#every time i see a delivery driver i want one of those roof signs in my apartment
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WAYBACK RECORDS
“Where are you?”
“I just left Sidney, and I’m headed up to Wapak, and then I’ll take 33 to Dublin. I should be back there by closing time.”
“Well make sure you are. A.J.’s not about to put up with any more excuses from you about getting lost now that there’s a GPS in your truck.”
“I know, I know. I won’t get lost. I’ll have everything delivered, and be back by closing. I swear.”
“Alright. See that you are.”
******
Meet Ronnie Dawson, a delivery driver for a small roofing co. in a small town in Ohio. Mr. Dawson walks a fine line between the real world and a world of dreams. When this day began, he was living reality. Before the day ends, he’ll be living a dream in a place we like to call…... The Twilight Zone.
******
I can’t get back late again today or my boss will fire me. This job isn’t really suited to me, but I collect records, and it gives me a chance to drive all over the state to different towns where I can check out any record stores that are still in business and maybe a thrift store or garage sales or flea markets now and again. The store I worked for was the last one in my town, and I just have to get my record fix. I don’t like shopping online. I don’t trust people. Anyway, I needed a job, and figured this job might feed me, and my habit. So when I’m in these different towns delivering roofing materials for jobs we’ve got coming up, sometimes I take a few detours just to see what I can find. Just last week I scored a Percy Mayfield record on Ray Charles’ Tangerine label for 50 cents at a thrift store in Hamilton. And last month I found a 45 of my favorite record by The Coasters, Shoppin’ For Clothes on Atco for a quarter at a garage sale up in Lima. You never know what you’ll come across. I’m probably pushing my luck with my boss. But I can’t help it.
Just then the cell phone rang.
“Hi, baby. What’s up?”
“Damn you, Ronnie!”
It was his wife, Rita.
“What’s wrong? What’d I do?”
“You know damn good and well what you did. Did you think I’d never find them?”
“Okay. Calm down. I know what this is about. You found the box of records in the closet in the guest room. I only put them in there until-“
“I don’t care. That’s not a guest room anymore. It’s supposed to be a nursery. Remember? If you think you’re going to keep buying records and storing them where the baby’s going to sleep, you’re daydreaming, buddy. I swear. I’ve had just about enough of this. There are records in every room in this house. I want a family, and the way you’re going we’ll never have the space or the money for either. You think I don’t know you’re buying records when you’re supposed to be working? You’re going to lose that job. Stella from the office called here last week looking for you. She said A.J. was having a fit you were getting back so late, and using too much gasoline to make the deliveries. How long do you think you can get away with it?”
“I know. I know. I promise-“
“I don’t want to hear it. Get your ass home in time for dinner tonight or you’ll need a divorce lawyer – and a good one. Because if I divorce you, I swear I’ll take every last one of those records in the settlement, and I'll burn 'em.”
And she hung up.
She knew when she married me that I had a habit. She doesn’t understand it. I settled back for the drive to Wapak, and listened to an oldies station on the truck radio.
_____
The drive to Wapak was uneventful. There’s not much to see or do in a town that small except for the Armstrong Air & Space Museum. But I never had any luck finding records in Wapak, so I made short order of lunch at Wendy’s and got back on the highway to Dublin – my last stop for the day before heading home. At least it was supposed to be my last. About midway between Wapak and Dublin, not long after I passed the exit to Indian Lake, I noticed a road sign that read Exit 6 Phillips 24 miles. Phillips? I’d never heard of Phillips, Ohio. Curious, I decided to talk to my new GPS.
“Reroute to Phillips, Ohio. Confirm, please?”
There was silence from the GPS. So I spoke the instructions again.
“There is no Phillips, Ohio in the database.”
“There must be. I saw a road sign.”
I tried once more, and again got the same response.
Worthless piece of crap. Who needs a GPS anyway? That’s what road signs are for. I’ll just turn off when I reach the exit. I’ve been making good time. I can still have a look around and get to Dublin and then home in plenty of time. I turned the radio up, and sang along with Get Off My Cloud by The Stones, and tapped the wheel to Draggin’ the Line by Tommy James.
_____
There’s the exit. Phillips, Ohio. Probably named after the great Sam Phillips of Sun Records fame. There’s got to be some great vinyl finds in a town named after Sam Phillips. There was nothing except open roads and empty fields after I took the exit. I must have driven a good dozen miles or so before I saw a sign that read: Welcome to Phillips, Ohio. Population 570.
Wow! This town is really small. No wonder the GPS never heard of it. I wonder how much further the town is? Just then, on the horizon, I saw what looked to be a main street with buildings lining both sides, and a stop light ahead. The place looked pretty clean, and there was parking up and down either side of the street. I pulled into an open space, and put the truck into park and looked at the sign directly in front of me. Wayback Records. Well, I’ll be damned. They’ve got a record shop. And it looks like it’s open, too.
Sure enough, it was open for business. But nothing prepared me for what I saw when I stepped inside. The place was enormous. It seemed to go on for miles in every direction. And there were racks, and racks, and racks filled with records as far back as the eye could see. The walls were covered with posters advertising Rock ‘n’ Roll shows. There was a ticket window to the left that must have sold concert tickets to shows in the area. Next to that was a long counter filled with buttons, and belt buckles, and scarves, and countless other things embossed with band names and logos. To my right was a magazine stand overflowing with Rock magazines. I’d never seen so many in one place in my entire life. Rolling Stone, Creem, Crawdaddy, Circus, Circus Raves, NY Rocker, Hit Parader, Melody Maker, Zig Zag, Sounds, NME, Who Put the Bomp, Kicks, Mojo Navigator, The Record, Goldmine, Billboard, Cashbox, Record Collector, Trouser Press, and too many more to mention. On the floor next to the stand were stacks and stacks of back issues of nearly every title. I couldn’t believe my eyes. On the overhead sound system I heard – no, it couldn’t be. But it was! They were listening to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. And it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t going to make it home on time that night. I wasn’t going to make the delivery to Dublin either. I was going to need an alibi, and fast! I ran back out to my truck, opened the glove box, and found my cell phone, and dialed A.J.’s.
“A.J. Construction. May I help you?”
“Stella. It’s Ronnie. I’ve got a problem.”
“Oh for god’s sake. What now?”
“The truck broke down, and I had to have it towed for service.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Phillips, Ohio off 33 about halfway between Wapakoneta and Dublin.”
“Hang on. I’ll get A.J.”
A few moments later I was listening to my boss, and he wasn’t happy.
“Goddammit Ronnie! What the hell happened?”
“The truck broke down A.J. I had to get it towed to a service station. They’re working on it right now.”
I almost had myself convinced.
“I just had that truck serviced a month ago. What happened?”
“I don’t know. Everything was fine, and then out of the blue, the thing just died. I think it’s the electrical system. I couldn’t get it started, and I didn’t have any lights or radio or anything.”
“Well, those supplies need to be in Dublin by tomorrow morning or we’ll lose that contract. I guess I’ll have to send another truck and we’ll have to reload them.”
“No, A.J. That won’t be necessary.”
I was trying not to panic.
“Well, what do you suggest? I don’t want to lose that job.”
“Maybe they can get it started. It’s still early enough. I can probably get them to Dublin by tonight. But I’ll be real late getting back.”
“Did the mechanic think he could fix it today?”
“He hasn’t said anything yet. He’s still doing a diagnostic on it.”
“Well, when you find something out, call me back.”
“Right, A.J. I sure will.”
And with that I hung up. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I still had to call my wife and tell her I wouldn’t make dinner. After giving some thought to it, I decided that call could wait. And I headed back inside the shop.
I began wandering around and I saw several glass booths set up throughout the store, and there were people inside them with headphones on sitting in chairs, listening to records on the turntables. As far as I could see, it was mostly records. But on one of the walls near the cash register there were 8 tracks, and a smaller selection of cassette tapes. There wasn’t a CD anywhere in the place. The aisles were long, and every fixture was jammed with records. I’d never seen anything like it – except in my dreams. As I browsed the aisles looking through the records, I overheard other customers arguing with one another about what they liked and didn’t like. I heard some recommending records to friends or strangers who were nearby. There was a lot of conversation while the music on the overhead sound system now played Dave Edmunds’ Tracks On Wax 4. This was a very strange place indeed.
The selection was also astonishing. The place seemed to stock everything I’d ever heard of. Every artist I could think of seemed to be here, and every record seemed to be stocked. I couldn’t imagine where it had all come from or how they managed to restock it all.
In the middle of the store, dividing two huge sections of LPs were several aisles of tables with wooden boxes on top filled to the brim with 45s. I noticed that the 45s all seemed to be in factory sleeves, and were original label as well. But, how could that be? And how would you ever restock them once you’d sold them? I moved over to a section labeled “R&B/Soul” and began browsing the selection there. What stopped me dead in my tracks was a copy of Frank Wilson’s Do I Love You on the Soul label. That record is highly sought after by Northern Soul collectors, and sells for a fortune online whenever it’s offered for sale. And here it was, just sitting in the rack alongside thousands more original Soul singles – most from England, and all with original sleeves on the original labels.
I picked up the Wilson single and walked to the front counter. There was a big guy working the counter, smoking a cigar. He was wearing a striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and when I approached him, he turned and glared at me.
“Got a question, kid?”
“Yeah. Several, I think. Are you the owner?”
“Yeah. Call me Fats. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering about this record,” and I handed it to Fats across the counter.
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s extremely rare, and you stock it, and….”
“We stock everything kid. That’s what we do.”
“But there’s no price on it, and I –“
“See that sign above the 45s?
“You mean that one?” I asked pointing at one hanging from the ceiling.
“Yeah. What’s it say?”
“All 45s 99cents.”
“Okay, then.”
“You mean I can buy this record for 99 cents?”
“Jesus! Yes! You got a learning disability?”
“No, but it’s really rare, and – “
“It ain’t rare. We just restocked it from the distributor last week. We sell out, we order more.”
“How late are you open?”
“We’re open ‘til midnight every night. We open at 10 a.m., and we’re closed on Sundays.”
“Why aren’t you open Sundays?”
“Stores should be closed on Sundays. People need to cool out once in awhile, and Sunday used to be the day they did that. Not anymore. But this place closes on Sunday because that’s how I want it. I tell my customers to buy some Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers or Sister Rosetta Tharpe to get their Sunday music fix. And we don’t do holidays either. Holidays are for families to gather round the record player, or the upright piano or the radio. When you need that communal music experience, we’re here the rest of the time.”
Looking at my watch, I said, “Man, no wonder I’m hungry. It’s after 5. Is there some place in town to get a bite?”
“Sure thing. Go out the door to your right. About a block up the street you’ll see Roy’s Diner. Best burgers anywhere.”
“Thanks a lot. I’ll be back.”
“We’ll be here, kid. What’d you say your name was?”
“Ronnie. Ronnie Dawson.”
“Your folks name you after Ronnie Hawkins?”
“Nah, I wish.”
Fats chuckled as I headed for the door.
_____
I had a problem. I needed to get that truck full of roofing materials to Dublin by tomorrow morning. I needed to sort out the lie I told my boss. I needed to talk to my wife. And I needed to find a job in Phillips so I could live there the rest of my life. Before I started my walk to Roy’s, I got into my truck and grabbed my cell phone. The first call I made was to A.J.
“A.J.! It’s Ronnie. The truck is fixed, and I’ll have it in Dublin by morning.”
“Well, that’s a relief. What the hell was wrong with it?”
“Uh, there was a wire in the electrical system that sparked, and shorted everything out. Once they fixed that, it started right up.”
“Well, the site will be closed tonight. You won’t be there in time to deliver the materials.”
“I know. I’m gonna drive down tonight, and I’ll sleep in the truck and be there when they open in the morning.”
“Alright, Ronnie. Then get your butt back here because we got two more runs tomorrow.”
“Sure thing, A.J.,” I replied, knowing full well that after tomorrow morning I’d no longer be working for A.J. Construction Co.
I thought it best not to call Rita until I’d had something to eat, so I took the walk to the diner. Roy’s Diner had one of those rusted neon signs on the outside – half-burned out like neon signs always seemed to be. But there was a pair of sunglasses wrapped around the word “diner” and they were lit. The inside of the place had about a dozen small booths along the walls, and a half dozen tables on a red and white tiled floor with tablecloths on each. The booths had those old fashioned jukeboxes on the table. A girl behind the counter called out to me, “Have a seat anywhere, darlin’ I’ll be right with you.”
I took a seat in one of the booths and pulled a menu from between the salt & pepper shakers. It looked as if this restaurant had a theme. And the theme was Roy Orbison. That explained the name and the sunglasses on the sign outside, not to mention the early 60’s décor. And the menu featured a variety of grilled sandwiches with names like The Ooby Dooby, Chicken Hearted, Rock House Chops, Blue Bayou Cajun Fish, and so on. There was even a Candy Man dessert – ice cream with chocolate topping. I ordered The Ooby Dooby burger, a Coke and a side of fries from the waitress whose name tag read “Leah” and who peppered her sentences with the word “Sugar”. You want fries with that, Sugar? Small Coke or large, Sugar? Ketchup and pickle, Sugar? It’d been a while since a woman called me Darlin’ and even longer since one called me Sugar. Leah is in for a generous tip.”
While I waited, I browsed the selection on the jukebox. The titles were familiar: Oh, Pretty Woman, In Dreams, Blue Angel, Runnin’ Scared, Crying, It’s Over, Claudette, and many more – every one of them a Roy Orbison classic. I put a quarter in and chose three of my favorites.
The burger was even tastier than the song it was named after, and when Leah brought the bill, I couldn’t believe it - fifty-seven cents for dinner? That couldn’t be right. I called Leah back over to the table.
“Change your mind about dessert, Sugar?”
“No, but I think you miscalculated the check. Fifty-seven cents sounds a little light, doesn’t it?”
“No, Sugar, that’s right. The burger was 30 cents, the fries were 15, and the Coke was a dime. And two cents for tax.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But I wasn’t about to argue. I could definitely afford to live in Phillips. I left Leah a generous 2-dollar tip, and made my way back to my truck. For the first time, I began to notice the other businesses on the street. Now that it was getting dark, all the shop signs were lit up like Christmas trees. There was Bo’s Billiards, Buddy’s Market, The Killer’s Bar & Grill, Presley Pharmacy, Everly Cleaners, Penniman’s, which looked like a men’s clothing store, Wanda’s Sweets - a candy store, Brenda’s Nail Salon, a movie theatre called Connie’s Majestic (which happened to be playing a double feature of The Girl Can’t Help It, and Where The Boys Are), Berry Motors on the corner, Vincent’s Texaco, and Cochran’s Body Shop. It was all starting to make some sense to me. But before I could return to Wayback, I needed to call my wife.
“Where the hell are you, you sonuvabitch?”
“I’m in Phillips, Ohio. My truck broke down, and I’ve been here all afternoon waiting for it to be fixed.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Look, Rita. Give me a break, will you? I know I should’ve called earlier, but – “
She hung up. I hoped she wasn’t serious about a lawyer, but I figured I’d find out when I got back home. In the meantime, I had to talk to Fats.
When I walked back inside Wayback, Fats asked me, “How was the burger, kid?”
“Oh, it was great. You were right about that place.”
“Isn’t Leah a doll? I went to school with her mother.”
“Yeah, she was something else. But I have to ask you a few more questions.”
“I figured you might once you’d had a look around town. So, go ahead and ask.”
“What is this place? Where is this place? According to the new GPS in my truck, it doesn’t exist. It’s not on the map. And every business on the main drag – including this one – seems to have a history and a name connected to Rock ‘N’ Roll. Where am I?”
“You’re in Phillips, Ohio, Ronnie. This place is the best-kept secret in the state. We don’t want it spoiled by outsiders. We want to keep it as pure as the music it represents. I built Wayback, and the rest of the businesses followed – one by one. But it’s my town. I incorporated it, and I’m the mayor, the city council, the police, the fire dept., and the post office, too. I named the town after Sam Phillips that founded Sun Records. And I only grant citizenship to people who are as devoted and dedicated to the music as I am. Everybody that came to town and wanted to stay and start a business had to agree to name it after one of the founders or leading lights of Rock ‘N’ Roll. This place is named Wayback because it’s the entry portal."
“The portal? What’s that mean?”
“It means to really see the town, ya’ gotta come through the portal – the front door of Wayback.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Trust me. It’s not important. Anyway, I get the feeling you might be staying. Am I right?”
“If I can find a job. Is anybody in town hiring?”
“I could use some help here, but you’d have to work your way up.”
“I’ll take it.”
“I haven’t even told you what you’d be doing or how much I can pay you?”
“Details. I’ll take it.”
“When do you want to start?”
“Well, I have some loose ends to tie up, and I’ll have to find a place to live.”
“You head over to Lymon Avenue. There’s a boarding house there - Perkins Boarding House. There’s a sign out front. Tell them I sent you.”
“Fats, can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure, kid. What is it?”
“You don’t know me at all. How come you offered me a job and a place to live and we just met? You said you don’t let just anybody live here.”
“You collect records, don’t you?”
“Of course. But how’d you know?”
“I can spot a serious record collector a thousand yards away. They’re all going to come here eventually because it’ll be the only place they can be truly happy in the world we live in now. I figure we’ve all gotta stick together. Kindred spirits. You know what I mean?”
“Yes sir. I sure do. Thanks, Fats.” And I shook his hand, and called back as I turned to leave, “I’ll be back with my things next week. Don’t give my job away.”
“Don’t worry, kid. It’ll be waiting for you.”
******
All of Ronnie Dawson’s dreams were about to come true. He was leaving behind reality for a new job, and a new address in a new town. Phillips, Ohio. Take the exit 6 offramp, and drive 24 miles……to The Twilight Zone.
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...oh thanks, Tumblr, it wasn’t like I was trying to answer that ask or anything. -_-
OHKAY. Take two! For this trope mashup meme, @dogmatix asked:
Rex/Obi or pairing/characters of choice - Apocalyse AU / Mermaid/Siren AU / Aroused by their voice
This modern!AU got a liiiiiittle bit more absurdist than planned, but NO REGRETS. Assistance was provided by @dharmaavocado and @deadcatwithaflamethrower -- THANK YOU BOTH!
*****
There was a lovely breeze coming in across the ocean, the sky had just enough puffy white clouds to keep things interesting, and Rex was taking a maintenance day. The last family group of tourists to charter a day trip had included several children that were at least two parts sticky and three parts grime. His poor Vigilance needed a serious scrub down, and Rex was not looking forward to restocking. Small Grubby Fiend 1 had stumbled – supposedly due to a sudden swell, but more likely because Small Grubby Fiends 2 and 3 hadn’t stopped ‘not kicking’ each other for way too long. Not being an entire idiot, Rex has gone right for the band-aids with cartoon characters, but since it wasn’t a cartoon Small Grubby Fiend 1 liked, that meant another – until all three Small Grubby Fiends had been plastered with far more of his first aid kit than was good for anyone.
It had been a long day.
So there he was, untangling life-vests that hadn’t even been used, while singing along with whatever music was playing from the boat’s speakers. Rex wasn’t sure if the music was pop, rock, or some other unholy category he’d never heard of, but thankfully it didn’t matter. He liked it, and could figure out which of Tup’s mix tapes it was on, which was the important thing.
Tup always made hilarious offended noises when Rex called them mix tapes, which was a significant reason why he did so. They were music folders, sensibly labeled by mood, because his little brother had realized at some point that was the only way to keep Rex up to date on anything past the 90’s grunge music.
Tup’s accusation, not his. Rex damn well knew how to use a radio – several kinds of radio, thank you very much.
He was several songs into mind-numbing chores when he spotted a flash of red streaking under the dock, and Rex ducked his head to hide a grin. He’d started spotting movement like that a couple of weeks ago, around the time the neighbors descended on their beach house. There were several ginger teenagers, so he figured one of them was a hell of a water rat who had damn odd taste in music.
To be fair, so did he.
It’d been weird at first, realizing he had an audience that disappeared the moment he acknowledged their existence. But the most he heard or saw out of them beyond the momentary glimpse was a bit of percussion, someone drumming in time against the water – and once, the dock itself – so Rex had shrugged and accepted their presence. It was kinda nice, actually, just to have someone around. He lived a ways off the end of a long, sparsely populated road, and while he didn’t mind the solitude, sometimes you just wanted another–
Rex’s train of thought went off the rails with a loud yelp as he discovered something slimy stuck to the back of a life-vest. It might have been edible once – it was a shade of radioactive green he didn’t associate with anything other than candy or video games, at least, so that was his best guess. Much as he wanted to blame the Small Grubby Fiends, he hadn’t done more than a spot check of these vests for awhile – could’ve been anyone.
Ugh. At least unlike some clients he could name, Rex’s eavesdropper wasn’t vandalizing anything. Wasn’t about to begrudge that.
Rex had managed to get most of the neon green grossness cleared when the rumble of an approaching car caught his attention. He wasn’t expecting visitors, not that that had ever stopped any of his brothers. Lost delivery drivers usually turned around before hitting up the driveway, which was long enough and had enough private property signs to keep out idiots looking for easy water access.
“Who the hell is this?” he muttered, setting the vest aside. He didn’t recognize the little black car, or the burly guy stepping out of the passenger’s side, but the guy waved and casually started towards Rex as if he knew who the hell he was.
Not reassuring, especially since the stranger rapped the car’s roof, and it headed back up the driveway.
“You seem lost,” Rex said, standing up and trying to look just the right level of intimidating.
“Nope,” the guy said back, still heading towards him. “Need your boat.”
“That’s work related – you need to wait till I’m back at the marina tomorrow. I’m at home, it’s my day off.”
