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pinnithin-writes · 3 years

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The Valley

The beginning of an original horror I submitted for grad school. 4503 words.

A thin howl stretched lean across the New Mexico dusk. The desert was sleepy, its hot sand settling into a gentle cool like the ticking shutoff of a pickup engine. Porch lights flicked on in time with the stars as the town of Lonely Valley drew inside for the night. This was the hour of dogs.

Lonely Valley was a small town, a generational town, circulating bloodlines and traditions and ghost stories like the pinwheel of stars overhead, and its residents knew not to travel the old dirt roads late at night. Stay inside, leave a light on, let the tumbleweeds pass by, and sweep the paw prints off the porch when the sun comes up.

Jude Garcia knew the whispers, the stories that passed from mouth to ear to mouth across grocery lines and over glasses of whiskey. He was born here, had grown up here, and would likely die here, with Guadalupe County clay permanently under his fingernails. It was later than comfortable to be out walking. The scent of sagebrush sighed in on the cool wind as he crunched down the road toward his house.

He was safe, probably. Safe for now. Even with the distant sound of dogs wailing from the desert beyond, he knew how to avoid them. He remembered his mother’s advice, and her mother’s advice, and so on. Don’t look over your shoulder. Don’t shine a light in the dark. Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry.

And, if all else failed, run to the inn.

Jude didn’t have much to worry about. At least, not much more than the average resident of Lonely Valley did—stuck in the middle of nowhere, living in a rut of habit so deep it was impossible to climb out of. Shitty cell signal. Shittier roads. He jammed his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, using the emerging moonlight to guide him as he trudged home.

No, he wasn’t worried, just frustrated. He’d already settled in for the night, kicking his feet up on the ottoman to watch Seinfeld reruns when he remembered he’d left his phone at his workstation. A couple beers in, he didn’t feel up to drive, and the thrift store was only a few blocks away, as everything was in Lonely Valley. So he walked, kicking up dry, dusty clay all over his jeans, goatheads embedding in the soles of his sneakers.

Darkness gathered quickly. He was almost home.

He wasn’t worried. He wasn’t. Concerned, perhaps, since he’d gotten the news of his sister’s condition earlier that week, but she was going to be fine. She was folded into the practiced hands of the Santa Rosa hospital staff, and she had a real job with real money in a real town, so she could afford it. Her heart was stronger than his, even with a hole in its tissues.

It was easy not to worry in the daylight, when the eggwhite sun burned hot on their heads. When the nearest beast was the toothy, painted dog sign at the visitor’s center. It was much more difficult now, with the cool air lifting his collar and his worrying forbidden through bloodlines.

A shift of dry sand, a panted breath behind him, and suddenly Jude was no longer thinking about his wallet or his job or his sister. He froze mid-stride on the dirt road, hair on his neck prickling. In the absence of his footfalls, only the sigh of wind and the chirrup of night creatures could be heard, but his heart rate climbed all the same. Don’t worry, he told himself, don’t worry.

Still, nothing came, so he kept walking, alert now to his surroundings. Straining to catch a long black tail, a reflected pupil in the dark. He stopped and started and stopped again, hearing the quiet snick of claws on gravel, or maybe imagining he heard it. His hand found the iron cross in his pocket, and he gripped it tight.

They were following him now. How could they not be, with the emotional racket he had been making? Jude worked his stride up to a faster clip, shoving away the cold pit of dread in his stomach. Squares of yellow melted out into the streets from the houses he passed, banding him with light and agitating the animals that pursued him.

The dogs didn’t like the light, didn’t like to be seen, sticking like tar to the shadows as their breath condensed on his heels. Jude Garcia whispered a prayer under his breath, guessing too late his faith made them hungrier.

There. His house. Leaning wearily in the darkness up ahead. A rush of air left him, and he fished in his jeans for his keys. A fumbled jingle rang out in the night, stopped short by the pair of eyes that met him on the front porch steps.

The black dogs of Lonely Valley weren’t necessarily dogs but something like them, with long legs and long ears and long red tongues hanging from their pointed jaws. They kept to the shadows so their limbs could not be counted, and one could never quite be sure of how many eyes they had, twin rings blinking white and watchful from the dark.

Snarls and snaps came from the surrounding night, and he realized he was encircled by a whole pack of them.

He ran.

---

Ramona used to tell people she knew the desert better than she knew her own mind. Growing up, this had always been the case—she’d spent hours in the sagebrush and sand, learning the names of the wildlife, the sound of the wind, and the smell of an infrequent storm rolling in from the west. She knew every rock in Guadalupe County and every creature that lived underneath them, and she did not know herself.

At eighteen, she’d since stopped saying this, as it was no longer an impressive boast but a sad fact.

This was because she was a Lopez, and every Lopez knew Lonely Valley intimately but were strangers to themselves. This was so with her two brothers, father, and her mother, she assumed, though she never knew her. The four of them lived and worked at the Black Dog Inn, hub of Lonely Valley—or, at least, that was what the sign said. The red and blue neon still worked even after seventy years, flickering and humming out hope in the canine darkness.

On most mornings, Ramona would sweep up the dust in the front lobby and knock the spiderwebs from the corners of the rooms, but today was unusual because they had a guest. This was heralded by a pounding on their door around ten o’clock last night, when the moon was thin and the night was close and purple, and Jude Garcia had come tumbling in their front door. Ramona and Luca, her younger brother, had been working the front desk—if chucking a stress ball back and forth over the counter qualified as working—when it happened.

It wasn’t the first or last time the desert dogs had hunted someone all the way to the inn. Their family had a reputation for protecting the townspeople and the secrets they ran from. Luca handled the guest—the patient, really—and Ramona handled the dogs. This was how they always did it, because Ramona was bad with people and Luca was bad with dogs, not necessarily because either of them preferred their respective duties.

She’d swung open the screen door and rang the old iron bell the animals hated so much until they melted back into the darkness. They’d be back, but not for a while. When morning broke, safe and silent, Ramona made herself scarce while her father checked on the guest. Most often when they had visitors, they’d stay a night, recover in the morning, and return home safely that day, trusting the Lopez family to keep their secrets as they always did. Sometimes, when the dogs were especially hungry, the person they fed on would have to stay for weeks or months, remembering who they were, but that hadn’t happened since Ramona was twelve.

Sometimes, they never remembered who they were and wandered into the desert to never return. But that hadn’t happened in Ramona’s lifetime.

The town of Lonely Valley was nine square miles of nothing, cupped by shallow mesas furred up and down with juniper and pinyon pine. A train track cut through the landscape like a spinal column, whistling in the night in a mournful way that haunted visitors and comforted residents. Ramona and her brothers used to stack pennies on the rails and wait for the locomotives to come chugging through, fishing the flattened copper out of the wells between the tracks after they’d passed. Luca liked to claim these were luckier than regular pennies, while Ramona argued that luck didn’t exist and it was all science. When pressed, Dominic would say luck was something you made yourself, revealing a mysterious smile before pocketing his coin.

Dominic didn’t go down by the train tracks much anymore. He was busy trying to make his own luck by applying to jobs in places far away from the valley. His smile was reserved only for interviews, and it was no longer mysterious.

Places like the railroad were where Ramona tended to hang out in the summer, because adults didn’t feel much like picking their way through the briars and camelthorn just for a couple of parallel lines and occasional passing freight. Adults needed more reward for their efforts, like a fantastic view after a mindless, exhausting hike, or a business deal after a mindless, exhausting meeting. It wasn’t enough to just dwell amongst the larkspur in your sunhat and listen to the approaching chuggachuggachugga while a jay screamed. It wasn’t enough to just sit and be.

Ramona liked the railroad, and she liked the dump site on the outskirts of town with its overturned, out-of-tune baby grand, and she liked the Dollar General parking lot and its sun-buckled blacktop. She liked haunting odd, undesirable places, because no place was really undesirable once she got to know it. Ramona spent a lot of time getting to know places nobody wanted anything to do with, and often she found herself falling in love with them.

She was down by the tracks right now, in the shade of a pathetic, scraggly spruce, throwing pieces of gravel at the steel beams from a few yards away to make a ting sound. It was a few hours past noon, and her cuffed jeans were dusted with clay after digging around in the rail wells, nearly washing them the same color as her red-brown hotel T-shirt. It was originally a bright, cheerful scarlet, but the sand and sun had bleached it out to a fine dirt color, as it did with most things here.

Inez Ferro’s arrival was announced only by her shadow falling across Ramona’s line of sight. Ramona threw another rock, missed, and frowned. She watched the shadow curl against itself as Inez bent to pick up a pebble of her own. A flick of a wrist in her periphery, and it went sailing past Ramona to ping solidly against the rail.

Some people, when they said they were born in Lonely Valley, really meant they were born at the hospital in Santa Rosa forty miles away. When Inez Ferro said she was born in Lonely Valley, she meant the bathtub in her parents’ double wide, because her mother didn’t believe in hospitals or medicine or anything else that wasn’t mentioned in the fat leatherbound Bible she kept on her nightstand. Inez had come screaming into existence seventeen years ago and hadn’t stopped screaming since, meeting the world with knives in her boots and sharpened knuckles. Her mother called Inez her prickly pear. Her father called Inez dead weight.

Inez didn’t much care what others called her, so long as they kept out of her business. What Inez did with her spare time only made sense to Inez, and the people who got along with her best were those who had given up trying to understand her. Once, Inez told Ramona she was her worst friend by far. Ramona wore the sentiment like a badge of honor.

Inez’s voice was low and rough as the wind in scrubgrass when she asked, “They got another one?”

Ramona let the rest of the rocks in her hand fall to the dust at her feet and turned to look at her. Inez was staring at Ramona with a dark, piercing stare that always looked accusatory, even when it wasn’t. The bones of her shoulders stood out where she cut the sleeves off her black graphic tee. Pointy thumbs hooked in her belt loops. Inez was always taking a knife to her appearance, hacking away her hair and slicing through her jeans. Ramona tried not to worry about what else Inez’s blades touched.

“Mister Garcia,” Ramona affirmed.

“That guy who works at the thrift shop?”

“Yeah.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “He’ll be fine,” even though she knew Inez didn’t really care.

“You’re feeding them tonight,” Inez said, sharply. Everything about her was sharp—elbows, fingers, smile. It wasn’t a question.

Ramona gnawed on her lip as hot wind blew in her face. “You can come,” she answered.

Inez was very good at appearing disinterested when she was in truth very interested, but because Ramona had spent years digging into her mind, she knew what the glint in her eye meant. To her credit, she managed to pull off a lackadaisical shrug that almost looked casual. “Sure. Didn’t have any plans otherwise. I mean,” she paused, smirking, “unless you count being a general delinquent.”

Ramona snorted, recalling her older brother’s choice words for them. In all reality they should have been spending their evening being general delinquents. This was their last summer here in the sun-baked valley of their hometown before their final year of high school, and after that they were expected to apply for colleges or join the military and move away. Each graduating class got a little bit closer to escaping, but a few always remained, either for familiarity or bad luck’s sake. Ramona knew she’d probably be one to stay behind and was almost certain Inez would skip town as soon as she turned eighteen.

She wanted to make the most of their last summer together, kicking around in the dry riverbed and making fun of Elliot for his accent and getting chased away from the gas station by Miss Barela and her broom. Biting down on the inside of her cheek, she looked away, her throat suddenly tight.

