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silvokrent · 4 years

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So since Tyrian's arrest screen didn't list everything he was wanted for, what else do you think he did? My brother thinks arson, I think more along the lines of torture.

It’d probably be easier to ask, “What crimes didn’t he commit?”

I think you’re both right. Arson and torture seem like equally valid possibilities, but they’d have to be the result of context and circumstance. On one hand, Tyrian always struck me as someone that’s adaptive, flexible, and capable of improvisation, which is why I doubt he’d be averse to either. On the other hand, Tyrian appears to have a modus operandi—speed and stealth. Like most Faunus, seeing in the dark (presumably with tapeta lucida, the eyeshine a lot of nocturnal and crepuscular animals have) affords him an advantage many of his victims lack. That, coupled with his stinger, sets him up by default for a very specific tactic: hit-and-run assassinations. Catch your target off-guard, deliver the killing blow, then melt back into the shadows before anyone’s the wiser. Fire lacks discretion, and torture involves prolonged interaction with the victim (which increases the odds of him getting caught, as time/duration would be proportionate to the risk of being discovered).

If a situation called for it (like setting a car on fire in order to distract pursuers), or he was contracted to complete a specific job (like torturing someone for information), then I could definitely see him committing arson and torture. But if he’s recreationally killing, then I think it’s more likely that he’d indulge in his preferred repertoire, envenomation and stabbing.

The nice thing about his criminal record being truncated (with a “see attachment for more details” appended to the file) with multiple redacted sections is that it leaves a lot of room for speculation. Bear in mind that much of this is either conjectural with little supporting evidence, or my personal headcanons.

One of the things that I found interesting about Tyrian’s character was his reverence of Salem. “Goddess” isn’t just an affectionate title or a term of endearment—he literally apotheosizes her. Compare that to how his teammates interact with her. While they treat her with respect, none of them use the same venerating language as Tyrian (“Your Grace,” “my lady,” “our divine savior,” “our goddess”). This tells us that his worship of her isn’t the norm amongst her followers, which also means that he has a reason for doing it.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of labelling people who commit heinous crimes as crazy or insane—not only because it implicates nonviolent mentally ill and neurodivergent people, and scapegoats them for the actions of others—but because in this instance, it robs Tyrian of the complexity that comes with rationalizing one’s choices. Tyrian’s decision to deify Salem shouldn’t stem from some sort of psychopathology, but rather a logical, personal, or historical precedent.

Let’s reverse-engineer this thought process:

Tyrian worships Salem.

Salem (in Tyrian’s eyes) is the extreme embodiment, manifestation, or expression of cathartic violence.

Tyrian worships this form of violence.

And what else in RWBY’s universe embodies those traits?

The Creatures of Grimm.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about all the illegal things Tyrian’s done over the course of his life, and more specifically, why.

Archotherolatry: This is a term I coined for my RWBY worldbuilding blog. If you break down the etymology, archotherian (Greek - ruling beast, the scientific term for Grimm) + -latry (Late Latin - worship of), it translates to “the worship of Grimm.” The practice was outlawed by the King of Vale (King Ozark) after the Great War. While the decision was rooted in common sense—like, you really don’t want people to see the Grimm as gods for fairly obvious reasons—Ozark had ulterior motives for outlawing it. You see, Ozark was one of Ozma’s incarnations, and the immediate predecessor of Ozpin. While archotherolatry had been falling out of favor over the last few centuries, it was still a religion with a presence in certain corners of Remnant. Salem used to recruit these cultists directly into her ranks. By making the practice illegal, Ozma was hoping to cut off a potential source of followers.

Prior to meeting Salem, Tyrian was one of the surviving few practitioners of the faith. Not only that, but he had a particular mania about it. Grimm worship in Remnant changed depending on where in the world you went, but one of the recurring practices involved human sacrifice. Now, while Tyrian didn’t subscribe to any specific holy doctrine and wasn’t a member of any secret groups, he did adhere to certain rites and ceremonies. He savored the taking of lives, but even more than that, he enjoyed offering up his victims to the Grimm. During the months that Pickerel spent hunting him down, his trails would often lead him to secluded areas outside cities or towns. There he’d often find a large ornately-detailed circle on the ground painted with blood, with the tattered corpse of the victim lying in the center. The surrounding trees and rocks would sport eye-like patterns drawn in blood, similar to the patterns seen on the bony white protrusions on a Grimm’s body.