Burly guy finally stopped, planting his hands on his hips – a move which just happened to part the jacket of his cheap suit enough that Rex could see the gun he carried. “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Fett. I don't want any trouble – I just want you to head inside, and take that day off while I borrow your boat.”
Oh, FUCK. Nobody really talked about how the mob owned most of the marinas in Tatooine Bay, but you didn’t need to declare water was wet to get drenched in the rain. It just wasn’t something that ever happened to someone you knew, just friends of friends or something.
“And if I don’t agree?” he couldn’t keep from asking.
Burly Guy had a surprisingly expressive shrug. “Most people don’t enjoy pushing their luck that far.”
To his credit, it was a remarkably polite threat. “I’m surprised anyone ever does.”
“Eh, every now and then there’s some freaky masochist looking for cheap thrills, but it ain’t my kink. Don’t think it’s yours, either, so if you’d just head inside, that’d be appreciated.”
The smart move was probably to comply. Rex wasn’t inclined to cooperate anyways. He was saved from making either bad decision by...sound.
It didn’t register as singing – there was something too off about it, a combination that wasn’t quite autotune, or that polyphonic singing Echo had gotten into when Fives got obsessed with the guitar. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right in a way that was madly distracting.
The...singing? – pulled both Rex and the goon around towards the end of the dock, and if Rex hadn’t been so muzzy-headed from that sound he would have been gaping much more blatantly.
There was someone slipping out from under the dock, and it was most definitely not one of the neighbors.
It was a trim, shirtless figure in the water – ginger indeed, short red hair just dry enough to be messy spikes. Pale skin was freckled in scales of shimmering reds, protective lines over what would be vulnerable areas on a human. It swam close enough to the surface that Rex could see the sleek fins and tail, and part of his brain kept screaming ‘mermaid!’ while the rest took in the long, sharp claws on webbed hands and whispered ‘predator.’ Its singing showed sharply pointed teeth, and it should not have been nearly that gorgeous.
The mermaid glanced over at him, eyes a deep blue-on-blue that could never masquerade as human, flicking a look up and down him that could have been flattering or terrifying – it all depended on if that was measuring him for a meal euphemistically or not.
The singing changed as the creature turned its attention back to the goon, and the magnetic pull on Rex lessened. He staggered back a step, not too surprised to find he was halfway down the dock without noticing. The hazy feeling in his brain stopped, or at least dropped down to levels that were close enough to normal, so he got a clear view as the goon started walking into the water, oblivious to everything except the mer-siren-thing he was shambling towards.
The siren moved when the goon was almost waist deep in the water, flowing forward to delicately place a hand at the goon’s throat. The singing continued, but now there was a new undertone, soft and somehow questioning. Rex couldn’t tell if there were words to it or not – maybe a whole other language for all he knew – but the goon responded, voice soft enough that he couldn’t make out what was said.
Whatever he said, it didn’t please the siren. It kept singing, but it snarled, showing more of those pointed teeth, then it twisted and dove, hauling the unresisting goon under the water.
A terrifying few moments more, and the last hums of the song seemed to stop vibrating through the water.
“What the absolute fuck?” Rex said numbly. Thank everything, no one answered.
A smart man would’ve hidden inside, or driven off to a movie theater or something – inland and away. Rex wasn’t sure why he stayed: curiosity – morbid or otherwise – shock, or a healthy disbelief in the whole debacle. He was maybe a bit too numb to not have some kind of shock, but –
He felt like he maybe deserved it. “Yeah, I can have a bit of shock,” Rex muttered to himself. “As a treat.”
Okay, he might have more than a bit. But by the time the siren poked his head out of the water again – politely out of arms’ reach – Rex had calmed down a decent degree. They just looked at each other for a bit, then the siren gave him a polite nod.
“Hello there,” he said in a pleasant, deep voice with a hell of an accent.
Rex held up a hand, needing a moment. Of fucking course the British even colonized under the goddamned sea. “Hi. You speak English.” It wasn’t quite the most inane thing he could’ve said, but his brain hadn’t managed to catch up yet.
He was talking to a goddamned mermaid who had just kidnapped and possibly eaten some mob thug who’d been trying to take Rex’s boat. It had been a day.
“You’re not the first land-dweller I’ve made the acquaintance of.”
Rex absolutely refused to make any kind of a crack about being charmed. There was too much hysteria lurking in there. “Speaking of acquaintances, you didn’t, ah, kill that guy, did you?”
The siren’s lips pulled back from his teeth a little. “I still haven’t decided what to do with him, so right now he’s out of the way.” He must’ve seen something impressive in Rex’s expression, because the angry disdain smoothed over to something more neutral. “He’s stashed in a cave I know. Enough air to breathe, but the only entrance is underwater and too far for most humans to swim without assistance.”
That was...a lot. “Thanks for the help.”
The siren smiled, an oddly sweet, bashful expression. “I’d be a very poor guest if I didn’t assist.” He cleared his throat, his expression going awkward. “Though I...suppose ‘guest’ is a bit presumptive.”
Rex grinned. “No, I spotted you a couple weeks ago – ah, I mean, sort of.” Before he could make more a hash of that, he cleared his throat. “The name’s Rex.”
The siren folded his hands together and did a little bow thing. “Obi-Wan. Pleasure to meet you.”
He wasn’t blushing. He absolutely was not blushing. “So...you in town for long?” Ok, now he was blushing, that was worst subject change ever meeting worst fishing attempt – meeting worst and wildly inappropriate pun.
Obi-Wan’s expression fell, sorrow way too visible in those non-human eyes. “I suppose you could say that. I...no longer have a home to return to.”
Definitely not a topic to change to. Right. Rex cleared his throat and shifted. “Well. You’re welcome anytime, for what that’s worth.”
The slow-growing smile didn’t remove that sorrow, but it did kindle something warm inside. This was at least three different kinds of trouble, but Rex didn’t think he’d regret any of it.
~end
#star wars#My writing#meme#trope mashup#Rex/Obi#mermaid#dogmatix#still not thrilled with how it wraps but it's certainly not the worst fic ending I've read recently#oh I'm still salty#whoops?#meanwhile there's several lines in here i adore more than is reasonable#AND I DON'T CARE
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Wishing On Stars
So, fun story! Remember that quick one shot I made [Idle Threats] that was not quick at all and featured Deceit punching a guy in the face? Guess who made a sequel!
Word Count: 4958
Pairings: Brotherly Thomas and Deceit
Summary: Dee’s world is shifting and he doesn’t know what to do about it.
Quick Taglist: @chelsvans @felicianoromano @jemthebookworm @holliberries @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @treasureofpriam
Read on AO3 || Masterlist
Dante Ethan Ekans has never thought of himself as dumb. It’s simply not something he’s ever allowed himself to consider the possibility of. So what if his grades sucked and he couldn’t even buy a candy bar at the market with his unweighted GPA? So what if he wasn’t in any honors clubs or wearing nerd glasses or correcting his teachers in class? So what if he had never found a grammar error in his textbooks or maxed out his library card (can those be maxed out?)?
Dante Ethan Ekans—ugh just call him Dee—was not, is not, and never will be “dumb”. He’s fought for his grades and lost, he doesn’t have time to waste on honor clubs, and its not like he needs to give his teachers anymore reasons to hate him. Since when has anyone actually read the textbooks? And he’s never really found a good book that keeps his attention past the third chapter.
But that’s never meant that he was dumb.
And fuck Dr. Logan Ackroyd for making him question that about himself.
Dee leans forward on the rickety structure, pressing his head into his arms into the cool metal bars as he does. He wants to stare up at the stars, wants to bury his head in his arms and sleep, he wants to tear the the packet of papers in his right hand to shreds and then feed it to Dr. Ackroyd with a sneer.
The stars over head twinkle, because that’s all the stars do. Dee had learned at the lovely age of six, no amount of wishing on the stars was going to change how reality had panned out. Stars were just lights in the sky with no ability to bring his dad back or obscure the burn marks on his face.
The papers crinkle in his hand, like a campfire, like a car crash that once again ruined his life. Or is ruining. Or, perhaps, is in the process of ruining? It feels like it, like everything good and great that Dr. Ackroyd had promised was collapsing on him and suffocating him all over again.
“I know you can do it,” The teacher had said.
And Dee really hates him for it. Really hates Mr. Walker for that car accident he was in and for not coming back, hates Dr. Ackroyd for showing up with his gaze of steel and his stupid ties and his “equality under the law” reign that’s dragged Dee from the cave everyone had exiled him too and let him enjoy a bit of light.
Sure, Dee can do it. He can also throw himself from the top of this old playground set and fracture his arm or something so he doesn’t have to go back to that stupid room and see that stupid teacher ever again.
The stars blink down at him, and maybe they take pity on the boy who aced Dr. Logan Ackroyd’s midterm test last week, because Dee thinks they look a little less distant than before.
He knows he’s not dumb. He knows that the formal red pen on the test, the long line, the circle and the next long line mean something great and amazing is on the brink of happening. He knows that Dr. Logan Ackroyd is to blame for it, because the man has no time for jokes and no time for nonsense and no time to waste leading Dee astray.
He knows the man means well.
He knows that he hates him for it.
Since when did anyone look at Dee and “mean well”? Since when did any teacher look at him and see something worth believing in? Since when had Dee wanted them to?
Dee knows when: since at exactly nine hours and nineteen minutes ago when Dr. Ackroyd had called him to "please, wait a moment, Mr. Ekans! Its imperative I talk with you." And Dee like a fool (which is completely different from being dumb, thank you very much. Dee very much was a fool), had paused just short of fleeing the classroom.
(Kyle Phillips had shoulder checked his way by him, the healing purples of his black eye just visible under the layer of concealer his mother had applied that morning and he had worn away through the day.)
Dr. Ackroyd had taught up to the bell, or at least he had talked up to the bell. Dee and the rest of the class had stopped paying attention after 2:15. For a terrifying second Dee had felt a cold hand clench his heart and the voices in his head whispered that this was it, the end, Dr. Ackroyd was finished pretending to be nice to him.
"I hope you don't mind if we walk while we talk," Dr. Ackroyd had said (and it most certainly was "Doctor" because the man had snarled something about several PHDs the last time a student had mistakenly called him Mister Ackroyd. To be honest it had been a little hard to make out while the man was foaming at the mouth). Dr. Ackroyd had gathered all of his teaching notes, several stacks of worksheets that needed grading, and his laptop into a bag and pulled it over his shoulder.
"You have a younger sibling to pick up at Mind Elementary, correct?" The teacher had asked, "I happen to have a colleague I am meeting there as well. To prioritize our time, it would be efficient to talk while we walk.”
And Dee hadn’t had a reason not to agree so instead he nodded and let the teacher lead the way.
On their way out of the building, they had run into Mr. Hart who had wished them “a wonderful rest of the day, and oh, Logan, text me when you’re both at the restaurant!” Dr. Ackroyd had waved him off with a soft smile and two seperate promises. Dee hadn’t seen any sign of Resource Officer Roman Prince anywhere, and he was silently grateful he didn’t have to watch the adult man sulk because Mr. Hart showered Dr. Ackroyd in love the second he entered any room. Dee had made sure to avoid that growing drama like the plague. It was a soap opera in the making.
They had carefully trekked out of the school building and down the walking path that lead to the student parking lot and then branched off to the sports fields and to the Elementary school. Dee normally tried to procrastinate the walk for a good fifteen minutes to avoid the drivers that like to play chicken with the kid walking on the sidewalk while they waited for the traffic to ease up. But no one would dare try to run him over with the new substitute teacher by his side.
(The rumor was that Dr. Logan Ackroyd could stop a truck moving at 100 miles per hour with just a look, and Dee wasn't immune to propaganda.)
Dee had focused on how nice of a day it had been outside, how the sun was shining so it wasn’t too cold, how the grass peaking out of the cracks in the sidewalk were rather resilient and how many breaths he was taking and was that too many? Was he annoying Dr. Ackroyd? Should he take less? Could he? How important was it for him to breathe?
"Mr. Ekans," the teacher had said, "I'm not exactly one for beating around the bush with these types of things. Patton often tells me I am too blunt, while Roman criticizes my delivery. However, I believe the best way to approach any subject is straight on to avoid deluding you with false pretenses."
Dee had wanted to state the hypocrisy: the teacher rambling on about how he should just say something instead of talking around it. But his heart rate had increased with every word which in turn caused his mouth to dry and his tongue to stick to the roof of his mouth.
“I finished grading the midterm you took,” Dr. Ackroyd had said.
It had been so much worse than any of the thoughts had been swimming through his mind. His chest tightened, his breath silently disappearing and his lungs refusing to work the way they were supposed to. He had wanted to apologize, had wanted to melt into a puddle on the sidewalk right then and there and safe himself from the embarrassment. He had wanted to avoid the part where Dr. Ackroyd tells him so plainly that he never should have risked his reputation for someone as worthless as Dante Ethan Ekans.
But Dee was only human, only a child, only normal. He stared hard down at the sidewalk at the patches of squashed gum that students had spit out in the past while waiting in traffic, at the tuffs of grass peeking up through the grass, at the loose rocks that his scuffed yellowed shoes tapped against.
“Speaking quite frankly,” the teacher had continued, “I was impressed--”
And Dee had really stopped breathing. His chest had heaved, the gasping word billowed past his lips before he could think to keep it back. “What?”
Dr. Ackroyd had reached up and tentatively adjusted his glasses. “I was relating how impressed I was with your test. As I predicted you are far ahead of your class-- far enough that I put in the request to have you moved up to my higher level class.”
“Wait what--”
“Additionally, your performance exceeded my expectations. You exemplify more dedication to learning than any other student I have seen in a good three years, Mr. Ekans. I entered your missing work last night and you far exceed the requirement for the Science Honor Society. I took the liberty of reaching out to Mrs. Hydrus on your account--”
“Stop!” Dee had blurted out. His mouth tasted like ash, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his head was still ringing from being completely blindsided by the information he had just been given.
Dr. Ackroyd had paused, taking span of three steps to adjust his glassed once again and peer down at Dee. “Pardon? Is there something the matter?”
It was horribly pretentious when he said it like that. In retrospect, Dee groans into his arms and wishes he could invent time travel solely to go back and stop the two of them from ever meeting, from ever having that conversation, from ever existing. Logically, what the teacher had been saying was amazing news, the news of a lifetime: he had gone out of his way to do things for Dee that no other teacher had done and it honestly hadn’t ever occurred to the doctor that he hadn’t needed to do it at all.
“I can’t,” Dee had told him kicking a rock on the sidewalk. He didn’t elaborate, because it hurt so much to get two words out, he couldn’t imagine getting anymore out. He had wondered absently when he had allowed the rose bush to grow around his own neck, allowed to prickly, pesky thorns to embed themselves in his throat, when those blood red petals that had matched the flushed color of his face.
Dr. Ackroyd had let him walk another ten paces in silence-- as silent as it could get with pop music blasting from the cars stuck in the afterschool traffic and the game of honking that was going on distantly from the parking lot (that Dee was pretty sure Kyle was a part of).
“You can’t,” The teacher repeated, but he hadn’t sounded angry or offended. It had taken a moment for Dee to place the tone: somewhere between confused and curious. “I’m afraid I do not understand. As your teacher, I have assessed your ability and professed that you are certainly capable of keeping up in my honors class, and Vice Principal Joan has already confirmed that your school schedule can be amended around the new class with very little impact on your current learning courses. Additionally, the honors club for science has very few requirements: no more than three unexcused absences-- which you have none of--, at least an eighty-five average in the class-- which you now have a ninety seven--, and--”
“--and a grade point average of 3.0.” Dee had finished for him.
Because it wasn’t like at one point Dee hadn’t been looking into honors clubs. He knew collages looked into club activities, and that most honor clubs had scholarships that came with admittance to said honor clubs.
“Also, Kyle Phillips,” Dee had said lowly, “is president. He gets the power to veto any applications he doesn’t like.”
It had gone without saying that Kyle and him weren’t on the best of terms. The black eye incident hadn’t even blown over yet and it had been a whole week. When Kyle had found out that Dee hadn’t really been punished for punching him, he had whined to his mom, who in turn showed up at the school and demanded that Dee be expelled.
VP Joan had refused on some grounds or other, and it ended with her threatening to sue the entire school system. VP Joan had calmly told her that she was welcome to take them to court, just let them know the date. She had stormed out of the school.
And so far it looked like she wasn’t really going to push it, but VP Joan had pulled Dee into their office and asked him to lay low for a little bit.
Dee had dragged a hand through his unruly hair, “I guess it doesn’t help that Mrs. Hydrus doesn’t like me much either.”
It had gone without saying, again, that it wasn’t just Mrs. Hydrus. All the teachers didn’t like Dee much. The “why” was still something Dee was trying to figure out.
He had offered Dr. Ackroyd a parody of a smile. “Sorry that you wasted your time.”
And that should have been the end of it. That was usually the end of it. One of Dee’s apologies, a short tense silence, a backhanded comment that always, always, felt like a slap in the face and Dee left standing alone once again. When had Dee stopped expecting something better from people?
And why did Dr. Ackroyd keep upsetting these expectations of his?
The teacher had hummed to himself, staring at the distant elementary school. The brick building had a faded look to it: something that had stood for a thousand years and would stand for a thousand more, something that had seen hundreds of kids grow up and move on, something that should have been remembered fondly.
All Dee remembered was the fact his scars matched the pattern of the brick by the southern entrance from the number of times his cheek was grounded into it, and the way a deflated kickball felt slamming into his face repeatedly. He remembered the look on the nurses face when she told him to stop crying over the blood on his face, the annoyed expression from one teacher or other when he came in late covered in bandages. He remembered the librarian who always brought up the car accident when he saw her, always saying what a shame it had been, always ripping the scab off the wound before it could heal over and ten year old Dee trying not to scream at her for it.
“Mr. Ekans,” Dr. Ackroyd had said suddenly. “I have never once wasted my time on anything. I do not plan to start now.” He had picked at the packet of papers in his hand before hands before handing over it to Dee. Dee had taken it without really knowing what was happening.
“What?”
“I’m going to get you into the Science Honor Society Club.” The teacher had told him as if it were really just that easy.
Who knows. Maybe he really thought it was.
“I’m going to do all I can, Mr. Ekans, so I expect you to do as much as well. Bring your grades up.”
“What?!” Dee had stopped in his walk, blinked, and then repeated, “What?!”
“Surely you heard me the first time--”
“I did!” Dee had said hotly, “What do you think I’ve been trying to do this whole time! Bringing my grades up is not-- it’s not that--” He had spit the word between his teeth, “--easy!”
And Dr. Ackroyd had raised an eyebrow at him, in that way of his, “I know you can do it.”
Dee squeezed the test packet in his hand leaning forward on the old playground structure again. There it was. That voice, that absolute conviction in the teacher’s tone. At the moment it had filled Dee with a horrible fiery anger that send him storming away from the teacher and leaving him behind on that sidewalk.
He had picked up his brother. He had gotten home and did the dishes and made dinner and done everything that wasn’t open his backpack and look at his homework. Then when he had finally caved and pulled the four pages worth of good marks from his bag, he had immediately thrown that stupid test in the trash, taken it back out, flipped through it, ripped several of the pages, crumpled them into a ball, thrown it out again--
And at half past the Little Dipper, Dee was in his backyard on a playset that should have succumbed to the natural selection a decade ago, with the test in his hand and his ears ringing from a teacher who had such absolute faith in Dee’s ability he had managed to make Dee doubt the very law of his life.
(Like Newton’s law of Gravitation, or Murphy’s law of Perversity: Dee’s law of Loneliness.)
((It has a ring to it, didn’t it?)
Dee had been alone for all of his life, alone in his corner of the boxing ring there to be beaten again and again as others used him as a stepping stone to something greater. There had never been anyone cheering for him in the stands, any coach hollering advice at him, any water boy reminding him to drink in between rounds of the fight. It had been him and him alone.
All at once Dee becomes aware of the noise behind him, the dramatic shift in the balance of the playset he had been sitting on that causes the rusted metal screws to whine and the floor to shake. Dee yanks his feet up onto the platform and hugs the metal bar he had been leaning on and tries to remind himself that a four foot fall was not going to kill him.
Then the shaking stops and Dee chances a look behind him to see exactly what idiot chose to come outside and play on the goddamn kids play castle that Dee had already claimed brooding rights on for the night--
“Thomas?”
The eleven-year-old totters on the platform, less than a foot away, on his hands and knees and in socks that have several chucks of the playground mulch stuck to them. The kid looks at him with those wide eyes, a sheepish smile, and he unapologetically shifts so he’s sitting across from Dee.
“Hi, Dee!”
“What are you doing out here?” Dee asks, “Do you know what time it is? What about mom--”
Thomas picks a piece of mulch off his socks, “I couldn’t sleep.”
Dee had known Thomas since he was eight and Thomas was just a year old. He knows all the kids ticks, the way he picks at his fingers when he’s nervous and lying, and how he hates the cowlick in the back of his hair and how he hates when Dee leaves him alone with their mother, but never says anything because he feels guilty.
He knows that when Thomas says he can’t sleep its a lie, and he still can’t bring himself to be even a little upset.
“Go back inside, Tom,” Dee tells him.
“Why aren’t you coming in?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because.”
“That’s not an answer!”
“Go to sleep.”
“Fine!”
And because Thomas has known Dee since he was one and Dee was eight, he leans forward until his head hits Dee’s shoulder.
There’s a pause between the two of them, where Dee goes as still as he can, feeling the pressure of his little brother’s head right there on his shoulder, feeling the weight of the absolute trust, feeling the frustration fade right out of his bones.
“What…” Dee says, impossibly soft, “are you doing?”
