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out-of-control · 2 years

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WINDOWS

words: 1863

warnings: suicide attempt, hospitals, self harm implied (past), alchoholism

summary: Jax, 3 years after it all.

He turns the object over in his hand, the one that never healed right, feeling numbed. He tries to steel himself for it, tell himself that clichè line, that they'll all be better off, et cetera, et cetera, et fucking cetera, but the thing is, he knows it isn't true. This is definitely going to make some people really miserable for a long time. And it is going to ruin Alice's life.

This is the most selfish thing he will ever do.

He almost wants to laugh. Here he is, finally letting himself get what he wants. And he still feels guilty. There is no calm. There is no peace. It's just that old familiar self-hatred. If this isn't proof that he'll never be rid of it, he doesn't know what is. He's so tired. That's all there is to it. He's tired, and he's sick of it all.

"You're stalling," he whispers to himself. Then he takes a deep breath.

–

He wakes up in hospital white, and the first thing he does is look for a window.

Yanking tubes from his body and throwing away those tissue-thin sheets, he makes his way over to the glass.

He can't figure out how to open it.

He goes back to the bed.

–

They tell him he called 911 on himself. He doesn't remember doing that. It doesn't sound like him.

–

When they let Alice in, she looks worse than he's ever seen her; with her face puffed up, her eyes hollow, she's like a drowning victim. The first thing she does is slap him, and he thinks, Fair.

Then she grasps his hand, and he hisses through his teeth at the pain of moving his arm, but doesn’t take it away. From the bedside, she lays her forehead down on his shoulder and says nothing. He's grateful for that. He turns his face into her hair, breathing in her perfume: something fresh, green.

After a solid twenty minutes of total silence, a nurse pads her way into the room and says, "Mr. Donovan, your father is here."

"I don't want him," he says, feeling his heart rate spike. "Alice, please."

Alice hesitates, and he squeezes her hand tighter, pleading.

Alice and the nurse exchange a look, and then the nurse squares her shoulders, knowing the information she's about to relay is going to be incredibly poorly received.

He turns his face aside and looks out the window, as Alice breathes on his shoulder, in and out.

"You know they've got me in this dress that lets my ass hang out?" he says.

She makes a noise. He can't tell if it's a laugh or a sob.

–

They don't send him to the psych ward, but it's a near thing.

–

"You called 911 yourself," Alice shouts, tears streaming down her face, "You didn't want to, you changed your mind."

"So I failed," he screams at her. "I failed. That's all it is."

"You didn't fail," she says, and gathers him into her arms. Despite himself, despite his rage, his despair, he curls his spine, buries his face in her frizzy hair. "You survived. You fucking bastard, it's not failure," she weeps, "Can't you see it like that?"

He can't, he thinks. He doesn't know how, he thinks. "I want to," he whispers, and begins to cry.

–

The shrink gives him a handbook.

One of the pages asks: What do I need and want?

Not to return to the hospital

Relief from depression

Relief from distressing voices

A life without alcohol or other drug problems

Financial help

A place to live

A trusted friend

Better relationships

Hope for the future

Other:

He checks off six boxes. Under Other, he writes, NEW TATTOO, just to be an ass.

Beneath the list reads: Know that you can have these things.

–

With the black guitar sold long ago, he buys a new one to practice on. Well, a new old one. Pre-loved. A real Strat, not a knockoff. Red body, black pickguard. He’s a little in love with it if he’s honest. Nerve damage makes it hard to hold a chord, but he tries.

He considers taking up bass instead, putting his handful of informal lessons from years ago to the test, but he just can’t quite bring himself to do it. When it comes down to it, he’s just not a bassist.

–

His first foray into sobriety doesn’t even last a month. His hands shake a little as he’s paying in the liquor store; the sound of glass clinking together in the bag is deafening to him. When he gets home, he stands the bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey on his counter and just stares at it for a few minutes, pacing from one wall to the other. Then he reaches an arm out, and there’s seventeen days down the drain.

–

They tried to get him to go to AA, but the God stuff was too big a turnoff. So he and the shrink are trying to come up with something else that works for him.

Funnily, he finds that praying the Rosary calms him down.

–

He calls Anna up. They haven't spoken in a while, not since he got fired. Not since he got so drunk he shattered her glass coffee table and flaked on paying for it. Not since she cut him off one night and he started screaming at her in the packed bar. Not since Martine had to throw him out of the Pross.

It's stilted, intensely awkward, but his shrink has told him he needs to try and make amends, to connect with people again. She agrees to meet for lunch. He finds he's missed her so much it hurts.

–

The first time he goes to a show afterwards is terrifying. Xs on his hands, he spends the entire set lurking with his back pressed to the wall. But he makes it through the night.

–

The first time he has sex afterwards is even more terrifying. She's cool, nice, has more tattoos than he does. He lets her take his jacket off and tries not to tremble, praying she'll ignore his left wrist. Instead, she gives him a quick glance, before pushing him down on the bed. She peels out of her jeans and straddles him, shows him the lines across her thighs. Then she takes his hands and puts them on her skin, right over the marks. He has to blink hard.

She kisses him very sweetly for a one-night stand, and in the morning he makes them both eggs. They don't see each other again.

–

He waits in line for two hours for a shitty little Friday the 13th flash piece. While he’s getting it inked into a gap on his tricep, the artist casually mentions that they happen to be doing touch ups for cheap this weekend. He glances down at the silvery pink line on his forearm, slicing carelessly through the black ink. Then he says thanks, but he doesn’t have anything he needs touched up.

–

He has a bad week and relapses again, hard. It was bound to happen, he thinks pessimistically, but it doesn’t erase the shame. He doesn’t tell his shrink for weeks, because he’s irrationally terrified the guy will yell at him. When he finally does admit it, like wrenching shrapnel from his chest, the shrink just says, “We’ll make a plan.” And they do.

–

He plays a song all the way through for the first time. He doesn't cry, but it's a near thing.

–

Leaning against a headstone, he says, out loud, “I don’t know, man. It’s so hard sometimes. Duh. It’s hard for everyone. But it’s still hard.” He picks at the grass. “I wish you were here a lot,” he says, more quietly. “I think we’d get on like a house on fire.”

Then he fishes in his pocket for a lighter. “I’m pretty sure I remember you smoking a couple times, so I hope you don’t mind.” Stretching out a leg, cigarette smoking away between his lips, he continues, “Anyway, I got a job. Which is great. Some hole-in-the-wall computer repair place. It’s not much, but. I dunno. It’s nice to be putting things back together.”

–

“So I had this girlfriend,” he says one day in therapy, “when I was younger. And I think she maybe fucked me up pretty bad.”

–

“Should you even be smoking?” Martine says suspiciously, ashing her cigarette.

He grins, and takes a drag. “The doctors said I got to pick one vice to keep.” “Smoking beat out sex?” she says, skeptical.

Now he makes a face and sighs. “Well, no. But I’m basically giving celibacy a whirl anyway, so.”

She gestures at the rosary wound around his left wrist. “Really leaning into the Catholic thing, huh.”

“Yeah,” he says, blowing smoke at her. “You know I’ve got mommy issues. I’m thinking of getting an immaculate heart on my ass.”

It’s Martine’s turn to make a face.

–

He tries to make pad thai on his stovetop. He burns the bottom, which is, of course, fucking typical. But the rest tastes fine. He saves the recipe.

–

To the headstone, he says, “So I found one of your old coworkers– colleagues, whatever– on Facebook, and we actually chatted for, like, hours. About you, of course. And I gotta say, I really– you had girlfriends? I can’t believe I didn’t know that. I mean, I can, because there’s no way Miles was gonna tell me. If he even knew, I guess. Not like I’m gonna ask. But holy shit, dude. I mean, holy shit. This whole time, I thought I was– Man. So is it genetic?”

The headstone doesn’t reply, but a robin sings somewhere.

–

He lands a new job, actually officially doing sound for a venue he loves. The Pross went under about a year ago. He rides past it every once in a while. Now it’s an Italian restaurant. He wants to think, Good riddance, on account of the terms he left on, but honestly, he’s more compelled to salute.

–

He gets a call from an unknown number. He almost lets it go to voicemail, sure it's another fucking telemarketer. But for some reason he picks up. Phone clamped between his ear and shoulder as he does the dishes, he says, "Jax Donovan."

He hasn't heard the voice in five years, but he recognizes it from "Hey, feel free to hang up on my ass if you so choose–" The phone nearly falls into the sink but he catches it just in time, and presses it back to his ear, wet hands notwithstanding "--but hi. It's Jim."

There's a buzzing in his head. "This is Jax," he says, stupidly.

A pause. "Yeah, it sure is."

"Fuck me," Jax groans, bringing a hand to his head. He stares across the room, through the kitchen window. The sky is clear. Pale blue, like a robin’s eggshell. This is not a phone call he ever expected to get. The silence stretches on between them as Jax tries to figure out if he does, in fact, so choose.

