum, a young man, told us of his discovering his Jewish roots as a teenager. When he asked his father to tell him more, he was directed to “ask your grandmother.” When we asked him when the Jews came to live in Russia, he enlightened us. It wasn’t that the Jews of Poland and its vicinity left for Russia, but that Russia conquered those areas and absorbed its many Jewish inhabitants into an expanded empire. I then recalled my grandmother telling me of her youth in Galicia, which was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire at the time of her birth. “I lived in several different countries without having to move from our home.”

  The Jewish Museum boasts an extensive collection of materials presenting the history and culture of the Jewish people as well as Russian history, in an interesting and visual manner. The quality and level of the Museum’s permanent and temporary exhibitions is exemplary. The museum opened in 2012 in the former Bakhmetyevsky Bus Garage, a Constructivist (early 20th century) landmark. It is designed as a full-fledged cultural and educational complex consisting of numerous organizational structures including a research center, a library, and a medical facility. As expected, there was full security to enter the museum campus.

  “The Museum’s permanent exhibition is split into twelve interactive thematic spaces, equipped with panoramic cinemas, audiovisual installations and huge panels that feature unique photo and video archives, documents and interviews showing the Russian history through the prism of everyday life and culture of the Jewish people from the early days of Empress Catherine II’s rule all the way to the present time.”

https://www.moscovery.com/jewish-museum-and-tolerance-centre/

  There is a lot of interaction between Russia and Israel. Don’t forget that more than a million Russian immigrants came to Israel in the last 40 years. Our time in the museum and in Moscow itself was too short. I expect that we will make a return trip in the future.

Steve Kramer – White Nights in Russia Steve Kramer - White Nights in Russia For many years, Michal and I have wanted to visit Russia during June, when the days are longest.

[theliterateape]

The Lack of any Viable Alternatives Makes the Smirking Kid Cement His Ideology

By Don Hall

Was the dress blue or gold? Was C.K. funny or not? Were they protesting or looting?

I can guarantee you that you answer to these bizarre viral moments in internet history — based on snap judgments pulled rapidly out of asses large and small, tight and loose — serve to identify where you stand on any number of issues but mostly on which side you will stand in the coming American Social Civil War.

Establishing for the moment that a Catholic Prep School — mostly white, rich and all male — sent a field trip of sixteen-year-old boys to D.C. to march in a protest against abortion and ignoring that some of them decided to wear those goddamned MAGA hats is the source of a lot of putrid, vomited hate and should be shut down like the diners of old that refused to serve black people or bakeries who refuse to serve gays. Establishing that most sixteen-year-olds are borderline mentally deficient due to an influx of hormones, video games, too much fucking screen time and Tide Pods. I say most because some of them, in a trial by fire, get their shit together and are forced to grow up too fast by some active shooter in their school and set an example that is both inspiring and unrealistic in the cases of 99 percent of the sixteen-year-old population.

Establishing those two aspects as dogma, let’s just say, for shits and giggles, that the kid in the video decided his immediate reaction to being taunted for an hour by Black Israelites then suddenly confronted by a Native American man drumming and singing at him was out of line. That he bought into the polemic that “I’ve seen that smirk and I know what it means” and realizes the mistake he made in the absence of any real time options he had at the moment.

Yeah, I hear you. You would’ve done better because you are on the right side of history. You knew that a Native American elder drumming and singing was a call for peace because how could anyone not know that?

After the two sides of the Neo-Union and Neo-Confederacy go to bat, either defending him or condemning him, what’s that kid supposed to do with it? What are his options in how to move forward?

He can:

Double down and defend himself, fully owning the racist hat he wears

Conform and start the loop of endless apologies that will never be forgiven

Eat a gun

What the fuck do you think he’s gonna do? What would you do if you were a) sixteen years old and b) called names by thousands of assholes you’ve never met who have decided that their opinion of you is sacred text?

Yeah, I hear you. You were far more evolved when you were sixteen. You were whipsmart and filled with the lazy cynicism and biting wit of every episode of The Gilmore Girls. Instead of reacting with fear or rage or righteous indignation, you’d be the Martin Luther King of teenagers and calmly put the thing to rest.

This is the Wonderful Suckhole Existence of the Callout Culture, fuck-os. Where the assumption of motivations is second nature and stereotyping is just the only way to go because anything more complicated than good and evil is too taxing for your demented marshmallow brain. Get used to it.

First, none of this one situation in the Mall in D.C. was simple. You have this predictable confluence of a group of high school kids in town to protest abortion who may or may not love Trump (or maybe just love conservatism counter to the identity politics that paint anyone white as evil), a group of professional activists who, for hours, stand and insult everyone they can in hopes of their viral video moment they can post and get their cause (Black Israelites? What?) some fifteen seconds of notice, and a group of Native American activists marching for their Indigenous People March all converging in fifty square feet of sidewalk.

However you choose to view the multiple videos of this encounter, the last thing it is is simple. The white kids are dickheads (in part because they’re kids in a group, which is a thing that sidesteps all racial or gender identities because all kids in a group are dickheads), the Black Jew Guys are dickheads with an agenda, and the Native Americans, while not dickheads (not trying to be divisive or ugly about things) could’ve easily continued marching past the other two groups but chose a different path. The kids are challenged by the African Hebrews, they respond the way kids would, things get heated up and Nathan Phillips comes into the fray to calm things down with assumption that both of the other groups understand that a Native American elder banging a drum and singing a prayer means they’re supposed to shut the fuck up.

By the way, this is not a “boys will be boys” argument but a “most kids are dumb as a box of burrito wrappers” argument.

Second, only the Native American group had a permit to even be there. The black dudes just showed up to piss on people and the kids are just out fucking around.

Third, the hypocrisy. Good Christ, the hypocrisy. The Rage Profiteers are banking serious credibility with their fight against internet bullying and, without a single rational self-reflective thought, use the internet to bully a sixteen-year-old kid because the Hive Mind thinks he deserves it because he’s a) white, b) male, and c) wearing a fucking Trump ball cap. None of the chaperones had their mugs and names thrown out in the Twitterverse and publicly pilloried; none of the administration of the established racist, sexist, classist, Catholic Prep school was thrown to the horde. Not even the kids in the background yelling “Build the Wall” and doing tomahawk swipes were outed. Just the kid who smirked. Are you all fucking idiots? Sociopaths? Zealots without any regard for basic rationality?

