#quiet world

[anexperimentallife]

Since the rights have reverted to me, this is the story I WAS getting paid to license as the basis of a video game until the deal got canceled unexpectedly after a year of development(for understandable reasons I won't go into here). There's a lot I'd change about it now (I'm a better writer now, for one thing, and my understanding of problematic tropes is better now--this was the first story I ever sold, and was originally published in the anthology The Crimson Pact, volume 2), and my Quiet World setting has morphed and expanded quite a bit since then, too. This will be getting a rewrite, with additional characters (some of whom you'll meet if you play the dialogue-only demo linked to below). But anyway...

HERE’S THE ORIGINAL STORY--ENJOY!

(also here's a link to a playable dialogue-only version of the first three chapters of the mobile game version--which is quite different)

Karma

by D. Robert Hamm (about 15,000 words)

We hit the interstate like an unguided missile. Needles of frozen rain and jagged blades of wind beat my face numb and turned what was left of my dress into a full-body ice-pack. Even with the heater on ‘incinerate,’ I couldn’t stop shivering, but the outside air was all that kept me from gagging on the smell of my own puke and the rusty stench of blood, so the window stayed down. Between the black pavement and blacker sky, the air was wet and gray. It sucked the vitality from my headlamp beams well before their natural time, but that was okay. I wasn’t paying much attention to the little they revealed anyway.

The man in the passenger’s seat either didn’t feel the cold or was too stoic to show discomfort. The dashboard glow turned his short white beard to green and deepened the age lines in his face. Gods, I’d loved that face growing up. It was my grandfather’s face. But right then, I could barely look at it, because this wasn’t my grandfather, just a sad, confused spirit wearing his body. And even though he was one of the good guys, that didn’t mean it was easy to take.

“You’re going to catch cold,” Not-Grandpa shouted over the storm.

“I’m… what?”

Since last night I’d been shot at, whipped, and electrocuted. I’d watched a good man beheaded and disemboweled before my eyes, and learned things about myself, my family, and especially my past, that had already driven other people into padded-room territory. I was marinated in a vile concoction of blood and various other body fluids, quite a bit of it my own, and had spent the last however-many hours fighting horrors that should never have existed. In the middle of all that—because I’m an overachiever—I took time out to kill a man I loved.

And this guy was worried that I’d catch a fucking cold?

Once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. The kind of deep, full-body laughter that doubles you over and makes your stomach muscles ache for days afterward. The kind that shreds the lining of your throat and rises in pitch to rapid staccato squeaks, like sneakers on a hardwood floor. I held back the worst long enough to wrestle the car onto the shoulder, then let go. The laughter turned to howling, the howling into screams, the screams into sobs, and the sobs into a quiet whimper that finally, gods finally, tapered off, and I could breathe again, in great, ragged gulps. I wiped away a rope of snot hanging from my nose and sat hunched over with my eyes closed and my forehead against the steering wheel, shaking, while the rain pummeled my back with tiny, ice-cold fists.

In shock? Probably. Hysterical? Definitely. Look, I make sandwiches at my family’s restaurant for a living, okay? Sandwiches.

Not-Grandpa waited until I quieted down before speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said. It was the dozenth or so time he’d said it. The line of his mouth stayed hard, but his eyes and his voice were soft and broken. I believed him. Had to believe him.

“I know.” I didn’t mean for it to sound bitter. He’d saved my life after all, and he deserved better than that. I just didn’t know if I could forgive him for not being who I wanted him to be.

A little too “in media res” for you? Yeah, me too.

So here are the vitals: My name is Karma Miranda Rodriguez. I’m twenty-three years old, five foot six, with brown eyes, light brown skin, and dark brown hair that I keep boy-short. I claim to be a size five, and I dare you to say otherwise. I like strawberry daiquiris, support equal rights for supernaturals, am indifferent toward long walks on the beach, and . . .

And oh, yeah—apparently, I kill demons.

Eli’s Borderland Station, my family’s restaurant, has been the only twenty-four hour eatery on the Kansas City Plaza since back before the Jasonites outed the supernatural community (aka, “The Quiet World”) and we had to coin the term ‘daylighter’ to differentiate plain vanilla humans from those touched by the paranormal. During the riots that followed the Jasonites’ little party, and all through the Apocalypse Wars, my Grandpa Eli and Uncle Garston kept the restaurant open as a free kitchen-slash-aid-station for refugees and emergency workers, and turned the upstairs apartment—which is mine, now—into a de facto headquarters for various peacekeeping forces.

So alongside our Absolutely Killer Turkey Sandwich (made from, according to the menu, genuine killer turkeys), we serve up a mean side-order of history. Obviously, a lot of things have changed since the AWs; for instance, the Plaza, always an upscale shopping district, is now a level four Private Patrol Zone with the best law enforcement money can buy. As you’d expect, our main business is well-heeled shoppers whose sidearms are more fashion statement than personal defense, but we try to keep prices reasonable enough for the average college student, too.

No amount of money will buy you a table or a bar stool in our VIP lounge, though, even if every other seat in the house is taken. The lounge is permanently reserved for veterans, proxies, bounty hunters, elites, and so on. It’s where people with code names like Halloween Jack, Lucy D.T., HalluciNathan, and so on come to catch up with one another, trade information, or just relax. Grandpa and Uncle Garston are technically civilians now, but a lot of the VIPs still use their call signs from way back when, so if someone in armored leathers with notched weapons and a stare that looks like they’re counting the ways they could kill you with one finger says they’re going to see The General and Body Mass, they’re not talking about some secret mission, it just means they’re headed our way for the lunch special.

On Tuesday nights we lock up for a few hours of uninterrupted cleaning with my special patented Karma Rodriguez closing procedure. This involves, among other things, lots of dancing around with brooms and mops, and other Weapons of Mess-Destruction, and me in a casual dress singing along with loud music at the top of my lungs. It’s effective. The more I can make work feel like play, the faster and more efficiently I get things done, and as proof of that, what used to take three people on Tuesday nights now requires only two.

At thirty seconds to zero-dark-thirty on a drizzly February evening, when my grime-fighting partner Jayden and I were the only ones left in the restaurant, I locked the front door and hit the music. My mix for the night was weighted heavily in favor of pre-Apocalypse rock—music that was old before I was born. It was a minor tragedy when it cut off about ten minutes into the shift, right in the middle of David Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel. Jayden and I both trailed off a cappella.

“I didn’t hear you singing if you didn’t hear me,” Jayden said. “We stick together, and nobody can prove anything.” He fixed me with what would have been a deadpan stare if not for that quirk at one corner of his mouth that I thought of as his, ‘our little secret’ smile.

I put on my best film noir ‘tough dame’ voice. “It’s always secrets with you, isn’t it? Fine, I’ll play your game.” Staying in character, I headed upstairs with an over-the-top hip-swaying sashay, to reboot the router while Jayden kept cleaning.

I can’t be objective about Jayden, so I won’t try. He was one of a kind. Literally. Part Aosidhe, part Graealfinsidhe, and part daylighter, Jayden was a medical miracle, and he got the best from each branch of his ancestry. Six and a half feet of lean muscle, flawless skin, hair like pale gold silk, and . . . you get the idea. His ears were only slightly pointed, and with his hair down, he could pass for an exceptionally pretty daylighter, if not for his eyes. Whiteless, and bright turquoise in color. They suited him.

And yeah, I know. If only I wasn’t his boss. Jayden had something of a ‘mystery man’ air about him that only added to his status as local lust-object. Among other things, the way he dressed like a wastelander (only cleaner) but acted like a gentleman fueled speculation. He kept his past and his private life just that, though—past, and private. It was like the world was in love with Jayden, but Jayden wasn’t sure how he felt about the world and didn’t want to lead it on.

When I got back from confirming that the router was indeed fried, those exotic eyes of his were fixed on the big screen in the main dining area. I came up behind him and stopped, gaping. “What the . . . ?”

Just north of us, people were fighting in the streets and looting, while Hushville—Jayden’s neighborhood—burned.

“Short version?” Jayden said without turning around, “They busted the wrong guy for the Taylor murders, so they released him. He lasted a whole three hours.”

“They didn’t give him police protection?”

“He was under police protection when it happened. Now everybody has a conspiracy theory, and apparently with every conspiracy theory this week, you get a free Molotov cocktail kit. Speaking of which . . . ” He rewound a few seconds and paused on a burning apartment building that I recognized as his. “Great firebomb, huh?”

“Wow. I’m sorry.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged, his back still to me. “I carry everything really important with me.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Want me to leave you alone?”

He paused, as if considering. “No.”

“Okay. But know what? Fuck cleaning. Help me get the trash out, then haul your duffel bag upstairs. You’re staying at my place tonight.”

Jayden turned and looked at me as though I were speaking Swahili. “Your place?”

“You just lost your apartment to a xenophobic asshole with a fire fetish, and you need crash space. Friends do that kind of stuff for each other.”

That earned me a confused look. “No, I just . . . Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.” He seemed utterly bewildered. So much for his famed stoicism and unflappability. Ah, Jayden. Such a strange, strange boy. I ran up to get my coat and pull on a pair of jeans under my dress, and Jayden and I dragged the first can out into the alley.

I remember the air tasted of cold grease and wet pavement. I remember the electric buzz of the street lamp, and the way its dirty light turned the drizzle into sparse gray streaks like anime rain. I remember the exact cadence of the trash can’s scraping and banging as we dragged it toward the dumpster. How screwed up do things have to get before taking out the trash is a fond memory worth replaying in your head?

We didn’t hear the patrol team until they entered the mouth of the alley, running hard toward us, shouting at us to get inside. The woman’s name was Lawson. She’d lost her helmet, and a sheen of blood covered the left side of her face. Her partner, Hall, had a crack running down the side of his faceplate, and his body armor was shredded in places. They both carried their weapons at the ready, scanning the roofline as they ran.

