#MUD taxes in Texas | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lmaoplsdontlookatme · 2 years

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some1 reqd tommy corruption and idg why im having such a hard time but here this !!! general tw for typical violence n whatnot 🤭

(no minors, not work safe)

(requests are open)

It was Stockholm syndrome, you’re sure of it - the way you only slightly flinched away from Thomas, how Luda May’s uneasy stare no longer made your skin crawl, how Hoyt’s harsh words no longer hurt as much as they did before.

You were safe here, probably safer than most other places on Earth. You didn’t have to pay rent or go to work, you didn’t have to worry about taxes or grocery shopping or what new social media app to use. And if the police ever came snooping around, you would let them know that you were kidnapped and were forced to do all the horrible things that you have.

When you first came to Texas, you and a few friends were driving through to get to New Orleans to pick another friend up for a flight but you obviously never made it. You were caught up, quite literally, a meat hook through your shoulder that you could feel grinding against your collar bone as you struggled, watched as Thomas killed your friends that came along. You hung there for two days, watched the sun sink and rise and wished for death as flies laid eggs and maggots spread against your wounds. You couldn’t feel your legs but you knew there was something wrong with your left ankle - you’d caught it in a fucking bear trap and your mind told you that you were in some sort of shitty horror movie as Thomas grabbed you from behind like a toy doll.

When the garage door opens you can’t register panic, fear, much of anything. There was a weak puddle of mud on the dirty concrete floor, blood and where you’d wet yourself as white hot pain ripped through your back and out the front of your chest in the form of the thick hook. There are hands at your abdomen, fingers running along your ribs and chest and around the metal penetrating your chest which makes you cry out. The figure in front of you - Thomas - jumps slightly but that only spurs him on. You’re registering everything now, pain and fear all slamming back to you at once and tears spill over your eyes as you finally see your capture up close.

It only took a few days for Thomas to move you outside from the stifling heat of the garage and into the house - it was so much cooler that you moaned out loud and sobbed a thank you as you were marched downstairs. The days blurred together and you’re thankful you don’t remember most of it. When you’re more conscious, you remember stumbling up the basement stairs in your underwear, Thomas’ hand tight on yours. He lets you sit at the dining table and serves you himself - a plate of some kind of stewed meat and the smell makes your stomach ache so badly you want to puke but you had been a vegetarian for the past six years. When you don’t eat, Thomas takes a seat next to you and motions at the plate - when you shake your head, his fist slams down hard on the table and you jump, leaning forward to take a fork.

Maybe it’s because you’re starved or maybe it’s because you hadn’t eaten an animal in so long, but it’s the best meal you’ve ever had in your life. You finish it faster than you want and Thomas gladly gets you another bowl and when you’re fat and satisfied, he takes you by the hand and leads you to a side bathroom off of the kitchen.

When he pulls back the curtain of the tub, you gasp and shut your eyes as your stomach rolls. It was a body, faceless, naked and cut and you hear Thomas grunt as he manhandles it out of the tub. Your meal comes back up into the sink as the smell hits you and when Thomas comes back, he pushes you towards the tub. You shake your head as you sob and he only picks you up with his hands under your arms and sets you into the tub. You almost slip in the blood and gore that coats the bottom but Thomas has a hand on your unhurt shoulder to steady you. You shower uneasily under his gaze, shaking in the warm water as you fight your nerves and the rest of your stomach coming up.

Around a month and you no longer get wide eyed at Thomas’ approach - there’s barely even a flinch when you look up at him, meeting icy blues under the stretched, rotting skin of your best friend. He doesn’t speak to you, you’re not sure if he speaks at all, but he’s good at making clear his wishes. You were let out of the basement and allowed to enter the connecting kitchen and bathroom as you pleased, having earned the Hewitt’s trust by being quiet, willing, broken.

Three months in is when you put two and two together - you’d had an inkling for weeks but we one day you watch Hoyt coming out of the shed with a paper wrapped package that he throws onto the table and tells you to cook and when you open it, there’s a strange cut of meat with skin still attached, a tattoo that reads ‘matt’ with a heart and you think of hearing the heavy screams from the basement the night previous.

You can’t bring yourself to be sick, not with the bracelet around your wrist Thomas had gifted you, adorned with bones the likes of which you’d never seen in person. Not with the cot tucked away into the little offshoot of the kitchen that was meant to be a pantry, carved bones and animal pelts that was covered with a thick, leather panel courtesy of Luda May offering you privacy.

That night after family dinner, Thomas takes you by the hand and leads you back downstairs. It isn’t the first time he touches you, but the first time you’re conscious and can remember. You touch him back without a second thought and after that, you’re allowed free reign of the entire house.

Five months and it’s cold outside, July having turned into December and you have a Proper room now, the master upstairs that used to be Hoyt’s. Luda insisted and when Hoyt tried to take it out on you, Thomas grabbed him by the throat and threw him against the wall so hard, it broke his arm.

He slept up there with you every night and every night you were compliant beneath him and it got easier and better each time until you took it upon yourself to sit in his lap, fingers at his face as you moan and move against him.

Month six found you staring uncaringly into a set of handsome green eyes, trustful and pleading and your chest was so tight and your blood was so hot at the feeling. The owner of the eyes had his fingers hooked tight into yours as you pulled him into the house, hushing him as you feigned ignorance. There’s a noise upstairs and you’re able to lead him into the basement without any trouble, heart slamming in your chest and when he says he thinks it might be safe enough to take a break, you drop his hand and wipe the sweat from your palms. His face falls as you turn, slamming a knife deep into his stomach up under his ribs and there’s a throb between your legs as dark blood bubbles out between his lips.

Thomas’ heat is almost oppressive behind you but he pushes in close - you can feel how hard he is against your back as the man in front of you drops into the dirt of the basement, scratching at his chest and trying for purchase at the knife lodged into his spine through the gape of his stomach. Your fingers don’t fumble as you flick open your pants and drop them, leaning forward as you reach back for Thomas. With your legs shaking and how hard he fucks you, you find yourself on your knees with your face pressed into the dead man’s sternum, Thomas’ grip harsh against your roots and you cum on his thick cock as he desperately pumps in and out of you because that was your first kill.