Fourth, this is complete bullshit:

Seriously. Whomever took the time to type that and post it on their Faceborg wall is a moron.

Racism stems from ignorance and limited experience. Sure, the racism exhibited by those in power is about power but I’d posit that 95 percent of those who hold racist attitudes aren’t in any kind of power, so the meme is crap. Grow up.

Those in power love this shit. They wallow in it like a four-year-old rolls around in a ball pit. Power is the game and as long as those of us with no power focus on nonsense like a smirking kid, a staring kid, an angry black woman, a strident white talking head on FOX, we aren’t paying attention to them as they continue to bilk us all for trillions.

Back to the smug kid. As a society of free thinkers, we have a choice as to how to approach him. We can do all we can to bury him in shame and rage knowing that unless he chooses a dirt nap, he’s only going to become more concretely entrenched in the dogma he was taught in that fucking school. Or we can go after the school that made sure they continued pumping out Hitler Youth one smirking kid at a time. We can give that kid some room to become a bit more educated and perhaps change his mind and take down the adults who want him to stay stupid or we can destroy the kid (and fuck you if you think that a mob of a thousand tweets isn’t destroying someone, you anti-bullying hypocrite) and let the school apologize and expel him and get a pass.

You wanna be “woke?” Wake up to that, dipshit.

[kidsviral-blog]

How I Grew Up On The Internet

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-i-grew-up-on-the-internet/

How I Grew Up On The Internet

The internet is IRL. It always has been.

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I started navigating the internet — really, the earliest versions of social media — early in my life, and before most people even really knew what the internet was. I was 11 when I first logged on in 1993 — I’m 32 now — and I’ve spent the ensuing years invested in online communities at least as much as I’m invested in offline ones. I never understood there to be a clear line between the two. Before I ever even had a cell phone, I used the social web to document and reflect on my offline life. I’ve met wonderful people online, connected in much deeper ways to the friends I had, and I’ve used dozens of networks and platforms to figure myself out. The internet hasn’t been a way to escape, it’s been a creative outlet, a friend, a documentarian, and a tool that has made my real life better, cooler, weirder, and more fun. For me, the internet isn’t some distinct virtual universe, it’s just one part of the real world.

This is the history of my first 20 years online. It’s a happy story.

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When I was 9, my parents chose to homeschool my older brother, Mitch, and me out of frustration with public school. I had just finished third grade and he, fifth. We were both doing fine academically, but my mom felt like our personalities were changing. My brother often came home from school depressed, and we started to complain about things like reading that we had loved before. Mom and Dad hated the focus on standardized testing, and felt that our teachers didn’t appreciate the creative curiosity they treasured.

A couple years into the great homeschooling experiment, we moved temporarily from Austin, Texas, a hippie college town with a growing secular homeschooling community, to Arlington, Virginia. I missed home and I had trouble making new friends in the Christian homeschool group there.

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My brother Mitch on our Macintosh computer in the mid-’80s.

That was when Mitch told me about BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) and saved me from my boredom and social isolation. BBSes were local networks where we could read and write on message boards, chat live, and play games. We were lucky enough to have the magic formula: a PC, a 2400-baud modem, and a second phone line. My dad had always been fascinated by gadgets — he’d bought us our (and the!) first Macintosh in 1984, when I was just two years old. The iconic modem sound that began any trip to my favorite BBSes still makes me feel urgently stoked. That sound means I’m about to arrive at the best party ever, and I still get to wear my pajamas.

I tried a few BBSes, but I quickly became devoted to one in particular called “International House of Kumquats.” IHOK was run by a chill teenager who went by the handle Surrealistic Pickle. I felt at home there. Everyone was young and smart and cool and they immediately became my friends. (Since the BBS was on a local phone number, I knew we all lived in the D.C. area.) I never really thought much about the fact that we had “met online” — the concept was too new to feel dorky or taboo yet.

The average age of people on the board was probably about 16, while I was only 12. “Star Shadow,” my earnest choice of an alias, was a dead giveaway that I was the youngest person on the board. Still, I fit in fine. The kids on IHOK shared my enthusiasm for the band They Might Be Giants and we discussed them constantly, dissecting lyrics and debating best songs. We also talked about our lives and anxieties, we made up recurring inside jokes, we quoted our favorite movies and TV shows, and recommended books. We developed real friendships.

Within a few months, Surrealistic Pickle made me a co-sysop (system operator), the official duties of which were slight enough that I don’t actually remember what they were, but I still listed it on all of my teenage resumes. It was the first time that anyone had put semiprofessional faith in me, and it was done purely because of the value of my contributions, without a thought given to my being a girl, a weird homeschooler, or an actual child.

When my mom first agreed to let me meet my friends in person, she dropped me off at the National Mall but then parked a few blocks away with a stack of books and an eye on our activities. Looking back, I’m amazed that the teenagers from the board didn’t tease me for my mom literally watching over us, and I’m equally grateful she was open to the idea at all. We couldn’t share photos on the BBS, so the first time I met my board mates IRL was the first time I saw them at all. That part seems weird now, but it didn’t feel strange at the time. We already knew each other’s sense of humor, feelings, opinions, and personalities — the rest was just wrapping paper.

A few months later, I went to my first ever show with my BBS buddies: NRBQ and They Might Be Giants (obviously) at Wolf Trap in Virginia. The Kumquat crew were splayed out on picnic blankets on the grassy hills. They were Manic Panic-ed, glasses-wearing, and trench-coated teenagers who probably didn’t fit in at high school. They were all, more than any other quality, ridiculously nice. I thought they were the coolest people in the world.

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Cool “Lion King” button + Slurpee T-shirt.

I was having an awkward adolescence. I liked talking to my parents way more than I liked anyone my own age. I wanted to have deep, intelligent conversations about my interests, which were Disney animated movies (I collected Lion King merchandise), horses, and cute boys. Not, for the most part, things that grown-ups actually wanted to talk to me about.

Luckily, Prodigy existed. Prodigy was a dialup service that predated widespread use of the World Wide Web. Like its competitor, America Online, Prodigy contained multitudes: shopping, news, weather, games, advice columns, and more. I was only interested in connecting with people, so I used the live chat, email, and discussion boards.