Before they’d even finished their warning, a clot of shadow and sickening angles detached from the rest of the dark. The Shashashkuhun slaughter-spider—How did I know that?—dropped from the roof and—The Shashashkuhun and the bad people are making us walk a long way again. I don’t say how tired I am because I am almost eight years old, and that means I’m a big girl, and because it would make Mommy feel bad that she can’t carry me that far. Mommy and me are in our nightgowns because we were asleep when they—Where were these images coming from?—landed in the alley behind them. It was an impossible thing, eight or nine feet tall, all mottled ochre-and-black chitin, with eight spiked and bladed spiderlike legs from which it took its name, serrated mandibles beneath great protruding compound eyes, and short, thick, writhing tentacles suspended from the underside of a bulbous, misshapen central body.

I shouted my own warning, but Hall was already emptying his magazine at the thing as he backed toward us. Lawson either tripped or dove in our direction, twisting in mid-air to land on her back. She raised her shotgun, and—grabbed us, and it was really late because both moons were out, but they let us put on our boots before they made us start walking. Mommy tried to fight them and she shot one of them but they beat her up and cut her cheek really bad. But she is still the prettiest lady in the whole wide world. It was real people, not Shashashkuhun, but they don’t act like real people. Mommy says they have bad things inside them called Qlippoth. I think they are telling the Shashashkuhun what—made it roar as she hit the pavement.

The monster’s cry was like a foghorn made of cats and feedback, a spike that shoved through both eardrums. Lawson had hurt it, taken out one leg, in fact, but it wasn’t enough, and Hall’s automatic gunfire cut off with a sickening, meat cleaver sound as the spider sliced through his neck. Hall’s head flew from his shoulders and bounced against the alley wall while the spider eviscerated his body before it could hit the ground, as if he weren’t–to do. A man tried to run away today, but they caught him, and instead of shooting him a Shashashkuhun stuck one of its sharp arm/leg things in him and cut him open and played with his insides until he stopped screaming, and I cried, but I won’t cry anymore, because I’m a big girl, and—dead enough already. Even as far back as Jayden and I stood, hot, sticky wetness splattered our faces.

The monster tried to leap toward us, but its missing leg threw it off balance. Lawson’s shotgun was out of ammo, so she fumbled out her .45 and taunted the slaughter-spider while edging toward the side of the alley opposite the door. Sacrificing herself—big girls don’t cry. The demons usually kill everybody, but now they only kill people who try to run away or stop walking before they tell us to stop or people who fall down and can’t walk anymore, but sometimes when somebody falls down they let somebody else make a travois, which is a kind of sled thing that you drag—to give us a chance to get away. My gun was in my purse inside, but even if I’d had it on me, I couldn’t loosen my grip on the trash can, let alone force myself to move.

I caught Jayden’s eye. I’d never before realized–when I feel like crying I think about Daddy. Daddy is a general, which is a kind of soldier who tells other soldiers what to do. He is a long way away fighting other Shashashkuhun, but when he comes to save us, the Shashashkuhun and the bad people are going to be sorry. I am going to be a soldier like Daddy when I grow up and—how much he and I communicated without speaking, but with that look, I knew we’d done the same math. One of us might—just might—make it to the door. If we left the other one to die along with Lawson.

Fuck that.

Once I’d made the decision, the tension drained from my body—I am nine years old, and I have been in the prison camp for over a year. They tell me it is time for the laboratory again, but if I pick someone else to go, they will leave me alone today. If I choose my mother to go they will leave me alone for a month. They seem surprised when my answer is to hold out my wrists for the cuffs. I am the daughter of a general and a hero. I do not run, or let others take my pain. And no matter what they do to me, I won’t let them see how scared I am—the way the fear had, sublimating into the night and leaving me perfectly relaxed. Jayden gave me that ‘our little secret’ smile, and I knew he got it. He understood. Not just what I was about to do, but why.

When anything you do will end in death, make your final act one of defiance.

And so it was that we, about to die, in the most futile and ridiculous gesture in the history of futile and ridiculous gestures, screamed our defiance in the face of death, and charged the monster that would surely kill us.

With a fucking trash can.

We slammed into the slaughter-spider and fell hard, with the trash can bouncing between those giant legs and spilling its slippery contents out onto the already-slick blacktop. The slaughter-spider screamed at the impact, even louder than when Lawson had shot it, and nearly toppled. A serrated leg missed me by inches, and I rolled away, but I’d only be able to dodge for so long. My only regrets were that since I hadn’t properly prepared this body, I would die along with it—again, where the hell did that thought come from?—and that so many things would go unsaid between me and those I cared about. Including Jayden, if I was being honest.

Something hard in my coat pocket bit into my side as I rolled. I’d forgotten about the taser I almost always took with me when I left the restaurant. Even if it was still charged, it wasn’t salvation, but at this point salvation wasn’t an option. Victory was what mattered, and victory was nothing more nor less than continuing to fight until the inevitable happened. I pulled out the taser, flipped off the safety, and sent 50,000 volts into the center of that mass of tentacles, along with all the fury I could muster. The slaughter-spider jerked momentarily, and Lawson took advantage to pick up a piece of steel rebar from the junk pile in the alley and plunge it glove-deep into one of the slaughter-spider’s faceted eyes. Jayden followed with a sharp piece of broken two-by-four into the other.

And as though someone had flipped a switch marked ‘alive/dead,’ the slaughter-spider fell . . . in slow motion, like those television broadcasts of building demolitions. After one final spasm, it was still, and the alley was silent for several seconds except for the buzz of the streetlight. After barely long enough to begin to accept that we weren’t dead, answering cries to the spider’s death scream split the night.

We staggered inside the restaurant as the first new creature hit the pavement, and got the bars across the door just before another slammed against it. I slapped my palm against the ward sigil and spoke the syllables to activate it, then ran to the front and did the same there. After grabbing my gun and other weapons from upstairs and activating still more wards, I hit the ‘dim all’ switch and met up with the others in the kitchen. Lawson used a cabinet as cover, her shotgun aimed at the door, and Jayden . . .

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I’d been gone perhaps two minutes, but when I returned, Jayden stood transformed, a grim-faced cross between a modern wastelander and a wild warrior from legend, in a combination of armored biker leathers and Fay armor. The hilts of two matching blades extended over his shoulders, and his jacket sleeves were pushed up to reveal Sidhe archery gauntlets—the real kind, not the department store knockoffs. Other weapons clung to various parts of his body, strategically placed so as not to impede movement—blades, throwing disks, bolas, and quivers and bandoliers of bolts and arrows for the quick-load mini-crossbow in his hand and the compound bow housed in a slender case across his back. He shrugged bashfully—Jayden? Bashful?—when he caught me staring. So this was what he meant when he said he carried everything important with him.

The booming of another hit on the door jerked my attention away from Jayden. After a few more tries, though, the spiders seemed to realize that it was futile, and ceased their efforts.

Now that we had stopped racing time, time slowed to let us catch up. Whether from the endorphin rush or something else, I felt disconnected, an observer watching from inside myself. In the dimness, Lawson and Jayden were pale, oh so pale, and heartbreakingly beautiful against the gray and charcoal shadows. I stood with chest heaving alongside them, seeing and feeling and hearing everything as though for the first time, in love with it all. Because we, who moments before had been dead, were alive and more than alive, were filled with life until we could burst from the pressure as it strained against the insignificant scraps of skin and flesh that could barely contain it.

A single glossy drop of blood formed at the tip of Lawson’s finger, creating itself until it was real enough to float downward and finally join its comrades who had already emigrated to the floor to form a puddle, and Lawson was falling, falling, falling behind it as if to join the puddle herself.

I shook out of my trance barely in time to help Jayden take Lawson’s weight. She was conscious, but weak. “It’s okay,” I told her, “We’re going to get you taken care of. Did you call for backup?” Lawson shook her head weakly, closed her eyes, and made a sound between a chuckle and a sob. “Nobody left to call. Even if the radio worked, nobody left to . . . ” she trailed off and seemed to fold in on herself. I’d seen what that thing did to Hall. I didn’t need her to tell me what had happened to the rest of her squad.

We got Lawson into the VIP lounge and onto a folded-out hide-a-bed, and raided the crisis closet. There was more in there than I’d realized. We patched up Lawson as well as we could and got a saline drip going with something for pain and nausea. It was only after I’d given her naproxyn, though, that I thought to wonder if it thinned the blood the way aspirin did. What if she had internal injuries? Was there anything else I was supposed to be doing? At least I remembered to elevate her feet and make sure she had plenty of blankets. Beyond that, it was a matter of, ‘do no harm,’ with a supersized side order of, ‘hope I don’t fuck this up.’

Damn it, I wasn’t qualified for any of this. Grandpa was the one with the certifi—Duh! Grandpa could talk me through this, and we needed to get word out anyway. Our phones may as well have been paperweights, though. No signal, whether due to the riots or something else. If all else failed, Lawson said that after too long with no contact, it was corporate policy to send in what amounted to the wrath of the gods to investigate. The restaurant was pretty much a fortress—even the ‘glass’ was actually transluminum—so theoretically speaking, all we had to do was stay buttoned up for a few hours and wait for help to arrive. And not go nuts in the meantime.

I’d cut away most of Lawson’s uniform, but the rest needed to come off to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Her partner had died saving us, and I’d be damned if she followed suit because of me. I asked Jayden to leave the room, but Lawson put a hand on his arm, winked, and flashed a weak smile. “‘Sokay. I like your boyfriend,” she said.

“Just a friend. It’d probably break my ego to date somebody that much prettier than me.”