Dinner that night was dedicated to you, Thomas putting on his best clothes while Luda dipped into the liquor stash and even Hoyt clapped you on your shoulder, mostly healed, as he tells you that you’ve done a good job. You’re offered first dibs at the family’s insistence and you take your cut of meat with pride, shooting a smile towards Thomas until he nods with permission and you go ahead and take the first bite.

Seven months in and you’re awake early in the cold, eyes on the heavy form next to you, the rise and fall of Thomas’ chest as he sleeps. He really was beautiful in his own way, and you were beginning to really pick up on and admire his characteristics.

A year passes and you don’t realize - you just know the days are growing warmer and somewhere, there was an empty grave for you because surely there was no hope for your search. Not that you particularly gave a shit anymore - you were well fed and the supply was always rolling in the form of nosy visitors, of whom Thomas always gave you a trinket.

And then one day, when you see the front door open and Hoyt’s stolen cop car in the drive, you take the keys out of the running ignition and lock the door without a thought of running crossing your mind.

It wasn’t Stockholm, you knew that now. You had a family, a home, and you were in love.

#tcm 2003 #texas chainsaw massacre #the texas chainsaw massacre #thomas hewitt #thomas hewitt x y/n #thomas hewitt x you #thomas hewitt x reader #slashers #slasher x reader #corruption #mine #gn reader

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freddief4gb34r · 8 months

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a list of movies/shows i like!!

texas chainsaw massacre 1 and 2

land of the lost

venom (not carnage!! yuck)

total drama

the walking dead

black christmas (1974)

how to train your dragon (1 & 2, and the show!!)

jackass

stranger things

heartstopper

izombie

children of the corn (1986)

bunk’d

ginny & georgia

the promised neverland

ninjago masters of spinjitsu

zombieland

goosebumps (1st film)

we can be heroes (hate-watch)

twilight saga

shameless

squid game

scooby doo

mean girls

john mulaney specials

the breakfast club

warm bodies

avatar movies

the spiderwick chronicles

bring it on

young sheldon

bee movie

madagascar

night of the museum

jurassic world

box trolls

dazed and confused

across the spiderverse

holes

unfriended

paranormal activity

47 meters down

orphan

home

dont fuck with cats

daybreak

i am legend

trick ‘r treat

the suicide squad

pearl

childs play franchise

scream 1

jigsaw

the menu

terrifier

the meg

final destination

pet semetary

the black phone

moon knight

megamind

barbarian

behind the mask

assassination classroom

GAMES I LIKE!!

fnaf

little nightmares

mr krabs overdoses on ketamine

bramble the mountain king

texas chainsaw massacre game

dead by daylight

little turnip boy commits tax evasion

minecraft

roblox (sort of)

forge

choo-choo charles

freds cereal company

night of the consumers

amanda the adventurer

iron lung

nightmare in squidville

deep iron

eat the rich

suffer the night

alternate watch

subliminal

fears to fathom

high on life

tattletail

gorilla tag

priest simulator

deer simulator

happys humble burger farm

ultimate chicken horse

dead realm

youtubers i like!!

markiplier

jacksepticeye

crankgameplays

the boys

kurtis conner

danny gonzales

joe bartolozzi

drew gooden

what it do dave

puggapillar

mud consumer/andy king

petty pumpkins

vlad ncl

#meet the artist #youtubers #movies #shows #games #what i like #movies i like #youtubers i like #youtubers i watch #shows i like #games i like #yippee

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aficsblog · 10 months

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Dallas County Will Increase 2020 Fiscal Year Property Taxes

If you disagree with your property worth, you have till May 31st or 30 days from the date the discover was mailed (whichever is later) to file a protest. The State Comptrollers Office distributes a brochure giving data on many areas of the taxpayer's rights. “The official state companies, the comptrollers and public accounts, as far Dallas County Property Tax Loan as it pertains to [taxes], do a research every two years. They examine our property, evaluate [the appraisal district’s] worth assessments, and we get a report card. We make a extremely good report card here in Dallas County,” Jordan mentioned.

Property tax charges in Texas are recalculated every year by county after appraisers evaluate the county's properties. The charges are calculated based mostly on the whole property value and total income needed. Texas’ local governments rely heavily on property taxes to pay the salaries of law enforcement officials and firefighters and for government Property Tax Loans Dallas services like roads, libraries, parks and public colleges. Coupled with the truth that Texas has no state revenue tax, Texans’ property tax payments are among the highest within the nation. Property tax collections have risen more than 20% since 2017, based on knowledge from the Texas comptroller’s office.

These taxing models are organized by districts which embody actual property and different property. A single parcel of property may be taxed by multiple Pay Dallas County Property Taxes districts, such as college, city, or municipal utility districts (MUD). Property tax is usually assessed as a portion of the property value.

Most of those tax dollars go to local colleges, so they’re vital to the community. Also, it’s the second-most populous county in Texas, meaning there are lots of people who have to pay up! Owing delinquent property taxes in Dallas County, Texas can cause lots of problems, each for you and your locality. Property homeowners Dallas county property tax may end up deciding on a worth throughout an off-the-cuff protest the place a property owner can discuss the worth with an appraiser one-on-one, before going to an appraisal evaluation board hearing.

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The ARB won't accept protest filings by facsimile or e-mail submissions. The uFile Online Protest can be accessed via your account by way of by deciding on uFile Online Protest. You could request your individual PIN # via the uFile system for straightforward access. The Appraisal District has varieties for protesting, but an official form isn't Property Tax Lenders Dallas necessary. Any written notice of protest shall be acceptable as lengthy as it identifies the proprietor, the property that is the subject of the protest and indicates obvious dissatisfaction with an motion or choice taken by the Appraisal District. For more information, please go to the DCAD's FAQ web page for protesting assessed value, or obtain the DCAD Protest Process pdf.

