#theft of drugs

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Alfred Hall Gets 5 Years And 5 Lashes," Vancouver Sun. October 16, 1943. Page 1 & 8. --- For the first time in a decade or more lashes were added to a penitentiary sentence when punishment was meted out in Assize Court today by Chief Justice Wendell Farris to seven prisoners.

Accompanied by a scathing denunciation of the "detestable crimes" of which he had been found guilty - two charges of gross indecency - Alfred G. Hall, 53-year-old self-styled psychologist and nutritionist, was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary and five lashes.

At the same time, Frederick Hathaway, 43, leader of the Aryan Astrological Occult Church of Christ, was given the maximum term for indecent assault, two years in the penitentiary.

Charles Willard Davis, 41, former New Westminster druggist who pleaded guilty to possession of drugs while he was staff sergeant in the RCAMC, was sent to the penitentiary for six years, with a fine of $1000, or an additional six months.

Other sentences given today, were:

Pte. George Donald Bowie, 27, two years from his arrest on May 29 for a statutory offense.

Ralph Prentice, 28, salesman, and Robert Morgan, 27, laborer, three years for burglary.

Robert Findlay, 21, fisherman, one year for burglary.

HAD FAIR TRIAL When court convenes at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Mr. Justice Stiney Smith will preside for the re-trial of two cases in which there were disagreements earlier in the assizes. They are Herbert Gordon Penny, false pretenses, and Robert Walter Millman, theft.

Hall, who is general director of the World Fellowship of Faith and Service and operator of its adjunct, the Human Adjustment institute, claimed he was greatly handicapped at his trials by lack of counsel. He told the chief justice also that there was a public movement to prevent the career which he had chosen as his life work in Vancouver.

"You had extremely fair trials and your ability in conducting your defense was such that I am satisfied it would not have been excelled by many lawyers," Chief Justice Farris told the prisoner.

LONG PERIOD "I think you have a contempt for the law and the decent things of life," he added, and then recited Hall's criminal record which began in Vancouver 20 years ago and extended to Toronto, Chicago, Seattle and back to Vancouver to pile up six convictions for false pretenses, theft, fraud, con-games, violation of immigration laws and non-support.

The chief justice said Hall's conduct in court indicated more than ordinary ability and a remarkable brain. It is too bad, he remarked, that science has not advanced sufficiently to correct the quirk which prevents his ability being of service to the community rather than a disgrace to himself. His Lordship said he could see nothing in the case which war ranted sympathy or leniency.

"Absolutely brazenly you defended yourself on this detestable charge, and I sentence you to five years with five lashes, as I believe that it is only by such means you may be brought to a realization of your position. Though the thought of the lash is to me abhorrent, in a case such as yours I see nothing else that will serve."

In making the sentences on the two counts concurrent, the chief justice stipulated that if the lashes are not given in the first case they shall be given in the second, within four weeks of Hall's admission to the penitentiary.

"COSMETIC SCIENCE" "In the second case you went into the box and your admissions were such as to my mind shows a completely perverted mind and a system of carrying on these perversions with your so-called institute to further what I might term your beastly desires," declared the judge.

Objections taken by G. V. Pelton in behalf of Hathaway of alleged prejudice at his trial by reference to cosmetic science instead of cosmic and the use of the name Hall instead of Hathaway, might be grounds of appeal; also his trial by jury on a lesser charge than the one on which he was committed.

"In these days, when people are seeking faith and religious outlet, those who profess religion and in the name of that religion, commit a crime, it becomes a very serious matter," Chief Justice Farris told the cosmic science lecturer who claimed at his trial to have visited Mars, Venus and other planets.

He was not unmindful of the suffering of drug addicts, the chief justice said after hearing a second impassioned plea by T. F. Hurley for leniency for Davis, the staff sergeant who admitted stealing morphine and cocaine from army supplies and substituting other medicines for a year.

But Davis' case was different to the ordinary drug case because he knew thed anger of going near narcotics; still he took a position of responsibility know- ing there might be serious consequences.

'KNEW WAY AROUND' His Lordship thought it remarkable that Canada has no institutions for the treatment of drug addicts.

He said he took into consideration the sorrow of his parents, wife, a son overseas and a brother invalided home; also the co-operation Davis gave in preventing the serious consequences there might have been. However, the judge said the Crown might have charged him under a section with a maximum penalty of 11 years instead of seven.

