#I'm aware prime is considered even more beautiful

[godsandtorrance]

Loneliness

One of the main things in my life that I struggle with, and that I don't think gets talked about enough, is loneliness.

I'm at the ripe age of 23. I'm at the prime-time where friendships, particularly female friendships, should be the highlight of my life right now. I should be going out drinking (or a different meet-up activity, as I don't actually drink or like risking going out at night in this currant climate), sending memes and inside jokes to the group chat, checking in on a group of women my own age who do the same for me.

But I don't. I have a best friend, but due being busy and other life issues, we don't talk like we used to. Aside from her, there really is no other friend. My colleagues are all older than me, at a completely different life stage, and the only colleague my own age has her own friends who appear to not match my own lifestyle.

I used to have a friend group - five or so girls in my teen years who I went to school with. We would hang out all the time, message each other constantly - not necessarily relatable to adults but still a nice little social and fun group I could rely on.

Naturally, we grew apart as we got older. They changed and went out partying, while I, at the time, was isolated due to my mental health troubles, and I don't like alcohol (as established). Unfortunately, in hindsight I realised it wasn't really a good group of friends. I was very weird (annoyingly so, but I refuse to even entertain the thoughts of my irritating, not-self-aware younger self), and it was obvious, looking back, that they mostly tolerated me, and often left me out of things.

It was also, considering we were a group of hormonal teens, pretty toxic at times too, but I'm happy to say I, at least, have grown up a lot since then and can put that kind of behaviour behind me.

University was a struggle too. As a highly socially anxious young adult, following my stressful few years of intense mental health issues, I really found it difficult to open up to people. In lessons, I'd remain as quiet as possible; I didn't start conversations or join in; I tried a few societies but they just weren't the right fit for me - or maybe I didn't give them enough of a chance.

It took lockdown, a time for reflection for myself and my personal struggles, to see that I was lonely and I wasn't helping myself. I didn't try enough to join in and make the effort - and I couldn't expect other people to always do so first, especially if I gave off the blank-faced, unapproachable (but secretly fearful of looking stupid) vibe.

When I went to university again for my masters degree, I made far more of an effort - I chatted and instigated conversation, said yes to certain meet-ups and really pushed myself to being open and friendly. It didn't get too far, as many in the year-long course had their own friends, and I wasn't entirely perfect at being the right social person, but I knew I could do it. Practice, after all, makes perfect.

Now that I've started work, and I'm steadily trying to figure out what the hell I want to do with my life (more on that another time), I'm gradually trying to let myself be open to any opportunities, conversation, anything.

But it's hard. Seeing people on social media in their tight-knit groups makes me feel like I'm the problem. It feels like I'm the only person in the world incapable of - and undeserving - of friendships. As much as I know social media is a facade at times, there's no denying that there are truly beautiful friendships out there.

However, I use this as something to hold on to, and something to hope for. Knowing that great friendships exist is wonderful, and it's special to know that when the right time comes along, I will meet the right people I click with. I wouldn't want to force any kind of connection, as in my experience trying too hard doesn't work and it's just emotionally exhausting.

Without trying to sound ridiculously over-positive (I can't stand the high-key promotions of being 'happy happy happy!' that saturate social media, it's just not possible to be as joyful as a Cbeebies programme all the time), there is a blessing to having minimal friends. I get to work on the most important friendships I have - the one with myself.

Disgustingly saccharine, I know, but I've spent the past few years working on my mental health issues and actually working through CBT, getting two degrees and simply enjoying the small things. I love being creative, I adore films, I'm a huge reader. The introvert in me gets to enjoy the comfort of staying in and working on my private hobbies.

Of course I want to branch out still - there's such a thing as getting too comfortable in solitude, especially as someone who clearly still misses frequent socialising - but in the meantime I can focus on myself and the activities that bring me joy.

Early twenties are complicated, and I'm still trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do. I don't see myself sticking to this job forever, or putting down roots in my home for too long, so I need this quiet time to work it out, find the right career for me and just let things progress naturally.

It's time I start being kinder to myself, and I'm not going to get that self-respect, self-esteem or self-love from other people. Tying my worth into other people - whether they're in my life as my friends or not - only ends badly, as I've learnt before.

Loneliness doesn't mean failure, or that I suck as a person, or that this is going to be my future. It just means my life is a little bit more quiet right now, and I have all this time to look after myself.

If you're like me, feeling completely isolated in your loneliness like you're the only young adult struggling, you're definitely not alone. It's rarely talked about, but that doesn't mean other lacking-in-friends people aren't out there. We're just don't shout about it, and we're probably socially awkward introverts too.

#Loneliness #Blog #Writing blog #Early twenties #Alone #No friends #Thoughts #Musings #My picture #Godsandtorrance #British #Uk #Friendship #Female friendships

[floxalopex]

And you then understand that you really, truly, are a demi mess when Hordak is very beautiful to you, spacebats are cute, but Prime is the most disgusting thing in the universe.

And in theory...these are all...the same person.

#sorry #my emotions #guide #my idea of beauty #hordak #spacebats #horde clones #horde prime #I'm aware prime is considered even more beautiful #and even more sexy #than all of them #but to me is just #disgusting

[yammoba]

Something this whole ranfren thing has got me thinking about recently is like... the line between "personal creations" and "art that is consumed"

Like, for one way, art is art once its seen by others. And there are certain Things that happen to it when its veiwed by others. And as a general rule I think fandom culture and transformative works are really valuble and cool. And like, your headcannon can be your Canon, its all you baybee. I am the sort of person who believes copyright law is one of the greatest weights around the progress of humanity and needs to be abolished immediately (along with the rest of capitalism). [This is one of those areas though, where even i am like, "maybe there is a single shread of validity to this" {copyright not capitalisim}]

Its just, i do also think that if one is able, there is a certain level of responsability to creating art. Part of this is my own personal philosophy developed as cope that I'm unable to personally fix everything wrong in the world. But i do think that if one is speaking with the intent to Speak to the wider world, its good to try to keep the way in which things will be seen in mind. Though that is a very context sensitive task, and its basically impossible to do without error. Context sensitive meaning that: certain types of work being produced in certain ways have more "responsabilities" than others (ie mass media, and shit indended to be consumed in a childlike way). And that it can be impossible to know how things will shift in the future of what is considered "responsible to depict". I think also -for very complicated reasons- there is very little that is 100٪ "off-limits" wrt depiction, and its a balencing act of context, intent, intended audience, and balancing the potential harm done vs the benifits gained. Its an extreamly complicated web of factors made more complicated by every single person having different thresholds for what is "acceptable".

All that said.

i think its extreamly fucked up and invasive to act entitled to someone else's characters, at the proposed expense of that person's control over those characters, especially when those characters are being used as a means of very personal self expression. I guess in an ideal world people could understand its like... not their place? Not the function of the work? Or if you're gonna engage in that way you gotta really engage in that way. Its difficult to express exactly what i mean.....

its like... the difference between a chef cooking at a resturant vs cooking for themselves. On a certain level, i am talking about "quality". But, im also talking about things like "cleanliness". Speaking from personal experience, i have different standards of what is acceptable to do when cooking for the public vs myself vs my friends. When im at my job i have high standards of cleanliness and visual presentation, its going to a stranger with unknown standards, if something falls on the floor or is even a little moldy i am not going to use it. Im going to make everything to the same, kinda bland, standard. However if i am cooking for myself, ill eat shit off the floor idgaf. I know my own tolerance for mold and i will proceed accordingly. I am fully aware of the risks and i will weigh them as i see fit. I will also go all out with ingredients and spices to my liking. I crave salt to a level that is unpalitable to many people. But there is a spectrum between these extreams, cooking for my partner who's tastes and "boundries" i know quite well, cooking for my friends. How it changes when im cooking with people and i can just ask "how do you like this?" "Are you okay with it if i just cut the mold off the parmesean and use the rest?"

The freedom of "publishing" on the internet has created a much wider strata of "personal" to "public" intent than has ever been seen in art before. And i think its created the opportunity for some extreamly beautiful and important works of art to exist, randal's friends being a prime example of that. But its clear we are also still trying to figure out how to work with that, especially within the framework of any kind of "fandom" culture. Especially the type of fandom culture that can grow very "parasocial" in a way that creates expectations that i think are often wildly missplaced.

i dont think it helps that people seem intent on applying a blanket standard of expectation, responsibility, and availability to every single work.

#dichotomy #is it okay if i tag this oc as kin #sorry to resort to a food cooking metaphore #but it is one of the only otger things i think about #i have struggled with the thought of this for a while #back when people first started to ask and i was like would i be okay if someone tagged my ocs as kin?? #its complicated #ranfren #i have endless thoughts but i guess ive explained enough. will keep thinking forever though

[filmmakerdreamst]

Xena: Warrior Princess Review

During Pride Month 2020, I finally got around to watch ‘Xena’. A show that had been in my to-watch list for years, but never got around to start. And when I finally did, I was pleasantly surprised. It was not what I expected and it was everything I think my 11 year old self would have loved.

The one thing that surprised me about the show, was the lack of packaging. Even though it was a fantasy, it also played with different kinds of genres too. I’ve talked about this before in my other review - ‘Xena’ was made at a time when TV had very few rules/rarely had a set audience, since there were parts of the show that were clearly for kids and there were other parts that were clearly for adults (therefore had much more flexibility). I admired how they weren’t afraid to break barriers and touch on deep themes such as religion, morality, redemption, spirituality, motherhood, forgiveness etc - even more than shows of today are able. I also loved how they played into the idea of ‘murder’ and how much it can damage a person - not just the person who commits the act, but the many people affected afterwards. I wasn’t expecting it to be that extreme. It made me think that this must of been the inspiration for ‘Game of Thrones’. 

I see a lot of comments here and there, saying how ‘cheesy and terrible’ it was but to just accept it because its part of the fun. And while like any show it does suffer from the occasional spell of bad writing (the whole of season 5) but it was also shown to be very aware of that fact and never took itself too seriously - unlike some shows I could mention. 

And regarding the ‘cheese’ factor (what 90s show wasn’t) It definitely can be, but I would call it ‘camp’ and ‘experimental’ more than anything else. (Don’t diss the poor use of CGI - I’m personally sympathetic to what was avaliable to them at the time) The style of humour reminded me of Taika Waititi’s filmmaking. If you’ve watched any of his films such as ‘Hunt for The Wilderpeople’ or ‘Jojo Rabbit’, then you know what I’m talking about. I liked how little they cared about being accurate or logical, which added to the ‘bonkers’ element in the show - which you can see in all of Taika Waititi’s films.

In all seriousness, a show centered around two women in their late twenties, who are realistic sizes (not trying to play teenagers). One of whom is a reformed mass murderer, who has lived a life experience, trying to do good in the world for the first time, picking the other one up who has no life experience prior (after they bugged them until they said ‘ok fine’) in their path to redemption. Just two women who become friends travelling the world together, fighting crime, having a laff, learning from one another without any toxicity - when suddenly when the stakes are raised - they realise ‘oh I'm actually falling in love with this person’ I have watched a lot of badly written shows in my childhood enough to know that, that’s not ‘cheesy’. I’ve never seen a story like that in my entire life. I’m not at all surprised that Russel T Davis was inspired by it while writing the Doctor and Rose’s relationship in ‘Doctor Who’ since he’s gay himself.

What’s more amazing about their love story is how they’re both develop as separate people as well. There was this video essay explaining ‘Why you should watch Angel’ the spin off series to Buffy; how ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer ‘was all about growing up and ‘Angel’ was all about being an adult. With Xena: Warrior Princess, you have both of those stories at the same time. 

Xena’s character was such a multifaceted experience to watch. And I can’t imagine anyone else who could play her as well as Lucy Lawless. What planet did they get that actress from? She's flawless! The amount of skill she has to put herself into a very physical role is astonishing. I personally had a love/hate relationship with her character all series long. Not in the way that I hated her, just that I couldn’t trust if she was all good or bad, which I know was intentional on the writers part. I haven’t seen a character quite like her before. She felt very much like a fallen angel; almost like the villain of her own story. Some of my favourite episodes come from fleshing out her character and dark past (‘Locked up and Tied Down’ is one of them) which reminds the audience that's she's not the stereotypical hero everyone expects. I loved her transformation from being this incredibly stoic warrior to being content and happy with who she is in season six, all because of a woman she fell in love with along the way. 

I’ve always thought of Gabrielle as the real hero and narrator of ‘Xena’. She’s the prime example of ‘a normal person becoming extrodinary’. Gabrielle’s coming of age story starting out as an innocent girl from a poor village dreaming of adventure, and ending as this vicious warrior who realises the ‘adventure’ wasn’t how she made it out to be is honestly the best character arc that I’ve ever seen. I loved how travelling with Xena made her realise her passion for writing (which was never going to happen in her home town, given the ‘sexist’ and ‘heteronormative’ ideas) and that she became a amazon princess like Xena. In regards to her sexuality, which is more up for debate than Xena’s (which I think we can all agree is bisexual) I personally interpret her as gay, just in terms of how she was written. Theres this moment in season 4 where she's being held up her hair, and Xena “symbolically” cuts it off ‘freeing her’. And she never really gets with a man afterwards, unless she’s being ‘possessed. It reminded me of a moment in one of Hayao Miyasaki’s films ‘Laputa, Castle in the Sky’ where the bad guy Moska shoots Sheeta’s ‘princess hair off’ which symbolises her transition from child to adult.

The cinematography was breathtaking. There was some great utilisation of New Zealand as the scenery. So was the soundtrack. You could tell it was made by experienced filmmakers. One of my favourite things about the show was the domestic elements - moments in the show where time seemed to stop - which made the world around the characters seem very real and magical. Even though it was a show that featured a lot of action/adventure, there was also this gentleness to it as well. For example, you could feel the wetness of the rain, the warmth of the sun and the clashing of the waves. This technique is used in Hayao Miayasaki’s work a lot .

The technique is referred to as ‘MA’ 空虚 meaning emptiness in Japanese. ‘Miyasaki describes this as the time between a clap’

“If you just have non stop action, with no breathing space at all, its just busyness. But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension” - Hayao Miyasaki

The episode ‘A Day in the Life’ in season two is a really good example of this technique being used.

To my understanding, they used a lot of the local actors in New Zealand, which according to Lucy Lawless, consisted of ‘African immigrants and other different ethnicites’. It was so refreshing to see such a diverse show (despite some slip ups) especially in the 90s. I appreciated the idea that if the actors or extras couldn’t do an ‘american accent’ people could just talk in their natural speech which was also very refreshing. 

The LGBT representation was surprisingly amazing. I never expected so many queer characters in one show - especially under the censors. There was this one episode where they had a trans woman - played by an actual trans actress - win a beauty contest. It made me cry. Not to mention the actress was an aids activist. It was actually Lucy Lawless’ idea to kiss her which was incredibly controversial at that time considering how everyone thought you could catch aids just by kissing. I can definitey see how it validated people back in the 90s.

When people told me that Xena: Warrior Princess was one of the greatest love stories, I thought they were exaggerating a little. But no, watching the show in context, I found out that it really is. Despite its obvious restrictions, It made me realise (regarding token gay couples today) how often television writers rely on physicality and drama to convey a ‘love story’ and how much of it is actually pandering the audience. One of the reasons why Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship felt so genuine is because it was built on mutual respect/compassion and they were also best friends. I felt like I was witnessing something very real and private. It didn’t need kissing scenes or drama to make it interesting. 

It really helped that most of the writers were queer also. There’s this opening scene in season 4, panning over to Gabrielle giving Xena a massage (metaphor for sex - because they weren’t able to show that on screen) which I consider to be one of the most iconic scenes in media - considering how I wanted to sick up my supper when I watched the 10 minute ‘empty’ explicit sex scene in ‘Blue in the Warmest Colour’. The difference when something is written by a queer women vs a straight man.

Because the creators weren’t allowed to write their love story in the normal way, due to the studio forbidding them to, they found creative ways to showcase that love on screen - which made for a very magical/sensual experience. And I can safely say, if anyone has doubts about watching ‘Xena’, whenever I expected to be queer baited at a few points in the show, I was proved wrong time and time again. It’s the most romantical show I’ve ever seen in my life!

#xena: warrior princess #xena #xena x gabrielle #review #rating #analysis #renee o'connor #Lucy lawless #90s show #lgbtqia #lgbt #pride month #-- it truly is a unique show #gabrielle #studio ghibli #hayao miyasaki #quote #film #reference #fantasy #lgbt representation #lgbtqia representation #doctor x rose #xena x gabby #subtext #happy pride 🌈 #queer subtext #xwp #xena and gabrielle #xena & gabrielle

[lilred8220]

SOOOOOOOO.....Lilith.....

I couldn't get her out of my head with how she might've looked like soooooooo, I did a thing.

Quick head cannon

Yes, I'm aware that I gave her butterfly like wings, HOWEVER, I imagine that not all angels have the very common feathery angel wings.

Like yes, most angels have that stereotypical angel wings but, there are MANY different types of angel wings, much like how demons have different types as well. One set of feathered wings are just the most common.

Lucifer, for example, had common feathered wings yet, his wings were still considered very rare, considering he had.....well.....3 of them.

No, it wasn't the fact that he was an archangel, he was just born with 3 sets of wings.

Lilith having butterfly wings really made her stand out in the celestial realm. Besides Asmo, she was always considered the most beautiful angel, even been thought of as a fairy from time to time.

ANYWAY, WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY,

I can see Lilith when she was alive like....well kind of like Luke but A LOT more mature and A LOT less feisty. She was a very wise and calming person, even one as innocent and pure as her.

I see her as basically the prime example of being an angel, not included archangels. She was very sweet, loving and nurturing.

Before the fall, most angels wanted Lilith to be an archangel, due to being such a pure light in all the realms. Everyone was shocked to hear what she had done with the forbidden food and were all devastated to hear what her punishment would be. Some chose to accept it, some fought against it. It was the biggest controversy the celestial realm had ever seen.

But, as we all know, the war happened, the brothers and those who fought against it fell and Lilith "died". The celestial realm was divided for a very long time. They won, yes but, at what cost? Many lives changed and many lines where crossed. Returning to normal wouldn't happen for hundreds of years due to the loss of many angels, an archangel and heaven's light.

#obey me #obey me lilith #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me diavolo #obey me luke

[drekasal]

Hope I'm not to late to ask these so 3,4,8 and 9 for Anadl,Bremier and Rota >:3c

Pulling out the big guns I see >:V

ANADL

3. What is their hair color best described as?

Honestly, his hair color can be anything he wants it to be! The perks of a master of camouflage. Most cases, however, he prefers the mossy green look.

4. Would they be considered conventionally attractive?

Absolutely hard yes to this. Dragon form, he’s absurdly beautiful with that plumage, and human form...well, you and I already know it’s just uff.

8. Do they often get compliments on their appearance? How do these compliments make them feel?

Aside from a certain cleric, I’m pretty certain that he gets a fair bit from within his own flock, and that he is 100% aware of them and embraces it for the aforementioned reasons. He’s a pretty bitch, and he knows it.

9. On a daily average, how much time do they spend on their appearance?

In DragonVerse, amphipteres as a whole have near-excessive grooming tendencies—those feathers need to be kept looking as fine as humanly possible. Anadl is not exempt from this, and it’s actually one of the few things that will get him to touch the ground, since you can’t exactly groom yourself while in transit.

BREMIER

3. Black as coals...literally.

4. Given his age, he’s still a rather fine specimen and not out of his prime just yet. Best thing I’d most likely equate him to is probably Ragnar Lothbrok?

8. Taking into account his status as their god Titan of wisdom and knowledge, he hasn’t received aesthetic compliments out of deferential respect, at least among his own kind, so it’s a foreign thing to him. Not that it ever bothers him, he focuses more on the beauty of one’s soul. That said, he does come to learn and appreciate the aesthetic of a certain someone alongside their kind heart.

9. Any self-grooming he does simply out of necessity, to get rid of any debris built up in his scales and claws. Even that isn’t too much of an issue, as a lava bath takes care of those problems in an instant.

ROTA

3. I’d say something like a dirty blonde is the closest match!

4. Rota’s in the same boat as her sisters in that they’re more “angles” than “curves”, so they’re more a “rough attractive”. (Frankly, though, I’m biased, and anyone of them could step on me and I’d thank them.)