“I’ve still got to pick some stuff up,” she said once she’d dragged her facial expression back to something manageable. She rattled the bag over her shoulder, jostling the railroad spike and the copper coins inside.

“I’ll help,” Inez intoned.

“Sure.”

It wasn’t fair; Ramona was never allowed to offer her own assistance to Inez, whose mouth would cut until Ramona backed off. But she wasn’t about to open old wounds now.

Loaded down with supplies, Ramona and Inez’s hike back to the inn concluded with soft guitar music on the porch. The setting sun bathed the adobe walls and a pair of dusty boots kicked up on the railing a warm red. Ramona recognized the voice crooning from her porch swing immediately. It blended sweetly with the soft plucked chords.

Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas

His face was burnt deep by the sun

Part history, part sage, part mesquit

He was there when Poncho Villa was young

And he'd tell you a tale of the old days

When the country was wild all around

Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way

And listen while the coyotes howl

At this, the singer’s curly head tipped back and he let out a loud “awoo!”

The distant song that answered him was too long and lonely to be a coyote, and it made the hair on the back of Ramona’s neck rise.

The best place to hide secrets was in plain sight, and this held true for the desert dogs of Lonely Valley as much as any other secret. A hundred miles north of Ruidoso, the town didn't get much traffic beyond the pronghorn herd that clouded in and around Guadalupe County, so it sold itself on ghost stories to turn a profit. Many residents who didn’t work in the city peddled whispers and worries alongside T-shirts and trinkets to any travelers passing through. The long black dogs that fed on feelings were a curiosity of the town, a charming oddity that drew road trippers off the highway for a tamale and a picture in front of the town sign.

Local shops had paw print keychains at the register next to the little trays of geodes, and the cashier would smile and wink when their total came out to $6.66. Ramona was particularly fond of the gas station tees that read “Don’t Eat Your Feelings” printed over a dog silhouette. Visitors were warned not to stay out past dark in Lonely Valley, and they usually didn’t, because there was nothing fun to do in Lonely Valley past dark, anyway.

This left a small, curious minority of ghost hunters, vloggers, and conspiracy theorists who hungered for the supernatural. The Lopez family buffered these visitors as best as they could, though often their curiosity was sabotaged by local teens making noises in the dark, freezing their blood to ice with a bucket, a stick, and some creative mimicry. Most of the morbidly nosey cleared out after a night in the Russian olives with only the moon for company.

That is, save one person, who prickled Ramona like a burr stuck to her sock. Elliot James.

He was a Lonely Valley resident only by technicality, living with his aunt in the summer while his musician parents went on tour. He flew back to Austin every fall when school started up, to clean the dirt out from under his nails and forget about the desert for nine months, and for this crime Ramona habitually disliked him.

Inez, however, enjoyed his company because he was loud and weird and lovely and her parents hated him. She let him in on the secret of the desert dogs when they were fifteen, and Ramona had eventually forgiven this discrepancy after several months of seething. She didn’t care if Elliot tagged along anymore—he had proven his value to the creatures of the night with the lovesick collection of B-sides he could strum on his acoustic.

The dogs loved him. Sometimes, perhaps, more than they loved Ramona, which was another obstacle of dislike she was working on clearing. It didn’t help he held an uncanny ability to show up all over Lonely Valley unannounced and uninvited.

“Lovely night for a hike!” Elliot said in lieu of greeting, silencing the still humming strings of his guitar with a flattened palm.

He smiled sunnily as Ramona ascended the porch steps with Inez trailing behind her. Elliot James was handsome in the way a well-made armoire was, warm and loved and handcrafted. He was the only outsider who was welcome in Lonely Valley because he disarmed and charmed in equal measure with his lovesick songs and his starfield of freckles. Elliot dropped his boots to the deck with two solid thunks as he stood, angling the neck of his guitar aside to bump knuckles with Inez as she joined them on the porch.

Ramona crossed her arms, determinedly resistant to his charm. “I guess you’re coming too, huh?”

Elliot’s smile was unwavering. “Oh, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Lonely Valley’s favorite tourist rounded out the trio of teens who kept the desert dogs fed. Ramona still wasn’t sure why her father had so willingly accepted both Inez and Elliot into the fold when he himself had never been permitted to bring along friends growing up. But perhaps that missed childhood opportunity was the reason.

Inez leaned against the railing, studying Elliot. “You sure? Last time you cried.”

Elliot pressed a dramatic hand to his chest, feigning insult. “And? It was helpful, wasn’t it?”

Ramona shifted the bag she carried to her other shoulder. “I’ve just gotta grab some stuff inside, and we can go,” she said. Her eyes fell to the acoustic Elliot carried. “I hope you're bringing the guitar.”

Elliot patted the polished wood good-naturedly. “Her name,” he corrected without venom, “is Winona. Of course I’m bringing her.”

Swinging through the screen door, Ramona left her friends to wait on the front porch. She tried not to think about how similar her name sounded to ‘Winona’ in his voice.

---

The sagebrush snagged at their ankles as they climbed. Ramona’s rucksack banged against her back, and dust caked beneath her fingernails. This last scramble was short but strenuous, pulling at the tendons in their calves, grabbing at their shoulders, beckoning the climbers back to the safety of the valley. The dog-sounds that cradled the hikers sent tremors through their ranks.

Mesa Luna was a sacred place, if only to the shivering pines that crested it and the children traipsing to its summit. It was built upon rumors and rattlesnakes, and its sharp, thin line on the horizon was the sun’s eternal hurdle to jump. It was a giant at night, blue and looming. Standing atop its siltstone table, Ramona always felt cosmic—detached in a way—like Lonely Valley and Mesa Luna and Ruidoso and Guadalupe County were all just meaningless labels for a cupped handful of miracles. Here, the land didn’t have names; the night creatures sang, and Ramona Lopez was one of them.

Generation to generation, each member of the Lopez family found their own way to feed the hounds. Emilio used to drive his battered white truck out to Holy Point and play a fiddle on a schedule kept like clockwork. His mother Gianna before that sank to her knees in Wolf Creek, shivering out prayers until the surrounding dogs were satisfied. Her mother preceding her sat on the back porch of their very inn, reading stories out loud to the quiet, panting night, a gentle flirtation with nightmares.

Ramona climbed to the top of Mesa Luna and frightened herself.

In the most recent years, she had helpers, but prior to that she would scale the tallest Ponderosa that hugged the cliff face and lean out over the rocky riverbed below. With nothing between her and the ground but the cool, empty air, Ramona would cling to her nerve and the tree bark while her heart threw itself against her ribcage. And the dogs would gather below her, hungry and expectant, until it was time to disperse.

These days, it was different. These days, it was a little easier on her heart. Ramona had been hesitant to allow Inez, and later Elliot, to join her out under the swathe of stars, but now it was a comfort. This was no longer a lonely ritual built to scare her soul. This was a commune with the gods, and Ramona did not know or care whether those gods were the creatures of the night or the three teenagers who ventured into it.

The three sat together in the dust around an empty fire pit that had lain cold since the annual burn bans rolled in. Ramona carried a walking stick with an iron nail driven through the bottom, wood grain worn under generations of fingers. A lacework of satin ribbon tied in knots of threes sat against Inez’s collarbones. Elliot kept sprigs of rosemary and dried chili peppers in his pockets.

They could sense the dogs nearby in an eruption of goosebumps on their arms, the hair rising on their necks. Ramona meticulously unpacked her rucksack and withdrew what she needed. Copper pennies, tossed in a circle around them. A dogeared book of Anne Carson poems. The industrial flashlight her father kept in his pickup. And the old iron bell, just in case, the clapper wrapped in cloth to keep it silent.

The dogs could draw near, but they could not make contact. There was debate among Lonely Valley residents if the talismans and the pennies and the prayers said in triplicate did any good. A trick of the light, of the mind, a placebo to keep the thoughts from wandering. The Lopez family straddled the line between arguments. If it worked, did it matter if it was real or not?

Ramona angled her chin to Elliot, speaking in a low voice. “You wanna start this time?” Behind his shoulder, she could see a pair of round white eyes watching from the surrounding ink. The animals were hungry.

Elliot’s smile was not as sunny as it had been on the porch of the Black Dog Inn, but he made a valiant attempt as he fingered a chord on his guitar and strummed.

I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger

Traveling through this world below

There is no sickness, toil, or danger

In that bright land to which I go

I'm going there to see my Father

And all my loved ones who've gone on

I'm only going over Jordan

I'm only going over home

And so it went. Each took their turn leaving offerings, feeding off one another’s emotions with as much voracity as the dogs fed on them. They crooned and cried and sang and the dog’s voices joined them. Ramona recited passages from the book that made her heart ache. Inez chilled them to the bone with a ghost story and a Zippo under her chin, making the dogs flicker on the edges of their vision.

The animals circled and drank up their feelings, genuine heart song rising on the mists of their breath into the air. When it came time for them to disperse, the moon was a cold, bright point overhead. Sated, melting ink stains, the dogs were there and then were not, their absence noted by the warming of the night. The tension ebbed from the trio’s shoulders.

Quiet lay the valley. The town was at rest once more. Ramona never felt more alive than she did during these times; this was in her blood and her nerves and every particle of her heart, and though she did not know herself, she knew where she belonged.

#ink #the valley #fiction #horror #mystery

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fearsmagazine · 3 years

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Screamfest Horror Film Festival Announces Initial Lineup for 21st Edition

Screamfest® Horror Film Festival, the largest and longest-running horror film festival in the United States, announced their first-wave lineup of competitive features and shorts for its 21st edition. Running October 12th through 21st at the TCL Chinese Theater, Screamfest® welcomes audiences back to the big screen for a collective experience they won’t soon forget. Tickets can be purchased here: https://screamfestla.com

The Retaliators will open Screamfest® LA on October 12th for its North American premiere with a red carpet prior to the screening. The film follows an upstanding pastor who uncovers a dark and twisted underworld as he searches for answers surrounding his daughter's brutal murder. Directed by Bridget Smith and Samuel Gonzalez Jr. and written by the Geare brothers, The Retaliators also features a high-octane original soundtrack and cameos from some of the biggest names in rock music, including Five Finger Death Punch, Tommy Lee, Papa Roach, The Hu, Ice Nine Kills, Escape The Fate, and more appear on screen. Marc Menchaca (Ozark), Michael Lombardi (Rescue Me), and Joseph Gatt (Game of Thrones) star in this horror-thriller which reveals a game of revenge played using a new set of rules.

Considered the "Sundance of Horror," Screamfest® is proud to showcase new work from independent filmmakers from across the globe. Highlights from this year’s program include the World Premieres of Father of Flies, the haunting tale of family life and the supernatural and Teddy Grennan’s Wicked Games where a long weekend at a country estate is turned into a nightmare when a group of masked intruders invades the property. Little do they know one guest has a surprise for them.

Four films will be making their North American debuts at the festival. In addition to The Retaliators, Richard Waters’s dark folk horror Bring Out The Fear traps its protagonists in an unsolvable maze where a sinister presence awaits; Clare Foley stars in the sci-fi horror The Changed where an alien presence takes possession of the hearts and minds of her city; and Isolation depicts nine tales of terror which are woven together as remote people work to survive an increasingly deadly outbreak.