Ultimately, he thinks he makes the right decision.

“Uh, how have you been, man?”

#words

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prnanxiety · 6 months

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10/19/23

Brief, tense moment with a patient today.

I was speaking with a patient freshly admitted to our unit yesterday evening. Young, postpartum depression, BPD(not yet diagnosed), had a flare up and made a suicide attempt. Apparently they stayed up all night sobbing and panicking about their involuntary admission status and had to get a sedative injected just so they could go to sleep; I didn't even see her awake or present on the unit until about 10am.

She had just finished speaking with the doctors about what's going on with her stay, and was pretty tearful about the news; no answers about a discharge date. It's never easy for someone to hear "we're holding you hear against your will and we're not telling you when we're going to let you leave," but in her case, that was compounded by the fact that she couldn't see her infant son in the meantime. You have to be 18 or older to visit a patient, after all.

I was talking with her, assessing her, getting to know her in general in the middle of the day room, where she was pretty clearly and openly weeping. During one moment where I was just letting her cry, being with her in the moment and so on, one of the other patients came up. It was her roommate. She put a hand on her shoulder and started talking to her, saying things like "It'll be fine."

From the moment she put her hand on my patients shoulder, I was on edge. If I interrupt them, I give them the impression they're not allowed to talk to each other or give each other encouragement or bond. That's stupid, unhelpful, and in any case, unenforceable. Patients can and should talk to each other about why they're there, if they feel comfortable sharing. But if I let her go on, I mean, I haven't vetted her! How do I know she isn't going to tell her something staff simply can't promise? One of the simple things every doctor and nurse learns in school is, no matter what, you cannot under any circumstance tell a patient "everything will be fine." Can't do it! All of us know of a case in which things got worse for somebody and they didn't recover! How do we know it won't be her?

Thankfully, she didn't do any of that. She was definitely telling her a bunch of things she herself wanted to hear when she was admitted, but isn't that kind of a good thing? She's not a member of the staff, so what the hell does it matter what she says? The patient would hear anything she says differently from what I say anyways, even if we said the exact same things, word for word.

So she ended up encouraging her to trust us, called the staff excellent, said some things about laying a foundation for her future after discharge, et cetera. By then there were actually a lot of people in the day room, and it was getting pretty loud, so I actually had her come back and talk with me one on one in their room. In any case, I didn't want to risk her roommate misspeaking. But her roommate was discharged just a few hours later, which I think was a big player in helping this patient calm down.

In other news, as I was leaving tonight one of my favorite coworkers told me when she first met me she thought I was "building bombs back at my apartment." My whole life since turning 18 and going to college I give off too much of a weird reserved loner vibe. People usually love me when they get to know me, but, fuck! I put up too many walls.

#dear diary #diary entry #nursing #psych #psychiatry #psychosis #nurse #schizophrenia #actually bpd #cw: suicide #suicide #bpd #cw: bpd

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recapitulation · 3 years

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[id: two gifs from the 36th episode of the series "Word of Honor," showing Wen Kexing smiling widely while shaking his head before turning to Zhou Zishu. /end id]

#hi shelley this is for u #shledit #shl #wen kexing #my gifs #I'm giffing the rejects for that smile set #this one was rejected bc anything after ep 35 was a blanket reject ALKSF #crying and weeping et cetera......

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piratebay · 2 years

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can’t find this app game i used to play where u go around finding pieces to fit a scroll i think?? or maybe it was just a picture.. and i do not rmr the name + am losing all hope. it was rly pretty, really easy + i need to rmr more abt it i can only rmr the charas voices the music + the scenery google is Not helping me 🥺😵😢

#And op isnt loading for some reason im cold n i think im reading a racist ass book what have i done #the main chara was a monk!! also but im not having luck w those. search terms ;_; crying weeping desparation et cetera #404 not found #I THINK it was made for like children lol but it was rly nice finishing it + i wanna tell a friend BUT I CANT REMEMBERRR

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rosethesongbird · 4 years

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Gotta Have You

Music had always been a part of Jaskier's life.

In childhood, nursery rhymes, and songs mothers would sing lovingly to their children as they fell asleep. As a teenager, a method of showing off how brooding you were, how "deep" your thoughts were, and of course, women loved men who could sing.

As an adult, it was his way of life. It was a salve in times of pain, and a celebration in times of joy. It was how he kept from starving--most of the time, anyway--and it was his way in to all the places he loved to go. Parties, bars, et cetera. "Food, women, and wine," and all the other things in life that there were to love.

But he had gotten too comfortable. He had allowed all of his songs that he loved to perform be about one person. Always a mistake. You break up with that person, and all of those songs become painful. Of course, it's not like this hadn't happened before. On again-off again relationships seemed to be something that he had grown accustomed to. No one seemed to be able to handle him being, well, himself in more than small doses.

It was foolish to think that the person he thought was his best friend in the whole world was any different.

He had been with Geralt on the mountain. Yennefer had just left in a huff--not sure he wanted to know what that was about--and he had tried to comfort his longtime friend. For the first time, Geralt snapped. He had always joked around with Jaskier, that he wanted him to go away, that he was a poor traveling companion, and that he was going to leave him in a tavern somewhere. At least, he thought they were jokes. Apparently not. The look on Geralt's face implied that he would have slit Jaskier's throat if he didn't leave, and quick. Nothing in the words implied "Come back when I feel better, Jaskier," or "You're an idiot but you're still my friend, Jaskier." He never wanted to see the bard again. Jaskier managed to squeak out a "See you around, Geralt," but deep down he knew it wasn't true. When Geralt wanted to avoid someone, he avoided someone. "Destiny" be damned.

He managed to hold in his emotions until he saw Roach waiting patiently among the other horses. She had finally grown more comfortable with him, and when Geralt let him touch her she leaned into him. She knew his touch as the touch of a friend. He let out a sob when he saw her, breaking out into a run down the rest of the hill into the town. He ran through the town and halfway to the next before his tear-clouded eyes betrayed him and he fell face down into a muddy puddle. Collecting himself the best he could, he leaned up on a nearby tree, only to remember he had no food, no coin, and not a single friend in the world. Geralt might as well have left him to die. In a moment of clarity, he had decided that he was going to move on, go to the next town, and return to pubs and taverns all across the Continent as an entertainer.

Of course, when he got there, he couldn't bring himself to sing or play.

He had hoped to charm his way into a room in the inn. If he was being realistic with himself, they gave him the room because they felt sorry for him. Spying his face in the mirror was quite a sight to see. Muddy, scraped, with two very telling tear tracks plowing their way from eye to neck. He was completely and totally alone. No one at the tavern spoke to him, and he couldn't bring himself to burden anyone else with his once-bubbly personality. The barkeep always gave him a free drink or two, sometimes wine, sometimes coffee. He wasn't sure why. It was otherwise a lively place--often having other bards and troubadours performing, even a female minstrel a few times--but he couldn't stand to listen to the songs of love and adventure anymore, instead departing to the room he reluctantly called "his." Worse was when he retreated to the barren room and he could hear the entire bar in a rousing chorus of "Toss A Coin To Your Witcher." It was all he could do to cradle his head in his hands and sit on the small bed. He didn't even cry anymore. There was no point.

The passage of time didn't matter. He lingered in that town for nearly a fortnight.

A strapping, shockingly muscular woman was laughing, strumming a lute and crooning alongside two older men, also equipped with instruments of their own. "Instruments of torture," thought Jaskier, sitting in his customary place at the far corner of the bar. He always faced away from the other patrons, not wanting to see women kissing husbands and men carousing with their large groups of friends. He just looked out the window. It was a rainy day today, and it was at least pleasantly warm inside--between the groups of warm bodies and the fire roaring at the other side of the room.

In an effort to avoid recognition, he had gotten rid of the red trousers and doublet he had come here in. They were filthy, anyway, and he had barely enough energy to remain alive, let alone do laundry. A simple white cotton shirt and grey breeches were enough. He nursed his pint of ale. He was always thankful for the free alcohol but it was never enough to get sufficiently drunk. The woman began singing softly, finally deciding it was time to stop messing around and earn her keep. The other patrons grew quiet.

"Another damned love song," he thought. "Might as well stay and listen. Have to get back to these eventually, and it's time to rip the bandage off."

Gray, quiet and tired and mean Picking at a worried seam I try to make you mad at me, open and prone Red eyes and fire and signs I'm taken by a nursery rhyme I want to make a ray of sunshine and never leave home

Hot tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He set his jaw and sighed, determined to hold together, fingers running through his hair, his other shaky hand pulling the ale to his lips. A stray throught crossed his mind about the only person he knew who could always stay stoic, and his shoulders began to shake.