“‘Just a friend,’ my ass.” She smiled and closed her eyes, slurring her words, and rolled her head around on her pillow. Her own smile didn’t so much fade as disappear. “Thanks, guys. You did good. I just wish . . . ” Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes, and it didn’t take a psychic to know how that sentence was supposed to end.

After helping Lawson down some broth with a little liquid protein and Nutri-All added, we let her rest. When we were sure she was asleep, and that her breathing and pulse were regular, Jayden and I crept out of the room to treat our own injuries, mostly scrapes and bruises.

It seemed like there was something about what had happened in the alley even stranger than the attack. A flash of knowledge or memory. But whenever I tried to access it, it slipped away. Probably the kind of thing that takes over for some people in emergency situations, like the woman who supposedly lifted a car off of her toddler, or the accountant who found himself standing over the bodies of three would-be muggers, with no memory of what had happened. The other disturbing thing was that I was so . . . blank. I should have been shaking. I should have been horrified at Hall’s death, and at the deaths of the rest of their squad. It’s not that I didn’t care, I just kept feeling like it should have affected me more. We should have been . . . I don’t know, mourning them or something. Maybe I couldn’t let myself feel it yet.

I knelt behind Jayden on a tablecloth on the floor, dabbing antiseptic onto a scrape on his upper back. “So everybody dies,” I muttered, “and we end up with road rash. That’s fair.”

“That’s survivor’s guilt talking,” he said.

“Yeah, well.”

“Lawson’d be dead if not for you. We all would.”

“I had help.”

“Your idea, though.”

I’d been swabbing the same area for maybe a full minute, no longer aware of what I was doing, until Jayden spoke again. “You were wrong, you know.”

“About what?”

“About the ‘prettier than you’ thing. I don’t think anybody is. Nobody I’ve ever seen. And I see into the infra-red and ultra-violet, so I see more than you’d think.” I could almost hear that, ‘our little secret’ smile. “It’s not a peeping thing,” he added quickly, “It’s just my normal vision.”

Blatant change of subject, but not unwelcome. I’m pretty sure I blushed. “Yeah, well thanks. But hey, I like the way I look and all, and I’m not fishing for a compliment here, but—realistically speaking—if you’ve never seen better, you must’ve been living in a cave.”

“Actually,” he said, “a Graealfinsidhe separatist conclave, until five years ago. It was carved into the side of a mountain, so I guess it counts as a cave. Never talked to anyone about it until now. I stand by my statement, though. I decided that if we lived, I was going to tell you that. Tell you everything.”

I blinked. “I’m . . . honored. And I’m not complaining—I mean, look, you’re not the only one who decided out there to reveal some things; guess almost dying does that. It’s just, the guy I’ve been crushing on for two years now is suddenly . . . Why me?”

I caught myself stroking his hair, and was about to stop when he tilted his head into my hand and sighed. We sat there like that for a while before he answered. “I want you to know me.”

Coming from him that night, there in the dark on the hardwood floor with the smells of grime and antiseptic assailing our senses, with death waiting outside the door, those were the sweetest words ever spoken. Sweeter in their simple, naked honesty, than any candle-lit declaration of love, more beautiful in their artlessness than any sonnet delivered on bended knee. I couldn’t stop the wetness on my cheeks, and I didn’t want to.

“Yeah, well, there’s something I want you to know, too.” I pulled him back against me, brushing my lips along his cheek. He turned his body in my arms until we found each other’s mouths and lost ourselves, and entwined around each other on that blood-streaked tablecloth on what might be the last night of our lives was the only place I ever wanted to be.

We dozed, and when we woke it was to Uncle Garston standing over us like a bearded, glowering mountain of muscle in blood-stained flannel, with one bandage around his head and another showing through a rip in his shirt, wearing a flak vest that didn’t quite close around his girth. In addition to his omnipresent Desert Eagle in its holster, he clenched an assault rifle in a hand so huge and meaty that the rifle looked almost like a child’s toy.

“Where’s your half of Eli’s find-me charm?” he growled.

“What? What happened?”

His nostrils flared, and he snorted like a bull about to charge. “Did I fucking stutter? Where is the gods-damned—” He stopped, took a breath, and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Sorry. L-word, all right? I didn’t mean to . . . Just, where is it?”

I told him where it was, and he sprinted out of the room. Jayden and I dressed hurriedly, and Lawson called out from the VIP lounge asking what the shouting was about. “That’s what I’m going to find out,” I told her. I ran upstairs, with Jayden behind me, to find Garston in the kitchen scattering the contents of drawers onto the floor.

“Here,” I said, “Right where I said it was. Now stop being Uncle Growly long enough to tell me what’s going on.”

“They took him. Don’t know why, or why they didn’t kill us, but those bastards—”

“Who? The Shashashkuhun? The Qlippoth?”

“Of course, the Shashashkuhun. Who else . . . ” He looked at me with an undecipherable expression. “How did you know about the Shashashkuhun?”

Yeah, how did I know? “I—I don’t know. But when the slaughter-spider attacked last night—”

“They came here?” Garston roared loudly enough to be painful. “Why didn’t you say so? Did they hurt you? And you, boy,” he turned to Jayden, “where were you when this happened?”

Gods. Could I get one question at a time? “I’m fine,” I said, “and Jayden helped kill one of the damn things, so you can back up out of his grill right now. They killed an entire patrol squad except for Lawson, though. She’s downstairs. But this is . . . ” I shook my head. This wasn’t right. “People don’t suddenly know things like that, Garston. And then not even wonder how.” My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest. Anyone would be freaked out, but why now instead of last night? Where was this panic coming from? “But that’s exactly what I did. I haven’t thought about it since—and when I do, I get these pictures in my head. There were two moons, and we were walking to some prison camp or something, and I was a little girl, and they . . . ” I could hear my voice rising in pitch, but couldn’t stop the words from spilling out or the images from growing more and more solid. Garston and Jayden moved toward me, but I held up my hand. I could do this on my own. I slowed my breathing and counted my breaths, an exercise I had learned as a little girl. One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Little by little, the panic faded, and I opened my eyes.

“Better?” Garston asked.

“Oh, hell no,” I said. “Or yeah, better, but not good. What’s happening to me?”

“Something your grandpa and I were afraid was coming, and that fucker last night must’ve kick-started things. ’Swhy we made you learn all that meditation and shit. Important thing to know is you’re not crazy, okay? But right now, I have to go find Eli, and we’ll explain it all when we get back. Just try not to think about any of it until then.”

“No, you can explain on the way.”

Garston shook his head. “This ain’t a discussion, K-girl. I want you safe. Don’t worry about me. I’m just gonna find out where they’re headed and call in the big guns soon as I get someplace I can get a signal.”

“You’re right, it’s not a discussion. We’ll take my car; it’s faster, and I just charged it.”

Garston opened his mouth to argue, but Jayden jumped in. “Quick question,” he said, “Do you really think anything you say is going to stop her from following you?”

My uncle glowered, but Jayden spread his hands, “I didn’t make the rain, I’m just reporting the weather.”

Garston looked from one of us to the other and threw up his hands—narrowly missing my spice rack with his AR-15—and, grumbling, led the way back downstairs.

Jayden, with his preternatural senses, rode in the passenger seat with Garston’s AR-15, once again in full warrior regalia, while Garston rode in the back with the find-me. I drove. It was calming to have something active on which to focus.

“So,” I said once we were under way, “Tell me if I’ve got this right. Monsters kidnap Grandpa Eli and attack the restaurant, and you know all about them, right down to their inseam sizes, but you don’t think to say anything until they show up and actually start killing people? Oh, and I have random surprise knowledge and first-person scenes from a science fiction movie popping into my head, and you knew that was coming, too, but didn’t think to warn me about that, either. So if I sound just a little bit pissed off, it’s probably because I am. Care to explain?”

“It wasn’t . . . We never thought they’d come here, and just . . . you were so happy, not remembering. You could grow up and have a life this time. Meet a nice boy. Or girl. Hell, a dozen of each and a fucking toaster if that was what you wanted. But you’re the one that made yourself forget shit, and we figured you had a reason and we shouldn’t fuck with it. Maybe it was wrong, but if we’re guilty of anything, it’s trusting your own subconscious, so if you’re looking to be pissed off at somebody, you better put yourself right at the top of the list.”

Ouch. I pretended to focus on traffic for a little while.

“Sorry.”

“‘Sokay.”

“So, whatever ‘it’ was, it was that bad?”

Garston snorted. “Pardon the old war-dog cliché, but I still wake up screaming some nights, and that’s after decades with a PTSD specialist. See, we got what they call desensitized after a while, so they stepped things up a little at a time. When I remembered, though, it was fifteen years all at once, including the stuff at the end that would’a broke anybody unless they worked their way up to it. The good part is it doesn’t sound like it’s hitting you all at once, and like I said, there’s all that meditation and shit.”

“And I still have no idea what ‘it’ is. Looks like we’ve reached the point where not remembering is more dangerous than remembering, though. Agreed? Make me understand here.”“Eli’s better at this kind of thing than I am. It’ll sound crazy coming from me.”

“I challenge you to top the last couple of hours in the crazy department.”

“Okay. Here goes.” He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and went for it. “Your Grandpa Eli is a demon hunter who travels between universes by performing a ritual that lets him die and come back in other worlds, and he’s actually your father from your first life. You and I and a bunch of others got taken prisoner by the Shashashkuhun demons—who were working with the Qlippoth demons at the time—when you weren’t quite eight years old. Everybody thought we were dead, but we weren’t. We spent about the next fifteen years as live test subjects for demons, until we finally escaped.”

