#tv: severe trauma center golden hour

[theinfinitedivides]

Joo Ji Hoon Choo Young Woo and Shin Ha Young in one frame. God has looked down and smiled upon me today

[jokerownsmysoul]

“All the things about you that matter” - Arthur, Carnival, Joker x Reader // comfort, angst

Summary: Arthur doesn’t allow himself to experience his own pain and doesn’t allow you to enter his world. You try to reach him in his deepest thoughts so you can teach him to take care of his own feelings.

Warnings: heavy thoughts, mention of childhood trauma, crying, self-destructive coping mechanisms, mental abuse

Word count: 6574

A/N: I have this fic in my mind since October, it jumped into my mind the second after watched Joker but it took me a lot of time to write it because it was just too much for me and I wasn’t ready, but finally I write it and I cried a lot during the process. I put all of myself in this fic and I throw up all my feelings for Arthur. For a better atmosphere, I was listening to this while writing.

A/N: English is not my first language. I’ve written this fic in my native language, italian, and then I translated it in english, so I apologize for any typos or grammar errors, I’m still learning.

Gotham that night seemed darker than usual, you thought, along the way you were walking home with the only desire of falling into Arthur’s arms and staying until the day after in the only place in Gotham where you seemed to breathe: his arms.

You traveled the streets of Gotham with a swift pace, eager to his contact. You went out to work that morning and only since then have you not seen him, but even just a few hours away from him had always seemed to you much more, every part of your body quivered with his presence and it seemed to you that your body no longer had a center of gravity, so strong was the lack you felt for Arthur. Because you both were like that, you always have been. You were always insatiable to each other, the desire you had for him was so strong that you often missed him even while you were in his arms. In the moments when you were apart Arthur kept you company as if it were an invisible shadow hidden around you, It seemed so real that sometimes you might even be surprised to feel a strange pressure on your body, as if Arthur was actually caressing you from afar, and since your relationship began you felt his presence everywhere, in your heart.

There was no room in you that Arthur could not occupy.

You watched the city as you walked thinking about the love of your life. You left the building where you worked when the sunset was still coloring the city. The time of sunset was the only time in which Gotham seemed to be almost a beautiful place to live and was pleasant to look at. As you walked the city was tinged with a vivid red that reflected pink shadows between the buildings and the strangers you met, in the atmosphere was a golden color that reminded you of the same color of amber reflections in Arthur’s hair when in the morning you woke up with the sun that illuminated his still sleeping face; at that moment, as you were making your way through the streets of a city that at sunset looked totally different from the city you were used to at other times, you felt the light warmth on your skin of a sun that was going away again as if it wanted to say goodbye, see you tomorrow, to the next sunset.

You were almost near the long staircase that led you home, the sunset was getting lost along the horizon and Gotham was about to return to the dark city it used to be. You always hated that stair, especially on days when you were more tired than usual, like that day, when every step seemed to hold your feet tight in a fist and wouldn’t let you walk.

You hated it, and yet somehow you’d always found it poetic that your home was beyond such a long, endless staircase. It was as if your love nest was above a gloomy city populated by even darker people. It was as if you were above the whole world and that staircase separated you and your love from a world that had never been kind, especially with Arthur. You hated that staircase, but you loved it because every time you walked down that stair it meant you were going back to your fold where you were sure you would have found Arthur, waiting for you.

By then you had already started to walk that stair when the last lights of the sunset had totally abandoned the city and Gotham had started to be again that ghost-haunted city that had always been. It was no longer illuminated by the otherworldly colors of sunset. The buildings had started to look dark again and they looked like ghosts of a city that in the past, you were sure, hadn’t been so gloomy, and the few passersby that you met on the way home seemed empty bodies without a heart, black figures who walked every day the same roads as if they were robots who no longer had desires left in their soul. A soul that you were sure they didn’t even have. Except for your Arthur. You can feel his soul in the love you feel for him and in the way he loves you, it is so palpable that at night you feel it resting on you as if it were another blanket that wants to protect you from nightmares. Because Arthur worries about you and takes care of your every need even when he sleeps and his mind is not vigilant, he doesn’t need to be awake to know that you need him even in the nights when you are far, far away in a world made of dreams where he can’t reach you.

You were so eager to come back home and to embrace him again that as soon as the entrance door was in front of your eyes you took the keys so fast that they fell to the ground, several times, so much was the almost painful lack you had of him. On the fourth attempt, when you managed to calm yourself and dominate your body eager to see him, you inserted the keys into the lock slowly, with no little difficulties in doing so, and in a second you were finally at home.

It didn’t take you long to understand that something was going on in the air and that Arthur wasn’t well. You understood it from the way in which every window of the house was closed and the lights off, the house was illuminated only by the reflection of a moon that was now high enough in the sky and allowed you to distinguish the furnitures. You understood this from the fact that Arthur hadn’t run towards you as he did every time you came home after him, picking up the pieces of you which that workday had broken and hugging you to put them back together, one by one. Arthur assembled your broken soul every day, and every time you came home after him he ran into your lips as soon as he heard the door open, not even giving you time to put down your coat. He felt the same painful lack that you felt of him, none of you could stay away from the other and this was what you shouted at each other in your kisses and in your hugs.

And how could this not be so? You were no longer the people you were before meeting, who wandered the world in search of a destiny, in search of something that, you both were sure, had been created just for you. At the exact moment when you both met, you understood that what you knew was waiting for you was the lips of the other, the love of the other, and that the person who was in front of you was your destiny. The exact moment you met, you both stopped being two distinct bodies and you became a single soul hidden in two bodies that sometimes have to be apart: for work, for tasks, because life is just not yet used to two souls who have known how to find each other, so rarely does happen such a unique thing, and in those moments you both feel that you aren’t whole. Until one of the two of you come back home, and then you both go back to being complete with that piece that you have always missed in the time you were apart.

You threw your coat and your bag on the floor not even interested in which corner of the house they had fallen in and went in search of Arthur. You found him sitting on the couch of the living room, his eyes fixed on the TV off looking at an indefinite point on a completely black screen. That television didn’t show any programs, but you knew that what Arthur was watching on that screen were his invisible thoughts, which you knew were flowing through his mind like infectious rockets that erased every vital spark in him. His hands were closed in a fist so tight that you could clearly see the knuckles of his hand reddened and the nails entered his flesh, even if you had just crossed the threshold of the room and you were a few meters away.

Looking at him carefully you then noticed that he was wearing Carnival’s make up and took you by surprise because it was his work make up and he always took it off immediately after coming home, even if this time he hadn’t drawn any black line around the red paint on the lips, unlike the make up he usually does for work. Arthur wasn’t looking at you but he could feel the amazement in your face just by listening to your body. The one in front of you wasn’t Carnival, it was another person who belonged only to Arthur and whose name you couldn’t have said. In that moment, at least, because now you know that identity without black lines around his red smile and you love every single thing about him, just like you love Arthur and Carnival.

Seeing the love of your life in such a strong grip of pain you felt your heart slip away from you. How was it possible to love a person so much that you felt his pain? And how was it possible that at the exact moment you met him your soul had completely absorbed his, and vice versa? You ran towards him without even thinking about the movements you were doing, your body knew for itself exactly what to do and you went along with it. You sat next to him so close that your thighs touched and pressed each other, you wrapped him in your arms as hard as you can.

Arthur hadn’t moved since you got home. The pain seemed to have frozen him. He hadn’t moved his eyes to look at you, he hadn’t moved his lips to ask you how was your day and he hadn’t instinctively approached you when you sat on the couch as he normally does.

Because you are like two magnets who struggle to stay apart and get drawn to each other and every time you sit on the couch, he comes close to you and cannot resist to such a strong force. He hadn’t moved but you knew perfectly well that every part of his body and his heart was thanking you, even though he was inanimate from the outside. He would have liked to hold you tight and greet you, he would have liked to run into your arms and feel his skin burn less than when you weren’t there, because your arms were what softened the grip he was feeling to the soul, he would have liked melt into you and stay in that position for the rest of his life, but he just couldn’t.