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine No, no, no, no, no, nothing else will do I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you.

The tears fell. He set the half-finished ale aside and placed both arms on the table, leaning over. His face was twisted in sorrow. "This is so stupid," he thought, choking back a sob. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just like everything else." His cuffs were wet with salty remains of silent weeping. The door to the bar opened and some of the patrons began speaking again, softly, amongst themselves. A gravelly voice ordered a drink. The minstrel woman kept singing, undeterred, one of the men deftly harmonizing.

The road gets cold, there's no spring in the meadow this year I'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears Oh, such a prima donna, sorry for myself But green, it is also summer And I won't be warm 'til I'm lying in your arms

"That's it," he thought. "I'm leaving. Fuck the chorus, fuck this bar. I'm going to bed." He downed the rest of the ale, despite the tightness rising in his throat, and managed to rise from his seat. "Just in time for the verse," he thought. "Wouldn't want to miss this." He couldn't even help being sarcastic when it was himself on the receiving end. The tears had stopped, and he wiped a few cold, lingering drops from his jawline.

I see it all through a telescope: guitar, suitcase, and a warm coat Lying in the back of the blue boat, humming a tune

He began walking toward the stairway that led to his room. The single newcomer sitting at the bar was turned slightly, doing his best to ignore the wistful atmosphere in the bar.

The man's eyes flashed, golden. He called out. "Jaskier,"

Jaskier couldn't hold back a sob. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and kept walking.

"Jaskier, come here,"

"No." The man was following him now.

"Jaskier, I'm sorry--"

"I could have been on the coast by now, Geralt," tears were shedding freely now. He turned to face the tall, oppressive frame. "Was it too much to ask? To have a friend for once?"

Geralt's eyes were shockingly soft. "That's not why I asked you--"

"I don't care why you asked, Geralt, and for that matter you didn't ask, wait, stop--"

Geralt was gripping his shoulders, jaw set. The intensity of his gaze stopped the bard's speech immediately.

"I'm sorry, Jaskier." He sighed. "I shouldn't have said those things to you, and I'm sorry. I waited for you, in the first town. I thought you would come back, and when you didn't, I got worried that you got into trouble, so I came here."

"Well, that certainly doesn't excuse--"

Geralt stooped to embrace the smaller man. Jaskier stopped speaking and started wailing, embracing him back. The witcher waited for a moment before shushing him and beginning to stroke the back of his head with a free hand. When the wails slowed to sniffles, he pulled away, resting his forehead on Jaskier's.

"Look at me."

Blue eyes, stained with sorrow, met amber.

"You are a worthy traveling companion. No one else, in the whole Continent, as worthy to travel with me as you. Alright?"

"But you said--"

"Fuck what I said."

Jaskier let out a small laugh. "Alright," he said, rubbing the last tears from his eyes.

"Now, I plan to stay here a night, and then go to the coast." Jaskier nodded. "And you're coming with me."

"On a hunt?"

"No. Just for..." The white-haired man trailed off. Jaskier waited a moment, to see if his friend would finish his sentence.

"For fun?"

"For fun."

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine No, no, no, no, no Nothing else will do I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you.

#songfic #the witcher #geralt of rivia #geralt #jaskier #dandelion #emotional whump #hurt/comfort #emotional h/c #h/c #fanfic #gotta have you #i edited the lyrics but only slightly #my writing

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cawlo · 5 years

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Pakan word – gýχy

Okay so uhh this is gýχy [ˈŋyxʏ]. It means “call” or “voice” and is used in some rather interesting ways if I do say myself.

So in Old Pakan, there was this word ńuku [ˈɴukʰu], which meant “(angry) voice”. It came from Proto-Kotekko-Pakan *ńucu (> Old Kot. nuco > */nyɟ/ > Kotekkic nij [niç] “sign”, “warning”).

One of the ways that ńuku could be used was with the verb meku “to cut”, “to penetrate”. The phrase meku ńuku meant “to scream (angrily)” in the sense that you sort of penetrate the air with your voice.

The word meku as “to cut” was going out of fashion in favor of kahka. Now meku was basically only used in this expression. Furthermore, ńuku’s meaning had shifted to a more neutral term for “voice”. Because the original meaning had been blurred, the speakers reanalyzed the phrase with meku being the word for being angry, while ńuku simply meant “voice”.

Through analogy, the speakers started using ńuku (later gýχy) as an adverb sort of word, that turned ‘verb X’ into ‘the sound you make when you verb X’.

That resulted in some (in my opinion) cool phrases:

θíta gýχy “to laugh” (θíta “to have fun”, “to play”) χýχy gýχy “to weep (in pain)” (χýχy “to be in pain”) láy gýχy “to cry (from sadness)” (láy “to be sad”) láθy gýχy “to pitter-patter” (láθy “to rain”, “to fall”) θíθa gýχy “to make out” (θíθa “to kiss” – this refers to how passionate kissing is often accompanied by sounds)

Et cetera!

#conlang #conlanging #conlangs #conlanger #conlangers

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calamity-bean · 6 years

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harlots 2.05

An episode in which things REALLY start to get serious! Not that that should come as a surprise, really — after all, we’re in the back half of the season now, y’all! In season 1, this was about the point when the merry revels and domestic drama started to really make room for murder and conspiracy and other awfulness (not there wasn’t awfulness in the earlier episodes as well). In this season, we’ve still got the revels, we’ve still got the domestic drama in spades, and we’ve known all along there was disaster simmering in the background ... But by the end of 2.05, I think we can safely say that it’s begun to boil.

Scattered thoughts, reactions, rambling, and screaming under the cut.

Well we started off with another TALLY HO scene so give me a moment to wrestle my soul back into my body real quick!

Actually, technically we started with Margaret, Nancy, and Emily Lacey sprawled drunk on a couch together, passing around a pipe. Which really is utterly, charmingly timeless in how much it resembles many of my own girls’ nights? And this is something I love to see, and we were fortunate enough to see a good deal of it in this episode: FRIENDSHIP. Companionship. Support and solidarity — the “five-headed beast” defending one another, Amelia confiding in Rasselas for guidance and support, even some tender reconciliation between Mags and Will! I’m in love!!

That said ... There are serious fractures in many of these relationships already, and I’m sure we’re going to see even more stress applied. Emily Lacey is a weak link in the five-headed beast, but I can’t fault her for that. She’s in a tough position. Also, while it’s possible, the timing of her announcement makes me REALLY doubt she’s pregnant.

Also did I mention AMELIA AND RASSELAS cause oh my god!!! I’m so happy we haven’t forgotten about their friendship!!! The little forehead kiss! The hug!!

Rasselas’s boyfriend has apparently passed away, though, which made me WEEP and write a whole lot of frowny-crying faces in my notes. :’( The way Lydia has him lay his head on her shoulder would be SO cute if it weren’t, y’know, Lydia.

On another Amelia note ... I have a lot of thoughts about the Violet / Amelia / Hunt situation, and a lot of fears. As I’ve said many times, I really love all three of these characters. None of them have done anything WRONG in regards to this little quasi-romance, really, but it’s a BAD situation, it’s just a perilous and uncomfortable quagmire that is NOT fair to any of them. Hunt’s whole demeanor toward Amelia this episode was incredibly adorable and sweet, but it’s really hard to watch knowing that this surely is gonna end in one or all of them getting hurt.

GOD seriously though I was cringing SO HARD for him throughout his proposal and et cetera ... Like it was honestly really fucking cute and respectful, I may have squeed a bit at certain points (in between watching through my fingers because the secondhand embarrassment was too much), but knowing what he doesn’t know is AGONY.

IMMENSELY pleased by Hunt’s character development and trajectory in general this episode, though. We’re getting so much of what I’ve wanted to see from him all along (see this post and this one): his faith in the law as the ultimate arbiter of right/wrong has been shaken, and he’s acknowledging his moral uncertainties and taking a more proactive role in going after the true criminals. Would have been perfectly happy to see him reach this point without a romantic element to spur his conscience, but I’ll take what I’m given. Still worried about the love triangle situation; still wish he would release Violet from her indenture and pardon the rest of her sentence for such a petty crime; but I’m overall really pleased with his direction this episode nonetheless.

Another big part of this episode was our very own Hades and Persephone. As a ship, Fallon and Lucy are not my jam. As a dynamic, it’s REALLY difficult for me to parse how much of this is Lucy manipulating him, or simply saying what she thinks he wants to hear, and how much is Lucy getting suckered in by his dark charms and letting herself get carried away or even fall for him. His grooming of her continues, and for the moment, at least, she seems more than happy to be groomed. (Though there ARE hints she might be playing him ... That mention of Kitty was a little out of place.) I’d be lying if I said I'd never gone home with a weird guy who immediately showed me his knife collection, though, so ... Don’t know that I have any room to judge her taste in men.