8. Compliments are rather few and far between for her, but that’s mostly due to her having not much opportunity for socialization—most of them came from her sisters. Her hair is a source of pride for her, however, so any praise in that direction is enough to get a small smile from her.

9. Her braids are about the only in-depth self care she does, as well as a mild brushing of her hair, but otherwise, she doesn’t spend too much time on it. She’ll go about a week or so before doing maintenance as necessary.

—•—

OC Appearance Ask Game

#thank you for the ask! #oc appearance #oc ask #ask game

[miss-atomic-bitchh]

Another pet peeve I have about the 2000s nostalgia crowd is their tendency to sometimes glorify really .................. dark aspects of that time period. it’s kinda disturbing whenever people say things like “omg I like SOOO totally wish it was 2006 again🤪wow I miss when britney lindsay and paris partied all the time and did crazy things in front of hoards of paparazzi” 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ biggest facepalm ever. prime example of childhood nostalgia gone too far!!!!!!

Look I love me some 2000s pop culture too and I acknowledge the beauty behind the madness. I understand that people are drawn to the rebellion behind it all. That ability to say “fck you” to the press. I get it. But what’s NOT okay is to actually wish to bring those days back. I'd hate to go back to a time period when pop stars are treated as subhuman and their personal space is hoarded by disgusting paparazzi. I'd hate to go back to a time period when female celebrities' mental health was considered laughing stock and misogyny was still seen as normal. I'd hate to go back to a time period where my fav celebs' future is uncertain because of their mental distress. Be nostalgic and sentimental all you want, but have some boundaries and learn how to move on from certain things.

As iconic as those images and videos are, it’s not an era I'd wish to revive. I’m glad that paris and Lindsay are in a much better place today and that they've healed after those tumultuous years. And I’m also glad that the general public is becoming more aware of how society has wronged britney spears. I’m glad that we're spreading awareness towards her situation and working hard to free her from her suffering.

Even though celebrity gossip/paparazzi culture is still prevalent, I’m glad it isn’t as awful or extreme as it was back then. I’m glad that we've made a shift towards a more digital environment for such things rather than the constant physical invasions. And with COVID social distancing, even better!!! And I'm so glad that most people are finally realizing that invasion of celebrities' privacy is becoming shunned. Back then, people found it masturbatory to see celebrities as trainwrecks or to simply see their peace getting disturbed. The newer mediums that’ve risen since then have called for conversations about mental health. Especially in conjunction with sexism, racism, and much more. For example, I think about how meghan markle is constantly bombarded by tabloids but now the general public is more socially aware of how racist and sexist the media is to her and spreading awareness about it.

Exactly! I’m pretty sure that Britney’s mental breakdown was a still a meme and shaving her head had been deemed ‘iconic’ until recently when that documentary about her came out. And girls were still acting all crazy with the baby voice and shit like Paris Hilton until she revealed in her documentary that it was all fake lol 😂 I agree about the increasing mental health awareness but trolls on the internet seem to be getting worse and journalists like Piers Morgan will always exist, along with stans who still believe that celebrities don’t deserve privacy. I don’t really care too much about celebrities but I agree that the Noughties were toxic.

[mbti-notes]

Hi. thank you for writing this blog, you're really helpful. I'm sorry if my question is weird. I'm physically unattractive and people often comment/mocking my looks. because I was a very sensitive kid, I withdraw from people and become really introverted. now I'm in college but my communication skill got worse. when classmates talk to me, my mind went blank and I always need seconds to answer. I want to know what's wrong in my thinking, is it because I can't accept the reality of my looks?

Not a weird question at all. No child deserves to be mistreated and I’m sorry that you had to go through the bullying. There are two main issues that I think you need to address: 1) the residual effects of being bullied, and 2) your standards for evaluating the worth of people, including yourself. 

1) People get bullied for all kinds of things. It’s missing the point to try to compare what kind of bullying is worse than others. The most important point, in terms of psychological health, is your subjective experience of the bullying and whether it had a significantly negative impact upon your well-being. In children, the experience of constant bullying is a recognized form of psychological trauma. 

When people experience emotional trauma, the way that they perceive and assess situations changes. It has to. All human beings have a survival instinct. When you live your life experiencing constant threats, it is normal and rational for the mind to find ways of protecting itself. Therefore, bullied children are much more likely to feel fearful, anxious, and/or defensive in social situations, since most of their social learning took place in situations that were legitimately threatening, hurtful, and painful for them. Unfortunately, fearful, anxious, or defensive behavior tends to get worse over time and causes problems in life when the original trauma is never properly addressed and resolved. This is why bullied children are more likely to struggle with mental disorders as well as socialization and relationship problems later in life.

Children need care, love, and affection to thrive, but many are thrust into bad situations, and it’s not their fault. As a child, you barely know up from down, so you can’t be expected to know how to fend for yourself in very negative social situations. Try to look at your situation more objectively. Imagine that, today, you were walking down the street and you witnessed somebody bullying a young child about their looks. How would that make you feel? Would you join the bully and ridicule the child, believing that the “ugly” child is worthless and deserves it? A sensitive person is capable of empathy, so I doubt that you’d want to be the bully. An empathetic person would immediately know that the child was being mistreated and want to stop the bully, would they not? A bully wants power over people, and their greatest success is to teach you how to bully yourself. Not only do they make you feel like shit by calling you ugly, they also gain complete control over you once they convince you to call yourself ugly, for the rest of your life. To be more objective, look upon your childhood self not through the disdainful eyes of your bullies but rather through the empathetic eyes of the good person that you are. You didn’t deserve to be bullied. You deserved to be loved. You deserve love.

Everybody needs to go through level 2 ego development in terms of learning how to adapt well to their social environment. If your social environment is loving and full of affection, you’re going to learn that the world is a safe and positive place, so you’ll naturally feel confident in navigating it. If your social environment is threatening and painful, you’re going to learn that the world is a frightening place, so you’ll naturally feel unsafe and insecure in most situations. As a child, you had to adapt to a negative social environment as best as a child could. From being bullied, you “learned” again and again that physically “beautiful” people get praised and physically “ugly” people get scorned. Since you were repeatedly called “ugly”, you’ve come to expect that people will scorn you, and you might even start to unconsciously attract people who confirm your distrustful worldview. Bullying is always worse for children because they have no preexisting knowledge of how to cope with it. The early adaptations that you learn in childhood tend to stay with you because they serve as your “default” mode. Whenever you feel a little bit stressed by a social situation, your psychology tends to “regress” to those early adaptations, even when the present situation poses no objective threat to you. It’s a mental reflex, aka a defense mechanism.

There’s a lot of debate in the psychological community about whether it’s possible to rid the brain of traumatic memories. However, even if you take the most pessimistic position of believing that childhood trauma is written into the brain and stays with you forever, that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about it. If you are able to improve your awareness and understanding of the many ways that your past trauma has impacted your cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns, you can then implement some practical strategies for disengaging your past adaptations, i.e., you can learn healthier coping mechanisms instead of allowing your “default” mode to run the show all the time. This is generally what they teach you in cognitive-behavioral therapy. A lot of people are in therapy to try to make sense of past trauma or abuse.

For example: You’re talking to someone new, and you suddenly freeze up. Why did you freeze up? What’s going on? Time to reflect on yourself honestly. Chances are, you are afraid. Based on your past experience, perhaps you’re afraid of trusting this new person only to have them turn around and mock you, and then you’re instantly that hurt kid again. It is a perfectly reasonable fear to have because you have experienced it several times before. Humans are considered smart for being able to learn from their past experience. Once you’re aware of the fear and its source and able to accept it as legitimate, then you have a chance to implement a better coping strategy. Perhaps you take a deep breath and remind yourself that this new person is not the old bully of your past. Remind yourself to give this new person the benefit of the doubt. You can’t develop a good relationship without giving a little trust and being positive. A lot of people can overlook physically unattractive features once they see a nice personality, but it’s a lot harder to overlook a negative and distrustful attitude. Another way to cope better is to work on your people skills and communication skills, which will help boost your confidence.

2) Beauty has a very important place in human psychology. Without connection to beauty, people wouldn’t be able to access all the good, positive, wonderful, and sublime things about being alive. I would never downplay the importance of beauty; however, the fact is that most people’s concept of beauty is superficial and wrong. For a lot of people, beauty is merely about ego: comparing and contrasting, competition and jealousy, self-harm and violence. If beauty is meant to be a human good, then why does it drive people to be their worst selves? There’s something rotten going on. True beauty is NOT about whether you are more/less beautiful than, it’s about nurturing the ability to see the best side of everything in the world. Not many people nurture this ability in themselves. If you did, you’d never ever call yourself ugly, because everything in this world has some beauty in it. If you aren’t able to see it, then the problem lies in your own perception, not the object itself.

Human brains are built to process information about physical appearance very quickly. This cannot be helped. We all make snap judgments based on physical appearance because this ability was very useful for human survival. However, human beings also have the capacity to reflect on the veracity of their snap judgments as well as the intelligence to realize that outward appearance and inner qualities are two different things. Failure to use one’s higher intelligence means remaining very hasty and shallow in judgment. To be shallow isn’t just to care about appearances, because we are all primed to care about appearances, it’s to take appearances as the only/primary standard for JUDGING someone’s WORTH. Shallow people easily become bullies when they feel the need to elevate themselves socially by putting others down. All you have to do is read through comment sections on gossip pages to know that no one is immune to having their appearance mocked, not even beautiful celebrities or supermodels. No matter how objectively beautiful you are, there’s a shallow person out there ready and willing to pick you apart, for their own egotistical reasons. The fact of the matter is that there are lots of shallow people in this world. There’s no avoiding them, there’s no wishing them away, but you can always render their judgments meaningless, and thus very easy to ignore. 

Be brutally honest with yourself, would you rather use the criterion of “physical beauty” or the criterion of “good moral character” to choose a mate/friend for yourself? I’m not saying that the two criteria are mutually exclusive, I’m simply asking which one is more important to you. If you say “physical beauty”, then you must count yourself as one of the shallow people. And if you are shallow, you’re going to care a lot about what other shallow people think. By being shallow yourself, you’re doomed to judging yourself through the eyes of a shallow person - you. If you say “good moral character”, then congratulations, because you understand what really counts for creating a successful relationship. It takes someone of good moral character to recognize another, and when you have good moral character and prioritize it, it’s easy enough to see through shallow people and their meaningless judgments. If you surround yourself with people of good moral character - people who are capable of appreciating you for the good person you are and vice versa - you will exist in a very different social space, a place where shallow people can never get any real foothold.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they need to be beautiful to be loved. Makes no sense. When you focus only on physical beauty, you turn people into mere objects, and, worse, you turn yourself into a mere object and allow others to treat you as such. Genuine feelings of love don’t come from physical beauty, they come from deep within the heart. What is it that you really want from people? Do you want them to praise your face and body? Is it going to make your life meaningful and fulfilled in the long run? No, because what people really want is love. To experience love, you must be a good person who is capable of love, and then you will have the ability to spot good people who are capable of loving you. If you are not even capable of loving yourself and seeing the beauty in yourself, how can you ask others to? If you are not capable of loving people and seeing the beauty in them, what kind of people will you attract and who would want to be around you?

You are not a passive player in social situations. Children who are bullied often feel passive and helpless for good reason, but that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest of your life, does it? You get to choose your attitude towards socializing (whether to trust or distrust), you get to choose how to engage with people (whether to focus on outer or inner qualities), you get to choose what sorts of people to engage with (shallow or kind), you get to choose who to keep as your long term friends (those who praise your looks or those who appreciate your true beauty). When you always default to the old lessons you learned from childhood trauma, you’ve essentially given up the power to choose, thus remaining a victim indefinitely, trembling in fear in every social interaction. And if the only standard you have for navigating social situations is the “physical beauty” standard that shallow people told you should be elevated as the most important human quality, you’re going to live a very shallow existence, devoid of love, because you’re not using the right standards in your approach to relationships. Do you want to think in the same way that the bully taught you, or do you want to have your own way of looking at the beauty in the world and trust in yourself?

#bullying #trauma #abuse #physical appearance #appearance #beauty #shallow #socializing #self worth #ask

[skaylanphear]

Cry of the Siren

Summary: Marinette considers herself a different sort of pirate, what with her having morals and a just cause. While Adrien doesn't much fit into the expectations his people have of mermaids such as himself. Backed into a corner by an arranged marriage, he leaves his home behind to brave the open sea, only for a dire injury to leave him stranded on human shores. And so when Marinette finds him and hauls him aboard her ship, he finds himself trapped in a world far removed from his own.

But perhaps the sea carried them together for a reason. Fate, after all, is never clear-cut, nor easily read.

Chapter I

Chapter III is up on Patreon - Skadako

AO3 (the art is better quality on AO3)

The awesome art is done by @salty-french-fry 

Chapter II

"Adrien."

Startling awake, Adrien turned over from where he'd been tucked away in the back of his pod. Floating outside was his father, and he looked none too pleased by the fact that it was early afternoon and Adrien was still asleep. Little did his father know that he'd only just returned some three hours prior, having spent a majority of the morning swimming all the way back to the city.

"Yes, Father," he said as he stretched, yawning once as he rubbed his eyes.

"Your mating ceremony is tonight," he said as he crossed his arms over his broad chest. "I would think you'd be a little more alert given today's importance."

Shrugging, Adrien slinked down out of his pod, generally attempting to avoid his father. But, alas, Gabriel grabbed him by the shoulder before he could get away.

"I realize that everyone in the city thinks you're the perfect siren, but this sort of inattentive attitude will not be acceptable to your future mate."

Frowning, Adrien turned to meet his father's cold gaze, uncertain what he was expected to say. While he was perfect in public, he knew both Nathalie and his father were aware that he was not the least bit enthused about the prospect of a mate. Yet, being the prime merrow that his father was, he had little sympathy for Adrien's situation.

While Gabriel wasn't a warrior and never had been, he was still well-respected amongst their social circles. He was a businessmer and an explorer. A merchant. He couldn't be soft to lead that sort of life. That he was a broad, intimidating figure only defended his position as an upstanding merrow, even if he didn't participate socially as often as most. His severe countenance was only accented by his sleek, gray tale and white underbelly, which were shorter than Adrien's—as all merrows' tales were—and lacked the showy layers in favor of a sharp, duel lobed caudal fin.

There was all the more pressure on Adrien to be the perfect siren as a result. His mother and father had once been a perfectly suited couple, or so he'd heard. His mother's death had been a tragedy, and now he had to live both for himself and for her. Everyone expected him to be her, to be the example for the family as the only child they'd been able to conceive. He was no proud, warrior merrow, but if he mated well, that would be the best he could do.

"Nor will your lackluster enthusiasm," Gabriel finished.

"I don't want to be mated, Father," Adrien said quietly.

"What would you rather have happen?" Gabriel asked, finally releasing his arm. Adrien sank to the ground a moment later, his father remaining domineeringly above him. "It's time to grow up and take your place in society. I can't protect you forever, but a good wife with suitable breeding can."

"I can protect myself," Adrien dared to mutter.

"Because you pretend at sword training? You've never practiced outside this house, and even then, you have no natural defenses. We all have to live our lives as the world dictates, Adrien, and I won't watch you put yourself in danger because you're unwilling to accept that. Now, get ready for the ceremony. Chloe Bourgeois is already here to assist you."

Apparently deeming the conversation over, he swam over Adrien's head and right out the door, deeming it appropriate to leave his only son nearly crying on the floor. Or so Adrien told himself, before taking a forceful breath and burying his emotions back in a hole where they belonged.

A few moments later, he heard the familiar swishing of Chloe's tail through the water. She was accompanied by one other, her bodyguard and friend, Sabrina.

Sabrina was a merrow, but she wasn't wholly suited to warrior life, not with her thin tail and shimmering silver color. She was quite common looking for lower-ranking merrow, hardly standing out. Her position as a siren's bodyguard was a low one, but she didn't seem to mind.

Turning to face them, Adrien cleared his expression of his previous misery in favor of a small smile. "Hey, Chlo," he said, noticing how relieved she appeared at the sight of him. "Hello, Sabrina."

"Hello, Adrien." Sabrina smiled brightly in return, not the least bit aware of why Adrien wasn't as excited about the ceremony as nearly everyone else. "Chloe said you'd need help getting ready. I may be a merrow, but I've helped Chloe get ready plenty of times."

"Thanks, Sabrina, I appreciate that."

"You look terrible," Chloe said then, curling her lip some as she circled him, as if evaluating what she had to work with. "Did you get any sleep last night?"

Adrien knew she was asking facetiously, but he answered honestly nonetheless. "Not really. I was up nearly all night." An innocent comment that anyone who didn't know any better would think stemmed from nerves, but by the way Chloe's complexion paled, she knew exactly what he meant.

"Do us a favor, won't you, Sabrina?" she said a moment later. "Go to Nathalie and fetch some of Aunt Emilie's old jewelry. I fear Adrien may require as much as possible, if we're to draw attention from the splotchiness of his skin."

"Certainly, Chloe." Bowing her head lightly, Sabrina was soon swimming back out the door, leaving Adrien to bear Chloe's critical gaze.

"What did you do last night?" she hissed out a moment later, sinking down so she could look Adrien square in the eyes.

"I followed that ship," he admitted easily enough. "All the way to land."

Eyes narrowing, Chloe grabbed his hand to have a look at his finger, which was still sporting his silver ring.

"I didn't get the chance to leave it anywhere," he admitted. "But I did see some humans."

Chloe's eyes bulged.

Adrien, meanwhile, was finding himself getting quite excited over the whole experience. "I swam up to their ship, to see if there was a place I could leave the ring, and I was close enough that I could hear their voices and see their faces."

"Adrien!" Chloe hissed out, grabbing his arm as tightly as she did. "What's wrong with you? What if they'd seen you?!"

Flicking his gaze from hers, he looked pointedly at his reflection in the mirror nearby.

Chloe's claws dug into his arm. "Did they see you?"

"They didn't do anything to me," he defended.

"Adrien!" Flitting away, Chloe swam in a pacing circle before dropping down in front of him again. "Don't you understand how dangerous they are? What if they'd decided to capture you? Or worse? Do you want to end up like Kagami did? Dead because of your own stupidity?"

Adrien cast her a disapproving look, yet couldn't come up with much in the way of a defense. As far as the mer-folk were concerned, Kagami had gone missing the night before her mating ceremony and never been found again because she'd been captured by humans. And while she was, indeed, gone, Adrien would wager she'd less "gone missing" and more than likely run away. While Kagami had been quite a few years older than him, she'd been his playmate for many years. They'd spent days playing at swords in the back garden, honing their abilities to the best of their knowledge despite everyone else's unwillingness to help. Even Chloe had joined in on occasion, though she'd never much approved of their practice.

And much like Adrien, she'd been less than keen on the idea of mating, albeit more vocal in her objections.

But as of those days, Kagami was a cautionary tale. An example used to warn others of the dangers of humans.

"You weren't there," Adrien eventually said. "They never tried to do anything to me. Did you know we speak the same language as humans do? I could understand them. And they seemed more interested in getting me to leave than they were in capturing me."

"It could have been a ruse," Chloe argued. "Humans are foul—they could have been trying to trick you."

"I don't see how. Besides…" He smiled a bit to himself. "One of them was quite beautiful."

Chloe cast him the flattest, most unimpressed look he'd ever seen.

"I think she was the one in charge of the ship," he continued, not much caring what she thought. "One of the others called her 'cap,' like captain. She knew what sirens were, and that I was one." And she'd called him a 'pretty thing,' which he didn't mind coming from someone he thought was also quite lovely.

"Adrien, what's wrong with you?" Chloe said a second later. "You can't go getting involved with humans! They're dangerous!"

"Not any more dangerous than merrows," he countered coldly.

"Now you're just being ridiculous."

"I'm not. I'm—"

His defense was cut short a moment later, when Sabrina came swimming back, her arms loaded with golden jewelry. The subject of his previous escapades was dropped as a result, all focus put on preparing him for the ceremony.

It should have been his mother getting him ready, as the parental siren in his family. But as she was gone, help from a close friend would have to be good enough. Chloe scrubbed him clean as carefully as she could, she helped clean out the crevices of his fins, and she sharpened his claws into fine, elegant points. She then used a pale, light green body paint to carefully decorate his skin. Curved stripes accented his hips. An elegant line was drawn up from his bellybutton, up through the center of his chest, and branched out around his shoulders. She placed perfect, tiny circles at the base of the line and at either side as it branched off, as well as in a sweeping design beneath his eyes. A small mark was drawn down from the bottom of his mouth, to draw attention to his lips.