But luckily you could hear his wishes and you welcomed him in the place where he had dreamed of coming back since that morning, when you had said goodbye to him and he had seen you walk out the front door to go to work: you welcomed him into you.

Arthur trusted you and knew that you were fully aware of his every desire, so he let your body move his own and guide him into your arms, at that moment when he didn’t have the strength to be able to approach to you by himself. He was so thin and fragile that you could easly support his torso with your arms and bring him close to you. He had remained motionless when he felt your arms around him and brought him closer to you as much as you can, he had remained motionless even when he felt your body pressing on his body, his left cheek touching the fabric of your shirt and your hands on his head to put it on your chest. In all that time in which he had allowed you to take care of him, he had remained motionless for so long that you felt the shivers of fear flowing on your back and becoming intense every second more. In that position you could feel his ribs protruding from the left side of his body pressing on your stomach and pricking you like thorns, yet that pain didn’t hurt you. Feeling his bones and his tiny body on you was the only thing that reminded you of being alive and every time he was close to you or on you, you knew that you didn’t need anything else.

Being with Arthur had never been easy, and every day you had to help him fight against himself and against that world that had never helped him to get him up when he fell to the ground. Some days were easier than others. Sometimes he managed to live with himself and in those days he seemed almost not to have any boulder on his heart, those were the days when he didn’t get sucked into his pain and he looked just… happy, with you in your daily life, even though you both knew that it wasn’t so and that in those luckiest days his pain was only dormant, ready to reveal itself at any time; sometimes even though that pain showed up he had enough strength to try to hide it, even though he had never been able to hide it from you. You would have recognized his pain everywhere: from the language of his body, from the way he breathed, from the way he moved in the world, from the look in his eyes, and from his thoughts, that you knew so well that sometimes you were surprised by it and looked like you were going into his mind and living in it, and maybe you really were. You two were the same soul, after all.

But you never saw him as grieving as he was at that very moment. That day his pain was so heavy and his thoughts so swirling that he couldn’t handle them and he got sucked by them. In other circumstances he would have tried in every way to make you worry as little as possible, pretending that he was okay, that at work no one had called him a freak and that no bunch of kids had beaten him, left him bleeding on the ground. He would have cleaned the wound himself, he would have hidden the bruises as much as he could until the last sign of pain of his body was vanished. He knew that somehow you would have understand that he wasn’t okay, but if he could make you believe for one second that he was okay, it was already a victory.

That day, however, he was so much in pain that he had no strength and he couldn’t find those to pretend to be okay, even if he wanted. He hated the thought of being the source of your worries more than he hated himself and that pain that never went away. If he could, he would have lived his whole life pretending to be okay so he wouldn’t be your burden, even though he knew you would have been worried about him every single day of your life and you would never stop yourself from do it, because that’s what you do when you love someone more than your own existence, and he knew that very well, too, because he felt the same way about you when between you two you were the one who was in a bad mood. 

And you wanted, on your side, to be able to take all his pain away from him and live it on your skin, and you would have done it every second of your life if that meant seeing him happy. It’s a great way to live making sure the love of your life doesn’t suffer. That was what you thought every second of your life with Arthur.

You stroked his hair for so long that you couldn’t tell how long it had been, but you noticed that the moon had risen even higher in the sky and brightened the room in a better way. Arthur hadn’t moved yet and he hadn’t said a word since you were home. You kept caressing his hair for a few more minutes, while you rocked him with your arms still around him and your right cheek rested on his hair, and then you decided to break that silence that made his pain resonate in every corner of the apartment.

“What happened, my sweetheart? Are you okay?” Arthur remained silent for a few seconds as he looked for the physical strength to answer you. “I’m okay”, he said with a decisive tone and a strength you would never expected at that moment, judging by how much his face was empty and wounded and he was still so weak that he couldn’t move. It was clear that he wasn’t okay and that he had probably consumed the only ounce of strength he had left to make you believe otherwise.

“Arthur…” you pushed your cheek away from his head and with the index finger of your left hand you raised his chin to look him in the eyes, “you know you can tell me everything, right? Are you really okay?” You smiled softly and holding his face with your hands you caressed him with your thumbs, taking away the paint from his face that had stained your hand. “And why… why are you wearing your make up?”

Never before he had been so determined not to let you into his world and you had to figure out why, you had to make him feel better and you wanted him to open his arms and let you enter into his haunted world, knowing that you would have love every single ghost you met on that road. His pain would never keep you away from him, and none of his ghosts would ever scare you. To your surprise, Arthur moved away from you, and that was the first movement he had made since you came home. He sat down and took the position he had when you walked into the living room and noticed him sitting on the couch. This time, though, his face wasn’t for television, it was for you. He stared at you with an intense, wounded look, in his eyes you could read the pain of his whole life that was tormenting him at that very moment. He was so determined that night to convince you that he was okay, even though his eyes made you understand everything he didn’t want to say, that he put his fingers to the corners of his mouth and raised them upward, faking a smile with such a strength that he felt his flesh burning and his face tightened in such a grip so painful that made him bend his eyebrows and forehead in a painful expression. Telling you he was okay wasn’t enough, so he decided to prove it to you in the only way he could.

In Arthur’s mind echoed the words of a lifetime, those same words that had never stopped tormenting him. My mother calls me Happy. Smile and put on a happy face. Your purpose in life is to spread joy and laughter into this cold, dark world. You have to be happy. Happy. Put on a happy face.

He had been told so many times that after all this time he had learned to hold his pain in his body so much that he was immobilized, it did not allow him to breathe properly and he felt every part of his skin burning. He wasn’t supposed to let anyone know his deepest pain, put on a happy face, or no one would ever love him, or his life wouldn’t have no meaning. To be loved he had to smile and be happy, his pain didn’t matter and no one was supposed to see it. How do you plan to spread joy and laughter in to the world if you aren’t happy in the first place? Put on a happy face, my little Happy boy. C’mon, Happy, put on a happy face.

He had to listen to that voice, he shouldn’t have felt that pain even though that day was deeper than the previous one and didn’t allow him to hide it. Especially that day when it was stronger than the other days, he had to do everything he could to keep that play that he didn’t even remember when it started. By hiding it in every possible way and holding it in his bowels, at the end, that day his grief had exploded invading everything around him.

The pain had invaded his mind which every day fought against the instinct to scream, it had invaded his body that he could barely move. It had also invaded his vision, the reason why he had noticed with difficulty how upset his Y/N was at the time. He saw you sitting next to him, he heard you talking, but even though your body was there and Arthur perceived you beside him, he could only see the outline of a person who would have pushed him away, as all the others with whom he had come across his life. What would you have done if he stopped smiling?

You’re not supposed to feel this pain, you freak. How do you think people will ever like you if you don’t feel the happiness you want to spread so much into the world? What would they have done with him if people realized he hadn’t been able to keep the only thing he seemed to be born for? Would they have dropped him in one of Gotham’s dark alleys, if they found out he couldn’t accomplish the one thing he’d ever been asked to do? Put on a happy face, you’re useless if you are sad. Your pain doesn’t matter. This is your job. This is your only purpose. Your pain doesn’t matter.

Even if he had trying to resist with all the strength of his fragile and minute body that was a battle already lost. How did ever think he could have the freedom to suffer and be comforted by the woman he loved, if even his own body had taught him for all his life to hide the pain behind a laugh? To burst into laughter every time he was upset?

Everything in his life had only one purpose. His mother, the name given to him, his job, his aspiration. His body, his neurological disorder. That purpose was to yell at him that he didn’t deserve to feel pain. And if he felt it, he had to laugh. Your pain doesn’t matter. Put on a happy face. Those words resonated in his mind every time he thought of his mother, every time he wore clown makeup at work, when he practiced his jokes in front of the mirror or when he simulated the old recorded episodes of the Murray Franklin Show. Put on a happy face.

“Arthur!” Your voice was broken as you held back tears from a pain that Arthur didn’t allow himself to experience. His hands were anchored with all his energies to his skin and in a second your hands were already on his to set him free from that painful grip that was inflicting himself.