I joined a message board where other girls like me had invented an elaborate role playing game for made-up horses — we each “owned” dozens of fake horses, gave them names and attributes, and pitted them against each other in entirely arbitrary competitions that were just decided by whoever was running them. I kept my horse files in a giant binder full of descriptions like this:

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People who I tried to explain the game to didn’t understand it at all. It wasn’t until I was introduced to the concept of fantasy sports a decade later that I thought maybe this all wasn’t as strange as I feared.

I was even more involved with the Disney Fans Bulletin Board, which was populated mostly by grown men and women who retained their interest in all things Disney well past the age when most people grow out of it. I loved them. Many of my DFBB cohorts lived and worked in Orlando, just because it meant that they got to go to Disney World whenever they wanted. To me, they were living the ultimate adulthood dream.

I got so involved with the Disney board that I was eventually given a “job.” The job paid me in a free Prodigy subscription and one free t-shirt. My title was “Teens Liaison,” and I did just that: liaised with other teens. Although most of the community was much older , I developed raging crushes on the handful of boys my age. I can still remember, in fine detail, a photo one of them sent me of himself dressed up as Prince Eric for Halloween. I had several Prodigy flirtations before I had figured out the slightest thing about talking to boys I knew offline. We talked about our feelings, which was impossible with the teenage boys I knew in “real” life. I was myself with the dudes of Prodigy — open and honest and weird — and they liked me for it.

I eventually met my Prodigy friends in real life too. My parents planned a trip to Disney World, mostly for my obsessive benefit, and let me bring my best friend, another homeschooler named Kate. I dragged Kate and my mom to a meetup dinner with the DFBB group at a fancy Disney-themed restaurant. Almost all of the attendees were closer to my mom’s age than to mine, but we had fun anyway. I got a purple tie-dyed DFBB staff T-shirt that I wore proudly to the park the next day. Soon after our meeting, people started to leave Prodigy for the wider world of the web, and I followed.

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Editing my “Lady and the Tramp” fan site with a stack of Disney encyclopedias, 1995.

I made my first website in 1995, when I was 13, and it was dedicated to my favorite movie, Lady and the Tramp. It started with a short introduction: “I’m here to provide the major source of Lady information on the World Wide Web.” The page included an archive of tiny photos I’d been able to dig up or scan, random facts I’d strung together from my collection of Disney books, the title of the movie translated into several other languages, a character list, quotes, and the movie’s credits, transcribed from my own VHS copy.

I taught myself HTML to make the page, borrowing books from the library and reading tutorials online. Once I made the Lady and the Tramp page, I was hooked. I started expanding my website to include biographical information about me, terrible things I’d written, pictures of my friends, and more.

By 1999, the earliest date that the web archive has for my site, it was basically a magazine. It included:

A 14-part “about me” section

Thousands of words devoted to describing each of my friends. Example: “Lots of people will tell you that I’m obsessed with Dorothy and you might say that’s true — I just happen to think she’s one of tha most beautiful, funniest girlies in that whole wide world. :-)”

Pages devoted to my opinions on religion, animal rights, curfews, Bill Clinton, and legalizing marijuana

A list of reasons that you should go vegetarian

A description of my imaginary perfect boyfriend, Jimmy Tony

Dozens of poems I’d written

My “future encyclopedia entry,” including the career description “writer, artist, entrepreneur, animal handler, actress, philosopher”; the titles of several of my future books about Shakespeare and hip-hop; details of the company I would found someday; the many books I would write; and my partnership with my imaginary husband Jimmy

A daily journal cataloguing the mundane details of my life

Book reviews

Comics I made with Photoshop

“Summer’s Spiffy Sendable Celebs,” a collection of about 30 e-postcards I made of my favorite celebrities

Capsule reviews of every episode of Dawson’s Creek

Commentary on my favorite songs and a list of my favorite CDs

A “shrine” celebrating Ani DiFranco

A collection of my favorite jokes

Desktop photos of celebrities and animals that I’d edited and made available to my “public”

An elaborate, multisectioned fan page for the character Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, including artwork, personal essays, historical information, and more

A lengthy acknowledgments section that thanked AltaVista, my scanner, my entire extended family, friends, and all of my pets

Making websites was my primary mode of self-expression throughout my teens, and it was also a huge part of my mostly autodidactic education. Over the years, my family’s approach to our education had grown increasingly radical, buoyed by the writings of “unschooling” proponents such as John Holt and Grace Llewellyn. I chose what to focus on and how to spend my time based on my goals, with fairly minimal oversight from my parents. My website became an obsession, and I had all the time in the world to devote to it. Most of the other creative things I did — drawing pictures, writing bad poems, and composing essays — were in the service of making a cool-as-hell website.

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A version of my website layout, featuring a dog I found on the street and kept for two days.

Although my site wasn’t part of any specific social platform, there was an informal but intense network of teenage and young adult women doing the same thing I was, and we joined web rings, made link lists, and sent each other fan mail. I kept up with tons of other website makers, almost all of them women: from JenniCam to one gothy girl who I only remember as “Calliope.” I learned from them. I studied their source codes for HTML tips, copied their brooding photography styles, listened to bands they mentioned in passing, started taking moody selfies like theirs, and tried hard to impress them with endless tweaks and new features on my website. To some extent, I lived my life with my website in mind — do it for the dot-com! — but this was a good thing: It made me more creative, thoughtful, and adventurous.

Creating my own elaborate websites about myself was outrageously, hilariously narcissistic in hindsight. But building my own sites gave me the ability to tell people who I was in a way that I could control. It also allowed me to look at myself in a positive way, something that was missing when I looked in the mirror. I liked the me I was on the web. I still do.

I’ve always wondered about the assumption that our online personas are more fake than our physical ones. I often feel awkward and nervous in real-life situations; I almost always feel like I’m saying the wrong thing and am unable to articulate what I really think and feel. Online, I have plenty of time and unlimited space to consider what to say and how to express myself. It’s an advantage that makes me feel more like myself, not less so.