I pulled onto the interstate. The electric hum of the motor, the tires on the wet road, and the wind buffeting us from outside were the only sounds for a while. The drizzle had picked up into rain, and sandwiched between the black sky and blacker road, I struggled to see through the falling gray that sucked my headlight beams into limbo.

“So. You escaped. We escaped, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“By doing this death ritual thing.”

“Yeah. We got separated, and you took forever to get here, but one day you just sort of . . . coalesced is the word Eli uses. This perfect, beautiful little baby girl, looking exactly the way you used to. Eli picked you up and held you for the longest time, staring at your face and crying, and I said, ‘See? All the good things you’ve done, your karma finally caught up to you.’ And he said, ‘Yes, she finally has.’”

I drove. And I admit that I sniffled a little.

After a few minutes Garston said, “Well? You gonna say something?”

“This is probably the biggest understatement of the century, but it’s a lot to take in.”

“I warned you.”

“You did.”

Still trying to figure things out, we compared notes on the attacks. When Grandpa and Garston saw the riot footage and couldn’t reach me by phone, they headed to Garston’s truck to come check on me. That was when the demons hit them, about an hour and a half after the attack on the restaurant, roughly twelve-thirty or so, when we were still huddled in the restaurant thinking the monsters were right outside. Knowing all that didn’t help much in the ‘figuring things out’ department, though.

Jayden had been silent most of this time except for helping fill in details of our fight with the slaughter-spider. When I glanced over, he was frowning.

“So,” I said, “Regret getting involved with me yet, or do I need to work on that?”

“You’ll have to work on it. Had a thought, though. I’m still not getting a signal, and . . . ” He clicked on the radio. Nothing but static all the way up and down the dial. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

I caught up as close as we dared to the find-me charm, which bought us a few minutes to pull over and search for the jammer. Once we found it, in a waterproof casing fastened to the inside of a rear wheel-well, disabling it was simple. For something a little bigger than a pack of cigarettes, though, it had certainly caused enough trouble.

Jayden took the wheel when we got back on the road so we could run without headlights, thus saving juice and making ourselves stealthier at the same time. Garston made the call. Not just to anybody, but to Malachai Traeger, who doesn’t need a code name because, hey, he’s Malachai fucking Traeger. He might be a sweetheart when he’s not working, but according to local legend, he’s faced down gods. No, that’s not hyperbole. Handy having someone like that as a family friend, especially considering there was no way we could afford him otherwise.

Just knowing that Kai was on the job did wonders for morale, and we whooped triumphantly. Okay, I whooped. Jayden smiled, but for him, that counted. Uncle Garston’s whoop sounded more like, “Would you please shut your mouth while I’m on the phone?” but I claim creative license.

Why wouldn’t we be jubilant? We had a plan, and professionals to carry it out. We had a big head start, but Kai said he’d catch up as soon as he could, and make calls on the way to assemble a small recon team and get someone to the scene of each attack to do forensics. The recon team would figure out exactly what they were up against, and call in extra support as necessary. All we had to do was point the way.

The find-me led, and we followed, with occasional updates to give Kai our route. Once we got out of range of the last cell tower, we dropped emergency reflectors and other expendables at exits and intersections to blaze a trail, and considering we were well into unpatrolled territory at that point, I strapped on Lawson’s body armor just to be safe.

On a sketchily-paved county road at the corner of nowhere and nothing, something pinged the fender, and the front right tire blew with a ‘whump’ like a glove hitting a punching bag, Jayden fought for control and lost, and the world did cartwheels as the car flipped sideways into the ditch, coming to rest halfway down with wheels in the air. Jayden and I extricated ourselves from our seat belts and air bags while I called out to Garston to see if he was okay. He didn’t answer, and when I turned to check on him, he was gone, along with one of the rear doors.

With Jayden’s night vision, it didn’t take long to find Uncle Garston, laying spread-eagled in the bottom of the ditch with his head at an unnatural angle, and wheezing with every breath. I fought back the impulse to throw myself across him the way I had as a little girl, and knelt beside him instead. Jayden understood more quickly than I did what was happening, or maybe just accepted it more readily, and stood silently nearby.

“Least it doesn’t hurt.” Garston said. “Can’t feel shit, to be honest.”

“Kai should be here soon. We’ll get you to a hospital and you’ll be—”

“Come on, K-girl. This ain’t my first body. I know when one’s going.”

I felt like I was six years old again. “You can’t just give up. You’re my Uncle Growly, and you’re tougher than anything, remember?”

“Difference between giving up and knowing when to cut your losses. I need you to do something for me, now. It’s hard, and I don’t want to ask, but—”

“No. No, don’t make me do that again. I can’t.” Again?

“Yes, you can, K-girl. I don’t need the ritual, either, not if it’s quick and clean. If I’m stuck in this body for too much longer it’s over for real, though.”

“I call bullshit. You’re going to hang the fuck on, and that’s all there is to it.” I knew better. But until I admitted it, it wouldn’t be real.

“Karma, I’m asking you to do this because I can’t do it myself. You’ll get past it. Jayden’ll help you with that. I’d ask him, but I know you—even though he’d be saving me, you’d never be able to look at him again and I want better for you than that. So I’m begging you now. Please, do this one last thing for me.”

He coughed, drew in another wheezing breath and coughed again. I ran my fingers over that tangled, salt-and-pepper mess he called a beard and kissed him on the cheek, and after a little bit of struggle, I managed to free the Desert Eagle from its holster and hold it somewhat steadily in both hands.

“L-word, Uncle Growly,” I said.

“Love you, too, K-girl. I’ll be seeing you again.”

Garston closed his eyes. It took me a while, but I pulled the trigger. The big Desert Eagle knocked me on my ass and punched me in both eardrums. I turned my face skyward and howled while the rain sluiced thick, sticky warmth from my face.

And I remembered. Not everything, not even a lot, but enough to begin to understand just how fucked up everything was. To understand why they hadn’t wanted me to remember. Why I had made myself forget. Jayden stood back while I let it out. If he’d put his arms around me or offered any kind of support, I don’t think I could have handled it. He seemed to know that.

Although it’s the worst place to find it, there is strength in pain. Not if you stuff it down or deny it or revel in it, but if you accept the pain as yours. When I was done crying, I used that strength to pull myself from the mud, and hand in hand, Jayden and I helped each other up the slope to the car to assess the damage. Jayden made a frustrated sound beside me, and flipped open his cell phone to show me the bullet hole in the fender.

And that was when I put it together. “Jayden, this isn’t about Grandpa. It never was. This is about me.”

I laid it out for him.

Whoever planned this had learned my routine, knew it would be just me and one other person on Tuesday night, and knew we’d be in the alley with our hands full at some point. The idea was simple. Grab me and get the hell out of there. The spider was never supposed to kill me. But because of the riot, the Plaza had a bunch of extra security, and Jayden and I changed our schedule, so not only were the—call them minions—not all in place, they’d been spotted. Once they’d tipped their hand, they only had a few hours to act, so plan B was to grab Grandpa and use him as bait, leaving Garston alive to come tell me. If they just wanted me dead, why a jammer instead of a bomb, either on the car or in the alley? Or why not a sniper in the alley? And why would someone clever enough to think of making us carry our own jammer not think to look for a find-me charm? They had to have found it, but instead of getting rid of it, they incorporated it into their plan. Then, when we got to where they wanted us to be, they shot out the tire to keep us in place.

There were easier ways to do this. All of it. That someone had gone to all this trouble to show they could outsmart me and pull my strings meant this was something personal, and considering my age when the Shashashkuhun had taken us, it had to be something to do with the prison camp.

It took maybe thirty seconds to explain it all. “So, what do you think?”

“I think my girlfriend is either a brilliant detective or a criminal mastermind. What’s our next move?”

I had no idea.

Garston had brought an extra rifle and plenty of ammo. Jayden and I gathered everything and scrabbled to the edge of the ditch. The tree line was perhaps a hundred yards away on the other wide of the road, but in the darkness it may as well have been miles. I was thankful for Jayden’s eyes.

“I’ve got some movement, but nothing much,” Jayden said “They’re either waiting for their boss, or they just want to make us sweat.”

“Probably the latter,” I said. “We screwed up their plan. Whoever it is, now it’s even more important to show how clever they are. Both for their own ego and to save face. They’re going to want to talk. And gloat. I’ll try to stall them until Kai’s crew gets here. If I say anything horrible that doesn’t sound like the me you know, and I probably will—”

“No, I get it. ‘Words are weapons, sharper than knives.’”

Devil Inside. Now there was an appropriate reference. I nodded. “Just wanted to make sure.”

We watched the tree line in silence for a while. Rather, Jayden watched the tree line. I couldn’t see that far in the dark, so I watched Jayden and tried to stop shivering.

“So,” I said, “Bet you’re wishing you’d stayed at the restaurant about now.”

“No. Gotta admit, though, I normally don’t do the whole monster-fighting thing until the third date. But you’re special.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls who almost get you killed.”

Jayden seemed about to say something when a man’s megaphone-amplified voice shouted across the field. “Karma Rodriguez.”

“It speaks,” I shouted back. “And it knows my name. Should I be impressed?”

“You should remember mine. It’s Brallus. I’m sending over a field phone so you don’t have to shout.”

“Anything that steps out of that tree line dies, Brallus. Especially if it’s carrying something I think might go ‘boom.’” I was already getting hoarse, though. After a quick exchange we determined that both sides had access to walkie talkies, and that Brallus had no need for signal jammers this far from the closest cell tower.

“Alright, Brallus,” I said into the walkie-talkie, “Good people died tonight because of you. If that was supposed to get my attention, it worked.” I wanted to scream at him to give my grandfather back, but if there was any chance at all of that happening, I had to downplay how important he was to me.