US premieres at the festival include Russia’s #Blue_Whale produced by Timur Bekmambetov, which follows Dana as she works to uncover the truth behind her sister’s suicide; Argentina’s fantasy horror film Nocturna: Side A- The Great Old Man’s Night which depicts one old man’s journey to rethink his past and present and question his reality; and Kratt by Rasmus Berivoo in which children stumble upon an instruction manual to create a supernatural being.

West Coast premieres at the festival include a joint production between the US, Mexico, and Venezuela, Exorcism of God which follows an American priest working in Mexico who, due to a botched exorcism, carries a dark secret with him; hailing from Ireland, Let the Wrong One In dives into the complications of family ties when a vampire is discovered in the family; Erik Bloomquist follows twins who spend a night at a remote inn to investigate their missing father in Night at the Eagle Inn; North American distribution rights to the Argentinian The Returned (Los Que Vuelven) - which follows a woman in 1919 prays to a mythical deity to resurrect her stillborn son - were acquired in a new venture between Peter Block of A Bigger Boat and Seth Nagel, Scott Einbinder and Garrick Dion of 5X Media; What Josiah Saw explores a farmhouse haunted by the past; Alone With You stars Emily Bennett, Emma Myles, and fan-favorite Barbara Crampton in a twisted tale of memory and horror unfolding over a romantic homecoming for a distant girlfriend; and When I Consume You by Perry Blackshear where two siblings get more than they bargained for when hunting a shadowy stalker.

The festival will also feature a Special Presentation of Daniel Farrands’s Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeyman starring Peyton List and Lydia Hearst, which follows the notorious killer through a little known chapter of her life in Deland, Florida.

“After a challenging year for cinema, we are excited to return to our home at the TCL Chinese Theatre for our latest lineup of frights,'' says festival founder Rachel Belofsky. “While last year’s drive-ins allowed us to continue to celebrate horror films as a community, we have missed the magic of the traditional theatrical experience.”

Formed in August 2001 by film producer Rachel Belofsky, Screamfest Horror Film Festival is a female-run 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that gives filmmakers and screenwriters in the horror and science fiction genres a venue to have their work showcased in the film industry.

Please find the 2021 Screamfest feature line-up below:

Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeyman (US, 2021) - Special Presentation Written and Directed by Daniel Farrands Produced by Lucas Jarach, Daniel Farrands, Meadow Williams, Swen Temmel, Luke Daniels, Daniel Davila Executive Producer(s) Nicolas Chartier, Jonathan Deckter, Lydia Hearst, Alan Pao Cast Peyton List, Lydia Hearst, Tobin Bell, Nick Vallelonga, Swen Temmel, Meadow Williams, Andrew Biernat Based on a little-known chapter in the life of America's most notorious female serial killer, "Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeyman" takes place in 1976 when 21-year-old Aileen (Peyton List) arrives in Florida attempting to escape her tragic past. Soon she marries wealthy yacht club president Lewis Fell (Tobin Bell) who offers her the chance to become part of Florida's high society. Ultimately, the victimized Aileen surrenders to her murderous impulses and wreaks havoc on the peaceful seaside community of Deland, Florida.

Alone With You (US, 2021) - West Coast Premiere Directed by Emily Bennett & Josh Brooks Written by Emily Bennett & Josh Brooks Produced by Andrew D. Corkin & Theo James Cast Emily Bennett, Emma Myles (ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK), Dora Madison (BLISS, VFX), and Barbara Crampton (RE-ANIMATOR, YOU'RE NEXT) Charlie (Emily Bennett) is setting the atmosphere in her sleek, two-story apartment in Brooklyn for a romantic homecoming for her distant girlfriend Simone (Emma Myles) who’s been away for work. There are past glimpses of visual tension between the two, so we’re led to feel that this meticulous setting of mood may be a peacemaking gesture. Enamored beyond all good sense, Charlie begins to experience a myriad of unsettling incidents, and the horrors of what has transpired are slowly revealed in the shards of Charlie’s resistant memory.

#Blue_Whale (Russia, 2021) - US Premiere Directed by Anna Zaytseva Written by Evgeniya Bogomyakova, Anna Zaytseva, Olga Klemesheva Produced by Timur Bekmambetov, Anna Shalashina, Igor Mishin Cast Anna Potebnya, Timofey Eleckii, Ekaterina Stulova, Diana Shulmina, Olga Pipchenko, Polina Vataga, Daniil Kiselev After her younger sister Julia commits suicide, troubled adolescent Dana decides to find out what led to her death. Examining her sister’s computer, Dana finds a secret chat group where adolescents are encouraged to kill themselves through a challenge called "Blue Whale". Dana’s investigation leads her ever closer to the truth, but to really discover what happened, she herself must play the deadly game. #blue_whale // #I_want_to_play_the_game is inspired by real events that happened in Russia in 2015 and 2017.

Bring Out The Fear (Ireland, 2021) - North American Premiere Written and Directed by Richard Waters Produced by Alison Scarff & Richard Waters Cast Ciara Bailey, Tad Morari, James Devlin Rosie and Dan are a couple in a doomed relationship. While taking a final walk in their favourite forest, they find it has trapped them in an unsolvable maze. The paths lead nowhere, the trees never end, the sun never sets, and a sinister presence stalks and torments them, trying to drive them insane... There is no escape. But what exactly are they hiding? This dark folk horror will leave you questioning what is real and what is malicious trickery.

The Changed (US, 2021) - North American Premiere Written and Directed by Michael Mongillo Produced by Taylor Warren and Eloise Asmuth Cast Clare Foley, Jason Alan Smith, Carlee Avers, Doug Tompos, introducing Olivia Freer, with Kathy Searle, and Tony Todd Something has taken possession of the hearts and minds of the populace. Kim (Clare Foley), Mac (Jason Alan Smith), and Jane (Carlee Avers) try to convince themselves it's paranoia, but before long the city is besieged by the changed. By the time they realize an alien intelligence has merged with their neighbor, Bill (Tony Todd), a horde of changed is amassing outside their suburban home.

Exorcism of God (US/Mexico/Venezuela, 2021) - West Coast Premiere Directed by Alejandro Hidalgo Written by Alejandro Hidalgo, Santiago Fernández Calvete Produced by Alejandro Hidalgo, Joel Seidl, Karim Kabche & Antonio Abdo Cast María Gabriela De Faría, Will Beinbrink, Joseph Marcell Peter Williams, an American priest working in Mexico, is considered a saint by many local parishioners. However, due to a botched exorcism, he carries a dark secret that's eating him alive until he gets an opportunity to face his own demon one final time.

Father of Flies (USA/UK, 2021) - World Premiere Directed by Ben Charles Edwards Written by Kirsty Bell Produced by Kirsty Bell, Phil McKenzie Cast Nicholas Tucci, Camilla Rutherford, Davi Santos, Page Ruth, Keaton Tetlow, Colleen Heidemann A haunting tale of family life. A vulnerable young boy finds his mother pushed out of the family home by a strange new woman, and he must confront the terrifying supernatural forces that seem to move in with her.

Isolation (US, 2021) - North American Premiere Directed by Larry Fessenden, Andrew Kasch, Dennie Gordon, Bobby Roe, Alix Austin & Keir Siewert, Christian Pasquariello, Alexandra Neary, Zach Passero, Adam Brown & Kyle I. Kelley Written by Larry Fessenden, Cody Goodfellow, Dennie Gordon, Zack Andrews & Bobby Roe, Kyle I. Kelley & Adam Brown, Keir Siewert, Zach Passero, Alexandrea Neary, Christian Pasquariello Produced by Nathan Crooker, James P. Gannon Cast Larry Fessenden, Dennie Gordon, Graham Denman, Damien Gerard, Bobby Roe Sunny Roe, Bodhi Roe, Adam Brown, Alix Austin, Hannah Passero Marieh Delfino, Alex Weed, Fine Belger, Hans Gurbig Woven together are nine tales of terror that follow isolated citizens from around the world as they confront their darkest fears in an attempt to survive an increasingly deadly outbreak.

Kratt (Estonia, 2020) - US Premiere Written and Directed by Rasmus Merivoo Produced by Rain Rannu, Tõnu Hiielaid Cast Mari Lill, Ivo Uukkivi, Jan Uuspõld, Paul Purga, Nora Merivoo, Harri Merivoo When children are left at Grandma's without smartphones they’re bored to tears. That is until Granny finds them loads to do. She also tells them about a magical creature named KRATT that’ll do whatever its master says. When they stumble upon an instruction on how to build one they don’t hesitate. All they have to do now is to buy a soul from the devil…

Let The Wrong One In (Ireland, 2021) - West Coast Premiere Written and Directed by Conor McMahon Produced by Trisha Flood, Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde, Michael Lavelle Cast Karl Rice, Eoin Duffy, Anthony Head, Mary Murray Let the Wrong One In follows young supermarket worker Matt, who is a little too nice for his own good. When he discovers that his older, estranged brother Deco has turned into a vampire, he's faced with a dilemma: Will he risk his own life to help his sibling, with blood being thicker than water? Or will he stake him before he spreads the infection further? The film stars upcoming Irish talent Karl Rice and Eoin Duffy, along with Buffy the Vampire Slayer icon Anthony Head, in the role of Henry; a taxi driver with a sideline in vampire hunting.

Night at the Eagle Inn (US, 2021) - West Coast Premiere Directed by Erik Bloomquist Written by Erik Bloomquist, Carson Bloomquist Produced by Erik Bloomquist, Carson Bloomquist Cast Amelia Dudley, Taylor Turner, Beau Minniear, Greg Schweers, Erik Bloomquist Fraternal twins spend a terrifying night at a remote inn to investigate the last known whereabouts of their father. As they dive deeper, the property's dark secrets ensnare them in a hellish labyrinth they must escape before dawn.

Nocturna: Side A - The Great Old Man’s Night (Argentina, 2021) - US Premiere Directed by Gonzalo Calzada Written by Gonzalo Calzada Produced by Alejandro Narváez, Javier Diaz Cast - Pepe Soriano, Marina Artigas, Lautaro Delgado Synopsis - Ulysses is a hundred-year-old man, he lives alone and is on the verge of death. The last night of his life, he will experience something that will force him to rethink his past, his present and his view about his reality.

The Retaliators (US, 2021) - North American Premiere - OPENING NIGHT Directed by Bridget Smith, Samuel Gonzalez, JR. Written by The Geare Brothers Produced by Allen Kovac, Michael Lombardi, Mike Walsh Executive Producer(s) Dan Lieblein Cast Michael Lombardi, Marc Menchaca, Joseph Gatt, Jacoby Shaddix, Katie Kelly, Abbey Hefer, Ivan Moody, Zoltan Bathory In THE RETALIATORS, an upstanding pastor uncovers a dark and twisted underworld as he searches for answers surrounding his daughter's brutal murder. A high-octane original soundtrack and cameos from some of the biggest names in rock music set the tone as this horror-thriller reveals a game of revenge played using a new set of rules. Marc Menchaca (Ozark), Michael Lombardi (Rescue Me), and Joseph Gatt (Game of Thrones) star. Five Finger Death Punch, Tommy Lee, Papa Roach, The Hu, Ice Nine Kills, Escape The Fate, and more appear onscreen and on THE RETALIATORS Original Soundtrack, coming soon via Better Noise Music.