Previous value determinations, expert opinions, and value determinations for similar properties could additionally be attached to the attraction as supporting documentation. If your attraction is successful, your property might be reassessed at a decrease valuation and your Dallas County property taxes might Property Tax Loan Dallas County be lowered accordingly. Instead, we offer property tax info based mostly on the statistical median of all taxable properties in Dallas County. The median property tax amount is based on the median Dallas County property worth of $129,seven-hundred.

Dallas County is the second-largest county in Texas and one of many largest in the United States. Property taxes are collected to fund quite so much of essential services, similar to colleges and emergency companies. Here are five Dallas Property Tax Loan issues buyers and homeowners have to learn about property taxes in Dallas County. Rockwall County residents make property tax funds through the Rockwall Central Appraisal District.

The common effective property tax rate in Harris County is 2.13%, considerably larger than the national common. The common effective property tax fee within the Lone Star State is 1.60%, nicely above the nationwide average of 0.99%. Other jurisdictions throughout the City of Dallas set their very own tax charges.

"If they have the opportunity, individuals are going to seek the most important profit for his or her property tax buck." We research and analyze the most recent comparable property information to craft the best case for your lowered property taxes. Consistently protesting can prevent thousands Dallas Property Tax Help in property taxes over the long run by minimizing your yearly tax assessment. Last week, a pair of conservative Lubbock County commissioners decided to play hooky to keep away from a tax improve and ensure the adoption of the efficient tax fee. Under state legislation, a quorum of commissioners is required in order to levy taxes.

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aifc223 · 1 year

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Welcome To Galveston County Mud 6

After July 1st, nevertheless, you’ll receive a 20% collection charge to pay on high of the opposite charges stacked up in your unpaid stability. You may also obtain a tax lien which Galveston county property taxes may put your property into potential foreclosures. Before you place yourself vulnerable to financial hazard, reach out to Tax Ease for information on Galveston County property tax loans as quickly as possible.

Paying your taxes with a bank account switch doesn't assure that you'll receive a free bank card payment. You will end up paying a share of your taxes on account of this charge. The charge you may be charged by the cost processor will vary depending in your most popular technique of cost. The No New Revenue Tax Rate is a fee that may present about the identical quantity of income because the yr earlier than on property taxed in both years. The Galveston and Texas History Center has a wealth of supplies to aid in researching one's house or property, in addition to historic buildings in Galveston.

The City of Galveston adopted its tax fee 4 days prior to the catastrophe proclamation on September 17, 2020. Therefore, Galveston City Council on Thursday voted unanimously to supply its residents with the flexibility to use for this exemption. Find foreclosures and properties with tax liens to get unique Property tax galveston county access to funding opportunities within the Galveston area. TaxNetUSA’s complete database offers you full entry to Galveston County’s delinquent property tax listing.

Though Confederate navy and naval forces under Gen. John B. Magruder recaptured the city at the battle of Galveston, a yellow fever epidemic in 1864 left it forsaken. On June 19, Union main common Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, raised a flag symbolizing the restoration of Union control Galveston county property tax, and proclaimed freedom for the slaves. American presence in Galveston County started in 1815 when Henry Perry and Warren D. C. Hall, former members of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, landed at Bolivar Point in September with three ships and 200 males.

By 1839 steamers that furnished provides to much of Texas plied the space between the port and New Orleans, and building of the Galveston wharves began in that year. The antebellum port shipped cotton and cottonseed oil, with much less essential quantities of sugar, molasses, cattle, hides, and pecans, while Galveston finance and fee businesses supported the area's agriculture and commerce. Exports to international nations exceeded one million dollars in 1839, and in 1856 included 4,590 hogsheads of sugar and 7,878 barrels of molasses.

Lawmakers have raised the state’s homestead exemption — the portion of a homeowner’s home value exempt from taxation — to $25,000. "One of my top goals this coming session is to minimize back property tax considerably, and that may reduce the worth of doing enterprise," Abbott stated throughout a March occasion for the united states On November 2, 1935, voters approved the creation of the Galveston Junior College District. However, a subsequent 1936 election to support the new district through a property tax failed, as did several different makes an attempt. Once you have a homestead exemption, your appraisal cannot go up more than 10 p.c every year. If you have lived in your home since January 1st, you are eligible.

If you own any sort of property in Galveston County, you're subject to property taxes. In the state of Texas, these taxes trigger property owners plenty of stress as they're subject to penalties and curiosity fees in the occasion that they fall delinquent on the taxes. Texas has only native property taxes levied by local taxing units. The state doesn't have present native tax records on each Galveston property tax property and its possession and doesn't set your property’s value for property taxes. Local officers worth your property, set your tax charges, and acquire your taxes. Johnson has served as Galveston County “Cut Tax” Assessor/Collector with passion and dedication, taking part in efforts to result in meaningful property tax relief and reform over the past 29 years.

#Property tax galveston county

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hakesbros · 1 year

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Reasonably Priced New Homes For Sale In San Antonio, Tx

The El Paso real property market is one other sizzling market to put cash into.El Paso real estate market was ranked 4th in Trulia’s hottest actual property markets to look at in 2018. El Paso’s strong job growth, affordability, low vacancy charges, and high inhabitants of young households have new homes san antonio been pivotal within the ranking course of. You can discover high-density housing in downtown Fort Worth, but it is far simpler to seek out horse-friendly properties in the Fort Worth actual property market than in the distant suburbs of Dallas. This is, of course, in addition to the luxurious housing markets in each cities.

The San Antonio actual property market is seeing property valuations skyrocket due to the challenge of assembly the demand of everyone moving here for work or mere alternative. The San Antonio housing market is trying to deal with a metropolis growing at roughly 2% a yr. The median age of a San Antonio resident is 33 whereas home builders in san antonio the average U.S. resident is almost 38 years old. Here is a brief and crisp San Antonio housing market forecast given by Zillow for San Antonio, Bexar County, and Greater San Antonio Area. Housing inventory stays low in lots of major cities across the nation, and this area is no exception to that.