Arthur smiled faintly at you in a dull and empty smile that had cost him so much effort, he was screaming inside and those screams had not allowed him to hear properly even the words that you spoke shortly after. “Don’t! Arthur, stop! What you are doing, my love?” You tried to be as calm as possible, you had to be strong for him and you didn’t want to upset him further with your tears, but you couldn’t disguise the pleading tone with which you called him my love, the desperate scream that came out of your mouth as you screamed at him to stop and the broken tone of your voice, that revealed all your pain and how you would have take his pain away from his soul. You held his hands tight in yours and kissed the spot on his finger with which he had hurt himself knowing that, if you had left them, he would have faked another smile and cause himself another grip of pain.

“I shouldn’t be feeling… that way… I disappointed you” he said, not answering your question, while his eyes focused on any point beyond your shoulders as if he were talking to someone. The voice in his head reminded him that his pain wasn’t important, that it didn’t have to exist, and it was so strong that he almost seemed to be able to look at that voice in front of him, growing and taking the shape of his mother yelling at him smile and put on a happy face. That voice had kept him company in his mind for so long that he couldn’t tell what his origin was, so he was so used to his presence. He thought of his mother and of all the times she had called him Happy, of all the times he had been told his purpose in the world was to make people smile, of all the times he wanted to cry and scream, but the only thing that came out of his body were desperate laughs that caused him only pain.

That’s why that day when his pain had been unbearable, at some point when his mind was clearer, he had found himself in the bedroom, sitting in front of the mirror that once belonged to his mother, wearing the clown make up. He was hoping that the fresh paint wouldn’t only paint his face but would also deceive his soul, he was hoping that the happiness that he desired so much would enter him and, above all, he was hoping that he would erase that pain and never feel it again, or he would try it less and at best, pretending it didn’t exist, he would start to believe it, just like he did until that day. Deceiving himself he hoped that even his Y/N would look at him and would only see the smile of a clown. He would tell you a joke and you would keep to love a brave man who felt no pain and who, not feeling pain, was still useful and not trash to throw away.

“In that way? What do you mean?“ You clung to his words because it was the only thing you could really get from him. You looked at him and his mind looked lost in a place very far away that you couldn’t reach, that he didn’t allow you to reach and looked like he wasn’t able not to feel on his skin even your touch. He was simply absent. "I… I shouldn’t be suffering” Arthur fought with all of himself as he tried to hold back tears that were in stark contrast to the words he had just said, were tears that Arthur couldn’t resist and came out of his eyes, making his way between his cheeks. “Arthur, my love, no baby,” you approached him just enough to put your hands on his face and kiss every tear that fell from his eyes and the corners of his mouth that he had hurt before. You looked into his eyes and wondered how two eyes so beautiful and deep could hold all the pain of a world that had only hurt him, and how eyes of such a bright green color could be so… dead eyes. “You don’t always have to be happy, my love”, you told him while between one word and another you kept kissing his tears. “You don’t have to pretend to be happy with me, or with anyone else.”

With your lips you kissed every single tear your mouth could reach and the tears you couldn’t reach in time were stopped by your thumbs that drove them away. “Is that the reason why you’re wearing your Carnival make up?” Arthur nodded between your hands that held him and your fingers that caressed his face. Your hands weren’t just holding his face, they were literally grounding him to reality and he felt his body held tight to his life thanks to your touch.

“It’s Joker now”. His body trembled but spoke with a firm tone of voice. Joker, you repeated it slowly to imprint it in your memory and in your skin. By lingering on every single letter of that name, Joker, you wanted to kiss every part of that identity that was growing up within him and you hoped that just by speaking it slowly, as you had just done, it would have make him feel loved. It would have make Joker feel loved. Joker had always been inside him, and now that he was finding the strength to emerge completely, you knew that you would have loved that part of him, too, and over time you would have known him even more deeply and love him even more. He had to feel loved and you tried to make him feel that love in every possible way. This has always been your main purpose: to teach him to love himself, to take care of his own feelings and to make him understand that the person to whom your heart, your soul and your entire existence belonged was him, your Arthur, your Carnival, your Joker.

“Arthur, Joker, love of my life. Your pain matters.” Your lips felt the salty taste of his tears and the bitter taste of the paint. Arthur’s make up was still visible but it had vanished along those thin stripes that his tears had formed falling on his face. You had never stopped kissing his tears, you hoped that by kissing the only way his body had found so far to express pain, Arthur would understand that you were kissing his pain itself and that you would have keep kissing him every day of your life, and by kissing his tears, you wanted to teach him to take care of himself in a way that he had never known before, but that you allowed yourself to teach him during the course of your relationship. He deserved to feel pain and he deserved to be seen pained.

“You don’t need to use your make-up with me to pretend you’re okay”, you had moved your face away from his face to speak up and only at that very moment, looking at his face entirely, you understood from his grateful look that everything you wanted to tell him through those kisses, he had heard it all. “I want you to allow me to see your pain, I want you to allow me to be here for you, and I love you no matter what you’re feeling.”

With your hands still on his cheeks, you were trying to wipe the smile of red paint off his face. You wanted to see his naked face, you wanted to see his real smile for what it was like at that exact moment, you wanted to see it whether if it was lifeless, or it was fake or even if it didn’t exist. You would have loved him anyway, and you wanted to see his beautiful lips so you could kiss them hoping you would have made him really smile in that kiss that you both, were sure, wished for.

“I want you to allow me to see your pain so I can send it away, because I love you even if you are not happy. I love all of you, all of your feelings and there isn’t a part of you that I couldn’t love. I love you entirely, and I am entirely yours.” Arthur answered by hugging you tightly. That day he had no strength, since you had returned home he was almost motionless, but as soon as his arms surrounded your body you were surprised by how much strength he had to hold you so intensely. You were his strength and he had found it again, thanks to you, and he had found also his energies that were slowly growing up through your contact and those words of love that he had felt to the soul, and he was showing you all of this in that deep hug.

He clutched you in a desperate way with his hands on your back, his nails anchored to your skin as if he was afraid you would have been gone at any moment. He probably would have left scratches on your back, but you didn’t care. If you could have carried on your body forever all the signs that Arthur inflicted on you, you would have done it. He was desperate to feel your existence and your body close to him because in his whole life he never thought that a person could feel such intense feelings for him and he was sure that, If he had released you from that hug and showed you that he was smiling, the first real smile he had done since he woke up, you would have smiled back, because every time one of you smiled for the other was almost impossible not to do the same. And you heard him smile for real, and you smiled back, and Arthur heard him.

You were two pieces of the same soul that had found each other, after all, and your existence made music that only you two could hear. Every time one of you smiled, the other felt it. Arthur moved away from you just enough to reach your lips with his own. 

In a kiss that tasted like tears, paint, pain and just like Arthur, you read through his smiling lips while he was kissing you all his gratitude and all the love he felt for you. I love you, Y/N, this was the music of that kiss. I love you, and thank you for taking care of me like no one has ever done, and thank you for telling me that my feelings matter.

You didn’t know what happened that day, you didn’t even know if something really happened that day. Certain wounds don’t need a reason to explode. That was a pain that Arthur had kept in his body for so long that sooner or later it would explode with all the destructive power possible, and it could happen even on an ordinary day when, apparently, nothing different than the other days had happened. That day was the first of many other bad days you would have lived together because his demons were not yet gone, they were so deep that his soul would always need you, your hands that support him and a lot of care. He could still hear his demons scream at him as he kissed you and probably it’s impossibile to heal from such an intense wound, but those voices weren’t as strong as they were before you came over, and that was all that mattered. He only moved away from you a few inches to break the kiss and, in the very moment you lost the contact with his lips, you approached him with your hands to hold his face. Not feeling Arthur on your body was impossible since you always craved for him, and as soon as you lost his contact, you went back looking for it.

“Until a little while ago it was like nobody ever saw me, even I didn’t know if I even really existed.” He said, not looking at you in the eyes and making a sound that hardly looked like a laugh and instead brought out all his shame, as if he was telling you a deep thought that had been held for a long, very long time and for him it was even a fault to feel such a feeling. You held his face in your hands like a fragile thing you had to hold to keep it from breaking, because your purpose wasn’t to pick up his pieces and put them back together, your purpose was not to let anyone break him, in the first place, and to keep him whole. But if the part of that world he wanted to hide from had managed to catch him and had broken him, if you had found the pieces of him scattered on the floor, then you would have held him tight until those pieces would return to their place and you would personally checked that no one could have scratch them again.