I’ve saved the most significant and least pleasant plot arc for last ... the Spartans and the Vestal Virgin. There is a LOT to unpack here. There is a lot to be said about Harcourt, and how we see him gaslighting Isabella, and how the plan was doomed from the moment he walked into Golden Square — not solely because of the necklace, but simply because he is far, FAR too clever a beast to have been fooled by the way Charlotte was acting. There is a lot to be said the immense consequences this is going to have for Charlotte in terms of both external and internal conflict, and SUCH chilling resonance in Lydia’s line about how, “Your mother was never strong enough to help with new girls. You surpass her in every way.”

But for now, I’ll simply mention the thing that struck me most: The shit Lydia does? Kidnapping virgins? Is literally no secret from anyone in her house. Oh, the Spartans might be, but the Vestal Virgin party is an ANNUAL ENDEAVOR. Every goddamn year, for decades, Lydia has been kidnapping, drugging, and selling a virgin. All her girls know it’s happening at least to some extent, even if they don’t quite know the details or that the “new girls” are utterly unwilling ... But I daresay Charlotte and Mags are probably not the only right-hand girls Lydia’s tried to have help her with it outright.

“Can I play Vesta again?” Anne Pettifer does not show a MOMENT’S hesitance about this party. Her entire mood is excitement. And since, before Charlotte, she was something of Lydia’s top girl in the house ... I would not be surprised if loyal, dutiful Anne has “helped” with the new girls in the past.

#harlots hulu #charlotte wells #lydia quigley #margaret wells #nancy birch #emily lacey #amelia scanwell #josiah hunt #violet cross #prince rasselas #harcourt #harlots 205 #harlots meta #my meta #harlots spoilers #op #harlots

53 notes · View notes

the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

Alone

Case: 0161301

Name: Naomi Herne Subject: The events following the funeral of [her] fiancé, Evan Lukas Date: January 13th, 2016 Recorded by: direct from Naomi Herne, under the supervision of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

[John: Right, let’s try this.

Naomi: Really? Does that thing even work? It must be thirty years old.

John: I know, but we have previously had some success using it to record statements that our... digital recording software struggles with.

Naomi: Yeah, well that’s one way to put it. You need to get some better equipment.

John: Believe me, I have been trying. Still, the tape recorder seems to work fine as a backup, and I can have it transcribed later, so for now if you’d be so kind—

Naomi: You’re serious? You actually want me to tell my story into that rattling piece of junk? I see why no-one takes you guys seriously.

John: You’re under no obligation to speak to us.

Naomi: No, I just... I guess I’m just desperate. The last paranormal investigator I went to laughed at me when I suggested talking to you. Still, I-I guess you have to believe me.

John: Something like that.

Naomi: ... Okay, from where we left off?

John: Probably best to start over. Name, date, subject, et cetera. I’m not optimistic that any of the previous recording will be salvageable.

Naomi: Fine. My name is Naomi Herne, and I’m making a statement about the events following the funeral of my fiancé, Evan Lukas. The date is the 13th of January 2016. To be honest I’m not even sure I should be here. What happened was weird and, alright, I can’t think of a rational explanation for it, but I was distraught. I still am. I should go. I probably just imagined the whole thing. He’s gone and that’s all there is to it.

John: That’s certainly possible. It might all be in your head, though there is the matter of the stone.

Naomi: That could be... I don’t know. I just don’t know what to think.

John: Take your time.

Naomi: Wait, where are you going?

John: I was going to give you some privacy while you make your statement.

Naomi: Ok, it’s just... could you stay please? I don’t want to be alone.

John: Very well. Let’s start from the beginning.]

Alright. I guess the beginning would be when I met Evan. I’ve never really been the social type. I’ve always been more comfortable alone, you know? My father died when I was 5 years old and my mother spent so much time working to keep us fed that I hardly ever saw her. I wasn’t bullied in school or anything like that. I mean, to be bullied you need to be noticed and I made sure that I wasn’t. It was the same in secondary school and even in uni up at Leeds. When everyone was moving out into shared houses for second year, I stayed in a nice cosy room for one in university accommodation. I’ve always just been happier alone.

Well, maybe happier isn’t quite the right word. I did get a bit lonely sometimes. I’d hear laughter coming from other rooms in my building or see a group of friends talking in the sun outside and maybe I’d wish I had something like that, but it never really bothered me. I knew my own company and was comfortable with it. I didn’t need other people and they certainly didn’t need me. The only person who ever really seemed to worry about it was Pastor David. He worked in the Chaplaincy, and I saw him occasionally when work or stress was getting to me. My mum’s a Methodist, and I felt more comfortable talking to him that any of the secular counsellors. He used to tell me it wasn’t natural for people to live in isolation, that we were creatures of community by nature. I remember he always used to say that he was “worried I’d get lost”. Back then, I didn’t know what he meant. I think I do now, though. Anyway, the point is that when I graduated three years ago, I left Leeds with a first in Chemistry and no real friends to speak of. And that was fine by me.

I got a job as a science technician down in Woking. It didn’t pay well, and the children were a thick, entitled lot, but it was enough to live on and kept me close enough to London that I could apply for the various lab jobs that I actually wanted. It was interviewing for one of these where I met Evan. He was going for the same position as I was – lab assistant in one of the UCL Biochemistry departments. He got the job, in the end, but I didn’t care. He was so unlike anyone I’d ever met before. He started talking to me before the interview, and I amazed myself by actually talking back. When he asked me questions, I didn’t feel uneasy or worried about my answers, I just found myself telling this stranger all about myself, without any self-consciousness at all. When he was called in for his interview, I actually felt a pang of loss like nothing I’d known before. All for a stranger who I’d met barely ten minutes ago. When I came out of the building after my own, somewhat disastrous, interview and saw him standing there waiting for me... I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than in that moment.

We went out, and dating gradually turned into living together. I’d had two boyfriends in the past – both short-lived relationships that ended abruptly. In both cases they said it was because they never really felt like I wanted them around and, looking back, that was kind of true. With Evan it was different. It never seemed like his being there stopped me being myself or crossed into spaces that I saw as my own. Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me, it only came as a surprise to realise that we hadn’t said it already. He had friends, as well, plenty of friends, how could he not? And he would take me out to meet them when I wanted to, and when I didn’t he let me be. After a year with him I actually had what could perhaps be called a social life and, more than that, I didn’t hate it. I always used to roll my eyes at people who said that their loved ones ‘completed them’, but I honestly can’t think of any other way to describe how it felt to be with Evan. I proposed to him after only two years, and he said yes.

I’ll skip over the bit where he dies. It’s only been a year, and I don’t want to spend an hour crying into your crappy tape player. Congenital, they said. Some problem with his heart. Always been there, but never diagnosed. No warning. One in a million chance. Blah. Blah. Blah. He was gone. Just gone. And I was alone again.

There was no-one I could talk to about it. All my friends had been his friends, and once he was gone it didn’t feel right to see them. I know, I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded, they would have said they were my friends too, but I could never bring myself to try. It felt more comfortable, more familiar, to be alone as though Evan had just been some wonderful dream I was now waking up from.

I don’t remember the week between his death and the funeral. I’m sure it must have happened, but I don’t have any memory of it at all. After leaving the hospital, the next thing that is properly clear in my mind is walking into that big, austere house. I don’t remember where it was, somewhere in Kent, I think, and I must have been given the address by someone in Evan’s family who had organised the funeral. It was strange. Evan never really talked about his family. He said he wasn’t on good terms with them because they were very religious, and he never had been. I’d never met or visited them, or even been told their names, as far as I remember. But they must have known me enough to invite me, as I somehow ended up at the right place. Just as well they took on the responsibility for the funeral. I was in no fit state to organise anything.

The house was very large, and very old. It had a high gate separating it from the main road, which has the name “Moorland House” carved into the stone of the gatepost. I drove there alone, my old, second-hand Vauxhall Astra complaining all the way. You remember that storm that hit at the end of last March? Well, I hardly noticed it. Thinking back, I really shouldn’t have been driving at all, but at the time it barely registered. The trees were bending ominously when I finally parked at Moorland House, and I immediately lost the only respectful hat that I owned to the wind. Evan had once told me that his family had a lot of money, and looking at this place I realised why the funeral was being held there. I could see round the side what appeared to be a well-kept mausoleum. The last resting place of Evan’s ancestors, and soon, I guessed, of Evan himself. This thought set me crying again, and it was in that state, weeping, windswept and soaked through from the rain, that I saw the door open.

I don’t know what I expected from Evan’s father. I knew he couldn’t be anything like the easy, charming man I’d fallen in love with, but the hard-faced stranger that confronted me on the doorstep still came as a shock. It was like looking at Evan, but as if age had drained all the joy and affection from him. I started to introduce myself, but he just shook his head and pointed inside, to a door down the corridor behind him, and spoke the only words he ever said to me. He said, “My son is in there. He is dead.” And then he turned and walked away, leaving me shaken, with no option but to follow him inside.