The Returned (Los Que Vuelven) (Argentina, 2021) - West Coast Premiere Directed by Laura Casabe Written by Laura Casabe, Paolo Soria, Lisandro Colaberardino Produced by Alejandro Israel Cast Maria Soldi, Lali Gonzalez, Alberto Ajaka South America, 1919; a landowner's wife is desperate for a child of her own, having suffered through multiple miscarriages. She finds hope, however, in a seemingly outlandish plan: she'll pray to a mythical deity to resurrect her stillborn son. The plan works, but along with the child comes something else...something evil.

What Josiah Saw (US, 2021) - LA Premiere Directed by Vincent Grashaw Produced by Ran Namerode, Vincent Grashaw, Bernie Stern, Angelia Adzic Executive Producer(s) Cole Payne, Scott Haze Written by Robert Alan Dilts Cast Robert Patrick, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Kelli Garner, Tony Hale, Jake Weber Everyone in town knows about the haunted Graham Farm on Willow Road. You'll hear there's a bad history to it. Josiah and his youngest son, Thomas, are all that remain of this estranged family. But after experiencing terrifying visions from beyond, Josiah decides they must change their ways to right a great wrong. After being away for over two decades, Eli and Mary, Josiah's eldest children, are enticed to sell the property and reunite at the old farmhouse in hopes of closing this haunting chapter of their lives for good. Sins of the past will be paid in full.

When I Consume You (US, 2021) - West Coast Premiere Written and Directed by Perry Blackshear Produced by MacLeod Andrews, Perry Blackshear, Evan Dumouchel, Libby Ewing Cast Libby Ewing, Evan Dumouchel, MacLeod Andres, Margaret Ying Drake Siblings Daphne and Wilson Shaw practically raised one another. They’ve protected each other from everything life has thrown their way. Daphne’s professional life is soaring and she’s looking to adopt a child. Wilson is interviewing for a position at a local school, hoping to become a teacher. But Daphne has an unsettling, dangerous stalker whom she can’t seem to shake, and now threatens to destroy them both. They hunt for their tormentor through the shadowy streets of Brooklyn, honing their bodies and minds for a showdown. But this foe may prove to be more than they can handle. They will break and rebuild themselves if necessary to save each other, and protect the light they know is in this world for them... if only they can persevere.

Wicked Games (US, 2021) - World Premiere Written and Directed by Teddy Grennan Produced by Bennett Krishock, Heath Franklin, Burton Gray, Teddy Grennan, Christopher Walters Cast Christine Spang, Markus Silbiger, Michael Shenefelt, Conner Ann Waterman When Harley joins her new boyfriend for a long Halloween weekend at his country estate, they're invaded by a bank of masked freaks and forced to play a Wicked Game. To the intruders' unpleasant surprise, Harley's hard-boiled history has endowed her with a bag of tricks which give the game a surprise ending.

Standing out as one of the top tastemakers in the genre of horror, Screamfest has been a launchpad for top tier franchises and storytellers. Among the numerous films that have been discovered and/or premiered at the festival include box office hit The Wretched, Tigers Are Not Afraid, We Summons the Darkness, Pledge, The Master Cleanse, Tragedy Girls, American Mary, Paranormal Activity, 30 Days of Night, Trick ‘r Treat, and The Human Centipede.

Screamfest selects award winners at the close of the festival. Film entries are accepted in the categories of Best Feature, Directing, Cinematography, Editing, Special Effects and Musical Score. In addition, there are special categories for Best Animation, Best Short, Best Documentary and Best Student Film as well as a Screenplay competition.

Screamfest® takes the health and safety of its guests seriously and proof of vaccination or negative COVID test with a temperature check will be required for entry. Masks are required at all times while inside the venue. Hand sanitizer stations are placed throughout the theater and lobby with special cleanings in between screenings. Screamfest® will comply with all LA County regulations and policies are subject to change.

For more information or the latest news, visit screamfestla.com

#film news #movie news #festival news #screamfest #selections #lineup #2021

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trysomecats · 5 years

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Caught in a Web Part 5

Summary: Dan was offered to join Willow Grove Academy, Britain’s most prestigious and renowned private school, on a full scholarship. All of the other students are rich, unlike Dan who comes from a modern lower class society. Things become complicated when he lies about his background to Phil Lester, the most popular and richest boy in the school.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The confession happened before the food had even arrived. They were at a small Italian restaurant with prices that were thankfully affordable. Dan viewed it as a small victory, considering that Phil was going to hate his guts when he revealed the fact that he was nothing but a pathetic liar.

Dan had initially planned on confessing before they even went inside the restaurant, but it was hard to interrupt Phil’s bright eyes and cheerful babbling. It was only after they had sat down at their table and ordered drinks when he spoke the truth.

“-and we can go on vacation together when our next school breaks comes around. I figured the four of us could go somewhere new, an adventure, you know? There’s this place in America called Roswell - it’s in New Mexico I think - and there’s this conspiracy theory that aliens landed there one time. And it got me thinking that we could go there and, well, who knows, maybe-”

“I lied.”

“What’s that?” Phil asked, eyes still crinkled with happiness as he sipped his cider.

Dan’s mouth was dry. Despite this, once he began speaking, it was impossible to stop. He was a fly making his last stand before the spider came to kill him. Everything came pouring out, right there in the middle of the most expensive dinner he had ever eaten, with the first boy he had ever loved.

“I lied,” he repeated. “I lied about everything. My dad doesn’t work in India, he works in a shitty cubicle copying papers all day. I was never homeschooled, I went to public school instead. The headmaster at Willow Grove was feeling charitable and gave me a full scholarship to attend. I don’t have any money to my name, most of my clothes and games are second-hand. I’ve lied about everything, Phil, everything...”

‘I lied because I was scared you’d judge me,’ were Dan’s unspoken thoughts. ‘I lied because you were the first people besides Louis who talked to me, and I never had any friends before you, Pj, and Chris.’

Phil was staring at him, his mouth open. All traces of happiness were gone and replaced by obvious shock and anger. His eyes, usually so beautiful and blue, were wide and glinted darker than usual.

“I’m really sorry,” Dan spoke, when the silence became suffocating. He felt like he was going to vomit.

“I’d like for you to leave,” Phil finally spoke. His voice was so soft, but it sounded as if he struggled to get the words out. It was as if he were seething with anger on the inside, but trying desperately to keep calm on the outside. “I’d like for you to leave right now.”

Dan didn’t need to be told twice. He shoved his chair back and stood up quickly, knocking over his glass of sparkling cider. The waiter rushed over to help with the spill, but Dan only pushed passed him. People from nearby tables shot him glares as he ran through the restaurant and created disturbance, but he couldn’t have cared less.

He left without turning back, so that Phil wouldn’t see the tears streaming down his cheeks.

Somehow, word had got around by the time Dan went back to school the next day. He arrived at the very last minute, when the bell had already rung. There was no use coming early, because he knew that Phil would never talk to him again, and neither PJ nor Chris either. Oh God, he dreaded having to face Chris, who was easily the most tempered out of the trio.

Louise was one of the first people to give him an icy glare when he walked into French class.

“I guess I was wrong about you this whole time,” She spoke loud enough for the whole class to hear.

“I guess you were,” Dan found his words, but he didn’t dare look at her. His heart was pounding fast, and it took all of his willpower to remain seated rather than leaving the classroom.

Louise wasn’t done with him.

“You might not be rich, but you’re just as greedy and snotty as everyone else in this school! I didn’t take you as the kind of guy to use someone for their money. I mean, do you even have anything to say?”

“No,” Dan told her, his throat too tight. His hands clenched his pen tightly, and tears were pooling in his eyes once again. Before coming to school today he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t cry, but evidently that was not going to happen. “No, I don’t have anything to say Louise, so just don’t talk to me.”

She gladly took him up on that offer for the rest of French class, as well as Arithmetic too. In fact not one person offered him any sort of greeting. Joe made brief eye contact with him, but it wasn’t friendly, and Zoe didn’t look at him even once.

It took Dan a great amount of courage to step into his Advanced Literature classroom, and when he did, he immediately regretted it. His usual spot, the one next to Phil, was taken by another student who Dan recognized as Anthony Padilla. Phil didn’t even spare a glance at Dan, talking with Anthony as if he always sat there.

Dan’s face felt hot as he hurried to an empty seat in the back of the room. Phil might have not been looking at him, but the rest of the class certainly was. The entire school had obviously known by now about his lie.

But there was nothing more he could do; Dan knew that he had been slowly digging his own grave at Willow Academy from the very start. In a way, he had known from the beginning that sooner or later his life here would end in disaster.

Dan made it three days before everything became too much for him to handle. In his old school he had been used to being ignored, but this was a lot different. People who used to talk to him on a regular basis now either gave him the cold shoulder or blatant scorching glares.

After hours and hours of pleading with his mother, she had agreed to set up a meeting with the headmaster to discuss his transferring back to public school, but she wasn’t happy about it in the least.

Now he would be looked down upon in school and at home.

When lunchtime on Wednesday rolled around, he skipped it yet again to hide in the library. There was no way he could possibly eat; his stomach had felt too tight and uneasy every since PJ has discovered his secret.

His thoughts lingered back to the conversation he’d had with his mother this morning.

“This could completely change your future Dan,” She’d said with a shake of her head. “I hope you know what a wasted opportunity this will have been. And you won’t even tell me why! I was under the impression that you were coming to like Willow Grove....”

His breath felt too short as he thought about how badly he’d messed up. The look of pure disappointment on Phil’s face was impossible to forget about. Dan had been the cause of it….

Because that’s what he was, a disappointment. If he knew how to talk to people, or was smart of good looking, or had something to counter against his awkward, pathetic personality, then maybe things would be different. Maybe he would have been able to befriend Phil without having to lie. There were so many opportunities to confess early on, before the web had grown too big. But he had wasted those opportunities, and now the web was wound tightly across his throat, choking him.

Dan realized that he wasn’t in the library anymore. His feet were taking him down the winding hallways, so he could be somewhere alone, somewhere where he could hide forever…

His breath was still short as he reached the bathroom, and as soon as he reached a stall his stomach lurched. He heaved his meager breakfast into the toilet, over and over again until there was nothing left to come up, not even caring that the door was still wide open.

He felt shaky and his heartbeat was thunderous.

He wanted to be anywhere rather than here, but home was almost just as bad, and there was no safe place to go. His only comforts were Phil, Chris, and PJ, but he didn’t have them anymore, and now he couldn’t breathe.

An immeasurable amount of time passed before Dan became aware that someone was speaking to him.

“Dan? Hey- what’s the matter?”

“C-Cant-,” Dan struggled to find his voice, the dizziness becoming overwhelming at this point in time. “Can’t breathe, I-”

His stomach twisted again and he was back to dry heaving. His knuckles were white as they gripped the porcelain. There were black dots interfering with his vision, mingled with the hot tears that had built up in his eyes.

“Try to take some deep breaths Dan,” Chris encouraged, but his voice was distant and Dan could hardly focus on it. The voice became sharper and more desperate. “Dan! Come on, you have to breathe!”

It was easier said than done.

“Fuck,” Chris was swearing, and Dan realized that he had collapsed onto his knees.