“You expect me to believe you’re upset about those native guards?” he said, “What happened to the cold little demon-bitch who whored out her own mother for scraps and special treatment?”

What? Jayden caught my eye, and I shrugged, nonplussed. “You know that’s not how it was. And which of us is working with demons? I could swear that was a Shashashkuhun slaughter-spider I killed a few hours ago.”

“A temporary alliance. And better the Shashashkuhun than monsters like you. See, I know why the Qlippoth’s little experiment worked on you when it killed everybody else they tried it on. You were evil to begin with. That thing they put inside of you wasn’t an invader, it was a soulmate.”

Okay, best not to think about the Qlippoth putting anything inside me for now. Probably something I was better off not remembering. “Brallus, I was a child when they captured me.”

“Captured you? Took you home, you mean. Put you in with the real prisoners to spy on them, and anyone who caught on, you had your followers kill. Then when you and your little band escaped, you left the rest of us there.”

“Okay, do you see the flaw in your logic here? If I was somehow serving the Qlippoth, why would I want or need to escape?”

“How should I know how a demon thinks? After what you did to my brother, I stopped even trying to understand you.”

Riiiiiight. Not like I’d really expected logic to work, anyway. “Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No idea? His name was Kolb. You used your powers to seduce him, then had him ripped to pieces when he finally gave in. As if he had a choice. I can still hear him screaming.”

Speaking of screaming, I didn’t need the walkie to hear him at that point. If the idea was to stall, as opposed to goad, I’d better take things down a notch. I keyed the mic, but before I could speak, the world went away. This world, anyway.

The stone is rough against my back, and Kolb has his hand over my mouth. His brother Brallus is supposed to be keeping watch, but he keeps looking at me funny, and he says they shouldn’t do this, but he breathes harder when he looks at me. Kolb thinks I am afraid of them, but I am just waiting for them to make a mistake. When Kolb tries to rip my top off, I bite his hand as hard as I can and knee him between the legs the way Mommy taught me. I still have a piece of his hand in my mouth, and it is gross, but I can’t think about that now. I spit it out and dig my fingernails into his eyes and scream as loud as I can. And then Mommy is there . . . That twisted . . . And he called me a monster? When I could speak again I screamed back hoarsely. “I was nine years old, you sick fuck. I’m glad Kolb is dead. I hope it hurt like hell and took a long, long time, and I’m just sorry they could only do it once. Now give me back my grandfather, you piece of shit, or I swear I will tear you open with my bare hands and feed you your own intestines.”

I was shaking with rage, and when Jayden touched my arm I nearly decked him before I regained control. He raised an eyebrow and indicated the tree line by inclining his head toward it. By the time I followed his eyes, he was already sending arrow after arrow across the field. The Shashashkuhun were attacking. There were at least a dozen or so—I was a little too occupied to count—a mix of slaughter-spiders and more humanoid-looking creatures—slothor, something inside me said—laying down suppressing fire with automatic rifles, but considering what it had taken to kill just one already-wounded slaughter-spider, we were well and truly fucked. So much for Brallus wanting me alive. The only thing to do was go down fighting, but that would probably be quicker and cleaner than whatever Brallus had originally planned. I picked up the AR-15 and took aim, and Jayden lay down his bow and grabbed the other rifle.

“I’m sorry, Jayden,” I shouted. Like sorry would cover this. “They don’t care about you. If you run they might let you go.”

Jayden’s only response was to keep firing. I had to give him the out, even though I knew he wouldn’t take it. Part of me found comfort in knowing he’d be there until the end, and the rest of me hated myself for that.

“I love you,” I yelled above the sound of gunfire. I should have said it months ago, and I might not get a chance to say it later.

“You’d better,” he said as he swapped out magazines, “And I love you, too.” He tried to give me one of those ‘our little secret’ smiles, but failed, and we pretended not to see the fear on each other’s faces. We downed two demons, but although that made them a little more cautious, they were still too tough and healed too quickly. By the time they were thirty yards away, we had only taken one more out of the fight, and were nearly out of ammunition. It would be hand to hand with the remaining ones soon, and realistically speaking, that wouldn’t last very long. We were about to die. The only question was whether we could take any more of them with us.

And that was when our miracle arrived. At first I thought it was more Shashashkuhun, but no, the demons were taking flanking fire from the roadside perpendicular to ours, and a three-wheeler with a sidecar leapt over the adjoining road and sped toward us down the center of the ditch. Malachai Traeger, tall and lean in brown armored leathers and that Boba Fett-looking helmet of his, jumped off the trike before it even came to a full stop, letting it stall out, and a slender Aosidhe woman in ill-fitting rust-colored gear followed from the sidecar, carrying four assault rifles with jungle clips. If I knew Kai, and I did, they’d be loaded with something to give us an edge. She tossed one to Kai on the run, and scrambled up the slope to hand one each to Jayden and me before taking a prone position and firing. She and Kai squeezed off disciplined three-round bursts, and Jayden and I tried to follow suit, focusing on the same targets. The Shashashkuhun didn’t simply fall back or retreat, they scrambled for the tree line. About half of them made it, and the gunfire changed to occasional shots and bursts as targets became less visible.

The Aosidhe woman took off toward the other end of the ditch. Kai waved me a little further down the slope and plopped down next to me, flipping up his faceplate. “Would’ve been here sooner, but someone left a surprise for us. And by the way, that trash can did quite a bit of damage. Not fatal on its own, but more than it should have. Same with the taser.”

“So their weaknesses are aluminum and electricity?”

“Nope. I have a theory about that, but—”

The radio squawked. Brallus wanting to know if I was still there. “Yeah, I’m here, Brallus. You’re down a few troops, though. Seems like this might be a good time for you to surrender.”

“Not when I still have something you want.”

I made sure the mic was off, and explained to Kai what was going on, then asked, “Can your people get to my grandpa?”

“They’re working on it, but we don’t want to put him in any more danger. Stall.”

Along with everything else, Brallus was playing a power game. He couldn’t just tell me what he wanted—He had to make me ask. “Okay, what do you want?”

“You, demon-bitch.” He didn’t speak the words so much as spit them. “Wearing thrice-blessed iron manacles, in a circle of containment. Then I’ll let the old man go.”

What. The. Fuck.

“Traditional anti-demon thing,” Kai whispered. “This is good. Keep him talking.”

“I see a couple of problems with that,” I said. “The first of which is, gee, wouldn’t you know it, Brallus? I’m fresh out of thrice-blessed iron manacles.”

“Funny. I’ll send over the restraints.”

“And what’s to stop you from double-crossing us once you have me?”

“I don’t think you have much choice.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“He’s rather . . . indisposed.”

“Look, do you see the other hole in your logic here? If I’m this evil demon spawn you claim, why would his life mean enough to me to risk my own?”

“I don’t know, nor do I care about your reasons.” Of course. Hadn’t we established earlier that Brallus was immune to logic? “I’ll give you twenty minutes to decide how important he is to you.”

“If you kill him, you lose your leverage.”

“True, but I don’t have to kill him. How do you think he’d like living without his lips? Or maybe his eyelids?”

That was when I knew that no matter what, even if it cost me my own life, I was going to kill that son of a bitch, and anyone who got in my way.—The worst part isn’t what they do to us. It’s what they make us do to each other. I am strapped to the table trying not to cry while my mother stands over me with a hot iron. They give her a choice. She can take over torturing me, or they will burn out my eyes, one at a time. If she still refuses, they will cut out my tongue—but not all at once. They will draw it out. They make it very clear just how long and how horribly they can make me suffer while keeping me alive and awake.—

“You touch one hair on his head, and I’ll make the prison camp seem like Club fucking Med, motherfucker. I’ll . . . ” I don’t even remember the rest of what I screamed into the walkie-talkie at that point, only that my hands were shaking so badly that I dropped it. I was wiping the mud off when Brallus’ voice broke in again.

“I’ll turn this back on in twenty minutes. Have your answer ready.”

Oh, I had an answer for him, all right. I was going to put him in a hole where no one could hear him scream. I was going to cut off his balls and feed them to him. I was going to—

“You know you can’t hand yourself over, don’t you?” Jayden said.

My voice came out harder than I’d intended. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You think I don’t understand the risk? Would you do it for someone you love?”

Jayden’s voice was quiet when he answered. “You already know the answer to that.”

Oh, smooth. I was bitching at a man who’d proven twice in the past few hours that he’d stand beside me even if it meant dying. I hung my head, blinking. What the fuck? One minute I was ready to kill, the next, I was fighting back tears.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” I said. “It’s just so messed up right now. We started the night being attacked by monsters. And do we run from them like, oh, I don’t know . . . sane people? No, we chase them into an unpatrolled zone like some kind of demon-food delivery service, because yeah, that was bound to turn out well. But what other choice did we have? They took Grandpa and we had to get him back. And Garston . . . I lost one of only two people I consider family tonight—no, correction, I blew his fucking brains out, and I don’t dare even slow down long enough to let myself feel it yet.” I heard my voice rising, felt my control slipping, and I didn’t care. “Apparently my entire family is from some alternate universe, and I’m remembering things from a past life where I was tortured by demons for fifteen years starting when I was eight years old—Let me tell you, it wasn’t a good time. I am this close to completely, absolutely, permanently, and irrevocably losing my fucking shit, and the only reason I haven’t already lost it is that all of this is so utterly bat-shit insane that I can’t even focus enough to go properly crazy. I—”

Jayden knelt and pulled me to him hard, covering my mouth with his in a kiss that, for just that moment, was more real than anything else in existence. Solid and tangible proof of a connection with another human being. One who would support me no matter what the odds. When we broke the kiss Jayden remained, holding me firmly but gently, grounding me.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “I just . . . I’m doing the best I can, but I honestly don’t know how much I have left in me. I’m trying to be strong, but I’m so fucking tired of being strong right now.”