“You exist, sweetheart, the love I feel for you is a proof that you exist. I see your pain. I see you. Okay? I. See. You. And you are beautiful, in every way.” You told him with your hands caressing his face and your lips a few inches from his lips, from that distance you could smell the paint on his skin. He didn’t answer, but you knew he was thanking you because he put his lips back on yours. In that kiss his demons had gone and the only voice he could hear in his mind was no longer the voice of his demons, or his mother. It was his own. I do exist. And people are starting to notice. You are noticing. I love you, Y/N.

You knew that teaching him to love himself and to experience his pain took a long time and that you would have to fight with him every day, and that was okay. That’s how love works, and with you, your love and a little patience, Arthur would understand it, and every day the voice that he heard in his head would fade, more and more. Until it completely disappeared.

You couldn’t took his pain away from him and erase it from his body to make him happy, no matter how much your soul might desire it, but every day you woke up with the purpose of helping him as best you could, with your presence and your love in his life, and every day you decided to bear his pain with him.

You couldn’t hold it all and free him from this burden, even if you wanted it with all your heart, but you could hold it together, going down with him into that abyss and pulling him out when the time had come. Or in the days when Arthur didn’t have the strength to come out of the abyss by himself because that pain froze him, just like that day, then you would have sat next to him holding him by the hand in that abyss that never scared you, and you would have stayed there until he would have found the strength to let it go and get back into his alert mind. He would have climbed back from the abyss without leaving your hand and would have found you again on the surface.

It was true that you wanted to eradicate out every seed of his pain from him as if it were a root but this had never prevented you from loving him with all of yourself even in his most difficult days, on the contrary this made you love him even more. 

You love all of himself with all of yourself, even on days like these, because his pain is a part of him too.

He is your Arthur, your Carnival, your Joker, and you love him completely, and you couldn’t love him any other way.

[ecotone99]

[HR] Forget me not.

My name is Doctor Elizabeth Hayes. I’m a psychotherapist who specializes in the unlocking of repressed memories. A repressed memory for those of you who may not know is a rare psychological phenomenon in which memories of traumatic events may be stored in the unconscious mind and blocked from normal conscious recall.

In simple terms the human mind can sometimes hide away memories of trauma or abuse, giving them the illusion as if the event never happened. Some theorists claim this is a defense mechanism developed in the cases of young children who could probably not be able to mentally cope with the trauma from the experience. At first glance, this may not seem to be much of a concern, what you can't remember can't hurt you, right?

For some people, this may be the case, but in others they find themselves responding to mental triggers, smells, sounds or phrases with no prior knowledge as to why they are having these experiences. For others, they may unknowingly stumble across the memory in their sleep. Have you ever had a dream that seemed so vivid and real yet upon awakening you think back to it, unable to recall when in your life the scenario happened? What you simply dismissed as a strange dream could have very well been a repressed memory unwittingly stumbled upon in your subconscious. It's weird, I know but bear with me.

I find the phenomenon fascinating. Which is why I choose to specialize in this area of psychology in my studies and practices. Periodically from time to time, I am visited by patients from all over the country who believe they have experienced this phenomenon. After being referred to me by their therapist who suspects their patents may have repressed memories from their childhood. It is then up to me to “unlock” these memories. Only after using social cues and making notes on their reactions to certain smells, sounds, and pictures can I estimate wherein their lifetime the repressed memory takes place. This is a slow process that can take up to a year before we even identify the timeframe of this memory.

Once the right time frame of the repressed memory is discovered, commonly between the ages of 4 to 12. I bring in what I call the “Dream Screen”. A device invented by the National Center for Neural Applications lent to me by the University of Illinois. The appropriately nicknamed “Dream Screen” is a device that measures brain activity while you sleep. This data can be plugged into an algorithm that reconstructs your memory so that it can be played back in a recording.

Subjects are first put into a stage of sleep called Hyponagoia. This is a semi-lucid stage of sleep that takes place at the moment between sleep and wakefulness so that I can communicate with them as I watch their memory unfold on the screen, live as if I, myself were living the memory. While walking the subject through the memory for the first time it is up to me to coax the subject through the entire memory, asking the right questions, pointing out the hidden details all while making a conscious effort into not leading the subject too much as to incidentally plant false memories into their subconscious. This is an incredibly delicate procedure and requires absolute concentration on my behalf. Something I have only been able to achieve after years of experience and practice.

This entire process can take up to an entire month to complete, but the results are always worth it. Some patients were able to recover memories they lost years ago and finally be able to come to terms with the past and put years of not knowing to rest. Other times missing evidence from crimes and horrific injustices such as rape, torture and child abuse were able to be reported in the court of law so that the victim could finally get the justice they deserved.

It is for moments like these that I continue to do what I do. was only after viewing my most recent subjects results that I ended up having more questions than answers. Questions I’d never imagine asking myself. Questions, in hindsight even I would much rather be left unanswered.

The subject, Hugo was a 26-year-old male from Eden, New York. He was initially referred to me by his family therapist after identifying gaps in his memories and recalling a strange reoccurring dream he had no memories of in his childhood. The subject appeared healthy both mentally and psychically. Aside from the obvious signs of sleep depravation he was in great shape for someone of his age. During our initial interviews, he was able to recall memories from as far back as 1995, when the subject was only 2 years old. These memories were recorded and replayed to his living relatives and confirmed as being legit memories. This is very impressive and gave me high hopes for this being a quick and easy case. All there was left to do was find the key.

I asked the subject if he could recall any forms of abuse during his childhood years either from the hands of a family member, friend or stranger. “No, nothing like that”. He replied with a forced smile on his face. “Do you recall ever witnessing a traumatic event such as a traumatic accident, or a murder take place’? I asked him curiously. “Nothing as long as watching reality TV doesn’t count”. He remarked comically. I forced a smile at the bad joke and continued. “Tell me about those dreams you have been having”? I asked him with genuine curiosity.

His smile was quickly replaced by a look of concern as he unconsciously stole a glance over his shoulder then back to me. “Well… Uh,” He stuttered. “It started happening last year.” He said as he took a casual sip of water from his table as he continued. I noticed a slight tremor in his hand as he placed the glass back onto the table. “I’ve been having this dream I’m in a field at the old family farm”. “How do you know it was that particular location”? I asked. “According to your file, you moved several times during your childhood”. “I would recognize those blue skies and open farmland anywhere.” He said. “My mother would complain all the time about wanting to move back to the city, but my father claimed that the open country air would do us kids some good”. “What else do you remember”? I asked patiently. “I remember standing in an open field walking toward something.”

“Go on” I coaxed him. He sat there for a moment in silence, becoming visibly tense. “Then things get weird”. He said nervously “I’m all of a sudden in a dark room I’ve never seen before, and someone else is there”. “Do you remember who this person is”? I asked him. “No, no I don’t,” He said. “If I can be one hundred percent honest, I don’t remember anything else that happened”. He leaned back in his chair closing his eyes as if trying hard to remember. “How old were you when you lived on that family farm,” I asked him. “nine to ten years old” He replied more confidently. I lived with my grandparents at the time, it was only for about a year or so.” “Anything else you can remember about your time there that you think could be related to this dream,” I asked

“I don’t know”, the patient admitted. “That’s where my memory begins to get a little foggy. All I know is that hours, even days after having the dream, I just can't shake this feeling of dread. No matter how much I try I just can’t calm my nerves after that dream”. I took a few notes and stood to my feet. Well, I guess the only way we are going to find out is through phase two. I moved the cart over to where the patient was sitting and began to prep the “Dream Screen”.

After leaning the subject’s seat back into a prone position, I administered the sedative to ease him into his semi-lucid state. After placing the electrodes to his temple and forehead I slipped on a pair of headphones onto the patient so that I could communicate with him from the observation room.