Residents of Cypress Trails will enjoy easy accessibility to the Leon Creek trailway system. Your household will attend the acclaimed Northside ISD. Together, on this lovely setting, we’ll create a house that’s a true reflection of your style and your passions. A beautiful community conveniently situated inside Loop 1604 near Redland Road and Jones Maltsberger Road. Residents of Mustang Oaks will enjoy quick access to Mud Creek Park and McAllister Park. Your family will attend the acclaimed Northeast ISD. Together, in this beautiful setting, we’ll create a house that’s a true reflection of your fashion and your passions.

The Tax Assessor-Collector is answerable for assessing property taxes in accordance with the value and exemptions certified by the appraisal district, and charges adopted by each of the taxing jurisdictions. During these phases, appraisal districts identify and appraise all actual and enterprise personal properties. The governing bodies new homes for sale san antonio tx of the taxing jurisdictions undertake a tax price to help their fiscal yr price range. In the ultimate phase, the Tax Assessor-Collector assesses and collects property taxes for every of the taxing jurisdiction they're liable for accumulating.

The neighborhoods in San Antonio must be safe to stay in and may have a low crime rate. The neighborhoods should be close to fundamental facilities, public services, faculties, and buying malls. The limited housing provide keeps rents and property values going up year-over-year. San Antonio has been hit with a double whammy regarding its efforts to meet housing demand. San Antonio has lagged behind other Texas cities in the restoration of its home constructing trade; housing starts grew by 63% in San Antonio since 2011 whereas rising by 181% in Austin. This means the quick development of neighboring cities like Austin is sucking in the proficient craftspeople that would be wanted to construct more homes in San Antonio.

Education matters embody enterprise administration, multifamily housing and extra. In-depth economic analyses of the house building industry to assist you acquire perception into the problems and tendencies driving the business new home builders san antonio. Represent to any person that a home just isn't available for inspection, sale or rental, when such a house is, in fact available. Discriminate in the phrases, conditions or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling.

They didn’t essentially want to buy a home, but rents have been almost as high as a mortgage cost would have been, said Savella Constancio, 29. But the increasing numbers of deep-pocketed consumers coming from the West and East Coasts that Glast noticed last homes for sale san antonio yr has tapered off. He recalled working with 4 different clients in Seattle who had been researching probably the most affordable locations to reside, stumbled across San Antonio, packed up and headed here.

#real estate #san antonio

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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I've long said that a second American civil war would break out because of a new Nullification Crisis, and I think the Texas abortion law may be that crisis.

In the 1800s, South Carolina decided it didn't have to pay federal taxes because its lawmakers believed the constitution was an unenforceable agreement between the states, something they could opt out of at any time (they said they never would have joined the Union in the first place if they had known the government would be telling them what to do). The federal government, of course, disagreed with their decision, and the Supreme Court ruled that the president had the power to mobilize the national guard to enforce federal laws if the states refused to enforce it themselves. The states cannot unilaterally nullify federal law. The federal government has authority over them unless the Court explicitly cites a breach of the 10th Amendment.

Texas is breaking federal law by violating Roe v Wade. The Supreme Court hasn't explicitly overturned Roe, so it still stands as the law of the land, which Texas is just outright ignoring because they want to. They're trying to nullify federal law, so unless the conservative majority on the court specifically overturns Roe (they very well could, which would be a legal can of worms in and of itself), Joe Biden has the legal authority to mobilize the national guard to enforce the law and stop the abortion ban. This would lead to legal challenges at best and full scale civil war at worst because the Texas guard would refuse to mobilize under his authority or would mutiny against him. But by NOT enforcing the law, the precedent is set that suddenly NO federal laws are enforceable. What's stopping a blue state from banning guns if a red state can ban abortions? Banning guns would be illegal, but if states can nullify federal law and supersede the constitution then everything is fair game. This too would lead to war as gun nuts would take up arms against the state government for trying to ban them (and chances are the blue state guard would side with the nut jobs over the government, selectively enforcing the laws for one party over the other). Damned if you do, damned if you don't; enforcing federal law could lead to war, but so could ignoring it. The ball is in the conservative's court; they can't have it both ways, they can't carve out an exception for themselves but expect the other side to keep playing along as if nothing has changed. The laws either apply to everyone or no one.

We are teetering on the edge of history right now. This could be a turning point in our republic, and I think pundits on both sides are quietly hoping it'll all blow over. They want to just sweep it under the rug so it doesn't escalate, but pressure has been building for decades, especially in the last 5 or 10 years, so something's gotta give.

You never know what's going to be a major historic event until after it happens. Maybe this becomes the new normal and abortion simply becomes illegal in a ton of states, or maybe this catalyzes a long overdue revolution. Will this end with a whimper or a bang? Who can possibly tell? I pray this isn't normalized. I pray we don't grow complacent. I pray we don't just let this happen. We need to act, we can't keep expecting old rich elites to act for us; Congress doesn't have or best interests in mind, they've proven that time and time again by failing to act on important issues from civil rights to healthcare to the minimum wage and now abortion. Half the elites want us dead, so why should we keep looking to the other half to stick their necks out for us? The solution isn't to have "good" elites combat the bad ones, it's to get rid of the elites altogether.

I don't want to undersell this. We can't just act like it's okay for Texas to ban abortions, this is a major fucking deal! But at the same time, I don't want to blow this out of proportion either. Very few things wind up in the worst case scenario, and we've made it through similarly bad situations in the past, so this might not necessarily explode into something bigger. But we just don't know how bad this will be until the consequences start piling up. Once women start seeking abortions and doctors start getting arrested and wannabe vigilantes start claiming bounties on them, then we'll know just how far the country is willing to bend before it breaks.

Either the law means something, or it doesn't. If Republicans are allowed to break whatever law they want, then they're giving Democrats carte blanche to do the exact same thing. You can't cheat and then get mad when your opponent cheats right back; you've thrown out the rules, so why would you expect the other side to keep following them? How can you possibly hold them to a higher standard then yourself?

Democrats need to understand: If your opponent cheats, you can't win by playing by the rules. There's no shame in stopping to their level; they can't claim the moral high ground from down in the mud.

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ao3theskyisblue · 3 years

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Our Unforeseen Forever

Summary:

For a moment, TK takes in his appearance.