It took several minutes, but Dan managed to evade passing out. As soon as his breathing was back to normal, Chris took him by the arm and led him outside the school before he could protest.

Dan was completely silent during the whole ride to Chris’ house, and the other boy didn’t say anything to him. When they finally got inside, the mansion big and empty and unbearable, Chris sat him down on a sofa worth more than Dan’s house and handed him a bottle of water.

“Drink it,” Chris demanded, watching with sharp attentiveness until Dan had taken several gulps of the clear and refreshing liquid. Chris, meanwhile, had taken a seat next to him.

“Jesus, just look at you. When’s the last time you’ve slept?”

Dan spared him a response, because they both knew the answer to that one.

“You have to give me some answers Dan,” Chris finally said. “We both know that you didn’t lie to take advantage of us.”

What?

Dan looked up at Chris in confusion. “H-How do you know that?”

“Well, obviously I was pissed as fuck when Phil and PJ told me the truth about you. But then when I calmed down, I got to thinking about things. You never once asked for...well, anything. If you were really just friends with us for our wealth, surely you would have tried to get some, yeah?”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Dan finally muttered after a moment of silence. “I lied, and that’s the real problem here.”

“It matters to me,” Chris said, folding his arms. “I want an answer, Dan.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Dan began to feel desperate for some sort of way out of this. “I mean, I don’t even know why I did it! I was an idiot, okay? I’d never been to such a fancy school before, with chandeliers and school lunches too expensive to afford! I didn’t have any friends in my old school, so I certainly didn’t expect to have friends at Willow Grove! When you guys actually started talking to me, poor insignificant me, I panicked! Does that answer your fucking question? Does it!?”

“Yeah,” Chris said sharply. “It does! Dan, you need to talk to Phil about this as soon as possible.”

“What are you talking about? Phil doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I completely understand why!”

“No Dan, you don’t get it. Phil loves you!” Christ took a hold of his shirt collar. “I don’t understand why you’re just letting everyone assume that you were after our money!”

Dan pulled away from him. “What’s the point of trying to explain? I lied!”

“But you didn’t lie to hurt us; you didn’t lie to hurt Phil!”

“It doesn’t matter Chris! The whole point is that I wasn’t honest with Phil, or any of you! I have a meeting with the headmaster tomorrow, so I can make arrangements to go back to my old school.”

“You can’t do that. Dan, you have to talk to Phil!”

“No I don’t!”

“Yes you do!” Chris said, gripping Dan’s sleeve so he couldn’t rise. “Besides, you have to whether you want to or not. I called him and told him about your panic attack, and he’s on his way now.”

i’m sorry for taking SEVERAL YEARS to update. If there’s anyone left who still remembers this ol’ fic, then you have my gratitude as well as my sincerest apologies!

#phanfiction #phan #high school au #angst #panic attacks #comfort #caught in a web #I'm sorry it took me years to update

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mountphoenixrp · 5 years

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We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

Ah Puch, the God of Death, whose origins stem from Ancient Mayan Mexico. He is now the owner of Sombra Muerte and a sadist at Bablyon.

FC NAME/GROUP: Woo Jiho/Zico | Block B GOD NAME: Ah Puch/Cizin/God A PANTHEON: Mayan OCCUPATION: Owner of Sombra Muerte and Sadist at Babylon HEIGHT: 6’ 3" | 190cm DEFINING FEATURES: A multitude of tattoos and piercings, he’s constantly changing them and adding more, the most prominent being a full body skeleton that’s skull begins below his chin and takes up most of his chest and torso. As well as frequently changing hair colors and hair styles. Over many centuries of combatting the scent of decay that follows him, he has managed to keep it quite faint using a sage and onyx choker that resembles 3 human eyes dangling from his neck that he is rarely ever without. Only wears black with an occasional red accent piece with lots of accessories and even bells. The spirit of his loyal western screech owl named Muan never far behind, often manifesting on his broad shoulders and alerting him of customers in his shop.

PERSONALITY: A dark shroud follows Zico at all times, a somber and quiet air constantly filling whatever space he is occupying. His deep voice and sharp cat like eyes give him an incredibly intimidating aura. Among the darkness and somberness there is an unbelievable confidence that he exudes. A type of confidence that could be seen as cocky yet is really just a physical manifestation of his intensity. As a quiet and mysterious man Zico hides his true personality from many. As a personification of the Mayan people’s worst fear; death, he is all too used to being shunned and hated - with great reason. Over many years this has left him cold and distant, yet behind this shroud of evil, darkness and death there could potentially be a man that I smore than just a manifestation of fear. Maybe there is more to him…

HISTORY: tw: death, abuse, violence, gore

Ruler;

“When an owl screeches, someone nearby will die. If you hear a hoot, take a deep breath and count to ten.”

The soft jingle of bells follows Cizin as he walks the cold and quiet night streets of the upper world. His wide owl eyes awaiting the one who shall join him in his trip back to Mitnal. His gaunt, decaying body dragging along the streets, the shuffle and jingle of the bells in his feather a haunting thing for anyone to witness. A literal manifestation of people’s worst nightmares. He was created from their worst fears. The fears of those terrified of death. His faithful and equally as terrifying companion Muan flies over head, helping the Lord of Death and Ruler of Mitnal decide who will be joining him tonight.

With each daunting step he draws closer to the doors of unsuspecting mortals, each one becoming closer to their worst fear as Cizin approaches. The first door he passes brings him joy as he hears the wailing of a woman and the impacts of fists, her husband doing the work for him. He moves on to the next houses, screaming children being punished by strict mothers and fathers bringing him the same hope. Children crying out about monsters in their closets or under their beds - his demons doing their best work by instilling fear in those too impressionable to resist the influence. The screams and wails of mortals turning him to the quiet homes, the ones the god has noticed must be taken care of by his hand rather than others.

He enters a quiet home, finding a man alone in his bed. Cizin knew of this man, a man as horrible as he. Who stole from the poor and vulnerable and killed innocent men, women and children. The Lord did not fear him, nor was he happy to be taking his life. This man saved the god time and energy, not being restricted by the dark of night or to a decaying body. So the god did what must be done, careful to kill the man in such a way that the cadaver would be in tact and unscarred. The Lord of Death took in this man’s home and his body. He admired his life and that night he made a decision. This was the night Cizin decided to live amongst humans.

Humanity;

When Ah Puch imagined humanity, he imagined those he saw in the dead of night. Those who wailed and screamed to send him away, those who feared him and hated him. Those who worshipped him and were then shunned by their peers. What he did not imagine were those in the day. Those who were kind and soft and sweet. Those who were forgiving and smart and patient. He appreciated this side of humanity. For this side of humanity was what made his side all the more powerful. He and his peers fed off of their fear and naivety and it only made them stronger. His peers were also those who fed him and made him strong. By giving in to their desires and destructive natures. Ah Puch would watch them wither away into nothing, allowing him all the time he needed to slowly torture their souls into ash.

The Lord discovered that mortals were easily manipulated and molded. Easily turned self destructive and vulnerable. Upon this discovery he knew this would become the easiest way to acquire souls. Instead of hunting for them himself, he simply fuels their destruction and swoops in to collect the broken pieces. Ah Puch started with tobacco and alcohol, the two easiest addictions he found that lowered the inhibitions of mortals. Then he discovered sex and love were just as addictive to mortals as physical drugs. Now in a much more modern era, the amount of drugs and inhibition reducing pass times like, technology, and toxic relationships fueled him immensely.

Except now, with even more options of watching human self-destruct he was bored. Bored of death and torment. He wanted something else. Persuading humans into sacrificing themselves to him wasn’t fun or enjoyable any more. It was just depressing. Their minds so easily moldable and destructible. It was the 1970s that he began collecting. Collecting things humans found disgusting or “evil”. He admired them. Admired these objects and their owners abilities to be different. The evil contained within his collections providing him with enough spiritual comfort to last a millennia.

Business;

When historians discovered him; well the old Cizin. They classified him as “God A” among the alphabetical Mayan gods. Out of spite he gave himself a new name, Zico. The final letter of the English alphabet inspiring his new expression of self. It was around this time he heard of a new place, an island for gods and their half-blooded children. A bizarre thought to him, to see the many gods and goddess’ there with their half-human children. He had a few of those, half-blooded children. None worth his time. He had better things to worry about than children; as if they would want anything to do with him anyway. Zico couldn’t imagine any of them could bare the idea of such a monster as their father anyway. So he let them be, whatever that meant.

For many years, Zico has lived above Sombra Muerte - his pride and joy. Customers came and went over the years. The front of the back alley curiosities shop was dark, brooding, gothic, evil and odd. A perfect home and workplace for a god of death. The back of said shop housed a drug empire. The same drug empire that Zico had been running for decades. Because if there was one thing he enjoyed more than taking souls and torturing them; it was watching them slowly do it to themselves.

Since learning of the power of torment and torture that humans are able to withstand and still live. He took on a new job, one catering to those only of a specific nature. Discovering there are times when he can torture and torment without having to kill and still feel fulfilled. Then, watching the poor humans - well half-humans - become addicted to this pain and pleasure slowly lose themselves was all the more enjoyable for him. With drugs, sex and oddities taking his time and fulfilling his nature, he rarely visits Mitnal anymore. Finding that wrecking havoc among gods and half-bloods much more fun than with pesky little mortals.

POWERS: Ah Puch has the conventional powers of the Mayan gods plus the ability to induce mental torment/torture and control death. He can also easily shapeshift back into his skeletal form, that of which is a well over two meters tall, gaunt and decaying skeleton with an ornate owl’s head and adorned in torn robes and various bells that look like human eyeballs. STRENGTHS: Clever, Observant, Patient WEAKNESSES: Blunt, Indifferent, Sadistic

#kpop rp #krp #block b #woo jiho #zico #mp; welcome

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the-scavengergirl · 6 years

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One Headlight Closed: @solorenperor

She flipped the head of the coin, Heads meant West, and Tails meant East…she didn't think she was cut out for the North, too much snow. And South well she was as far south as she could be within the legal United States. She flipped the coin, her fingers toying with it nervously. She promised herself she'd never move again after coming over to the States. But that was before Rey had met Markus, just shortly after moving to Arizona.

She'd landed herself a decent job at one of the many shops in the area. Markus was originally from New Mexico, and had a braid that ran down his back like an oil slick. He ran around town with a recklessness that Rey was familiar with, and it was almost comforting .But she soon found he couldn't hold his drink, like many of his ancestors, he became a monster. And while Rey prided herself on being able to fend for herself, it all changed one day when she found out her period was late.And Rey was never late…

She'd stuck around, keeping her secret to herself for a little while. That was until one particular night. When she'd caught Markus with Kaycee, and when she'd questioned him, nearly spilling her discovery, he blamed her, stating she'd been distant, and he'd given her a black eye. So packing all her items, one other pair of jeans, and a few shirts, the rest she could buy if she needed to whenever she got to where she was getting. Rey tossed the coin…East.