A strong recommendation by the jury for mercy was taken into consideration by the chief justice, he said, when he gave Bowie two years from the date of his arrest for an offense against a young girl. He said he also recalled that the complainant was "one who knew her way about" and that the soldier had been drinking.

Criminal records for 10 years and 13 years were confirmed by Prentice and Morgan respectively, when they appeared for sentence for a dairy safe-blowing.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

MatPat stole my car to sell drugs.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)

The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.

And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.

That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.

It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans

One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.

The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.

These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.

Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”

When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.

In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:

https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/

Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.

Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.

“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.

It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.

Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”

The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).

The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.

Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions

The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.

In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.

There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.

These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.

It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.

This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.

As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.

The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee

[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]

Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[frosted-skies]

trikey —

deliver to: heaven

TW: Dr*gs, overdose and s*icidal ideation

i would wait for you a thousand years, but would my life last long enough?

trevor philips x michael de santa

a series of nine letters, corresponding to the nine years since michael townley’s death during a failed heist in ludendorff, north yankton, written by trevor philips.

the nine letters are kept safely in individual envelopes, stacked chronologically and locked in a wooden box under his bed.

engraved in the wood was:

deliver to: heaven.

—

playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Yv3sN3tq0kfgZyI83k5P2?si=JKbagLZiS0KzG9A9vOgbjA&pi=a-ATFl3aYgQmuF

2004.

Michael.

I can't believe you’re not with me anymore. I can’t believe you are gone, I can’t believe you are dead. I couldn't leave your tombstone, even after everyone else had left, including your wife and children.

I stayed there for god knows how long. I cried in the cold unforgiving North Yankton winter, kneeling next to your grave. I held onto your tombstone. That smooth concrete with your name engraved.

Michael Townley, 1965-2004.

I wanted to dig out your body, I wanted to look at your face one last time. I cried, screamed, begged for all of this to be a dream. I prayed to a God I didn't even know existed, I yelled into the empty grey skies. I yelled your name. hoping that somehow and somewhere, you’d come back.

Why did it have to end like this? I should have taken that bullet instead of you, I should have died and not you. Why was it you? Why did it have to be you? Why? I don’t know how to live without you, Mikey. You were my everything. And now…you’re gone.

Maybe you’re happier on the other side wherever you end up. I don’t fucking know. But I can’t think of a way to live a life without you. I’d crumble without you. I can’t stop thinking about you. I see you in everything and everywhere. I can’t get you outta my mind. I have a shirt of yours. And a jacket. Those are my only two things that will remind me of you. And I’ll treasure it with my whole life. I promise.

I’m missing you so much, Townley. And I’ll keep missing you forever. I’ll always be waiting for you on the other side. No matter how long it takes. I’m waiting for you. I promise.

T.

2005.

Michael.

It’s been a year since you left me. A fucking year. 12 months, 48 weeks, 365 days, 8760 hours and 525,600 minutes.

All that time. I spent it alone. I moved to another part of the US. I decided to move to San Andreas. Blaine County. Sandy Shores. In a trailer.

I did drugs. All that you could think of. Just so I can fill the void and the never ending pain that your death caused. I still can’t believe that you’re actually gone. Sometimes I saw see you in my dreams. Sometimes I see your face in other people’s. God, I miss you so much I think I’m going a bit crazy.

But I don’t think you would like to see me like this, do you? I don’t know. But I just needed something to quell me from the emptiness that you left me. I still have that shirt and jacket of yours. I take care of it well, so your scent doesn’t ever go away. I kept all the pictures we took. I look at them when I miss you the most. And then I cry my eyes out. And then I smoke meth. And repeat.

One year since you left me and I’m struggling. I don’t know what will happen to me soon. But I’ll wait for you. I promise, I will never forget you and I’ll wait.

I miss you and I love you. Forever. Until I die.

T.

2006.

Michael.

Two years. Two fucking years. Two years have passed since you died.

I don’t know if I’m surviving. Barely.

Writing to Brad. He’s in prison. Even though I hate his guts kinda, I still write. I’m not heartless am I?

I went to visit you up in North Yankton. Still cold as always. I think the priest saw me. I don’t know. Don’t care. I sat there for probably three hours. Talking to you. Talking to a fucking stone. I don’t know if you heard me. I guess you did.

I miss you so much Mikey. I really do. Why did you have to leave me so soon?

I have no energy to write more. I’m gonna go smoke meth probably.

I miss you. I love you.