The house was full of people I didn’t know. None of the lovely, welcoming faces I’d come to know from Evan’s friends could be seen among the dour figures of his family. Each wore the same hard expression as his father, and I might have been imagining it, but I could have sworn that when they looked at me, their eyes were full of something dark. Anger, maybe? Blame? God knows I felt guilty enough about his death, though I have no idea why. None of them spoke to me or to each other, and the house was so quiet and still that at times it seemed like I could hardly breathe under the weight of the silence.

Finally, I came to the room where he was laid out. Evan, the man I was going to marry, was lying there in a shining oak casket that seemed too big for him, somehow. The coffin was open, and I could see him, dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit. I realised I had never seen him wear a suit before. Like everything else in his death, it seemed utterly alien to the life that had he had created for himself. I remember going to my father’s funeral when I was very young. I remember seeing him lying there, after the undertakers had done their business. My father had looked serene, peaceful, like he had calmly accepted the reality of his passing. It had comforted me, as a child, though it had done little to blunt the acute sense of loss I felt. There was none of that on Evan’s face. In death he seemed to have that same hardness and reproach that I saw on every one of the silent family that claimed him for their own.

I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like seconds, but when I turned around I almost shrieked to see dozens of black-clad figures stood there, staring at me. The rest of the Lukas family were standing, waiting without a word, as though I was between them and their prey. Which I suppose, in some ways, I was. Finally, an old man walked forward. He was small and hunched with age, his black suit hanging off his body like sagging flaps of skin. He spoke, “It’s time for you to leave. The burial is a family affair. I’m sure you want to be alone.”

I tried to reply but the words stuck in my throat. They stood there, waiting for me to respond or to leave, and I realised the old man was right. I did want to leave, to be alone. I didn’t care where I went, but I had to go, to get away from that awful place with its strange quiet watchers. I ran past them and out into the storm. Inside my car, I just turned on the engine and began to drive. I didn’t know where I was going, and could barely see a thing through my tears and the driving rain, but it didn’t matter. Just as long as I kept going, as long as I didn’t have to stop and think about what had just happened. Looking back, the only thing that surprises me about the crash is that it wasn’t bad enough to kill me.

When I became aware of myself again, I realised I was in the middle of a field, quite a distance from the road. The tracks behind me showed where I had skidded into the dirt. Luckily I hadn’t hit anything or flipped over, but smoke billowed from the engine of my poor old Astra, and it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere. It was dark, and the time on my dashboard said twelve minutes past eleven. My phone said the same thing. I had arrived at Moorland House at 6 o’clock, as instructed. Had I been driving for hours, or had I spent even longer with Evan’s body than I thought? I hadn’t hit anything, so I couldn’t have been knocked unconscious. Had I just been sitting there in my smoking car all that time?

It didn’t matter. The rain was beating down hard, and I needed to get some help. I tried to call the emergency services or use the GPS on my phone, but the screen just said “NO SERVICE”. I took a deep breath, trying to stifle panic, and got out the car. I was soaked through in less than ten seconds, as I struggled through the downpour towards the road. I could hear no sound except for the howling wind, and there were no headlights anywhere to be seen. Having no idea where I was, I made the decision to turn right and began to walk. I tried to use my phone again, but as I reached into my bag I realised how much of the rain had soaked through. Pressing the power button only confirmed what I already suspected – my phone wasn’t working. Anger washed over me, and all the bitterness and rage that had been building over the worst days of my life surged of me and I threw the useless lump of plastic at the ground. The corner shattered as it hit the road, then it bounced off the side and disappeared into the thick mud.

I suddenly felt very cold as I stood there in the road. Rain beating down, tears flowing freely, and utterly alone. I kept walking, desperately hoping to see headlights in the distance, but there was nothing but darkness and the steady pounding of the rain on miles of empty countryside in every direction. I didn’t have a watch, so without my phone I have no idea how long I walked. The cold bit into my soaked funeral clothes and I shivered, falling to my knees and just about giving up. No cars were coming, and I didn’t have the first clue where I was going.

It was then I noticed that the rain had stopped. Wiping the tears from my eyes I saw that a fog had gathered around me, and I could no longer see more than a few feet in front of me. I kept walking, though, as the clinging mist made me feel somehow even colder. The fog seemed to follow me as went and seemed to swirl around with a strange, deliberate motion. You’ll probably think me an idiot, but it felt almost malicious. I don’t know what it wanted, but somehow I was sure it wanted something. There was no presence to it, though, it wasn’t as though another person was there, it was... It made me feel utterly forsaken. I started to run, following as much of the road as I could see in the hopes of getting to the other side, but there seemed to be end to it.

I don’t know exactly when the hard tarmac of the road became dirt and grass, but I realised after a few minutes that I had strayed off the path. I tried to backtrack, but it was gone. All that remained was the fog and the skeletal outlines of half-glimpsed trees. The dark lines of them bent away from me at harsh angles, but if I tried to approach them then, rather than becoming clearer, the trees would disappear back into the hazy night and I would lose them. Kneeling down, I was surprised to realise that the ground I was now standing on was not wet. The hard-packed earth was damp from the creeping mist but it did not appear to have been rained on. The despair I felt was quickly turning into fear, and I kept moving forward, further into the fog.

I realised afterwards that the night should have been far too dark to see the fog. There were no lights there to show it, and the moon had been shrouded in storm clouds all night, but despite this I could clearly see it. Shifting, slate-grey and smelling of nothing at all. As I walked I saw more shapes nearby. Dark slabs of stone, sticking out of the ground, leaning and broken. Gravestones. They spread out in all directions, and the gentle blurring of the mist did nothing to soften the hard weight of their presence. I did not stop to read them.

I kept moving until I reached the centre of what I can only assume was a small cemetery, and there I found a chapel. The top of its steeple was lost in the gloom and the windows were dark. I started to feel relief, as though I might have found some sign of life at last. I began to circle it, moving around to where I assumed the front doors were. As I went I noticed that there was stained glass in the windows but, without any light from inside, I couldn’t make out the design. Finally, I came to front of the building, and I almost lost hope. Wrapped around the handles of the entrance was a sturdy iron chain. I would find no sanctuary here.

I came very close to making a rash decision at that point. I started to shout, to scream for help, but the sound seemed muffled and disappeared almost as soon as it left my throat. No-one heard me, but I continued shouting for some time, just to hear the noise, even if it did seem to die as soon as it touched the fog. It was useless, though, and as I finished I felt the prickling damp flow in and out of my lungs. It was cloying and heavy and I decided I had to do something. I started to look around the ground for the heaviest rock I could find. I was going to get inside that church, even if I had to break a window to do it. Anything to get out of the fog. I was sure that eventually someone would find me.

I noticed that one of the graves had been slightly broken by age, and a small chunk of it could be seen on the ground. It had an engraving of a cross on it, and the weighty lump of stone now lay embedded in the graveyard soil. I bent down to lift it, but as I did so I saw something that froze me in place. The grave was open. And it was empty.

It wasn’t dug up, exactly. The hole was neat, square and deep, as though ready for a burial. At the bottom there was a coffin. It was open, and there was nothing inside. I backed away, and almost fell into another open grave behind me. I started to look around the cemetery with increasing panic. Every grave was open and they were all empty. Even here among the dead, I was alone.

As I stared, the fog began to weigh me down. It coiled about me, its formless damp clung to me and began to drag pull me gently, slowly, towards the waiting pit. I tried to back away, but the ground was slick with dew and I fell. My fingers dug into the soft cemetery dirt as I looked around desperately for anything I could use to save myself, and my hand closed upon that heavy piece of headstone. It took all my self-control to keep a grip on that anchor, as I slowly dragged myself away from the edge of my lonely grave. Flowing around me, the very air itself willed me inside, but I struggled to my feet. The image of Evan’s family suddenly came into my mind, and I vowed to myself that they would not be the last human contact I ever had.

I looked towards the chapel, and saw with a start that the door was now open, the heavy chain discarded on steps in front. I ran to it as quickly as I could, crying out for help, but when I reached the threshold I stopped, and could only stare in horror. Through that door, where the inside of the chapel should be, was a field. It was bathed in sickly moonlight, and the fog rolled close to the ground. It seemed to stretch for miles, and I knew that I could wander there for years, and never meet another. I turned away from that door, but as I looked behind me I could have wept – beyond the graveyard’s edge lay that same field. Stretching off into the distance.