His husband’s shoulders are slumped, as if it was physically taxing to stand upright. There were heavy bags underneath his eyes – eyes that were sunken and haunted. They were distant, sporting thoughts swimming a million miles away than where he was standing right now.

It was like seeing a shadow.

Written for Day 6 of @911lonestarangstweek : Off the job injury + “You’ve got to be more careful.”

Read on AO3

Warning: Major Character Death

He gets one wish.

And without even hesitating, he chooses him.

Everything was still the same.

As soon as he steps through the door, he’s greeted with the sight of their hooded blankets strewn messily on the couch, a stack of books on the coffee table in a lopsided pile with the one on top on the verge of falling off.

There was a half-drank cup of coffee left on the kitchen counter, a thin layer of film covering what lay underneath. Speckles of dust floated lazily in the beams of sunlight through the gap between the curtains.

He’s sure he wasn’t supposed to be able to smell or feel anything anymore, but stepping through that door filled him with a wistfulness and longing he couldn’t quite explain. He wants to curl up on the couch. He wants to feel the way his heart would stutter in his chest every time the lock clicks as the front door opens and see his favourite smile lighting up the room.

He wants to smell sandalwood and the bitter tang of coffee lingering on clothes, feel strong arms wrapping around him and pulling him into a hug – hear the quiet giggles as they exchange sweet kisses.

He wants a lot of things, but want was something that just fell short in the hands of reality.

TK sweeps his gaze over the nostalgia plastered all over the walls, his eyes catching on a few pictures that immediately takes him down memory lane.

The day he moved to Texas, standing beside his father in front of their house, arms wrapped around each other as they made funny faces to try and depict their surprise at the cost of Austin real estate.

Next is a photo of the 126 a few weeks after the tornado, all wearing bright grins as they gave a playful thumbs-up at the camera.

His smile dims a little at the next photo taken not long after Tim’s death beside the ambulance, all of them standing around the inscribed name. Their eyes are red-rimmed, and TK feels a sudden urge to see the ambulance one more time.

See all of them one last time.

Swallowing thickly, his racing thoughts ease as the next picture immediately makes him chuckle wetly.

It was a selfie taken underneath the glowing sky of the little miracles of Mother Nature. Carlos had pulled out the camera on his phone, wanting to commemorate the day and TK had only been eager to comply. They tried to find the angle where they could get the luminescent sky in the picture, and in the end settled for their faces being slightly shadowed in favour of the glittering lights.

TK reaches out, fighting back the pressure building behind his eyes as he pauses just a few inches before his fingertips could touch the picture, running them over Carlos’ startled expression frozen in time.

It had taken them so long to find the semi-perfect angle that by the end, TK had just felt a strong urge to kiss his affections into the man next to him and proceeded to do just that. Mere moments before Carlos clicked the shutter button, he leaned in to press a kiss to the corner of his lips, smiling into his skin.

No matter how many phones they’ve changed over the years, laptops that they went through, USB keys that were forgotten, that photo had been etched permanently into their lives. It was their first tangible piece of each other’s hearts offered underneath a night with the stars as their witness.

He flits his eyes over towards another photo, and this one pulls out a quiet laugh that rises naturally.

They had been out with the team along with Carlos’ partner and Grace, thinking that nothing could go wrong when a bunch of first responders decided to line up their days off to go on a mini road trip.

Of course, everything that could go wrong, did.

There were a couple pictures scattered around the one showcased in the center of them all, with their friends laughing in their soaked clothing and making ridiculous faces at the sky to playfully protest the thunderstorm. The snuffed-out campfire was between them all, a lost cause after the weather decided to mock their abilities.

Mateo was swinging his shirt around in one of them, the movement blurring the photo but the elated expression he sported was the best depiction of how their trip had gone despite everything. Another one had Marjan and Nancy pouting as they were covered in mud, one of them having slipped and pulled the other down with them.

All of their faces were filled with excitement and bliss, the rain a mere backdrop to the love they all shared.

He yearns to touch the photograph sitting at the center of them all, but stops himself and instead takes one of the drawstrings of his hoodie to twirl around his fingers.

The picture was of him and Carlos, soaked to the bone, hair a wild mess. The loose tanks they were wearing were completely plastered to their bodies, their shorts tightly hugging the muscles of their thighs. Their arms were locked securely around each other, his heels tipping a little off the ground to press his body more into his then-boyfriend, leaning their foreheads together mid-laugh. Carlos’ back was relaxed against their broken-down RV, eyes crinkled happily as the picture Nancy took caught him mid head tilt as he tried to capture his lips in a searing kiss beneath the pouring rain.

That trip was his best and worst memories filled into one, but if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing.

More photos fill his line of sight. Carlos’ family, his mother and father holding a four-year-old Carlos who was in the middle of eating a cookie between them, crumbs all over his face, grinning happily. Andrea and Gabriel hugging both of them between them, all of them sporting versions of cowboy hats when they went to their niece’s cowboy-themed birthday party.

There were ones of his mom and dad with Andrea and Gabriel, laughing openly with icing on their faces, which was done from a place of unadulterated love from both of them for Gabriel’s 57th birthday. Holidays spent together, more birthdays, lunch dates…

It was like walking through a visual screenplay of the time they’ve shared with each other, captured in snapshots filled with everlasting memories.

His eyes land on a more recent picture, making him pause. It had been taken just a little over two years ago. Both of them were sporting complimenting blazers, their sky blue and viridian button-ups neatly tucked into black dress pants. They were adorning twin smiles that radiated pure affection and love as they looked at each other, forgetting the world spinning around them. Their hands were interlocked, the glint of their matching rings being the secondary focal point.

He absently twists said ring on his finger, and although he shouldn’t be able to feel the weight of it, his memories won’t let him forget.

The faint click of the front door startles him, and he turns to see a sight he’s yearned for since he first stepped foot into their home. His instincts tell him to run forward, tightly envelop the man standing in front of him in his arms, and tuck his face into familiar curls.

But he knew he would just pass right through him.

Carlos hasn’t lifted his eyes from the ground, his hands trembling slightly as he gripped the doorknob heavily.