T.

2007.

Michael.

Three fucking years.

Three.

The more days I live, the more I wonder if I should still stay. My life has no purpose.

My tolerance grew. The usual amount I smoked isn’t cutting it anymore.

I sometimes smoke with a picture of you next to me. You’re my only friend. I think.

I tried huffing gas. Interesting experience. Ended up with a pounding headache and puking my guts out at the abandoned motel. Who cares.

I don’t think I should stay alive anymore, Mikey.

I can’t do this anymore. I’m numb. I feel invisible. Miserable. Horrible.

I should just…die. I have no purpose to live anymore. Especially without you here with me. I’m tired of crying, breathing, and living. I might just die by an overdose. I should.

I’m broken, Mikey. Maybe I’ll see you. You’re waiting for me, right?

T.

2008.

Michael.

Four years. Sorry I wrote later than usual.

I was high as fuck. Took a mix of meth and heroin. Crazy. I probably killed a guy or two. I don’t know.

Almost died. Wasn’t planning to at that moment.

I heard your voice when I was tripping. Were you visiting me Mikey? I missed you.

I dont know if it was the drugs or my imagination. But I swear I saw you.

Planning to overdose next year, on the fifth year. Probably gonna mix a fuckton of drugs. It’ll be effective. I hope so. I just wanna meet you again.

You’re waiting right? Wait for me Mikey.

I’m coming.

T.

2009.

Michael.

Well…I tried.

I overdosed. I drank, I smoked. Somehow. But somehow, I’m still alive. Fuck.

Damn it. Fuck. Wait for me Mikey.

Please. I wanna see you again.

Hold you. Hug you. Talk to you.

Wait for me. Please.

I’ll come to you, Mikey. I promise.

T.

2010.

Michael.

Six years have passed.

I still wished I was the one who got shot. Not you. God. I miss you everyday. It hurts. Even the drugs aren’t cutting it anymore.

I miss you so much. I don’t know how to describe it. This grief seems to go on forever.

Should I just…keep living and accept the fact that you’re gone?

Tried to die twice to meet you but it seems like my life has other plans. Maybe one day I’ll accept the fact that you’re gone. But that doesn’t change the fact that I miss you so much. Remember that.

T.

2011.

Michael.

Coming to terms with the fact that you’re dead is weird. I’m still doing drugs though.

I think I found a friend. His name is Ron or whatever. He's a bit of a weirdo and his wife's an ass.

He's kinda like a little apprentice to me. I started a little drug stint to make money. Forgot to tell you that.

Even though I'm slowly accepting reality…that you're gone…

I will never forget you.

Take my word for that.

T.

2012.

Michael.

Sorry for not writing. Ron got a divorce from his ass wife. He lives in the trailer next to mine. I got another kid. Wade. Very gullible young kid.

I've been thinking of you a lot.

I've fully accepted that you're dead. After eight damn years. Almost a decade of me crying at night because I missed you.

Accepting that you're dead feels weird. Really weird. It's kinda like I've made peace with it. I no longer feel the weight of my grief. Nor have I felt that soul-crushing, rose-thorns-on-my-throat feeling of deathly missing you. Even after all that.

Remember that in another universe I still love you with all my heart.

T.

2013.

Michael.

Happy New Year. Well…I'm a month late. You don't care, do you?

I hope you're okay wherever you are. It's almost ten years since you're gone.

Isn't it weird that everyone grieves differently? I'm here always having you in my thoughts. Maybe your wife moved on quick and married someone else!

Finally accepting your death is calming. I'm not a miserable mess anymore. I have those two idiots and my business to occupy my time.

You're always in my thoughts. I miss you lots, Mikey. I love you lots, too.

T.

[hummingbird-of-light]

Round 2: Twentieth story for @badthingshappenbingo ~

Title: Third Wheel

Fandom: Star Trek (AOS)

Character(s): Robert "Robbie" Scott, Female OC, Leah McCoy (mentioned)

Relationship(s): Robert "Robbie" Scott/Leah McCoy (mentioned)

Rating: M

Words: 902

Prompt: Organ Theft

Warnings: Kidnapping, Non-con Drug Use, Swearing, Ambiguous/Open Ending

(You can also find this story on AO3)

~ Third Wheel ~

When Robert "Robbie" Scott had met his girlfriend's new colleague, he hadn't been too sure what to think of her at first.