I had to make a choice, and so I began to run from that chapel, into the field behind me. I nearly fell into a hungry grave but kept my balance well enough to get beyond them. The fog seemed to be getting thicker, and moving through it was getting harder. It was like I was running against the wind, except the air was completely still. I could hardly breathe as I inhaled it. And then, as I found myself in the middle of that open, desolate field, I heard something. It was the strangest thing, but as I tried to run I could have sworn I heard Evan’s voice call to me. He said, “Turn left”. That’s it. That’s all he said. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what he told me to do. And I did it. I turned sharply to the left and kept on running. And then... nothing.

[John: That’s when the car hit you?]

Yes. I remember a second of headlights and then nothing until I woke up in the hospital.

[John: I see.]

So what do you think? Was it real?

[John: Well, we’ll need to do some investigation into a few of the details that you raised, but at first impressions I’d say it was only real insofar as trauma can have a very real effect on the mind. Beyond that, it’s difficult to prove either way, but I would suggest you leave the stone with us, so we can study it. And it would likely help you move past this unpleasant incident. Some time with a more... qualified care professional might also prove helpful.]

Right. I don’t know what I expected, really.

[John: We’ll let you know if we find anything.

Oh, this is ridiculous! I can’t believe I’ve wasted my time–

Archivist Notes:

Following Ms. Herne’s statement, we did as much follow-up as we were able, which admittedly wasn’t a lot. Evan Lukas did indeed pass away from heart failure on March the 22nd 2015, and his body was taken by his family for burial. All requests to the Lukas family for information or interviews have been very firmly rebuffed.

At roughly one in the morning on the 31st of March, Ms. Herne was involved in collision with one Michael Getty. She had apparently run out into the road in front of Mr. Getty’s car near Wormshill in the Kent Downs. She was quickly taken to a hospital and treated for concussion and dehydration. Her car was found abandoned in a field five miles away.

There are no cemeteries matching Ms. Herne’s description anywhere near the road she was found, nor could there have been any fog, given the incredibly high winds during the storm that night. I’d be tempted to chalk this one up to a hallucination from stress and trauma, if it wasn’t for the fact that when she was hit, Ms. Herne was found to be holding a piece of masonry. It appears to be lump of carved granite with an engraved cross design. The size and style match what would conceivably be found atop a headstone, though we have been unable to trace its origin. Still attached to it is a small fragment of what we can assume would have been the marker itself. The only text that can be made out simply reads “forgotten”. I’ve arranged for it to be transferred to the Institute’s artifact storage.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 13 Alone)

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG13 #MAG 13 #Alone #Statement #The Lonely #The Lukas Family

2 notes · View notes

writer59january13 · 3 years

Text

Justice for Mollie Tibbets

Preface:

Earlier today May 28th, 2021,

the 12-member jury unanimously

found Cristhian Bahena Rivera guilty

of first-degree murder in brutal stabbing death sentenced to life in prison

without the possibility of parole

of Mollie Tibbetts remembered as then friendly

20-year-old who was studying

to become a child psychologist.

IOWA CITY, Iowa

(killingly, jarringly inexplicable,

horribly, gruesomely, and forlornly),

the body found July 18, 2018, an exhumed decayed corpse belonging to young

vibrant coed twenty year old

college student Mollie Tibbetts.

Impossible mission to deduce senseless killing of innocent babe wild speculation perchance spurned, snubbed,or scorned love seriously gone wrong, she who disappeared

from her small hometown

in central Iowa sad swan song now plays, where every

last drop of sorrow rung,

now weeping family, friends,

relatives, et cetera subjected wrack

with lifelong emotional pain,

which searing inescapable

grief twill unrelentingly track ferociously, fiercely, and figuratively,

doth disallow recourse

to duck away

from heart wrenching quack king unbearably, terribly, and scathingly

will fully bill leave ably beak homing a folly,

mockery, and travesty,

sans time heals

all wounds (truly "FAKE"),

nonetheless psyche riving tragic

(irrevocable loss) doth pack.

Grievous punch greater then any

all star olympic pugilist

straight to the ab domain of opponent, where

rumor mongers mill and blab how this, that, or

another potential suspect,...

whence tissues dab

corners of crying eyes,

an endless stream

of tears merge with gab bullying utter disbelief.

Family/friends question the supposed almighty at devastating loss

to do nothing but bawl (at Baal) into the fox sized rabbit hole

trying with futility

to block (even crawl ling into every

rabbit hole) no bastion against implacable maddening crowded

house alive with murderous frenzy,

and a dialect (non

tickling) gentle Iowan drawl. Third anniversary regarding asper the impossibly steep toll the purposelessness killing, aforementioned deceased

affected sodden wet soul cannot process any (defying) logic,

a foregone lovely gal (same age

as my youngest daughter),

whose missed presence,

(albeit said slain lass

Mollie Tibbetts – permanent absence),

now created an expansive

infinite black sink hole.

0 notes

unsettlingshortstories · 4 years

Text

Emergency

Denis Johnson (1992)

I’d been working in the emergency room for about three weeks, I guess. This was in 1973, before the summer ended. With nothing to do on the overnight shift but batch the insurance reports from the daytime shifts, I just started wandering around, over to the coronary-care unit, down to the cafeteria, et cetera, looking for Georgie, the orderly, a pretty good friend of mine. He often stole pills from the cabinets.

He was running over the tiled floor of the operating room with a mop. “Are you still doing that?” I said.

“Jesus, there’s a lot of blood here,” he complained.

“Where?” The floor looked clean enough to me.

“What the hell were they doing in here?” he asked me.

“They were performing surgery, Georgie,” I told him.

“There’s so much goop inside of us, man,” he said, “and it all wants to get out.” He leaned his mop against a cabinet.

“What are you crying for?” I didn’t understand.

He stood still, raised both arms slowly behind his head, and tightened his ponytail. Then he grabbed the mop and started making broad random arcs with it, trembling and weeping and moving all around the place really fast. “What am I crying for?” he said. “Jesus. Wow, oh boy, perfect.”

I was hanging out in the E.R. with fat, quivering Nurse. One of the Family Service doctors that nobody liked came in looking for Georgie to wipe up after him. “Where’s Georgie?” this guy asked.

“Georgie’s in O.R.,” Nurse said.

“Again?”

“No,” Nurse said. “Still.”

“Still? Doing what?”

“Cleaning the floor.”

“Again?”

“No,” Nurse said again. “Still.”

Back in O.R., Georgie dropped his mop and bent over in the posture of a child soiling its diapers. He stared down with his mouth open in terror.

He said, “What am I going to do about these fucking shoes, man?”

“Whatever you stole,” I said, “I guess you already ate it all, right?”

“Listen to how they squish,” he said, walking around carefully on his heels.

“Let me check your pockets, man.”

He stood still a minute, and I found his stash. I left him two of each, whatever they were. “Shift is about half over,” I told him.

“Good. Because I really, really, really need a drink,” he said. “Will you please help me get this blood mopped up?”

Around 3:30 a.m. a guy with a knife in his eye came in, led by Georgie.

“I hope you didn’t do that to him,” Nurse said.

“Me?” Georgie said. “No. He was like this.”

“My wife did it,” the man said. The blade was buried to the hilt in the outside corner of his left eye. It was a hunting knife kind of thing.

“Who brought you in?” Nurse said.

“Nobody. I just walked down. It’s only three blocks,” the man said.

Nurse peered at him. “We’d better get you lying down.”

“Okay, I’m certainly ready for something like that,” the man said.

She peered a bit longer into his face.

“Is your other eye,” she said, “a glass eye?”

“It’s plastic, or something artificial like that,” he said.

“And you can see out of this eye?” she asked, meaning the wounded one.

“I can see. But I can’t make a fist out of my left hand because this knife is doing something to my brain.”

“My God,” Nurse said.

“I guess I’d better get the doctor,” I said.

“There you go,” Nurse agreed.

They got him lying down, and Georgie says to the patient, “Name?”

“Terrence Weber.”

“Your face is dark. I can’t see what you’re saying.”

“Georgie,” I said.

“What are you saying, man? I can’t see.”

Nurse came over, and Georgie said to her, “His face is dark.”

She leaned over the patient. “How long ago did this happen, Terry?” she shouted down into his face.

“Just a while ago. My wife did it. I was asleep,” the patient said.

“Do you want the police?”

He thought about it and finally said, “Not unless I die.”

Nurse went to the wall intercom and buzzed the doctor on duty, the Family Service person. “Got a surprise for you,” she said over the intercom. He took his time getting down the hall to her, because he knew she hated Family Service and her happy tone of voice could only mean something beyond his competence and potentially humiliating.

He peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk—that is, me—standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.

“What seems to be the trouble?” he said.

The doctor gathered the three of us around him in the office and said, “Here’s the situation. We’ve got to get a team here, an entire team. I want a good eye man. A great eye man. The best eye man. I want a brain surgeon. And I want a really good gas man, get me a genius. I’m not touching that head. I’m just going to watch this one. I know my limits. We’ll just get him prepped and sit tight. Orderly!”