“Sleeping,” Thomas answers equally soft.
The test papers in his hand crumple again, when he squeezes his fingers into his fist to wake himself from the dream he’s been living for the past week since Dr. Logan Ackroyd walked into his life. The reality doesn’t shatter around him; its distressing, worrying, and stupid, because Dee doesn’t think he’s known what to do in this upside down world.
If he accepts it, he’s going to lose it. If he fights it, it will destroy him. In the boxing ring of his life, Dee’s alone, lonely, abandoned and losing. The past week has just been setting him up to knock him back out of the fight and is it wrong for Dee just want to want the final blow to land, already?
“Whats that?” Thomas says.
And because Dee doesn’t lie to his brother, he flattens the front page out and spreads it for the moon to read. “My test.”
“Did you do good?”
“I did.”
“Then why are you sad?”
Dee doesn’t lie to his brother.
He’s not like his mom when she says “it won’t happen again” or like Thomas’s dad who says he’ll “be back in a little bit” and just to “tough it out” until he shows up like he isn’t gonna leave again in a week, a day, a few hours. He isn’t like Thomas’s friends who say they’re not scared of his brother, and he’s not like his own teachers who tell him that they “don’t give out grades, kids earn them”.
So instead he drives his chin into his chest and tries to speak around the lump in his throat. “I’m not sad.”
“Why are you angry then?”
“I’m NOT ANGRY!” Dee snarls, maybe a little more angry than he means, and he doesn’t regret it for a good one, two nanoseconds.
Three nanoseconds and Thomas flinches. “I’m sorry!”
And then Dee recoils, because fuck, he raised his voice, and this was Thomas and He raised his voice at Thomas.
The playset shifts dramatically underneath the two of them, wobbling like Thomas’s last loose tooth seconds before it fell out. Dee’s hand flings to the metal bar, and Thomas grabs the wall opposite of him. There’s a squeak of fear from them both, something shrill enough that Dee’s sure a light at the house across the street flicks on and off and a call to the police is probably being debated (and ultimately discarded, because no one called the cops for Dee’s broken arm three years ago or someone took a metal bat to their mailbox or the rock to the window, or, or, or.)
The playset wobbles, and they both cling to their respective parts, and they both stare at each other. Dee and Thomas.
At some point it stops shaking.
At some point, both their breathing evens out again.
At some point, Thomas says, “oh,” and they’re both quiet.
Dee can hear the crickets sing, the too-early morning breeze dancing through the wind chimes on someone’s porch, the soft even breaths of his little brother. The test scatters on the ground a few feet below them, picked up by the little wind and tossed across the little yard. Somehow it makes the whole world feel confined to this little bubble where it was him and Thomas and this stupid space that Dee had forced between them.
“I’m sorry,” Dee says and its different from the times he’s said it before, all the times his teachers dragged it out of him and all the times the other kids had claimed one as a person victory. This time he means it, because it’s Thomas.
“It’s stupid,” Dee says because he doesn’t lie to his brother, “It stupid and I hate it.”
Thomas, sweet, wide-eyed, little Thomas, waits for him so say more.
“It’s stupid that I’ve made it this far and I can’t go any farther. I hate it. They said that everyone had a chance and then they drew the line right in front of me, like “oh not you”. I hate that everyone has always ignored who I am and what I can do, what I’ve done-- and Thomas? It sucks. I’m so tired of it. I’ve tried so… so very hard to do the right thing every single time. They tell me to apologize, and I do. They tell me to try harder and I do. They tell me that I’m not going anywhere--”
Dee savors a breath, and forces it out just as quickly, possibly a little hysterically, “I don’t wanna be here for the rest of my life, Thomas. I can’t be here forever. It will kill me.”
Thomas at eleven years old is too wise for his age. Because he doesn’t tell Dee that he’s not going to die, he doesn’t tell Dee that its going to be alright, he doesn’t say anything at all.
Dee feverishly wipes at his eyes, because heaven forbid the stars see him cry.
(They’ve seen him do that enough already.)
“Dr. Ackroyd made it seem so easy,” He says barely more than a whisper in the silence of the night. “I’m really scared it might be.”
The metal feels warm to his touch, burning hot and he clings to it like a lifeline that will light his entire body on fire and turn the rest of his skin to match his face and shoulder and arm and, and, and.
“I’m really scared that it’s gonna be that easy after all, and that I’m going to make it out of here and that I’m going to get to college and that it will be the same exact thing all over again.”
“It won’t.” Thomas says, loud enough that Dee has no choice but too focus back in on him. The moonlight is playing with his pale skin and making his eyes shine. Or maybe those are tears. Is he crying? Or is Dee?
Thomas, wise beyond his years, too wise for his eleven years. Thomas says it won’t be like this out there. Thomas says he’s going to have a chance. Thomas agrees with Dr. Ackroyd.
“It won’t be like that, Dee, I promise.” Thomas says. “You won’t let it be.”
Unwavering faith.
“I know you can do it.”
He brings a hand to his face again rubbing those tricky, telling tears off his face. He sniffs, his ears prick, and his throat stings just a bit. How ridiculous is it, crying at half past too-late, and with his little brother watching him. He thinks of how Dr. Ackroyd must be somewhere probably asleep because that’s what normal fucking people were supposed to be doing--
And stupidly Dee thinks of that boxing ring of his life and thinks of Thomas standing in his corner smiling at him like he is right now, watching him take hit after hit and watching him get back up each time. And he thinks of that Science Teacher watching him with those calculating eyes, pen in hand and analyzing his opponent’s every move and crafting the plan of retaliation---
Just asking Dee to make it to the next round, to the break where he can get to the moment where he remembers why he’s fighting in the first place.
Thomas lets go of the wall, and carefully leans forward again. The playset squeaks slightly. Thomas stops just an inch away from Dee. When he calms down he reaches the last bit forward and hugs him. Dee can feel him shaking, can feel them both shaking.
And then the playset comes toppling down.
They both let loose twin yells of panic-- Dee blindly grabs to his side and pulls Thomas forward, covering him with his arms. The metal screeches, something wooden cracks and Dee feels absolutely, terrifyingly weightless for a full second.
They hit the ground heavily: Dee, landing on the platform base at an odd angle and Thomas landing on him at an odder angle. Dee loses his grip on his brother he rolls to the side. The air, what little bit of it was left ejected from Dee’s chest, and several part of his back and his arms and his legs are left whimpering with promised bruises.
And they’re left lying there, trying to catch their breaths in the wooden and metal wreckage, staring up at the stars.
And they’re left there, alive even after everything around them had come down around them.
“You okay?” Dee asks the second he’s sure he’s not dead.
“Yeah,” Thomas says equally out of breath. Dee watches him raise his head, slightly, a stupid shiny grin on his face and flushed cheek in the moonlight, “You?”
It’s not that easy, bringing his grades up. It’s not like flicking a switch, or knocking over a domino, or starting a car engine, or, or or. But he’s got a couple people (Dr. Ackroyd, Thomas) in his corner, and something that he wants (Science Honor Society).
And the stars twinkle overhead the same way they’ve always done
“It’s so... fucking late.” Dee chokes out a sopping wet laugh. It tastes like salt and despair and something completely awful that he absolutely hates: hope.
Dante Ethan Ekans has never thought of himself as dumb.
He’s not.
#Idle Threats sequel#Friends on the Other Side (Your Side) au#sympathetic deceit#Student!Dee#Teacher!Logan#burns#bullying#grades#au#series man#much shorter than I thought it was
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Day 6 ..Friday Struggling .. which is why i did nt see the news or spend time on Social Media yesterday.. I thought it would be a breeze and after a little concentration id have it down .. but no , even the first part…known as lumpedy lump was proving tough , because of the triplet walk up from the V to the 1.. and i think thats the part Jimmy Reed himself is playing… If you ve read previous episodes you will know i refer to Honest I Do….the song. Im learning it on a You Tube lesson , now a lot of people who think of themselves as pros , seem to think there s some sort of stigma ro learning stuff on You Tube, but i know a French guy , of Spanish descent , who is a really hot Flamenco guitarist who has mastered nearly all the Palos , and all on You Tube They are right, if you dedicate yourself to different songs at the same time, but it s like working form home…you need time and discipline ..and take the lessons very slowly and don’t move on till you can play it 20 times with your eyes shut..preferably standing up .. then move on up. Yesterday was the first time i managed to do this. There is a different tone on Social media today .. angrier , more prone to blame others, more censorious…and on one group forum i saw they were going to ban Humour..well , i don’t personally know the Group leader.. but it does nt take much imagination to know she s not someone you d want to be quarantined with. The only thing to fear is fear itself.. well i certainly don’t think that applies in this situation, quite the reverse, the more frightened we are the less we will venture forth on errands that are not strictly necessary..i was on my way out the door , literally, when my mobile rang…it was the charming woman from the bank.. she d got my message .. id gone way over my limit.. which was why i could nt withdraw funds…She , and i won’t name her, is working from Home and sorted it all out on her laptop..no need for me to go to town.. Is nt that great?..well , I thought it was..and a good thing too,as she has not been provided with any masks..and we are talking about a Bank..if they cant get basic stuff like that no wonder the Government are nt testing people .. they don’t have the wherewithal…it is nt as though this has nt been on the News everyday since December the something. .I remember listening to Radio Four as i was driving through Slough, in December,… don’t ask … the M4 was closed..and i was listening to a woman in Wuhan describing how her parents were dying in the Street.. that really got my attention. It did nt seem to get the attention of the people in charge here however, as when the inevitable arrived nearly three months later , they had done nothing to prepare for it. The Spanish Disease is politics, it creeps into every corner of life and spreads its poison , a bit like you know what,..and in the past when people got fed up with their venal politicians there was a Military Coup , and then they realised maybe life was better before with democracy … and the cycle starts again. This model has been exported successfully to Latin America.. with the possible exception of Mexico. and Costa Rica Its all very well for us stodgy Northerners with our bad weather , to criticise, but Sun affects people,and when things are good they seem so much better in the Sunshine..but something about Sunny weather produces Volatility, and an @ i won’t fix the roof as its not raining @ World View… and Italys colossal death rate is the price to be paid .. not that it is nt sunny in China..or South Korea..but they do a lot more than just fix the roof..and to put it down to Confucianism .. well maybe best not to start on that. Australia will be interesting, they have lots of sun , but its a pretty organised place ..and i don’t see them making this sort of Balls up.. also they have the experience of natural disasters,,and pulling together, and will not let Politics interfere…any country that had leaders with names like Abbott and Costello doesn’t waste too energy on petty politics. The Current Classic example of petty minded, spiteful, pointless, negative ,oppurtunism , is the attempt on social media and what sup groups to denigrate the Royal Family organising people to rattle saucepans at a given time, because apparently the current King s father had a rather large amount of money in a Swiss Account..well, it was Saudi Money , not money stolen from the Spanish taxpayer, unlike the billions stolen by the previous administration , the PP .The idea for this stupidity was inspired by the Custom of applauding the Medical profession every night at eight o clock.. an excellent morale boosting , bringing everyone together kind of gesture..well everything has its opposite and this is an excellent way to breed more discontent and fracture an all ready pretty fractured society.. it beggars belief and you really have to have lived here to see these Barca Madrid idiocies at first hand. Barca Madrid is a term used to describe the divide and conquer ,us and them , attitudes that have stopped Spains progress since the collapse of their Empire, culminating in the most vicious Civil War in recent European History, and one would have hoped that after 40 plus years of Democracy it would have disappeared , but sadly, like in the USA and a lot of other democracies , it seems to be on the increase.The anger on Social Media which results from the claustrophobic frustration of a lockdown will hopefully not boil over into something with unpleasant political consequences, which would be very sad , as after Francos death and the adoption of constitution that is the envy of many countries, Spain was a beacon of hope in the last quarter of the 20 th century… how the mighty are fallen .. one hopes not.. SPANISH LOCKDOWN DAY 7 Slept really well , but then I remember reading that people on Death row sleep 16 hours a day so possibly not a good sign. Last Night i watched the Spanish news ,on the main channel and things are looking up , relatively speaking, in the sense that testing has arrived ..someone, or some country, has sent several thousand, or may be half a million test kits.. which is obviously excellent news , and testing in Galicia is going full steam ahead. There was the obligatory item about a vaccine..which I think one can take with a pinch of salt. .Military erecting field hospitals next to various main hospitals…the eight o clock applause of medical staff…all in all well put together not too desperately pessimistic, and generally not as disheartening as Facebook.. afterwards i felt like some light relief so we watched eleven episodes of 2 and half men, in Spanish ,to cheer ourselves up before going to bed. .. Today i decided to live a normal day .. if such a thing were possible , so , after taking Tina for a walk i got the Old TV and DVD working and put on Marty Schwarz s Intermediate Blues Guitar Course part one…and it started raining .. so that was encouraging as it took away any temptation to venture outside.. except for firewood that is. I worked through the course without rushing , but also without too much pausing , as i d done those lessons before, and all that repetition of Honest I do is paying off.. On going outside for firewood i could not ignore the noise of the generator that kicked in yesterday evening, as we ve had not Sun for several days, so i decided to fill it up with diesel, and see how much 15 hours constant running had used,only half the 20 litre can to fill up the tank…but was it full to begin with?..anyway it s very rare to have 4 days without sun , so even if it did use 13 euros of diesel Im not going to freak out as that was expensive diesel.. and I’m entitled to use the cheaper stuff .Of cause i spilled Diesel over my hands , and shoes , and when i spent a good 5 minutes trying to wash the smell out i realised this was the ultimate anti virus test.. so i will leave a bowl of Diesel outside every time i go to town and use that as first part of the disinfection process , yet another excuse not to go to town. My neighbour M. rang and suggested i look at his scheme on Facebook to institute Food Deliveries , so one does nt have to go to the Supermarket in person and infect and be infected… a good idea of course , but like so many , i don’t see it happening…I pointed out several objections , lack of drivers, expense, one would need a sort of Uber program which will probably not be ready for a year .. etc..and the Supermarkets are making so much money i doubt they need this sort of input.I promised to look at it later , which I will , as Lunch was ready. We ve run out of Bread ,Oranges and Chocolate, Aurora has broken a nail and the nail bars are closed till further notice…but otherwise we can probably get through till Monday without suffering too much ..on the other hand Monday is probably the worst day to go shopping..Im toying with the idea of going to the small Supermarket, at 8 am Sunday morning, and hopefully having it to myself , as i cant face the idea of a queue. I know English people are supposed to love queueing but i must be an exception, and queuing nowadays is a High Risk Activity. The Sun is out and i did one of the jobs from a month old to do list… pumping the water out the flooded pump room , it all went very well , and i felt very worthy , and now , with the Sunshine it s time for a walk , with Tina , of course. I return , feeling optimistic .. and the phone rings, i assume it s my neighbour asking if I’ve read his article.it isn’t , it s C another near neighbour, with some very bad news . The police are in Quarantine…and the Army will soon be here. No Tobacco..as they will close the Tobacconist. A completely different ball game I rang M, and gave him the news…I f he d had a kalashnikov he d have been checking the magazine I rang another neighbour F, whose office is next to the Police Station , to warn him. .When the Rumour , comes to your Town , It Grows and Grows, Where it Started No-one Knows…*Robbie Robertson I rang my source in the Town Hall G…no , it s only one cop , and he has nt got the results yet.. I rang M again…he had spoken to his friend who is a Guardia Civil .no , it was nt a Cop it was a Guardia Civil..he also told me the Cuban woman who cleans houses had been stopped, by the Police and they checked the receipt for her shopping I rang the first neighbour and corrected the original story I opened Facebook .. and there was the original story , which had started a firestorm of comments along the likes of whats your source? etc as though we were in the Watergate hearings, not only that, the people reading the story imagined it referred to Mojacar , not Carboneras , and were all frantically ringing the Police Staion , The Town Hall and each other to see if it were true. The tones of the respective comments went from shrill outrage that anyone should suggest such a story without due documentation , to fear , to I knew this would happen, all these irresponsible idiots .. blah blah It began to increasingly resemble an episode of Dads Army with a false alarm about a German Landing.., which Facebook does anyway There is the Captain Mainwaring..@While i was out today making sure everyone was behaving themselves i saw these irresponsible panic shoppers, and these people walking around without a good reason @ The Fraser .. We Re Doomed The Air raid Warden…Its all the fault of the Ruling Class, and rules are rules etc Jones ..Dont Panic... in a tone of complete hysteria Pikes mother…Be sure to wear your gloves , motorcycle helmet , hazchem suit, mask..galoshes, .Do you have your hand sanitiser , all clothes must be burnt on reentry etc By this time Auroras original alarm had been replaced by hilarity, as she was sitting by the fire hearing one side of these conversations.. I went out for some more wood and we relaxed by watching a Documentary about the Boeing 737 MAX..complete with simulation in the Pilots cockpit The best part was the CEO of Boeing trying to justify his 30 million Dollar salary at a Congressional hearing..…i wondered what the Shareholders thought about that , i know what the victims families thought , as they were being interviewed and did nt sound too impressed
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@freiheitxdrang says: loop ( from zack! )
| loop: drape an arm around their shoulders.
( Prompts featuring nonverbal scenarios. )
☆ ━━━ Cloud keeps remembering this one fact as he fires his gun, bullets spraying into the air and the casings clattering to his feet: This mission was supposed to be simple.
In fact, when he received orders to aid a vehicle into Sector Three of Midgar, Cloud thought it was another boring task he had been assigned, far from the dreams of glory he envisioned when joining SOLDIER. Another reminder that he’s just a pawn in a game he doesn’t know the rules to.
The only solace about the mission is that Zack will be with him.
The fact that a First Class SOLDIER would be with him on the mission should have been a telling sign--if a First Class was involved it was no ordinary delivery. However, Zack is careful to keep Cloud in the dark about the details: he has to. Leaking the company’s greatest secrets, after all, would be damning. So as the metal van rolls toward Midgar, Zack is oddly quiet.
Zack is never quiet.
Cloud has been told only what he needs to know: stand alert, aid the convoy into Midgar’s borders, deliver three parcels into the fort inside. It sounds stupid to Cloud--why so much secrecy for three packages? Why ask a First Class on a delivery mission?
Cloud sulks in his seat in the van. For the most part, the vehicle is like most on the road: a large blocky thing that could have been any other industrial van, if not for the ShinRa logo emblazoned on the side and the fact that it is armored from the roof to the chained tires. Cloud hunches in the back with his gun on his lap, gazing out the window with furrowed brows.
Zack twists around in his perch from the front seat.
“You okay, Cloud? What’s wrong?” Zack asks amiably, no doubt growing stir-crazy from the long journey to Sector Three.
“...I didn’t join SOLDIER to deliver packages,” he mutters, his voice edged in annoyance. “I’m not a delivery boy.”
Zack gazes at Cloud for a long moment and it seems there’s so much he wants to say, no doubt about the mysterious contents of this mission. But the silence lapses too long and Zack hides his apprehension with another bland smile like he always does.
“Ya know Cloud--” He begins.
“FUCK!” The driver yells in panic.
And it happens in snatches: there’s gunfire banging loud in the air from outside, their truck deflects most of the shots, but as the bullets crash into the windshield a spiderweb of cracks bloom across the glass. Cloud clutches the door and his gun, eyes wide despite the instinct to close them screaming at him, yet he can’t because he sees the road ahead of them has a tall, furious barrier of fire blocking the path.
Their truck spins to a halt, Cloud’s head bounces off the front seat, but otherwise he’s unharmed. He blinks from a little dizziness and shakes his head to clear it of ringing.
What the hell?
Zack is already in motion, a hand going for the Buster Sword next to Cloud in the back. It takes a moment for Cloud to realize he’s rattling off orders calmly and quickly:
“You need to go to the back and protect the doors there,” Zack is telling the driver. “Move when I signal to you that it’s clear and go. Cloud, get my left flank. They have Materia, so this might be tricky.”
“What--? Who are they?” Cloud gasps as the driver scrambles to press a button to unlock their doors.
And Zack slowly looks over to Cloud, those blue, blue eyes glowing so brightly:
“Ya know Cloud, not everyone likes ShinRa. Now move.” And Zack kicks open his door and is flying, like a bird, sliding the Buster Sword smoothly through the opening with him, launching across the field--
Cloud can’t help but to catch his breath, his head still swimming, eyes wide as he watches Zack dance out there so gracefully it’s like he’s not even fighting. There’s just this SOLDIER and that huge sword swinging around in the air, easily following his every movement as if the weapon weighed nothing at all.
And then, Zack’s gloved hand goes up into the air and closes in a fist. The driver has no such hesitation like Cloud, he springs from his seat and is out and gone.
Cloud fumbles with his helmet, pushing it on. Then he opens his door and is out on the ground. It takes a moment to get his footing, but the adrenaline gets him running, sprinting quickly around the truck to the left, trying to focus despite all the sounds blaring around him: fire crackling, bullets blasting, Zack’s sword deflecting metal, and his own breathing loud in his ears. Outside the sky is foreboding with deep gray clouds and threatening rain. The sky does not care about this small war erupting all around Cloud.
Cloud crops up by the left headlight of their truck and he sees more clearly what is happening: ahead on the road there is the fire and three people wearing dark clothing and bandannas covering their faces before it. In their hands are auto-machine guns of varying sizes and they are firing blindly at Zack.
And somehow, unbelievably, Zack deflects all of their bullets, like some kind of superhero right out of a comic book. The Buster Sword is swinging so fast it almost blurs among the gray of the clouds.
This inspires Cloud to raise his gun and begin firing at the assumed rebels. He doesn’t have time to question the morality of killing these strangers, only that if he doesn’t they will surely kill him and Zack. Cloud knows he can’t let that happen, so he fires at them with the intent to kill.