For a moment, TK takes in his appearance.

It was like seeing a shadow.

TK waits until Carlos finally manages to step through the doorway, barely reacting to the sound the door makes as it shuts behind him. He stares down at where both pairs of their shoes would sit neatly, and TK can see something flashing through his eyes when it was clear that only one pair would be sitting there now.

“Hi, sweetheart.” TK whispers, even though it doesn’t matter. Carlos kicks his shoes off, not bothering to line them up like he usually does and passes by him without a glance. He hates how it’s suddenly harder to breathe, the pressure in his chest building up and making his breath catch.

“I waited for you, you know?” TK says gently, trailing behind Carlos smoothly, stopping beside him at the kitchen counter where he’s staring at the half-drank coffee mug. “They wouldn’t let me go anywhere else, but that was okay. It means I get to see you come home one last time.” TK smiles, looking down at where Carlos’ hands were resting on the counter, gripping the material tightly and placed his hands down next to his, as close as he could.

His hands twitch, itching to get closer, but TK doesn’t let them.

He doesn’t want to feel the pain that will grip him when he sees that they’ll just pass right through him.

Carlos doesn’t move for a long time, still staring at the mug, but TK can’t take his eyes off him, longing to kiss away the frown marring his expression.

“I feel like I’ve missed out on staring at those pictures we have lined up at the entranceway,” TK chuckles, mimicking leaning against the counter to face his husband properly. “You always say you never know what to do with your hands in front of a camera, and complain that you look awkward and misplaced, but you’re always the first one I see.”

Carlos doesn’t react, doesn’t so much as twitch. TK takes in a few deep breaths, trying to calm the pounding in his chest. His heart had stopped permanently a few days ago, so he wondered what exactly it was that made him feel like his heart was breaking all over again.

“I know that you didn’t want to come home,” TK stays still as Carlos moves for the first time in what feels like eons, but may have just been a couple of minutes. “And that’s okay. You never have to hold back what you feel, Carlos. Our friends, our family are all here for you – they all love you so much.” Carlos has reached the other end of the counter, and they were facing each other. He still hasn’t lifted his gaze, but TK can still see his hands shaking as he moves to grasp the mug.

“I love you.”

As if on cue, Carlos’ grip on the mug slackens, and the object falls onto the floor with a resounding smash. TK immediately steps in between the mess and his husband, knowing that Carlos would instantly want to clean it up.

He forgets in that millisecond, and closes his eyes when Carlos just walks through him, every inch of his body wanting to chase that familiar warmth.

He’s crouched next to the broken pieces, his eyes a hollow abyss as he moves to pick up the first piece before flinching back. There’s a quiet hiss of pain, and TK sees his husband clutching one hand in the other, a finger jutting out unnaturally.

“Babe, you’ve got to be more careful,” TK murmurs, crouching down next to Carlos as he stares at the blood slowly seeping through the cut on his finger, the mug a scattered mess beneath their feet. “Remember the dustpan we keep near the leftmost cupboard? Because of how often I drop things? Please use that next time.”

A quiet giggle suddenly bursts out of his lips when he suddenly remembers something, and he stops himself from nudging the shoulder next to him so he doesn’t fall over. “Though, you hardly ever drop things, so that dustpan will be collecting dust I guess, huh?” TK grins at his terrible joke, but Carlos doesn’t smile.

And just like that, his own smile dims.

His chest tightens at the sight of his husband staring at the kitchen floor with a vacant look in his eyes, as if staring at the broken pieces of ceramic hard enough would mend the mug back together. The blood is still trickling steadily down the length of his finger, a few drops landing on the floor.

“You need to rinse the wound with cold water. Then clean it,” TK coaxes gently, but Carlos doesn’t move. “Come on, baby. Our first aid kit isn’t that far away.” He wonders if Carlos can sense his urgency, because he jumps back slightly on instinct when he abruptly stands up, stepping over the mess and towards the kitchen sink. He watches as Carlos lets his finger rest underneath cold running water for a while, letting out an affirmative nod when he finally shuts off the water, walking over to the cabinets inside the bathroom.

“Man, I think the last time we used the first aid kit on you was years ago,” TK mused, leaning casually against the bathroom wall, admiring his husband’s profile as he pushes aside miscellaneous things to take out the first aid kit. “You were always so– what is it?”

TK straightens when Carlos’ entire frame freezes, his hands holding the kit in a vice-grip. He steps forward, frowning when he sees Carlos just staring down at it, the first hints of emotion flickering across his face.

“What’s wrong–”

His eyes land on where Carlos was looking, and feels something roaring in his ears.

Suddenly, there’s not enough air to breathe, and his skin stings like salt water being poured over invisible scars.

There’s a lump growing in his throat, and he has to actively force himself to push it down the longer they stand there, stock still.

Because on top of the first aid kit is a harmless green sticky note. Something he had written a lifetime ago and pushed to the recesses of his mind, thinking it was just an innocent act.

If you’re using this, that means you hurt yourself. Which means getting treated personally by yours truly. Don’t even try to talk your way out of it. I love you babe, but no amount of kisses will distract me.

P.S. I know exactly what’s in here. If there’s even a single piece of tissue missing, consequences will occur

There’s even a poorly drawn face with its tongue sticking out at the end along with a heart, and TK suddenly wants to go back in time to when he decided to write it at all. A day like any other, basking in the excitement of being newlyweds, a minor kitchen accident, his laughter ringing around them as he grabbed a sticky note and pen, scribbling down something hastily and sticking it on the kit before joining his husband.

He takes in a wobbly breath, and through blurry eyes he sees Carlos running his fingers reverently along the words, tracing every single letter, leaving none behind. His fingertips stop on the ‘I love you’ and the heart, and before his fingers finish tracing it, TK hears a sound that has his soul snap in two.

Unrelenting sobs fill the air around them, and he blinks against the tears in his eyes as he watches Carlos slowly slinking down onto the bathroom tiles, clutching the first aid kit towards his chest. His shoulders are shaking violently, both arms wrapped protectively around the kit, which gives him a clear view of his husband’s tears running down his cheeks without abandon.