“Do you mean me?” Georgie said. “Should I get him prepped?”

“Is this a hospital?” the doctor asked. “Is this the emergency room? Is that a patient? Are you the orderly?”

I dialled the hospital operator and told her to get me the eye man and the brain man and the gas man.

Georgie could be heard across the hall, washing his hands and singing a Neil Young song that went “Hello, cowgirl in the sand. Is this place at your command?”

“That person is not right, not at all, not one bit,” the doctor said.

“As long as my instructions are audible to him it doesn’t concern me,” Nurse insisted, spooning stuff up out of a little Dixie cup. “I’ve got my own life and the protection of my family to think of.”

“Well, okay, okay. Don’t chew my head off,” the doctor said.

The eye man was on vacation or something. While the hospital’s operator called around to find someone else just as good, the other specialists were hurrying through the night to join us. I stood around looking at charts and chewing up more of Georgie’s pills. Some of them tasted the way urine smells, some of them burned, some of them tasted like chalk. Various nurses, and two physicians who’d been tending somebody in I.C.U., were hanging out down here with us now.

Everybody had a different idea about exactly how to approach the problem of removing the knife from Terrence Weber’s brain. But when Georgie came in from prepping the patient—from shaving the patient’s eyebrow and disinfecting the area around the wound, and so on—he seemed to be holding the hunting knife in his left hand.

The talk just dropped off a cliff.

“Where,” the doctor asked finally, “did you get that?”

Nobody said one thing more, not for quite a long time.

After a while, one of the I.C.U. nurses said, “Your shoelace is untied.” Georgie laid the knife on a chart and bent down to fix his shoe.

There were twenty more minutes left to get through.

“How’s the guy doing?” I asked.

“Who?” Georgie said.

It turned out that Terrence Weber still had excellent vision in the one good eye, and acceptable motor and reflex, despite his earlier motor complaint. “His vitals are normal,” Nurse said. “There’s nothing wrong with the guy. It’s one of those things.”

After a while you forget it’s summer. You don’t remember what the morning is. I’d worked two doubles with eight hours off in between, which I’d spent sleeping on a gurney in the nurse’s station. Georgie’s pills were making me feel like a giant helium-filled balloon, but I was wide awake. Georgie and I went out to the lot, to his orange pickup.

We lay down on a stretch of dusty plywood in the back of the truck with the daylight knocking against our eyelids and the fragrance of alfalfa thickening on our tongues.

“I want to go to church,” Georgie said.

“Let’s go to the county fair.”

“I’d like to worship. I would.”

“They have these injured hawks and eagles there. From the Humane Society,” I said.

“I need a quiet chapel about now.”

Georgie and I had a terrific time driving around. For a while the day was clear and peaceful. It was one of the moments you stay in, to hell with all the troubles of before and after. The sky is blue and the dead are coming back. Later in the afternoon, with sad resignation, the county fare bares its breasts. A champion of the drug LSD, a very famous guru of the love generation, is being interviewed amid a TV crew off to the left of the poultry cages. His eyeballs look like he bought them in a joke shop. It doesn’t occur to me, as I pity this extraterrestrial, that in my life I’ve taken as much as he has.

After that, we got lost. We drove for hours, literally hours, but we couldn’t find the road back to town.

Georgie started to complain. “That was the worst fair I’ve been to. Where were the rides?”

“They had rides,” I said.

“I didn’t see one ride.”

A jackrabbit scurried out in front of us, and we hit it.

“There was a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel, and a thing called the Hammer that people were bent over vomiting from after they got off,” I said. “Are you completely blind?”

“What was that?”

“A rabbit.”

“Something thumped.”

“You hit him. He thumped.”

Georgie stood on the brake pedal. “Rabbit stew.”

He threw the truck in reverse and zigzagged back toward the rabbit. “Where’s my hunting knife?” He almost ran over the poor animal a second time.

“We’ll camp in the wilderness,” he said. “In the morning we’ll breakfast on its haunches.” He was waving Terrence Weber’s hunting knife around in what I was sure was a dangerous way.

In a minute he was standing at the edge of the fields, cutting the scrawny little thing up, tossing away its organs. “I should have been a doctor,” he cried.

A family in a big Dodge, the only car we’d seen for a long time, slowed down and gawked out the windows as they passed by. The father said, “What is it, a snake?”

“No, it’s not a snake,” Georgie said. “It’s a rabbit with babies inside it.”

“Babies!” the mother said, and the father sped the car forward, over the protests of several little kids in the back.

Georgie came back to my side of the truck with his shirtfront stretched out in front of him as if he were carrying apples in it, or some such, but they were, in fact, slimy miniature bunnies. “No way I’m eating those things,” I told him.

“Take them, take them. I gotta drive, take them,” he said, dumping them in my lap and getting in on his side of the truck. He started driving along faster and faster, with a look of glory on his face. “We killed the mother and saved the children,” he said.

“It’s getting late,” I said. “Let’s get back to town.”

“You bet.” Sixty, seventy, eighty-five, just topping ninety.

“These rabbits better be kept warm.” One at a time I slid the little things in between my shirt buttons and nestled them against my belly. “They’re hardly moving,” I told Georgie.

“We’ll get some milk and sugar and all that, and we’ll raise them up ourselves. They’ll get as big as gorillas.”

The road we were lost on cut straight through the middle of the world. It was still daytime, but the sun had no more power than an ornament or a sponge. In this light the truck’s hood, which had been bright orange, had turned a deep blue.

Georgie let us drift to the shoulder of the road, slowly, slowly, as if he’d fallen asleep or given up trying to find his way.

“What is it?”

“We can’t go on. I don’t have any headlights,” Georgie said.

We parked under a strange sky with a faint image of a quarter-moon superimposed on it.

There was a little woods beside us. This day had been dry and hot, the buck pines and what-all simmering patiently, but as we sat there smoking cigarettes it started to get very cold.

“The summer’s over,” I said.

That was the year when arctic clouds moved down over the Midwest and we had two weeks of winter in September.

“Do you realize it’s going to snow?” Georgie asked me.

He was right, a gun-blue storm was shaping up. We got out and walked around idiotically. The beautiful chill! That sudden crispness, and the tang of evergreen stabbing us!

The gusts of snow twisted themselves around our heads while the night fell. I couldn’t find the truck. We just kept getting more and more lost. I kept calling, “Georgie, can you see?” and he kept saying, “See what? See what?”

The only light visible was a streak of sunset flickering below the hem of the clouds. We headed that way.

We bumped softly down a hill toward an open field that seemed to be a military graveyard, filled with rows and rows of austere, identical markers over soldiers’ graves. I’d never before come across this cemetery. On the farther side of the field, just beyond the curtains of snow, the sky was torn away and the angels were descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity. The sight of them cut through my heart and down the knuckles of my spine, and if there’d been anything in my bowels I would have messed my pants from fear.

Georgie opened his arms and cried out, “It’s the drive-in, man!”

“The drive-in . . .” I wasn’t sure what these words meant.

“They’re showing movies in a fucking blizzard!” Georgie screamed.

“I see. I thought it was something else,” I said.

We walked carefully down there and climbed through the busted fence and stood in the very back. The speakers, which I’d mistaken for grave markers, muttered in unison. Then there was tinkly music, of which I could very nearly make out the tune. Famous movie stars rode bicycles beside a river, laughing out of their gigantic, lovely mouths. If anybody had come to see this show, they’d left when the weather started. Not one car remained, not even a broken-down one from last week, or one left here because it was out of gas. In a couple of minutes, in the middle of a whirling square dance, the screen turned black, the cinematic summer ended, the snow went dark, there was nothing but my breath.

“I’m starting to get my eyes back,” Georgie said in another minute.

A general greyness was giving birth to various shapes, it was true. “But which ones are close and which ones are far off?” I begged him to tell me.

By trial and error, with a lot of walking back and forth in wet shoes, we found the truck and sat inside it shivering.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“We can’t go anywhere without headlights.”

“We’ve gotta get back. We’re a long way from home.”

“No, we’re not.”

“We must have come three hundred miles.”

“We’re right outside town, Fuckhead. We’ve just been driving around and around.”

“This is no place to camp. I hear the Interstate over there.”

“We’ll just stay here till it gets late. We can drive home late. We’ll be invisible.”

We listened to the big rigs going from San Francisco to Pennsylvania along the Interstate, like shudders down a long hacksaw blade, while the snow buried us.

Eventually Georgie said, “We better get some milk for those bunnies.”

“We don’t have milk,” I said.

“We’ll mix sugar up with it.”

“Will you forget about this milk all of a sudden?”

“They’re mammals, man.”

“Forget about those rabbits.”

“Where are they, anyway?”

“You’re not listening to me. I said, ‘Forget the rabbits.’ ”

“Where are they?”