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On Dec. 7, 2000, the day I joined LiveJournal, I was 18 years old, living with my parents in Austin, jobless, ecstatically in love with my first boyfriend, and spending almost every waking second with as many of my friends as possible. My crew was comprised of other homeschooled teenagers with the same excess of free time that I had, resulting in us spending so much time together that we complained about missing each other when we were apart for two days. I documented every mundane moment of that life and the years that followed on my LiveJournal, eventually falling off but still occasionally updating until 2007.

My journal is still up, hundreds of thousands of words detailing the first seven years of my adult life, and it’s full of hilarious contradictions. I was clearly leading a blissful adventure, experiencing a new “first” practically every week — my first relationship, my first apartment, my first road trip with friends, my first full-time job — but I constantly write as if the weight of the world is on my shoulders: “Life has gotten so misplaced. I don’t even know what I’m doing, just that it can’t be like this forever.”

I was also so unaware of how dang corny I was being all the time. I would write about “candy magic” and my “yummy” days and being “so full of joy.” I think I’m a pretty earnest and even cheesy person now, but I’ve got nothing on my 18-year-old self waxing poetic about every single silly thing under the sun that day. Some parts of it make me wish I still had the ability to be so sincere, but other parts make me think I must have been the most annoying person on earth.

I shared more on my LiveJournal about my thoughts and emotions than I ever did in verbal conversations. I masked my feelings with humor and being loud in “real” life, but I was able to share my neuroses on my LJ. My best friends were reading my journal, and writing in their own too, so it wasn’t like it was a secret — when we weren’t busy hanging out and having fun in my room, we were talking and fighting and sharing our lives, all through words upon words upon words on our computer screens.

I’d write about politics or religion, about trying to understand people who disagreed with me, about the anxieties and delights of my first relationship, about the bands I was discovering and falling in love with. Most of all, I wrote about spending time with my friends, and about how much I loved them.

“I’ve just had one of the most fun-packed days of my life! This will be a long entry but it may actually be worth reading becuz there was so much weirdness today:

“Rachel and Dorothy and I stayed up ALL night last night, being goofy and bitchy and farting and just being completely delirious and silly. At 8:00 we went to Flips, and soon thereafter down to soccer.

I went to soccer and was loud and delirious and singing, and then we went to Schlotsky’s and had great conversation. Then Rachel left and I almost cried cuz she was so fun and I’m gunna miss her so much. But then I went to Flips and they were funny over there. And then I went to meet Isaac after work! And I was dressed so cool and in such a good mood, and we walked around.”

My friends’ journals have largely the same tone: documenting our lives in incredible, mundane, ecstatic detail. This is mostly a practice that seems to have been left behind on the present web, where at least most people are self-aware enough to know that others aren’t interested in an outline of their everyday lives. I guess this is a good thing — I’ve naturally grown up and become smarter and more self-aware since my LiveJournal days, and reading my writing from that era causes my entire body to seize up in embarrassment. I’m also so incredibly jealous. I look back at these entries and I read someone who was completely, 100% unafraid of being herself. I can’t think of anything more remarkable in a teenage girl, and I’m grateful that LiveJournal was a place where I could be me: purely, ridiculously, perfectly.

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I was still blogging when I first joined Flickr.com in August 2004. For five years when everything else was changing — I left jobs, moved four times, broke up and restarted relationships, got a cat, and met my best friend — Flickr was a stable and integral part of my life. Flickr was focused entirely on photographs, and those pictures were all there was to it. You were judged not by your cool list of interests or your clever status updates, but by the glimpse into your actual life that photos provide. The present analogue is Instagram.

Still, before I even had an iPhone, Flickr flipped the tables for me. Instead of the internet being a thing I did when I wasn’t ~living~, Flickr became a way to keep track of all the cool stuff I was doing with my time. And there was plenty to keep track of — the time when I started using it a lot was also when I started drinking, dating, and traveling, and met most of the friends who are still my crew today. My Flickr photos are packed with boys I had flings with or unrequited crushes on, parties, late night video game sessions at my ex-boyfriend’s house, my new best friend’s hands folded around a beer at our favorite bar, and lots and lots of elaborately artistic selfies taken with my DSLR’s timer function.

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Cute boys with cats uploaded to my Flickr, 2004-2005.

I looked at Flickr a lot. My friends who were on it uploaded all of their photos too, and it was a way to reflect and reinforce all of the things we were going through together. Looking back at my early uploads or my favorites list is as evocative as listening to an old favorite song. It’s easier to remember things that you regularly look at photos from, and as a result, the years after I joined Flickr are genuinely much clearer to me than all of the ones that came before.

When I browse Flickr now — it still exists, but active users have dwindled away since Yahoo started making changes after it acquired the service in 2005 — I’ll come across a photo of an ex-boyfriend hugging a cat or a good friend drinking coffee or a bunch of co-workers dancing in someone’s apartment, and I can hear and smell and feel everything in that frame. Flickr isn’t a window into my “internet life” of yore, it’s a window into my life-life. Maybe they are the same thing.

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Typical Myspace selfie.

Although it was preceded by Friendster, which was used by me and a handful of my friends, for me Myspace marks when the concept of “social networking” became mainstream. It was the first time that the energy and excitement I felt for the internet was shared by almost everyone else my age.

There were so many Myspace things that came and went with the platform. The entire concept of having a “top eight” friends will always haunt people of a very specific age and remain completely meaningless to everyone five years older or younger than us.

And the Myspace selfies! I used Myspace photos to exert a control over my appearance that I’ve never quite felt like I had in real life. I’d carefully apply makeup I never wore in public, borrow my roommate’s jewelry, and have an entire selfie session in the sunshine just to achieve the perfect new profile picture.

Most notably, we made music for each other on Myspace. Getting musicians and their fanbases online must have been a strategic push for the company, but it felt completely organic. It felt like one day some band got on Myspace and made it big, and then the next day everyone on earth opened GarageBand for the first time.

Countless friends put music up on Myspace, so after joking that if I had a band I’d call it Premade Bears, I made a profile and I made some songs. For one of them, I borrowed my roommate’s 5-year-old son’s tiny miniature guitar and locked myself in the bathroom, strumming along to my imperfect country-ass voice singing about having a thing for a younger dude. For others, like “Stay Sweet; Don’t Ever Change,” I arranged some generic beats and played some keys on my laptop while sort of lackadaisically rapping about having a crush in the summertime.