---------------------

She awoke nearly four days after flipping that trusty coin, her hand resting gently on her side, her eyes taking in the sights as the bus pulled into the Boston station. Boston…she'd always wanted to live closer to the ocean. Thanking the driver, she grabbed for her duffle, stepping out into the early morning air. She had sixteen hundred dollars to her name, and in a town where she knew nobody. Needing food before the lovely nausea that came with growing a human claimed her Rey took note of a place just a block over, its bright sign blinking at her like some beacon. 'Maz's'

Toast, coffee, eggs, and bacon, and a job later, and Rey was on her way to wandering about the place she'd decided would be her home. She needed to find a home first. She was about to find a coffee shop when another store front caught her attention, for two reasons, the free wifi sign, and the fact it was a book store. Rey hadn't set foot in a bookstore since she'd left England, and what better time now. Pulling her bag over her shoulder, and tugging her Radiohead shirt down properly, she made her way for the shop, her nose wrinkling slightly at the sound of the bell as she pushed shops doors open, finding herself a seat immediately.

#solorenperor #v:modern #aw yus #sorry its long aff #all the musical references

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blueimmersion-blog · 4 years

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Trimix Diver

Divers watches usually are not solely good to have, however they're a necessity to the diver. Air tanks solely maintain so many hours of air, realizing how a lot time has handed because the dive started is essential to survival. If a diver was to get to deep and never notice how a lot time has handed they could run out of air and grow to be disorientated and never make it again to the floor. These watches are designed to make sure that the diver will be capable to clock how a lot time is left within the air tank. Trimix Diver

There are a lot of types of a majority of these watches. They aren't actually designed for aesthetics however as an alternative are designed for operate and are rated by how deep they will go into the water and nonetheless work. The depth score is an important facet of this model of watch. If a diver plans on diving fairly deep then the watch that they put on must have a excessive sufficient score to have the ability to maintain the strain. Most of them have rubberized wrist straps and naturally are sealed so the water can not get into the mechanics of the watch.

What's extra is that these watches are additionally nice for individuals who simply desire a sturdy and top quality watch. The water proof function is a good incentive, and they're additionally recognized for his or her excessive sturdiness.

The truth that they're so sturdy is what makes them a wonderful selection for anybody that may be a little exhausting for the damage on watches. There are a few of them which might be excessive tech and have many further options that may profit a diver beside simply telling the time. A few of them even come full with GPS navigation.

The extra options that diver watches have the costlier they are going to be. Any mannequin that that comes full with GPS navigation and all the opposite bells and whistles no matter who the producer is, goes to be among the many costliest.

The PADI Open Water Diver Course teaches you the basics of scuba diving. You may study your entire scuba diving gear and tips on how to gear up appropriately, and all the essential diving dos and don'ts. On profitable completion, you'll obtain an Open Water Diver card and a diver quantity - your key to the thrilling and exhilarating world of scuba diving. With this underneath your belt, you may rent gear and dive to your coronary heart's content material (inside the security parameters, in fact!) and also you needn't sit a single take a look at extra, in case you do not wish to. Most divers, nevertheless, discover themselves hooked by this stage, and progress to the PADI Superior Open Water Diver Course, offering them with the required coaching to dive to deeper depths.

The PADI Open Water Diver Course lasts from three to five days. It teaches the required abilities to allow you to plan and dive to a most of 18 metres. You might discover all of it a bit daunting on the outset, nevertheless it's stunning how rapidly you study. You may be gearing up like a professional very quickly!

There are two components to the course: sensible and information. You may must spend money on a PADI Open Water Course Crew Pack. This incorporates your PADI Guide, which incorporates all it is advisable to learn about diving and your scuba diving gear. You may additionally obtain a dive desk (for dive planning) and logbook to document your entire dives. Some Crew Packs additionally function a PADI Open Water DVD - a helpful studying support. You might undertake the information part of your PADI course on-line earlier than commencing your sensible coaching. Ideally, although, you must undertake the information and sensible points concurrently. You would not, in spite of everything, take your driving idea take a look at with out ever having sat behind the steering wheel.

In the event you like unique styled accent items you then'll just like the several types of diver watches which might be obtainable right now. You should purchase watches which might be truly designed for diving functions or look-alike watches that merely resemble the precise diver's model. Many of the genuine watches designed for diving functions are also very elegantly styled for night put on as properly.

You'll find these watches in types by prime title designers resembling Rolex and Omega. A look ahead to diving such because the Accutron, is water-resistant to a stage of 200 meters. The watch is manufactured by Bulova and was the primary totally purposeful digital watch ever made. The IWC Aquatimer watch is designed to be water-resistant as much as 2000 meters. This kind of watch can be a good selection for any skilled diver to put on.

Related Topics:

TDI Trimix Courses TDI Decompression Procedures

#Trimix Diver

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redantsunderneath · 7 years

Text

Twin Peaks the Return, part 8

Twin Peaks the Return has had a comprehensible main plot consistent with Lynch directed elements of the original series, but far more grounded than anything he has produced since. Elements of the first 3 parts of the Showtime show that set the metaphysical stage aside, part 8 houses the majority of the difficult to grasp material that the show has produced, concentrated in one big 40 minute gulp. This is an attempt to try to explain WTF is happening without the far more complicated task of integrating this with all the other dream-like, archetypical material.

Let's rundown what we see on the screen in this sequence, which begins after “the” Nine Inch Nails leave the stage. It begins with a pull-in to the Trinity explosion, 1945, in B&W followed by short loops of swarming particles, coalescing into nebula forms (the last of which is the “mauve” color) to cacophonous music. Sooty men (B&W, the woodsmen) then emanate from a convenience store as smoke envelopes it. In space (B&W), a deformed woman (experimental model, with horns, no eyes, and backwards hands) spews viscous fluid from her mouth containing spotted eggs and a dark sack with the face of Bob. An explosion of gold coalesces to form a pure golden globule. The screen goes red before focusing on the Mauve sea from the first episode which slowly pans up an impressive tower to enter a small window.

Inside (B&W) is a 30’s style lounge room where Señorita Dido sways to the music, as the giant (who we now known as the Fireman) comes around a large bell-like tank with dials which has started to emit an alarm klaxon. He looks at this, at Dido, and then plaintively into the camera. He ascends stairs, enters a theater (with another bell) and watches the preceding events unfold, then begins to levitate with a starry gold substance (in color) coming from his face and coalescing above. Dido comes and watches the this. The cloud produces a glowing gold ball, which floats down to her within which she sees Laura’s face, kisses it, and releases it into a saxophone-like, Dr. Seussian tube (also color), which rotates and sends the orb toward the screen which now contains a rotating earth. It winks to B&W and descends.

In New Mexico (all B&W from here) 1956, a frog/cicada/needle nose bug hatches from a spotted egg. A boy walks a girl home where they chat of high school love. In the road, a couple drive as Woodsman swarm around, one of whom asks “got a light?” They speed off from a mild stupor. Back to the boy and girl, the boy says he has broken up with Mary, and asks for a kiss. She gives it bashfully and goes into her house. The woodman approaches a radio station (KPJK) where the Platters’ “My Prayer’ begins playing.

We see three scenes - a man fixing a car, a waitress manning an abandoned diner, and the girl in her PJs, all listening to the song on the radio. The Woodsman enters, asks the receptionist “got a light” and crushes her head. He then goes to the DJ, grabs his head, removes the needle from the record with a scratch, flips the switch, and begins to speak over the airwaves, saying repeatedly “This is the water and this is the well, drink full and descend, the horse is the white of the eye and the dark within.” The three listeners drop to sleep one by one. The bug climbs into the girl’s window where she opens her mouth and ingests him, still asleep. The Woodsman walks away into the desert as we hear the sound of a distant horse whinny. Starring Kyle MacLachlan.

This material must be understood as a fable. This is a telling of a history in its “collective unconscious” manifestation. Primarily, it is a story about the origin of baby boomers as a generation, and it is easiest to view through that lens, although the patterns repeat at many different scales, so this is the origin of the universe, the origin of consciousness/society, and sex/parenting. The general form is applicable to just about every generation, but the cues are specific for the post war (WWII) kids. The following, in an effort not to go too long, will not apologise for its “this is how I boil it down” nature. Mileage may vary. I may skip around.

Dido and the Fireman are an idealized concept of the maternal and the paternal. She is love and nurturing energy, full of positive feeling. He is reserved, careful and responsible, and concerned that things turn out right, the compassionate protector and problem solver. They live in a 30s black and white world because that’s the vintage that the generation looks back to as the “pre fall” ideal. These entities code as masculine and feminine, but are part of all natures regardless of gender. There is an alarm, which worries the Fireman. So he is called to witness the problem.

The atomic bomb test is a heck of a metaphor. Like in Denis Johnson’s novel Tree of Smoke, the mushroom cloud is an act of creation which includes destructive violence, recapitulating the big bang and the Bible’s creation story as a map of the birth of consciousness and civilization, but also evolution and the reproductive act (it looks like a tree, but also like the evolution of the arm and a brain and spinal column forming). The cacophony is the post creation disorder on every level that must settle down to allow live to be lived (out of entropy coalesces order, from the void, form) - the violent universe cooling to form planets, the violent nature and character of mankind ordering to form society, the disorganized infant becoming a person. But this generation (all of them, sure, but we are looking at this one) is tainted by the history of its production. The technology boom is manifested as the unleashing of unprecedented destructive power, with many deaths and the threat of annihilation over everyone’s heads, but there is more than one dangerous technology.

So this act of generational birth manifests two “wrong” aspects. The tainted masculine (swarming like black sperm) Woodsmen who stand in for a general societal degredation and the experimental model (“mother”) who spews bad seeds. As the Fireman and Dido were the “good father and mother,” these are the “bad” versions this generation must contend with. The Woodmen, smoking, ash covered and breaking brains, code for lower class, burnt out, anti-intellectual, used up culture that will spew through media devices and dull the population making infection by the Mother’s eggs possible. You can say this is “rock and roll” but I think it’s really about mass media, advertising, and the coarsening/unawareness of American culture.

The mother is harder to parse, possibly because the end of the show will clarify. The collective “feminine” is deformed, unable to fulfil its role. Maybe she is mass media herself, spewing infective ideas from the boob tube. But I get a strong sense of alienated femininity, a self involvement and isolation that yields a violent rejection of the nurturing or associative role. I really think the infected “girl” has to be Sarah Palmer, or a general metaphor for people of the time like her, people who dull themselves through consumption and are oblivious people who need them. The model is inattentive (she has no eyes and just throws the eggs out there). There is a tendency to think of Bob, born of this “model,” as a man specifically (his actions code that way, and he is played by a man) but he is, most primally, a taker and consumer born of a more feminine (relational) framework. He is the breakdown of human relationships into pure “mine!”

Like the myth of Pandora, the box is opened and the evils spill out, but there is one more thing yet to come out of the box. The Fireman uses his male spark to create a gold seed (the opposite of the dark/silver of the “bad” parents) to bring hope, goodness and redemption into the world, in the form of Laura’s soul. Dido carries and loves the seed and lets it go into the world where the redemption can take place in a tragic trial of Job.

This boils down to “every generation has it’s own ills that attempts to erode an idealized mode of character and a transformative component that will redeem it but leave it changed.” This repeats and recurs but this is the story of Frost’s and Lynch’s cohort specifically. The traditional “dad’s a stoic rock and mom is warm hugs” are challenged by technological change and the horror of the 20th century. Culture gets more crass as multimedia starts to alienate us and we show signs of selfish consumption and obliviousness. This ties into what’s up with Coop (the masculine trying to find itself a new paradigm of goodness) and what happened to Laura (fighting for her own painful subjectivity, rejecting selfish hedonism, and taking responsibility for herself), but that’s a story for another time.