When selecting potential victims, Tyrian didn’t discriminate. Gender, age, nationality, race, economic background—they all bleed red, so it didn’t matter. Not technically, anyway. That wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy abducting business owners that were prejudiced against Faunus, or that he didn’t find ironic humor in sacrificing Huntsmen to the Grimm. He just wasn’t particularly choosy about who he sacrificed.

In a similar vein, I think this is how Salem first learned about Tyrian’s existence. Whenever her scouts or sentries returned to Evernight and reported in, they’d inform her about a man that would drag people into the woods and invite the Grimm to feast upon them. This possibility excited Salem for several reasons: not only was he predisposed to loyalty to her, but the fact that he’d clearly been doing these sacrifices for some time meant he was talented. It took a lot of skill to kill so many people without being caught by the authorities. She needed an assassin, and he would do perfectly.

When Tyrian wasn’t feeding people to the Grimm, he probably murdered for sport. He thrilled in the hunt, in the dizzying slick of blood beneath his fingers, the intoxicating coppery smell, the beautiful song of his victims as they cried, begged, and screamed. Acts of violence honor the Grimm, but in addition to that, he simply relished in the joy of killing. And he was good at it.

Of course, sacrificial manslaughter doesn’t pay the bills, so Tyrian had a day job. Well, I say “day job,” but it was more along the lines of contract killer/thief/kidnapper/smuggler. Tyrian operated largely out of Mistral’s criminal underworld, particularly in the capital (though depending on the work he was doing, he’d travel to Wind Path or Kuchinashi). Potential clients sought him out and hired him for any number of jobs: collect the debt that this person owes me and kill them if they refuse to pay; abduct the member of this rival syndicate and bring them to these coordinates; assassinate someone for me, and bring back proof that they’re dead; transport this contraband (weapons, drugs, Dust) and ensure the shipment arrives safely; kill these people and destroy the evidence; capture this person and extract information from them by whatever means necessary; follow this person without being detected, and collect information about their routine. Although Tyrian preferred jobs that involved bloodshed, he’d still accept contracts for more mundane work (even if he found it somewhat boring). Tyrian didn’t have a ton of dealbreakers in terms of jobs, though he refused to do anything that involved sexual assault. (Even serial killers have standards.)

Destruction of public and private property was likely an unintended or indirect consequence of his work. As much as Tyrian enjoyed wanton carnage, he prided himself on being stealthy and thus had to exercise some level of restraint, so as to not leave behind damning evidence in the form of collateral damage. Breaking a window or kicking in a door is a liability. Accidentally setting off a Dust explosion is a good way for the authorities to track you. That being said, there were a few memorable occasions where Tyrian absolutely wrecked shit up. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was the day that he was finally captured by Atlesian and Mistrali law enforcement. On the day of his arrest, Tyrian caused nearly 50,000 lien’s worth of property damage, including the destruction of three Paladins.

Tyrian’s name, while spoken among the criminal element, was unknown to the public. Even so, he garnered a reputation as Anima’s most infamous serial killer. People often referred to him by his title: The Ghost in the Mist. (Years later, a documentary by the same name was released. It was an hour-long production that detailed his activity in Mistral, all of his victims, an analysis of his signature, and other relevant or interesting trivia. It even featured an interview with Pickerel, prior to his death. Tyrian absolutely loves this documentary and has re-watched it several times.)

I’m sure there’s more that he’s done that I can’t think of presently, but hopefully this gives you a general idea of all the criminal activity I think he’s committed.

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sayleeofkanto · 6 years

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Hey! I'm a big fan of your nuzlocke run, and want to try one on my own now. Because your story's are so emotionally and thought through, like every little detail could be important later, and your world building is amazing. I'm happy every timewhen I see you posted a new chapter. Do you have a few tips to make a nuzlocke run successfully into a story? How to you don't get confused over so many details and people?