He slowly sinks down beside him, leaning against the sink base cabinet, feeling the faintest outline of warmth from where their arms brushed against each other. He leans his head down, mere millimeters away from Carlos and closes his eyes as he quietly listens to his husband’s cries.

“I miss you too,” TK whispers, smiling against the silent tears that had slipped down his cheeks as he reaches forward with a hand hovering over the sticky note, right next to where one of Carlos’ was. “And I love you. So much.”

He wonders if Carlos knew that right now, he would have given anything just to say those words to him one last time out loud. To hold him in his arms, murmuring sweet nothings. To feel the way Carlos would clutch at him, holding each other so close until they felt each other’s heartbeats, sharing each other’s warmth.

He would give anything, just to have five seconds more with the love of his life.

“I know you wouldn’t want me to be, but I’m sorry,” TK murmurs, licking his lips and not tasting the usual saltiness of his tears that he didn’t bother to wipe away. The tears that disappeared into oblivion anyway, from his lack of corporeal form. “I’m sorry you have to go through this so soon. I’m sorry for fighting my hardest and it still not being enough.”

Carlos’ cries had quieted slightly, but there were still sniffles and occasional quiet coughs, and TK stares at the dried tear stains on his cheeks, wanting nothing more than to wipe them away, leaving soft kisses in their wake.

“I love you with everything that I am, Carlos Strand-Reyes, and I hope you won’t ever forget that,” TK says steadily, feeling what was left of his body aching with the overflowing love he had for the man sitting in front of him. He lifts his only free hand to brush a stray curl away from Carlos’ eyes, but closes his eyes sadly as his hand slips through.

He sits back, placing both hands right beside where Carlos’ own rested, looking up at him reverently.

“We’ll see each other again. Hopefully not until the far future but when we do,” TK is sure the smile he’s currently donning is one of Carlos’ favourites, his eyes crinkling tenderly at the sides. Leaning forward, he presses one last lingering kiss to his husband’s temple.

His body is slowly fading away, a weird tingly sensation filling him as he drifts away into the light.

The last thing he sees is Carlos cradling the sticky note in the palms of his hands carefully, the faintest of smiles painting across his lips.

“I’ll hold you in my arms again.”

#Tarlos #Tarlos fic #warning: major character death #911lsangstweek

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dansedan · 3 years

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I had a real shit time of things and listened to a lot of old mountain goats and then proceeded to draft an overly-ambitious multi year plotline for buddy cops wherein I just skipped to the end and wrote it because I wanted to write a bitterweet/romantic/repressed/familial car ride because that’s what old Mountain Goats makes me wanna do!!! So. Halia and Conolly driving home from the hospital two years and over 1500km after their first meeting in that hotel room. Under the cut.

They were going 50 on a hillside highway, and Halia was a surprisingly bad driver. Unsure, stressed out- he was clenching his jaw and his shoulders something awful, like that car was no machine and instead some feral animal he had to handle like a rowdy stallion, with a sure and even hand. If the car had been an animal, it might’ve smelt his fear- Jay practically could.

The view outside was bright and muted, the sopped-up greens of the far-from-finest North Dakota flora and the mid-autumn sky in the afternoon. Hazy, warm-hot-chilly wind blowing outside the heated leather of the car. Halia was unsurprisingly bad at handling the winter, even after years in the Midwest. Made for finer weather, that hidden expanse of real, living skin he so loved the fleeting glimpses of- dark, sure. He felt like he could reach over the console and kiss the tension out of the thin knuckles of his hands- supposed he was still mostly delirious from the medicine and the long, long sleep, and even in a more normal circumstance he would’ve been just as impolite about the staring.

“-did it feel? Did you hear anything, or something-- Jay?”

Distracted, he’d missed most of his question. But he caught the tone- soft, hoarse, uncomfortable. Jay supposed this was just about status quo with him, maybe even more so now.

“sorry, what’d you say?”

Halia didn’t look away from the road (the empty road, not even half-deserving of that title, almost a mud-paved streak of hilly land) but his eyes creased in forbidding concern. The edges of them were dark, sunken in somehow. There was a dark bruise on the underside of his jaw, too, under the thin layer of un-styled stubble.

“are you feeling drowsy? Try to keep awake, the doctor said-“

“no, no,” he reassured him. “was just distracted.”

The concern didn’t leave his face. Neither did the bruise- half-brown by now, almost a scar.

“I was asking what it felt like. The coma.”

Halia said he had a terrible bedside manner. Jay always thought it suited him just fine like this.

“like a real bad sleep, doctor. Like a real bad, sticky sleep with crappy noises.”

“So you could hear at times?”

He paused to contemplate it. The whole experience was difficult to recall, right now, maybe everything was.

“not anything exciting. Just grating noises and no meaning,” he smiled a little, tired, optimistic. “certainly no ‘Jacques, I love you please wake up, oh please do’ “

Halia didn’t grace him with an answer to that. “did it feel like a long time?” it was alright though. That had been what he’d expected- a bit less tooth-gritting from the poor kid, a small assurance he was well enough to joke about it.

“not really. Did It for you?”

Heaven help us—that strained expression of his right back on his face, not new but unfamiliar. Two years of deaths and somehow this sleep was what brought the grief out.

“very,” he said, even softer. “For a lot of reasons, very.”

“long enough that Ernst can’t possibly want to kill me anymore about it?”

And Halia breathes out and that’s close enough to almost a laugh from him. He can breathe again- fifty years of misery and somehow these scowls are what bring the reconciliation out.

“no, he absolutely fucking wants to kill you—why else would we be on a drive right now?”

“ah, so it’s a getaway? You’re gonna whisk me off to some tax haven under a secret identity, doc? Cause I want a say in just where we’re eloping.”

“Of course. How about Indonesia?”

“…they do tax haven-ing down there?”

“god if I know.”

“I thought you had a doctorate, Halia, what the hell do you mean you don’t know?”

“I have an MD, not a PhD. Didn’t you study history?”

“American history, Halia. Union army shit.”