Once she finished there, she took altogether too much time to decide the jewelry he'd wear. She ultimately declared that he didn't need much—not with his naturally golden fins and tail, which no jewelry could rival ("much like my own tail, of course"). A simple chain and necklace around his neck, bangles for his wrists, and a plethora of rings to adorn his fingers.

Satisfied that no one but herself could rival his beauty, she then went about decorating herself in much the same way, only with blue accents and a bit more jewelry. By the time she was done, it was nearly time for them to be leaving, which did—admittedly—have Adrien's nerves a bit twisted.

Despite the fact that he'd known this was coming his whole life, it now seemed to be upon him far too quickly. So quickly that it became difficult to keep track of time. He hardly noticed when his father and Nathalie came to fetch them, looking him over approvingly before announcing that guests were beginning to arrive. He followed them out shortly after. Wrapping his hand far too tightly around Chloe's arm, he kept her close the entire way.

His father had hosted plenty of parties, whether he found much joy in them or not. It was expected, given his status, and they had a large atrium at the center of the house for such occasions. Lined with stone columns, it was open to the ocean and bordered with a garden of only the prettiest flora—red algae, brilliantly colored reef, occasional anemones. The round floor was tiered, steps leading down into the center, where an intricately painted platform of swirling reds and purples awaited.

This was where Adrien was expected to put himself and stay for the duration of the party. It was called a ceremony—a debut—but all that was really involved was that he present himself as a fully matured siren for all in attendance. Everyone coming knew him and knew he'd just turned eighteen—they all knew what to expect. He was of mating age and, as a high-status, "beautiful" siren, would be expected to pick a mate within a few days, if not that very night. Perhaps others anticipated that he'd been thinking and fawning over potential mates for months in anticipation of this moment, but they couldn't be more wrong.

Yet, even so, he was expected to act his part. There was some applause and congratulatory smiles as he entered the atrium, which he returned with an understated smile of his own. A lot of notable mer-folk were already there—guard commanders, their mates, their children. Chloe's father was in attendance, as were quite a few notable tableteers (those who engraved and reported on events throughout the clan—they did so on replaceable tablets at the center of town. It was where any and all news was spread). Basically, any one of any import would be arriving.

But it wasn't the society that unnerved Adrien so much as it was how he was expected to behave throughout the night. Not only was he to remain at the center of the atrium for the duration of the party—so anyone and everyone could swim around, gawking and assessing him like a prized lobster—but he was expected to preen and display for potential mates he was "interested" in. Which involved a lot of fanning fins, flirty smiles, and—if he was certain of a mate—an exhibit of his "willingness" as a means of being totally "enraptured" despite how public the ceremony was.

He was "property," after all. Once he belonged to a mate, they would regulate his private life. But as nothing more than a siren, it was expected that he display his readiness as a means of flattering potential mates, even if such a thing would remain behind closed doors from that point on. It was because of his nature that this was expected—it was a show and he had to make it clear all that he had to offer—be it in beauty, in temperament, or in sexuality.

Thankfully, the notion of public arousal from sirens—while encouraged—was not required unless he was truly trying to impress a merrow in attendance. Yes, he had to greet certain merrows flirtatiously just by default of who they were, but if he kept himself restrained—if he looked as though he were weighing his options—then he could get through the ceremony without having made a decision at all. Which bought him at least a few more days.

And seeing as he was the "most desired" siren of his generation, he could get away with being coy.

He dragged Chloe down to the center of the atrium with him, despite that it would usually be frowned upon to have another siren taking up his spotlight. But seeing as Adrien wasn't in dire need of mating proposals, he wasn't worried about Chloe detracting from his appeal. In fact, he hoped she would. The less attention on him, the happier he'd be.

"You need to calm down," Chloe said rather strictly as they floated some just above the center of the atrium. Yet, despite how he agreed, Adrien couldn't fight back on the anxiety plaguing his entire body. It was like every eye in the atrium was looking down on him, watching every move he made. Which wasn't so usual, really, but as of that moment, every action he'd ever made and word he'd ever spoke was cascading down atop him. He stood on the tip of a pin, his entire future riding on the outcome of that night.

It was too much.

And when a few female merrows—those wearing dark bangels, which symbolized their availability—began to circle him, clearing giving him appraising looks, Adrien wanted to do nothing more than swim away into the garden and hide.

"Adrien!" Chloe hissed. "You look like you just got chased by a shark. Would you fan out your fins?!"

She was right. He'd curled up on himself as the merrows had approached, his fins folding in and lying flat. That everyone else was staring on, speaking to each other in low voices, didn't help.

He felt like he was trapped with absolutely no one willing to help him.

"Adrien!" Chloe hissed again.

Swallowing hard, he did his best to push back on his anxieties, forcing his fins to fan and his tail to uncurl. A few of the circling merrows chuckled, likely interpreting his behavior as shyness and not terror—though even if they did know he was scared, that probably wouldn't have deterred them.

"Hello, Adrien."

The sound of his name startled him, causing him to whip around only to see Lila closing in. She hovered some above him, a wide smile on her face as she swam right up into his personal space.

"Hey, Lila," he choked out, once again tightening his hold on Chloe's arm.

Lila was a prime merrow. Muscular arms and torso, long claws, and a hardened tail that was no doubt good for pushing her swiftly through the water. She had a tanned complexion, which faded to brown along her tail back. Dark brown stripes flowed down the back of her tail, while the underside was a creamy white. At the end of her tail was a sharply shaped caudal fin, which was divided into two lobes. She had two small pelvic fins as well, and a dorsal fin that protruded sharply from her lower back. She was a bit nicked around the edges—probably from skirmishes outside the city—but that was considered a desirable trait among merrows.

The smile she was throwing his way was a bit too suggestive, her green eyes looking him blatantly up and down. Long, brown hair stretched all the way along her back, the very end braided to hold it in place, and her sharply cut bangs made her expression appear all the more intense.

"You look a little overwhelmed," she commented, pushing herself even closer. "I'm glad I could be here. It's probably better for you, seeing a familiar face."

"Oh, yes, of course," Adrien replied, offering her a small smile of his own.

"You're so cute," she said a moment later, reaching out to touch the tip of his nose with her finger. "I'll be glad when all of this is over, because then I'll have you all to myself."

Her comment had his skin crawling, while Chloe gaped a bit in disgust beside him. It was a very forward remark, after all. Yes, he was expected to choose a mate, but that choice was still his own. Even if she was just that confident in her chances, it was still an untoward sort of a thing to say.

"We'll see, Lila," Adrien replied civilly. "I'm still making up my mind, after all." He tried to sound playful, but he wasn't sure how well he succeeded.

"I bet you are," she said, once again swimming closer, until they were practically nose to nose. "Just be sure to make the right decision. We wouldn't want any confusion on the matter, now would we?"

He couldn't tell if she was flirting with him or… threatening him.

"Whatever decision I make will be the right one for me, no doubt."

"I think both your father and I feel the same way," she replied, offering him one final, knowing smile before she turned and flitted off through the water.

Adrien, not understanding the implications behind her words, turned to stare up at his father, who was floating up near the top of the atrium. Yet, he appeared to be paying Adrien little to no attention, speaking instead with a group of politicians that Adrien had never been allowed to learn the least bit about.

"Don't let her get to you," Chloe murmured a moment later, snapping Adrien's attention back her way. "There are plenty of other merrows much more suited to you than Lila Rossi."

Smiling, Adrien attempted to be calmed by her words, but they did very little at putting him at ease. His performance was very poor as a result, as he found himself constantly ridden with apprehension as a result of his exchange with Lila. It wasn't helped by the fact that very few of the merrows showed honest interest him, which was both surprising and unsettling. Though they circled and cast him appraising look, very few dared approach in any intimate fashion.

They gazed at him as though he were a trinket far out of their reach, only three or four—who were, by far, the most elite of all the available merrows—bothered speaking to him for any great length of time, yet there was no actual intention in their words.

It left Adrien so twisted with nerves when the party ended some hours later that he was hardly able to make it out of the atrium. Chloe pulled him along beside her, until the quiet seclusion of the mansion was able to settle his thoughts.

He and Chloe ended up in his bedroom, Sabrina floating quietly nearby as Adrien paced in a circle.

"Something isn't right," he muttered, his stomach rolling with unease. He'd been to plenty of mating ceremonies, after all, and though it might have looked like what was to be expected from the outside, he knew things had not gone as would have been normal.

The way Chloe tightened her jaw and remained silent only proved his suspicions.

"I don't understand," he admitted quietly, sinking down into the center of the room. "It was like… like nobody took me seriously. Like we were simply rehearsing for the real ceremony or—or—"

"Adrien…" Chloe reached out toward him, as if she might comfort him despite sympathy not being one of strong suits, but was interrupted when a tall shadow fell across the blue light of the blooming crystals. They all snapped their attention around to the door, where Gabriel floated, his hand clasped behind his back.

"Chloe, Sabrina, it is late," he said coldly. "I believe it time you both returned home."

Clearly startled by his abrupt appearance, Chloe nodded before swimming over and grabbing Sabrina by the arm. Though she cast Adrien one final look, she couldn't stay. Without another word, she skirted past Gabriel as he moved aside, Sabrina trailing right behind.

Once they were out of the way, Gabriel pushed himself fully into the room.

Adrien slumped a bit lower upon the floor.

"You presented yourself very poorly today," Gabriel said stiffly, his gaze cold as he laid it directly upon Adrien.

"I was nervous," he admitted honestly.

"I didn't expect much better given that you have shown only distaste in relation to your mating."

Dropping his gaze to the floor, Adrien grit his teeth and stayed quiet.

"No matter," he continued. "I anticipated your lack of interest some months ago. Your mother was much the same, before her mating with me was arranged."

Snapping his gaze back up, Adrien gaped. "Arranged?"

"Yes, arranged," Gabriel agreed. "Your mother's inability to choose a mate as was fitting resulted in her mating being arranged. While it's an old practice, it is not wholly unheard of."

"Father—"

"Everyone has been watching you, Adrien. I was not the only one that anticipated you would be difficult to mate off. Your lack of interest in any merrows has forced me to consider other options."

Straightening, Adrien tried to come up with an objection, but none formed in his thoughts. While it wasn't often practiced, the head merrow in a family could both impede upon and arrange mates for those within their care. Mostly this was used to stop the mating of one mer to a mer beneath their social status. But it could also be a means of arranging a mating. And as Adrien belonged to his father until he submitted to a mate, it was well within his father's rights to mate him to someone he chose, instead of who Adrien chose.

"I've told you time and again that mating is for your benefit. It will ensure that you're taken care of when I'm gone. Yet you have fought the idea at every turn." Gabriel paused, the silence between them heavy. "Three offers were made to me prior to your mating. All from suitable families whose daughters would be more than capable of caring for you in the future. And as you have shown no interest, I have simply defaulted to making the choice for you based on the most generous offer made to me." Not because he needed whatever they'd offered him, but because it gave him reason to make the choice.

Adrien had failed to choose his own shackles, and so Gabriel had sold him to the highest bidder.

Lila's comment during the ceremony abruptly made perfect sense.

"The Rossi family will be over tomorrow morning for the official send off," he replied. "The union ceremony will be performed the same as though you had picked Lila for yourself. You will then abandon your life here and start a new one alongside your wife."

"Father, wait!" Finally, Adrien's voice came to him. Desperately, he tried to come up with any way to stop the stone that was now rolling unhindered and out of his control. "I know I've been difficult, but I'll choose a mate of my own, I promise! I'll do it tomorrow! Please, just—"

"It's already done, Adrien," Gabriel replied, not seeming at all fazed by his son's pleading. "Lila Rossi is a fine merrow and will do well in keeping you safe and secure in the future. You will lead a life not unlike the one you have lived up till now, and there will be no concern over your future."

"But I—"

Gabriel sighed. "I realize you feel no affection for Lila Rossi, but you clearly feel no affection for any other merrow, so I'm failing to understand how this arrangement could be any different than whatever choice you could possibly make come tomorrow."

"Because I don't care for her at all! I actively dislike her!" Which was a far cry from being neutral.

His response seemed to displease his father all the more. "Mating is not always about affection, Adrien. Your mother felt little for me when we mated, but given time, came to feel as strongly about me as I did her. Lila clearly favors you despite the fact that you don't care for her, which is more than you likely deserve given the situation. In time, you will come to appreciate her. Perhaps you will even find some sentimentality, should you be willing to try.

"I will hear no further objections on the matter," he finally finished. "Ready what few belongings you wish to go with you—the morning will not wait."

Not even providing Adrien a moment to say anything, he turned on his fin and swam back out the way he'd come. He left Adrien wide-eyed and gaping, not a single care for the fact that he'd shattered his son's world as he'd known it.

All too quickly, hopeless despair overcame Adrien. He could hardly comprehend what he'd just learned, let alone somehow deal with it. While Lila had always been very obvious in her intentions toward him, he'd never fathomed that he'd mate with her, simply because he'd known from the beginning that he'd had no interest. She was pushy, demanding, and altogether too uncaring of those around her. Adrien had always found her too much of a braggart and too selfish.

Yet, now he had to entertain a life with her. His whole future would be wrapped up with this woman that he actively disliked. He'd have to live with her, and make a home with her, and create a family with her.

And as that thought occurred to him, Adrien somehow knew that she wouldn't respond well to being told "no" in any situation. He'd seen the way she'd looked at other sirens—like they were nothing. And while she'd always wanted him, it wasn't because she somehow thought him different. He was an object to be bought and to function as expected. That was all she wanted out of him and if he didn't deliver…

He didn't know what would happen.

"I get the feeling this whole ceremony thing didn't go too well," Plagg said, his voice somewhat subdued as he poked his head out of the decorated jar he'd been hiding in during the duration of the party. Startled by the sound of his voice, Adrien turned to the tiny kwami, who was casting him an uncomfortably sympathetic gaze.

"No," Adrien said weakly. "It didn't."

His whole body tingled with nerves, his emotions bloating inside of him despite how useless it was to express any sort of grief. His hands were shaking, his whole body beginning to echo with light trembles. And as he took a helpless look around the room—looking for solutions that weren't there—his gaze tripped across his reflection in the mirror.

Staring at it for a moment, he was soon pushing himself through the water, until he floated directly in front of it. Continuing to stare his reflection down, his gaze eventually turned to a glare before he reached up and began to violently scrub at the paint adorning his body. He rubbed and scratched and torn at it until it was completely gone—until his skin was glowing a harsh red as a result. He then tore all the golden jewelry away, throwing the chains, bangles, and rings aside.

Yet, even with none of the trappings of his station, the reality of his situation could not be undone. He was still trapped with a mate he didn't want, still victim to the expectations of his people.

Sinking back down before his mirror, he hunched and curled in on himself.

"I heard what you and your father were talking about," Plagg said some moments later, coming to float up beside Adrien. "Seems like you really are in a tight spot."

"A horrible spot, perhaps," Adrien replied quietly.

"Then why go through with it?" Plagg asked.

"I don't have a choice!"

Plagg appeared skeptical. "You always have a choice. It's just a manner of acting on it."

Turning to look at him, Adrien cast the tiny kwami a curious look.

"Just because other people say you don't have a choice," Plagg said knowingly, "doesn't mean you have to listen." The little kwami's slitted eyes pulled up toward the ceiling then, Adrien following his gaze to the sunning window, which was currently closed.

Suddenly, Kagami flitted through his thoughts. Everyone said she'd been captured. That humans were responsible for the fact that she'd been unable to come back once she'd returned to her senses. Yet Adrien had never truly believed such things. He'd never really known what to believe, not entirely.

Not until that very moment.

"You've done it before, plenty of times," Plagg murmured, now hovering close by his ear. "Why would tonight be any different?"

"But where would I go?" Adrien asked quietly.

"Anywhere you bloody well like."

Plagg was right, he could do it. No one would likely expect it of him, and so no one would be watching. Kagami had been a rare, isolated case after all, not what some would consider a precedent.

Not yet.

But if he did leave, it would mean leaving everything behind—his friends, his family. His home. Then again, was he not being forced to do that anyway? He had no way of knowing what Lila would do once they were mated. She could very well dictate that he never leave the house again.

As far as he could figure, either way was a risk. But if he was the one making the decisions, then at least he had some control. If things did end badly, he'd have no one to blame but himself. And at least he'll have tried, which was better than simply submitting to a life he didn't want.

Continuing to stare up at the sunning window, he felt his heart speed up in his chest. It was already late. If he wanted, he could leave then. Just swim right out and never come back. They'd look for him, of course, which meant he had to leave soon. Leave with enough hours left in the night for him to get out ahead of any search parties. And he'd have to go somewhere they'd never think to look for him.

Somewhere they'd never dare to go.

Unexpectedly, the red captain's pretty face flitted through his thoughts. If he stuck close to humans—to land—then he might be safer from his own people. They wouldn't come so close, not with humans posing such a terrible risk. Granted, it was a risk for him as well, but he'd done it the night before and everything had turned out fine.

Perhaps he could return to the same shore and follow it to a new place. A new sea that was far, far away from his home. He'd be alone, but even that seemed better than the alternative.

It was either that, or face the future everyone else had planned out for him.

He didn't want a life spent in the shadows of others that had decided to speak and act for him. He wanted his own life, no matter the risks that came along with it.

"C'mon, Plagg," he whispered a moment later, gathering his wits about him as best he could. "You still want to get to the surface, right?"

"That would be preferable, yes."

Staring hard at the sunning window, Adrien made up his mind.

"Then let's go."

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous #ml #mlb #ladybug #cry of the siren #chapter ii #my fics #fics #mermaid AU #mermaid

[verobatto]

Destiel Chronicles

(Vol. X)

It was a love story from the very beginning.

Ally... Protector... Best friend... And something else... (Part I)

(5x03//5x04//5x06//5x10//5x13)

Hi dear Fandom! I'm here again bringing you a new volume from my Destiel chronicles.

I want to say thank you to my dearest friend @agusvedder she made the gifs for this meta and discussed with me these topics! Thank you girl! 😘💕

But let's start...

Ally

In 5x03 "Free to be you and me" Dean and Cas team up to hunt Raphael.

Dean discovered Castiel's lack of touch for get information. And in an almost "paternal" gesture, he fixed Cas tie and shirt. Trying to teach him the basics...

I will talk about the "first date" with CAS in other volume, here I want to show you how they worked together to get Raphael.

First of all, they found the vessel in the hospital. Cas sent a message to the Archangel, and I want you to pay attention to Dean's reaction while watching his friend being such a badass...

He likes to see Castiel this way. He likes his badass side, his bossy side. He is proud of it. And he likes it. We can read all of that from his face, full of amazement.

So after they track down the Archangel, Dean follow Cas and he mentioned something... Hoping Cas catch an inner joke between them. You know, as friends.

And then we had this scene... Such a badass Castiel too...

And Dean following him, I could say I little proud of his friend's fierceness.

One of the last moments from 5.10 in which Lucifer was trying to wake up Death, with Sam and Dean trapped there... Showed us how Castiel is a "good timing" Ally. He appeared in the best moment and rescued his friends.

He was trapped by Lucifer and Meg bc Lucifer knew he will be a problem... He was a strong and determinated Ally of the Winchesters.

Protector

In the episode 5x13 "The song remains the same" Castiel blocked Anna intentions to get an encounter with the Winchesters...

CASTIEL: Hello, Anna.

ANNA: Well. If I didn't know any better...

ANNA turns around.

ANNA: I'd say the Winchesters don't trust me.

CASTIEL: They do. I don't. I wouldn't let them come.

Castiel is protecting Sam and Dean from Anna, he suspects she has bad intentions... Bc he knows well Heaven and his techniques...

He is acting like a truly Guardian Angel of the Winchesters.

CASTIEL: If you're out of prison, it's because they let you out. And they sent you here to do their dirty work.

ANNA: And what makes you so sure?

CASTIEL: Because I've experienced...heaven's persuasion.

Castiel began to confirm his suspects over Anna. When he sees her armed, recalling Anna intentions were to be face to face with Sam and Dean.

CASTIEL: If you're not one of them, then what do you want?

ANNA: I want to help.

CASTIEL: You want to help?

ANNA: Yes.

CASTIEL: Then what are doing with that knife?