Ahhh, thank you so much! Glad to hear that you’re writing your own! I would like to recommend joining the Nuzlocke Forums--the community’s wonderful and very supportive while you’re posting your story!

So here’s my best tips that I’ve figured out over the past few years:

Play the whole run before you start writing the story proper, but take EXTENSIVE notes while you play. Who you catch and where, where and how deaths happened, where and how evolutions happened, details on how major battles went, but also particularly funny conversations with NPCs, interesting game landmarks, close encounters with trainers or wild Pokemon, etc. I’ve recently started outlining chapters as I play, but I already have a pretty sizeable world built XP If you’re writing your first story, you’re probably gonna discover the worldbuilding as you play and note. How many deaths you have and who kills them is definitely gonna influence parts of the story as you have to decide how and why those deaths happen. Knowing who lives and who dies is also helpful for planning what Pokemon to feature in your story--I’ve tried in the past to introduce every Pokemon I ever caught, but unless you have a distinct idea for what to do with the Pokemon you never use, better to stick with fleshing out the Pokemon who serve on your team. You can catch a Pokemon early in the game and only introduce them later in the story when they join your team after a death if you want, even if you’re introducing them in-story in a wildly different area to where you caught them ingame!

Give EVERY character a goal. Even if it never comes up in the story, make sure YOU know what every character’s goals are, and that these inform their actions. Even if your Pokemon don’t speak or don’t have human intelligence, give them goals, even if they’re simple ones like “getting scratches” or “having fights”.

For that matter, it can be a fun exercise to figure out the life stories of a lot of characters, even if they’re not important. It’s a good rule of thumb for you to know a ton of information about both your characters and the world that might never appear in the story--but it’s good for YOU to know it, as the writer.

Don’t ever force in information where it doesn’t need to be. Don’t open with a long explanation of your main character’s life story (I have been guilty of this) or every detail of the world. Just get your characters talking and let details come out as and when they’re relevant! Don’t make characters explain things they already know to each other--only explain things to characters who have reason to not already know! It’s very tempting to babble on about the details of your world, I know, but you’ve got some built-in interesting mysteries if the characters talk about a subject or person without explaining all the details for the reader, and y’know, readers are pretty smart. We like figuring things out from context clues!

Okay, so the secret to keeping track of huge numbers of characters: SPREADSHEETS. Here’s the one I use to keep track of Pokemon:

I use this as I’m writing--grey denotes dead Pokemon, blue current team members.

Here’s the one I use to keep track of characters, with some spoilers for stuff coming after Dimensional Destruction redacted:

So if that’s pretty small, basically for ever character I have their title if they have one (Professor/Doctor/Marchioness/etc), surname, married name (if different), forename, nickname, if they’re an avatar (this is particular to my storyworld and how the god/human relationship works), the year of their birth (in my story’s year numbering) and their age at various important story events and during different fics. The outlined boxes are the character’s age during a story where they’re particularly relevant--for example, I’ve outlined Cyrus’ age during Dimensional Destruction only, but Burgh’s for the years of both Unova fics. There’s a bunch of other tabs on this spreadsheet to list leaders/E4/champion in different regions at different times, family trees, etc. I’m shit with numbers so this is great for helping me keep track of my own made-up year system that I felt pedantically compelled to make up, ages, when shit happens... for Dimensional Destruction and Deliverance, to keep them aligned, Key and I wrote a day-by-day calendar. How much detail you feel you need is up to you, but this is how I manage all the information.