But he knows his shots don’t hit a damn thing and that most of the dirty work is done by Zack’s hands. He watches the dark-haired soldier dart among their ranks abruptly and it’s so obvious how much more skilled he is compared to them: they flounder at the close quarters and the blind shots from Cloud in the distance. Zack, however, is incredibly skilled at such closeness and his sword slices at their weapons, the guns falling apart like confetti.
And then, the Buster Sword cleanly slices the first rebel in two. Blood sprays into the air. And then the second masked man falls, an arm detached from his corpse as its thuds to the ground. The third stranger, however, doesn’t go down quite as easily: his hand is clenched around something that glows green and suddenly bands of white-hot lightning blaze to the ground.
Cloud falls to his knees at the blast, his ears ringing from the crash of noise that follows the light. Zack manages to remain almost standing with the Buster Sword held protectively before his body, perched on one knee and panting. He hunches and coughs, and after a moment of blind panic Cloud can see he’s bleeding from a temple and no doubt other places too.
The last stranger flew back at the lightning and sizzled himself alive from his own spell.
Cloud takes only a second more to gather himself and then he’s sprinting to Zack, panting and reaching for him.
“Zack!” Cloud shouts, falling next to Zack on his knees.
Zack is panting, a damn bloody mess, but somehow, impossibly, he smiles.
“That w-was a... pretty good show, y...yea?” Zack says with a breathy laugh, but there’s a hollowness to it as his gaze touches the bloodied lumps of the rebels.
“Shit, here, take this Zack,” Cloud is saying, pushing a Hi-Potion to his raw lips.
Zack gratefully drinks the healing liquid and Cloud helps him shakily get to his feet. Zack drapes an arm over Cloud’s shoulders as they slowly work their way to the vehicle where the driver should be waiting. Cloud keeps looking back, staring at the pieces of human flesh left discarded in the road.
“...Who were they?” Cloud asks again, softly.
Zack stops. He drops his arm and takes Cloud’s shoulders in each of his hands, staring hard into his flustered gaze.
“Some people don’t like what we do, Cloud. Or even who we are. They’ll kill us and we have to protect ourselves. Really, we gotta protect what we believe in! I believe in ShinRa helping the people I love, that’s why I joined. That means sometimes we have to do terrible things to protect the ones we love in the end. That’s why I keep going.” Zack tells Cloud with such devotion that Cloud can only stare in response.
( But those people... weren’t they also protecting someone or something they loved? Isn’t that why they’re doing something this desperate...? )
The Planet is screaming, but neither Zack or Cloud can hear it.
#✦┇ ask#freiheitxdrang#{ omg ty for this ;3; }#{ i always wanted to write something like this }#{ i like cloud being conflicted and in the dark about shinra }#{ i was going to put a whole bit about what the hell they are shipping }#{ but this shit was getting long lol }#{ so lets say its some bomb ass materia xDD }
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If you don't want to read this whole thing, I've provided the audio reading of it. I suggest giving it a listen, it adds a whole different and more unsettling mood
youtube
I’d like to share with you all an incident that actually happened in my little home town. When it first happened, I was pretty young, so I just picked up bits and pieces from hearing adults talk. But that was rare. It’s like they thought, whatever happened, there was something in it that had to be shameful. It always scared the heck out of me when they did whisper about it. Now, after what happened here and knowing more, it’s even scarier.
For me, it started when I was nearly ending my shift at the clinic one night. It was a gloomy evening. We’d had a hunting accident earlier, but otherwise it was quiet. Mitch Lemieux, this guy who owns a garage on Cartier Blvd, five-time arm-wrestling champ down at the Caribou bar, comes in panicking, looks spooked out of his mind. Never seen him so much as flinch before that. So I’m expecting some serious carnage.
He’s shouting for help, so I call two EMTs to go out with him. They come back with a half-naked girl. Her clothes are torn to ribbons and what’s left of them is soiled. She has cuts, bruises, and like pond scum or something over her. She has this deadness in her eyes like nothing I’ve ever seen.
They get her in a blanket, a stretcher and take her away. Everyone in the waiting room is standing now and the only sound is Mitch panting. Because everyone knew that girl was Chantal Norman. The same Chantal who’s been missing for twelve years.
Since then, I’ve found out a lot more details about her disappearance. I had to. I got specifics wherever possible. I’m going to lay them out here.
The Girls Who Went Away
I may have heard more talk than some as a kid because my big sister, Virginia, was friends with Chantal and the other two, Jenna and Lise. She was supposed to hang out with them one weekend. I remember she was talking about it all week. I guess Chantal’s parents were out of town, so she was excited.
When Thursday came around, she starts saying she doesn’t feel like going anymore. My Mom questions her, asks if she’s had a fight with the girls, that sort of thing. Even if she’s pregnant. Virginia got upset and left the table, saying, “You don’t understand.”
By Saturday, she was starting to cry all the time for no good reason. She finally told my parents she knew something bad was going to happen that weekend. “They’re going to die, Mom!” she said. That sticks in my memory like it was yesterday. She was so certain it gave me chills. But nobody believed her.
On Monday, Virginia came home from school hyperventilating. My Mom could hardly get a word out of her. When she did, it was, “They’re gone!”
Soon the story was all the town could talk about. The three girls disappeared that Saturday night. Had Virginia gone, she would’ve been the fourth.
The night of the disappearance, Maestro’s Pizza had a call from Chantal’s phone at 8:47pm for pizza. The driver recorded the delivery at 9:20pm. He said the girls looked ok when he delivered the pizza. All three were at the door. He said it seemed like one of them kept looking behind her, like someone else was there. He couldn’t see anyone.
A receipt from a nearby liquor store was timestamped 9:39pm. The clerk recalls only seeing Jenna and Lise. (Chantal was not yet 18, so that may have been why.) They did not seem distressed to him, although one kept checking her watch.
At 10:14pm and 10:17pm, two calls were found in Chantal’s phone records. Neither call was local. One was to a law office three-hundred miles away. The recorded voicemail was one minute and sixteen seconds of breathing. The second call was to a residence on Prince Edward Island. The woman who answered the phone said the caller asked, “Is he there?” and hung up before she could get clarification. She’d never heard of Chantal and had no idea why Chantal would be calling her. The law office said the same.
That was the last confirmed time anyone heard from Chantal, Jenna, and Lise.
At 11:29pm a 911 call was placed from an unknown phone. A woman is heard whispering, “Send someone, please.” And when the dispatcher asks where, she says, “We don’t know” and the call drops. None of the girls’ parents could say it was their daughter. It may have been a coincidence.
The next day, after not being able to reach her daughter or Chantal, Lise’s mother calls for a wellness check. At 5:45pm on Sunday, police arrive. Chantal’s home is locked up. No signs of a break-in or a struggle. The alarm system was in ‘Home’ mode. The cars were still parked outside. The girls’ phones had been left on the table, one was even left charging. Nothing had been stolen. Slices of pizza were out on the coffee table, partially eaten. Half-drunk drinks were beside the plates.
It’s like they’d just been in the middle of having a good time, drinking, listening to music, when they suddenly dropped everything and ran off. It’s not even clear how they locked up, because the house keys were found on the kitchen counter.
Nobody could understand it. But there was a bad feeling about the whole thing. Even the cops say they felt “dread” when they approached the home. They felt what Virginia had felt before: that something terrible happened.
The usual events that surround missing girls followed. Much of the community helped search surrounding wooded areas. Signs were put up everywhere, all the way to Montreal. It must’ve cost a ton. The bay was searched and a body was found. It turned out to be someone else. In fact, I believe that body was never positively identified.
Police questioned everyone who knew the girls. Family, friends, neighbors. Nobody saw anything, heard anything particularly suspicious. They questioned Virginia a few times about why she didn’t spend the weekend with them as planned and why she wasn’t helping with the searches. To the latter, she said, “It’s too late.”
The Case Gets Stranger
That’s when the weird stuff started to come out. I think every case that’s low on leads like this is going to have some degree of strange tips that go nowhere. But these strange tips went somewhere. This is the stuff that made people not so keen to talk about it.
The first strange report was from an old man, an ex-cop, in a town an hour away. The night the girls disappeared, he was having trouble sleeping. This was around 1 am, he says. While he’s taking a leak, he thinks he hears someone in his yard. It sounded like it might’ve been giggling. Figuring it was kids, he ran out with a bat just to scare them. When he got to his backyard, which backs up to the tree line, he saw three girls holding hands and running single file into the woods.
He ran after them, because there’s a lot of woods back there. He was afraid they’d get lost or hurt. When he got to the woods, he couldn’t find them. They were just gone. He felt stupid about the whole thing, so he kept it to himself. Until he heard three girls had gone missing.
A search was conducted in the area, dogs brought in, but nothing was ever found to say the girls were actually there. It creeps me out thinking about it, because, if it was them, why would they be there? It’s a long walk from Chantal’s home to this town. Why would they walk all that way to wander into the woods?
Chantal’s parents were questioned repeatedly if they’d received demands. Someone said they’d seen Chantal’s father meeting with some men in black suits the week before the girls disappeared. They were getting into a black car when he’d been spotted. Chantal’s dad was a roofing contractor, so top secret meetings wouldn’t have been his thing. He denied it at first. Later he said they were hardware salesmen. So why’d he start by lying? What hardware salesmen act like that?
It didn’t help their case that Chantal’s mother believed the girls were dead. She said it was because of something that happened while she was out of town. At the hotel where she was staying, three birds got into the lobby the same night the girls disappeared. Staff got a 40 foot ladder to get the birds down, but when they got up there, the birds were nowhere to be seen. “Why exactly three birds? That was their spirits. They’re with God now.” That’s what she used to tell people.
I guess that brought her comfort. Someone told Virginia about it once and she said, “They’re nowhere near God…”
Some people shared that opinion because, when police went through their search history, there was a lot of odd stuff you wouldn’t expect popular, cheerleader types to be into. There was a lot of occulty stuff and conspiracy theories. One weird search phrase stood out on the report, “can a TV signal make you do things” and variants on it. The last item in Chantal’s history, at 10:01pm, was for a mountain cottage in Arkansas.
They were in contact with someone with the handle ThePrince. Not many details of those interactions came out. I heard from someone in the police department that he was telling them to do things. There was only one of those he felt he could tell me: this guy had asked them to do something to Virginia. He wanted them to bring her out to this old woodshed back behind the yellow house on Nelson Rd. That was supposed to happen the night they disappeared. “Think about it,” he told me. “What do you think would’ve happened to your sister if she went that night? What would’ve happened?” His look told me this was something that kept him up at night thinking about it. I know the feeling.
They were never able to track down who this ThePrince was, from what I understand. Efforts to contact him online failed.
One of their mutual friends heard Chantal talking about some guy named ‘Vincenzo.’ How Vincenzo knew everything and told them things nobody’s supposed to know. She said Chantal told her Vincenzo took them out to a secret place. Another friend said while sitting with some other friends he saw Chantal talking on her phone at school. She was talking for five minutes or so. She came back and said it was Vincenzo. But everyone at the table swore she didn’t even have a phone in her hand. She was just facing the wall, talking. Whether real or made up, Vincenzo was another dead end.
And there were sightings of the girls everywhere. Sometimes locally, but some claims came from as far as Vancouver and even Australia. Sometimes in the woods, sometimes walking along the street, at the beach. Someone said he was sure it was Chantal who begged him for money in Toronto. Someone else said they saw the girls along the street on a vacation to Mexico. She said the girls retreated into the crowd when she called to them. “Why would they run away like that?” she asked.
Maybe the strangest was a guy who could point to some photos he and his wife had taken at a party. In the background, two girls and part of a third that looked just like them. The thing is, the photos were at a watch party for the fall of the Berlin Wall. The girls were infants at the time those pictures had been taken.
There was a lot mysterious about this case. Why’d they disappear? How’d they get where they were going? Was someone else involved? Where’d they go? Were they dead? The odds of them still being alive were extremely low. Nobody believed we’d ever see them again. With the reappearance of Chantal, the question now was: Where have they been for the past twelve years? And where are the others?
Chantal
Mitch told me, officers, everyone who’d listen, how he found her. He’d been out on his own land—his father’s land, technically, acres and acres of it going way back into the woods—hunting deer. He was up in his stand, way back there, having a few beers. He saw some movement far off in the trees. He was ready to take a shot, but something made him hold on. Just the way it’s moving. Too slow and unsteady for a deer, even a wounded one. It’s a sickly walk. He keeps watching as it comes closer. It’s a person, he’s sure. He’d normally be furious someone was trespassing. But this is too weird. She’s slowly walking straight toward the tree where his stand is and he can now see it’s this half-naked, beaten girl.
“Wherever she’s been, I don’t ever wanna go there,” he told me that night. Sent a shudder right through me. He reeked of something, like a scorched tar smell. And all I could think was that she’d been to hell and back.
The ER docs concluded she was physically ok. She needed food and warmth, but otherwise just bruised up. What she needed was psychological evaluation.
Whatever peace and quiet she had in her room ended quick. Police arrived to question her, her parents (now divorced) were called, and they all wanted to know where she’d been, if she was ok. She still had that dazed, mindless look, even with her mother caressing her.
When she finally spoke, she gave an address. They tried to get her to say more, but that’s all she’d tell them. Just the address. It was a local one, on the other side of town past the old drive-in. Not many people live out that way anymore.
Police sent someone to the address immediately, hoping the other girls would be there. I found out from a friend that they had trouble finding it because the yard was so overgrown that the house number was covered. The house itself was sagging, a rotten old house with busted out windows.
Two cops were checking it out and even with two of them, both armed, the place made them nervous. They go inside and find an old mattress and a bunch of dolls on the floor. They heard a thudding sound from upstairs. One of them went up to check it out, while the other looked around downstairs.
The one upstairs went room to room looking for the source of the noise. He comes to one room where he sees the window shutters are open. He thinks he’s seen this in the movies before: it’s just the wind. What next, a cat jumps out? So he goes and closes the shutters. Then it occurs to him. There isn’t any wind.
He searches the upstairs and finds no-one there. He runs downstairs and asks his partner if he’s seen anyone. He hasn’t. He’s been flipping through a book he found. It’s a book about the Nazis with polaroids of children between the pages. They decide to get out of the creepy place and come back in daylight. On the way out, they both notice the back door’s been opened. They were sure it was shut when they’d arrived.
Investigators looked all over the property the next few days. One of the upstairs rooms has a lot of bloodstains. They’re tested and come back inconclusive. The polaroids are reviewed, but no-one recognizes the children. There wasn’t even a hint that Chantal or the others had been in that house. They can’t figure out why Chantal was so fixated on that address.
The owner of the house, according to records, made the purchase in 1974. Nobody in town had ever seen or heard of this person. More, as far as police could determine, this person didn’t exist. Others still living in the area say they’ve seen vehicles at the home before, years back. Never the same vehicle twice. But they never met anyone.
Hospital staff left Chantal’s mother stay with her the rest of the night. She didn’t want to leave her side. She was afraid of losing her again, perhaps. One of the nurses heard her mother asking her, “Where were you all that time, Chantal?” and saying things like, “You don’t look a day older.” And Chantal said, “I wasn’t anywhere.”
Technically my shift was over, but with what happened, I stayed on to help. And I was nosey. I didn’t try to go visit Chantal. I never really knew my sister’s friends. So I was surprised when I heard Chantal wanted to see me. I figured it would have to do with Virginia and I was right. She asked me if Virginia could come see her.
I just imagined how much she missed her friends and family after all this time, so I was quick to promise I’d try my best. Virginia had left town eleven years ago. She rarely even called. Something about the incident changed her. But I had her number, of course, so I called and told her everything that happened.
Up to, “She’s been asking to see you, V. Maybe she’ll tell you more.”
I was sure she would say she’s hopping on a plane. Instead, she said, “Chantal is dead. They’re all dead. They’ve been dead all this time.”
I said, “V, I was looking right at her. She spoke to me. She’s on an IV drip. She’s alive.”
“I don’t know who or what that is. All I know is if I come home, I’ll never be seen again.”
And she hung up. I called back a few times. She wouldn’t answer. My parents couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t answer for them either. I couldn’t go face Chantal with that news, so I just went home.
I spent the night beating myself up about it. I could hardly sleep. Around 3am I heard faint knocking on my front door. All sorts of ideas went through my mind. What if Virginia decided to fly in after all?
Before I could go to the door to look, my phone rang. It was Virginia. I answered and asked right away if that was her at the front door. She told me she had a bad feeling and woke up in tears, sure something had happened to me.
“Don’t answer the door,” she said. “Please.”
I didn’t. I heard the knock again and I didn’t answer. V and I weren’t close. But I trusted her. I spent the rest of the night hiding in my own home, because she really freaked the shit out of me.
I found out the next day that Chantal had gotten out of her bed during the night, around 2:45am, while her mother slept. Hospital cameras show her walking out calmly, nobody notices. And just like that, she disappeared again. Nobody’s seen her since. No idea where she went after leaving the hospital, and still no idea where she’d been for the past twelve years. There’ve been searches, but I’m sure it’ll be all dead ends again.
#scary stories#reddit#this literally scared the shit oit of me the first time I heard it#its so good
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Glockenspiel
Part 1/? - Transmission
Part 2/? - The Sandhill Hotel
Part 3/? - Piccadilly
Part 4/? - The Future
Part 5/? - Too Late
Part 6/? - The Mystery of the Missing Time Machine
Part 7/? - Underway
Part 8/? - The Sierra Bunker
Part 9/? - Cross-Country
The room was an office, albeit a rather spartan one: the floor was tile rather than carpet, and the furniture a very basic desk and chair, and a couple of shelves of books and documents on one wall. It was entirely dominated by the one decorative item in it, a massive painting hanging opposite the door.
That was Klimt’s Dido, a massive gilded portrait of a dark-haired woman wrapped in flames, and it caught Peggy’s attention not only because it overwhelmed a room not nearly big enough for something so ostentatious, but because she recognized it. During the war, Steve and the Commandos had been given a set of photographs of paintings stolen by the Nazis which they were to watch out for – one of them was the Dido, which they had never managed to find. She wondered now how many other missing paintings were hanging on the walls of HYDRA operatives’ offices in the future.
If the picture were too much for the room, it also completely overshadowed its occupant. The man sitting at the desk, who must have been Mr. Smith, was a perfectly ordinary-looking fellow in his mid-to-late thirties. He had brown hair that was just starting to recede, and a pair of rimless glasses on his nose. He wore a light green shirt and a tie with diagonal stripes, and he’d been working on a laptop computer much the same as Toulouse’s Sandhill’s. By the time Peggy managed to tear her eyes from the Dido and look at him, he was on his feet, his mouth hanging open.
“Look who just knocked on the door,” said the man from Yorkshire.
Smith was still gaping in disbelief. “They just… they just walked in?”
“Sure did,” Yorkshire nodded.
It took a moment more for Smith to recover and sit down again, and then he gestured to a stack of plastic chairs against one wall. “Sit down,” he said.
A man brought chairs over for Peggy and Howard. The man from Yorkshire forced them to sit down in them.
Smith licked his lips. He clearly had no idea how he was going to deal with this. “How did you get here?” he asked.
Peggy opened her mouth to tell him that was none of his business, but Howard spoke first. “We have connections,” he said.
She gave him a kick. “Howard, don’t talk,” she ordered. Saying things like that would lead these people to Toulouse, and Toulouse did not deserve that.
“Shit,” groaned Smith. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, and had to think for a moment before he could come up with his next question. “All right. Do you, or do you not, have the Glocke crystal?”
Peggy frowned. “What’s it worth to you if we do?” she asked, not because she expected an answer but to buy herself time to think. What did he mean by the Glocke crystal? Was he talking about those pieces of quartz they’d found in the crate with the time machine? Could it be that one of those, rather than some bell-shaped superweapon, was die Glocke?
“I’m not here to make deals,” said Smith. He was starting to recover his composure now, and had gotten to his feet again with his hands on his hips. “Either you have it or you don’t.”
“Whether we do or not, I see no reason we should tell you unless you can give us what we want,” Peggy replied. Smith would surely be able to guess what they wanted, but he was doubtless also smart enough to realize that sending them back to the 1940s was not in his best interests. For all he knew, they had already found out exactly who he was and were planning to prevent him being born.
“They told Zola they didn’t have it,” said the man from Yorkshire. “He didn’t think they knew what he was talking about. He thought they might know other things we could use, though.”
Smith frowned, then shook his head. “No, they’re a liability,” he decided. “We can’t go leaving bodies nobody can identify. Better drop them in the Pit.”
Howard looked at Peggy with panic in his face. She had nothing to say in reply. She had no idea what that would entail, and could not reassure him. Behind them, one of the men took out a phone and made a call.
Some forty-five minutes later, Peggy and Howard were dragged back out front and loaded into the back of a brown and gold UPS delivery truck. Peggy didn’t know what the back of such a vehicle was supposed to look like, but she doubted it was supposed to have an area set off by bars with wire mesh in between them, just a little over arm’s length from the back doors. Peggy and Howard were loaded into that, and both the bars and the actual back of the truck were closed on them, leaving them imprisoned in the stuffy heat. Sweat was already rolling down the small of Peggy’s back as they drove away.
Once they were on the road and presumably no longer surrounded by armed men, Peggy wriggled out of her handcuffs and got Howard out of his, then took a look at the doors. The cage bars had a lock, but there was no way to get a hairpin into it with the mesh in the way. When she felt along the ceiling, she found the mesh welded into the join between the bars and the roof. The back doors had windows in them, although there was a dark film over them to keep anyone from seeing in. By the light from that, Peggy could see that there’d once been an internal latch, but that had been removed and a plate of metal welded over the hole.