A long pause. ANNA draws the knife.

ANNA: I'm not allowed to defend myself?

CASTIEL: Against whom? That blade doesn't work against angels. It's not like this one.

Castiel is good on this. He gets the idea right away. He should be relieved he didn't let Sam and Dean to come.

Then... Suddenly Anna revealed her truly intentions.

ANNA: Sam Winchester has to die.

She explained Sam is Lucifer's vessel so she needs to finish him. Castiel tries to convince her that killing Sam wouldn't solve the problem. And finally, he quoted TFW "prime law"

CAS: We will find another way.

When Anna saw Castiel defending the WINCHESTERS with such loyalty, she knew he had changed a lot.

Castiel choose another path. He already choose Humanity and choose to be the Winchesters's Ally.

This is the episode in which TFW is born, beacuse by the end of it, we had Dean naming their alliance...

Best friends (part 1)

I'm gonna divide this one in two part bc it will take a lot of gifs and explanations... So... Please be patient! In the middle at volume I will finish talking about BEST FRIENDS topic and SOMETHING ELSE.

Ok, let's see then, continuing with episode 5x13, before they traveled time, Castiel explained the boys Anna had bad intentions, and wanted to kill Sam.

Again Castiel lack of pop culture as an impediment to understand the conversation, but Dean explains this time...

DEAN: No one, just this psycho bitch who likes to boil rabbits.

But Sam is kind of considering the offer...

SAM: So the plan to kill me, would it actually stop Satan?

DEAN: No, Sam, come on.

And then Dean looked at CAS with despair, trying to get from him some help. Castiel felt he could use Dean's reference again...

This, my friends, is improvement of character thanks to the beautiful friendship TFW started to develop.

After coming back from Croatan world in 5x04 "The End" , (episode I will talk in my next volume) Dean was so worried about the huge change he had seen in his friend, that after being rescued by Castiel from Zachariah, he observed that was his nerdy angel... So we had this classic Destiel scene...

This is Dean, shocked by the endverse!Castiel version he saw... Trying to preserve the present Cas, with his whole lack of pop culture...

In 5x06, the episode that talks about the Antichrist, the little boy transformed Cas into a wood figure. Dean asked him to return him to his truck form, but the kid didn't want to, he said there they weren't friends... But by the end of the episode, Dean came back to insist...

Here, Dean is in aknowledgment about what Cas had become in their lives... Kind of buddy? Kind of friend? He is trying to figure out what Cas means to him. He saw the future in which they seemed be more than friends, and he is aware he enjoys Castiel's company differently to the way he will enjoy expending time with just a friend... So... Kind of buddy... Yes... He just needs to know what the hell that means...

To conclude

Castiel is a powerful Ally the Winchesters had. He is loyal and protective, he is the Winchesters's guardian angel.

He had rebel for them and he will protect them with his life.

This was the season where TFW is mentioned for the first time, and Castiel quoted their prime law in the same episode.

He also is the best friend they will ever had, Castiel's mission. But with Dean there's something more, something else, that is always present there... Even when they had "friend time" there's always something else going on between the angel and the older hunter.

I hope you like this volume! C-u in the next one!

Tagging @metafest @gneisscastiel @mrsaquaman187 @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weirddorkylittlediana @michyribeiro @castiellover20 @whyjm @koshisekisen @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @cheerstofandomfamily @drsilverfish @savannadarkbaby @angelneedshunter @trickster-archangel @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @mishka-the-angel-of-saturday @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @hippyatheart80 @xsghn @foxyroxe-art @authorsararayne @anonymoustitans @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @wildligia @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh

Buenos Aires May 8th 2019 11:56 PM

Note: If you want to be tagged in this series of metas, please let me know

If you want to read season 5 volumes... Vol. VIII here and Vol. IX here.

#supernatural meta #destiel meta #destiel chronicles #vol. x

[serenagaywaterford]

5) Honestly, imo it would made a lot more sense if Serena got involved with the Resistance after 2x08. She's a writer and a good propagandist, June's an editor, they could carefully go behind Fred's back. Also, Commander Lawrence is there. They could have brought down Gilead from within. Maybe I'm being simplistic, but I think it would have given a nice msg. An instigator (and impassioned supporter) of a misogynistic (and homophobic) totalitarian regime becomes a victim herself, but decides to

6) to do sth about that monstrous situation she created, even if that means that she will go down with Gilead. Then again, I do understand why the creators didn't go there. This is the handmaid's tale, not the redeemed fascist's tale. Regarding 2x10, oof. I pride myself in having a hard stomach, but that scene made me REALLY, REALLY uncomfortable (and ENRAGED). (A lot more uncomfortable than the previous ceremonies, which were terrible enough on their own, AND Eden's death* .) And given that

7) Serena has the gall to tell Fred that June hates him, because he raped her. Like bitch, stfu, it was YOUR idea! You raped her and used Fred for the penetration. And not only that, but she manipulated Fred/played him like an instrument. She knows at this point that he's a serial rapist/abuser AND in love with June, so ofc he wouldn't decline the opportunity to abuse her once again. It really is telling that June was screaming Serena's name, not Fred's. I wonder wtf was going on Serena's mind

8) to put the baby's life in danger. She could have punished June after the birth if she really wanted to. That being said, I personally think that Serena was kind of OOC in that episode. Not because she's an angel that is not capable of such hideous things. But, after taking under consideration 2x08 and 2x09, I felt that her 180° change came out of nowhere. Especially, since she took a small taste of her own medicine. She knows what abuse/domestic violence feels like. As for the marital rape,

9) it may have been clichéd, but it would also have made sense. A person that repeatedly rapes a woman, beats his wife and is okay with mutilations draws the line at forcing himself on her? Since when do creepers have standards? One last thing, because I've spammed you enough. *I mentioned Eden's death (which made me cry like a baby). How do you feel about her? Bc was disappointed that the fandom blamed a 15 year old child that was forced to marry a man twice her age. Not only that, but she

10) forgave him and kept Nick and June's secret? // END OF RANT // My apologies.

---------

I think I have to put a read more here! Eep!

“Then again, I do understand why the creators didn't go there. This is the handmaid's tale, not the redeemed fascist's tale.”

I had to laugh IRL there. Cos, it’s true. It’s June’s story, technically speaking, not Serena’s. And I dunno but I feel like I suspect that’s where they eventually want to take the show. But S2 is too early for that? I personally don’t know why. There’s no law an American programme must go one for 14 seasons. It could easily be a 4 season series. Or 3! But I’ve read things that Hulu wants to keep it going as long as possible. Huge mistake, imo. Organically speaking, Serena changing course after 2x08, or even, at a push, 2x09 would have made much more sense than this “will she? won’t she?” BS they keep doing with her. I think she’s come around in a way she hadn’t before by the finale (or Eden’s murder). But it still doesn’t seem like it’s something she’ll carry through with--especially without June. It’s interesting how much Serena relies on June for incentive/encouragement. Basically everything Serena’s done in resistance since mid-S2 has been because June has done or challenged her or said something to prompt her. I feel on her own, she would be ~meeker. Even things like, “Hey, so I know this way to possible save the baby... what do you think?” is clearly her going “Please say what I want to hear!” It’s like she can’t just do it herself. She needs June’s input. June was calling almost every shot in 2x08. In 2x09, when left to her own devices, Serena folded. It took June screaming at her in 2x13 for her to do anything about reading. So, without June around I feel like Serena will just go back to old ways. Which is ridic cos she is an intelligent, powerful woman when she actually has the balls. The only thing Serena manages to do on her own is assault, hate speech, and war crimes lol. The easy shit.

That said, I kinda like how they ended 2x08. I loved Fred seeing the rose on June’s bedside and putting all the pieces together and seeing that as the true threat: Serena and June as friends/partners in rebellion. The beating scene was horrific too, mostly cos I’m not one of those weird fans that was sitting there cheering, “YAY I’M SO GLAD SERENA GOT BEAT! SERVES HER RIGHT!” (I just... want to throttle every single person who’s said that. Not necessarily cos I wuv woobie Serena sfm but because way to miss the point of the entire series.) but the aftermath was even worse, imo. June reaching out and attempting to maintain the bond, but Fred managed to break Serena really easily. Like it’s just so awful how easy it was for him to snap that bond, cos he knows his wife and her pride, etc. It was ... so manipulative and evil genius. (Although it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, Freddie boy.) It was just such a prime example of exactly how they maintain power in Gilead and how they managed to get it working: estranging women from each other. And it was just such an apt way of visualising the concepts June talked about in S1 about keeping women at arm’s length of each other, suspicious, etc. in order for men to keep power. So, in that sense, I thought it was well done. But then... I was like, “OH FUCK THIS. NOT AGAIN. FUCKING SERENA. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT. WHY CAN’T SHE BE STRONG LIKE JUNE. UGH.”

I dunno.

Yeah. 2x10. I was “lucky” to have seen that scene ahead of time... so I was prepared when it happened during the episode. But it was still repulsive. Aside from the nonsensical writing of the whole thing, it was just gross. And I think maybe you’re the first person that when talking about this has mentioned how grossed out you are by the other Ceremony scenes. So many people just... don’t really mention them. I remember the article about 2x10 and how the showrunners were saying something along the lines of “Is it really that big of a deal when the same thing has been happening the entire time?” Nobody reacted the same way those times, because the Handmaids are quiet and well-behaved during their rapes, even though, on some level I think Serena and some other wives (IIRC) are completely aware of how terrible it is (Serena even admits as much...but does it anyway uuuggghhhhh.) This is the only time June ever fights back and suddenly not only are Fred and Serena faced with the brutal reality of the act but as the audience we are as well. It’s easy to look the other way when nobody is crying or struggling but WHAM. Fuck that. This is gross and horrible and here is what it REALLY is. And it’s hard to swallow.

June crying Serena’s name was probably the absolute worst part, cos it just makes it crystal clear that everyone knows exactly who is responsible for that rape. June knows who has the power, whose idea it was, and she knows the only one to stop it is not Fred. (God, I fucking hate Fred but like you said, he was totally played by Serena. I don’t let him off the hook for it but really it was her idea, 100% and he just thought “Hell yeah! Sounds good!”)

I feel like as much as Serena understood the Ceremony is pretty bad generally, I don’t think she recognised it as “real” rape until that moment. I feel like a lot of those Gilead people are just so willfully blind and selfish and horrible that they actively refuse to see things. Like Serena’s weird ass enthrall about child brides. I know some of that was to get back at June but she seemed genuinely awed by how beautiful it all was. NO BITCH IT’S NOT. IT’S CHILD ABUSE AND SEX TRAFFICKING. 

I just have given up trying to understand why Serena would do such a monumentally STUPID and DANGEROUS thing if she honestly cared about the baby--which, incidentally, I do believe she truly loves Nicole and babies. As crazy as that is. Even if her love of Nicole specifically is totally a self-centeredness. But she loves babies. Babies above all else apparently, including other women. And she’s not an idiot. Baby health aside, that is a HUGE crime in Gilead to rape a pregnant Handmaid for any reason. I’m supposed to believe Serena is just so massively upset about June’s false labour that she goes mentally insane, even after being subjected to the similar treatment like a week earlier? It’s a huge, nonsensical risk on basically every single level. 

I’ve come to the conclusion, considering all those things you did, it was just bad writing. Her 180 just... is bonkers. I give up. I don’t think there’s any way to logically get from 2x08/09 to 2x10 without taking some leaps. Do I think Serena would punish and abuse June for humiliating her? Absolutely. That’s her MO. She lives for that shit. But rape? It... I dunno again. Fucking weird. I don’t know if it’s on purpose or what, but I do find it interesting that after that Serena never raises a hand to June again, when she had some opportunity. She still punished her by separating her from Nicole but she never physically assaults her again. (Not that I’m saying she’s a changed person or anything. I just thought it was curious but I don’t know if it was deliberate on the show’s part or just a symptom of lack of real opportunity.)

ITA re: the marital rape too. I see no reason Fred wouldn’t escalate to that. It’s all Joseph Fiennes fault. Which is probably what pisses me off the very most. He decided that was just too much for his character? C’mon. That’s too much but what Fred does in the next ep is peachy keen? Oh, right, because in 2x10 we can blame Fred’s behaviour on his evil wife. It’s not really his fault. I see. But you can’t blame Serena for him raping her. Ugh. So, cos, Fiennes doesn’t like it, we lose way more context for Serena--who, lbr, is the more important character in this whole series out of the two of them.

EDEN. OMG BB EDEN.

I’m with you. I was actually pretty disgusted at fandom’s response to her. SHE IS A CHILD. But all these Nick/June shippers were going hogwild attacking her for getting inbetween their precious self-insert fantasy relationship. (I have a particularly low opinion of Nick/June shippers primarily because of their reactions to Eden, tbh. Before that, I was like whatever, each to their own.) This is a story about women and girls in a horrible society, and the focus seemed to be on tearing apart this female child for something she had zero control over. I never got the “Eden is evil and gonna fuck shit up for Nick (and June)!” vibe. She seemed to be a regular girl caught and raised in a misogynistic awful place and just lost. I absolutely ABHORRED the way Nick treated her the entire fucking time. (I honestly hate him so much, and most of that again is due to him since the forced marriage, both in the way he was with Eden and with June. And the number of fangirls fanwanking away all his shitty fucking behaviour and throwing Eden under the bus didn’t help my attitude.) 

She’s a KID. FORCED TO MARRY A GROWN MAN. A man who it wouldn’t kill to just be straight up with her and a little bit kind. Fuck. (Serena’s grooming certainly wasn’t good either. Like, seriously lady, shut up. Stop pressuring the kid to fuck an adult man who hates her by telling her “Well maybe you can like it too!” AHHHHH.)

To me, aside from the babies/children, Eden was the most truly good character on the entire show. She was patient, kind, caring, FORGIVING, loving. Completely innocent bb girl. And then she gets fucking murdered for kissing a boy she actually likes and wants to be with. Which, was ........... wow. Gilead’s hypocrisy killing a pious young girl, presumably fertile... Yikes.

And that little girl was more brave than ANY other character. And maybe some of that is teenage thinking but still she was staring down death and refused to back down. Sure, it’s unreasonable, and an adult likely wouldn’t have made that decision... but also what was her option? Repent... and become a Handmaid? That would have been her fate since she’s an adulteress and fallen woman. And since she truly believes in goodness, and God, and Heaven (presumably), she sees it as a way for her and Isaac to be together. Meanwhile, it took a literal death sentence for Nice Guy Nick to actually recognise he could have maybe been a bit kinder to her. Then she’s asking for HIS forgiveness. AH. Eden bb.

I have a lot of feelings about Eden, and the way fandom treated her. Even when she was killed, fans were still calling her stupid and annoying for her choice--likely the ONLY real choice she has EVER had for herself. (I think that concept gets forgotten.) Like WTF sort of world do you live in that you watch a show about fascism and female oppression and turn around and bitch out the YOUNG GIRL strictly for being a young girl in a fascist society?

But hey, this is the same fandom that calls Janine annoying and crazy, and says Serena deserves to be beaten and mutilated by her husband/Gilead. Way to miss the point of the entire show. But that’s a totally other rant for another time, heh.

Also, anon, NEVER APOLOGISE FOR YOUR RANTS. They are so wonderful to read cos I completely agree! And it’s just such a relief to see reasonable people around these parts. 

#rants and raves #Anonymous

[andya-j]