“And you are strong, Karma,” Jayden said. “Just stop taking it all on yourself. Nobody’s that strong.”

Kai shook his head and sighed. “The kid’s right,” he said. “Most people’d be ready for a rubber room after half of what you’ve been through in the past—what’s it been, five hours or so? I’ve been close to the edge myself a couple of times, and I deal with fucked-up shit for a living. No shame in needing somebody to pull you back.”

I swallowed and nodded, and Kai continued. “That said, as much as I don’t want to push you any further, we’ve got a deadline to meet. You gonna be okay?”

There was a question I’d heard before. “Ask me that in a couple of years. But let’s do this.”

“Okay. Give me your hands. I have to check something.” Kai knelt where Jayden had been and took both my hands in his. A familiar, subtle energy, both warm and cool at once, circulated through me. Something in Kai called out to that energy, but it was like the call was in a foreign tongue, a friendly language that I could almost, but not quite, understand. Kai became somehow more real, more solid. I had an impression of immensity, of a bright column of light almost too intense to look at, that feathered outward like three sets of giant wings, and of a voice like singing multi-tonal bells and pipes accompanied by a chorus of beautiful, almost human voices. Kai removed his hands from mine, and the vision faded.

“You’re a—” I started.

Kai cut me off. “Don’t go there, it’s not what you think. I’ll explain later, but for now let’s just say the Quiet World is a hell of a lot bigger than most people think. There are some people who don’t even know they’re Quiet Worlders. Like you.”

I swallowed.

“So what am I?”

“Beats the hell out of me. Not the same as me, but similar enough that I’m betting your power—at least one part of it—works about the same way mine does. At least there’s one thing we can both do.”

“Are you telling me I’m a—”

“I said don’t go there. Now about this power . . . ” After he told me I sat blinking, trying to take it in.

“You’re telling me that I turned a trash can into a holy weapon? And I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”

Kai winced. “I wouldn’t put it like that, but basically, yeah. You channel energy into objects, and if something’s got a supernatural weakness, well . . . You’ve seen the results. You’ve already done it unconsciously, and we have about ten minutes to figure out how, so let’s get with it.”

When Brallus came back on the air, I told him I was ready. He sent the more humanoid of the remaining Shashashkuhun across, pulling what looked like an old barn door on makeshift runners, marked with containment circles. Assuming they were specifically keyed to demons, they wouldn’t affect me, nor would the blessings on the restraints. Unfortunately, though, the chains would hold me just like they would anybody else. Brallus insisted I strip down to my bra and panties to make sure I wasn’t hiding a weapon, and while that made sense on one level, it was also creepy, considering. The kind of pseudo-succubus he’d convinced himself I was wouldn’t mind stripping, though, and the idea for now was to play into his expectations.

So I stepped up into the containment circle and made a show of it, shimmying and tossing my head as though dancing to some private, raunchy music—which is a lot harder than you’d think when you’re soaked, and shivering uncontrollably. When I got down to my underthings I ran my hands down my sides, did a little wriggle, and hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my panties. “Sure you don’t want me to keep going?” The demon eyed me and licked its black lips as it came closer. Gods, I was going to be sick if the thing actually touched me.

At a word from Brallus, it backed away hurriedly, and someone in the tree line fired a warning shot. “No tricks,” Brallus shouted. “You, with the long hair,” meaning Jayden, “Chain her up. And do it right, or the old man suffers.” So far, so good. Part of the plan depended on either Jayden or Kai getting up onto the platform with me.

The cuffs and collar were fastened to a ring in the middle of the platform by chains that wouldn’t allow me to raise myself up past a crouch, and secured by large, medieval-looking padlocks. As Jayden snapped the last lock in place, I lowered my head, ostensibly in defeat, but in reality to hide my smile at the feel of cold metal hidden beneath my foot and the chemical smell in my nostrils. The drizzle hadn’t let up, and would already be diluting the acid, but all the acid had to do was weaken the wood where the ring was bolted.

It took forever for the monster to slog across in the mud pulling me behind it. This would work, I kept telling myself. For the most part I believed it, too. Until Brallus stepped forward, placed his hand on the platform, and spoke an activating word. After that I was too busy screaming to think about much of anything.

When I came to, I was huddled on my side in the fetal position, shivering, in a pool of my own vomit and urine. At least I’d landed on the multi-tool when I fell, keeping it hidden. The air was damp and cold, but a tent kept the rain off of us. Brallus stood nearby with arms folded, glaring at me. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, fairly well-muscled, with close-cropped, thick, dark hair. The overall effect was like someone had brought a G.I. Joe to life. A .45 sat holstered on his right hip, and a coiled whip hung from one wrist by a leather strap.

“Killer turkey sandwich,” I croaked, “No mayo, black coffee, apple pie.”

“You have no idea how difficult it was to treat you like a human being, or to keep my food down while looking at you. And by the way, please try to move again. The outer circle is containment, the inner one is pain, as you’ve already discovered. So sorry your foot was touching it when I turned it on.”

“Kinky. If I were fifteen years younger I bet you’d be creaming yourself. Again.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but I was scared shitless, and trying to hide it from him any way I could.

It wasn’t a good tactic. I barely saw the whip coming in time to take the lash on my arms instead of across my face. It was a half-hearted strike and didn’t quite draw blood, but it stung like hell, and I cried out despite myself. The whip gave me an idea, though; I just wasn’t ready to try it yet.

Brallus was red in the face. “Soaked in holy water. It should have burned you, but I guess that’s just one more mystery we’ll have to solve. Some old friends want to see what makes you tick, and I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it. If there’s anything left when they’re finished, you’re mine. Think about that, demon-bitch.”

I thought about it, alright, and I didn’t like the pictures in my head. “What about The General? Did you let him go?”

In answer, Brallus pointed behind me to where Grandpa was tied to a post by his wrists with his head down on his chest. He was breathing, but unconscious. “I’ll release him at a more appropriate time. For now, though,” He pulled a baby monitor—talk about creep factor—from his cargo pocket, switched it on, and set it on top of the nearby field table. “Feel free to scream at me as much as you like. I’ll be listening.”

He muttered what I supposed were instructions to the monster who’d dragged me here, then swaggered out of the tent. Smug bastard. The man demon growled when it looked my way, but immediately averted its many eyes, as though afraid to look directly at me. I guessed Brallus had him convinced that I was dangerous. I took advantage to inspect the pain ward more closely, careful not to move any part of my body over it. I was no expert, but if I was right about it, my idea should work. I wrapped myself around the ring, and worked it back and forth, covering the motion with fake, body-wracking sobs, augmented occasionally with very real dry heaves from the stink of my own fluids, until I’d gotten it as loose as I thought I could by hand.

I was determined to stay alert for a chance to work on it with the multi-tool, but I was at that point of exhaustion where inanimate objects move in the corners of your eyes and normal background noise becomes voices on a far-away radio. The pain and growling in my stomach reminded me that what little I’d eaten in the past few hours was either smeared all over my skin or lay in a noxious pool beneath me, and the last time I’d felt warm or dry seemed like a lifetime ago.

My body finally said, ‘enough,’ and as if my brain was trying to convince me to stop fighting sleep, I could almost hear a lullaby in a woman’s soft mezzo-soprano, familiar and comforting. I held the song against myself and let it pull me down into the welcome dark.

I couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes, but when I opened my eyes, the demon guard’s misshapen head lolled to one side in sleep. It had to be a trick, I thought at first, but then again, we’d left Brallus short-handed, and who knew how much it took out of these things to heal as quickly as they did?

I turned at a low hiss from Grandpa. He winked at me and wiggled the end of the rope. He’d gotten loose, but held it in place to make it look as though his hands were still bound. Thanks to the baby monitor, we didn’t dare speak, but I managed to pantomime my idea, and urged him to escape. He frowned and shook his head no. I hadn’t really expected him to leave me there, any more than I’d have left him or . . . Gods, I didn’t want to tell him about Uncle Garston. I set to work with the multi-tool, digging around the ring to which my chains were attached. Once I got it out I replaced it, took a deep breath, and with an encouraging look from Grandpa, got ready to put on another act.

“Brallus,” I said toward the monitor. The demon guarding me jerked its head up, awake, but other than that, nothing. “Brallus! Please, I’m cold, and I’m hungry, and I know you don’t care about that, but I’ll tell you things you want to know. All I want is a blanket and some food. I’ll cooperate. I didn’t know how bad it would be without my power.”

Still nothing.

“This body’s getting weaker. It’ll get sick. What if it dies? What then? All this for nothing?”

Something rustled outside, and Brallus entered the tent glowering. He spoke a few words to the demon in an ugly language, and the beast left. I did my best to look small and pitiful and afraid. The afraid part wasn’t hard, and I figured that being scared at least meant I was still sane.

“I sent it for food, water, and blankets. I’ll have it bring them in once we’re done here.”

I bowed my head, doing my best ‘humbled prisoner’ act, and reminded myself that as long as those wards were active I’d be unconscious from pain before I could get my hands around Brallus’ throat. “Thank you,” I mumbled.

“Don’t thank me. I’d rather watch you suffer.”

I bit my lip. Have to play this just right. I couldn’t have him get pissed and walk away. I needed to get hold of that whip.

I kept my head bowed. “I know. But I’ll keep my end. I’ll tell you everything.”

“And how would I know it was the truth?”

“Because my best chance of survival, or at least a quick death, is to cooperate.”