After guiding the patient through verbal cues and building the scenario I began to see the first sign of images on the screen. The memory started dark at first, but what began to look like an open wheat field came into view. I began to take in the sights. Blue skies, white clouds, the sway of the golden wheat blowing in the wind and what appeared to be a small country home in the distance. “OK, now tell me. Where are you standing right now”? I asked the subject. “The Farm” The subject mumbled, “The one I grew up on”. As he spoke I took in the surroundings as they began to become clearer as the subject began to remember.

“Now tell me who else was with you”? I prodded. “My… my friend… no …. cousin… Kaity”. The subject said. “Good, you’re doing great”! I said encouragingly as a figure appeared walking next to the subject in his memory. “Now describe your cousin, what did she look like”? “Dirty blond hair, brown eyes, freckles on her nose.” The subject said confidently as Kaity came into view, exactly how he described her. She looked to be around 8 years old. “Come on Huey,” Kate said excitedly! “Can you see it? The old farmhouse, we are almost there!”

“Can you tell me about this old farmhouse”? I asked the subject? “Yeah. It was an old abandoned house built on my grandfather’s property. It was built before my family bought the property, we lived just a few acres away from it” He mumbled quietly. “Kate and I wanted to check it out, we were planning on making it into a new clubhouse” I spotted a small smile on the subjects face from the window of the observation room as he began to remember. “We had a backpack full of stuff, action figures, comic books, a couple of snickers bars.” He said quietly. “We were driven out of our old clubhouse in the hayloft after a family of raccoons moved in”.

Now describe the old farmhouse to me. “I asked him as the blurry image of the house began to come into contrast. “Two stories, peeling dark blue paint, thatched roof, an old tire swing in the tree out front.” He told me. The image now became clear as the farmhouse came fully into view. Down to every detail he described it in. “Come on Huey” Kate beckoned “Let’s see what’s inside.

As she walked to the front door the subject’s eyes darted to a window on the top floor. A figure quickly moved out of view that appeared to be watching them. “Wait, I blurted. “Who was that”? The subject’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I don’t remember, he said after a long pause”.

I let it go and let the subject continue. “Ok now, what happened after you went inside of the farmhouse? What did you find inside”? I asked. “Umm… Nothing”. The subject said slowly. “It was cleaned out. No people, no furniture, not even a single scrap of litter.” The dream suddenly grew darker as the subject now appeared in a small dimly lit room. Light pooled out from the creases in between the boarded-up windows. “Isn’t this great”? Kate said excitedly. “We can have campouts, we can have picnics, we can even invite our friends over and-” Her voice was cut off as a low creak sounded from upstairs.

“What? What was that”? Kate said nervously. “Probably another family of raccoons. I heard Kate say as the subject’s eyes trailed to the top of the stairs”. “Wait, I remember now,” the subject said shakily”. “Who was it”? I asked cautiously. “No, not who.” The subject said with genuine fear in his voice. “Oh god, It… It was...” His voice trailed off as a figure appeared from the top of the stairs. I leaned in close trying my best to make out the figure standing at the top of the stairs. “Stay with me” I coaxed the subject. “Describe what you saw inside of that farmhouse.” The subject didn’t say anything, his facial features remained taunt but his lips quivered.

My eyes went back to the screen as the humanoid figure began to walk down the stairs. “Huey?” Kates soft voice said nervously. “Who is-“? The figure suddenly dropped onto all fours and dashed down the stairs with alarming speed. “Teeth” the subject shouted “White-eyes, pale skin”. The figure suddenly stopped, inches away from the subject’s face.

My heart began to race as the image cleared up, as the subject began to remember. Most of what I could make out of the face of the figure was only what was visible in the small slivers of light from the boarded-up windows. Pale skin, gleaming white teeth, and brown receded gums from a mouth who’s lips were pulled so far back they almost appeared to not exist. Its eyes were also rolled so far back that the pupils and irises were not even visible, showing only the whites of its eyes. Its nose was nothing but two slits as it breathed heavily only inches away from the little boy's face. The being wore no clothes and appeared to be human, yet showed no discernible signs of gender.

For a long time, I watched in complete shock as the figure appeared unmoving, the slits where the nose should have been flaring with every breath. Its teeth began to click as if in curiosity as movement was spotted from behind the being. “Katie, no!” The subject screamed in unison with the child in the dream. Kate stood behind the figure and swung a two by four at the being’s head. The creature spun around with lightning speed catching the little girl’s wrist in his hands and lashed out with the other slicing a clean cut into the child's stomach with its clawed hand.

Kate fell onto her back, hands covering the open wound and began to whimper terrified subdued sobs as the creature slowly crawled on top of her, its face now inches from hers. “Leave her alone”, the subject screamed once again in unison with his younger self as he made his way forward, arms outstretched as if to push the creature off his cousin. The creature once again moved with blinding speed knocking the young boy across the room with a mule kick to land roughly against the opposite wall. The creature once again drew its attention back to the young girl lying beneath it. It slowly leaned forward, its mouth only inches away from the young girl’s ear. It then stopped and a hissing whisper could be heard from the creature’s mouth. Kate looked up in confusion as the creature then broke into a sprint, dashing out the open door faster than any living creature I’ve seen anything move in my entire life.

The screen went dark as an alarm went off in the observation room. The subject began to shake violently as if in a seizure. I ran forward and quickly shut down the machine and removed the electrodes from the subject’s head. “Kaity no, leave her alone”. The subject cried as the trashing became less violent and he slowly drifted into unconsciousness.

I will be honest with you, this was not the first time I have seen this creature while using the dream screen. The first time I dismissed it as simply a pseudo-memory. Sometimes a subject subconscious would replace the person who caused the trauma with a childhood fear, like the monster in their closet, or a creature from a horror movie that scared them as a kid creating a pseudo memory.

The second time I saw it, I knew It was so more than that. Several times before I have seen this thing locked deep into a subject’s locked memories as if its appearance itself was so horrifying that the human brain automatically retracted the memory into the deepest parts of the subject’s memories as to keep them from going insane. Each subject completely different, unrelated with no discernable trends or patterns in physical appearance, mental health or age.

I do not know who or what this thing is but, but I have dedicated my entire career to finding out what this creature is. Every case only leads to dead ends but this case was different. Never in any of my past subjects’ memories have I heard this creature speak. Even in my most recent report, I could not make out what exactly was said.

Earlier this month, I have contacted the most recent subjects’ cousin from his memory, Kate. After much convincing on my behalf I talked her into visiting my office in Washington DC, to have her memories examined. The now fully grown Kate was also experiencing similar dreams as the most previous subject prior to our first meeting. Her resulting memory once unlocked ran parallel to that of her cousins. She also bore an old scar on her stomach in the same place the creature scratched her in the memory, proving its legitimacy.

The only difference between that of Kate's memory was the creature's voice was now clear as day.

I will never forget the words I heard from Kate's memory. The sound of the creatures hissing voice still fresh in my mind what I heard what it say to that little girl almost 17 years ago.

“Stop searching for me, Doctor Hayes.”

submitted by /u/Grotesque-penguin [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2QiA7wl

[keywestlou]

SNOWBIRDS RETURN

The season has arrived. Unquestionably.

From what I can see, not as many tourists as normal. Might be Irma and the fear Key West not ready to accept tourists. Which is not the case. Or, it could be the cost of a Key West vacation. Pricey. I have begun to wonder if Key West is going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

A different story as  to snowbirds. Those who have second homes in Key West and return on a regular basis. They are here ten fold.

I pointed out yesterday the massive turnout at the Gardens sunday. Mostly snowbirds. Last night the same at Aqua for Dueling Bartenders. The crowd unusually big.

Tom Luna and Rick Dery their usual selves. Their singing off the walls. Everyone joining in. The fun part.

Ran into Joe Lysle at Aqua. Made a  mistake a few days ago when I reported he was the new concierge at Casa Marina. He is a concierge, though at the Reach. Both Waldorf Astoria Hotels.

Enjoyed dinner at Tavern ‘n Town following Dueling Bartenders.