Speaking of Key, this is my number #1 tip for success: have a writing buddy. Somebody you chat to as much as possible--Key and I talk pretty much every day and have for years, and lately so do Bri (writer of Eye of the Beholder, which is an all-around great story and particularly a great example of how to do a “protagonist from another world” story without getting too info-dumpy) and I, and it really is the best way both to keep your own juices flowing and to come up with ideas. Talk to somebody you feel safe to share ideas you’re nervous about with so they can help you figure them out. Talk to somebody you can share silly jokes with and then take far too seriously (aka how Johanna ended up marrying Byron--”haha Silver really looks like a younger Roark doesn’t he lol”). Talk to somebody you can babble AT LENGTH at about your latest idea and will enthuse about every word. Talk to somebody whose story you love reading and love hearing their story babble ideas about. Inspire each other and have fun :D

Read a lot of other nuzlockes, and try not to think “this is so much better than mine...” Instead, try to think “wow, that idea was really creative. This is how I’d do it...” Other nuzlockes can give you ideas for how to reinterpret things in the game, maybe things you hadn’t thought about trying to reinterpret! It really can help if you get stuck on where to take your story.

Write backwards. Know how things end, and then start working on how characters get there. If you have a distinct scene in your head, write it out and set it aside. Then, as you actually start writing the story, everything will change. That’s fine! Let it! Let the characters tell you what’s going on, then go back and add the foreshadowing.

Unless you’ve got something really, REALLY good, don’t try to explain how Escape Rope works.

I hope some of these help! Send me a link when you start publishing your story, I’m excited to read it! Also, I just want to say that I love your Blue avatar a lot. SWAG.