#twin peaks #david lynch #mark frost

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lunarfae714 · 7 years

Text

more poems, a few seasons past

how lucky to have breath

stop & ask why we live

question our structures

question human history & wor ship

find out we know nothing.

just be.

an open container

for Spirit.

***

twenty Worn tetherballs

off-the-chain

in the plain view of

concrete charade

people in heavy metal boxes

on wheels shrugging off

piss-stained balls

in unmarked yards

i wonder if you

saw the roads,

high ways

concrete carplays

in the colors of the mental play

of each driver

would they be

colorful, or still grey?

grateful or stray?

what strain of gasoline

fuels the minds

of mindless drivers

what excites us

while our earth decays

who makes our day

when the culture is so far away

from deep roots,

holding neighbors' hands

taboo

what can we plant

& grow too?

return to our mother

to our tribe.

together,

without divide.

possession at the rainbow gathering.

sacred fire

not so sacred afterfall

as the village dissects the chip

from the backside of her ear

she stops talking to rosemary-

who haunts her waking,

green eyes that travel

like a bouncy ball,

lost

muttering

paranoid

in a void.

***

let these hands transform

to portals to open doors

from playing the piano of dirt,

sparking fruitful dance of the earth

Gaia feeds us when we feed her

when we pour out love, it comes back in

we let another cosmic spiral begin~

to serve our creations of the now~

for our hearts, our ears, our old souls

in strange flresh want to be stirred, not shut down

conduct our hands & our throats

as intruments of Light, sailing the eternal boat

help us let go of illusions of fear,

discomfort, darkness we know

help us let Go

the light comes in nothingness

it comes in silence

our shared dream

our family

our energy

recycled & renewed

cleansed with intention

our energy reflects

infinity.

***

pictures for what

at the sevensacredpools

high rockpiles

tourists drenched in neon

not stopping to be

but to get a photograph.

as the water that freefalls

with the wind, the breath

of the Sea & i came

by foot, naked under a raincoat

to watch the sky sitcom,

color show,

highfive cows

on the silent jungle road.

the sole palm on the mountain

anal, how we can be selfish

not giving all we can like the

monkeypods give the wind,

the rain gives the stream,

we plant the seeds for our earth

or ourselves

what is really greater

its

obvious

and yet

we destroy it

but the pictures are pretty

what moment is worth capturing

when memory distracts us

from growth?

glorify the photo

the still

eternal film

identity

how can we be fre

from our memory?

***

newyearseve at the potfarm

when we broke the wood splitter

after sunsets

cum & dirty animals

on the trail

fingering a carcass

shoegaze & bodyshots

on couches that aren't ours.

& the girl on the phone

asks what i'm doing with

my poetry degere

***

when i am blind

i can really see

how the sun reflects the rocks on the shore

a million suns line the sea

& mother moon takes up half the sky

the light is grand when i can see.

***

plate lunch

found bliss in darkness

you are the white light in my dream

when our chests align

divine

runs through our body line

celestial

nightlightning strike on

these cages of flesh

these brains

of judgment &

fear, weight

evaporate

with the light

angel

when i am only

white light

charged

full-body-bliss

the game creatures of the system

fully charged

to give the white light to

next emotional vagabond

the sleeping dream is

the waking dream

and we are the fingers to turn the switch

kitttens in the palm of my hand

detachment meditation

the ever-moving train within

we become the beauty

of earths afternoon rainsong

bamboo creaks of delight

aesthetic throatsing

sweet simplicity of hot water

and ginger.

the bowl sings

when the wind moves

over our head.

remove the mask

and truly see everything.

***

12.29.16

above the monkeypods,

touched by south-blown aire,

the breath of old-man Saturn

we wait among

nebulas of cyberlit selfiesticks-

modern self-sacrifice--

wait for the moon to rise--

to wait

a lost practice

in the fast-paced

outer-space

instant-gratified

culture without gratitude.

wait

on layers & layers

of sacred stone.

present-

with the knowledge

inside these bodies

we were once the hands

that carried the stone,

the bled freely,

that knew the reflections

of the planetary drama:

the sky-show on Earth

the sacred Nature

& geometry of it all-

even the rocks wait with us

in our collective breath

in this cloud of illusion

brought by the family

of dragonflies.

1.25.15

the darkness inbetween

flashes of consciousness

like drowning air

the hidden woodpecker

or the muted tree

the distant shotgun

melody, off-key

or how the cobweb tangoes

from the liquid gold

coasulates 5pm power of afternoon sun

a never quiet forest

forever beckoning yet

i forgot the magic

down the tree talk

leave the thumbprint acrons

speared dry pine tears

the worms and the thorns

the rhythmic bubbles

of breath like the hotsprings

fairywands

synsthesia woodspell

mesmerizing & dulled

with my blank stare in the pan

my body that will tremble no more

to reel in the

brother & sister shepherd

until the bites swell

my skin once again.

i take a baby pinecone

& wait to exhale.

2.6.15

neruda aftertastes of lovepoems

i come in your nothingness

like a passing rainffall

thoughts lost before

the sun's descent

i come in your mayan silence

like a bite of garden candy

in the middle of a fast

you come to me in dreams--

even in dreams, you lift me

with wonder, divine light

two nude chests perfectly align

sorrows dissipate like dew

the other eve, you were the water

of my illusion. you sobbed

shoulders hunched & heaving

for you, for me, for

the static of our living movie.

why did i leave neverland

for another open hand?

i will be the Bliss you bring me.

a late february migration

not spending a dmie

bicycles where the cars pass

down the volcano,

in a musty trailer with bellyaches

distracted from the new colors

of flora

i still feel it-

in the folks who lift us up

in the backs of their trucks

in the washed-up tortoise

& freefalling passionfruit,

mellow music & polynesian words

like medicine of

slow-moving people

on a slow-moving island.

1.31

cream-colored fairies before noon

wave after wave, stretched & bird-like

transforming into waterfowl

flowed with breasts & freckles,

whiskey shadow gods explain

narratives of the dead kings

and holy mothers from Spain,

irrelevancies?

december sweat

underbelly portal

left open too long

can the body forget to breathe?

can the chicken be born again

to walk out of your potroast?

the belly rolls of dead madron

the rolls in the way

between a clear mind

and the state of distraction

don't linger on loves lost,

the lack of drive

december sweat

from my armpits

to the hole under the madron

to water the earth

as i burrow my bones.

***

santa cruz

twenty-two days to reach enlightenemnet

crowded redwood trails

this morning made our

separation a scene

to be by the sea

the water that mirrors the wild in me

light colors here hide the darkness

the oversized pastel homes

the white skin that reigns

worriless over white sand

when you cook close

sun reflects the glass, for grains, charcoal bark

whiteness

in the dark solitude of the mountain

i went a little mad.

winter solstice

black panther spirit in an abandoned field

when we slept in the church van

Bast, or an old Indian

reminding us of the white man torture.

with my spirit guide beside

desert trips where there used to be forest

california is dead.

christmas tamales inspired by the border

my season of depression.

my dance teacher once told me

making the bed each day just makes the whole house look nice

instructing the direction of my hips.

music is in every moment

music already abundnat

frequencies & fractals

geometry of movement

death is stealing new cycles

the animals of our bed

change with the temperature of our tears

the cycle of our mothers

we communicate here

travel through the galaxies

warm tears of sorrow & joy

faces in everything

trees remind you of the people you miss in yourself.

counterclock spirals

in the half-lit cabin

we watch fire like a television,

the sound of fallen wood tongues

we roll the dice in the manifesting mind

read wet eyes of my lover

always surprise me

candelit rest

in the pyramid home.

-fluid static-

lullyabing nightmares

the appetizers we dream in the mid-afternoon

bells of bedridden in our sacred triangle

madron, smoke & mirrors,

high-hung hiding termites and antlers,

a dome to sky pines.

spirits flash in to watch

the dark shadows of grace float ---the creatures.

what are street drugs?

laying on the bench outside the coffeshop,

run by a wealthy church.

overheard conversation

"not much to talk about=not too bad"

they hold their books from the Free Bible room

"have my bed its not weird, its not weird"

so removed in my head on narcos & weeping

in public from the way we treat each other & our pathwhere

i lost it

"it is easy not to look"

suburban sidewalk study

they look at me & look away

i needed a break from the noise

the orchestra of voices

loud women constant concerns &

biology notes & lost boots left

the churchgoers car

nice drums or jazz

monster of control & demand

well dressed church leaders

the church folk always look happier

the safety in identity,

acceptance in anonymity

Which do you prefer?

the anonymity of white privelge

smiles from passing men or children

or the constant attention of a white girl

in central america

smiles from passing men

both kind and undressing

to fade or melt in fake empires?

new mexico first

midnight coyote call & elk herds

push shower & chocolate oatmeal on a campstove

cacti spruce & mesquite

empty roads & desert

adobe & forests

dry heat, redwillow, aspen and mullen.

crescent waxing

in the Sky's midnight cloud paintings

leaving Pueblo into the Rockies

in the valley by river end

sunset moonrise

folk music & free firewood

grandfather faces in a redrock mountain

the most constellations under

the clear sky with lightning storms afar.

befriending bibcycle junkies

outside the donut shop

in the town where i dont belong

sunshine cupo'joe to calm

a long night of meth.

hidden hundreds

in a fake locked book,

jerry garcia

eases the sneeze & aches

roadhead to ease the fights

bald cop with traveling advice

sleeping & sneezing in reststops

free food and kind strangers in memphis

latenight roadsodas

stovestop cooking

cement lots with new friends

arkansas

for naked boatrides,

on a manmade lake

until the elder tells us to come back

the universe always provides to the Lovers

friends, meals to eat, where to rest,

water to bathe, towns that like a little color,

soul music, spoken word and dancing hips.

america

self-titled pais of

corporate stores of things that no one needs

restaurants with deadly ingredients

people stay in their boxes

drive in their cars

cops lurking hyjenas to cuff

those whose feet

graze, tease the edge of the boxes

the white-dotted lines

so the animals can return to boxes,

jailcells

and the president

in his great white box

declares war and shows us

to spend money we dont have

perpetual enslavement

taxes to start another

generation of animals.

train emergencies

when they can really know

the nature of themselves

in disappearing grass.

lumberjack love

rainbow

palm-planted

midnight

blue-breasted

humminbirds

of foreign lands

stinkbugs & cicadas

orbit my lobes

in red kitchens

while houseflies

frolick on treasure island

and our bubblegum mattress on wheels-

the birds of paradise

cocoooned

to the insects of now.

my lover

who moves & speaks through the sea & moonlight

has human hands again.

1 note · View note

thegourmez · 7 years

Photo

The Oakland Urban Wine Tour

Obligatory Disclaimer: Participation in the Oakland Urban Wine Tour was free to me.

A year and a half ago, I discovered the plethora of urban wineries housed in Oakland’s Jack London Square.