There was no future for me in these weirdo amateur tunes, no shows to book or albums to release. Lily Allen made it big on Myspace, but most of us weren’t thinking about scale. I worked at a bookstore, doing events and making displays. I had designs to do something more with my life, but I wasn’t ever going to be a famous musician. Still, I made something I’d always wanted to, and I shared it with my friends. That was cool. Before Myspace, making music and getting people to listen to it seemed hard and complicated. During Myspace, it was the easiest thing in the world. Our old Myspace photos and cliquey top eights were a little silly, but making tunes for each other was a truly sweet, cool thing we got to do and I am grateful.

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When I joined Facebook in 2006, it felt at first like the other social networks — a secret club for me and a select few to share our lives together. I didn’t quite get the point — most of the action was still on Myspace for the first couple years, and the wonkiness of Myspace’s customizable color scheme felt way more me than the clean, boring blue and gray on Facebook. And then Facebook grew. And kept growing. And now it remains the only network mentioned here that’s frequented by my entire extended family.

As evidenced by the teens who’ve left Facebook for other less mom-supervised networks and apps over the last couple years, being on a social network with everyone you’ve ever known is sometimes less fun than the alternatives. I mean, it makes sense: The last thing I want to do in real life is gather every friend, former co-worker, family member, and ex-boyfriend in one giant room together.

That said, my own mom is by far the coolest part of my Facebook experience. My mom uses Facebook with the same delightful, contagious joy that I used early BBSes with. Every Friday, she posts nature photos from the ranch where she lives with the hashtag #FieldNotesFriday. Rumor of her excellence on Facebook has spread among my group of friends, and I occasionally get a text from another pal asking if it’s cool if they request her.

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A typical Facebook update from my mom.

Social networking is associated with youth — naturally, kids who grew up with the internet are more comfortable adapting to new social networks. But in the next couple decades, those same kids will be the parents crashing the party. If my mom is any indication, that could actually be pretty great.

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I joined Twitter just about as soon as I heard about it, in early 2008; by that time, I was joining pretty much any social network that came onto my radar. When I first joined, my tweets were approximations of Facebook statuses.

is going to start using twitter.

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

It took months before I started using the actual functionality of Twitter, like to find out I had missed events or, er, comment on the news:

checking twitter for the first time in a day & like a nightmare, last night: “secret okkervil river show RIGHT NOW @ the compound”… Sigh.

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

david foster wallace is dead. wtf.

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

I felt like I was talking to a wall, because no one I knew was on Twitter, so I gave up on it for a while. I got the sense that Twitter was never going to catch on, but when a few of my coolest real-life friends started accounts, I quickly returned:

people keep joining twitter. so i’ll try to start updating again. i need an omelette.

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

But I used the platform for desolate personal revelations and song lyrics cryptically referencing my complicated personal life:

We are the challengers of the unknown.

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

Whiskey, i love you with a depth of feeling that scares the shit out of you.

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

When I first started at BuzzFeed almost three years ago, I stopped using Twitter as a constant stream of my brain and started using it more professionally and strategically to share my articles, comment on other sites’ posts, and interact with writers and editors I worked with or admired.

It felt like Twitter was something I did for work and Facebook was something I did for my “real” friends. Living in New York City, I have now met many of the people whose faces light up my TweetDeck window every day, but my pals back home mostly remain holdouts.

Still, lately my Twitter experience has reverted 360 degrees back to the personal, flirty, ~relatable~ vibe of my early tweets, except people are actually listening. I like to tweet about songs I like, and having crushes, and being up too late at night. I like to post selfies, and look at the selfies of cute dudes and ladies I follow. I like Twitter on the nights and weekends as much as I like it during the day at work. I like to wonder about whether a fav is a flirty fav or just a fav. I try to make people smile, or laugh, or, at the very least, think I am charming. I follow people who I find nice, warm, and smart.

life goal: be more like this dog

— summeranne (@Summer Anne Burton)

I often describe Twitter these days as the cool room where I hang out with my internet friends all day. Most of my closest “IRL” friends back in Texas still don’t use it, so Twitter still feels in some ways like a throwback to the internet of yore. It’s insurance that my thoughts won’t just disappear inside my brain. It’s a place to test my own ideas and jokes and cute pictures before unleashing them on a wider audience. And it’s an amazing way to maintain mild crushes on the brains of a few hundred other people, a true dream come true for my giant, fickle heart.

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In January 2011, I had been using Tumblr for a couple years. I’d given up on maintaining my personal domain name and redirected it to my tumblog, where I posted photos, wrote about songs I liked, and shared links to things on the internet I was into. I had, around this same time, gotten super into drawing again. Art was something I’d been into consistently as a kid and a teenager, but I’d been focusing on writing, kissing boys, and working shitty retail jobs for most of my twenties. I started posting drawings on my blog in 2010 and found that my friends responded super positively to them. There’s so much reblogging and reposting and sharing on the social web that putting something truly new into the world again felt like I was doing something special.

I was also becoming completely obsessed with baseball, thanks to a fortuitous series of events. I’d started dating an obsessive sports fanatic named Brian and we visited the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown together for his birthday. I’d also recently switched from cheerleading to playing in my devoted local co-ed softball league. I’d just binge-watched all of the Ken Burns baseball documentary series. I joined a fantasy league. I had always liked baseball — it was the only sport I remember my dad being really into when I was a kid, and my grandmother was a devoted Astros fan — but this time, I got serious about it. I devoured books about baseball statistics and history, got an MLB season pass for my phone and computer so I could watch all the games I wanted, learned how to keep score, and started reading baseball websites and following baseball writers online.

So, in 2011, I started something that seemed totally natural: I decided to draw every member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame (there are currently 306) and put the drawings up on Tumblr. I thought maybe I could do it in a year. Four years later, I’m up to 258 drawings done. The project wasn’t designed to go viral; I just thought it would get me into the practice of drawing regularly, and that I’d get to learn more about baseball history in the process.

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One of the inaugural five Hall of Famers and one of my first drawings for the blog.