#blues-chatter

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613526362 · 6 years

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Poodle or die

I’m sitting here, teaching a pediatric medical course right now, watching the videos along with the students, and I feel it coming on I feel the depression coming It’s crazy This journal was supposed to be the story of a burgeoning humanitarian struggling to get back to what he loved most - Africa Instead, it has turned into a tale of psychological self-discovery, a fight for survival against one’s own mind I fear the coming months are going to be a fight against money That’s typically when I do worst - when I’m worried about money And I’ll have to fight against money alone. I’m not sure if Nia left me or I left her, but it doesn’t matter. She never even pretended to care. My friends told me a girl who messages me back a day or two after I messaged her doesn’t care. But I didn’t listen. I took her to the $1,200 play she had always dreamed of seeing before she seems to have dropped me. That’s right, the financial problems will be my fault as always. I wasn’t trying to buy love, I was just trying to show how much I care and hoped someone might care back. Wrong, again. Yes I still think it’s cool I made a first-generation Ethiopian girl’s dreams come true, and yes the play was fucking amazing. Even though there were more black people on stage than in the entire crowd. And every seat was taken. I don’t think she appreciated me pointing that out. She doesn’t see the things I see. She’s never been to Africa. I would have taken her too, but maybe it would have been too late for her mind to understand anyways. At this point, she’s just another American. The chronic disease of being-an-American defines her now. Did I mention she didn’t text me back all day the day of the play, and I actually was trying to find someone to go in her place because I thought I was getting stood up? Did I mention it was literally past the time when I was supposed to pick her up - and I was about to go to a bus stop and offer strangers the ticket - when she finally called back? Maybe she’s seeing someone else. Fuck it, I’m getting a dog. I’m not sure if I even care if I can afford a dog. Every day I wish Maya would message me. But she never does. I want to talk to her so bad, but every time she messages me (about a month ago was the last time), I delete her number. Knowing what I want and knowing what’s right is something I might be getting slowly better at. The dog is what’s right now. I really will. I will kill myself in the darkest part of the winter, when business sales are low or I’m worried about the IRS or some girl has hurt me again, I WILL kill myself this winter, unless something changes. I could never blow my brains out with a dog who loves me in the other room. Never. The last two days I’ve been obsessing over researching the dog purchase. My dad is a veterinarian, so obviously he was my first stop. When presented in the context of, “This could be challenging, but women treat me like shit and women and children are way more expensive,” he was actually quite supportive. But only after suggesting, “How about no women or dogs. Maybe pet rock?” Pet 9mm Glock that expels a 1,500 feet per second steel projectile into my inner brain is the alternative. If he’d known that he wouldn’t have suggested the rock. I’ll be in Africa for a week in early October, so I’m hoping to bring him home right after I get back. I hate that the poor little bastard will have to live his first months in the fierce winter of The Big City. But shit, I have to live through those months too, and at least we’ll have each other. And once again, if I wait, I’m probably dead. This big business move I’m making, there is a good chance it will fail. In which case, once again, the only thing keeping me alive while fighting through bankruptcy battles and maybe dropping out of medical school, would be the dog. If I turn out to be a failure in everything and wrong about everything, well, the dog won’t give a shit. He’ll just want to play and cuddle. And if I actually finish school and move to east Africa, he can come too. No matter how hard, I’ll smuggle his ass in. My dad says if you shave a Labrador, the shedding isn’t too bad. Their coat is thick though, so a lab would struggle in some of the hotter areas of east Africa. What people don’t realize is that the Standard Poodle is the Navy SEAL of dogs. They don’t shed, so they leave no trace. They have thin skin and a long nose, which is good for hot climates, and they can grow their hair out for more warmth in a colder climate. They’re also light and agile, and can swim or run for long distances. Lastly, they’re always considered one of the smartest dog breeds. I hope I can keep up. Redacted Two days have passed I’m in bed now I woke up around noon, I think I worked from 7p to 7a last night On the way home, I started crying real bad That hasn’t happened in a while I don’t think I’ve cried while driving in years. It’s very rare I cry at all. I don’t know whether to describe the things I see at work anymore. I don’t know if I can. I just know the day after I always seem to wind up sitting around replaying things I saw the night before. At first I was upset they put me in triage. I hadn’t worked there in 7 months. I didn’t realize it would bring me so much closer to the horror of what’s going on out there. In triage, you hear all the stories. The shift started with a whimper. I had a middle aged black woman walk up to my triage desk with a suitcase and a four year old child. “I was told by the state that I can come here to seek shelter.” Wait what. I had absolutely no fucking clue what to say. All I knew was that she was at the wrong place. Charge nurse told me to call the city hotline. I did, and when the lady on the hotline asked to talk to the woman in need of shelter, I went into the waiting room, handed my $800 cell phone to her, and then left the room. God has taught me a lot over time. One thing I’ve learned is that I’m generally protected when taking risks to help people in need. Generally safe, that is. Safe from immediate adverse harm. Not safe from long term consequences though. After I got my phone back and some amount of time passed, I noticed she was gone. We had a number of those throughout the night, but the rest just wanted to sleep in the waiting room. One of them was a younger black woman, must have been in her late 20’s. She said she was homeless, and her torn clothing and disheveled