“It’s too bad they took our phones,” said Howard. “We could have called Toulouse.”
Peggy shook her head and sat down on the floor to take her stockings off and inspect the damage to her feet. “She wouldn’t be able to do anything to help us now.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” sighed Howard. “They’re probably already coming for her, anyway.”
“I’m sure they would have figured it out eventually,” Peggy said with a sigh. Toulouse had been the only other person win the Piccadilly Sandhill, and she’d left it at the same time they had. Sutcliffe may even have been able to see her in the Uber, though he might equally have been focused on Howard waving at him. So much for not getting her friends into trouble anymore.
“She’s a sweet kid,” Howard said wistfully.
Peggy managed not to roll her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure she’ll look very fetching in a diamond bracelet. You can leave a message with the jewelers to save one for her, assuming they’re still in business in 2015!”
This suggestion popped out sounding rather meaner than the light sarcasm Peggy had intended, but Howard didn’t seem to notice. He looked thoughtful.
“Apparently I’m gonna give a girl a diamond ring eventually,” he said. “I wonder what she’ll be like. I wonder what her name is.”
Peggy was about to tell him that he’d just have to wait and see, but in their current situation, that wasn’t true. “When we get out of this, you can ‘google’ it,” she said.
Howard hadn’t thought of that, either. He mulled it over a minute and then shook his head. “Nah. I’d rather be surprised.
That was more character than Peggy would have credited Howard with, and she was actually kind of proud of him, although she wasn’t going to tell him so. “And I’m going to have two husbands,” she mused. “I suspect Daniel will be the first one, but I haven’t any guess about the second. I probably haven’t met him yet.” She did wonder what would lead her and Daniel to split up. Or perhaps… Toulouse had said Peggy outlived both her husbands. Maybe it would be until death did them part. She shivered.
“You think anything’s gonna be different now that we know this stuff?” Howard asked. “What if I propose to the wrong girl, just because I know I’m gonna get married someday?”
“I don’t know,” said Peggy. What if she decided not to marry Daniel, out of fear that she would be the death of him? Given her track record it wasn’t all that improbable. What if she decided not to have children now that she knew at least one of them would predecease her? If she didn’t have children, what would happen if one of them were destined to be a doctor who saved lives, or an influential scholar, or President of the United States? Now that they knew even hints about the future, were they prisoners of it?
“Time travel really is a terrible idea, isn’t it?” asked Peggy.
“Yeah,” said Howard. “It is. Yeah.”
Peggy had assumed that this Pit would be somewhere nearby, but apparently she was wrong. The truck continued to rumble along, its insides getting hotter and closer by the hour. Through the back windows Peggy could see that they passed through the Sierras and came down into the Nevada desert, where they began heading north. A second vehicle, a dark red van, followed them the entire afternoon, as flat scrubland rolled by under a slightly hazy sky.
Towards the evening they stopped briefly in a town for petrol – a sign near the station identified their location as Wells, Nevada. Peggy stood up and stretched, thinking this might be an opportunity to make some noise and summon help. When she looked out the window, though, she found a man leaning on the back of the truck. He was wearing a brown uniform, to match the vehicle, but when he straightened up to wave at somebody she could see the handgun under his jacket. If she made a sound, he would do something about it, or at least make excuses to whoever heard.
The red van was at the next set of pumps behind them, also filling up. Even if somebody heard her, there were allies nearby to prevent an escape.
A few minutes later the driver returned, and they set off again. Evidently they were planning to drive through the night.
“I bet the drivers got to eat,” Howard grumbled.
“We’re not going to live very long,” said Peggy. “Why bother feeding us?” She hoped he would warn her if he needed to pee again. Now that they were locked up somewhere they could see, she definitely planned to turn her back.
Peggy slept fitfully on the vibrating metal floor, waking up every time the truck went over a bump and missing the soft pillows and lavender-scented sheets of the Sandhill hotel. Even the foldaway bed she’d once shared with Colleen would have been an immense improvement. This was like trying to sleep in a cargo plane while a dogfight went on all around her, and when their destination was a ‘pit’, it was probably just as likely to end in a hard collision with the ground.
She woke up in the morning with half her bones aching, and desperately needing to pee, herself, but having no place to do so. Peggy sat up and stretched, grimacing as her neck refused to straighten, then turned around and checked on Howard.
“Are you awake?” she asked softly.
He’d been sleeping curled on his side, facing away from her. When he heard her voice, he groaned. “We’re still in the back of a truck in the future, aren’t we?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so,” said Peggy. “How does it feel to wake up and not be hung over?”
“Terrible,” Howard replied. “I need the hangover to keep me balanced.”
Peggy shook her head and got stiffly to her feet to look outside. The air was chilly now, and smelled damp – they were definitely no longer in the desert. The view out the window showed that they were driving slightly uphill, along a two-lane road through open pine forest. The van rumbled over a little bridge with metal guard rails to keep anyone from accidentally driving into the narrow, fast-flowing stream below. Behind on them on the horizon, under towering grey clouds, were the silhouettes of mountains.
The red van was gone. That was interesting. Had it only been a coincidence, or had somebody decided that backup wasn’t necessary after all?
“No signs,” Peggy said, sitting back down. They were probably somewhere in the Rockies, but it was impossible to say exactly where. Certainly a very long way from people. The wilderness was a great place to hide bodies.
The truck made a left turn, and the sound under the wheels changed – they were on a gravel road now. Trees closed in behind them, and they slowed to a stop.
Though her knees complained, Peggy grabbed the bars and hauled herself to her feet again, and helped Howard to do the same. As when they’d thought Mr. Smith was coming for them in the walk-in safe, they wanted to meet their fate head-on. It was probably too much to hope for that it would be help instead of harm this time, too.
“Keep your hands behind your back and hold on to the handcuffs,” Peggy whispered. Howard nodded.
The door opened. The wind was cold and it was starting to rain a little, just a mist that didn’t really wet anything but could be felt on the face. Outside were two men in brown uniforms, with guns in their hands. One of them unlocked the inner cage and let Howard and Peggy down onto the ground. He gripped Peggy roughly by the arm as she made the long step, and she nearly lose her hold on the handcuffs.
“I suppose you’re going to shoot us now,” she said. “Could we at least have permission to die with some dignity?”
Her captor frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?” he asked. Another Brit, Peggy noted, this one probably Suffolk. Had British members of HYDRA escaped arrest by fleeing to America? Toulouse had said America had rounded them up, too, but then, America was a much bigger country, with proportionately more places to hide.
Peggy looked at Howard, who understood totally. “She means that we both really, really need a bathroom, pal. Can we find some bushes or something so we don’t die pissing ourselves?”
The two men exchanged a look. The one holding on to Howard almost laughed, but saw the serious expression on his colleague’s face, and controlled himself. “Maybe once there are more…” he began.
He never got to finish. Peggy drove her knee into his bollocks and he doubled over in pain. Howard pushed him over and took his gun away from him, and snapped the handcuffs around his legs so he couldn’t get up again. Peggy used her own cuffs to hit her guard in the temple, then pushed him into the back of the truck and slammed the door. Howard kicked the second guard in the face as he tried to get up, then turned to Peggy and smiled.
“High five!” he said, holding up a hand.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I saw it on the television – you slap your hand on mine.”
Peggy shook her head. “We’re not finished escaping yet.”
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Fractured: Chapter 5
Chapter 5
“Jesus Christ, Jonesy, you're on the clock! Put that Goddamn thing out.” Sharpes' harsh voice barked, startling the lanky little crook. Elijah Jones, Jonesy to his small circle of friends, had a few bad habits, and they'd worn steadily on the nerves of his employers; in this case, a few hits off a thin reefer of Gotham Groove to calm his nerves had set the older gangster off, and Jonesy swore as he tossed the weed aside, coughing as he tried his best to look professional after that embarrassing little display. The others, Eddie and Carmine, had a good laugh while they loaded the last of the huge Lex Corp crates into the delivery truck, and he could only grumble and heft his uzi, shuffling back to his spot outside the hangar. He was easily the smallest member of this crew, standing at roughly 5'5”, his body thin and wirey, and his smooth, youthful face gave the impression of a kid straight out of high school, at least when he was off the clock.
He'd been with this crew for about a month now, and he was still unsure of the whole organized crime scene. Before, he'd just been a petty crook ripping off ATMs and making nickel-dime deals on what little grass he was willing to part with. Then Teddy had told him about a boss looking for extra guns for some big scheme, and when he heard that they were paying five hundred a week for just watching out for cargo at the airport, he couldn't say no. After the first week, he'd started to regret his hasty decision. It had turned out this wasn't just some ambitious mob boss trying to get a step ahead of the competition and the law; it was goddamn Slade himself calling the shots, and Jonesy had nearly soiled himself when he found that out. Was there even a word for just how in over his head he was?
Sharpes growled sourly and stomped off toward the driver's seat of the truck, slamming the door in frustration, and Jonesy did his best to avert his eyes. Hopefully Carmine or Eddie would be willing to swap places with him in the back so didn't have to endure the shame of riding up front with the vet. He wondered just what the hell they were moving if the needed four guys with SMGs and shotguns to guard it. It wasn't like the cops would search this hangar, since it was just one in a long list of buildings signed under a seemingly never-ending series of dummy corporations. How would they even guess this place was Slade's?
There was a sudden thud on the roof, and Jonesy's head snapped up at the sound. Everyone else looked up too, guns in hand and ready for anything. Nobody was going to fire until they were damn sure these was trouble, with airport security only a stone's throw away. They stared up for a long moment, not moving as the silence after the initial sound went on. Eddie was the first to lower his piece, letting the shotgun barrel rest at hip-level before Carmine joined him. Jonesy had started to do the same, but almost the second he did, he felt the worst pain he'd ever experienced in his life shoot through his jaw. He'd been hit with something hard and metal, and he felt teeth rolling around in his mouth. It hung open, obviously broken as he howled in agony, the sound drowned out by gunfire. The last thing he saw before he began to black out from the pain was a flash of red, yellow and green. He thought of Boy George, for some reason.
TTTTT
The security was about what Robin had expected. He'd gotten the first of the goons by surprise, putting him out of the fight with the first swing of his staff. The other two had reacted almost instantaneously, buckshot and 9mm bullets filling the air. He danced around them, rolling and weaving as fast as they could aim. The shotguner, a burly balding man with pig-like eyes, tried to play it smart, firing his 12 gauge ahead of his friend's shots, trying to catch Robin where he thought he would dodge. It was a good effort, but it wasn't near good enough to beat the boy wonder. A boomerang in the barrel ended the big man's effort, and he screamed as the shotgun's barrel burst in his hand when he squeezed the trigger on reflex. It distracted the other gunman long enough for Robin to close in, thrusting the end of the staff into the man's gut and knocking all the wind out of him. The second blow across the side of his head sent him sprawling to the ground. The shotguner was all that was left, and he'd dropped the remains of his weapon, a pearl-handled stiletto in his hand now.
“Really?” Robin asked with a slight smirk to his lips. The goon scowled at him for a long moment, looking like he was going to make a lunge with that blade. Then, it seemed reason won out, and he almost sheepishly pocketed the knife before he started to back away. Robin couldn't help but smirk. Maybe some gangsters weren't as dumb as they looked.
The moment of humor didn't last very long, though as the truck roared to life and started to back out of the hangar as fast as the driver could manage, and Robin had to dive out of the way to keep from being run over as it came speeding toward him. The shotgunner bolted for the passenger’s side then, almost ripping the door open and leaping inside. Robin hissed as he saw the truck turning to flee, and knowing he wasn't going to catch up with it, all he could do was reach into his utility belt and reach for a tracker. He hurled it at the escaping goons, and smiled with satisfaction as he saw the device clamp onto the bumper. Even if he couldn't tail them now, he'd be able to follow them. They were out of sight a moment later, and Robin frowned as he turned his attention toward the two goons that had been left behind. The one with the broken jaw wouldn't be of much help for obvious reasons, but the second could still talk. He was starting to come to when Robin knelt beside him, and when he saw the Titan's eyes narrowed right at him, he swore and started to reach for his gun. A quick smack across the forearm with the end of his staff put an end to that thought.
“Your friends. Where are they taking that tank?” Robin demanded in as harsh and commanding a voice as he could muster. Even with the tracker, it was no guarantee that they would lead him to their hideout. It wouldn't be the first time someone had been smart enough to stop and sweep for bugs after a fight with him. The thug growled and spat, nursing his arm as he glared back at him.
“Eat me. I ain't saying shit.” The Titan leader sighed, standing and grabbing the man by the back of his leather jacket. He tried to resist, but it was difficult with only one arm, and the threat of another good whack with that staff was enough to stay the good one from doing anything too hasty.
“Propeller or the forklift?” Robin asked almost casually. The thug blinked once, then stared straight up at him.
“W-what?” There was a squeak to his voice.
“Propeller or the forklift? Your choice in how we do this.” He could practically hear his victim trying to keep his bladder and bowels from releasing now.
“W-wa-wait! Stop you friggin' psycho! I don't know where they take the goddamn trucks, I ride in the back an' watch the door here! They don't let me see the route!” Robin listened to his tone, the pitch in the goon's voice, his breathing. He was telling the truth. He released the man's collar, then without a word snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. As he started to cuff the second one, who was now whimpering and crying pathetically on the ground, he heard the other's voice shouting back at him.
“You better friggin' hope you catch Slade before he gets to your lil' green friend! The shit he says he's gonna do to him, man!” He stopped, and turned sharply back at the goon with eyes narrowed and his hands balling into fists.
“What are you talking about? Why does Slade want Beast Boy?” Robin snarled, getting into the man's face, the sharp end of one boomerang now pressing against the man's throat. He swallowed hard, but looked back at the teen with defiance in his eyes.
“He's offerin' fifty grand to whoever brings his sorry ass in alive. Guess he figures it's his fault Terra left. He's gonna get his money's worth outta that turd's hide, and he's gonna make sure Terra knows about every lil' detail.” And then the goon laughed, loud and malevolent. Robin's teeth gritted hard, and with one last snarl of rage he backhanded the cuffed man to the ground. Retracting his staff, he stomped out the hangar with his communicator in hand.
“Titans, this is Robin. In the living room, wait for me. We all need to talk.”
TTTTT
“He wants Beast Boy?” Terra asked with wide eyes, one hand gripping the arm of the couch as tightly as the should could, while the other held the changeling's. Everyone else looked roughly the same, save Raven who bore her usual frowning gloom. Robin stood in front of them, arms crossed and his eyes shifting between his team, stopping on Beast Boy and Terra, nodding in answer to her question.
“That's what that thug said. Slade's figured that it's him that made you decide to stay with us. He's going to want to make an example. Fifty thousand to whoever brings him in.” All of the Titans were chilled at those words, though they couldn't say they were surprised. Terra continued to stare at him, the look on her face one of horror mixed with a trace of anger. Robin knew well what those two felt for each other, and he couldn't blame her for her reaction. “I'm not going to allow anyone on my team to be put in any more danger than necessary. From now on, Beast Boy's not going to be left alone out there. If we have to split up for any reason, it's groups of two.”
His tone left no room for argument, and it seemed no one was in the mood to disagree, anyway. Beast Boy looked for a moment like he wanted to protest, but he quickly let it drop. Much as he might value his pride, he knew that Robin was right, and he had no desire to make Terra worry about him being kidnapped by Slade for torture or whatever else that maniac had planned. Robin looked at all of them again, then raised a hand to dismiss the team.
“I need to talk to you, Terra. Alone.” Terra stopped, looking back at him with unsurprised. She gave Beast Boy a soft smile and a peck on the cheek before he left a bit reluctantly. A moment later they were alone, neither looking the other in the eye.
“He's doing it to get at me, isn't he?” Terra broke the silence, looking up at Robin. She still had some of that fear in her eyes, but the rest of her face was starting to contort with anger. Robin nodded.
“He tried the same thing with me. He infected the others with nanobots, threatened to kill them if I didn't follow him.” He kept his gaze steady, though his expression softened just a bit. “We're going to stop him. Don't let him intimidate you like he did me.” There was another long silence, and again Terra was the one to break it.
“I don't want Beast Boy hurt because of me, especially after what I was so ready to do to you guys. Maybe I should just leave, let Slade chase me for a while.” Robin stopped her right then, one hand closing around her shoulder and forcing her to look him in the eye.
“That's out of the question. You're a Titan and I won't have one of my team putting themselves in that kind of danger, no matter what the reason.” The words struck the geomancer like a ton of bricks. She looked at Robin, how he looked at her. It was a brotherly gaze, fierce and unshakeable. A look she hadn't seen since the last time Brion had been around. She nodded, now ashamed she'd even contemplated that idea. Sure it might have distracted Slade from the rest of the Titans, but what would it do for them to see her disappear on them again? It would have broken BB's heart.
“Alright. Sticking to kicking his ass, then.” The both smirked at that, and she felt her leader give her shoulder a squeeze.
“Good. Keep up that attitude. We're going to need it.” And then he was gone, leaving Terra alone in the living room. Her gaze turned over toward the giant windows, the view of the cityscape before her. Slade and his gang were out there somewhere, waiting for their time to make their next move. Her hands balled, and she felt her lip pull into a frown. No more running from her troubles. She was going to face whatever came her way with her friends. She was claiming her own place in life.
TTTTT
“Only two lost, then?” Slade asked, Sharpes and the last man, Carmine he thought his name was, standing before him, still shaken by their close encounter with Robin. Sharpes nodded, trying his best to look composed before his employer.
“Just a coupla the new guys. Nobody important or that knows where this place is. Ditched the tracker bird-boy stuck on the truck too.” Slade looked approvingly at his underling's thoroughness. Of course he'd worked long enough in Gotham to know the Bat-family's tricks, especially the ones that could compromise the entire operation. Rising from his chair, he beckoned the two gangsters to follow him, and they did so without hesitation. Several others were moving the last of the cloning tanks in with the rest, the other ten already filled with 1174/AA and growing their specimens. Ten days was all he would need to buy, and then he would have total control over this city. For now, though, there was other work to be done.
“We still have business to tend to before the final stage can begin. For now we lay low. Relax, but keep your lips tight, and be prepared to act on a moment's notice.” Sharpes and the other were all too happy to comply with that order, having been working almost non-stop on this operation for over a week now. “Before you go, Sharpes, tell Shade, Parasite and Sportsmaster to be ready for a...special assignment very soon. I need them to tend to a more personal mater.” His left hand grunted in acknowledgment of the order, immediately pulling out his cellphone and striking the speed-dial.
Slade looked into one of the tanks, at the tiny, infant face floating in the orange growth accelerant. The subject inside was already the size of an eight month old child, and by the end of the week it would probably be a teenager. Its features were a perfect match of it's template's at that age, and the mastermind couldn't help the satisfied smile that crossed his lips at that sight. If they fought as well as the real thing, then neither the Teen Titans or the Justice League would be able to stop him. He'd have his own little fiefdom in the palm of his hands, and an army to keep it there, and perhaps even the rest of the United States if he started to cultivate even greater ambitions. But that was for another time; the present plant was big enough, and he'd seen more than enough times the dangers of overreaching in these kinds of schemes. Of course, back then he'd been the hired muscle. Now, he was the one calling the shots, and he'd learned well from the mistakes of his former employers.
For now, though, it was time to sit back and relax for a short time. After all, his boys had some growing up to do, and it wouldn't do in the slightest to introduce them to the Titans before they were in prime shape. He'd enjoy the sight of their blood on the pavement, and their heads on his wall.
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9 tips to start with your website
When you open a store in the real world, the name is not the first thing
you need. It helps to have the name first, but it isn’t essential. In the
hosting world, though, the site name, known as the domain name, is the
first thing you need to decide on.
You can’t buy hosting and start designing your site until you have
decided on a name and have purchased the domain name. See Chapter 2
for an explanation of how to pick a name.
Finding the right location (and landlord)
As I explain earlier in this section, you should picture your website as a
store regardless of whether you’re actually selling anything.
Remember that in this analogy, your hosting is like a building that your
store is in, and your website is the decor, products, and everything else
2- that goes inside the store.
When you first open a store, you need to find a building you can lease in
a good location at the right price.
You may want it in the local shopping mall, but that has its drawbacks
because then you’re restricted by the mall’s opening hours and by its
rules and regulations about what you can and can’t do.
Alternatively, you may want to lease some property of your own or get
some space in a strip mall. With the strip mall, you have more freedom
but are still somewhat restricted; if you lease a piece of land, you’re free
to do whatever you like on it (providing the city council allows you).
Finding somewhere to host your website is the same. You can go for a
hosted website as described earlier in the chapter, but a hosted site is like
being in a mall. The plethora of restrictions might outweigh the benefits.
You can locate your site in the web-hosting equivalent of a strip mall —
a shared server. There, you’re fairly free to do what you want, but you’re
sharing the space with possibly hundreds of other sites, and some things
you do might affect them (and vice versa).
The final option is to lease your own server. Like leasing your own plot
of land, nobody can tell you what you can and can’t do on your own
server.
Don’t try to go too big too fast; your web hosting can grow with
your website. Unless you know you will be getting thousands of
visitors from the get-go, you don’t need top-of-the-line hosting
right from the start.
With a physical store, not only do you have to find the right location, but
(unless you buy the land yourself) you need to make sure you have a
landlord you can work with.
Your landlord leases you the building and is responsible for the physical
building. It’s his responsibility to make sure the walls are sound and the
roof doesn’t collapse, but beyond that, everything is up to you. If one of
your racks or product display stands breaks, it isn’t your landlord’s
responsibility. It’s yours.