It wasn't like Samantha Lorson wasn't friendly. On the contrary, she was a really nice lass who took great care of all her patients. But something had felt kinda off about her. Robbie just hadn't been able to find out what it was.

When Samantha and Leah started to become better friends, the Scotsman had eventually shaken off the strange feeling and over time he had actually started to like the blonde nurse too.

Samantha sometimes joined them for lunch or they all went out together at the weekend. Robbie often worried that the woman would start to feel like the third wheel, hanging out with a couple, but she never said anything.

And so, in the end, everything appeared to turn out fine. Or at least Robbie had thought so.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

"Oi! Let me go!" The Scotsman's voice echoed back from the walls of the more or less empty room.

There was not much furniture – except for the operating table he was lying on of course.

Robbie tried his best to pull at his restraints once more, but it was impossible for him to move his arms or legs.

"Let me out of here!"

He didn't remember too much of the night before. He just knew that he had been out at the club with Leah and Samantha.

"Let me go!" No matter how loud Robbie screamed, no one seemed to hear him.

He was just about to try it again when suddenly a door at the end of the room opened. A switch was flipped and quickly bright light filled the room, blinding Robbie whose eyes had been adjusted to the darkness, for a moment.

"Would you please stop screaming, Rob? It's kinda useless. No one will hear you anyway."

Robbie's blood froze in his veins when he heard the familiar nickname and once his eyes got used to the light, he stared at the person, who had entered the room, with a shocked expression on his face.

"Samantha?"

The blonde nurse gave him a smile, closing the door behind her and stepping over to the operating table.

"Hey Rob. How you feeling? I see the effect of the knockout drops has worn off."

The Scotsman couldn't stop his mouth from opening in disbelief. He frowned in confusion, shaking his head.

"Wh-what? I... I don't understand. I–"

"Oh, Rob," Samantha sighed, placing one hand on the man's cheek, "you really are naïve, aren't you?"

She let her eyes wander up and down Robbie's bare body, the smile turning bigger. He was wearing nothing but his underwear. A blush crept onto the Scotsman's face.

"What kind of crazy shit is this!" Robbie demanded to know, glaring at the woman looking down at him.

Samantha just chuckled.

"Don't worry, Rob. I'm not really into guys." She turned her head and looked at a smaller table that was set up next to the operating table. "However, I'm interested in the beautiful things inside of them."

Robbie followed her gaze and almost instantly his heart stopped beating for a second.

There were... all kinds of medical tools. He pulled at his restraints again. It was useless.

"You know, Rob, right from the start I knew that I wanted you out of my way. Seeing you so close with pretty Leah... It was just so disgusting." Samantha made a face as she talked about everything. Slowly, she stepped over to the table with the tools and put on some gloves. "But I could see just how much she loves you. So, I had second thoughts."

Robbie felt his mouth go dry as he watched Samantha pick up a scalpel. It was shining in the unnatural light of the lamps.

"Of course, I still looked you up in the hospital's computer system to find out everything I need about you and your health status."

The Scotsman slowly shook his head as he listened to the nurse. This couldn't be happening! It had to be a nightmare!

"You see, selling organs is a really lucrative business. Been doing it for several years now and I need a lot of money to keep up my life's standard."

Robbie's breathing fastened and his heart started to race.

"N-nae. Y-ye cannae be serious," he muttered, horrified by the thought of what Samantha was implying. But the woman only sighed, turning back to face him.

"It's a real pity. In the end, I kinda started to like you, Rob. Unfortunately, the group I work for has a new customer." She grabbed a syringe from the table and tested if it worked. "And you are the perfect donor."

"P-please, Samantha. D-don't do this. Ye cannae do this! Wh-what about Leah? Ye cannae do this to her! Without me–"

"Shhh," Samantha whispered, placing one finger on Robbie's lips to shut him up. A crazy smile formed on her lips when she grabbed his arm and injected whatever was inside the syringe into his bloodstream. "Don't worry about Leah, Rob. I'll take good care of her once you're gone. Just go to sleep now. Tomorrow your heart will belong to someone else."

And no matter how hard he tried to fight it, eventually Robbie lost his consciousness, not knowing if he ever was to wake up again.

[e-m-p-error]

[ Closed Starter For @voxiiferous || Vox ]

[ Erasmo ]

When he'd gone to sleep at that party, he hadn't known what he was going to do. He'd been too out of it to move, too tired, too drugged to do anything. He remembered touching the heart tattoo on the back of his neck just in time to pass out when he saw a large heeled boot appear near his head. He was safe. Ozzie wouldn't let anything bad happen to him.