William Pearl did not leave a great deal of money when he died, and his will was a simple one. With the exception of a few small bequests to relatives, he left all his property to his wife. The solicitor and Mrs Pearl went over it together in the solicitor's office, and when the business was completed, the widow got up to leave. At that point, the solicitor took a sealed envelope from the folder on his desk and held it out to his client. 'I have been instructed to give you this,' he said. 'Your husband sent it to us shortly before he passed away.' The solicitor was pale and prim; and out of respect for a widow he kept his head on one side as he spoke, looking downward. 'It appears that it might be something personal, Mrs Pearl. No doubt you'd like to take it home with you and read it in privacy.' Mrs Pearl accepted the envelope and went out, into the street. She paused on the pavement, feeling the thing with her fingers. A . letter of farewell from William? Probably, yes. A formal letter. It was, bound to be formal - stiff and formal. The man was incapable of acting otherwise. He had never done anything informal in his life. My dear Mary, I trust that you will not permit my departure from this world to upset you too much, but that you will continue to observe those precepts which have guided you so well daring our partnership together. Be diligent and dignified in all things. Be thrifty with your money. Be very careful that you do not . . . et cetera, et cetera. A typical William letter. Or was it possible that he might have broken down at the last moment and written her something beautiful? Maybe this was a beautiful tender message, a sort of love letter, a lovely warm no of thanks to her for giving him thirty years of her life and for ironing a million shirts and cooking a million meals and making a million beds, something that she could read over and over again, once a day at least, and she would keep it for ever in the box on the dressing-table together with her brooches. There is no knowing what people will do when they are about to die, Mrs Pearl told herself, and she tucked the envelope under her arm and hurried home. She let herself in the front door and went straight to the livingroom and sat down on the sofa without removing her hat or coat. Then she opened the envelope and drew out the contents. These consisted, she saw, of some fifteen or twenty sheets of lined white paper, folded over once and held together at the top left-hand corner by a clip. Each sheet was covered with the small, neat, forward-sloping writing that she knew so well, but when she noticed how much of it there was, and in what a neat businesslike manner it was written, and how the first page didn't even begin in the nice way a letter should, she began to get suspicious. She looked away. She lit herself a cigarette. She took one puff and laid the cigarette in the ash-tray. If this is about what I am beginning to suspect it is about, she told herself, then I don't want to read it. Can one refuse to read a letter from the dead? . Yes. Well... She glanced over at William's empty chair on the other side of the fireplace. It was a big brown leather armchair, and there was a. depression on the seat of it, made by his buttocks over the years. Higher up, on the backrest, there was a dark oval stain on the leather where his head had rested. He uþed to sit reading in that chair and she would be opposite him on the sofa, sewing on buttons or mending socks or putting a patch on the elbow of one , of his jackets, and every now and then a pair of eyes would glance up from the book and settle on her, watchful, but strangely impersonal, as if calculating something. She had never liked those eyes. They were ice blue, cold, small, and rather close together, with two deep vertical lines of disapproval dividing them. All her life they had been watching her. And even now, after a week alone in the house, she sometimes had an uneasy feeling that they. were still there, following her around, staring at her from doorways, from empty chairs, through a window at night. Slowly she reached into her handbag and took out her spectacles and put them on. Then, holding the pages up high in front of her so that they caught the late afternoon light from the window behind, she started to read: This note, my dear Mary, is entirely for you, and will be given you shortly after I am gone. Do not be alarmed by the sight of all this writing. It is nothing but an attempt on my part to explain to you precisely what Landy is going to do to me, and why I have agreed that he should do it, and what are his theories and his hopes. You are my wife and you have a right to know these things. In fact you must know them: During the past few days I have tried very hard to speak with you about Landy, but you have steadfastly refused to give me a hearing. This, as I have already told you, is a very foolish attitude to take, and I find it not entirely an unselfish one either. It stems mostly from ignorance, and I am absolutely convinced that if only you were made aware of all the facts, you would immediately change your view. That is why I am hoping that when I am no longer with you, and your mind is less distracted, you will consent to listen to me more carefully through these pages. I swear to you that when you have read my story, your sense of antipathy will vanish, and enthusiasm will take its place. I even dare to hope that you will become a little proud of what I have done. As you read on, you must forgive me, if you will, for the coolness of my style, but this is the only way I know of getting my message over to you clearly. You see, as my time draws near, it is natural that I begin to brim with every kind of sentimentality under the sun. Each day I grow more extravagantly wistful, especially in the evenings, and unless I watch myself closely my emotions will be overflowing on to these pages. I have a wish, for example, to write something about you and what a satisfactory wife you have been to me through and I am promising myself that if there is time; and I still have the strength, I shall do that next. I have a yearning also to speak about this Oxford of mine where I have been living and teaching for the past seventeen years, to tell something about the glory of the place and to explain, if I can, a little of what it has meant to have been allowed to work in its midst. All the things and places that I loved so well keep crowding in on me now in this gloomy bedroom. They are bright and beautiful as they always were, and today, for some reason, I can see them more clearly than ever. The path around the lake in the gardens of Worcester College, where Lovelace used to walk. The gateway at Pembroke. The view westward over the town from Magdalen Tower. The great hall at Christchurch. The little rockery at St John's where I have counted more than a dozen varieties of campanula, including the rare and dainty C. Waldsteiniana. But there, you see! I haven't even begun and already I'm falling into the trap. So let me get started now, and let you read it slowly, my dear, without any of hat sense of sorrow or disapproval that might otherwise embarrass your understanding. Promise me now that you will read it slowly, and that you will put yourself in a cool and patient frame of mind before you begin. The details of the illness that struck me down so suddenly in my middles life. are known to you. I need not waste time upon them except to admit at once how foolish I was not to have gone earlier to my doctor. Cancer is one of the few remaining diseases that these modern drugs cannot cure. A surgeon can operate if it has not spread too far; but with me, not only did I leave it too late, but the thing had the effrontery to attack me in the pancreas, making both surgery and survival equally impossible. So here I was with somewhere between one and six months left to live, growing more melancholy every hour and then, all of a sudden, in comes Landy. That was six weeks ago, on a Tuesday morning, very early, long before your visiting time, and the moment he entered I knew there was some sort of madness in the wind. He didn't creep in on his toes, sheepish and embarrassed, not knowing what to say, like all my other visitors. He came in strong and smiling, and he strode up to the bed and stood there looking down at me with a wild bright glimmer in his eyes, and he said, 'William, my boy, this is perfect. You're just the one I want!' Perhaps I should explain to you here that although John Landy has 'Look,' he aid, pulling up a chair beside the bed. 'In a few weeks you're going to be dead. Correct?' Coming from Landy, the question didn't seem especially unkind. In a way it was refreshing to have a visitor brave enough to touch upon the forbidden subject. 'You're going to expire right here in this. room, and then they'll take you out and cremate you.' 'Bury me.' I said. 'That's even worse. And then what? Do you believe you'll go to heaven?' 'I doubt it,' I said, 'though it would be comforting to think so.' 'Or hell, perhaps?' . 'I don' really see why they should send me there.' 'You never know, my dear William.' 'What's all this about?' I asked. 'Well,' he said, and I could see him watching me carefully, personally, I don't believe that after you're dead you'll ever hear of yourself again unless...' - and here he paused and smiled and leaned closer- '...unless, of course, you have the sense to put yourself into my hands. Would you care to consider a proposition?' The way he was staring at me, and studying me, and appraising me with a queer kind of hungriness, I might have been a piece of prime beef on the counter and he had bought it and was waiting for them to wrap it up. 'I'm really serious about it, William. Would you care to consider a proposition?' 'I don't know what you're talking about.' 'Then listen and I'll tell you. Will you listen to me?' 'Go on then, if you like. I doubt I've got very much to lose by hearing it.' 'On the contrary, you have a great deal to gain - especially after you're dead.' I am sure he was expecting me to jump when he said this, but for some reason I was ready for it. I lay quite still, watching his face and that slow white smile of his that always revealed the gold clasp of an upper denture curled around the canine on the left side of his month. 'This is a thing, William, that I've been working on quietly for some years. one or two others here at the hospital have been helping me, especially Morrison, and we've completed a number of fairly successful trials with laboratory animals. I'm at the stage now where I'm ready to have a go with a man. It's a big idea, and it may sound a bit far-fetched at first, but from a surgical point of view there doesn't seem to be any reason why it shouldn't be more or less practicable.' Landy leaned forward and placed both hands on the edge of my bed. He has a good face, handsome in a bony sort of way, with none of the usual doctor's look about it. You know that look, most of them have it. It glimmers at you out of their eyeballs like a dull electric sign and it reads Only I can save you. But John Landy's eyes were wide and bright and little sparks of excitement were dancing in the centres of them. 'Quite a long time ago,' he said, 'I saw a short medical film that had been brought over from Russia. It was a rather gruesome thing, but interesting. It showed a dog's head completely severed from the body, but with the normal blood supply being maintained through the arteries and veins by means of an artificial heart. Now the thing is this: that dog's head, sitting there all alone on a sort of tray, was alive. The brain was functioning. They proved it by several tests. For example, when food was smeared on the dog's lips, the tongue would come out and lick it away, and the eyes would follow a person moving across the room. 'It seemed reasonable to conclude from this that the head and the brain did not need to be attached to the rest of the body in order to remain alive provided; of course, that a supply of properly oxygenated blood could be maintained. 'Now then. My own thought, which grew out of seeing this film, was to remove the brain from the skull of a human and keep it alive and functioning as an independent unit for an unlimited period after he is dead. Your brain, for example, after you are dead.' 'I don't like that,' I said. 'Don't interrupt, William. Let me finish. So far as I can tell from subsequent experiments, the brain is a peculiarly self supporting object. It manufactures its own cerebrospinal fluid. The magic processes of thought and memory which go on inside it are manifestly not impaired by the absence of limbs or trunk or even of skull, provided, as I say; that you keep pumping in the right kind of oxygenated blood under the proper conditions. 'My dear William, just think for a moment of your own brain. It is in perfect shape. It is crammed full of a lifetime of learning. It has taken you years of work to make it what it is. It is just beginning to give out some first-rate original ideas. Yet soon it is going to have to die along with the rest of your body simply because your silly little pancreas is riddled with cancer.' 'No thank you,' I said to him. 'You can stop there. It's a repulsive idea, and even if you could do it, which I doubt, it would be quite pointless. What possible use is there in keeping my brain alive if I couldn't talk or see or hear or feel? Personally, I can think of nothing more unpleasant.' 'I believe that you would be able to communicate with us,' Landy said. 'And we might even succeed in giving you a certain amount of vision. But let's take this slowly. I'll come to all that later on. The fact remains, that you're going to die fairly soon whatever happens, and my plans would not involve touching you at all until after you are dead. Come now, William. No true philosopher could object to lending his dead body to the causes of science.' 'That's not putting it quite straight' I answered. 'It seems to me' there'd be some doubts as to whether I were dead or alive by the time you'd finished with me.' 'Well,' he said, smiling a little,'I suppose you're right about that. But I don't think you ought to turn me down quite so quickly before you know a bit more about it.' 'I said I don't want to hear it.' 'Have a cigarette,' he said, holding out his case. 'I don't smoke, you know that.' He took one himself and lit it with a tiny silver lighter that was no bigger than a shilling piece. 'A present from the people who make my instruments,' he said. 'Ingenious, isn't it?' I examined the lighter, then handed it back. 'May I go on?' he asked. 'I'd rather you didn't.' 'Just lie still and listen. I think you'll find it quite interesting.' There were some blue grapes on a plate beside my bed. I put the plate on my chest and began eating the grapes. 'At the very moment of death,' Landy said, 'I should have to be standing by so that I could step in immediately and try to keep your brain alive.' 'You mean leaving it in the head?' 'To start with, yes. I'd have to.' 'And where would you put it after that?' 'If you want to know, in a sort of basin.' 'Are you really serious about this?' 'Certainly I'm serious.' 'All right. Go on.' 'I suppose you know that when the heart stops and the brain is deprived of fresh blood and oxygen, its tissues die very rapidly. Anything from four to six minutes and the whole thing's dead. Even after three minutes you may get a certain amount of damage. So I should have to work rapidly to prevent this from happening. But with the help of the machine, it should all be quite simple.' 'What machine?' 'The artificial heart. We've got a nice adaptation here of the one originally devised by Alexis Carrel and Lindbergh. It oxygenates the blood, keeps it at the right temperature, pumps it in at the right pressure, and does a number of other little necessary things. It's really not at all complicated.' 'Tell me what you would do at the moment of death,' I said. 'What is the first thing you would do?' 'Do you know anything about the vascular and venous arrangement of the brain?' 'No.' 'Then listen. It's not difficult. The blood supply to the brain is derived from two main sources, the internal carotid arteries and the vertebral arteries. There are two of each, making four arteries in all. Got that?' 'Yes.' 'And the return system is even simpler. The blood is drained away by only two large veins, the internal jugulars So you have four arteries going up they go up the neck of course and two veins coming down. Around the brain itself they naturally branch out into other channels, but those don't concern us. We never touch them.' 'All right,' I said. 'I imagine that I've just died. Now what would you do?' 'I should immediately open your neck and locate the four arteries, the carotids and the vertebrals. I should then perfuse them, which means that I'd stick a large hollow needle into each. These four needles would be connected by tubes to the artificial heart. 'Then, working quickly, I would dissect out both the left and right jugular veins and hitch these also to the heart machine to complete the circuit. Now switch on the machine, which is already primed with the right type of blood, and there you are. The circulation through your brain would be restored.' 'I'd be like that Russian dog.' 'I don't think you would. For one thing, you'd certainly lose consciousness when you died, and I very much doubt whether you would come to again for quite a long time if indeed you came to at all. But, conscious or not, you'd be in a rather interesting position, wouldn't you? You'd have a cold dead body and a living brain.' Landy paused to savour this delightful prospect. The man was so entranced and bemused by the whole idea that he evidently found it impossible to believe I might not be feeling the same way. 'We could now afford to take our time.' he said. 'And believe me, we'd need it. The first thing we'd do would be to wheel you to the operating-room, accompanied of course by the machine, which must never stop pumping. The next problem...' 'All right,' I said. 'That's enough. I don't have to hear the details.' 'Oh but you must,' he said. 'It is important that you should know precisely what is going to happen to you all the way through. You see, afterwards, when you regain consciousness, it will be much more satisfactory from your point of view if you are able to remember exactly where you are and how you came to be there. If only for your own peace of mind you should know that. You agree? I lay still on the bed, watching him. 'So the next problem would be to remove your brain, intact and undamaged, from your dead body. The body is useless. In fact it has already started to decay. The skull and the face are also useless. They are both encumbrances and I don't want them around. All I want is the brain, the clean beautiful brain, alive and perfect. So when I get you on the table I will take a saw, a small oscillating saw, and with this I shall proceed to remove the whole vault of your skull. You'd still be unconscious at that point so I wouldn't have to bother with anaesthetic.' 'Like hell you wouldn't,' I said. 'You'd be out cold, I promise you that, William. Don't forget you died just a few minutes before.' 'Nobody's sawing off the top of my skull without an anaesthetic,' I said. ' Landy shrugged his shoulders. 'It makes no difference to me,' he said. 'I'll be glad to give you a little procaine if you want it. If it will make you any happier I'll infiltrate the whole scalp with procaine, the whole head, from the neck up.' 'Thanks very much,' I said. 'You know,' he went on, 'it's extraordinary what sometimes happens. Only last week a man was brought in unconscious, and I opened his head without any anaesthetic at all and removed a small blood clot. I was still working inside the skull when he woke up and began talking. "Where am I?" he asked. "You're in hospital." "Well," he said. "Fancy that." "Tell me," I asked him, "is this bothering you, what I'm doing?" "No," he answered. "Not at all. What are you doing?" "I'm just removing a blood clot from your brain." "You are?" "Just lie still. Don't move. I'm nearly finished." "So that's the bastard who's been giving me all those headaches," the man said.' Landy paused and smiled; remembering the occasion. ''That's word. for word what the man said,' he went on, 'although the next day he couldn't even recollect the incident. It's a funny thing, the brain.' 'I'll have the procaine,' I said. 'As you wish, William. And now, as I say, I'd take a small oscillating saw and carefully remove your complete calvarium the whole vault of the skull. This would expose the top half of the brain, or rather the outer covering in which it is wrapped. You may or may not know that there are three separate coverings around the brain itself the outer one called the dura mater or dura, the middle one called the arachnoid, and the inner one called the pia mater or pia. Most laymen seem to have the idea that the brain is a naked thing floating around in fluid in your head. But it isn't. It's wrapped up neatly in these three strong coverings, and the cerebrospinal fluid actually flows within the little gap between the two coverings, known as the subarachnoid space. As I told you before, this fluid is manufactured by the brain and it drains off into the venous system by osmosis. 'I myself would leave all three coverings - don't they have lovely names; the dura, the arachnoid, and the pia? - I'd leave them all intact. There are many reasons for this, not least among them being the fact that within the dura run the venous channels that drain the blood from the brain into the jugular. 'Now,' he went on, we've got the upper half of your skull off so that the top of the brain, wrapped in its outer covering, is exposed. The next step is the really tricky one: to release the whole package so that it can be lifted cleanly away, leaving the stubs of the four supply arteries and the two veins hanging underneath ready to be reconnected to the machine. This is an immensely lengthy and complicated business involving the delicate chipping away of much bone, the severing of many nerves and the cutting and tying of numerous blood vessels. The only way I could do it with any hope of success would be by taking a rongeur and slowly biting off the rest of your skull, peeling it off downward like an orange until the sides and underneath of the brain covering are fully exposed. The problems involved are highly technical and I won't go into them, but I feel fairly sure that the work can be done. It's simply a question of surgical skill and patience. And don't forget that I'd have plenty of time, as much as I wanted, because the artificial heart would be continually pumping away alongside the operating-table, keeping the brain alive. 'Now, let's assume that I've succeeded in peeling off your skull and removing everything else that surrounds the sides of the brain. That leaves it connected to the body only at the base, mainly by the spinal column and by the two large veins arid the four arteries that are supplying it with blood. So what next? 'I would sever the spinal column just above the first cervical vertebra, taking great care not to harm the two vertebral arteries which are in that area. But you must remember that the dura or outer covering is open at this place to receive the spinal column, so I'd have to close this opening by sewing the edges of the dura together. There'd be no problem there. 'At this point, I would be ready for the final move. To one side, on a table, I'd have a basin of a special shape, .and this would be filled with what we call Ringer's Solution. That is. a special kind Of fluid we use for irrigation in neurosurgery. I would now cut the brain completely loose by severing. the supply arteries and the veins. Then I would simply pick it up in my hands and transfer 'it to the basin: 'This would be the only other time during the whole proceeding when the blood flow would be cut off; but once it was in the basin, it wouldn't take a moment to reconnect the stubs of the arteries and veins to the artificial heart. 'So there you are,' Landy said. 'Your brain is now in the basin, and still alive, and there isn't any reason why it shouldn't' stay alive for a very long time, years and years perhaps, provided we looked after the blood and the machine.' 'But would it function?' 'My dear William, how should I know? I can't even tell you whether it would regain consciousness.' 'And if it did?' 'There now! That would be fascinating!' 'Would it?' I said, and I must admit I had my doubts. 'Of course it would! Lying there with all your thinking processes working beautifully, and your memory as well...' 'And not being able to see or feel or smell or hear or talk.' I said. 'Ah!' he cried. 'I knew I'd forgotten something! I never told you about the eye. Listen. I am going to try to leave one of your optic nerves intact, as well as the eye itself. The optic nerve is a little thing about the thickness of a clinical thermometer and about two inches in length as it stretches between the brain and the eye. The beauty of it is that it's not really a nerve at all. It's an outpouching of the brain itself, and the dura or brain covering extends along it and is attached to the eyeball. The back of the eye is therefore in very close contact with the brain, and cerebrospinal fluid flows right up to it. 'All this suits my purpose very well, and makes it reasonable to suppose that I could succeed in preserving one of your eyes: I've already constructed a small plastic case to contain the eyeball, instead of your own socket, and when the brain is in, the basin, submerged in Ringer's Solution, the eyeball in its case will float on the surface of the liquid.' 'Staring at the ceiling,' I said. 'I suppose so, yes. I'm afraid there wouldn't be any muscles there to move it around. But it- might be sort of fun to lie there so quietly and comfortably peering out at the world from your basin.' 'Hilarious;' I said. 'How about leaving me an ear as well?' 'I'd rather not try an ear this time.' 'I want an ear,' I said. 'I insist upon an ear.' 'No.' 'I want to listen to Bach.' 'You don't understand how difficult it would be.' Landy said gently. 'The hearing apparatus - the cochlea, as it's called - is a far more delicate mechanism than the eye. What's more, it is encased in bone. So is a part of the auditory nerve that connects it with the brain. I couldn't possibly chisel the whole thing out intact.' 