The same is true of your hosting. The web hosting company you buy
hosting from is renting you space on a computer connected to the
Internet. It’s the web host’s responsibility to make sure the computer
keeps working and the Internet connection stays live, but beyond that,
it’s all up to you.
Most store owners only contact their landlords to pay the rent or to tell
them when there is a problem with the building. Likewise, website
owners only need to contact the web hosting company to pay the hosting
charge or to report that the server seems not to be working correctly.
Ask around online to find out how good your chosen web host is as a
landlord — in other words, how good the host’s service, response time,
and communication are.
Hiring the right staf
Before paying for hosting, think about who is going to keep the website
updated. If you were opening a business, you’d have to think about what
staff you are going to have in the store, whether you’ll sell enough to pay
them, and whether you’ll ever get any sleep with all the work you’ll
have to do.
2-Keeping a website updated is very similar.
Whether you’re creating a
site for your community group, a blog, or even an online store, who is
going to keep it updated? It always sounds easy, but the challenge of
writing every day or remembering to update the website with new events
or even adding and deleting products can soon drive even the most
patient person to insanity.
Stocking the shelves
It is not enough to open a store and stock the shelves once then never
restock them. The stock on the shelves needs to be replenished regularly
or people will have nothing to come back to buy.
Likewise, unless the content on your website changes regularly, there is
nothing new for people to come back to your site for. Not all websites
need to be updated daily, but regular new information gives your visitors
a reason for continuing to return on a regular basis.
Your hosting plan and your website are not the same thing. Your
hosting plan is the facility that gives you a location in which to
house your website. The website itself is comprised of the files,
databases, and pages that create something viewable to Internet
users.
If you picture a store, you generally think of a building with products
inside. What you’re seeing, though, is two separate parts: a building and
the decor/products. If you take the decorations, racks, products, and
everything else out — and even take the sign off the front — the
building is still there.
Hosting is the building. It’s empty; it simply provides space for you to
work in. Your website is everything that’s inside the building. Delete
your website and the computer it was hosted on still exists (and you’ll
still be charged for your hosting plan whether you’re using it or not).
Every store needs an office. Somewhere where you can sit and relax
without being in front of customers. Somewhere you can do all the
background administration the store needs. For the hosting plan, that’s
called the control panel or the dashboard.
Your control panel is where you administer the hosting, set up passwords
and e-mail accounts, and do all the back-end stuff that is related to the
hosting but not specifically the site. With most hosting companies, you
can run multiple sites under one control panel, like having a central
office doing the administration for a chain of stores.
You need a lock and keys to keep your office safe, and that’s your
control panel’s username and password that your host will have provided
for you when you registered for hosting.
Stores need a way to get stock in and out, so where possible they have a
loading bay. The loading bay is typically at the back so the customers
don’t see the deliveries being made and can’t interfere with them.
FTP provides a loading bay for your website. Any time you need to
update the site in any way, FTP is the tool you need to do that. It’s like a
delivery driver. You tell it which files you want delivered and where you
3- want them delivered and the FTP does the rest.
Finally comes the part everyone hates — insurance. Nobody likes
making insurance payments until something goes wrong, and then
they’re really glad to have insurance and wish they had paid a little more
to get even better coverage.
Website owners face the same problem. Nobody wants to pay for daily
backups — or even weekly or monthly ones — and many people choose
not to, but then their website goes down and they really regret not
having paid for the backup service.
Just as I would suggest that any company get insurance, I absolutely
recommend that website owners get a good backup system.
4- Avoiding Misconceptions and Missteps
Building websites and purchasing web hosting are things that are still
new concepts to most people. Knowing who does what and who is
responsible for what does not come naturally.
A few things trip up many people . The next sections describe these
things so you don’t fall into the same mistakes.
Know what to expect from hosting support
Your web host will offer support in some manner. Some hosts offer
phone support or an online chat option, whereas others might only offer
support through an e-mail or ticket system. Either way, there are limits to
5-what your host can do for you.
As I mention in the section Finding the right location (and landlord),
your host’s responsibility is to provide you with a computer connected to
the Internet to host your website on.
Generally, the hosting support desk will work with you to ascertain
whether the problem is with your site or the hosting plan. If it turns out
to be your site that is causing the problem, most hosts will tell you to
find someone to help you fix it, or they may offer to help fix it for an
extra charge.
It would be unreasonable to assume that your host would be an expert in
whatever language or script your site is hosted with and would have staff
available to fix every problem you come across with the site you are
creating.
Make sure that you identify in advance other ways to troubleshoot
problems that arise with your site for those situations where your host
cannot help. Knowing where to turn in an emergency can be a great
comfort in itself.
Recognize that you’re the owner and you’re the
responsible party
Whenever anything goes wrong at home, I always look for someone else
to blame. My poor kids get the blame for everything!
The same is true online. Whenever something goes wrong, it’s always
someone else’s fault. I never do anything wrong — at least, not that I’ll
admit.
The problem with that attitude, though, is that it gets me nowhere when
something goes wrong with my website.
What I’ve learned, the hard way, is that a website is the owner’s
responsibility. You put a lot of time, work, effort, creativity, and money
into creating the site, and, ultimately, if the worst happens and you lose it
all then you’re the only one who can re-create it. Re-creating it will take
a long time.
You must take responsibility for your site and ensure that you have a
good, recent backup of it at all times.
In case the server blows up or your host goes bankrupt or some teenager
with nothing better to do on a Friday night hacks in and deletes
everything you need, you must be sure you have a recovery plan.
Shouting at your host might feel good, and if the problem is the host’s
fault, suing the company might be successful, but neither of those
actions will get your site back.
A website requires simply too much of your valuable time and talent for
you to not do everything you can to ensure that you can recover it when
disaster strikes.
6- Don’t fall foul of your host’s terms and conditions
Did you read the seemingly endless pages of your host’s terms and
conditions when you signed up?
I didn’t think so — I never do either.
Web hosting terms and conditions make for interesting reading, though.
You’d be amazed at what they say.
Every host’s terms and conditions are slightly different, but here’s the
general gist of them:
“We’ve listed a thousand things that we could class as being
unacceptable, and if we find you doing any one of them we will most
likely suspend your account immediately and possibly even delete it
without any notice.”
Yes, seriously, your host is like a landlord, but there aren’t many laws
covering what it can and can’t do. This means the host can, if it wants,
change the locks right now and never give you access to your stuff again
— for pretty much any reason.
Now, most hosts won’t do that, but they generally give themselves the
option should they need to.
Things that will normally get you in trouble with your host are
pornography, illegal content, and phishing sites (where you mimic a
bank or other website to try to steal people’s login details).
If your site does get suspended, contact your host immediately. You’ll
probably have to do a little convincing that your site got hacked or you
genuinely didn’t realize that what you were doing was wrong, but most
often your host will at least let you collect your files before deleting the
account.
Don’t delay in contacting your host, though, because delays can be seen
as proof that you knew you were in the wrong and you’re not going to
fight to get your stuff back.
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Part 2, Chapter 1: The Last Free Place
So to recap. Uh... Shit.
There’s a lot. Probably too much. Alice isn’t dead, let’s start there. I thought she was, but she isn’t. I’m not looking for her anymore. She asked me not to. She deserves to not be followed.
What she did was wrong. Someone doesn’t have to be perfect, or even good, to deserve not to be followed if they don’t want to be. The threshold for deserving that is just being a human being that isn’t a danger to anyone.
But I’m still out here. Still driving a truck. Still searching. Not for Alice but.. for understanding. She and I both worked for a transportation company called Bay and Creek. But Bay and Creek is not just involved in trucking and is apparently at war with a group of inhuman entities I call the Thistle Men, who are responsible for unsolved serial killings all over the country. The Thistle Men appear to do this with the knowledge and permission of the US government.
Oh man. That’s a lot when you say it all out loud like that. What am I doing? I should go home. But I can’t.
Alice isn’t dead, and neither am I.
I see their commander not two weeks later. I would have thought they would try to keep our routes separate, but maybe I’m below their worry, or even below their notice. And so the woman who led the Bay and Creek army that saved me back in the town of Thistle Men, I see her chatting at a distribution center outside of Omaha. She seems at ease, a truck driver on a smoke break. Talking, flirting maybe, with a warehouse worker. As she leaves, he hands her a piece of paper, which she puts in her pocket without reading. I don’t think they were flirting.
Then in Los Angeles a month after that, I see her again. She’s sitting in her truck, not looking at her phone, not reading a book, not anything. Only staring straight ahead. This time I decide to follow her. I will be late on delivery, I will be in a great deal of trouble, but I don’t think they will fire me.
Dead stop traffic in the valley. High above, way up there on the powerline, are three tiny birds. They sway as the line sways. At any moment they could take off. And then the car in front of me moves and so I move, and we inch forward a little more before stopping again.
An hour later, we come over the hill and there is an entire plain of suburbia laid out for me. Orange tile roofs, and the signs for Targets and Walmarts arrayed out into the distance like the flags of nation states, each one marking a place that is, in historical terms, mind-bogglingly huge. Forget the cavernous spaces inside, the aisles of products and the employee areas in the on-sight warehouse. And forget the roof of each of these megastores, maces of tar and ducts. Instead, just consider the parking lots. Acres and acres of lot for every acre of store. Entire medieval cities could fit into each one of these parking lots. At night, in the least lit corners, teenagers learn the best secrets of being an adult, before drudging the next day to their cashier jobs in Target or the cell phone stores, to learn the worst secrets of being an adult.
We give so much space to these lots, without considering what kind of space they take in our culture.
I follow her east. The hotter and drier the land gets, the more snow there is on the mountains above us. All through the desert here, patches of bright green, stands of trees and lawns, and hundreds of farm fields. They’re wrong against a landscape like this, sure, but extravagant in their wrongness. They are not like an ill-fitting toupee but.. like a towering purple and silver wig barely restrained by cavity. The green on the desert revels in its artificiality.
At sunset, the mountains go pink. And then the edge of the color slides up the slopes, a candy avalanche in reverse, until only the peaks glow. And then, all at once and together, the mountains lose the last of the light and become silhouettes, as though finally letting out a long held breath.
We pass Palm Springs and turn south toward the Salton Sea. An expanse of salt water created accidentally by a flood and maintained by agricultural run-off. With no natural flow of water in or out, the sea is destined to die, evaporating into an ever saltier state, and because of the fertilizers and the run-off, subject to algae blooms that cause mass die-offs in the fish.
When I was a kid, we lived near a lot of agriculture, and from the road we could see a pond near the edge of some fields. It had a little island in the middle, trees all around it. The water was bright green. One day, my friends and I snuck under fences, through the fields and to the pond. The entire bottom was lined with black plastic, something I realize only now was because they didn’t want whatever was in that pond seeping into the ground water. We swam for a couple hours, went home, showered and agreed that there was something wrong about the water there, and that we would never go back. Anyway, that’s basically the story of the Salton Sea. All of California spent their 50’s and 60’s sneaking into a pond of agricultural run-off, and then later realize that there was something wrong with the water and they should never go back. And so the resorts died, crumbling away or buried in mud.
We’re heading along the coast of the sea now. Oh shit! OK... OK. The road keeps dipping down and then up sharply, which is disconcerting in a truck like this. We pass these little dry steams, each one called a wash. I just… I just passed Butter Wash. [chuckles] That sounds pretty good. Hmm. Bug Wash. That sounds less good.
We’re turning off the highway in a town called Niland. At the hollowed-out ruin of a corner store, where someone has left a dog, a pony and a horse all hitched together under a broken wall. Past this is a scattering of houses and trailers, and then an electrical substation in some railroad tracks, and then a concrete pill box spray painted with the words “Slab City- the last free place”. Hm. The squatters’ city. A mixture of gutter punks and anarchists and artists and, just retirees looking to make their pension stretch. Anyone who wants a patch of land without worrying about paying for it. The last free place.
I’m keeping back, because there’s only one road in and out of Slab City, and a truck like this stands out on it. So I’m going to have to be very careful. What are those lights? [police car siren] Oh no. Oh God. Oh shit. Oh God. [anxious breathing]
The cop is sitting there. It’s been several minutes. They have not gotten out of the car. Lots of trailers in sight but no people. I think they scattered when they saw the cops. I would have.
The officer’s getting out, they’re walking toward me. I’m going to… I’ll leave the radio on, just in case.
Officer*: Hey. Hey.
Keisha: Hello, officer. How can I help you?
Officer: Do you have any idea how fast you were going?
Keisha: Uh, no. I-I think I was… Well how fast was I going?
Officer: I don’t know. That’s why I asked.
Keisha: ) have it on cruise control, but it should have been right around the speed limit.
Officer: Like to give up control?
Keisha: I’m sorry?
Officer: Don’t be. It’s a common wish. Life is so complicated, anything to make it more simple.
Keisha: I’m not sure what… How can I help you Officer?
Officer: What’s your name?
Keisha: Keisha.
Officer: OK Keisha, no problem. I need your license and registration, please. [paper rustling] OK. I’m gonna run these through the system. Sit tight.
Keisha: [sighs] Oh, Jesus.
Keisha: She’s been in her car for a while. Her uniform was weird, I can’t even put my finger on how. It seemed sloppy somehow, with a badge that looked like it was plastic. It’s probably just… she’s coming again.
Officer: You can have these back.
Keisha: Thank you.
Officer: Did you have a chance to visit the beach?
Keisha: The… beach?
Officer: Of the Salton Sea back there. It’s the weirdest beach ever, the sand isn’t right. It’s not the right texture. It’s covered in petrified fish.
Keisha: What is happening right now?
Officer: And then you look closer at the sand, you know, of the beach, and you realize the sand isn’t sand. It’s fishbone. The beaches are made of fishbone here.
Keisha: Is there a problem, officer?
Officer: I used to have this thing as a kid, I didn’t like uncovered windows. Mostly after dark, but sometimes during the light too. At night, I thought there was something out there watching me. Even if just a little sliver of the window wasn’t covered. I’d picture an eye pressed up against it. and then during the day, it was different. I would instead imagine some horrible creature shuffling around the house and they would be arriving that window soon, and they would see me but worse, I would see them. It’s a childish fear, but as you and I both know, not an unfounded one.
Keisha: Officer, I… was there a particular reason you pulled me over ?
Officer: You were going fast.
Keisha: I was going over the speed limit?
Officer: I have no idea. You were going fast. Big truck going fast, it’s exciting. Anything that big and fast, you wanna chase it.
Keisha: What department do you work for? Are-are you a State Trooper or..?
Officer: I’d have to check the car, I forgot what it said when I got in it.
Keisha: When you got in it?
Officer: It was dark. I’ve gotten more used to the dark. I’ve grown as a person. I would have thought you’d be proud of me.
Keisha: You aren’t a police officer at all, are you? You’re.. You’re a weirdo who stole a police car.
Officer: That’s an interesting theory. Here’s my badge.
Keisha: This doesn’t say any department on it. it says you are a… ���police instigator”?
Officer: I could take off both.., your arms.
Keisha: What?!
Officer: With my own hands. No tools, I could take them off. I’ve done it before. It was easier than I thought it would be. [engine stars, stops] Trying to drive away would be a mistake, Keisha. I’m just here to talk.
Keisha: What do you want?!
Officer: You know, it’s been so long since anyone asked that. I was just thinking about it, standing on that beach made of bone. Near town with its cheery 50’s resort signs still up, a woman on water skis in a bikini and now the whole town shrugging its way into the silt. What do I want? [chuckling] I don’t know what I want. So let’s instead think about what you want.
Keisha: What do I want?
Officer: To be careful. You’ve seen things. We don’t like people who have seen things. I would say it makes us nervous, but we don’t have the capacity for nerves, so more it makes us agitated. It makes us wild. Have you ever been made wild?
Keisha: I-
Officer: It.. doesn’t.. matter, that was a rhetorical question. Or not a rhetorical question, what’s that word? Threat! I’m threatening you!
Keisha: OK, I… Now your turn to listen. I’ve faced fiercer dangers and walked out alive. I’ve seen things that I could never explain, not if I spent 100 more years talking into this radio. You want me scared? Officer, you have no idea. I’m always scared. You think fear is new to me, you think fear is the novelty that will change my behavior? For me, fear is living. And I’ve lived this long, haven’t I? I said haven’t I?
Officer: [pause 5 s] I like you. You’re the most interesting one yet, I can see why they sent me. They know I love the interesting ones.
Keisha: Who sent you, the police?
Officer: [scoffs] You think the highest it goes is some thugs in blue? You think the Thistle Men could live in peace on an air force space because some State Troopers are in on it? Police don’t understand. I feed on the police.
Keisha: Try to feed on me. You wouldn’t be the first.
Officer: Feed on you? We just met. We have so much more to get through first, Keisha. I take my time. Drive safe now, I’m letting you off with a warning. But remember.
Keisha: Yeah?
Officer: [pause 4 s] I could dismantle you with just my teeth. I’ve done that, too. I’ll be seeing you around, Keisha. This is gonna be a good time, I think. Isn’t it so nice, you know, you love your job?
Keisha: What just happened? [chuckles] Oh, Alice. This is much worse than the Thistle Men, I think. They were hungry but she… She was smart. She was very smart. I’m in a bad position here. I hope you’re safer. The woman I’m following is out of sight, of course. But there’s only one road in and out and nowhere else she could go. I just have to wait.
An entire day, by the way. An entire day I spent waiting and searching. A sculpture garden made of discarded junk. A library tucked away back among the sage and trailers. A towering monument to Jesus made of hay and latex paint. A squatter’s shack on a hill with a big yellow eye watching me. I don’t know how, but the woman from Bay and Creek and her entire truck vanished in the Last Free Place, among the trailers and abandoned military structures. I don’t know.
I think I should lay low a bit. I’m gonna head north, try to stay out of the radar. But the officer… She isn’t done with me. There’s bad trouble coming. I can tell you that, Alice. There’s some truly bad trouble coming.
*The “officer” is the same person who introduced themselves in bonus episode 3.
Joseph Fink: Alice Isn’t Dead, by Joseph Fink. Performed by Jasika Nicole. Produced by Disparition. This episode also featured the voice of Roberta Colindrez.
And now, a knock-knock joke. Knock knock.
[left speaker] Who’s there?
A sense of well-being.
[left speaker] A sense of well-being who?
A sense of well-being. A touch of the hand to snow. The way it feels good until it doesn’t. the way it only hurts later. The way that the world seems lighter, as in illumination. And the way the world seems lighter, as in weight. And the way the world seems lighter, as in stress. The way it seems like we’ve hidden all that was ugly under our fresh start until the friction of our movement starts churning all that was hidden back to the surface. Because it always resurfaces, because the dead return, because light reverses. Aren’t you glad I didn’t run screaming into the woods, never heard from again physically, impossible to stop hearing memory-wise?
If you enjoy this show, consider heading on over to aliceisn’tdead.com and checking out our T-shirts, which have the incredible skull truck logo by Rob Wilson. And be sure to check out the other shows from the Night Vale Presents network, including the scifi/romance/prison escape thriller/relaxation type show Within the Wires, and the surrealist beauty of Paris in The Orbiting Human Circus of the Air. And the show that started it all, Welcome to Night Vale, telling an ongoing story you can jump into at any time. Come join us in a little desert town where every conspiracy theory is true.
Meg Bashwiner: This has been a production of Night Vale Presents. Find out more about us and our shows at nightvalepresents.com.
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Worm Liveblog #15
UPDATE 15: The Unexpected Obstacle
Last time it was decided this was a good time for some backstory talk. Taylor’s was very unpleasant – that’s an understatement – and it’s unlikely everyone else’s stories are going to be any better. It’s bound to be tough to read, but here I’m going to do it. Onwards!
It’s Brian’s turn and he’s going to tell his backstory during the way back. He’s the son of divorced parents, they divorced when he was thirteen. His sister, Aisha, went to live with the mother, and they stayed in contact. The day when Brian got powers was when Aisha sent a text pleading for help, he immediately went to the mother’s house to see what was going on. I gave her a hug, picked her up and started to leave. A man I didn’t recognize got in my way. My mom’s new boyfriend. You see where this is going?
It all does point that this man is the cause for that text, the mother is shrinking back, clear signs of fear. That’s enough for Brian, he did mention he knew how to fight thanks to his boxer father. Long story short: that man got a serious battering, to the point where Brian’s hands were very injured. And that’s when he saw his powers. Hm...
...you know; it wasn’t as bad as I had braced myself for this to be. Sure, it was unpleasant, and Brian’s description about how he felt nothing through all this is chilling, but it was nothing like I thought it’d be. Leaving that aside, I don’t see much of a link between the situation and his powers, so I guess I was wrong about how I thought that was.
“Um, I can’t think of a nice way to put this, but why aren’t you in jail, after thrashing that guy?” Hey, I don’t mean to throw cold water on anything, but you only have Brian’s word here, Taylor! For all you know this may have gone beyond a thrashing. Then again, there’s no reason for Taylor to look for information supporting this, and it’s unlikely she’d find some, anyways. You know who I think could know? Lisa. But she wouldn’t reveal if Brian lied, so that’s a moot point.
“It was a close call, but the guy I beat up had violated the terms of his probation by not going to his narcotics anonymous meetings and Aisha backed me up as far as us saying, well, it was well deserved. He came across as the bad guy more than I did. He got six months in jail, I got three months of community service.”
Nevermind, chances are I was wrong! Boy that was embarrassing for me. That’s the peril of typing while I read, sometimes my thoughts are refuted not too long after having done them! Brian nets himself some good guy points by stating his motivation for being a criminal here is because he needs money to be Aisha’s guardian. The benefactor is cooperating for that, the manager of a company is paying checks and giving Brian’s money a legitimate look. Just how powerful is this benefactor? Heck, are we sure this manager isn’t the benefactor? Unlikely, but who knows.