Waking up was odd. He was warm, too warm, and in the backseat of a car he didn't recognize. A huge car that he didn't recognize.

Getting out of the convertible, he dropped onto the cracked sidewalk and began to walk. His head was pounding, and he wanted something to drink. As he rounded a corner, he came across a huge building that looked kind of like what he assumed was a skyscraper. He'd never actually seen one in real life before.

Erasmo wandered inside, heading for a vending machine he saw in a little alcove near the door. Voxerade? He frowned. That seemed like his only option here, so he went to buy a blue one; only to discover that the machine wouldn't accept his dollar bills.

Damn it. It wasn't like they were wrinkled to Hell and back! And six dollars for a single drink? That was ridiculous.

Glancing around, he noticed this part of the lobby was fairly empty. With a sigh, he dropped to his knees, mindful of his tight, high-waisted shorts, and pulled a lockpick kit out of his pocket. Sliding it into the lock on the vending machine, he wiggled it around until it popped open.

Taking two blue Voxerades out of the machine, he set them on the floor beside his heeled boots. Closing the machine up, he locked it again, turning to grab his drinks off the floor just in time to see he'd been caught. By a-- What the Hell was that?

"Shit." He mumbled, before putting on a flirtatious smile, "Uh, hi~ I promise this isn't what it looks like." He needed to figure out what it was, though. All he knew for sure, now, was that he was not in California anymore.

[osihbj]

Bizarre Love

(Packie McReary x Niko Bellic)

TW: Drug addiction, sexual content, alcohol, death mentioned, spoilers to GTA IV. Angst to Smut

Autor note: The one shot is happening after GTA IV plot, that's my first one shot, so please be understanding :p.

Liberty City the year 2008, the wedding of Roman Bellic - Niko's cousin, and Mallorie Bardas, but now Mallorie Bellic. Everything promised to be perfect, Mallorie's beautiful dress as well as Roman who lost a couple of hundred pounds to look good in his graphite suit, and, of course, to make sure a couple of buttons didn't accidentally break. Everyone stood boisterously outside the church, waiting for the bride and groom to emerge from behind the colossal church walls.

Niko stood talking along with Patrick "Packie" McReary - his almost best friend with whom they were for each other for better and for worse. Slavic could only sit and reminisce about the moments when he saved the Irishman's clumsy ass, because unfortunately Packie himself was unable to remember most of those situations, mainly due to the states he was in while being bounced around by various shenanigans. However, when Niko needed the help of a friend he was always ready to step up, regardless of the situation. Maybe Packie couldn't emotionally express that he cared about the man's welfare, but even so, the actions said a lot.

— I'm happy that Roman finally got it right. He quit that fucking gambling...Damn Packie, he's getting married... — Niko snorted quietly under his breath, only to glance at the Irishman out of the corner of his eye a moment later. He looked as if he was absent-minded.

— Dude, are you alive? — He asked with intrigue in his voice and at one point even decided to poke him gently with his shoulder, and the man finally got down on the ground.

— Fuck, can't you see that I'm thinking? It's been a long time since I took that damn coke, without it I can barely think, so let me enjoy this fucking moment! — Patrick almost, shouted these words reproachfully, of course, people began to look at them, so Niko just rolled his eyes and fell silent, and the lower one returned his thoughts somewhere else. It was the norm for Packie to show up even at such events intoxicated. Bellic is used to it by now, but unfortunately others are not as forgiving as Niko. In the end, Roman and his now-wife left the church full of energy, with happy faces. Mallorie threw a bouquet of flowers into the crowd, which was caught by none other than Katie McReary, the sister of our favorite inebriated Irishman with whom Niko used to hang out from time to time. Everyone started cheering and giggling, of course not taking away the pleasure of directing their eyes at Niko, after all, it was clear that he was the one Kate was going to spend her life with. Just at that moment Patrick decided to return to the world of the living.

— Watch out for my sister, capiche? — He threw an angry look on Niko's direction, but after a moment he put his hand on his shoulder.

— I know you won't hurt her, you're a good guy...Except for the fact that you kill for money, but you know what kind of family I come from...it's on the order of the day. — He added after a while, but at some point a loud bang rang out. Even a gunshot. Everyone turned their eyes in one direction. Kate McReary had been shot.