'Couldn't you leave it encased in the bone and bring the bone to the basin?' 'No,' he said firmly. 'This thing is complicated enough already. And anyway, if the eye works, it doesn't matter all that much about your hearing. We can always hold up messages for you to read. You really must leave me to decide what is possible and what isn't.' 'I haven't yet said, that I'm going to do it.' 'I know, William, I know.' 'I'm not sure I fancy the idea very much.' 'Would you rather be dead, altogether?' 'Perhaps I would. I don't know yet. I wouldn't be able to talk, would I?' 'Of course not.' 'Then how would I communicate with you? How would you know that I'm conscious?' 'It would be easy for us to know whether or not you regain consciousness,' Landy said: 'The ordinary electro-encephalograph could tell us that. We'd attach the electrodes directly to the frontal lobes of your brain, there in the basin.' 'And you could actually tell?' 'Oh, definitely. Any hospital could do that part of it.' 'But I couldn't communicate with you.' 'As a matter of fact,' Landy said, 'I believe you could, There's a man up in London called Wertheimer who's doing some interesting work on the subject of thought communication, and I've been in touch with him. You know, don't you, that the thinking brain throws off electrical and chemical discharges? And that these discharges go out in the form of waves, rather like radio waves?' 'I know a bit about it;' I said. 'Well, Wertheimer has constructed an apparatus somewhat. similar to the encephalograph, though far more sensitive, and he maintains that within certain narrow limits it can help him to interpret the actual things .that a brain is thinking. It produces a kind of graph which is apparently decipherable into words or thoughts. Would you like me to ask Wertheimer to come and see you?' 'No,' I said. Landy was already taking it for granted that I was going to go through with this business, and I resented his attitude. 'Go away now and leave me alone,' I told him. 'You won't get anywhere by trying to rush me.' He stood up at once and crossed to the door. 'One question,' I said. He paused with a hand on the doorknob. 'Yes, William?' 'Simply this. Do you yourself honestly believe that when my brain is in that basin, my mind will be able to function exactly. as it is doing at present? Do you believe that I will be able -to think and reason as I can now? And will the power of memory remain?' 'I don't see why not,' he answered. 'It's the same brain. It's alive. It's undamaged. In fact, it's completely untouched. We haven't even opened the dura. The big difference, of course, would be that we've severed every single nerve that leads into it - except for the one optic nerve - and this means that your thinking would no longer be influenced by your senses. You'd be living in an extraordinarily pure and detached world. Nothing to bother you at all, not even pain. You couldn't possibly feel pain because there wouldn't be any nerves to feel it with. In a way, it would be an almost perfect situation. No worries or fears or pains or hunger or thirst. Not even any desires. Just your memories and your. thoughts, and if the remaining eye happened to function, then you could read books as well. It all sounds rather pleasant to me. 'It does, does it?' 'Yes, William, it does. And particularly for a Doctor of Philosophy. It would be a tremendous experience. You'd be able to reflect upon the ways of the world with a detachment and a serenity that no man had ever attained before. And who knows what might not happen then! Great thoughts and solutions might come to you, great ideas that could revolutionize our way of life! Try to imagine, if you can, the degree of concentration that you'd be able to achieve!' 'And the frustration,' I said. 'Nonsense. There couldn't be any frustration. You can't have frustration without desire, and you couldn't possibly have any desire. Not physical desire, anyway.' 'I should certainly be capable of remembering my previous life in the world, and I might desire to return to it.' 'What, to this mess! Out of your comfortable basin and back into this madhouse!' 'Answer one more question,' I said. 'How long do you believe you could keep it alive' 'The brain? Who knows? Possibly for years and years. The conditions would be ideal. Most of the factors that cause deterioration would be absent, thanks to the artificial heart. The blood-pressure would remain constant at all times, an impossible condition in real life. The temperature would also be constant. The chemical composition of the blood would be near perfect There would be no impurities in it, no virus, no bacteria, nothing. Of course it's foolish to guess, but I believe that a brain might live for two or three hundred years in circumstances like these. Good-bye for now,' he said. 'I'll drop in and see you tomorrow.' He went out quickly, leaving me, as you might guess, in a fairly disturbed state of mind. My immediate reaction after he had gone was one of revulsion towards the whole business. Somehow, it wasn't at all nice. There was something basically repulsive about the idea that I myself, with all my mental faculties intact, should be reduced to a small slimy blob lying in a pool of water. It was monstrous, obscene, unholy. Another thing that bothered me was the feeling of helplessness that I was bound to expenence once Landy had got me into the basin. There could be no going back after that, no way of protesting or explairing. I would be committed for as long as they could keep me alive. And what, for example, if I could not stand it? What if it turned out to be terribly painful? What if I became hysterical? No legs to run away on. No voice to scream with. Nothing. I'd just have to grin and bear it for the next two centuries. No mouth to grin with either. At this point, a curious thought struck me, and it was this: Does not a man who has had a leg amputated often suffer from the delusion that the leg is still there? Does he not tell the nurse that the toes he doesn't have any more are itching like mad, and so on and so forth? I seemed to have heard something to that effect quite recently. Very well. On the same premise, was it not possible that my brain, lying there alone in that basin, might not suffer from a similar delusion in regard to my body? In which case, all my usual aches and pains could come flooding over me and I wouldn't even be able to take an aspirin to relieve them. One moment I might be imagining that I had the most excruciating cramp in my leg, or a violent indigestion, and a few minutes later, I might easily get the feeling that my poor bladder - you know me - was so full that if I didn't get to emptying it soon it would burst. Heaven forbid. I lay there for a long time thinking these horrid thoughts. Then quite suddenly, round about midday, my mood began to change. I became less concerned with the unpleasant aspect of the affair and found myself able to examine Landy's proposals in a more reasonable light. Was there not, after all, I asked myself, some thing a bit comforting in the thought that my brain might not necessarily have to die and disappear in a few weeks' time? There was indeed. I am rather proud of my brain. It is a sensitive, lucid, and juberous organ. It contains a prodigious store of information, and it is still capable of producing imaginative and original theories. As brains go, it is a, damn good one, though I say it myself. Whereas my body, my poor old body, the thing that Landy wants to throw away well, even you, my dear Mary, will have to agree with me that there is really nothing about that which is worth preserving any more. I was lying on my back eating a grape. Delicious it was, and there were three little seeds in it which I took out of my mouth and placed on the edge of the plate. 'I'm going to do it,' I said quietly. 'Yes, by God, I'm going to do it. When Landy comes back to see me tomorrow I shall tell him straight out that I'm going to do it.' It was as quick as that. And from then on, I began to feel very much better. 1 surprised everyone by gobbling an enormous lunch, and short after that you came in to visit me as usual. But how well I looked, you told me. How bright and well and chirpy Had anything happened? Was there some good news? Yes, I said there was. And then, if you remember, I bade you sit down and make yourself comfortable, and I began immediately to explain to you as gently as I could what was in the wind. Alas, you would have none of it. I had hardly begun telling you the barest details when you flew into a fury and said that the thing was revolting, disgusting, horrible, unthinkable, and when I tried to go on, you marched out of the room. Well, Mary, as you know, I have tried to discuss this subject with you many times since then, but you have consistently refused to give me a hearing. Hence this note, and I can only hope that you will have the good sense to permit yourself to read it. It has taken me a long time to write. Two weeks have gone since I started to scribble the first sentence, and I'm now a good. deal weaker than I was then. I doubt whether I have the strength to say much more. Certainly I won't say good-bye, because there's a chance, just a tiny chance, that if Landy succeeds in his work I may actually see you again later, that is if you can bring yourself to come and visit me. I am giving orders that these pages shall not be delivered to you until a week after I am gone. By now, therefore, as you sit reading them, seven. days have already elapsed since Landy did the deed. You yourself may even know what the outcome has been. If you don't, if you have purposely kept yourself apart and have refused to have anything to do with it - which I suspect may be the case - please change your mind now and give Landy a call to see how things went with me. That is the least you can do. I have told him that he may expect to hear from you on the seventh day. Your faithful husband, William PS. Be good when I am gone, and always remember that it is harder to be a widow than a wife. Do not drink cocktails. Do not waste money. Do not smoke cigarettes. Do not eat pastry. Do not use lipstick. Do not buy a television apparatus. Keep my rose beds and my rockery well weeded in the summers. And incidentally I suggest that you have the telephone disconnected now that I shall have no further use for it. W. Mrs Pearl laid the last page of the manuscript slowly down on the sofa beside her. Her little mouth was pursed up tight and there was a whiteness around her nostrils. But really! You would think a widow was entitled to a bit of peace after all these years. The whole thing was just too awful to think about. Beastly and awful. It gave her the shudders. She reached for her bag and found herself another cigarette. She lit it, inhaling the smoke deeply and blowing it out in clouds all over the room. Through the smoke she could see her lovely television set, brand new, lustrous, huge, crouching defiantly but also a little Self-consciously on top of what used to be William's worktable. What would he say, she wondered, if he could see that now? She paused, to remember the last time he had caught her smoking a cigarette. That was about a year ago, and she was sitting in the kitchen by the open window having a quick one before he came home from work. She'd had the radio on loud playing dance music and she had turned round to pour herself another cup of coffee and there he was standing in the doorway, huge and grim, staring down at her with those awful eyes, a little black dot of fury blazing in the centre of each. For four weeks after that, he had paid the housekeeping bills himself and given her no money at all, but of course he wasn't to know that she had over six pounds salted away in a soap-flake carton in the cupboard under the sink. 'What is it?' she had said to him once during supper. 'Are you worried about me getting lung cancer?' 'I am not,' he had answered. 'Then why can't I smoke?' 'Because I disapprove, that's why.' He had also disapproved of children, and as a result they had never had any of them either. Where was he now, this William of hers, the great disapprover? Landy would be expecting her to call up. Did she have to call Landy? Well, not really, no. She finished her cigarette, then lit another one immediately from the old stub. She looked at the telephone that was sitting on the worktable beside the television set. William had asked her to call. He had specifically requested that she telephone Landy as soon as she had read the letter. She hesitated, fighting hard now against that old ingrained sense duty that she didn't quite yet dare to shake off. Then, slowly, she got to her feet and crossed over to the phone on the worktable. She found a number in the book, dialled it, and waited. 'I want to speak to Mr Landy, please.' 'Who is calling?' 'Mrs Pearl. Mrs William Pearl.' 'One moment, please.' Almost at once, Landy was on the other end of the wire. 'Mrs Pearl?' 'This is Mrs Pearl.' There was a slight pause. 'I am so glad you called at last, Mrs Pearl. You are quite well, I hope?' The voice was quiet, unemotional, courteous. 'I wonder if you would care to come over here to the hospital? Then we can have a little chat. I expect you are very eager to know how it all came out.' She didn't answer. 'I can tell you now that everything went pretty smoothly, one way and another. Far better, in fact, than I was entitled to hope. It is not only alive, Mrs Pearl, it is conscious. It recovered consciousness on the second day. Isn't that interesting?' She waited for him to go on. 'And the eye is seeing. We are sure of that because we get an immediate change in the deflections on the encephalograph when we hold something up in front of it. And now we're giving it the newspaper to read every day.' 'Which newspaper?' Mrs Pearl asked sharply. 'The Daily Mirror. The headlines are larger.' 'He hates the Mirror. Give him The Times.' There was a pause, then the doctor said, 'Very well, Mrs Pearl. We'll give it The Times. We naturally want to do all we can to keep it happy.' 'Him,' she said. 'Not it. Him!' 'Him,' the doctor said. 'Yes, I beg your pardon. To keep him happy. That's one reason why I suggested you should come along here as soon as possible. I think it would be good for him to see you. You could indicate how delighted you were to be with him again - smile at him and blow him a kiss and all that sort of thing. It's bound to be a comfort to him to know that you are standing by.' There was a long pause. 'Well,' Mrs Pearl said at last, her voice suddenly very meek and tired. 'I suppose I had better come on over and see how he is.' 'Good. I knew you would. I'll wait here for you. Come straight up to my office on the second floor. Good-bye.' Half an hour later, Mrs Pearl was at the hospital. 'You mustn't be surprised by what he looks like,' Landy said as he walked beside her down a corridor. 'No, I won't.' 'It's bound to be a bit of a shock to you at first. He's not very prepossessing in his present state, I'm afraid.' 'I didn't marry him for his looks, Doctor.' Landy turned and stared at her. What a queer little woman this was, he thought, with her large eyes and her sullen, resentful air. Her features, which inust have been quite pleasant once, had now gone completely. The mouth was slack, the cheeks loose and flabby and the whole face gave the impression of having slowly but surely sagged to pieces through years and years of joyless married life. They walked on for a while in silence. 'Take your time when you get inside,' Landy said. 'He won't know you're in there until you place your face directly above his eye. The eye is always open, but he can't move it at all, so the field of vision is very narrow. At present we have it looking up at the ceiling. And of course he can't hear anything. We can talk together as much as we like. It's in here.' Landy opened a door and ushered her into a small square room. 'I wouldn't go too close yet,' he said, putting a hand on her arm. 'Stay back here a moment with me until you get used to it all.' There was a biggish white enamel bowl about the size of a washbasin standing on a high white table in the centre of the room, and there were half a dozen thin plastic tubes coming out of it. These tubes were connected with a whole lot of glass piping in which you could see the blood flowing to and from the heart inachine. The machine itself made a soff rhythmic pulsing sound. 'He's in there,' Landy said, pointing to the basin, which was too high for her to see into. 'Come just a little closer. Not too near.' He led her two paces forward. By stretching her neck, Mrs Pearl could now see the surface of the liquid inside the basin. It was clear and still, and on it there floated a small oval capsule, about the size of a pigeon's egg. 'That's the eye in there,' Landy said. 'Can you see it?' 'Yes.' 'So far as we can tell, it is still in perfect condition. It's his right eye, and the plastic container has a lens on it similar to the one he used in his own spectacles. At this moment he's probably seeing quite as well as he did before.' 'The ceiling isn't much to look at,' Mrs Pearl said. 'Don't worry about that. We're in the process of working out a whole programme to keep kim amused, but we don't want to go too quickly at first.' 'Give him a good book.' 'We will, we will. Are you feeling all right, Mrs Pearl?' 'Yes. 'Then we'll go forward a little more, shall we, and you'll be able to see the whole thing.' He led her forward until they were standing only a couple of yards from the table, and now she could see right down into the basin. 'There you are,' Landy said. 'That's William.' He was far larger than she had imagined he would be, and darker in colour. With all the ridges and creases running over his surface, he reminded her of nothing so much as an enormous pickled walnut. She could see the stubs of the four big arteries and the two veins coming out from the base of him and the neat way in which they were joined to the plastic tubes; and with each throb of the heart machine, all the tubes gave a little jerk in unison as the blood was pushed through them. 'You'll have to lean over,' Landy said, 'and put your pretty face right above the eye. He'll see you then, and you can srnile at him and blow him a kiss. If I were you I'd say a few nice things as well. He won't actually hear them, but I'm sure he'll get the general idea.' 'He hates people blowing kisses at him,' Mrs Pearl said. 'I'll do it my own way if you don't mind.' She stepped up to the edge of the table, leaned forward until her face was directly over the basin, and looked straight down into William's eye. 'Hallo, dear,' she whispered. 'It's me - Mary.' The eye, bright as ever, stared back at her with a peculiar, fixed intensity. 'How are you, dear?' she said. The plastic capsule was transparent all the way round so that the whole of the eyeball was visible. The optic nerve connecting the underside of it to the brain looked like a short length of grey spaghetti. 'Are you feeling all right, William?' It was a queer sensation peering into her husband's eye when there was no face to go with it. All she had to look at was the eye, and shekept staring at it, and gradually it grew bigger and bigger, in the end it was the only thing that she could see - a sort of face in itself. There was a network of tiny red veins running over the white surface of the eyeball, and in the ice-blue of the iris there were three or four rather pretty darkish streaks radiating from the pupil in the centre. The pupil was large and black, with a little spark of light reflecting from one side of it. 'I got your letter, dear, and came over at once to see how you were. Dr Landy says you are doing wonderfully well. Perhaps if I talk slowly you can understand a little of what I am saying by reading my lips.' There was no doubt that the eye was watching her. 'They are doing everything possible to take care of you, dear. This marvellous machine thing here is pumping away all the time and I'm sure it's a lot better than those silly old hearts all the rest of us have. Ours are liable to break down at any moment, but yours will go on for ever.' She was studying the eye closely, trying to discover what there was about it that gave it such an unusual appearance. 'You seem fine, dear, simply fine. Really you do.' It looked ever so much nicer, this eye, than either of his eye used to look, she told herself. There was a softness about it somewhere, a calm, kindly quality that she had never seen before. Maybe it had to do with the dot in the very centre, the pupil. William's pupils used always to be tiny black pinheads. They used to glint at you, stabbing into your brain, seeing right through you, and they always knew at once what you were up to and even what you were thinking. But this one she was looking at now was large and soft and gentle, almost cowlike. 'Are you quite sure he's conscious?' she asked, not looking up. 'Oh yes, completely,' Landy said. 'And he can see me?' 'Perfectly.' 'Isn't that marvellous? I expect he's wondering what happened.' 'Not at all. He knows perfectly well where he is and why he's there. He can't possibly have forgotten that.' 'You mean he knows he's in this basin?' 'Of course. And if only he had the power of speech, he would probably be able to carry on a perfectly normal conversation with you this very minute. So far as I can see, there should be absolutely no difference mentally between this William here and the one you used to know back home.' 'Good gracious me,' Mrs Pearl said, and she paused to consider this intriguing aspect. You know what, she told herself, looking behind the eye now and staring hard at the great grey pulpy walnut that lay so placidly under the water, I'm not at all sure that I don't prefer him as he is at present. In fact, I believe that I could live very comfortably with this kind of a William. I could cope with this one. 'Quiet, isn't he?' she said. 'Naturally he's quiet.' No arguments and criticisms, she thought, no constant admonitions, no rules to obey, no ban on smoking cigarettes, no pair of cold disapproving eyes watching me over the top of a book in the evenings, no shirts to wash and iron, no meals to cook - nothing but the throb of the heart machine, which was rather a, soothing sound anyway and certainly not loud enough to interfere with television. 'Doctor,' she said. 'I do believe I'm suddenly getting to feel the most enormous affection for him. Does that sound queer?' 'I think it's quite understandable.' 'He looks so helpless and silent lying there under the water in his little basin.' 'Yes, I know.' 'He's like a baby, that's what he's like. He's exactly like a little baby.' Landy stood still behind her, watching. 'There,' she said softly, peering into the basin. 'From now on Mary's going to look after you all by herself and you've nothing to worry about in the world. When can I have him back home, Doctor?' 'I beg your pardon?' 'I said when can I have him back - back in my own house?' 'You're joking,' Landy said. She turned her head slowly around and looked directly at him. 'Why should I joke?' she asked. Her face was bright, her eyes round and bright as two diamonds. 'He couldn't possibly be moved.' 'I don't see why not.' 'This is an experiment, Mrs Pearl.' 'It's my husband, Dr Landy.' A funny little nervous half-smile appeared on Landy's mouth. 'Well…' he said. 'It is my husband, you know.' Ihere was no anger in her voice. She spoke quietly, as though merely reminding him' of a simple fact. 'That's rather a tricky' point,' Landy said, wetting his lips. 'You're a widow now, Mrs Pearl. I think you must resign yourself to that fact.' She turned away suddenly from the table and crossed over to the window. 'I mean it,' she said, fishing in her bag for a cigarette. 'I want him back.' Landy watched her as she put the cigarette between her lips and lit it. Unless he were very much mistaken, there was something a bit odd about this woman, he thought. She seemed almost pleased to have her husband over there in the basin. He tried to imagine what his own feelings would be if it were his wife's brain lying there and her eye staring up at him out of that capsule. He wouldn't like it. 'Shall we go back to my room now?' he said. She was standing by the window, apparently quite calm and relaxed, puffing her cigarette. 'Yes, all right.' On her way past the table she stopped and leaned over the basin once more. 'Mary's leavingnow, sweetheart,' she said. 'And don't you worry about a single thing, you understand? We're going to get you right back home where, we can look after you properly just as soon as we possibly can. And listen dear...' At this point she paused and carried the cigarette to her lips, intending to take a puff. Instantly the eye flashed. She was looking straight into it at the time, and right in the centre of it she saw a tiny but brilliant flash of light, and the pupil contracted into a minute black pinpoint of absolute fury. At first she didn't move. She stood bending over the basin, holding the cigarette up to her mouth, watching the eye. Then very slowly, deliberately, she put the cigarette between her lips and took a long suck. She inhaled deeply, and she held the smoke inside her lungs for three or four seconds; then suddenly, whoosh, out it came through her nostrils in two thin jets which struck the water in the basin and billowed out over the surface in a thick blue cloud, enveloping the eye. Landy was over by the door, with his back to her, waiting. 'Come on, Mrs Pearl,' he called. 'Don't look so cross, William,' she said 'softly. 'It isn't any good looking cross.' Landy turned his head to see what she was doing. 'Not any more it isn't,' she whispered. 'Because from now on, my pet, you're going to do just exactly what Mary tells you. Do you understand that?' 'Mrs Pearl,' Land; said, moving towards her. 'So don't be a naughty boy again, will you, my precious,' she said, taking another pull at the cigarette. 'Naughty boys are liable to get punished most severely nowadays, you ought to know that.' Landy was beside her now, and he took her by the arm and began drawing her firmly but gently away from the table. 'Good-bye, darling,' she called. 'I'll be back soon.' 'That's enough, Mrs Pearl.' 'Isn't he sweet?' she cried, looking up at Landy with big bright eyes. 'Isn't he heaven? I just can't wait to get him home.'