grooming seemed to reinforce that statement. The only question she didn’t seem to answer was, “What do the voices say when you hear them.” She got a really terrifying look in her eye when I asked that. But she didn’t answer. Even when I asked twice more. When Dan left me in triage alone with her for a minute, my mood immediately changed. It was weird. I guess I have my guard up when I’m around other staff members. Immediately after he walked out of the room, I felt a kind of intimacy with her. I wish I could have held her. But she would never have wanted to hug me, and it wouldn’t have made her feel any better even if it had happened. She had asked me for a blanket, and I grabbed her one before she left. It wasn’t before she had left the room completely and gone back out to the waiting room that I noticed there was blood on the chair she had been sitting in. I figured it was probably from a patient before her, so I grabbed a wet wipe and cleaned it off. A minute later I was back up front in triage, and I noticed there was even more blood on another chair she had sat in before I had taken her to the back room for blood draw. In emergency medicine, we’re not supposed to assume anything, so I needed to figure out where she was bleeding from. Obviously it was probably menstrual, but I couldn’t assume that. If it was rectal bleeding, although extremely unlikely, it could be deadly. I went and searched for her in the waiting room, and I found her lying on the concrete floor with the blanket over her. She had made a little bed for herself, using a small piece of clothing as a pillow. “Are you bleeding?” No response. “Where are you bleeding from?” Then she blurted out, “On my period I guess.” I walked away. I decided to get her another blanket, and a blanket for the other homeless man trying to sleep on the waiting room. I walked to the blanket warmer in a nonsensical path, not allowing any of the employees to see me twice. I knew it was against policy to give people in the waiting room a blanket. Back when I worked in the ER at (redacted), I used to take tons of juice out to the waiting room and give it out to anyone who wanted some. They would have been furious had they caught me doing that. When I put the second blanket on her, I guess I had meant to kind of lay it over her, but since I was standing over her and hadn’t taken the time to lean down, it came out as more of a throw. The top of the blanket, still balled up, smacked her in the face. She didn’t move, or react at all. I wondered if she even knew what had just happened, and, if she did, what she thought of it. It didn’t matter though. Here was a young, black, penniless, filthy, schizophrenic, woman, lying, soaked, in her own menstrual blood, on a concrete floor, in a dilapidated hospital, in a devastated, ultra-violent, 100% Black neighborhood, three miles from Trump tower and its $60 cocktails. And I just aggressively hit her in the head with a blanked stained with blood from one of her young Black brothers shot to death on the same streets she sleeps in, gets raped in. I am sorry I hide this. People should hear it. I just spent six hours shopping for dog clothing online. I just mailed a $750 deposit for a pure bred standard poodle this morning. Because I can’t even hear it myself. I started fighting this war so long ago, and unlike those who never even cared to admit they have a role in this war, or that there’s even anything to fight, I have become affected more and more by the war and my identity in it. I am ultimately isolated and alienated, by my own mental illness, and the burden of the path that mental illness and the abuse I have suffered and witnessed has taken me down. And I come to the same conclusion I came to before my shift last night. I really need a fucking dog. Redacted I hated my mom, for so many years after high school. Simply for what she did to me. It’s crazy that I finally learned that my dad told her that he would leave her if she didn’t get mental help, and she refused to. That made perfect sense. I think the turning point, where I stopped blaming the person and started to feel compassion for what the disease did to the person, was my trip to Sand state. She had a guest bedroom and a guest bathroom in this house she’d been renting for a while. She’d tried to make everything perfect for me, had a clean towel in there and new toiletries if I needed them. When I went to take a shower that night, I turned on the water. Turned the nobs a bit. Waited. Turned them some more. And waited. Eventually, I figured out the hot water didn’t work in there. She had never had anyone stay with her. No one had actually ever used the guest bedroom, or bathroom. Redacted When I walked back to my bedroom from the bathroom, I glanced at the shelves and saw the toothbrush and toothpaste in the packaging on the top shelf. I’d bought them when I started the whole dating app thing. The one girl who had stayed over I guess was too drunk to use them. I offered in the morning if she wanted to shower and everything, but she just wanted to fuck more and then leave. I hoped that Nia would eventually use them. I’ll never know what was going on in that girl’s head. But I know God saved her a bullet by keeping her from wanting me. I think people like my mom and me (saying “my mom and me” is pure evidence of how much I’ve come to understand this year - I never would have said anything like that before), I think people like my mom and me need to live alone. Yes, when I was dancing violently to Juice Wrld a minute ago and then fell to the floor and spit on the floor, yes, I wouldn’t be able to act that way if I lived with someone else. And maybe keeping that bottled in wouldn’t even be bad for me. But still, it feels right to be alone. To flush all this out. It would just terrify and damage someone else. I wonder what my mom does when she’s alone. As kids, I just remember she would get depressed and watch TV for long, long periods of time. And then she would obsess herself with weird projects and work tirelessly on them. I just thought of something scary. I’m supposed to have bipolar II. But my mom got hospitalized. Did she have bipolar I? Ok I’m going to stop thinking about that and just finish this post the way I had planned to. I used to have all sorts of cool names I thought I could name my book. Now I’m thinking, “Living for Suicide: Meditations on Mental Illness, Sacrifice, and Being Alone” The title doesn’t even fucking mention Africa anymore Fuck I’m still going to accomplish something, right?