A few months in, an editor for ESPN: The Magazine called my cell phone. I was at my part-time waitressing job when he told me the magazine wanted to pay me to draw some pictures of players who won’t make it into the Hall despite impressive resumes (such as banned baseball player Pete Rose). It was the first time someone offered to pay me to do something freelance, and it blew my mind. After the magazine, I did an interview with ESPN online, Emma Carmichael asked if she could feature some of the drawings on Deadspin, and the project was written up in my hometown alt-weekly, the Austin Chronicle.

I started to become known, not just as an illustrator but also among baseball writers online. I applied for and, miraculously, got a regular paying freelance gig at Fangraphs, a baseball website for mega-nerds like the one I’d become. I didn’t write about stats in any traditional sense, though — I wrote about female pop stars as if they were players, researched the GOP presidential candidates’ relationships with America’s pastime, and crafted a T-shirt with the win probability graph of a crazy playoff game embroidered on it (the latter led my wonderful editor, Carson Cistulli, to email me with an apology for, well, all men).

Writing about baseball on Fangraphs opened up a world for me that I hadn’t fully realized existed, where people got paid to do what I’d been doing for fun my entire life: make stuff for the internet. I did some posts for The Hairpin and started drawing a comic for the newly kickstarted The Classical. I started applying for jobs at websites. And, 16 months after starting Every Hall of Famer, I got an email from a woman at BuzzFeed asking if I could chat with two editors about the part-time weekend editor position I’d applied for. By September of that year, I moved to New York for a full-time position at BuzzFeed.

Though I don’t typically write about baseball for the site, I’m sure I wouldn’t be here without Every Hall of Famer, which I’m hoping to finally finish sometime during the 2015 baseball season. I sometimes miss writing about baseball, but I figure I was never meant to be a specialist.

My latest position at BuzzFeed, Editorial Director of BFF, entails running a new team that makes original content for emerging social web platforms. It’s better than I ever imagined a job could be. It’s also the job I’ve been in training for without knowing it since I first dialed into a BBS at age 12. It reinforces my dad’s decision to introduce technology to me and my brother when we were so young, and it validates my mom’s loose, organic view of education and willingness to let me self-direct in front of a computer screen. I’m grateful for this life, online and off.

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One of my first posts on Vine, starring Bobby Sneakers.

I’ve focused here on the social networks that have had the biggest impact on my life, but there was also the ego-stroking delight of Friendster testimonials, the thrill of experimenting with online dating — or, more accurately, online flirting — on Consumating.com, my brief foray into anonymous message boards on Zug.com, and countless music message boards and email lists. These days, I use Instagram, Vine, and Facebook daily, in addition to Twitter and Tumblr.

“Social networking” is what I think about all day at my job, but it’s also how I stay connected to my friends back home, make new friends, develop crushes, document my life, and entertain myself. So about this tension between the internet and real life: Maybe while they’re melting together, they can bring out the best in one another.

There are plenty of people who seem to have an easy time being cruel on the web who would crumble if they were face to face with the victims of their abuse. It would be nice if those bullies and trolls could take whatever it is that keeps most of them from being horrible every day in the streets, and bring it with them to online forums.

On the flip side, I often yearn for the texture of my internet life in my “real” life. Sometimes when I’m at a bar or a party these days, I try to summon internet-me so that I can be more open, generous, flirtatious, confident, and tender. A better listener and a nicer person.

Most days I spend a lot of time watching people — some of them friends and some of them strangers — post on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and Vine and Tumblr and TinyLetter and Medium. They are so often honest and vulnerable and breaking my heart, or funny, or creative, or incisive. I heart their selfies, I share their writing, I fav their tweets, and I read about their experiences. I tell them I love and appreciate them in tiny, easy ways, and they do the same for me.

Those moments usually feel like the realest part of my day.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/social-networking-a-love-story

[readingfordummies]

Witches of East End - Chapter One

Cat Scratch Fever

Freya Beauchamp swirled the champagne in her glass so that the bubbles at the top of the lip burst one by one until there were none left. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life - but all she felt was agitated.

This was a problem, because whenever Freya became anxious things happened - like a waiter suddenly tripping on the Aubusson rug and plastering the front of Constance Bigelow's dress with hors d'oeuvres. Or the normally gloomy dog's nonstop barking and howling drowning out the violin quartet. Or the hundred-year-old Bordeaux discovered from the Gardiner family cellar tasting like Three Buck Chuck - sour and cheap.

"What's the matter?" her older sister, Ingrid, asked, coming up by Freya's elbow. With her stiff modeling-school posture and prim, impeccable clothes, Ingrid did not rattle easily, but she looked uncharacteristically nervous that evening and picked at a lock of hair that had escaped her tight bun. She took a sip from her wineglass and grimaced. "This wine has a witch's curse all over it," she whispered, as she placed it on a nearby table.

"It's not me! I swear!" Freya protested. It was the truth, sort of. She couldn't help it if her magic was accidentally seeping out, but she had done nothing to encourage it. She knew the consequences and would never risk something so important. Freya could feel Ingrid attempting to explore through the underlayer, to peer into her future for an answer to her present distress, but it was useless. Freya knew how to keep her lifeline protected. The last thing she needed was an older sister who could predict the consequences of her impulsive actions.

"Are you sure you don't want to talk?" Ingrid asked gently. "I mean, everything's happened so fast, after all."

For a moment Freya considered spilling all, but decided against it. It was too difficult to explain. And even if dark warnings were in the air - the dog's howling, the "accidents," the smell of burnt flowers inexplicably filling the room - nothing was going to happen. She loved Bran. She truly did. It wasn't a lie, not at all like one of those lies she told herself all the time, like ‘this is the last drink of the evening’, or ‘I'm not going to set the bitch's house on fire’. Her love for Bran was something she felt in the core of her bones; there was something about him that felt exactly like home, like sinking into a down comforter into sleep: safe and secure.

No. She couldn't tell Ingrid what was bothering her. Not this time. The two of them were close. They were not only sisters and occasional rivals but the best of friends. Yet Ingrid would not understand. Ingrid would be outraged, and Freya did not need her older sister's disapproval right now. "Go away, Ingrid, you're scaring away my new friends," she said, as she accepted the insincere congratulations from another group of female well-wishers.