William Pearl did not leave a great deal of money when he died, and his will was a simple one. With the exception of a few small bequests to relatives, he left all his property to his wife. The solicitor and Mrs Pearl went over it together in the solicitor’s office, and when the business was completed, the widow got up to leave. At that point, the solicitor took a sealed envelope from the folder on his desk and held it out to his client. ‘I have been instructed to give you this,’ he said. ‘Your husband sent it to us shortly before he passed away.’ The solicitor was pale and prim; and out of respect for a widow he kept his head on one side as he spoke, looking downward. ‘It appears that it might be something personal, Mrs Pearl. No doubt you’d like to take it home with you and read it in privacy.’ Mrs Pearl accepted the envelope and went out, into the street. She paused on the pavement, feeling the thing with her fingers. A . letter of farewell from William? Probably, yes. A formal letter. It was, bound to be formal – stiff and formal. The man was incapable of acting otherwise. He had never done anything informal in his life. My dear Mary, I trust that you will not permit my departure from this world to upset you too much, but that you will continue to observe those precepts which have guided you so well daring our partnership together. Be diligent and dignified in all things. Be thrifty with your money. Be very careful that you do not . . . et cetera, et cetera. A typical William letter. Or was it possible that he might have broken down at the last moment and written her something beautiful? Maybe this was a beautiful tender message, a sort of love letter, a lovely warm no of thanks to her for giving him thirty years of her life and for ironing a million shirts and cooking a million meals and making a million beds, something that she could read over and over again, once a day at least, and she would keep it for ever in the box on the dressing-table together with her brooches. There is no knowing what people will do when they are about to die, Mrs Pearl told herself, and she tucked the envelope under her arm and hurried home. She let herself in the front door and went straight to the livingroom and sat down on the sofa without removing her hat or coat. Then she opened the envelope and drew out the contents. These consisted, she saw, of some fifteen or twenty sheets of lined white paper, folded over once and held together at the top left-hand corner by a clip. Each sheet was covered with the small, neat, forward-sloping writing that she knew so well, but when she noticed how much of it there was, and in what a neat businesslike manner it was written, and how the first page didn’t even begin in the nice way a letter should, she began to get suspicious. She looked away. She lit herself a cigarette. She took one puff and laid the cigarette in the ash-tray. If this is about what I am beginning to suspect it is about, she told herself, then I don’t want to read it. Can one refuse to read a letter from the dead? . Yes. Well… She glanced over at William’s empty chair on the other side of the fireplace. It was a big brown leather armchair, and there was a. depression on the seat of it, made by his buttocks over the years. Higher up, on the backrest, there was a dark oval stain on the leather where his head had rested. He uþed to sit reading in that chair and she would be opposite him on the sofa, sewing on buttons or mending socks or putting a patch on the elbow of one , of his jackets, and every now and then a pair of eyes would glance up from the book and settle on her, watchful, but strangely impersonal, as if calculating something. She had never liked those eyes. They were ice blue, cold, small, and rather close together, with two deep vertical lines of disapproval dividing them. All her life they had been watching her. And even now, after a week alone in the house, she sometimes had an uneasy feeling that they. were still there, following her around, staring at her from doorways, from empty chairs, through a window at night. Slowly she reached into her handbag and took out her spectacles and put them on. Then, holding the pages up high in front of her so that they caught the late afternoon light from the window behind, she started to read: This note, my dear Mary, is entirely for you, and will be given you shortly after I am gone. Do not be alarmed by the sight of all this writing. It is nothing but an attempt on my part to explain to you precisely what Landy is going to do to me, and why I have agreed that he should do it, and what are his theories and his hopes. You are my wife and you have a right to know these things. In fact you must know them: During the past few days I have tried very hard to speak with you about Landy, but you have steadfastly refused to give me a hearing. This, as I have already told you, is a very foolish attitude to take, and I find it not entirely an unselfish one either. It stems mostly from ignorance, and I am absolutely convinced that if only you were made aware of all the facts, you would immediately change your view. That is why I am hoping that when I am no longer with you, and your mind is less distracted, you will consent to listen to me more carefully through these pages. I swear to you that when you have read my story, your sense of antipathy will vanish, and enthusiasm will take its place. I even dare to hope that you will become a little proud of what I have done. As you read on, you must forgive me, if you will, for the coolness of my style, but this is the only way I know of getting my message over to you clearly. You see, as my time draws near, it is natural that I begin to brim with every kind of sentimentality under the sun. Each day I grow more extravagantly wistful, especially in the evenings, and unless I watch myself closely my emotions will be overflowing on to these pages. I have a wish, for example, to write something about you and what a satisfactory wife you have been to me through and I am promising myself that if there is time; and I still have the strength, I shall do that next. I have a yearning also to speak about this Oxford of mine where I have been living and teaching for the past seventeen years, to tell something about the glory of the place and to explain, if I can, a little of what it has meant to have been allowed to work in its midst. All the things and places that I loved so well keep crowding in on me now in this gloomy bedroom. They are bright and beautiful as they always were, and today, for some reason, I can see them more clearly than ever. The path around the lake in the gardens of Worcester College, where Lovelace used to walk. The gateway at Pembroke. The view westward over the town from Magdalen Tower. The great hall at Christchurch. The little rockery at St John’s where I have counted more than a dozen varieties of campanula, including the rare and dainty C. Waldsteiniana. But there, you see! I haven’t even begun and already I’m falling into the trap. So let me get started now, and let you read it slowly, my dear, without any of hat sense of sorrow or disapproval that might otherwise embarrass your understanding. Promise me now that you will read it slowly, and that you will put yourself in a cool and patient frame of mind before you begin. The details of the illness that struck me down so suddenly in my middles life. are known to you. I need not waste time upon them except to admit at once how foolish I was not to have gone earlier to my doctor. Cancer is one of the few remaining diseases that these modern drugs cannot cure. A surgeon can operate if it has not spread too far; but with me, not only did I leave it too late, but the thing had the effrontery to attack me in the pancreas, making both surgery and survival equally impossible. So here I was with somewhere between one and six months left to live, growing more melancholy every hour and then, all of a sudden, in comes Landy. That was six weeks ago, on a Tuesday morning, very early, long before your visiting time, and the moment he entered I knew there was some sort of madness in the wind. He didn’t creep in on his toes, sheepish and embarrassed, not knowing what to say, like all my other visitors. He came in strong and smiling, and he strode up to the bed and stood there looking down at me with a wild bright glimmer in his eyes, and he said, ‘William, my boy, this is perfect. You’re just the one I want!’ Perhaps I should explain to you here that although John Landy has ‘Look,’ he aid, pulling up a chair beside the bed. ‘In a few weeks you’re going to be dead. Correct?’ Coming from Landy, the question didn’t seem especially unkind. In a way it was refreshing to have a visitor brave enough to touch upon the forbidden subject. ‘You’re going to expire right here in this. room, and then they’ll take you out and cremate you.’ ‘Bury me.’ I said. ‘That’s even worse. And then what? Do you believe you’ll go to heaven?’ ‘I doubt it,’ I said, ‘though it would be comforting to think so.’ ‘Or hell, perhaps?’ . ‘I don’ really see why they should send me there.’ ‘You never know, my dear William.’ ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ he said, and I could see him watching me carefully, personally, I don’t believe that after you’re dead you’ll ever hear of yourself again unless…’ – and here he paused and smiled and leaned closer- ‘…unless, of course, you have the sense to put yourself into my hands. Would you care to consider a proposition?’ The way he was staring at me, and studying me, and appraising me with a queer kind of hungriness, I might have been a piece of prime beef on the counter and he had bought it and was waiting for them to wrap it up. ‘I’m really serious about it, William. Would you care to consider a proposition?’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘Then listen and I’ll tell you. Will you listen to me?’ ‘Go on then, if you like. I doubt I’ve got very much to lose by hearing it.’ ‘On the contrary, you have a great deal to gain – especially after you’re dead.’ I am sure he was expecting me to jump when he said this, but for some reason I was ready for it. I lay quite still, watching his face and that slow white smile of his that always revealed the gold clasp of an upper denture curled around the canine on the left side of his month. ‘This is a thing, William, that I’ve been working on quietly for some years. one or two others here at the hospital have been helping me, especially Morrison, and we’ve completed a number of fairly successful trials with laboratory animals. I’m at the stage now where I’m ready to have a go with a man. It’s a big idea, and it may sound a bit far-fetched at first, but from a surgical point of view there doesn’t seem to be any reason why it shouldn’t be more or less practicable.’ Landy leaned forward and placed both hands on the edge of my bed. He has a good face, handsome in a bony sort of way, with none of the usual doctor’s look about it. You know that look, most of them have it. It glimmers at you out of their eyeballs like a dull electric sign and it reads Only I can save you. But John Landy’s eyes were wide and bright and little sparks of excitement were dancing in the centres of them. ‘Quite a long time ago,’ he said, ‘I saw a short medical film that had been brought over from Russia. It was a rather gruesome thing, but interesting. It showed a dog’s head completely severed from the body, but with the normal blood supply being maintained through the arteries and veins by means of an artificial heart. Now the thing is this: that dog’s head, sitting there all alone on a sort of tray, was alive. The brain was functioning. They proved it by several tests. For example, when food was smeared on the dog’s lips, the tongue would come out and lick it away, and the eyes would follow a person moving across the room. ‘It seemed reasonable to conclude from this that the head and the brain did not need to be attached to the rest of the body in order to remain alive provided; of course, that a supply of properly oxygenated blood could be maintained. ‘Now then. My own thought, which grew out of seeing this film, was to remove the brain from the skull of a human and keep it alive and functioning as an independent unit for an unlimited period after he is dead. Your brain, for example, after you are dead.’ ‘I don’t like that,’ I said. ‘Don’t interrupt, William. Let me finish. So far as I can tell from subsequent experiments, the brain is a peculiarly self supporting object. It manufactures its own cerebrospinal fluid. The magic processes of thought and memory which go on inside it are manifestly not impaired by the absence of limbs or trunk or even of skull, provided, as I say; that you keep pumping in the right kind of oxygenated blood under the proper conditions. ‘My dear William, just think for a moment of your own brain. It is in perfect shape. It is crammed full of a lifetime of learning. It has taken you years of work to make it what it is. It is just beginning to give out some first-rate original ideas. Yet soon it is going to have to die along with the rest of your body simply because your silly little pancreas is riddled with cancer.’ ‘No thank you,’ I said to him. ‘You can stop there. It’s a repulsive idea, and even if you could do it, which I doubt, it would be quite pointless. What possible use is there in keeping my brain alive if I couldn’t talk or see or hear or feel? Personally, I can think of nothing more unpleasant.’ ‘I believe that you would be able to communicate with us,’ Landy said. ‘And we might even succeed in giving you a certain amount of vision. But let’s take this slowly. I’ll come to all that later on. The fact remains, that you’re going to die fairly soon whatever happens, and my plans would not involve touching you at all until after you are dead. Come now, William. No true philosopher could object to lending his dead body to the causes of science.’ ‘That’s not putting it quite straight’ I answered. ‘It seems to me’ there’d be some doubts as to whether I were dead or alive by the time you’d finished with me.’ ‘Well,’ he said, smiling a little,’I suppose you’re right about that. But I don’t think you ought to turn me down quite so quickly before you know a bit more about it.’ ‘I said I don’t want to hear it.’ ‘Have a cigarette,’ he said, holding out his case. ‘I don’t smoke, you know that.’ He took one himself and lit it with a tiny silver lighter that was no bigger than a shilling piece. ‘A present from the people who make my instruments,’ he said. ‘Ingenious, isn’t it?’ I examined the lighter, then handed it back. ‘May I go on?’ he asked. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ ‘Just lie still and listen. I think you’ll find it quite interesting.’ There were some blue grapes on a plate beside my bed. I put the plate on my chest and began eating the grapes. ‘At the very moment of death,’ Landy said, ‘I should have to be standing by so that I could step in immediately and try to keep your brain alive.’ ‘You mean leaving it in the head?’ ‘To start with, yes. I’d have to.’ ‘And where would you put it after that?’ ‘If you want to know, in a sort of basin.’ ‘Are you really serious about this?’ ‘Certainly I’m serious.’ ‘All right. Go on.’ ‘I suppose you know that when the heart stops and the brain is deprived of fresh blood and oxygen, its tissues die very rapidly. Anything from four to six minutes and the whole thing’s dead. Even after three minutes you may get a certain amount of damage. So I should have to work rapidly to prevent this from happening. But with the help of the machine, it should all be quite simple.’ ‘What machine?’ ‘The artificial heart. We’ve got a nice adaptation here of the one originally devised by Alexis Carrel and Lindbergh. It oxygenates the blood, keeps it at the right temperature, pumps it in at the right pressure, and does a number of other little necessary things. It’s really not at all complicated.’ ‘Tell me what you would do at the moment of death,’ I said. ‘What is the first thing you would do?’ ‘Do you know anything about the vascular and venous arrangement of the brain?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then listen. It’s not difficult. The blood supply to the brain is derived from two main sources, the internal carotid arteries and the vertebral arteries. There are two of each, making four arteries in all. Got that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And the return system is even simpler. The blood is drained away by only two large veins, the internal jugulars So you have four arteries going up they go up the neck of course and two veins coming down. Around the brain itself they naturally branch out into other channels, but those don’t concern us. We never touch them.’ ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I imagine that I’ve just died. Now what would you do?’ ‘I should immediately open your neck and locate the four arteries, the carotids and the vertebrals. I should then perfuse them, which means that I’d stick a large hollow needle into each. These four needles would be connected by tubes to the artificial heart. ‘Then, working quickly, I would dissect out both the left and right jugular veins and hitch these also to the heart machine to complete the circuit. Now switch on the machine, which is already primed with the right type of blood, and there you are. The circulation through your brain would be restored.’ ‘I’d be like that Russian dog.’ ‘I don’t think you would. For one thing, you’d certainly lose consciousness when you died, and I very much doubt whether you would come to again for quite a long time if indeed you came to at all. But, conscious or not, you’d be in a rather interesting position, wouldn’t you? You’d have a cold dead body and a living brain.’ Landy paused to savour this delightful prospect. The man was so entranced and bemused by the whole idea that he evidently found it impossible to believe I might not be feeling the same way. ‘We could now afford to take our time.’ he said. ‘And believe me, we’d need it. The first thing we’d do would be to wheel you to the operating-room, accompanied of course by the machine, which must never stop pumping. The next problem…’ ‘All right,’ I said. ‘That’s enough. I don’t have to hear the details.’ ‘Oh but you must,’ he said. ‘It is important that you should know precisely what is going to happen to you all the way through. You see, afterwards, when you regain consciousness, it will be much more satisfactory from your point of view if you are able to remember exactly where you are and how you came to be there. If only for your own peace of mind you should know that. You agree? I lay still on the bed, watching him. ‘So the next problem would be to remove your brain, intact and undamaged, from your dead body. The body is useless. In fact it has already started to decay. The skull and the face are also useless. They are both encumbrances and I don’t want them around. All I want is the brain, the clean beautiful brain, alive and perfect. So when I get you on the table I will take a saw, a small oscillating saw, and with this I shall proceed to remove the whole vault of your skull. You’d still be unconscious at that point so I wouldn’t have to bother with anaesthetic.’ ‘Like hell you wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘You’d be out cold, I promise you that, William. Don’t forget you died just a few minutes before.’ ‘Nobody’s sawing off the top of my skull without an anaesthetic,’ I said. ‘ Landy shrugged his shoulders. ‘It makes no difference to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad to give you a little procaine if you want it. If it will make you any happier I’ll infiltrate the whole scalp with procaine, the whole head, from the neck up.’ ‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘it’s extraordinary what sometimes happens. Only last week a man was brought in unconscious, and I opened his head without any anaesthetic at all and removed a small blood clot. I was still working inside the skull when he woke up and began talking. “Where am I?” he asked. “You’re in hospital.” “Well,” he said. “Fancy that.” “Tell me,” I asked him, “is this bothering you, what I’m doing?” “No,” he answered. “Not at all. What are you doing?” “I’m just removing a blood clot from your brain.” “You are?” “Just lie still. Don’t move. I’m nearly finished.” “So that’s the bastard who’s been giving me all those headaches,” the man said.’ Landy paused and smiled; remembering the occasion. ”That’s word. for word what the man said,’ he went on, ‘although the next day he couldn’t even recollect the incident. It’s a funny thing, the brain.’ ‘I’ll have the procaine,’ I said. ‘As you wish, William. And now, as I say, I’d take a small oscillating saw and carefully remove your complete calvarium the whole vault of the skull. This would expose the top half of the brain, or rather the outer covering in which it is wrapped. You may or may not know that there are three separate coverings around the brain itself the outer one called the dura mater or dura, the middle one called the arachnoid, and the inner one called the pia mater or pia. Most laymen seem to have the idea that the brain is a naked thing floating around in fluid in your head. But it isn’t. It’s wrapped up neatly in these three strong coverings, and the cerebrospinal fluid actually flows within the little gap between the two coverings, known as the subarachnoid space. As I told you before, this fluid is manufactured by the brain and it drains off into the venous system by osmosis. ‘I myself would leave all three coverings – don’t they have lovely names; the dura, the arachnoid, and the pia? – I’d leave them all intact. There are many reasons for this, not least among them being the fact that within the dura run the venous channels that drain the blood from the brain into the jugular. ‘Now,’ he went on, we’ve got the upper half of your skull off so that the top of the brain, wrapped in its outer covering, is exposed. The next step is the really tricky one: to release the whole package so that it can be lifted cleanly away, leaving the stubs of the four supply arteries and the two veins hanging underneath ready to be reconnected to the machine. This is an immensely lengthy and complicated business involving the delicate chipping away of much bone, the severing of many nerves and the cutting and tying of numerous blood vessels. The only way I could do it with any hope of success would be by taking a rongeur and slowly biting off the rest of your skull, peeling it off downward like an orange until the sides and underneath of the brain covering are fully exposed. The problems involved are highly technical and I won’t go into them, but I feel fairly sure that the work can be done. It’s simply a question of surgical skill and patience. And don’t forget that I’d have plenty of time, as much as I wanted, because the artificial heart would be continually pumping away alongside the operating-table, keeping the brain alive. ‘Now, let’s assume that I’ve succeeded in peeling off your skull and removing everything else that surrounds the sides of the brain. That leaves it connected to the body only at the base, mainly by the spinal column and by the two large veins arid the four arteries that are supplying it with blood. So what next? ‘I would sever the spinal column just above the first cervical vertebra, taking great care not to harm the two vertebral arteries which are in that area. But you must remember that the dura or outer covering is open at this place to receive the spinal column, so I’d have to close this opening by sewing the edges of the dura together. There’d be no problem there. ‘At this point, I would be ready for the final move. To one side, on a table, I’d have a basin of a special shape, .and this would be filled with what we call Ringer’s Solution. That is. a special kind Of fluid we use for irrigation in neurosurgery. I would now cut the brain completely loose by severing. the supply arteries and the veins. Then I would simply pick it up in my hands and transfer ‘it to the basin: ‘This would be the only other time during the whole proceeding when the blood flow would be cut off; but once it was in the basin, it wouldn’t take a moment to reconnect the stubs of the arteries and veins to the artificial heart. ‘So there you are,’ Landy said. ‘Your brain is now in the basin, and still alive, and there isn’t any reason why it shouldn’t’ stay alive for a very long time, years and years perhaps, provided we looked after the blood and the machine.’ ‘But would it function?’ ‘My dear William, how should I know? I can’t even tell you whether it would regain consciousness.’ ‘And if it did?’ ‘There now! That would be fascinating!’ ‘Would it?’ I said, and I must admit I had my doubts. ‘Of course it would! Lying there with all your thinking processes working beautifully, and your memory as well…’ ‘And not being able to see or feel or smell or hear or talk.’ I said. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something! I never told you about the eye. Listen. I am going to try to leave one of your optic nerves intact, as well as the eye itself. The optic nerve is a little thing about the thickness of a clinical thermometer and about two inches in length as it stretches between the brain and the eye. The beauty of it is that it’s not really a nerve at all. It’s an outpouching of the brain itself, and the dura or brain covering extends along it and is attached to the eyeball. The back of the eye is therefore in very close contact with the brain, and cerebrospinal fluid flows right up to it. ‘All this suits my purpose very well, and makes it reasonable to suppose that I could succeed in preserving one of your eyes: I’ve already constructed a small plastic case to contain the eyeball, instead of your own socket, and when the brain is in, the basin, submerged in Ringer’s Solution, the eyeball in its case will float on the surface of the liquid.’ ‘Staring at the ceiling,’ I said. ‘I suppose so, yes. I’m afraid there wouldn’t be any muscles there to move it around. But it- might be sort of fun to lie there so quietly and comfortably peering out at the world from your basin.’ ‘Hilarious;’ I said. ‘How about leaving me an ear as well?’ ‘I’d rather not try an ear this time.’ ‘I want an ear,’ I said. ‘I insist upon an ear.’ ‘No.’ ‘I want to listen to Bach.’ ‘You don’t understand how difficult it would be.’ Landy said gently. ‘The hearing apparatus – the cochlea, as it’s called – is a far more delicate mechanism than the eye. What’s more, it is encased in bone. So is a part of the auditory nerve that connects it with the brain. I couldn’t possibly chisel the whole thing out intact.’ ‘Couldn’t you leave it encased in the bone and bring the bone to the basin?’ ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘This thing is complicated enough already. And anyway, if the eye works, it doesn’t matter all that much about your hearing. We can always hold up messages for you to read. You really must leave me to decide what is possible and what isn’t.’ ‘I haven’t yet said, that I’m going to do it.’ ‘I know, William, I know.’ ‘I’m not sure I fancy the idea very much.’ ‘Would you rather be dead, altogether?’ ‘Perhaps I would. I don’t know yet. I wouldn’t be able to talk, would I?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘Then how would I communicate with you? How would you know that I’m conscious?’ ‘It would be easy for us to know whether or not you regain consciousness,’ Landy said: ‘The ordinary electro-encephalograph could tell us that. We’d attach the electrodes directly to the frontal lobes of your brain, there in the basin.’ ‘And you could actually tell?’ ‘Oh, definitely. Any hospital could do that part of it.’ ‘But I couldn’t communicate with you.’ ‘As a matter of fact,’ Landy said, ‘I believe you could, There’s a man up in London called Wertheimer who’s doing some interesting work on the subject of thought communication, and I’ve been in touch with him. You know, don’t you, that the thinking brain throws off electrical and chemical discharges? And that these discharges go out in the form of waves, rather like radio waves?’ ‘I know a bit about it;’ I said. ‘Well, Wertheimer has constructed an apparatus somewhat. similar to the encephalograph, though far more sensitive, and he maintains that within certain narrow limits it can help him to interpret the actual things .that a brain is thinking. It produces a kind of graph which is apparently decipherable into words or thoughts. Would you like me to ask Wertheimer to come and see you?’ ‘No,’ I said. Landy was already taking it for granted that I was going to go through with this business, and I resented his attitude. ‘Go away now and leave me alone,’ I told him. ‘You won’t get anywhere by trying to rush me.’ He stood up at once and crossed to the door. ‘One question,’ I said. He paused with a hand on the doorknob. ‘Yes, William?’ ‘Simply this. Do you yourself honestly believe that when my brain is in that basin, my mind will be able to function exactly. as it is doing at present? Do you believe that I will be able -to think and reason as I can now? And will the power of memory remain?’ ‘I don’t see why not,’ he answered. ‘It’s the same brain. It’s alive. It’s undamaged. In fact, it’s completely untouched. We haven’t even opened the dura. The big difference, of course, would be that we’ve severed every single nerve that leads into it – except for the one optic nerve – and this means that your thinking would no longer be influenced by your senses. You’d be living in an extraordinarily pure and detached world. Nothing to bother you at all, not even pain. You couldn’t possibly feel pain because there wouldn’t be any nerves to feel it with. In a way, it would be an almost perfect situation. No worries or fears or pains or hunger or thirst. Not even any desires. Just your memories and your. thoughts, and if the remaining eye happened to function, then you could read books as well. It all sounds rather pleasant to me. ‘It does, does it?’ ‘Yes, William, it does. And particularly for a Doctor of Philosophy. It would be a tremendous experience. You’d be able to reflect upon the ways of the world with a detachment and a serenity that no man had ever attained before. And who knows what might not happen then! Great thoughts and solutions might come to you, great ideas that could revolutionize our way of life! Try to imagine, if you can, the degree of concentration that you’d be able to achieve!’ ‘And the frustration,’ I said. ‘Nonsense. There couldn’t be any frustration. You can’t have frustration without desire, and you couldn’t possibly have any desire. Not physical desire, anyway.’ ‘I should certainly be capable of remembering my previous life in the world, and I might desire to return to it.’ ‘What, to this mess! Out of your comfortable basin and back into this madhouse!’ ‘Answer one more question,’ I said. ‘How long do you believe you could keep it alive’ ‘The brain? Who knows? Possibly for years and years. The conditions would be ideal. Most of the factors that cause deterioration would be absent, thanks to the artificial heart. The blood-pressure would remain constant at all times, an impossible condition in real life. The temperature would also be constant. The chemical composition of the blood would be near perfect There would be no impurities in it, no virus, no bacteria, nothing. Of course it’s foolish to guess, but I believe that a brain might live for two or three hundred years in circumstances like these. Good-bye for now,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop in and see you tomorrow.’ He went out quickly, leaving me, as you might guess, in a fairly disturbed state of mind. My immediate reaction after he had gone was one of revulsion towards the whole business. Somehow, it wasn’t at all nice. There was something basically repulsive about the idea that I myself, with all my mental faculties intact, should be reduced to a small slimy blob lying in a pool of water. It was monstrous, obscene, unholy. Another thing that bothered me was the feeling of helplessness that I was bound to expenence once Landy had got me into the basin. There could be no going back after that, no way of protesting or explairing. I would be committed for as long as they could keep me alive. And what, for example, if I could not stand it? What if it turned out to be terribly painful? What if I became hysterical? No legs to run away on. No voice to scream with. Nothing. I’d just have to grin and bear it for the next two centuries. No mouth to grin with either. At this point, a curious thought struck me, and it was this: Does not a man who has had a leg amputated often suffer from the delusion that the leg is still there? Does he not tell the nurse that the toes he doesn’t have any more are itching like mad, and so on and so forth? I seemed to have heard something to that effect quite recently. Very well. On the same premise, was it not possible that my brain, lying there alone in that basin, might not suffer from a similar delusion in regard to my body? In which case, all my usual aches and pains could come flooding over me and I wouldn’t even be able to take an aspirin to relieve them. One moment I might be imagining that I had the most excruciating cramp in my leg, or a violent indigestion, and a few minutes later, I might easily get the feeling that my poor bladder – you know me – was so full that if I didn’t get to emptying it soon it would burst. Heaven forbid. I lay there for a long time thinking these horrid thoughts. Then quite suddenly, round about midday, my mood began to change. I became less concerned with the unpleasant aspect of the affair and found myself able to examine Landy’s proposals in a more reasonable light. Was there not, after all, I asked myself, some thing a bit comforting in the thought that my brain might not necessarily have to die and disappear in a few weeks’ time? There was indeed. I am rather proud of my brain. It is a sensitive, lucid, and juberous organ. It contains a prodigious store of information, and it is still capable of producing imaginative and original theories. As brains go, it is a, damn good one, though I say it myself. Whereas my body, my poor old body, the thing that Landy wants to throw away well, even you, my dear Mary, will have to agree with me that there is really nothing about that which is worth preserving any more. I was lying on my back eating a grape. Delicious it was, and there were three little seeds in it which I took out of my mouth and placed on the edge of the plate. ‘I’m going to do it,’ I said quietly. ‘Yes, by God, I’m going to do it. When Landy comes back to see me tomorrow I shall tell him straight out that I’m going to do it.’ It was as quick as that. And from then on, I began to feel very much better. 1 surprised everyone by gobbling an enormous lunch, and short after that you came in to visit me as usual. But how well I looked, you told me. How bright and well and chirpy Had anything happened? Was there some good news? Yes, I said there was. And then, if you remember, I bade you sit down and make yourself comfortable, and I began immediately to explain to you as gently as I could what was in the wind. Alas, you would have none of it. I had hardly begun telling you the barest details when you flew into a fury and said that the thing was revolting, disgusting, horrible, unthinkable, and when I tried to go on, you marched out of the room. Well, Mary, as you know, I have tried to discuss this subject with you many times since then, but you have consistently refused to give me a hearing. Hence this note, and I can only hope that you will have the good sense to permit yourself to read it. It has taken me a long time to write. Two weeks have gone since I started to scribble the first sentence, and I’m now a good. deal weaker than I was then. I doubt whether I have the strength to say much more. Certainly I won’t say good-bye, because there’s a chance, just a tiny chance, that if Landy succeeds in his work I may actually see you again later, that is if you can bring yourself to come and visit me. I am giving orders that these pages shall not be delivered to you until a week after I am gone. By now, therefore, as you sit reading them, seven. days have already elapsed since Landy did the deed. You yourself may even know what the outcome has been. If you don’t, if you have purposely kept yourself apart and have refused to have anything to do with it – which I suspect may be the case – please change your mind now and give Landy a call to see how things went with me. That is the least you can do. I have told him that he may expect to hear from you on the seventh day. Your faithful husband, William PS. Be good when I am gone, and always remember that it is harder to be a widow than a wife. Do not drink cocktails. Do not waste money. Do not smoke cigarettes. Do not eat pastry. Do not use lipstick. Do not buy a television apparatus. Keep my rose beds and my rockery well weeded in the summers. And incidentally I suggest that you have the telephone disconnected now that I shall have no further use for it. W. Mrs Pearl laid the last page of the manuscript slowly down on the sofa beside her. Her little mouth was pursed up tight and there was a whiteness around her nostrils. But really! You would think a widow was entitled to a bit of peace after all these years. The whole thing was just too awful to think about. Beastly and awful. It gave her the shudders. She reached for her bag and found herself another cigarette. She lit it, inhaling the smoke deeply and blowing it out in clouds all over the room. Through the smoke she could see her lovely television set, brand new, lustrous, huge, crouching defiantly but also a little Self-consciously on top of what used to be William’s worktable. What would he say, she wondered, if he could see that now? She paused, to remember the last time he had caught her smoking a cigarette. That was about a year ago, and she was sitting in the kitchen by the open window having a quick one before he came home from work. She’d had the radio on loud playing dance music and she had turned round to pour herself another cup of coffee and there he was standing in the doorway, huge and grim, staring down at her with those awful eyes, a little black dot of fury blazing in the centre of each. For four weeks after that, he had paid the housekeeping bills himself and given her no money at all, but of course he wasn’t to know that she had over six pounds salted away in a soap-flake carton in the cupboard under the sink. ‘What is it?’ she had said to him once during supper. ‘Are you worried about me getting lung cancer?’ ‘I am not,’ he had answered. ‘Then why can’t I smoke?’ ‘Because I disapprove, that’s why.’ He had also disapproved of children, and as a result they had never had any of them either. Where was he now, this William of hers, the great disapprover? Landy would be expecting her to call up. Did she have to call Landy? Well, not really, no. She finished her cigarette, then lit another one immediately from the old stub. She looked at the telephone that was sitting on the worktable beside the television set. William had asked her to call. He had specifically requested that she telephone Landy as soon as she had read the letter. She hesitated, fighting hard now against that old ingrained sense duty that she didn’t quite yet dare to shake off. Then, slowly, she got to her feet and crossed over to the phone on the worktable. She found a number in the book, dialled it, and waited. ‘I want to speak to Mr Landy, please.’ ‘Who is calling?’ ‘Mrs Pearl. Mrs William Pearl.’ ‘One moment, please.’ Almost at once, Landy was on the other end of the wire. ‘Mrs Pearl?’ ‘This is Mrs Pearl.’ There was a slight pause. ‘I am so glad you called at last, Mrs Pearl. You are quite well, I hope?’ The voice was quiet, unemotional, courteous. ‘I wonder if you would care to come over here to the hospital? Then we can have a little chat. I expect you are very eager to know how it all came out.’ She didn’t answer. ‘I can tell you now that everything went pretty smoothly, one way and another. Far better, in fact, than I was entitled to hope. It is not only alive, Mrs Pearl, it is conscious. It recovered consciousness on the second day. Isn’t that interesting?’ She waited for him to go on. ‘And the eye is seeing. We are sure of that because we get an immediate change in the deflections on the encephalograph when we hold something up in front of it. And now we’re giving it the newspaper to read every day.’ ‘Which newspaper?’ Mrs Pearl asked sharply. ‘The Daily Mirror. The headlines are larger.’ ‘He hates the Mirror. Give him The Times.’ There was a pause, then the doctor said, ‘Very well, Mrs Pearl. We’ll give it The Times. We naturally want to do all we can to keep it happy.’ ‘Him,’ she said. ‘Not it. Him!’ ‘Him,’ the doctor said. ‘Yes, I beg your pardon. To keep him happy. That’s one reason why I suggested you should come along here as soon as possible. I think it would be good for him to see you. You could indicate how delighted you were to be with him again – smile at him and blow him a kiss and all that sort of thing. It’s bound to be a comfort to him to know that you are standing by.’ There was a long pause. ‘Well,’ Mrs Pearl said at last, her voice suddenly very meek and tired. ‘I suppose I had better come on over and see how he is.’ ‘Good. I knew you would. I’ll wait here for you. Come straight up to my office on the second floor. Good-bye.’ Half an hour later, Mrs Pearl was at the hospital. ‘You mustn’t be surprised by what he looks like,’ Landy said as he walked beside her down a corridor. ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘It’s bound to be a bit of a shock to you at first. He’s not very prepossessing in his present state, I’m afraid.’ ‘I didn’t marry him for his looks, Doctor.’ Landy turned and stared at her. What a queer little woman this was, he thought, with her large eyes and her sullen, resentful air. Her features, which inust have been quite pleasant once, had now gone completely. The mouth was slack, the cheeks loose and flabby and the whole face gave the impression of having slowly but surely sagged to pieces through years and years of joyless married life. They walked on for a while in silence. ‘Take your time when you get inside,’ Landy said. ‘He won’t know you’re in there until you place your face directly above his eye. The eye is always open, but he can’t move it at all, so the field of vision is very narrow. At present we have it looking up at the ceiling. And of course he can’t hear anything. We can talk together as much as we like. It’s in here.’ Landy opened a door and ushered her into a small square room. ‘I wouldn’t go too close yet,’ he said, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Stay back here a moment with me until you get used to it all.’ There was a biggish white enamel bowl about the size of a washbasin standing on a high white table in the centre of the room, and there were half a dozen thin plastic tubes coming out of it. These tubes were connected with a whole lot of glass piping in which you could see the blood flowing to and from the heart inachine. The machine itself made a soff rhythmic pulsing sound. ‘He’s in there,’ Landy said, pointing to the basin, which was too high for her to see into. ‘Come just a little closer. Not too near.’ He led her two paces forward. By stretching her neck, Mrs Pearl could now see the surface of the liquid inside the basin. It was clear and still, and on it there floated a small oval capsule, about the size of a pigeon’s egg. ‘That’s the eye in there,’ Landy said. ‘Can you see it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So far as we can tell, it is still in perfect condition. It’s his right eye, and the plastic container has a lens on it similar to the one he used in his own spectacles. At this moment he’s probably seeing quite as well as he did before.’ ‘The ceiling isn’t much to look at,’ Mrs Pearl said. ‘Don’t worry about that. We’re in the process of working out a whole programme to keep kim amused, but we don’t want to go too quickly at first.’ ‘Give him a good book.’ ‘We will, we will. Are you feeling all right, Mrs Pearl?’ ‘Yes. ‘Then we’ll go forward a little more, shall we, and you’ll be able to see the whole thing.’ He led her forward until they were standing only a couple of yards from the table, and now she could see right down into the basin. ‘There you are,’ Landy said. ‘That’s William.’ He was far larger than she had imagined he would be, and darker in colour. With all the ridges and creases running over his surface, he reminded her of nothing so much as an enormous pickled walnut. She could see the stubs of the four big arteries and the two veins coming out from the base of him and the neat way in which they were joined to the plastic tubes; and with each throb of the heart machine, all the tubes gave a little jerk in unison as the blood was pushed through them. ‘You’ll have to lean over,’ Landy said, ‘and put your pretty face right above the eye. He’ll see you then, and you can srnile at him and blow him a kiss. If I were you I’d say a few nice things as well. He won’t actually hear them, but I’m sure he’ll get the general idea.’ ‘He hates people blowing kisses at him,’ Mrs Pearl said. ‘I’ll do it my own way if you don’t mind.’ She stepped up to the edge of the table, leaned forward until her face was directly over the basin, and looked straight down into William’s eye. ‘Hallo, dear,’ she whispered. ‘It’s me – Mary.’ The eye, bright as ever, stared back at her with a peculiar, fixed intensity. ‘How are you, dear?’ she said. The plastic capsule was transparent all the way round so that the whole of the eyeball was visible. The optic nerve connecting the underside of it to the brain looked like a short length of grey spaghetti. ‘Are you feeling all right, William?’ It was a queer sensation peering into her husband’s eye when there was no face to go with it. All she had to look at was the eye, and shekept staring at it, and gradually it grew bigger and bigger, in the end it was the only thing that she could see – a sort of face in itself. There was a network of tiny red veins running over the white surface of the eyeball, and in the ice-blue of the iris there were three or four rather pretty darkish streaks radiating from the pupil in the centre. The pupil was large and black, with a little spark of light reflecting from one side of it. ‘I got your letter, dear, and came over at once to see how you were. Dr Landy says you are doing wonderfully well. Perhaps if I talk slowly you can understand a little of what I am saying by reading my lips.’ There was no doubt that the eye was watching her. ‘They are doing everything possible to take care of you, dear. This marvellous machine thing here is pumping away all the time and I’m sure it’s a lot better than those silly old hearts all the rest of us have. Ours are liable to break down at any moment, but yours will go on for ever.’ She was studying the eye closely, trying to discover what there was about it that gave it such an unusual appearance. ‘You seem fine, dear, simply fine. Really you do.’ It looked ever so much nicer, this eye, than either of his eye used to look, she told herself. There was a softness about it somewhere, a calm, kindly quality that she had never seen before. Maybe it had to do with the dot in the very centre, the pupil. William’s pupils used always to be tiny black pinheads. They used to glint at you, stabbing into your brain, seeing right through you, and they always knew at once what you were up to and even what you were thinking. But this one she was looking at now was large and soft and gentle, almost cowlike. ‘Are you quite sure he’s conscious?’ she asked, not looking up. ‘Oh yes, completely,’ Landy said. ‘And he can see me?’ ‘Perfectly.’ ‘Isn’t that marvellous? I expect he’s wondering what happened.’ ‘Not at all. He knows perfectly well where he is and why he’s there. He can’t possibly have forgotten that.’ ‘You mean he knows he’s in this basin?’ ‘Of course. And if only he had the power of speech, he would probably be able to carry on a perfectly normal conversation with you this very minute. So far as I can see, there should be absolutely no difference mentally between this William here and the one you used to know back home.’ ‘Good gracious me,’ Mrs Pearl said, and she paused to consider this intriguing aspect. You know what, she told herself, looking behind the eye now and staring hard at the great grey pulpy walnut that lay so placidly under the water, I’m not at all sure that I don’t prefer him as he is at present. In fact, I believe that I could live very comfortably with this kind of a William. I could cope with this one. ‘Quiet, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘Naturally he’s quiet.’ No arguments and criticisms, she thought, no constant admonitions, no rules to obey, no ban on smoking cigarettes, no pair of cold disapproving eyes watching me over the top of a book in the evenings, no shirts to wash and iron, no meals to cook – nothing but the throb of the heart machine, which was rather a, soothing sound anyway and certainly not loud enough to interfere with television. ‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘I do believe I’m suddenly getting to feel the most enormous affection for him. Does that sound queer?’ ‘I think it’s quite understandable.’ ‘He looks so helpless and silent lying there under the water in his little basin.’ ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘He’s like a baby, that’s what he’s like. He’s exactly like a little baby.’ Landy stood still behind her, watching. ‘There,’ she said softly, peering into the basin. ‘From now on Mary’s going to look after you all by herself and you’ve nothing to worry about in the world. When can I have him back home, Doctor?’ ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘I said when can I have him back – back in my own house?’ ‘You’re joking,’ Landy said. She turned her head slowly around and looked directly at him. ‘Why should I joke?’ she asked. Her face was bright, her eyes round and bright as two diamonds. ‘He couldn’t possibly be moved.’ ‘I don’t see why not.’ ‘This is an experiment, Mrs Pearl.’ ‘It’s my husband, Dr Landy.’ A funny little nervous half-smile appeared on Landy’s mouth. ‘Well…’ he said. ‘It is my husband, you know.’ Ihere was no anger in her voice. She spoke quietly, as though merely reminding him’ of a simple fact. ‘That’s rather a tricky’ point,’ Landy said, wetting his lips. ‘You’re a widow now, Mrs Pearl. I think you must resign yourself to that fact.’ She turned away suddenly from the table and crossed over to the window. ‘I mean it,’ she said, fishing in her bag for a cigarette. ‘I want him back.’ Landy watched her as she put the cigarette between her lips and lit it. Unless he were very much mistaken, there was something a bit odd about this woman, he thought. She seemed almost pleased to have her husband over there in the basin. He tried to imagine what his own feelings would be if it were his wife’s brain lying there and her eye staring up at him out of that capsule. He wouldn’t like it. ‘Shall we go back to my room now?’ he said. She was standing by the window, apparently quite calm and relaxed, puffing her cigarette. ‘Yes, all right.’ On her way past the table she stopped and leaned over the basin once more. ‘Mary’s leavingnow, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘And don’t you worry about a single thing, you understand? We’re going to get you right back home where, we can look after you properly just as soon as we possibly can. And listen dear…’ At this point she paused and carried the cigarette to her lips, intending to take a puff. Instantly the eye flashed. She was looking straight into it at the time, and right in the centre of it she saw a tiny but brilliant flash of light, and the pupil contracted into a minute black pinpoint of absolute fury. At first she didn’t move. She stood bending over the basin, holding the cigarette up to her mouth, watching the eye. Then very slowly, deliberately, she put the cigarette between her lips and took a long suck. She inhaled deeply, and she held the smoke inside her lungs for three or four seconds; then suddenly, whoosh, out it came through her nostrils in two thin jets which struck the water in the basin and billowed out over the surface in a thick blue cloud, enveloping the eye. Landy was over by the door, with his back to her, waiting. ‘Come on, Mrs Pearl,’ he called. ‘Don’t look so cross, William,’ she said ‘softly. ‘It isn’t any good looking cross.’ Landy turned his head to see what she was doing. ‘Not any more it isn’t,’ she whispered. ‘Because from now on, my pet, you’re going to do just exactly what Mary tells you. Do you understand that?’ ‘Mrs Pearl,’ Land; said, moving towards her. ‘So don’t be a naughty boy again, will you, my precious,’ she said, taking another pull at the cigarette. ‘Naughty boys are liable to get punished most severely nowadays, you ought to know that.’ Landy was beside her now, and he took her by the arm and began drawing her firmly but gently away from the table. ‘Good-bye, darling,’ she called. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ ‘That’s enough, Mrs Pearl.’ ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ she cried, looking up at Landy with big bright eyes. ‘Isn’t he heaven? I just can’t wait to get him home.’

From Horror photos & videos July 07, 2018 at 08:00PM

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