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613526362 · 7 years

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A Life and a Lie

Maybe if I just get this out It will help I'm lying in bed And I can't get out It's been two or three hours Since a phone call from someone calling about [redacted] courses woke me up. She wanted to complain about the prices a lot. I should have told her that I paid about six thousand dollars of my own money so that she can receive classes at this price. I mean I paid sixteen grand, but at least eight grand or so has been paid back to me. That doesn't add up but whatever And I just want to go to [redacted] next month and tell them, no, I'm not going to do your expansion to The Big City, because I don't make any money off this. I'm not trying to make even more not making money. I'm actually going to apply for other jobs just so I have a valid excuse to say no to them. When I drove up to work last night, there was police tape all around the ER. I guess a kid got shot in a car or something, and the car parked outside the ER was evidence or something. When I got in, that kid was gone, but there was another child who was stabbed. The way he screamed was haunting. Jesus we don't even take pediatric trauma anymore. But if EMS knows we don't, people out in the jungle still don't. They'll come forever. So many flashes of terror in mind. The resident wearing a "banned" shirt with two pistols on the front and "MOG TRAUMA" printed across them in stylized font. It's so cool for these twenty something doctors to see so many poor and black people shot. It's a fucking sport to them, and all that cool violence just soaks right into their walk, and clothes, and aura. They're so fucking cool for all this misery they walk past. The cockroach scurrying about of the box of IV flush that I grab. I'm told there's a room upstairs with tons of children's clothes in it, and there are just cockroaches scurrying everywhere. The beautiful medical and PA students. I try to teach one of them to insert IVs. She can't advance the catheter far enough. I take it, and twirl it in, showing her one technique to save the attempt. A nurse watches. The IV doesn't work, and when I pull it out, it's all distorted and twisted around. The nurse steps in to show her the "right" way to do it, humiliating me. I've used that technique a million times successfully, but of course the one time I'm showing a beautiful student who looked up to me how to do it, it fails terribly. I want to write her real name, it's such a beautiful name. She was Croatian. She was tall, and pretty, and I felt nervous next to her. I looked in the mirror shortly after I first talked to her. When I did, I saw my lips were terribly chapped, and I saw something black on my neck. I thought it was a scab from cutting myself while shaving (I also had a cut on my chin from that), but when I grabbed at it, it was actually a flea. It had just bit me and left a red mark. I killed it,and inspected it more closely. I wondered if she had seen the flea on my neck when we were taking. I wondered if the flea had jumped off a patient, or i f I just have fleas now. If they're in my bed. If they're in my hair. If I'm just living in fleas now. One of the five gunshot victims of the night had his sister with him. They were joking around while I was preparing the cast to keep his leg still until an orthopedic clinic could see the next day, and I caught something she said. "Wait, what did you say?" "Morgue Mog" "What's that?" "That's what they call it here, because everyone who comes here dies." I can just see poor black people, on street corners and in homes, talking about family members that I touch and I stick needles into and put blankets on. I can just see them casually referring to the place I spend 40 hours a week as "Morgue Mog." I work in a morgue. I find a library open the third floor, and that saves the night. I'm so excited to start using the library to study, but there's a passcode on the door. When I email the "library administrator" the next morning, she calls and says that the library is just for medical students, and my medical school isn't a medical school that's affiliated with the hospital. Crazy that I work here and get patients blood on my skin every single time I come to work and it's the students who are allowed to use the library and not me. They do nothing while they're here. Nothing. Nothing. So I'll either bribe the janitor to get me the code, or I'll send emails and harass uppers administrators to get permission to use it. Or I won't do either, because I'm just so tired of everything being a fight. I'm so tired of fighting. I just barely paid rent, but more bills are coming. I don't have the will to do any other things I need to do right now. When I got home I swatted at a mosquito ont he wall in the shower, and it caused the curtain rod to fall down and hit me on the head. It was a heavy metal one. It hurts now. I want to fast, and I want to sit in my room and pray. I want to study for the exam, or see my father. I just want to touch my fathers hand. I just want to hug my best friend's daughter. But I am alone here. I joined a Christian dating app. I just wanted someone to talk to. I purposefully avoided Tinder and Bumble because it's too romantic, too sexual. I just wanted