Taylor thinks it’s a noble motivation – I agree – Brian says it’s not because he wants to be noble, it’s because family comes before everything – and I agree with that too. I knew I’d like Brian!
And that was the end of Brian’s backstory tale. It was...wait for it...enlightening. Hah! But yeah, Brian does have sympathetic motives. Now Taylor tries to change the topic to Brian’s purchases. He wants to make his apartment homely and upgrade his costume, requesting Taylor’s services. I wonder if everyone would be comfortable with wearing a costume made of spider silk and bug exoskeletons?
Alec is a sane person and is hoping the thought of tens of thousands of black widow spiders living just under the loft isn’t feasible. Too bad, Alec! Embrace the spiders!
Dammit, Alec, why do you do this to me. “I don’t want tens of thousands of spiders just lurking below me, making spider noises and climbing upstairs to crawl on me while I sleep.” Of course, being the curious person I was, I consulted Google. Guess what.
That’s the very first result. Screw you, Alec! I didn’t ask for this information! Then again, the thought of Alec all antsy because the area under the loft is filled with thousands of horny spiders making noises is kind of funny. Too bad it’s black widow spiders and not purring wolf spiders.
It struck me that I was thinking seriously about putting together some high quality costumes for villains. I wasn’t sure how I felt on the subject. It means that you’re contributing to the team in productive ways, making it even less likely that she’ll betray them. To be frank, at this point I find it extremely unlikely she will.
Turns out spending what ‘s bound to be weeks or maybe months of working on costumes isn’t something Taylor isn’t excited to do, not even when she’s offered cash for this service. It doesn’t stop her from making some vague plans on how she’d set the spider farm, so at least she’s willing to make the effort.
Rachel isn’t in the loft, only two of the dogs are there. Could she have gone ahead to scout and ensure the delivery of the money would go alright? While Brian decides to call Rachel, everyone else goes to prepare for the ordeal. Taylor found something in her room, a gift from Bryan. It’s a dragonfly in amber, and she loves it, she truly likes it! She even gives him a hug. “Hey!” a voice from behind me startled the wits out of me, “No romance in the workplace!”
...huh. Is that so, Mr. Wildbow? It wouldn’t be unheard of that the author would take the time to insert romance in the story, but it hadn’t seemed to me like Worm would have any. Brian and Taylor...sure, why not. It could work. It’s still way too early to say for sure, but there could be the start of something here. I’m pretty sure things like romance would be the last thing in these characters’ mind throughout Worm, though, given the, hm, several warnings I have received about how grim stuff will be the deeper I get.
And then the story takes a swerve with the grace of a novice driver. One moment they’re smiling and giving hugs, the next Brian says something is wrong and they need to go check the money immediately. That was very sudden! Like it’d be in real life, but still, that’s some strong mood whiplash. I’ll be surprised if Rachel was caught or is in trouble, she didn’t seem to me the type that’d let that happen to her. That’s for the next chapter, which I’ll start now.
You know, I think I’m picking up already on how Mr. Wildbow’s writing style is. Every time they arrive to a place there’ll be a couple paragraphs of the way to that place, then a description, then how it ties to the city or to society, and then the plot continues. I haven’t read many authors who take the time to do this, usually authors tend to only do a couple paragraphs to make the setting, but Mr. Wildbow goes beyond that and builds upon the world. Look at that:
We descended into the maze. Each storage locker was only about ten feet by ten feet across, but there were hundreds of them, each one joined to the one beside it, organized into disorganized rows of ten or twenty brick shacks. It was a common enough sight; places like this were scattered all over Brockton Bay. Decades ago, as unemployment rates skyrocketed, people had started using the storage lockers as a place to live. Some enterprising individuals had caught on and storage blocks much like this one had appeared in the place of dilapidated warehouses and parking lots. It was, in an off the books sort of way, the lowest budget living accommodations you could find, a way for people who’d had apartments and homes of their own to keep their most cherished possessions and sleep on a bed at night.
But things turned sour. These storage facilities became drug dens, gathering places for gangs and areas where the crazies would congregate. Epidemics of the flu and strep throat had swept through these ‘neighborhoods’ of closely packed, unwashed and malnourished groups of people, and left people dead in their wake. Some who didn’t die to sickness were knifed for their belongings or starved, and corpses were left to rot behind the closed doors of their rented storage lockers. In the end, the city cracked down, and the lockers fell out of favor. By then, the local industry had crashed enough that the homeless and destitute were able migrate to the abandoned warehouses, factories and apartment blocks to squat there instead. The same general problems were still there, of course, but at least things weren’t so densely packed into a volatile situation.
That left these sprawls of storage lockers scattered over the city, particularly in the Docks. They were largely unused, now, just row upon row of identical sheds with faded or illegible numbers painted on the doors, each with a corrugated steel roof bolted securely on top, slanted just enough that people wouldn’t be able to comfortably walk or sleep on top of them.
It’s rather easy to imagine how the place looks like. I like this style of writing.
So, the plot. The team starts searching for the locker where they had left the money, soon finding the right one and opening the door. As expected: the money is gone. I have to wonder...could the boss himself or someone under his command have taken it? It depends on how exactly the Undersiders were going to deliver the money to him, I always imagined somebody under the boss’ payroll would pick it up.
Regent immediately jumps to conclusions, blaming a certain someone who isn’t here. My eyebrows went up, “You think it was Bitch? Would she just take the money and run?” Without two of her dogs? No way! Tattetale quickly destroys such accusation by stating Heckpuppy wasn’t the one to take the money. It was a villain cape – “More than one. And they’re still here.” Could it be one I have seen yet or be a new one? And why would they stay here? Looking for a fight, perhaps? Holding Heckpuppy hostage, as difficult as that sounds?
The villains are familiar names: Uber and Leet. I hadn’t thought they’d appear at any point, I always thought they’d be those two names that’d pop up from time to time just for the sake of mentioning them. Not the most intimidating duo, from what I have heard of them.
They were standing with one leg higher than the other, to keep from sliding off the angled roof, and both were wearing identical costumes. The costumes sported blue man-leotards with broad belts cinched around their waists, skintight white sleeve and leggings. Their hoods were elastic, clinging to their heads so they left only a window for the face, and each sported a single white antenna. Of all colors, their gloves, boots and the balls at the top of their antennae were bubblegum pink. Their faces were obscured by oversize goggles with dark lenses.
...okay, I’d like to make a formal request. Please send me someone’s fan illustration of these two, because...honestly, right now? The mental image I have of them right now is anything but intimidating. Here, allow me to make a general image of it, which I’m sure is completely inaccurate, hahaha
It’s missing the white sleeves but still...it would still look silly. There must be something I’m getting wrong here.
Tattetale isn’t intimidated by the green-screen-actor costumes, greeting them with no worry in her tone, while Taylor looks for a camera these two villains use to transmit their shenanigans to the public. Why’d they do that? Hm...anyways, I guess that explains why they’d stick around. Taking the money and running away would be boring for the public to watch. If they bother to set up a flying camera around to broadcast everything, of course they’d try to make it interesting to watch. They’re performers – villains and criminals, but performers nonetheless.
Skitter is petty and messes with the camera, much to the villains’ annoyance. Nobody here is taking these two seriously, nobody is worried, Regent is even jeering at the awful costumes.
Leet and Über glared at him. Their entire schtick was a video game theme. With every escapade, they picked a different video game or series, designing their costumes and crimes around it. One day it would be Leet in a Mario costume throwing fireballs while Über was dressed up as Bowser, the two of them breaking into a mint to collect ‘coins’. Then a week later, they would have a Grand Theft Auto theme, and they would be driving through the city in a souped up car, ripping off the ABB and beating up hookers.
You have no idea how relieved I am those leotards aren’t their regular costumes.
Uber tries to say something to try to counter Regent’s mocking words, but he doesn’t have the time to do that before Regent makes him lose his footing and fall face first onto the pavement. Everything that’s happening is piling more and more on these two being anything but intimidating. Then again, they captured Heckpuppy, that’s not simple. They’re a menace to a fault.
Grue is in no mood to play around, immediately asking for the money. It’s confirmed that yeah, they have Heckpuppy, so it’s official: If we don’t get a decisive victory here, our reputation is fucked.” He’s not wrong about that, not only their defeat would be broadcasted to thousands of people, they also would have lost against Uber and Leet. They’re villains, yeah, but until now I have no reason to think they’re respected in this city.
The plan is simple: fight and leave Leet in a state to be interrogated. “I’m game,” I answered. Wow. You totally did that on purpose, Skitter. She’s excited about the thought of fighting them, after all, this isn’t like the bank robbery or like fighting heroes. These two are villains, and since she still considers herself a fledgling hero...yeah.
I think I’ll leave the fight for the next time. I don’t expect it to take more than one or two chapters, unless these two really have a trick up their sleeve.
Comment time. It seems somebody in the comments guessed what the theme of this fight is. I had no idea, to be honest. Bomberman? Now that I think about it...yeah, that fits. So they do have a trick up their sleeves! My interest and expectations for this fight have increased.
Next update: three updates
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Tales of the Missing 8 - The Most Important Thing In The World
The people we call ourselves are a sum in series, a conglomeration of history, values, memories, ideas from our families and our times and our situation. When we see differently from others, it may be that our roots are in different springs.
The Most Important Thing In The World
The most important thing in the world is that nobody, nobody, ever, ever finds out. If anyone ever found out I'd be dead – you can't live like that out here, working on the gravel truck and going to the same Dunk's, the same diner, every single day of your life. So you keep it quiet: invent reasons to go to Framingham to pretend to have a girlfriend out there; eventually you get married and if you can't find a girl with the same problem you get divorced in a couple years – complain about alimony to your buds and eventually you get gray and people stop prying. But they can never, ever find out. It's the most important thing in the world.
But it doesn't change who you are – it doesn't change what you need, that nobody can ever find out about you. I don't like doing the rest stop scene – I don't think anybody does, but what else are you gonna do? Move? They don't need a lot of gravel truck drivers in Provincetown. You do what you gotta do – but every day, you're looking out and hoping that maybe here's something different: maybe this is going to go a different way.
But you've got to be careful – you still can't say anything, even when it happens, if there's the least chance that you're wrong, that somebody might find out. And that was why I didn't say anything when I ran that delivery in to their site: his dad or his uncle or somebody was there with him, pointing him out how to do it like someday he was going to be the Whoever in Whoever & Sons instead of one of the Sons. Sox longsleeve pushed back and maybe the tips of a couple tats around his elbows, nothing further down, sunglasses up on the brim of his hat, Carhardts and Timberlands covered in mud and cement dust – he mighta been just anyone, just another hardworking guy like anybody, not necessarily like me. But there was something else there, something different in the way he was carrying himself, something different in those deep dark eyes that I was trying not to stare into, because that would give me way and everyone would know. But I was almost sure, and I was sure that I wanted him.
I wanted to push him back onto the bench of a sauna like in the pornos – I wanted to run my hands all over him, feel all of his muscles throbbing, pulsing: squeeze and stroke all over his body. I wanted to know how he tasted, from the root up to the tip, all over his balls and back to his asshole, how he'd moan as I went down on him, if he'd thrust, if he'd grab me by the back of the head and hold me on it. I wanted to know how kids like him did it – what he'd do to me once I took care of him, how far we'd go with each other, how we'd fuck for hours and then shower, exhausted, and fuck in the shower again. But you can't give yourself away – you can't let anyone know, ever – and so I didn't even look him in the eye as I shook his hand while his dad or whoever signed the invoice. If he wasn't there – if I could get with him alone on another jobsite – if in five or ten years it was him running sites for Whoever Bros – then, maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
I'm pretty lucky: I've got a roof over my head, and I've been handling things at the company well enough that my dad's probably going to sell me over the business when he retires, no matter how much he bitches me out about my "lifestyle". I got that part set, at least, so for me the most important thing in the world is to find someone, someone to stick with – someone who won't mind running a construction company in Westboro full of swamp Yankees who yawp about "faggits". I don't like it, but what are you gonna do, move? Fight half your family? I like it here – I'm good at my job. Fuck going to New York or California or somewhere to work for someone else.
The problem is that all the dudes around here are so goddamned closed-mouthed: everybody's afraid, afraid of someone thinking they're gay, finding out they're gay – forcing them to face up to the idea they might be a little gay, the truth they've been running away from since they were in middle school and got a boner when Sylvester Stallone had his shirt off in the Rambo movies – that if you want to meet people, you can stay two long weekends a year with your cousin in Falmouth and drive up to P-town, or you can hang around the I-95 rest stops in the middle of the night. It's fucked. And it's not where you meet a guy who can drive a truck or do some bookkeeping and help with the business, adopt a kid with to fuss over to be the Son in the next & Sons or the daughter in the next & Family.
It's pretty hopeless, but it doesn't mean you give up hope. You're always hoping, when your gaydar goes off, that this one, this guy, is going to be the one, the first one that it goes different with: the one who notices, you, too, and says something, because this is Massachusetts and not goddamn Alabama or whatever, and we don't have to go hiding under logs any more. Just say something, ask if I served and if you'll see me in the VFW, so I can tell you I didn't and what bars I do go to, make that coincidence happen and we'll talk then, ducked in like we're talking about baseball while everyone else in the place is screaming karaoke, and we'll see where it goes. Like, I was hoping he would – the guy off the truck when we were laying the driveway for the Angofasta house in Plymouth.
I could tell right away – I definitely thought I could tell. Not that much older than me, just starting to silver-fox around the sides of a short, basic haircut that he probably got touched up every other Saturday in a hole-in-the-wall full of youth sports trophies by a barber who came over from Italy before the Korean War. Faded out Pats hoodie, jeans as skinny as he could wear them and still move around at work. There was something about him – something that felt right about him. He wasn't just good-looking: it was like there was something else there, something about how he stood, like he'd been holding himself up this whole time. This was someone I could settle down with, if it worked out: I didn't see a wedding ring and if there was a guy with this kind of feel who'd dodged all the thirsty girls around here who didn't want anything more than to keep house for someone who told them what to do for ten years older than me, he had to be. He had to be. But if he was interested – if he knew his own goddamn self – that was the problem.
I tried to look him in the eye as I shook his hand, make something out of this standard-issue ritual while my dad was signing his invoice, to put over by the touch of my hand that I wanted to touch him all over, plead with him by eye that I wanted him to say something, make an excuse to see me again, get to know him better, get in bed and see how that would be for us. He didn't look back – he didn't feel anything out of the handshake. Maybe I was wrong – it's not impossible. But if I wasn't, if he did feel something, what the fuck was he doing not saying something, not reaching out? To be able to have someone you hold onto, someone who always wants you for you – that's the most important thing in the world.
further Tales of the Missing ...
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dodge promaster insurance
dodge promaster insurance
dodge promaster insurance
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Which car in Canada has the lowest insurance rate?
Which car in Canada has the lowest insurance rate?
I m not talking about new cars btw, I m talking about the old cars from 95-2002 the shitbox cars, I m a student and I plan on getting my first car with my first insurance so I need to know what s a good starter/shitbox car with the lowest insurance costs. Thanks
BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurecostfinder.top
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I m not talking about new cars btw, I m talking about the old cars from 95-2002 the shitbox cars, I m a student and I plan on getting my first car with my first insurance so I need to know what s a good starter/shitbox car with the lowest insurance costs. Thanks
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I m not talking about new cars btw, I m talking about the old cars from 95-2002 the shitbox cars, I m a student and I plan on getting my first car with my first insurance so I need to know what s a good starter/shitbox car with the lowest insurance costs. Thanks
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Everything Wrong with my Tesla Model 3 Performance
New Post has been published on https://planet-geek.com/2019/09/02/ev-cars/everything-wrong-with-my-tesla-model-3-performance/
Everything Wrong with my Tesla Model 3 Performance
I finally got it. I got the robotic, electric, high performance car of my dreams. Sleek, fast, geeky as all get out, tremendous range – it’s everything a nerd would want in a car.
But it’s not perfect.
People have been coming to me pretty regularly and saying “So, how do you like your Tesla?” – and I answer truthfully. “I love it. It’s amazing. It’s my robotic space car. It’s nerdy and stupendously fast. But it’s not without its faults.” At this point their eyes light up and they get excited. “Yeah? Like what?!?”
The automotive press has not been kind to Tesla. With a strongly outspoken CEO in Elon Musk, it’s lofty goal of bringing affordable, exciting electric cars to the masses, and the base challenge of pushing against an industry selling a few hundred billion dollars worth of cars every year, it hasn’t been easy for them to break into the market and succeed. But succeed they have, pretty much jumpstarting the performance / luxury electric car market singlehandedly.
But there are problems. The car is hardly perfect. I’d like to run down the flaws and issues as I see them…
The Company
Tesla the company is relatively new in the automotive industry. Founded in 2003 right after the dot com bubble burst, they spent some years understanding what it takes to build a new kind of car from the ground up, without carrying all the folderol that the big auto manufacturers have. The Roadster came out in 2008, and the Model S 4 years later in 2012. In that time, the focus had to be on technology, manufacturing, and production.
What they didn’t have a chance to focus on was the customer end of things.
Dealing with Tesla can be an infuriating process. Because they don’t have a ‘dealer’ model similar to current car manufacturers, buying a Tesla is not far from ordering a laptop from Apple. You got to the website, choose your option, click ‘Buy’, and a car will be available… sometime.
It’s this ‘sometime’ can be problematic. Without a salesperson to regularly work with, the delivery process is extremely oblique. There is a nice website that will tell you the status on your car, but it’s not particularly informative, showing things like “We’re putting together your paperwork” for WEEKS until it suddenly changes to “Your car will be available for pickup in 3 days at such and such a location.” Thanks guys.
The Delivery Process
Okay, so now you have a delivery date. What happens at the delivery is relatively normal. You show up at the ‘delivery center’, 1-2 folks walk you through the dos and donts of the car, you sign a bunch of papers, and you drive off in the car. This actually went fine, the only drawback is the people there are complete strangers. No one knew me or anything about my excitement or interest or history. They were basically just like a refrigerator installer. “Here’s yer machine, bud. Seeya.”
The Exterior
I have a Model 3 Performance, which has some nice trim changes, but in general, the Model 3 is BORING. It’s a 4 door sedan. I suppose this is better than some of the more radical car designs floating around (Have you seen the new Civics and Prius’s? Yikes.) But on the other hand, if I’m getting a fairly expensive car, I wouldn’t mind if it turned heads just a little. People who know Teslas will go “Hey! Look! A Tesla!” but for the most part, the Model 3 just blends in with the other shiny sedans out there.
Having said that, there are some Issues – well known, easy to work around, and possibly even understandable for a ‘first generation’ run of this model, but they’re still there:
The delivery person warned us of this, but I did it before he even told me. There’s a nice little hatch that opens and closes over the charging port. You can unlock this hatch from the mobile app or from inside the car, or by touching the bottom of it when you want to plug in the cable. BUT. You should never try to close it by hand. Nope nope. Don’t push on the top of it or move the door, that can break it.
Huh? 🙂
The storage space under the front hood (where an ICE car would have an engine) is referred to as the ‘Frunk’. Apparently, this thing is delicate as heck. The delivery guy went out of his way to tell me to never slam it, nor close it with one hand. Gently set the hood down onto the latch, and then push down with both hands on either side of the latch. This seems like an obvious workaround to a design error, but it’s not something a normal person would think to do.
Much has been said about trim and panel fit. Sometimes the cars don’t fit together cleanly and properly. This was a real problem in the first runs of the Model 3, but far less so in later ones. I received mine in the spring of 2019, and haven’t noticed any particular gaps or bends or points where things aren’t coming together. Having said that, there has been a persistent whistling noise coming from the drivers side mirror. If I stick my hand out while driving, I can make that sound stop, but it’s obvious there’s some gap in the trim that’s causing air to whistle through it.
The Interior
The interior of the car is beautifully simplistic. Comfortable, laid out well, lit well, and easily the most comfortable car I’ve ever owned. The expansive glass roof, plenty of headroom, very adjustable and supportive seats, and the well articulated steering wheel all help make the car extremely comfortable.
But, this article isn’t “everything that’s awesome” – lets look at some of the flaws.
I absolutely detest the door lock mechanism. For those who have not been in a Model 3, there isn’t an actual ‘door latch’ that you pull to open the door. There’s a button. You touch the button, the window slides down about an inch, and the door unlatches – and then you push it open. There’s a sort of emergency latch that you can pull up, but the Tesla rep warned me never to use it, as it might damage the door. This just seems like poor design or an afterthought. It’s taken some time to get used to the ‘push button to open the door’ methodology – I almost never get confused now, but it’s really a very bad choice of design.
The center console is a mess. There’s several chambers, each quite deep and having a different ‘lift’ or ’tilt’ mechanism. They’re also cavernously deep, so putting something in them is akin to dropping the one ring into Mt Doom. You will likely not get it back easily.
No drink holders in the back? Well, they are sort of there, but they’re in the center console between the back seats. That’s… sort of weird, particularly if people are sitting 3 across.
It took looking up in the manual to figure out where the emergency 4 way blinker lights are. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to try and find the control next time they’re in a Model 3. We couldn’t find it until we looked it up in the manual. This is an EMERGENCY BLINKER button. It should be trivial to locate. It isn’t.
Why doesn’t the front drink holder have removable silicon liners? Those things get DIRTY. Even inexpensive little toyotas and kias have silicone liners for the cup holders.