It had been five months since the attack on Roman's wedding, after some time it became clear that Niko was to be the one to die at the hands of Pegorino's men, but unfortunately they missed, hitting a blameless woman. Everyone who was close to the McReary family experienced Katie's death as intensely as they did. Niko felt guilty about the woman's death because he was the one who was supposed to die. He couldn't get over it. Packie only deepened his unhealthy love for cocaine. They both tried to support each other in these difficult moments, however, they did not always feel like it. After all, it's not easy to walk out of the house after such a situation and pretend that nothing like this ever happened. This is reality, not a movie.

Around 9 PM, Niko heard the doorbell ringing. Who had the audacity to disturb his peace of mind at this difficult time? Annoyed, he got up from the bed, casually kicking some tattered clothes and trash under the bed. The whole apartment was as much as begging to have the windows opened, as it smelled musty and acrid with male sweat, but who could blame him? He wasn't expecting visitors. He finally walked with a wasted step to the door and opened it, without looking through the peephole beforehand, which he should have done looking at the fact that a few months back someone wanted to kill him. The brunet looked down as the figure was lower, and it was none other than Patrick.

— What are you doing here at this hour? — He asked, letting him inside. Packie did not look well, his eyes were blacked out and bloodshot, he was pale...and did not look inviting at all

Niko was the same way, dirty, smelly and in just his underwear, he had just welcomed his best friend into the apartment. All in all, he knew Packie would never judge him.

— Niko, I have a fucking problem. — The Irishman began, then sat down on a leather corner, which was also swamped with junk. By the way, Patrick decided to take with him hectoliters of alcohol (read: four bottles of strong scotch). Niko was increasingly curious as to what his dearest friend had in mind, so he sat down next to him and took in his hand one of the bottles previously placed by Packie on the coffee table. He didn't intend to sip the drink with anything, so he opened the glass and began to drink from the thread, waiting for McReary to deign to finish. Patrick's lips parted to let out the following words quietly.

— I got so high...I feel so lonely. — Patrick said and moved dangerously close to Niko, who looked confused.

— So what? — Asked the brunet measuring Packie with his hazel eyes. He didn't understand what the man wanted to convey to him with that.

— I want to fuck you. — He added after a moment, and Niko almost choked on his own saliva. What? He wanted what? Slavic murmured in such a way that he took a few more deep drinks and put the bottles back on the table. He looked at the green-eyed man and sighed deeply.

— Do what you want, I have nothing to lose anyway. — Spouted Niko, and all in all, at the mere thought of intercourse with Packie, he got hot. Had he ever thought about it? Probably yes, but only, When he was really drunk.

If Niko agreed, why should Patrick delay? He had been thinking about it for a long time. He was thinking about it before his friend started dating his sister. With a playful smile, the Irishman moved even closer to the man to place a passionate kiss on his lips. The warmth of his lips made Packie lose his mind more and more. The cocaine was making him as horny as ever, and horny he had always been. (XD) They began to undress each other, so that after a while they both ended up naked. Both of them would never have thought that this could actually happen. It was simply abstract to them, but well...It is said that dreams do come true. At one point Patrick hovered over his delighted lover and looked him straight in the eyes.

— You're begging me with your eyes. — He laughed and Niko merely shook his head, but at one point he lifted his hips involuntarily upward when he felt the man's rough hand running along his appendage. The feeling was...certainly much weirder than when women touched him, but he didn't complain.

— Damn, just do it already, don't tease me.— He howled through his teeth frustrated Niko, only to feel a sharp pain piercing him from the waist down a moment later. Packie, without any warning, simply with one move he...well, what to call it? Did he work it out? After a long session, which lasted really quite a long time namely as long as three and a half hours, they both ended up exhausted in the bed, as they managed to move there in the process.

— Damn, Niko, I didn't knew you liked be dominated. — Patrick snorted with laughter, and Niko muttered something under his breath apparently tired of it all. No wonder, after all, it was the first time someone fucked him, not the other way around. What is the moral of the story? If your sister dies, go fuck your friend, love n peace guyyzzz.

Thx for reading this.

It was a new, but good experience for me to write in another language than my native.