to make a friend, but I couldn't find an app for friends that anyone actually uses. I guess everyone wants more than that in life. That's all I want. All of the girls whose profiles I like don't like me back. There aren't many people in my area, so I had to expand the geographical region I was searching in more and more. To make a long and cruel story short, I wound up accidentally talking to the cousin of someone I wrote about when I was on the island. When she found out who I was, she started worshipping me. Her "favorite cousin" had already told her all about me, how great I was, my work in Africa. And then, when we finally talked on the phone, she was so disappointed to find out that I care more about peoples bodies than their souls. She told me a story about bringing someone to Christ, and then she said, "I'm so sorry you've never had that feeling before." I informed her that I've treated over 60,000 patients in the last ten years, and worked as an advocate for abused and neglected children, and worked with communities in schools, and so on and so on, and I have that feeling every week. But that's not true. There's no gratification in anything I do. In her eyes I'm not even a Christian. It jarred me to have that conversation with her. To see myself as so wrong in her eyes. And it made it worse that she's actually done more more medical work in Africa than I have. She's just an EMT, and at 22, she's done more of what I base my whole life on that I have. A week ago I was in the closet at a wedding making out with the maid of honor. When she came to my hotel that night, I noticed she'd been drinking. I think sometimes women do that. I think they expect that they're about to have sex, and they just want to relax. Maybe the guy will be bad at it, maybe he'll rush it, maybe he'll do things she's not comfortable with. Best to drink a bit before it gets started, and then it won't hurt as much. But as Finding Dory played on my hotel TV in the background (I own the movie since I used to play it off my iPad for pediatric patients on my ambulance, but I've never actually watched more than five monitors of it), she was shocked. She was shocked how comfortable she was with me, she was shocked that I wanted to hear about her life, and was actually, genuinely interested in it. She was shocked that I didn't come closer to her. When we did finally kiss, and things got heated, I said, "We need to stop, or else we might wind up having sex." And she said, "No that won't happen." Oh it won't? It won't? You're right it won't. Because ten hours later, I had cuddled you and held you and showed you what love is really like. You woke up in my arms to kisses on your neck, I make you cum using just my fingers in the morning. And you beg me to miss my flight, you beg me to move to South Carolina, you beg me to get a condom and put myself inside of you. But you're right. We won't have sex. I just needed someone to hold I just wanted to not be alone. I just didn't want to want, for a minute. So I kept my underwear on, even though she pulled my dick out of them and put it in her mouth. I try to turn over,a get out of bed. She grabs me, pulls me back in. I tried to walk away from bed. She follows me and tries to push me back into bed. She's trying to rape me, but eventually she gives up. And I'm in another state for two days, to attend my assistants wedding. While people in the state where I was last year cry out for help from a hurricane. The exact city where I used to work 911 needs people urgently to come help. It's a state of crisis. It's what as a kid I always dreamed of happening. Hurricane Katrina. I wanted nothing more than to go and help. And now, when it happens, in the exact city where I worked last year, it doesn't. even. fucking. occur to me to go. I'm literally making out with some girl I'm not attracted to in a closet while people post on Facebook that medical workers are urgently needed in [redacted]. Boats are needed to save people. I pin her up against the door and kiss her, I slip down her dress and touch her breast. My soul is dead. I need to get out of bed and prep paperwork and equipment for my CPR clases tomorrow morning. Jesus, being a fake version of you is shit. I tell myself I'm trying to be like you, but I'm not trying hard enough for it not to be a lie. I am the biggest lie ever. I convince women of me the lie, my father believes in me the lie. Promise me you'll take me quickly someday. Promise me I won't have to deal with all the debilitating shit that I see patients slowly suffering and dying from each day. Or just don't hold it against me if I take myself. I can't do this for more than 20 more years God. I don't deserve that. I don't deserve a quick way out. But as I see how much a lie I am more and more, I just don't know what to do. Do I go back to church Do I settle down and give up on Africa Do I get more radical What the fuck Do I do Let me have a dog some day, God. Let it be a sweet dog, who sleeps in my bed with me and cuddles me, and runs with me, and loves me like I love it. And don't let it die God, don't let it die ever We do get more selfish with age We do forget about others and care more about ourselves Forgive me for what I have become god I am a life and a lie I love you God

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