The best lies contain at least partial truths, and I sprinkled in just enough to make things sound plausible, given that there was no way he’d accept the unvarnished version. Some things I had to blatantly fabricate, though. For instance, I claimed that the riot and Grandpa were both parts of long-term plans to gain power in this world, and that when I agreed to trade myself I did so thinking that Brallus couldn’t hold me (that part was true) and I’d have my pawn back for free. After a few minutes, it was time to bait my hook. With head hung low, I offered to tell the truth about what I had done to his brother, and said that I’d write a confession. He bit, and I started reeling him in.

Another thing about lies. People will buy into almost anything as long as it confirms what they want to believe, and unless I had seriously misunderstood Brallus’ expression when his brother was trying to molest me, Brallus’ tastes ran similar to Kolb’s.

So I spun a Lolita story that would have made Nabokov proud. Although I barely kept from gagging as I did it, I confirmed all the lies people like Brallus and Kolb tell themselves so they can sleep at night, and credited myself demonic powers to further absolve Kolb of responsibility. Brallus’ breathing quickened, and every so often he’d unconsciously moisten his lips with his tongue. Yeah, I know. Makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it?

“And you’d write this out as a confession?” he asked.

I hung my head. “With witnesses, if you want, to prove I wasn’t coerced.”

He steepled his hands and sat watching me. “You know this doesn’t change anything.”

“I know. Still, I was hoping maybe . . . ”

I let the pause hang there until he prompted me. “I knew you’d have an ulterior motive. You were hoping what? That I’d unchain you and let you go?”

I shook my head. “No, just that if I cooperated and told you everything you wanted to know, maybe you wouldn’t turn me over to them.” I wasn’t even sure who ‘they’ were, but I assumed the higher-ups in the Shashashkuhun hierarchy.

“That’s out of my hands.”

“No, you can convince them. And you can . . . use me any way you want.” Emphasis on the ‘use.’ And then, for the bit that would set me free. “And if this body doesn’t please you, I could help you find young girls, like I was back then. Boys, too, if you want them. I could make them either submit or fight back, whichever excites you more.”

His face went slack and pale. The last thing people in denial want is to have their proclivities thrown in their face. “You. Dare.” Brallus stood and unfurled the whip. I crouched and threw my hands in front of me as though cowering, but as the whip wrapped around my forearms and bit into them, I grabbed and pulled. Brallus teetered, off-balance, but didn’t fall. We played tug-of-war, and Brallus was winning until Grandpa threw himself at Brallus’ back and knocked him across his own wards.

The wards flashed with electricity, and Brallus screamed, convulsed, and passed out. I used his body as a bridge to get out of the containment circle, then Grandpa grabbed his sidearm and his keys. Grandpa offered me the .45, but I waved it away in favor of the keys, and told him to deactivate the find-me charm—which would signal Kai and his group to attack. I should have taken the gun and put a bullet into Brallus’ head, but I wanted him awake and alert when I killed him. As I finished with the locks, scrambling noises outside said that at least one demon was on the way back to the tent. I grasped the chains that had held me and swung them in a slow, but accelerating circle while I used what Kai and I had discovered about my power to infuse them with what energy I could.

When tall, dark and revolting poked its ugly head into the tent, I swung my chains with everything I had, and sent it staggering back. The power in the chains flashed, then diminished, but did not completely fade, and the demon’s face blackened across its eyes where I’d hit it. I swung again and again while Grandpa flanked it with Brallus’ .45. On my third blow, the demon’s skull cracked open, spattering me with blood and brains.

Gunfire and other battle noises announced the arrival of our allies, and by the time I’d secured Brallus and stepped out of the tent, the fighting was over. Filthy as I was, I threw my arms around Grandpa’s neck, telling him how much I’d missed him, how worried I’d been, and babbling about Jayden.

Grandpa looked away, with sad eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not your grandfather.”

“I know. Uncle Garston told me. Dad.” I grinned.

“You don’t understand. I mean—”

I heard movement behind me, and turned to see Brallus low-crawling toward the tent flap to escape.

Reunions would have to wait. I ran toward Brallus swinging my chains, and opened a gash across his back with the bolt end of the connecting ring. He bellowed and fell forward, and I went to work on him. Not his head, though. That would be too quick. This man had killed my friends, kidnapped and tortured my father, forced me to kill the other man I thought of as a parent, and those were only the tip of the mountain of things he had to answer for. He rolled onto his back snarling and tried to catch the chain, and got a broken arm for his trouble. He succeeded in pulling me off balance, but I don’t think me landing with my knee in his solar plexus was the result he was going for. While he gasped for breath, stunned, I raised my arms into the air and smashed a double fistful of chain into his face.

Once he was unconscious I let up, simply because it wasn’t as satisfying to hit him when he couldn’t feel it. I wanted to kill him. I wanted it more than I could remember ever wanting anything. But I didn’t. No, not because of some cliché like, ‘he wasn’t worth it,’ or, ‘that would be stooping to his level.’ Oh, hell, no. I could have killed him and slept the sleep of the just, but it came down to a question of practicality. I had questions for the bastard, and if I killed him, I’d never get the answers. I left him to Kai’s tender mercies for the time being.

One of the proxies loaned us a vehicle to get back to civilization, and Jayden and I set out to find where Grandpa-slash-Dad had gotten to. The drizzle had become a downpour by the time we found him on the side of the road staring at the spot where Garston had died. Correction: where I had killed him. I stuffed that thought down as best I could. Kai’s cohorts had already removed the body, but someone must have told him. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that I didn’t have to break the news, or guilty that he’d had to hear it from someone else. I finally decided on feeling guilty about feeling relieved. Jayden kissed me—yes, vomit and all—and said he’d be close by, then wandered off to give my grandfather and me some time alone.

I stood behind Grandpa and put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t know what to say, or even whether to call him Grandpa or Dad, so I didn’t say anything. After thirty seconds or so, he broke the silence, and I didn’t think I’d ever heard him sound so frail or tired.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. I thought I could get Eli back, but then I was . . . He’s in here somewhere, but he’s buried deep.”

My stomach dropped, and my spine turned to ice. I backed away, drawing my nine millimeter, pointing it at the back of his head and thumbing the safety off. “Who are you? What are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my grandfather?”

“I—Nobody. Just another prisoner. Someone who tried to save everybody and failed. You did great, though. Saved everybody I couldn’t, including yourself. Including me. I’ll keep this body alive long enough to get it to a hospital, and then I’ll leave you all in peace.”

I lowered my weapon. “What do I call you?”

He turned toward me, and I averted my eyes to avoid seeing someone else behind that face. “I won’t be around long enough to need a name.”

There was nothing left but to go home. I took the wheel, with Not-Grandpa in the passenger seat and Jayden in the back. In the enclosed space, all the things I hadn’t been able to wash off hit me square in the face. That window had to come down, freezing rain or no. I eased us back to pavement, and then opened up full throttle, trying to outrun my own thoughts.

Nothing. It was all for nothing. I’d failed, utterly and completely, and as if to prove there was no justice in the universe, I was still alive—Then again, maybe there was justice after all. Maybe surviving was part of my punishment.

Which brings me to my laughing-slash-crying jag at the side of the road. The car was too confining, so I drove to the nearest rest stop, got out and walked to a covered picnic table. After a few minutes, Jayden joined me. As he’d already shown, he had a good feel for when to approach me and when to leave me alone.

“I was talking to, uh . . . ” He gestured toward the car.

“I’ve been thinking of him as ‘Not-Grandpa,’ for lack of anything better. And look, I already know I’m not giving him a fair shake. I can’t help it. And yes, I know we should try to help him find another—”

“About that. I know the whole deduction thing is your territory, but as the Watson to your Holmes, I figure I can come up with something once in a while, too.”

“Okay, spill, Watson.”

“Under one condition.”

At Jayden’s insistence, I gave myself a sponge-bath in the ladies’ room while he rinsed my clothes and laid out his thoughts and conclusions the way I’d done with him earlier. When he finished, I stood literally open-mouthed for probably a full minute, letting it sink in. If my power was, as Kai thought, something like his, there was one way to see if Jayden was right.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll wait here for a little while.” Seemed like that boy spent a lot of time waiting for me. Then again, we’d waited almost two years for each other, so we should’ve been used to it by then.

Back at the car I took Not-Grandpa’s hands, over his objections, and focused on finding that same energy I’d felt with Kai.

There were no heavenly choirs, no columns of light. Just a face. Layers of faces, actually. The first one was a facade, the peak of a bearded mountain named Garston. Behind that one was a woman’s face, with long, dark hair, and eyes like mine. A face from another life. My mother.

Although it was Grandpa’s body in front of me, it was still my mother’s face I saw superimposed upon it. She turned away from me, crying. I was almost too stunned to form words, and my mouth opened and closed several times before I could make anything come out. “Mom?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I—” she started, but a huge sob cut her off, and for a while, we just held each other and cried.

So much for this all being for nothing.

Maybe we all got what we deserved in the end, after all. We’ll be a family again for the first time in nearly two lifetimes, once we get Dad back from wherever inside himself he's hiding out and find Mom a new body (no idea how we're going to do that, but I have some ideas). Jayden got me, and at the risk of blowing my own horn, I’m not such a bad catch. The patrol officers—after everything I’d seen, I couldn’t believe that death was the end for them. Me, not only was I getting my family back, along with some sort of as-yet-unexplained superpowers, but also quite possibly the most fantastic guy in this or any other universe. I don’t know what I did to deserve any of it, but it must have been something pretty awesome. So even if it sounds corny—and I know it does…

I’m going to call it karma.

#my writing #urban fantasy #hopepunk #writing #karma #quiet world #my fiction #cosmic horror

[hansoeii]

Do you think of me?