The truth was I’d forgotten all about them, and they were dead.

“They slid around behind me and got squashed,” I said tearfully.

“They slid around behind?”

He watched while I pried them out from behind my back.

I picked them out one at a time and held them in my hands and we looked at them. There were eight. They weren’t any bigger than my fingers, but everything was there.

Little feet! Eyelids! Even whiskers! “Deceased,” I said.

Georgie asked, “Does everything you touch turn to shit? Does this happen to you every time?”

“No wonder they call me Fuckhead.”

“It’s a name that’s going to stick.”

“I realize that.”

“ ‘Fuckhead’ is gonna ride you to your grave.”

“I just said so. I agreed with you in advance,” I said.

Or maybe that wasn’t the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn’t matter. What’s important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren’t a problem yet, or they’d already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how the slave might become a friend to his master. Georgie slept with his face right on the steering wheel.

I saw bits of snow resembling an abundance of blossoms on the stems of the drive-in speakers—no, revealing the blossoms that were always there. A bull elk stood still in the pasture beyond the fence, giving off an air of authority and stupidity. And a coyote jogged across the pasture and faded away among the saplings.

That afternoon we got back to work in time to resume everything as if it had never stopped happening and we’d never been anywhere else.

“The Lord,” the intercom said, “is my shepherd.” It did that each evening because this was a Catholic hospital. “Our father, who art in Heaven,” and so on.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nurse said.

The man with the knife in his head, Terrence Weber, was released around suppertime. They’d kept him overnight and given him an eyepatch—all for no reason, really.

He stopped off at E.R. to say goodbye. “Well, those pills they gave me make everything taste terrible,” he said.

“It could have been worse,” Nurse said.

“Even my tongue.”

“It’s just a miracle you didn’t end up sightless or at least dead,” she reminded him.

The patient recognized me. He acknowledged me with a smile. “I was peeping on the lady next door while she was out there sunbathing,” he said. “My wife decided to blind me.”

He shook Georgie’s hand. Georgie didn’t know him. “Who are you supposed to be?” he asked Terrence Weber.

Some hours before that, Georgie had said something that had suddenly and completely explained the difference between us. We’d been driving back toward town, along the Old Highway, through the flatness. We picked up a hitchhiker, a boy I knew. We stopped the truck and the boy climbed slowly up out of the fields as out of the mouth of a volcano. His name was Hardee. He looked even worse than we probably did.

“We got messed up and slept in the truck all night,” I told Hardee.

“I had a feeling,” Hardee said. “Either that or, you know, driving a thousand miles.”

“That too,” I said.

“Or you’re sick or diseased or something.”

“Who’s this guy?” Georgie asked.

“This is Hardee. He lived with me last summer. I found him on the doorstep. What happened to your dog?” I asked Hardee.

“He’s still down there.”

“Yeah, I heard you went to Texas.”

“I was working on a bee farm,” Hardee said.

“Wow. Do those things sting you?”

“Not like you’d think,” Hardee said. “You’re part of their daily drill. It’s all part of a harmony.”

Outside, the same identical stretch of ground repeatedly rolled past our faces. The day was cloudless, blinding. But Georgie said, “Look at that,” pointing straight ahead of us.

One star was so hot it showed, bright and blue, in the empty sky.

“I recognized you right away,” I told Hardee. “But what happened to your hair? Who chopped it off?”

“I hate to say.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“They drafted me.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yeah. I’m AWOL. I’m bad AWOL. I got to get to Canada.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said to Hardee.

“Don’t worry,” Georgie said. “We’ll get you there.”

“How?”

“Somehow. I think I know some people. Don’t worry. You’re on your way to Canada.”

That world! These days it’s all been erased and they’ve rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?

After a while Hardee asked Georgie, “What do you do for a job,” and Georgie said, “I save lives.”

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askjester · 7 years

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Tldr of your life?

((I’ve been saving this one lol))

“Oh, boy… a telling of my whole life? Here goes, I guess…

I was born to two immigrants. My father was a veteran, my mother a survivor. They moved to Salem from New York, thinking that perhaps a quieter area still not far from a big city (Boston) would be a nice place to raise a kid. But… of course… then the murders and lynchings started happening when I was about five or so. My dad was always a paranoid man… but it skyrocketed once the murders started happening. Not to mention he wanted to take care of my mom and I… he was really worried about us. Going back to my parents’ roles… since town people tend to dislike those who stay neutral, they weren’t big fans of my mom. And since my father was so devoted to my neutral mother, they grew ever suspicious of him even though he claimed he merely wanted what was best for his family. He… he got a little too trigger happy one night… a sheriff had come to interrogate him and figure out if he was suspicious or not… and so my father killed him on sight, thinking he was a threat. They ended up voting for him to be lynched the following day. I… I remember him screaming and apologizing and begging them to let him live, and that he didn’t mean it. Naturally, town was angered and suspicious of him after finding the sheriff dead at our doorstep, and the mafia wanted him gone since he wasn’t with them, so… They all voted guilty. Many abstained, of course, but the ones who did vote… voted guilty. There was only one innocent voter- my mother. As he was dragged up to the stand, he was sobbing and screaming… "JEREMY!! JEREMY, DON’T LOOK!! PLEASE, COVER HIS EYES!!” My mom covered my eyes while I cried. She was crying, too… I could hear her and feel her diaphragm heaving against my back as she doubled over me, embracing me while covering my eyes so I couldn’t witness my father’s death… that’s… all I remember… before I was dragged back into the house, kicking and screaming. I was seven when this happened. Seven years old when my father, a poor veteran just trying to keep his loving wife and young child safe, was hanged… … No one offered much remorse to us at the time. People merely passively muttered that he was better off dead anyway, because he could continue to kill off ‘useful’ people… or they just ignored us… some merely quietly apologized to us for our loss. … At this point, I decided… I was going to become a retributionist. I was powerless in stopping my father’s death, but resurrection was a proven art and I was determined to get my father back. And so, I became acquainted with Salem’s medium at the time. She wasn’t a retributionist, of course, but she DID work with the dead, and so she taught me everything she knew about the dead and resurrection. She was nice enough to me, and she was one of the abstainers… it would have been better if she’d voted innocent, but… I had a goal and beggars couldn’t be choosers. I started shutting myself in. I would lock myself in my room and study hard, glued to my books and spells for hours on end. Then, every Friday, I would go out to the graveyard and attempt to perform the resurrection. It never worked… I never got it down. Let me tell you- resurrection is hard. There’s a reason most retributionists can only do it once. It’s DIFFICULT. And every failed resurrection only brought on more feelings of frustration and impatience from me. Just as I was, my mother had become a shut-in, too. You see… the mafia would often approach her and request that she join them and vote in their favor, and the townsfolk would sneer at her for not picking a side. She became a bit of an agoraphobe… she never left the house or opened the door for anyone anymore. She would occasionally timidly greet me, ask how my day was going, et cetera, but I never offered much conversation. Heck… I was even nasty to her on some occasions, snapping at her for breaking my concentration when all she wanted to do was talk… talk to her recluse son, the only other person she could bring herself to love and trust at the time. As I said, she was agoraphobic at this time and, as such, it was up to me to get groceries and other various supplies. I was kind of a bitter pre-teen and I wasn’t friendly to the locals. All I wanted was to get my dad back and get the hell out of this garbage town as fast as I could. I was so impatient. I just wanted my happy go lucky life back. I wanted my dad back… I wanted my mom to cheer up… and this terrible impatience caused me to be so, so mean. I was rude to the grocer, I was rude to the people who greeted me on the street, I was simply bitter to everyone. The medium and my mother were the only two people who ever got to see my better side at the time, and even then, it was rare, since I spent most of my time locked in my room with my face shoved into a book. One day I was off getting groceries after yet another unsuccessful attempt at resurrection. I carried the groceries home in a basket and I unlocked the front door, and-… well… I immediately dropped the basket and let out a high pitched whine. I trampled over the bread and rushed to my mother’s side. She was… she was on the floor. Blood… everywhere. Laying on her limp body was my late father’s gun… she had shot herself in the head… there was no note… no warning… I just remember hugging her cold body close and weeping so hard that i wasn’t even making any noise… I couldn’t breathe… I was alone… she was gone… and it was partially my fault… … No…it was the mafia’s fault… it was the town’s fault… No, no,it was MY fault… NO, it WAS the mafia’s fault… IT WAS THE TOWN’S FAULT… HA! IT WAS MY FAULT!!! HAHAHAHA!!!! IT WAS THE MAFIA’S FAULT! HAHAHAHAHAAA!! ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT, JEREMY? You sick son of a bitch. You’re dead. You’re DEAD. Just like your mother. Just like your father! Stone cold dead. You’re dead. Your future is dead. So just….. live in the present. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!“

#long post #writing #past clue #anonymous #askjester

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