Me at Dashe Cellars. Photo: Nannette @ Wine Harlots

Inspired by the quality of the wines and convenient positioning of their locations, I wrote up a suggested wine walk for Localwise. Apparently, I was on to something because the official Oakland Urban Wine Trail, developed by Visit Oakland, launched just a few months later. It covers 10 — 10! — different wineries mostly within walking distance of each other. You can find participating wineries by looking online, or by looking at your feet.

You’ll see that decal on the sidewalk in front of them! In the time since the Wine Trail launched, as might be expected, tours have cropped up to guide you along it if you want a more personal experience than downloading the brochure. I recently took part in one: the Oakland Urban Wine Tour put on by Raquel Navarro of See.Eat.Love.

Raquel Navarro

As Raquel expressed, her tours are centered around sharing places that she and her family regularly frequent – this is no distant tour guide reciting information by rote. For that personal, friendly connection, Raquel’s Oakland Urban Wine Trail tour will run you $95 for 3.5 hours of sipping and sampling in the Jack London streets. Okay, you’ll mostly be off the streets, taking your time to taste through a generous list of pours at each location.

Dashe Cellars

We began at Dashe Cellars. It was my first time checking out Dashe wines, and I thought the wide-open space, industrial with touches of whimsy, was very inviting.

Plus, there were enough shimmering metal surfaces to light up a wine lover’s eyes. Dashe is one of only two local wineries that still produce their wine in the same space as the tasting room.

Our tasting was conducted casually, at no rush, and at noon, we had the full attention of Megan Long, a tasting room associate who was a pleasure to chat with.

Megan poured us several tastes, though I think my crew of bloggers may have wiggled a couple bonus samples out of her. Four is likely the norm. With hours to go, one must sip with care, so taking the time to thoroughly consider each glass was appreciated.

As was the beautiful cheese plate that wakened our palates.

Raquel recognizes the importance of sustenance in a long afternoon spent conquering wine, so each stop came with some form of food to keep the tour participants going strong. She works with local vendors, so the exact food offered may vary from what you see here, but you can rest assured, something tasty is coming to pair with those wines.

At Dashe, my favorite wine was the Heart Arrow Ranch Les Enfants Terrible 2015, which I gave 4/5 stars and described on Vivino as “Smells of cherries fallen in fresh soil and ends with laughter while rolling around in the leaves. It’s plain tasty, an example of why zinfandel doesn’t always have to bowl the drinker over. Great with herbed chevre.” Yes, the referenced chevre was on that cheese plate!

A close second, which also earned 4/5 for me, was the 2013 Dry Creek Old Vin Zinfandel: “”How a squirrel might feel nestled up in a tree hollow out of the rain.” One of my creatively confusing tasting notes, for sure, but the coziness of that wine is what captured me.

Alas, one must move forward, though that is not such a bad prospect on a wine tour! We headed out of Dashe and onward about five blocks to Urban Legend’s tasting room.

I have sampled Urban Legend’s wine before, but this was my first time in their new slate-filled space that calls out for a lively group of friends to inhabit it….which may be what our tour group was fast turning into it. They experiment with blending many grapes in unexpected ways, which makes each mouthful a surprise even for stalwart bloggers such as ourselves. Yet it wasn’t a blend but the 2013 Cooper Ranch Syrah of Amador County that captured me most.

As I wrote in my notes, “Move past the nail polish nose and you’ll find a wine that begs for chili-spiced shrimp. Blackberry, tamarind, chili powder, lime, and a craving for Mexican candy.” The fact that I gave this wine 4/5 with some chemical pungency in the nose is proof, to me at least, that what was in the glass was that much more impressive.

But what really dominated at this tour stop was the warm empanadas by Javi.

We were offered three varieties, and I could not have chosen better than the chicken with bell peppers, onions, and a lively dose of black pepper. Perfect crust on the hand pies; perfect flavor on the inside. Check out Javi’s Empanadas for yourself at Scarlet City Espresso Bar in Emeryville.

Stop #3 was even closer than Urban Legend had been to Dashe Cellars. That’s likely wise nine samples into (or more, I’m not telling) a wine tasting tour.

Jeff Cohn Cellars, which I’ve also previously visited, is known especially for the winemaker’s excellent zinfandel line that masterfully showcases the differences between vineyards that grow the grape. This time around, his Shake Ridge 2012 Zinfandel most enchanted me. Or most made me wish for another empanada. You decide: “A zin that can handle any meat, from turkey to peppered beef to meat pies! And perhaps even a dark berry tart. It won’t knock you out in a glass, which is also a plus.” 4/5

Alas, we had no more meat pies. But rejoice! For Raquel introduced us to Winter, owner of We the Minis, a catering company that specializes in mini cupcakes and macarons.

We had the good luck to try the churro macarons, which translated to soothing cinnamon coursing through each vanilla-laden bite. Would definitely eat again! I’m contemplating a journey to Oakland’s downtown Courtyard Marriot or Taiwan Bento to get my mitts on a matcha-chocolate cupcake or bacon-chocolate chip cookie soon. Foodie radar activated!

And I must tell you, the final wine I’m highlighting, Cohn’s 2013 El Diablo Vineyard Grenache, is a foodie smorgasbord all its own.

The smell was full-on barnyard and Muenster, as the wildest syrahs can be, and it tasted of deep roots in the hay…until the raspberries came out with white chocolate notes! And how did it feel on the tongue? Like melted cheese. What an adventure in the glass! 4/5. Sadly, should you go on this tour someday, Jeff Cohn Cellars will not be among the stops as they just announced a relocation of their tasting room to Sonoma. But I’m sure Raquel will come up with an equally awesome winery to include.

My #EastBayWinePosse may not have ended the afternoon quite as fresh as we started it, but we sure were bubbly all-around.

Kelly of Off the Beaten Glass, Nannette of Wine Harlots, and Liza of Brix Chicks. Not pictured: Xan of Brix Chicks.

You can read Brix Chick Liza’s account of the tour here. What I appreciated most about what See.Eat.Love. has to offer is how attuned Raquel is to what an afternoon of wine tasting requires – and that’s not just wine! It’s pacing, it’s nibbles, it’s friendliness from the wineries chosen to participate, and it’s genuine enthusiasm for the jewels that Oakland has to offer. In addition to this Oakland Urban Wine Trail walk, Raquel offers culinary tours of Old Oakland, Uptown Oakland, and last I heard, was developing a Mexico City tour! That just may be required for my future vacation plans…

Salut!

Tour took place 5 November 2016.

For more of my food, drink, & travel posts, visit the Gourmez!

#brix chicks #dashe cellars #jeff cohn #oakland #oakland urban wine tour #oakland wine trail #off the beaten glass #raquel navarro #see eat love #tasting notes #tasting rooms #tourism #tourist ideas #urban legend #visitor's guide #Wine #wine harlots #wine reviews

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twodatesaweek · 5 years

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first date since E

my first date with E went like this, this past monday: a guy who seemed fine off the bat, and very cute in his photographs, messaged with me a little. name dropped the words ‘emotional intimacy’ and bell hooks and i thought to myself, wow, this sounds great. he said he had to leave for mexico for work for two weeks and immediately asked if he could buy me dinner. in my head, i thought, what i am learning is that this is the baseline. the conversation is easy, i am attracted to the person, and he asks me out like his life depends on it!

i had dinner with a friend beforehand and we laughed about how likely it is when someone seems really great online that you show up and they are short or have a weird voice. it put me in a better mood about the date, which i had been anxious about all day! i had to speak to the anxiety while i did laps earlier and ask it what it was doing there? was i anxious bc i felt myself getting excited? because it seemed too good to be true? still unclear, but probably a mix of those things, or maybe just a gut feeling that something was off.

i arrived at the bar and he looked...dissimilar from his photographs. he was short AND had a weird voice and at that point i just had to laugh. so i laughed from the time we met throughout the 45 minutes i could stand to sit there as he chattered at me, squirmed in his seat like a toddler, agreed voraciously with everything i said (after confessing that he loved animals...he was wearing a black shirt with a manatee on it....he’s 31...vehemently agreed with me that people who own dogs are emotionally damaged) attempted to impress me by saying how much he likes to knit, and eventually got so unsettled that he broke down and told me all of his emotional issues...that he had been single for so long, i don’t know, other really performatively sensitive things that made me want to tear my eyes out.

my therapist yesterday read me to death in a way i have never experienced...it felt like the first time i became myself, the first time i received the parenting i was always so desperate for as a child. i was explaining to her a dynamic i’ve recently found troubling in some of my professional friendships, wherein i move on from them and the other person freaks out at me in sort of overblown ways. one, for instance, made me get on the phone to say how neglected and unsupported he’d felt after i’d declined to join in on bashing another writer we both dislike. in my head, i’d narrativized these situations as men needing women to take on their emotional burdens, that actually i had just become friends with people who were selfish and narcissistic. but my therapist pointed out that at some point, i’d become friends with these people because i wanted something, and she pointed out that i held space for them...performed a level of emotional intimacy for them...because i could sense that that was their vulnerability. ‘so they could probably sense when you pulled away after you stopped needing them.’

‘oh,’ i said, feeling as though a question i’d forever asked myself was finally, improbably in the air. ‘that sounds emotionally manipulative.’ she just kept looking me in the eyes.

‘how does that make you feel,’ she asked.

‘really sad,’ i said, ‘of course that would be so painful for them to experience.’

she offered that i couldn’t help it, really, my parents and brother were emotionally manipulative so in order to exist at all and make life livable i would have had to adopt some tools of emotional manipulation too. but they i pointed out that in relationships, i’ve found that it can be hard for me to even recognize if intimacy is true or performed -- with e, for instance, it was a year later that i realized it was all a performance.

‘i would guess that you have maybe never felt true intimacy in a romantic relationship.’ i protested, but the truth is i think it’s probably correct. i have real intimacy in my friendships, but many of those friendships took years to develop and my newer ones often freaked me out so much in the beginning (me, paranoid about whether or not my new friend was genuine, whether they could be up to something) that i would spend months pulling away and pulling back in. and, at the end of the day, there is no particular professional achievement, social power, or thing that i want from my friendships aside from just company.

i’ve been thinking about this all day -- my aptitude for seeing other peoples’ vulnerabilities, my aptitude for getting what i want by using emotional intimacy and empathy as a form of currency. this month -- cancer season and mercury retrograde -- have thrown these sorts of relationships back in my face, have forced me to confront the consequences of this transaction that i learned, somehow, so long ago, that i’m only now speaking its name.

relationships, boyfriends, a husband, a life with a person....these are all things i want explicitly that i am ambitious to find. have i sought those out who are unable to take care of their emotions on their own to pay for their commitment with my empathy? and isn’t it easier for me to begin relationships with them, precisely because they are distant? my old therapist used to caution me against my description of relationships as ‘easy’ -- i think i see now that she was right.

i finally forced my date to settle up so we could go -- it was too painful to sit there, feeling like i was wielding all the power and he was regressing back into a small child. jonah hill walked past me as he was paying but when i turned back to my date to ask if it was really jonah hill, he was lost in thought, clearly playing back the entire conversation in his head anxiously, and then anxious again when he had to answer in the negative to my question. i felt sorry for him and also in some ways a little confused about myself -- should i have been nicer? my desire for the date was to be myself rather than catering to him, and yet it was painful or at least to watch him freefall. dating is hilarious and horrible, i guess, and i couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the entire thing, on my way home.

- W

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