The women had come to celebrate the engagement, but mostly they were there to gawk, and to judge and to giggle. All the eligible ladies of North Hampton, who not too long ago had harbored not-so-subtle dreams of becoming Mrs. Gardiner themselves. They had all come to the grand, refurbished mansion to pay grudging homage to the woman who had won the prize, the woman who had snatched it away before the game had even begun, before some of the contestants were aware that the starting pistol had been shot.

When had Bran Gardiner moved into town? Not so long ago and yet already everyone in North Hampton knew who he was; the handsome philanthropist was the subject of rumor and gossip at horse shows, preservation society gatherings, and weekend regattas that were the staples of country life. The history of the Gardiner family was all everyone talked about, how the family had disappeared many years ago, although no one was sure exactly when. No one knew where they had gone or what happened to them, only that they were back now, their fortune more impressive than ever.

Freya didn't need to be able to read minds to know what the North Hampton hens were thinking. Of course the minute Bran Gardiner arrived in town he would choose to marry a teenage barmaid. He seemed different, but he's just like the whole lot of them. Men. Thinking with their little heads as usual. What on earth does he see in her other than the obvious? Bartender, Freya wanted to correct them. Barmaid was a serving wench with heaving breasts carrying jugs of beer to peasants seated at unbalanced wooden tables. She worked at the North Inn, and their gourmet brew came only in pints and had hints of prune, vanilla, and oak from the Spanish casks in which it was stored, thank you very much.

She was indeed all of nineteen (although the driver's license that allowed her to pour drinks said she was twenty-two). She was possessed of an eye-catching, lively beauty rare in a time when thin mannequins were the peak of female beauty. Freya did not look like she was starving, or could use a good meal; on the contrary, Freya looked like she got everything in the world she ever wanted, and then some. She looked, for lack of a better word, ripe. Sex seemed to ooze from every pore, to slither from every inch of her glorious curves. Small and petite, she had unruly strawberry blond hair the exact shade of a golden peach, cheekbones that models would kill for, a tiny little nose, large, catlike green eyes that slanted just a little at the tip, the smallest waist made for wearing the tightest corsets, and, yes, breasts. No one would ever forget her breasts - in fact, they were all the male population looked at when they looked at Freya.

Her face might well be unrecognizable to them, but not so the twins, as Freya liked to call them - they were not too big, they did not display that heavy voluptuousness that ex-boyfriends called "fun bags," which sounded to Freya too much like "fat bags"; no, hers were exquisite: perfectly round with a natural lift and a creamy lusciousness. She never wore a bra either. Which, come to think of it, was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place.

She had met Bran at the Museum Benefit. The fundraiser for the local art institution was a springtime tradition. Freya had made quite an entrance. When she arrived, there was a problem with a strap on her dress, it had snapped, and the sudden exposure had caused her to trip on her heels - and right into the arms of the nearest seersucker-wearing gentleman. Bran had gotten what amounted to a free show, and on their first meeting, had copped a feel - accidentally, of course, but still. It happened. She had fallen - literally - out of her dress and into his arms. On cue, he had fallen in love. What man could resist?

It was Bran's serious embarrassment that had endeared him to her immediately. He had turned as red as the chrysanthemum on his lapel. "Oh god, sorry. Are you all right . . . do you need a . . . ?" And then he was just silent and staring, and it was then that Freya realized the entire front part of her spaghetti-strap dress had fallen almost to her waist, and was in danger of slipping off entirely - which was another problem, as Freya also did not wear any underwear.

"Let me - " And then he tried to step away but still keep her covered, which is when the hand-on-boob happened, as he had tried to pull up the slippery fabric, but instead his warm hand rested on her pale skin. "Oh god . . ." he gasped. Jesus, Freya thought, you'd think he'd never even gotten to first base with the way he was acting! And quick as a wink - because really, this whole experience just seemed to torture the poor guy - Freya's dress was back in its rightful place, safety pin secured, cleavage appropriately covered (if barely - nudity seemed a natural development given the deep cut of the neckline), and Freya said, in that natural, off-the-cuff way of hers, "I'm Freya. And you are . . . ?"

Branford Lyon Gardiner, of Fair Haven and Gardiners Island. A prosperous and generous philanthropist, he had made the largest contribution to the museum that summer, and his name was highly featured on the program. Freya had lived in North Hampton long enough to understand that the Gardiners were special even among the old and wealthy families in this very northern and easternmost part of Long Island, which wasn't Long Island at all (definitely not Long-guy-land, origin of big hair and bigger malls and more New Jersey than New York), but a place of another dimension entirely.

This little village wobbling at the edge of the sea was not only the last bastion of the old guard, it was a throwback to a different time, a previous era. It might have all the stuff of a classic East End area, with its perfect golf clubs and boxy hedgerows, but it was more than a summer playground, as most of its townsfolk lived in town year-round. Its charming tree-lined streets were dotted with mom-and-pop grocery stores, its Fourth of July parade featured wagon-pulled firetrucks, and its neighbors were far from strangers, they were friends who came to visit and sip tea on the porch. And if there was something just a bit odd about North Hampton - if, for instance, Route 27, which connected the moneyed villages along the coast, did not appear to have an exit into town, or if no one outside of the place had ever heard of it ("North Hampton? Surely you mean East Hampton, no?") - no one seemed to mind or notice very much. Residents were used to the back country roads, and the fewer tourists to clog the beaches the better.

That Bran Gardiner had been long absent from the social scene did not distract from his popularity. Any accidents displayed were quickly excused or forgotten. During the rebirth of his house, for instance, Fair Haven would be dark for days, but one bright morning the colonnade would appear completely restored, or else overnight the house would suddenly have new windows or a new roof. It was all a mystery since no one could remember seeing a construction crew anywhere near the property. It was as if the house were coming alive on its own, shaking its eaves, shining with new paint, all by itself.

Now it was the Sunday of the Memorial Day holiday, and what better way to kick off another calm summer in the Hamptons than with a celebration at the newly restored mansion? The tennis courts shined in the distance, the view of the whitecaps was unparalleled, the buffet tables heaved under the weight of the extravagant spread: chilled lobsters as big and heavy as bowling balls, platters of fresh, sweet corn, pounds and pounds of caviar served in individual tiny crystal bowls with mother-of-pearl spoons (no accoutrements, no blini, no creme fraiche to dilute the flavor). The unexpected rainstorm that morning had put a little obstacle on the plans and the party had been moved to the ballroom and out of the crisp white tents that stood empty and abandoned by the cliffside.