I frequently complain about bicyclists. A danger to themselves and the autos on the streets. Bicyclists have no consideration for rules of the road. One way streets, stop signs, red lights, etc. They think they own the roads. Tourists primarily.

Every day a danger.

In the dark of last night, I was returning home. Almost two accidents involving my car and a bicycle. Both bicyclists without lights and ran stop signs.

An accident did occur over the weekend. A bicyclist at 2:19 in the morning driving the wrong way on one way Olivia Street. Came into contact with a Key West police SUV at the intersection of Olivia with White Street.

The bicyclists hit his head on the front passenger door of the police vehicle. He was helicoptered to a Miami trauma center. The police officer and the K-9 dog with him sustained no injuries.

Irma’s after effects refuse to go away. Irma hit the lower Keys September 10. Work still to be done.

Debris clean up major! County and back roads the last to get attention. The County announced yesterday that all debris has been finally removed from County roads.

A major undertaking!

Next, the canals and waterways close to shore. Homes, boats, refrigerators, TV sets, etc. plugging the canals and shore lines. Together with trees and shrubbery.

The last chapter of my recent book Irma and Me is titled Post Irma and is dated October 15. I wrote at the time the debris clean up was on going. Noted…..The debris is non-ending.

I did not realize how correct I was! Here it is five months later and the work continues.

This morning’s Key West Citizen in its History Section mentioned Key West’s first electric trolley car began operation on Duval Street this date 1899. Carried 500 people the first day.

Brought to mind my youthful days. I clearly recall riding electric trolley cars in my home town Utica. The Bleecker Street line. In the late 1930’s into 1941. I was anywhere from 3-6 years old at the time.

I googled Utica and electric trolley cars. Came up with This Week in Mohawk Valley History. Includes Utica. The author Frank Tomaino, an outstanding newspaper man back when.

His article indicated Utica’s first trolleys were horse drawn. Began operating in 1863. The first electric trolley St. Patrick’s Day 1890. The last Utica electric trolley train 1941. Went to the barn forever.

Tuesday again. Comes frequently every week. Tonight, my podcast. Tuesday Talk with Key West Lou. Nine my time. www.blogtalkradio.com/key-west-lou.

So much happening these days. Most news worthy. I am constantly revising the tuesday night show. As late as dinner time on tuesday. Things worthy of comment occurring hourly it seems.

Tonight will be a fast moving half hour show covering 10 or so topics of interest. My opinions also, of course. Join me. I guarantee you will enjoy.

Portraits of former American Presidents and their spouses hang in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Those of President Obama and Michelle were unveiled yesterday.

Loved Barack’s. Different. The artist Kehinde Wiley. A black man. Established.

News releases today indicated Wiley enjoys challenging the power of white women in his works. Black women decapitating white women.

Did the President know? He must have. He and Michelle selected their artists.

Michelle’s painting I did not like. The concept lovely. Problem is the painting does not look like Michelle.

Michelle’s artist Amy Sherald. A black woman. She had a heart transplant several years ago.

Trump never seems to blame men for sexual wrongdoings. Denial by the man sufficient grounds not to denounce him.

Trump is sick. His thinking probably motivated by the 17 odd women who claimed during the election that they had been sexually harassed by him. He denied the charges. Must be he does not want to blow his cover of denial by not accepting the denials of others.

Enjoy your day!

  SNOWBIRDS RETURN was originally published on Key West Lou

[amylanchester]

PitchWars #PimpMyBio

Hi, I’m Amy.

This is my first ever PitchWars, and I’m hyped af.

About My Manuscript

Title: More Fierce Than Fire (title comes from here)

Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy

Word Count: 75,000

Comps: The Young Elites by Marie Lu, The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston

Sixteen-year-old Abigail Hunter, the best healer in Grady Hospital’s Magical Trauma Ward, has a secret. Ten years ago, Abby wished her mother dead on the worst possible day—the day dragons awoke and brought magical powers to everyone in the world. Abby's angry wish became the powerful spell that ended her mother's life. 

Abby has devoted her life to healing magic to atone for the sins of her past. Though she’s still afraid of losing control, she has become increasingly aware of the threat the dragons pose and frustrated that she is helpless to do anything about it. Hoping to develop the skills required to protect others, she joins a new United Nations-sponsored program which promises to give her the chance to work directly with the dragons and their victims. Training with some of the best young mages in the world, she prepares for the war to come.

And the war is coming. When a group of unregistered mages leads the dragons in a deadly attack on American cities, Abby must decide if she’s ready to join the fight against them, or if she’ll be stuck reliving the mistakes of her past forever. 

A Note About Diversity

Diversity is extremely important to me in my writing. Most of the characters in my book other than my MC are POC and/or LGBTQ. I did not feel that I had the skill or experience to write a first-person perspective for a POC/LGBTQ character, so I didn’t. However, I have been fortunate to grow up in an extremely diverse place, so I’ve included a number of POC/LGBTQ characters (loosely) based on real people. I feel that authentic, thoughtful representation is important in all forms of media and am hoping to find a mentor who feels the same.

MS Pinterest Board

Novel Aesthetic (Quotes & More on My Instagram)

About Me

Let’s start this the way you did back in pre-school. My name is Amy Lanchester, and I’m twenty-eight years old. My favorite color is pink (and has been since long before millennial pink became a thing #ILikedItBeforeItWasCool). More Fierce Than Fire is my first novel. 

I’m “from Atlanta” in the way that most people who say they are “from Atlanta” are “from Atlanta,” in that I actually grew up about thirty minutes away and only moved to the city as an adult. I set my book here because I feel that entirely too many books are set in NYC, London, or Chicago.

I’ve been funemployed for the past year.

I started my first “real job” before I’d even finished my master’s degree, and after working there for three years, I decided I wanted to do a few things before I’m too old/settled. So I’ve traveled Europe:

ALL

OVER

EUROPE

and the western United States:

ALL

OVER

THE 

WILD

WEST

and I finally achieved a life goal in writing this book. I highly recommend taking a “gap year” to anyone who is able.

I live with my boyfriend and our beautiful asshole of a cat, Bret. We found him about two years ago at a local McDonald’s hanging out near the drive-thru. We went back the next day and lured him out with bits of hamburger, and he’s been our lovable jerk of a pet ever since. 

Why You Should Mentor Me

- I am really, really serious about this. I’ve devoted an insane amount of time, energy, and research on this project in the past year and fully intend to see it through all the way. I love and believe in my work. 

- I am crazy meticulous. I come from a STEM background, and I use the tools I learned there in my work. I’m a firm believer in spreadsheets, outlines, automation, and using technology to the fullest. I am a grammar nut who googles everything she isn’t sure about and spends hours nerding out reading style guides and grammar blogs.

- I take criticism well. I’m a fairly self-critical person who is realistic about her flaws and shortcomings. Though I love my work, I know it is far from perfect, and I am greatly looking forward to receiving a thoughtful critique. You won’t hurt my feelings. I want my work to be the best it can be, and I know that takes knowledge and experience I don’t have.

Writing History

I had the idea for my MS in May 2016. It was inspired by this tumblr post which made its way to reddit (a site I love and hate and spend entirely too much time on):

I decided I could write that book, and so I did. I wrote a prologue that I cut and part of the first chapter on a train from Warsaw to Berlin in September. I made an outline when I got back home in October, and I wrote the rest of the book during NaNoWriMo 2016. I did finish my 50,000 words in November, but the book wasn’t done. I had a completed (terrible) first draft of about 55,000 words by the first week of December. 

My first draft was mostly just dialogue and action. I discovered that I hate writing description as much as I hate reading it. So my next several drafts mostly involved adding description to scenes, and it took forever. I cut several scenes and characters entirely during this process and added a few more scenes and characters, bringing my final word count to 75,000 words. My current draft contains very little from the original NaNoWriMo draft, and believe me, that’s for the best.

Writing Style

I am definitely a planner. I would have gotten nowhere without my outline or character spreadsheet. However, most of my character’s personalities came out through writing their dialogue. I used dialogue (that I went back and cut because it was boring and redundant) to solve plot problems and work out motivations in scenes. If I ever got stuck, I just started writing a conversation between my characters, and it solved basically all of my problems. 