#I am not ready to witness these two longing for each other in season 2 it's gonna ruin me #stede writing love letters to ed while on his way to win him back #and ed stealing the wedding toppers and imagining marrying stede during quiet and vulnerable hours #yeah I'm very much not ready #these two are my favorite thing in the world #our flag means death #our flag means death fanart #our flag means death 2 #gay pirates #ofmd #ofmd 2 #stede bonnet #edward teach #ofmd fanart #ofmd 2 fanart #david jenkins #rhys darby #taika waititi #my art #fanart

[solitary-shell]

IMO this album is some of the best arranged music in the Prog Rock/Metal scene. So sad they disbanded after only one album, but what an absolutely killer album it was.

#prog rock #prog metal #progressive metal #native construct #mylesyang #metal #guitar #shred #quiet world #Spotify #nativeconstruct

[elgaladwen]

Love me some dead plants in the snow at midnight.

#quiet world #snow #winter

[fairydollparts]

#manic pixie dream girl #sadgirl #alt core #lana del ray aesthetic #mentally fucked #sick sad world #the feminine urge #mpdg #coquette #quiet bpd #barbie swan lake

[firstfullmoon]

Matthew Dickman, from “Grass Moon,” in Wonderland [ID in ALT]

#i want the world to be my laundry quiet and good and neatly folded away………. #w #poetry #matthew dickman

[screwpinecaprice]

Just a silly guy, with silly silly thoughts.

@glowweek Day 2

Casual | Surprise

A casual surprise?😬😬😬

#Hooooo boiii this lad is about to get funky. #He was internally screaming the whole time. #It's in my core memory as a connverse fan. I'm never truly going to let this up I believe. haha #Our boy really one day went out there wanting to get married as a teen like a true classic Disney princess. 😭 #It was honestly endearing but sad and also pretty embarrassing. 😔 #Secondhand embarrassment aside. Steven is pretty much lucky in the romance department. Which. Deserved by the way. With all the other #crap he had to deal with. #connverse #Steven Quartz Universe #Connie Maheswaran #SU #my shiz #comic #SU comic #glowweek #connverse week #I have no idea if whatever Connie is spouting are actuallt true in real life. Good thing this can be chalked off as just a thing in their #fictional world. #Also I'm glad part of that was covered by Connie's body because I had to take a few notes from chat GPT to add in her enumerated rambling. #I had to make the glow bracelet float like that because I couldn't draw his hand holding it quiet right in that angle. #And yea that size difference is no error. That's how small Connie's wrist is compared to his hands. Or at least something like that. #teal

[nightwussy]

ghost and his autism stare: a collection

#like hes just always in his own world #he really quiet fr #unless he know u #hes funny as hell tho #cod posting #mw2 #simon ghost riley #call of duty #modern warfare 2

[treasureplcnet]

inverness here they come!!!!

#ignoring canon. does everyone know that esther forces her way back into his life even in a world where they don't have to meet #and then they just ditch london and live an oddly quiet life until the end of the war in scotland. they told me that. #more than anything in the world i am always thinking of the incredible force that these two are and how determined they are to survive #please see: esther genuinely trying to shoot him (makes me laugh everytime i see it) and the way karl blends himself into every scenario #not above lying not above running away just trying to get by. 'i treat others the way they treat me'. distrustful by default #and finally the only reason these two stop kicking and clawing is the budding family they accidentally form #AND THEN THE LAST 20 MINUTES OF EP4 HAPPENS. #ep8 gives me a semblance of peace. theyre in inverness to ME. #i do also rly adore their twin rbf. at any given moment they look as though theyre chatting shit (they are) #AND the gun thing is so funny. the gun fails and instead of giving up esther just tries to shoot him again LLOOOLLLL #no thoughts towards the consequences and with no experience with guns as well. she's literally goated #jacob fortune lloyd's interview on this and his thoughts on their relationship also makes me a tiny bit sick so . #anyways. WATCH BODIES #karl weissman #esther jankovsky #bodies netflix #my art #bodies 2023

[notllorstel]

took 3 years… finally doodled brickoppy💪

#trolls #trolls world tour #queen poppy #branch #hickory #brickoppy #some insp from tune of accidentally in love playing none stop in my head for the past week #I sure hope it finally quiets down (fools hope() #fanart #llorsdood #if i had a nickel for every time i drew a ot3 years after watching the medium #i’d have two which isn’t a lot but funny it happened twice now

[xoalsox]

taemin doing an impression of jonghyun (x)

#taemin #jonghyun #saw this going around on twt again....might have watched it at least 20 times in a row #when i tell you that taemin is the funniest person in the world...seeing how funny he is now u might agree but let me tell u about taemin #BACK THEN...he would normally be just a quiet little guy but then he would literally do the craziest thing out of nowhere and leave everyon #in shambles (me especially. also jonghyun as you can see in the video above) #anyway his impression of jjong's manner of speaking is so funny bc it is SO ON POINT im literally tearing up watching this again now #also look at jonghyun GIGGLING . #honestly posting this for myself specifically so i can go back when i need to laugh for a bit.... #ltm a comedian first a singer dancer artist second

[ask-looks-to-the-moon]

pls look at this funny slug i found in a pipe

its name is glubby

[First] <<Prev- Page 26 - Next >>

#rainworld #rain world #rain world askblog #looks to the moon #iterators #mun barely drew this page because i couldnt stop looking at the gif i love glubby #also i usually stay quiet for tags on moonie posts so im sorry about this but #how hilarious is it for an ancient to shove their hand in a pipe #pull out a slug and be like hey iterator looks to the moon look at it #she is looking at it #have a wonderful day everyone

[clownsuu]

I actually found mob! Howdy and Wally character.ai! Here: https://beta.character.ai/public-profile/?char=ehPv8PY3PyAHazrSVnPE1HMzhaDasjvQ1vfvHRa7AIg&username=MilThePerson

(It's actually a crazy ride cause I wanted to rizz Howdy but Wally came out of nowhere?? I didn't even know it could do that lmao)

Ps: I'm new on tumblr so if these look weird, i'm sorry in advance hehe

O YEAH I SAW LITERALLY AFTER I POSTED

I haven’t used it (yet) but my friend has and confused the shid outta those two KDHDGHD

#I CACKLED SO HARD CHCHDJDJJD #Love the image they chose is the straight up m o u n t a i n pic #I quite like the detail that Wally is also there #kinda helps build more dialog since Mob!Howdy is very quiet #Welcome home #welcome home wally #welcome home howdy #howdy pillar #wally darling #welcome home mob au #how many times has these two been rizzed up? #World may never know smhhh #WALTER WHITE CANON TO THE MOB AU???? #No he’s not smh #But closest is Dr Stone Face #I keep forgetting his first name is Stone last name Face #So it’s “Dr Stone” technically #Or Dr Face for more professional shids

[todayontumblr]

Wednesday May 3.

Landscapes.

Let's face it, we've all been there.

But if we are being honest with ourselves, there are fewer pleasures in life as simple, or indeed as great, than taking a moment to stare out over the wire/abyss/majesty/spectacle/vista/band/other of your horizon, taking a deep breath, and thinking. Or indeed not thinking—just staring out, empty and happy as a beach ball, yet knowing how aloof and unknowable and sexy and intriguing you must look to the hikers/dog walkers/wildlife/insects/others around you. You just wouldn't get it, your body language appears to say.

This is because life offers no pleasures quite like a good #landscape. It's a home and retreat for every reason, every season, and indeed everyone. All are welcome to stand or sit and marvel at the extraordinary, often moving sights offered by millions of years of natural, and very slow, changes in rock formations above and below the crust of the earth.

We will leave you with these fantastic images for now, and if you ever happen to see us avoiding bae, romancing our melancholic solitude, and gazing out over the horizon, don't hesitate to say hi.

#today on tumblr #landscapes #horizon #nature #natural world #planet earth #bae #difficult questions #solitude #romanticizing my own life #beauty #quiet contemplation #not now bae #busy

[apoemaday]

The Quiet World

by Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe.

#poetry #jeffrey mcdaniel #the quiet world

[bee-s-corner]

A 22 year old woman was killed for the sake of wearing "improper hijab". The police brutally killed her and then tried to blame it on the hospital staff and even tried to fake her having an illness just to "justify" their actions. As if there could ever be a justification for such blatant brutality and slaughter.

Let me quote a translated line from the holy Quran for you:

"There is no forcefulness in religion."

There is no such thing as a forced religion. And Islam is not what these fiends make it out to be. It breaks my heart to see people associate Islam with them when they don't even hold to God's most treasured principle: be good to each other. Be good people. Be human.

And yet, here we are in this country. They want to force everything on us. Our beliefs, our religion, our thoughts, and even our feelings. They try to control everything about us. How inhumane of a system do you have to be to do that?

And when we protest, they silence us. They take away our internet, beat the voice out of us, and in some instances, literally kill us for crimes that we have never committed. How wrong is it that we ask to live?

Our hearts go out to Mahsa and her family, and the others who've lost their lives in the protests that have followed her unjust and evil murder at the hands of this regime. This regime, this system, is neither Islam nor is it Iran. And we are no longer staying silent.

What can you do? Be our voice. Spread awareness. This is not us, and this is not our religion. We may lose this battle yet again to bullets and blatant slaughter in the streets, but our war with this regime will never be over. Not until the day Iran is freed.

For the sake of Mahsa and everyone else who's died an unjust death at the hands of these murderers, we ask you humbly: don't let our voice die out. Don't let us be forgotten.

Sincerely, thank you, from a woman in Iran.

#Mahsa_Amini #MahsaAmini #IranProtests

#مهسا_امینی #زن_زندگی_آزادی

#(( i was gonna stay quiet about this at first as to not burden my mutuals #(( but i can't do that anymore #(( please don't let our voice die down #(( don't let the world forget us #iran #iran protests #mahsa amini #مهسا امینی