Controls
Okay, lets start talking about the controls. This section isn’t about the software that runs the center display / functions of the car, this is basic control layout and usage.
The Model 3 has a very simplified set of operator controls. The steering wheel (obviously) two foot pedals, two control stalks (one on each side), and two thumwheel / joysticks. And the horn. That’s it. Everything else is done via the touchscreen. But lets look at those controls.
The stalks are useful and well placed, as are the thumbwheels. I never lose track of where they are. And there were some logical decisions made about what each set does. The left thumbwheel is ONLY audio controls (volume up/down, next/previous track, pause and unpause). The right thumbwheel is for quick commands to the autopilot / cruise control system. Pretty easy to work with.
The stalks are more complicated, because they service multiple purposes. The left one is your turn blinker, obviously. It also controls your high and low beams for the headlights, as well as a ‘quick touch’ to turn the windshield wipers on and off (assuming the auto wiper system doesn’t work).
The right stalk is sort of like your gear shift. You control what ‘gear’ you’re in (drive, reverse, park), as well as the state of the autopilot system. I haven’t figured out a lot of the wiggle functions on that stalk, other than engage autopilot and ‘go into drive’.
Sounds basic, so what’s are the issues? Well, there’s a bunch:
First, the mechanism for turning on and off turn signals is confusing. A light push on the left stalk, up or down, will blink the turn signals 3 times. If you hold the stalk, they’ll keep blinking until you release it. There’s a ‘secondary’ level of push though, that means “turn the turn signal on until… something tells them to stop.” – this part is the confusing one. The turn signals will stop blinking if the car thinks you’ve completed a turn, or… you signal some other way. How to turn off a turn signal seems to involve some invocation I still haven’t worked out. I find myself signaling in the opposite direction sometimes, or just wiggling the stalk around until the signals stop. This is hardly safe communication with other drives. On a normal car, the turn signal stalk locks into position until it either is automatically returned to a neutral spot, or you force it back to the center. The Tesla turn stalk doesn’t do that. It is always in the ‘neutral’ position whether you’re signalling or not. This is confusing.
Second, you can only sort of control your wipers via the end button push. A quick push will wipe your wipers once, and a longer push will turn on the spritzers. The wipers are normally controlled via the center touchscreen (with intermittency and automatic settings controlled there). But there’s numerous times i find the ‘automatic wipers’ don’t really keep the windshield clear enough, so i find myself pushing the button a lot. Or navigating the touchscreen to turn the wipers on and off faster or slower. You don’t want to be fiddling with the touchscreen while driving. This is not a very good setup.
High and low beam headlights work as you’d expect, though the ‘automatic’ high beams is gimmicky and works poorly. More on that in the Software section below.
Oddly, the right stalk is mostly okay. the gear position mechanism makes sense, and the ‘double press’ to engage autopilot is intuitive and works well.
The Software
I’m going to lump a couple topics into this section, but first some preamble.
So much of what makes a Tesla a remarkable vehicle is the decision to base as much of it’s functionality as possible around software. This is why there’s only one display system (the touch screen), and virtually every function is managed and displayed through this interface. It makes it easy to change, easy to upgrade, and easy to tune. All the ‘smarts’ of the car (it’s sensors, battery management, and yes, even the power train) are controlled via software. Some of that software is visible to the operator directly, but a lot of is internal. The operator doesn’t see the battery management, the heating / cooling systems, the adaptive drive for the motors, etc. The operator mostly sees the interface on the display. So lets focus on that.
Model 3 Center Console
The Tesla Model 3 has one large 15″ LCD touchscreen in the middle of the dash. There are no other display systems in the car. No turn signals, no idiot lights, no dashboard. Just this display. This ‘one screen to rule them all’ makes the Tesla much easier to upgrade and modify. In a traditional car, you can’t move the heater control from one place to another because, after 6 months of use, you realize the original placement was poor. But on a single screen like this, it’s a simple software change to rearrange controls. This has disadvantages as well. The center location of the display is awkward for the standard driver who expects basic operational information to be directly in front of them. The speedometer is in the upper left corner of the screen, as are basic status lights like blinkers, hi/lobeams, and what gear you’re in. All other controls and information is located at different points of the screen ,and sometimes that info may be hidden or on a different tab. This absolutely takes time to get used to, but it means improvements can be made via software. By comparison, my Chevy Volt had the WORST design ever for it’s center console, with horribly placed buttons that were impossible to understand. The software interface on the touch screen was mediocre at best, and over the 3.5 years I had the car, they made absolutely zero UI improvements to that display, when any number of changes could have been made – just not to the button layout.
But enough background. Given this amazing technology, the interface and tools must be awesome and perfect, right? Oh hell no. Lets investigate…
There’s a system in the Tesla that allows the hi/lo beams for the headlights to automatically adjust based on oncoming traffic and other cars. On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward, and it works relatively well. Until it doesn’t. Hi/Lo beams are also a mechanism most drivers use to communicate with other drivers. “Your lights are off” “Something dangerous is ahead” “I’m a jerk”. The Tesla software will turn the hibeams on and off depending purely on distance to another car in front of it (if it sees it), and if another car is coming towards you. That’s it. On the highway, the highbeams can flicker up and down automatically several times in a minute depending on how far behind another car you are. This is irritating as heck for other drivers. While a nifty gimmick, I disabled it.
The windshield wiper automatic system is supposed to turn on the wipers when it starts raining, turn them to ‘fast’ when needed, and off when things are dry again. I find myself many times going “Why aren’t my wipers on?” The system is very cautious about when to turn them on. Once they’re on, they’re fine, and will turn themselves off after the rain stops, but I do find myself hitting the ‘wipe now’ button regularly because the automatic system hasn’t yet figured out the window is wet.
The Autopilot
For some, this is it. The holy grail of the Tesla. The much vaunted ability for the car to drive itself. The model 3 has 8 external cameras that can ‘see’ to a distance of about 250meters. In addition to the cameras, there’s also a front facing radar that gives very accurate distance measurements to the computer. These systems together provide the autopilot computer in the car enough information for the car to drive itself. It can see obstacles, react to changing circumstances and environments, and navigate it’s way in relatively complex situations. It couples that information with maps that are constantly updated with traffic and construction changes. The car’s GPS will locate you on the map (though the Tesla won’t use GPS for very high detail information. You don’t want to depend on GPS for autopilot, then go into a tunnel, for example).
So, given all this technology, is it actually dependable as a self-driving system?
Hell no.
The autopilot has many many problems. It’s definitely not ready for prime time. While it is an absolute technological marvel, it is nowhere near the level needed for full autonomy. Even in the best possible driving situations for autonomous navigation (a mostly open highway), the system makes many many errors in judgement. Most of the time those errors are not threatening or dangerous, they’re just uncomfortable or irritating. A few examples:
The autopilot can change lanes as needed for faster / slower traffic or when approaching an exit. If there’s any form of traffic in the way (someone coming up quickly behind you, or a crowded lane), it’s handling of the lane change is infuriating. Not for me the driver, but mostly for other people on the road. It takes far far too long to make the decision to change lanes – and by the time it does, the ‘gap’ it was shooting for doesn’t exist anymore, so the car can swerve back into its original lane. Again, not particularly dangerous for me the driver, but irritating and alarming for people around us.
There are regular ‘phantom braking’ problems. You could be going along normally, and suddenly the car will ‘brake’ abruptly for no apparent reason. A moment later it’ll resume normal speed. This is jarring. I’m sure it had a very good reason to do that, but there’s no indication to the driver or passengers what just happened.
Autopilot HATES wide lanes. Onramps that don’t have middle dividing lines, or secondary roads that aren’t perfectly sized – the autopilot will ‘hunt’ from one side to another trying to guess which is the proper side of the road to be on. Ung.
The ‘navigate on autopilot’ feature which is supposed to allow the car to happily change from one highway to another using ramps without driver intervention gets easily confused on anything less than perfect interchanges. If the lane markings aren’t crystal clear and well sized, the car will jump around trying to determine the ‘best’ path on the ramps – and will frequently guess wrong.
The system is not ready. Having said that, Tesla is doing the right thing to get it there. Their software is constantly ‘learning’ how to drive properly – every Tesla on the road is collecting data on how people handle these weird road conditions, and that goes into the neural network that the navigation computer uses. And each update, it gets a little better. But I can’t see a driverless Tesla, or a ‘door to door automated driving’ Tesla on the road in the next 5 years.
The Toys
So we’ve talked about basic software tools and functions in the car. In addition to those things, there’s some stuff that’s just plain goofy and fun to have. Since the Model 3 is basically a computer with a touch screen attached to a car, there’s some silly stuff you can do.
Tempest!
My question is, is this stuff really adding any value?
For instance. You can play games on the display. That’s sort of fun, and the display is good and uses the existing car controls to play the game. But that means you can only play in park. And from the drivers seat. This seems more of a ‘Hey kids, look what my car can do, neener!’ feature than something I can use as a selling point for the car.
Performance
Yeah, I have the Performance version of the model 3. That means the extra motor, the low profile wheels, the painted calipers, the whole shebang. Those extra options added another 25% to the base price of the car. What do I get for that? Well, to start there’s that neck-snapping 0-60 in 3.3 seconds acceleration. Driving a car with this much power, with an always-available 450HP and 470 ft-lbs of torque is intoxicating. It changes how you handle traffic, navigation, everything. That power is ALWAYS there. No downshifting, no revving / turbo spool up. This car is the modern day equivalent of Neal Stephenson’s Deliverator from Snow Crash:
“The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.”
But, the performance version has some drawbacks. The cost? I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Is it really necessary to have THAT much power at your beck and call at any minute? I don’t think so. The only time I’ve really used it is to impress people I take on test drives. That’s not worth the money.
But let’s also talk about those low profile wheels. The short version? They suck. They’re fragile as hell, and they are NOT covered under warranty. Yes, everyone ‘knows’ that low profile wheels are the worst thing to happen to cars since they added ‘tiptronic shifting’ to every hyundai on the planet, but at $750 a pop for those wheels, hitting a pothole gets real expensive, real fast. Ask me how I know.
A model 3 AWD Long Range will get you 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, for $12k less. Do yourself a favor. Unless you’re dripping money, if you want something that’s still faster than most cars out there, just get that.
Conclusions
So where does that leave me? Do I like my car? Yes. Am I excited everytime I get in it and drive? Definitely. Am I proud that I am using a vehicle that emits absolutely zero carbon dioxide, and I’m powering from energy I buy from wind farms and solar? Absolutely. Do I think this is the future of cars in the world? No question.
Is the car perfect? Absolutely not. Not even close.
But it is, by far, in my opinion, the best electric vehicle on the market today.
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Out of the Box introduction
I have been remiss in one aspect. I have failed to reveal a villain that has played a role in some of the homebrewed creatures featured in the Out of the Box series. This villain has been mentioned in The Broker, and will be featured in re-writes of The Passenger, Smells Fishy and others. The reasoning for this is clear, and it’s something that happens at more than my table.
Starring Jim Davis! No, not that Jim Davis from Web DM. Actor Jim Davis played Dr. Quent Brady in this 1957 science fiction movie.
Dungeon Masters everywhere often stress about creating the right mastermind. There can be any number of reasons for this. Perhaps one or more villains have been used too many times, or the players are experienced and want something new. Perhaps the DM wishes to strike the right mood or tempo for a storyline, or perhaps they seek to have something unique at their table that a simple re-skin will not accomplish.
All of these can be valid concerns. Out of the Box Encounters has featured several new monsters thus far, but most have been of the minion-level variety, random thugs or wild creatures. One has been more of a lieutenant. None has been a master.
Let’s change that.
This encounter will introduce a new monster, the Vespidroi, or hive lord. Vespidroi can be a daunting foe, with possible lethal repercussions after a battle, whether it wins or loses. But what is a master without a master plan? This, too, can be something of an issue for DMs struggling with writer’s block. Therefore, we will start with something that appears simple, but holds deep insectoid horror within.
The plan will look superficial, but will have long reaching implications. It will be easy to understand, but impossible to immediately know how far it goes. This will have the effect of creating doubt and paranoia with the right delivery. And that’s the key — delivered to the right group of players, the DM could create an immediate sense of urgency.
Environment
Wilderness/rocky mountainous pass or canyon
Level
7-8
Monsters
Vespidroi (hive lord) — 1
Hive lord grub — 1-7
Treasure
The hive lord wears fine robes worth 50 gp, and carries an arcane focus — a black staff taken from a traveler (but not needed for its psionics), 25 gp, trade goods worth 100 gp worth, but heavy, weighing 100 pounds). The wagon is intact and worth 200 gp. What the hive lord did not know is the staff has a secret compartment in it, accessible by screwing off the top. Characters who succeed on a DC 17 Intelligence (Investigation) check will find a scroll of greater restoration hidden inside.
Description
Insectoid monsters are just straight up creepy and terrifying, like the ankheg as seen in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]
The path twists ahead through rock and around steep ledges. It seems a wonder why any take this path at all sometimes. Yet, it is the most direct route through this area of the badlands. Steep walls of orange-brown mark either side of this roadway. It was once a popular place for banditry in the past before the rise of law and civilization, but even that has taken its toll. More than once the party has had to try to squeeze past carts or wagons either coming the other way or in a rush to get around slower travelers ahead. Time waits for no one, you guess.
But fellow travelers on this path have been few and far between of late. Rumors have persisted of the pass being haunted. Some have whispered that entire coaches of people have gone missing, sometimes even the beasts of burden. Yet patrols have found no trace of giants, ogres, or even gnolls in the area; the typical villains for this sort of behavior.
The demand for goods and the need to pay the bills have yet driven the desperate to take this pass, and you are no different. But as you start to make it past the next bend, a wagon blocks your path. Diagonal in the road with what looks like the remains of a horse in front of it, it fully impedes this 15 ft. wide pass through high walls of stone and earth.
The terrain here is unforgiving, but not impossible to deal with. The path itself is indeed 15 feet wide, and the walls are of a textured sandstone and clay. They aren’t sheer, but they are pretty close to it, and go 45 feet straight up for 100 feet in front of and behind the wagon. Climbing them will require a successful DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check at the start of each turn. Those who fail will fall from the distance at which they failed. Those who fail just at the outset of the climb will obviously not fall, but will simply not proceed upward (or sideways, if so inclined).
Those what wish to check the wagon or the horse will find the wagon itself is 5 ft. wide and 10 ft. long with low walls on the sides and front. It has a 4 ft. tall hooped frame covered with a canvas tarp for a roof. It is, in essence, a typical covered wagon. The back is covered with a closed canvas flap. It looks, just at the outset, very much intact from the outside, apart from the dead horse lashed to the front of it. The driver’s bench is unoccupied.
The horse itself has a large open wound in its stomach, and its entrails have spilled out. The smell is awful. At the DM’s discretion, you may require a successful DC 10 Constitution saving throw to not wretch for a turn from the smell for those standing next to the horse. Those wishing to inspect the horse who succeed on a DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Medicine) check will discover a large puncture wound on the back of the horse. If the Medicine check succeeds by 5 or more, a character will determine the puncture wound had some sort of poison or other toxic agent involved. A Medicine check that succeeds by 10 or more reveals the wound on the bottom of the horse is explosive and not implosive. In other words, the wound originated from within, and was not a result of being slashed, bludgeoned or pierced from outside.
For those wishing to investigate the wagon, a successful DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Perception) check reveals the driver’s bench has no sign of struggle, and no blood stains. Further investigation will reveal the same on the outside of the tarp of the wagon. To gather more information, characters can investigate within the wagon. Should they listen for anything inside the wagon while standing outside, with a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check a character detects the faint sound of scratching within. Inside the wagon’s 5 ft. x 10 ft. x 4 ft. high space, there are an assortment of barrels and sacks pushed to the front of the wagon, with what look like rolled bedrolls scattered about. The moment anyone enters the wagon, the hive lord grub hiding in the sacks attacks. It looks like an orange and black striped pill bug with large black multifaceted eyes, four clawed legs and a long black stinger at the end of its abdomen.
Given that the grub is alone and the characters are of a much higher level, this should be a very quick fight. When the hive lord grub dies, characters within 120 ft. of the wagon will hear the following message telepathically.
“How dare you strike my children! Worms! Now you shall be reborn in pain into a perfect form.”
The vespirdroi will rise over the ridge to the right of the cart at a height of 60 feet above the wagon. It appears as a wasp-like humanoid with a chitin covered, segmented body and large black unblinking multifaceted eyes. Its black and orange striped body is held aloft with two large insect wings and is adorned in wizard or priest-like raiments covered in mystic runes. It holds a black staff in its two arms. It has two main goals on its agenda. Either Egg Sting everyone to generate more young, or kill those who resist. It will use every ability it has to do this, even if that means convincing the characters to climb up the ridge to its hidden nest above to either be implanted or feed its young.
It’s opening attack will be to cast enthrall on each character it can see. If it succeeds in charming everyone it sees, on its next turn it will convince whoever appears to be the biggest threat, or the most heavily armored to begin climbing the ridge. This will serve two purposes. It intends to implant eggs in every victim. If the charmed targets break the spell, it can then choose to attack those still climbing to make them fall. It can also just enthrall again as needed. If the vast majority of characters resist the enthrall, it will drop to 30 feet and use its Sonic Stunner ability. Stunned characters will be attacked with the Egg Sting ability.
If one character resists on a regular basis, it might use suggestion to convince that character it was merely trying to protect its children, and that the character should really help it rebuild its nest after travelers attacked it. If a character seems resistant or continues to save versus its psionic barrages, it will simply try to kill it, with or without the Egg Sting.
If any character climbs the ridge before or after the attack begins, or scouts above via spells or abilities, they will discover an indentation approximately 20 feet in diameter filled with what looks like a strange daisy-shaped tent. It has a central 3 ft. diameter hole in the centre, with six 2 ft. wide and 7 ft. long capsule-like “pedals” around it. Each pedal has a small entrance onto the central opening. The structure has a similar color to the orange-black soil around it. Should anyone touch it, it will have a rough texture like hand-made paper, and will be about as firm as cardboard. The entire area will have a strange smell like a mixture of rotting meat and nectar.
This is the vespirdroi’s birthing chamber. Each pedal is actually a cocoon that holds the dead body of a human traveler from the wagon below. The chamber has an AC 12, and vulnerability to fire damage. It takes only 10 damage to open a chamber, and inside they will find a human corpse. If the bodies are not destroyed by fire or acid, they will each birth a new hive lord grub in 24 hours, which will each wander off to start new hives of their own.
If the hive lord is successful in implanting a character, and that character is dropped to 0 hit points, it will be laid down here as a new petal and the vespirdroi will use a mixture of soil, chewed plant matter and saliva to build a new petal around their body until the new grub is born.
Complications
The single greatest complication is the risk of being implanted with a hive lord egg via the Egg Sting attack. Worse yet is not knowing such as occurred and the character has survived the conflict…with a grub growing inside them. If a character has such a condition, and you do not wish to surprise them with it, mention chest or intestinal pain, a problem with breathing, and constant nausea.
Perhaps viewing movies from a franchise where alien creatures burst forth from living hosts would give you an idea of what they might experience. It is truly horrific, and not a heroic death. Such is the nature of those who deal with beings from the Far Realm. Consider this first before treading into this territory. If your table would be averse to this sort of fate or are sensitive to such things, perhaps a different encounter might be best.
Vespidroi (hive lord)
A thri-kreen as seen in the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]
Proud and ruthless. Hailing from distant realms, vespidroi, or hive lords, seek dominance and control over everything they see. Their hunger for prey and breeding stock have driven them from world to world looking to implant fresh hive lords upon them to conspire for control.
These upright wasp-like humanoid figures are intelligent and conniving, though that is hard to recognize when looking at their unblinking, large, black, multi-faceted eyes and chitinous faces. Adults have four small arms to manipulate the world around them, and two long legs upon which they walk about. Their bodies are covered in smooth chitin, and varies in color depending upon the hive from which they originate. Many are yellow and black, but orange and black, blue and black, or bright green and black are not unheard of. Regardless of the color of their exoskeleton, they have two long, diaphanous wings with which they can fly about, often a shade of the color of their exoskeletons.
Hive lords are proud and vain, and will always seek to remain clean and well groomed. They will garb themselves in fine silks woven from the gossamer of arachnid prey, fine jewelry, and other finery when every they can.
Hidden speech. Vespirdroi communicate when necessary with outsiders through telepathy, but when among their own kind they also use pheromones to convey ideas, emotions, and plans. This form of communication is silent and invisible, and only faintly detectable those to most sensitive noses with a successful DC 20 Wisdom (Perception) check to detect a faint floral scent.
Warring for control. Vespirdroi do not suffer rivals in their territory. They despise all arachnids and their spawn. However, above all else, hive lords will seek out any thri-kreen in their territory. The hatred between these two species runs deep, and neither is divulging its origin. Furthermore, vespirdroi will seek to subjugate any coh leop hives within their domain. These insect humanoid species are readily compliant to their hive lord pheromones, and the hive lords are not above using them as instant slave labor and front line troops. Hive lords will slay coh leop queens who do not comply with vespirdroi rulership, and may simply kill queens as an example to keep the lower coh leop in line.
Distant parents. Vespidroi do not remain behind to care for any hive lord grubs. Each offspring seems born with all the evil intent and ruthlessness required to succeed in their genre, and grubs tend to mature quickly if not discovered and slain. This leaves the young to carve out their own domain, spreading hive lord influence to new territory.
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In this #OutOfTheBox #DnD encounter will you be powerless against the marauding unknown monster that crushes all before it? Out of the Box introduction I have been remiss in one aspect. I have failed to reveal a villain that has played a role in some of the homebrewed creatures featured in the Out of the Box series.
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