How I Write 

I started writing in Scrivener, a program I’d gotten for free when I worked at the Apple Store back in 2010. It helped me a lot with organizing scenes and research. I transitioned to Google Docs after a save file got corrupted and I spent an evening panicking that I’d lost everything (I hadn’t, thank God). Google Docs sucks for long documents, but it saves to the cloud every few seconds, so I suffered through it.

I write at night almost exclusively. My best creative work comes after midnight, and usually once I’m already in bed.

I dread having to get back on a normal schedule because the night owl life is best for my writing.

Favorite Writing Resources

- Excel/Google Sheets

- Grammar Girl

- Chicago Manual of Style (I’m too poor to actually own this, but I use their FAQs and this hyphenation table all the time.)

- Hemingway Editor

- Grammarly

- ProWritingAid

Upcoming Projects Preview

I have so many ideas. I think of new project ideas every day, and I constantly struggle not to get distracted by my newest, shiniest concept. Here are a couple of things I’ve started planning:

- Shakespeare’s plays retold in a combined setting like into the Woods or Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles. A central, overarching series plot with individual volumes devoted to some of the plots of the original plays. I’ll be combining side characters from one show with main characters from another.

- A space opera/sci-fi series centered on a girl who rescues an alien from a hostile species at war with Earth’s space empires. The aliens have superior technology and are annihilating the space colonies, but we can’t communicate with them. My MC and her android nanny devise a method for rudimentary communication and are captured by government forces who have ulterior motives.

Stuff I Like

Books

- Harry Potter, obviously. Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite. I spent years convincing myself I was a Gryffindor like Hermione, my hero, but I’m really a Ravenclaw.

- The Young Elites by Marie Lu

- Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

- A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

- 1984 by George Orwell

- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

TV Shows

I freaking love TV. 

I’m convinced that if Ray Bradbury had lived in the Golden Age of Television that we’re living through, he would never have written Fahrenheit 451.

A short list of shows I love: Futurama, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Parks and Recreation, BoJack Horseman, Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Jessica Jones, Broadchurch, Steven Universe, Stranger Things, You’re the Worst, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Musicals 

I love Broadway so much. 

I’ve been in (school productions of) Once on This Island, Les Miserables, Into the Woods, and Dreamgirls. Other shows I love include Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, The Last Five Years, Aida, Phantom of the Opera, Evita, The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, and West Side Story.

Cosplay 

I picked up cosplay a few years back. I didn’t own a sewing machine, didn’t know how to sew, and had limited crafting experience. I taught myself using books, online tutorials, and YouTube videos. Some of my projects:

Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones

Chell from Portal

Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter

Elsa from Frozen

Joy from Inside Out

Eleven from Stranger Things

That was entirely too long, and I’m sorry.

If you read this far, you’re probably my soulmate. Please send me a message on Twitter and let me know. :)

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2rwVmP1

When you flip through your phone or scroll through the channels on the TV to find something to watch, you’ll bet you’re going to run into some headlines about horrendous crimes. As the level and evidence of the crime become more complex, so do the reasons for the crime. In 2015, Business Insider reported that in the U.S. alone, reports of murders have gone drastically down. This then impacts the amount of unsolved murders in the country. One of the common reasons for the increase in unsolved cases is people having less trust in their authority figures. There’s been a rift between civilians and police for a while now, but as our political and economic relationships become more unbalanced, so do the relationships between civilians and their police. The other reason why unsolved murder cases have increased is because investigations into homicides are really expensive. Poor communities typically can’t afford to lower the amount of investigators’ cases. For example, the city of Detroit, Michigan in the U.S. has one of the highest murder rates in the country. The city of Detroit is a prime example of both reasons that lead to an increase in unsolved murders. Nobody wants to snitch, nobody trusts the police, the community is poverty stricken, and because it’s rated as the most dangerous city in America, it can potentially become isolated as well. These are sad and unfortunate statistics that also feed into the 15 scariest unsolved murder cold cases which will never bring the victims and their loved ones any closure.

  #1 Brain Shaffer At the time of his disappearance, Brian Shaffer was a medical student at Ohio State University. In 2006, he went out with some of his pals to party and rage the beginning of their spring break. Later on in the early hours, Shaffer wasn’t with his friends. He somehow got separated from the group and his pals assumed he’d gone back home. But, the security footage that was captured on camera by the bar entrance showed Shaffer chatting it up with two women. He then re-entered the bar. Ever since then, Brian Shaffer hasn’t been seen or heard from. The case gained national attention. His disappearance puzzled investigators because there wasn’t any other entrance into the bar. One of the theories into what happened is linked to Shaffer’s friend. There’s no doubt that foul play is suspected. Other theories include the involvement of ‘Smiley Face’ serial killer or that he’s alive and living somewhere else.

#2 Kingsbury Butcher The Cleveland Torso Murderer, otherwise known as the ‘Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run’, is an unidentified serial killer from the ’30s. The killer’s signature style is dismembering at least a dozen victims within the Cleveland area. There’s some speculation that there’s probably more unclaimed victims in the Ohio city of Cleveland and its surrounding areas, stretching as far into the ’50s. One of the unknown victims is nicknamed “The Lady of the Lake.” She was found in September, 1934. The other victim was Robert Robertson, who was found in July, 1950. It’s alleged that the victims were usually “drifters.” Thus, their identities were never determined. There have been a few exceptions—Edward Andrassy, Florence Polillo, and [possibly] Rose Wallace. Both male and female victims seemed to be from the lower classes, which was easy prey during the Depression-era in Cleveland, Ohio. Most were part of the “working poor,” who didn’t have anywhere else to live but the ramshackle-town known as the ‘Cleveland Flats’.

#3 Elisa Lam Elisa Lam was a Canadian university student, when she was pulled from a hotel water tank at the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles in 2013. Maintenance workers (at the hotel) discovered Lam’s body. Guests had complained about having problems with their water supply, which then led to the discovery of Lam. The LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) released elevator video footage of the last time Lam was seen. On the day of her disappearance, Lam is seen exiting and re-entering an elevator. She seems to be talking and gesturing while doing so, and looks like she’s hiding in the elevator as well. The clip went viral on the web and many people commented that they found it creepy. Claims of paranormal involvement, in combination with her known bipolar disorder, have been argued as part of the reason. However, reports show no evidence of physical trauma and that the cause of death was merely “accidental.”

#4 The Sodders In 1945, on Christmas Eve, a rogue fire destroyed the Sodder family home in West Virginia. The home housed George Sodder, his wife, Jennie Sodder, and a total of ten children. Apparently, during the fire, George and his wife—along with four of their nine children—had escaped the burning home. Unfortunately, the bodies of the other five children were never found. The family believed that the other five children were alive until the very end. George never rebuilt the home, but instead converted the site as a memorial garden dedicated to their lost children. In the ’50s, the family put up a billboard with pictures of their five offspring, offering a reward for any information that would bring closure. It remained up until the late ’80s. There were a number of unusual circumstances before and during the home-fire case. George disputed that the blaze was an electrical issue. Instead, theories were convinced that the children were taken by the Sicilian Mafia. However, this yielded no evidence or information.

#5 Daddy & Mommy Are In The Fridge Charles Frederick Rogers, son of Fred and Edwina Rogers, is the leading suspect in “The Icebox Murders.” Rogers was unemployed and living with his elderly parents in Houston, Texas. The son was said to be “reclusive.” In 1965, two cops forced themselves into the home after Edwina’s nephew voiced his concerns. When one officer opened the fridge, he found cuts of unwrapped “meat.” He thought it was pork until he saw two human heads through the vegetable bin. The dismembered heads were of Charles’ parents. They realized the “meat” was the couple’s dismembered limbs and torsos. Police found organs that had been flushed down the toilet and determined the couple was killed on Father’s Day. Fred was killed by blows to the head, had his eyes gouged out, and his reproductive organs removed. Edwina was beaten, then shot in the head. There was little evidence of blood, until they went in Charles’ bedroom. The cops only found a bloody keyhole saw. The son was never found.