That Bran was thirty years old, smart, accomplished, unmarried, and rich beyond imagination made him the perfect catch, the biggest fish in the bridal pond. But what most people did not know, or care to know, was that most of all, he was kind. When Freya met him, she thought he was the kindest man she had ever met. She felt it - kindness seemed to emanate from him, like a glow around a firefly. The way he had been so concerned about her, his embarrassment, his stammer - and when he had recovered enough, he had brought her a drink and never quite left her side all evening, hovering protectively.

There he was now, tall and dark-haired, wearing an ill-fitting blazer, shuffling through the party and accepting the well wishes of his friends with his customary shy smile. Bran Gardiner was not at all charming or knowledgeable or witty or worldly like the men from his background, who enjoyed zooming about the unpaved streets in their latest Italian sports cars. In fact, for an heir, he was awkward and self-conscious and Talented Mr. Ripley-ish - as if he were an outsider to an elite circle and not the very center of the circle itself.

"There you are." He smiled as Freya reached to straighten his bow tie. She noticed the sleeves of his shirt were worn, and when he put an arm around her she smelled just the slightest hint of body odor. Poor boy, she knew he had been dreading this party a little. He wasn't good with crowds.

"I thought I'd lost you," he said. "Are you all right? Can I get you anything?"

"I'm perfect," she said, smiling at him and feeling the butterflies in her stomach begin to calm.

"Good." He kissed her forehead and his lips were soft and warm on her skin. "I'm going to miss you." He fiddled nervously with the monogram ring he wore on his right hand. It was one of his little tics, and Freya gave his hand a squeeze. Bran was traveling to Copenhagen tomorrow on behalf of the Gardiner Foundation, the family's nonprofit project dedicated to promoting humanitarian charities around the globe. He would be gone almost the entire summer. Maybe that was why she was feeling so jittery. She didn't want to be without him now that they had found each other.

The first night they met, he hadn't even asked her out, which annoyed Freya at first until she realized it was because he was simply too modest to think she would be interested in him. Instead he showed up the next night during her shift at the Inn, and the next night, and every night after that, just staring at her with those big brown eyes of his, with a kind of yearning, until finally, she had to ask him out - she could see that if she left it up to him, they would never get anywhere. And that was that. They were engaged four weeks later, and this was the happiest day of her life.

Or was it?

There he was again. The problem. Not Bran, not the sweet man she had vowed to love forever - he had been stolen away by the crowd and was now in the middle of chatting up her mother. His dark head was bent over Joanna's white one, the two of them looking like the best of friends.

No. He was not the problem at all.

The problem was the boy staring at her from across the room and from all the way down the length of the great hall. Freya could feel his eyes on her, like a physical caress. Killian Gardiner. Bran's younger brother, twenty-four years old, and looking at her as if she were on sale to the highest bidder and he was more than willing to pay the price.

Killian was home after a long holiday abroad. Bran had told Freya he hadn't seen his brother in many years, as he moved around a lot and traveled the globe. She wasn't sure where he had just come from - Australia, was it? Or Alaska? The only thing that mattered was that when they were introduced, he had looked at her with those startling blue-green eyes of his, and she had felt her entire body tingle. He was, for lack of a better word, beautiful, with long dark lashes framing those piercing eyes, sharp-featured with a hooked nose and a square jaw. He looked like he was always ready to be photographed: brooding, sucking on a cigarette, like a show idol in a French New Wave film.

He had been perfectly kind, well-mannered, and had embraced her as a sister, and to her credit, Freya's face had betrayed none of the chaos she felt. She had accepted his kiss on her cheek with a modest smile, had even been able to engage him in the usual cocktail conversation. The soggy weather, the proposed wedding date, how he found North Hampton (she couldn't remember, she might not have been listening: she had been too mesmerized by the sound of his voice - a low rumble like a late-night disk jockey). Then finally someone else had wanted his attention and she was free to be alone - and that was when all the small but awful things at the party began to happen.

Cat scratch fever. That was all it was, wasn't it? Like an itch you couldn't quite reach, couldn't soothe, couldn't satisfy. Freya felt as if she were on fire - that at any moment she would spontaneously combust and there would be nothing left of her but ashes and diamonds. Stop looking at him, she told herself. This is insane, just another of your bad ideas. Even worse than the time you brought the gerbil back to life (she'd gotten an earful from her mother for that one, lest someone on the Council found out, not to mention that zombie pets were never a good idea). Go outside. Get some fresh air. Return to the party. She glided over to the vase of pink cabbage roses, trying to rid her whirling emotions by inhaling their scent. It didn't work. She could still feel him wanting her.

God damnit, did he have to be so good-looking? She thought she was immune to that kind of thing. Such a cliche: tall, dark, and handsome. She hated cocky, arrogant boys who thought women lived to service their uncontrollable sexual appetites. He was the worst offender of the type - screeching up in his Harley, and that ridiculous hair of his - that messy, shaggy, bangs-in-your-eyes kind of thing, with that sexy, flirtatious smolder: but there was something else. An intelligence. A knowingness in his eyes. It was as if, when he looked at her, he knew exactly what she was and what she was like. A witch. A goddess. Someone not of this earth but not apart from it either. A woman to be loved and feared and adored.

She looked up from the vase and found him still staring directly at her. It was as if he were waiting the whole time, for just this moment. He nodded his head, motioning to a nearby door. Truly? Right here? Right now? In the powder room? Was that not just another cliche that went with the motorcycle and the bad-boy attitude? Was she really going to go into the bathroom with another man - her fiancé’s brother, for god's sake - at her engagement party?

She was. Freya walked, as if in a daze, toward the said meeting. She closed the door behind her and waited. The face that stared at her from the mirror was excited and radiant. She was so happy she was delirious, so excited she didn't know what to do with herself. Where was he? Making her wait. Killian Gardiner knew what to do with lustful women, it seemed.

The doorknob turned, and he walked in, smooth as a knife, locking the door behind him. His lips curled into a smile, a panther with his prey. He had won.

"Come here," she whispered. She had made her choice. She didn't want to wait a moment longer.

Outside the door, in the middle of the party, the cabbage roses burst into flame.