[i-am-q]

SOME CLARIFICATION

NOT ALL NAZIS ARE SLAVE MASTERS AND NOT ALL SLAVE MASTERS ARE NAZIS

NAZI LESBIAN = GAY WOMAN COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): LIBBY ACKER, KATIE LUCAS, MARY RICHTER, JANET MONTGOMERY

NAZI KIKE = JEWISH PERSON ACTIVELY COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): JED STONE, RENA ZAID, SHANNON KEATING-ZAID

NAZI NIGGER = BLACK PERSON ACTIVELY COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): "KID O" TO LEBRON JAMES AND NO ONE ELSE, THE MAYOR OF TOWNSVILLE (NOT THE MAYOR OF AKRON)

NAZI WETBACK = LATINO/A PERSON ACTIVELY COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): LUCIANA RIVERA MOLINA & HER ARMY OF "BRATZ DOLLS"

NAZI FAG = GAY/BISEXUAL MAN ACTIVELY COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): PETER MCPIKE, ANTHONY DAVID SCIACCA

NAZI TRANNY = A TRANSGENDER PERSON MAN ACTIVELY COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): THE TRANNY FROM SANTA CRUZ, AUBREY GRAHAM

NAZI NAZI = AN ADMITTED NAZI / ANTISEMITE ACTIVELY COMMITTING HEINOUS CRIMES EX(s): SARAH STREET, MACKENZIE MCPIKE

SOS -O

EDIT: GAY/BISEXUAL/TRANSGENDER PEOPLE, JEWISH PEOPLE, BLACK PEOPLE, LATINO/A PEOPLE, AND ANTISEMITES (OLD WORLD NAZIS) ARE NOT NEW AGE NAZIS.

ALL THE LESBIANS ARE NEW WORLD NAZIS. CHECK THE SANTA CRUZ DIALOGUE.

[hatake]

california really said inmate slavery is good actually, we should make more ppl inmates, and also rent control is bad

[silkchifffon]

California voters fail again on proposition voting what do you mean you don’t want a higher minimum wage and rent control.

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

loloololol looks like some major blows incoming for californian progressives

[demadogs]

i despise when people bring up how noah auditioned for theo for the goldfinch and they make it about byler like plz for the love of god try to separate finns characters if you hear that and only think “omg think of the byler edits!!1!1” i am so embarrassed it feels like youre shipping the actors not any characters

[vamptastic]

'i think we should get rid of the police and prison system, except for crimes i think are bad. we should have special, even more militarized police for those people.' -person who is not actually anti-police in the slightest

[byanyan]

@lee-sol sent 🤳 + 15 for:

ㅤbyan's hobbies

ㅤyour hobbies have never been what others expected of you, and though you used to try to meet those expectations, nothing you did ever seemed to be good enough... so eventually, you started leaning in the opposite direction. you embraced the things you enjoyed despite the disdain cast your way and, in all your anger, you also found yourself taking enjoyment in more destructive uses of your time, in the sorts of activities that were perfect for making use of all those emotions you bottled up for so long. nowadays, your hobbies are a strange mishmash of creation and destruction — from drawing and painting, stick & poke tattooing, creating new outfits to suit your style, and experimenting with makeup to getting high, parkouring your way across the city, playing with fire, breaking anything that isn't yours, and picking fights with anyone who looks at you the wrong way. you know you should probably put more of your effort in to some of these over others, but you stopped caring about what you should and shouldn't do at about the same time you realized that your life never meant anything to those around you anyway.

[just-your-average-tangerine]

3 weeks back in my parents house and I'm listening to simple plan again. This bodes well

[quotesfrommyreading]

Since the turn of the twentieth century, this practice had been increasingly popular. Robbers would knock on an apartment door, force a chloroform-soaked rag over the face of whoever answered, and take what they wanted while their victim remained unconscious. “Burglar uses Chloroform: Attacks a Woman in a Flat, Robs Her and Cuts off her Hair,” read one New York Time headline in March 1900. Beautiful hair for wigs was as valuable as some jewelry, the newspaper pointed out. And there were the burglars who “put an entire family under anesthetic” in 1907 before emptying their house; the train robbers who drugged a Pullman car full of passengers and emptied pockets and purses; the party host who put chloroform into his guests' drinks, then went through their wallets and disappeared with $3,000; and the robbers who chloroformed an attorney on a busy Manhattan street in 1910, yanked off his heavy gold and diamond ring, and disappeared into the crowd. Occasionally chloroform played a role in real tragedy; a Long Island father, in 1911, killed his son and two daughters with chloroform and then, leaving a suicide note, walked away into the gray Atlantic.

  —  The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Deborah Blum)