#6 California Night-Stalker The ‘Original Night Stalker’ is the given media description for the unidentified serial killer and r*pist who committed 50 r*pe crimes in Northern California during the ’70s. The killer has also gone and murdered twelve people in Southern California area between 1979 and 1986. Other names include the ‘East Area R*pist’, ‘Diamond Knot Killer’, and ‘Golden State Killer’. The crimes initially centered around east of the Sacramento area. At least 50 women were s*xually assaulted. In 2001, several victims were linked through DNA evidence to the murders in Southern California. The DNA-linked assaults make it likely that the same person is responsible for the attacks. The last crime reported, and the only one reported after 1981, was in 1986. The ‘Original Night Stalker’ has never been arrested. Last year, the FBI re-opened the case to get nationwide effort to find the killer and offered up a $50,000 reward for the capture.

#7 Hinterkaifeck Farm The small farmstead of Hinterkaifeck was located in Bavaria. It’s approximately 43 miles north of the city of Munich. One evening, in 1922, six people were killed on the farm. The victims were the farmer, his wife, their widowed daughter, her children, and the maid. The farm was remote, surrounded by forest. A few days before the murders, the farmer mentioned to neighbors about finding footprints in the snow, which lead from the edge of the forest to the farm, but no footprints leading back to the forest. He added that he heard footsteps in the attic of his home, found a strange newspaper, and that the house keys were missing for several days. Six months prior to that, the previous maid left the farm, saying it was haunted. When the new maid came on the day of the murder, she was killed hours later. What happened isn’t certain. It’s alleged that the family was gathered in the barn and killed. The two-year-old was killed while sleeping. The murders remain unsolved.

#8 Zodiac Besides ‘Jack The Ripper’, the ‘Zodiac’ serial killer is probably one of the most notorious 20th century murderers. The killer operated in northern California between the late ’60s, and early ’70s. The killer’s identity still remains unknown. The Zodiac victims consisted of four men and three women (between the ages of 16 and 29). The killer got the name “Zodiac” by sending letters, which taunted the press. The letters were basically four ciphers. Out of the four cryptic letters, only one letter was successfully solved. Throughout the countless years, many suspects have been named. However, no concrete evidence was brought up. In 2004, the case was marked inactive but was re-opened in 2007. Coincidentally, that same year, the film Zodiac was released. The film starred Mark Ruffalo, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Robert Downey Jr. The film’s premise followed the exact same story outline as the real, and true, horrifying events.

#9 Somerton Man The “Tamam Shud Case,” also known as “Mystery of the Somerton Man,” is an unsolved Australian murder case. An unidentified Caucasian male was found dead at around six in the morning in 1948. His body was located on the Somerton beach, a little south of Adelaide, South Australia. The title of the crime was named after the phrase ‘tamám shud’, which means in Persian “ended” or “finished.” This was written on a scrap of paper, which was found in the pocket of the deceased man’s pants. The paper seemed to be torn from the final page of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which is a collection of poems connected to Omar Khayyám. The actual copy of the Rubaiyat, which the paper was torn from, was located and investigated. The inside of the back cover had handwritten notes. A telephone number, an unidentifiable digit, and an encrypted passage was inside. Unfortunately, the message hasn’t been deciphered. The case is considered to be one of Australia’s most mysterious crimes.

#10 Ashley Freeman And Lauria Bible In 1999, two girls, Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman, went missing in Oklahoma. On the evening of celebrating Ashley’s sixteenth birthday, a fire erupted inside of the Freeman mobile home. Kathy Freeman was found dead, but her husband Danny Freeman’s body, and the two girls’ were not found. It was theorized that the husband killed his wife, and abducted his daughter, Ashley, and her friend, Lauria Bible. But then, his body was found a day later with a gunshot in his head. Autopsy reports showed that the wife also had been shot in the head. Lauria’s purse was left with $200 inside, which ruled out robbery. One theory into the case was that the Freemans had issues with the Craig County Sheriff’s department over their son who was shot and killed by a deputy. The local judge ruled the shooting as “justifiable.” Some believe foul tactics with the police, but that was also ruled out. The girls were never found.

#11 Beaumont Children For this case, we go back to the ‘Down Under’ to look into the Beaumont children who were three girls—Jane Nartare, Arnna Kathleen, and Grant Ellis Beaumont. All three disappeared from Glenelg Beach by Adelaide, South Australia, in 1966. At the time of their disappearance, they were aged nine, seven, and four. It all went down when a tall blonde male was seen escorting the children around town. Several eyewitnesses saw the children and the man. The last time the children were seen was at an abandoned home, where one report saw a boy being grabbed violently by a man as he was walking away from the house. Their case is regarded as one of the largest police investigations in Australian criminal history. It’s also one of Australia’s most infamous cold cases, among the Somerton Man. Even after almost fifty years, the story is still regularly revisited by the press. It’s also seen as the pivotal event that changed the way parents look after their children.

#12 Where’s Amy Lynn Amy Lynn Bradley, at the time of her disappearance in 1998, was a 23-year-old American citizen who went missing during a Caribbean Cruise on the Royal Caribbean International. The ship was headed to Curaçao. Investigators into her case claimed no evidence of her falling overboard or dying by suicide. Throughout the ’90s, tourists have claimed to spot Bradley in the Caribbean. They’ve reported a woman with the same tattoos in department stores, a brothel, and other places. On the morning of her disappearance, Bradley was seen drinking and dancing with the Blue Orchid band on board. One band member said he partied with Bradley until about one in the morning. Around five in the morning, Bradley’s father saw her sleeping on the cabin balcony. When he got up at six, she was gone. It’s speculated that, due to the sightings, Bradley might have been kidnapped and sold as a s*x slave.

#13 Girl Scouts The “Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders” occurred in 1977 at Camp Scott, located in Mayes County, Oklahoma. The innocent victims were three girl scouts, between the ages of eight and ten. The murder case was classified as solved, when Gene Leroy Hart, a jail escapee, was arrested. But, he was eventually acquitted. It all started on the first day of camp. The night before, a thunderstorm hit the area and the girls stayed put in their tents. They were sharing tent number eight in the camp’s “Kiowa” unit. This was the farthest unit from the Camp Counselor’s tent, and also hidden by the camp showers. The next morning, one of the camp counselors, on her way to the showers, found a girl’s body in a sleeping bag. All three girls from tent eight had been killed. Their bodies were left on the trail leading to the camp showers. Autopsy reports showed the girls had been r*ped, bludgeoned, and strangled. Camp Scott was evacuated and was later shut down.

#14 Ray Gricar Ray Frank Gricar was an American attorney who served as DA in Centre County, Pennsylvania. He went missing in 2005, after failing to go home on time. Investigators soon found his red MINI Cooper vehicle, by an antique store. The car contained his county-issued cellphone, but not his laptop computer, keys, or wallet. There was no sign of foul play. Although, there was an eerie connection between his disappearance, and the discovery of his brother’s body in an Ohio river, in 1996. In July (of the same year), fishermen found a county-issued laptop computer in the Susquehanna River, but the hard drive was missing. Two months after the incident, someone found the hard drive on the banks of the Susquehanna River, but it was badly damaged. Attempts at recovering data from the hard drive failed. In 2009, police revealed (before Gricar’s disappearance) that someone used the home computer to search for ways to wreck a hard drive and laptop.

#15 Laced Tylenol The last in this list of scary unsolved murders is the infamous 1982 “Chicago Tylenol Murders.” They were a series of over-the-counter poisoning deaths which resulted from tampered Tylenol pills. The common thread that connected the victims, was the obvious—all had taken Tylenol-branded acetaminophen capsules, laced with potassium cyanide. Seven people died in the original poisonings with an additional several more deaths due to subsequent ‘copycat crimes’. The killings led to better reforms in the packaging of over-the-counter medications. Federal anti-tampering laws were harshly implemented and Johnson & Johnson took immediate action in reducing deaths by warning the public of poisoning risks, which was praised as an exemplary response. No suspect was ever charged but James William Lewis was considered the prime suspect and was convicted of extortion for sending Johnson & Johnson a note where he took credit for the deaths and demanded a million dollars. Do you trust what’s in your cabinet?

Source: TheRichest