“so no Indonesian tax havens, huh,” he whistles lightly. His knuckles are looser now, rolled like claws on the steering wheel. “Suppose we’ll just have to go get the groceries instead.”

Even smiling, even joking, their voices stay down, soft. They were alone for miles and almost whispering, like kids. Like they were sneaking off with something holy under the junkheap cover of the tin-can car making its shivery way through the alders.

Even the silence, now, was just a touch sparkling. Overheated, cramped into a crappy car and half-high on some cocktail of painkillers and five months’ sobriety, somehow he still felt something glowing from his gut about this, about a road in some nowhere state and the kid deadpanning next to him, no-one’s lives or murders resting in his hands for the first time in three decades.

“what’s the first thing you thought about,” not a question- hardly a statement. Nervy and too-quick and quiet. “when you woke up, I mean.”

I’d wanted to kiss you-

I’d wanted to die- I thought I had, somehow-

I didn’t think of anything-

It was so bright, loud too, white walls and-

Schaffer, if he’d made it, if he hated me- if he’d tried to-

About my daughter, in a plot in Tallahassee under a gravestone with one year on it alone, I never told you of her-

What the weather might’ve been the last few days, the guys at the logging company, my new job-

New like your wrinkles, when I saw them, new like nameless flowers undiscovered- god I wanted- god- god help us- maybe I should’ve stayed an altar boy, a priest-

“I thought about the herons.”

Halia barely nodded. He wanted to hear this- he would hear this for him.

“Down in Texas, Tiger-herons, when I was a kid,” he’s breathing too hard. He almost doesn’t feel sober- he hasn’t lied in months, maybe a year, he’s always hated lying. “god, I mean, they’re beautiful- they are, they’ve got these giant wingspans, gray and striped and almost garish, for a sea bird- but they’re classified as, vagrants, right? Vagrants- animals- are like, hmm, when they appear real far away from where they’re s’possed to be, you know?” he’s skipping into the accent now, god he is bad at this. “they’re actually from Mexico, but they get everywhere- they get all over the place in America. Not just America like, well here but like, y’know—America.” He could almost not hear over the beating of his heart right now. He couldn’t look at Halia. He couldn’t decide if he feared or desired the heart attack he thought was coming on with it. He didn’t stop. “I was wondering- when I woke up I was thinking if they’ve ever been in North Dakota. If I’d ever see one again, living here, at some point, you know? After moving. I never saw one in Missouri, but Dakota… Before- Before dying in Dakota I could…”

Halia’s hand was on his. It was shaking- he was still trying to drive with his left hand, he was still looking forward, too scared not to look forward, too scared to stop- but his hand was on top of his. Warm brown on creased, pallid white, thrown over each other, warm and wet and trembling.

He doesn’t dare to hold it, but he prays. He prays a thank you, prays a silent thank you. To the vagrant Herons in the mountains and the U-Haul company and crystal meth and the State Traffic Accident Reporting System and his useless degree and his taste for smooth jazz in his second year of college for getting him to this moment. To Halia, for almost letting him kill himself in the line of action, and to Ernst for letting him give it a second try as a civilian once that plan fell through, and to both of them making him live long enough to regret it. To the smell of fear and the taste of lies and Indonesia, whether or not it was a tax haven.

And to the winter sun two years ago, for such an accurate prognosis. To heaven, from its worst creation and its favorite child.

Amen, Amen, and thank you.

#my writing #buddy cop dramedy bullshit

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nothlits-archive · 4 years

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just putting this here because i have few followers and would rather talk into the void and delete later if necessary than try to condense my feelings into a tweet thread and perhaps be berated for it.

this year has been so bad and it’s only the beginning of march, to the point i made myself physically ill from stress for a while and now am actively dealing with the symptoms of depression that i usually don’t have. i’ve had problems disorder for so long that being depressed is just how i operate but now i’m actively upset a lot of the time about a lot of things, or about a few specific things, and it’s making it difficult for me to function and do daily tasks that i have no choice in doing.

despite telling management i only wanted 30 hours a week i now work 38-41 hours a week doing physical labor while dealing with chronic pain on top of the new depression. i can’t cut my hours now because i swear if i don’t get out of this house by the end of summer i will not survive, so i have to make as much money as possible to be able to move my bf here from florida and get an apartment.

and trauma is influencing my thoughts on whether this is even an ethical thing to do considering people i trusted also moved me from texas to florida under the guise of wanting to help me have a better life and then proceeded to traumatize me severely. and i feel like somehow this is all karmic retribution and punishment of some sort and i’m doomed to repeat what they did to me. all of this despite knowing i love and care about my bf and would never want to do to someone what those people did to me under any circumstances.

my relationship of two years that i felt secure in fell apart as i was forced to realize my then partner is completely delusional and impossible to talk to anymore, which is not their fault, they just need much much more help than i am capable of giving them and the mental load on me was becoming too much. but instead of parting amicably, i got dragged through the mud as they made it messy, involved my friends (some of which i do not talk to about personal life), said cruel things to me and to my bf, and attempted to villainize me and blame me for feeling hurt by this entire situation. we broke up in late january and i haven’t processed all of my feelings yet and don’t even know how to begin to. every day, it feels like it comes at me full force again. i don’t even know how to be their friend anymore or talk to them because i’ve had my feelings so disrespected and i’m now fearful in all relationships for now. being told by someone you love that you could never be enough for them is a hard thing to deal with and i feel like i’m dealing alone.

i feel alone all the time in general. i don’t have a good relationship with my family besides my mom and younger sibling, who live six hours away. i don’t have a home environment i would describe as safe and i’m frequently threatened or otherwise made to feel worthless by people i live with, but i have nowhere else to go because i can’t afford an apartment alone making 10.20 an hour besides being unable to live alone because of being autistic and traumatized. i do everything for myself by myself for the most part. i get treated like i’m lazy and never do anything. i bend over backwards for people constantly in every aspect of my life and i cannot stop or i will feel selfish and worthless and things will fall apart. i feel like if i’m not doing something, i have no value. and i have little value as it stands.

i don’t feel like people respect me, especially online. i feel like an easy target to be misunderstood or made into the bad guy because i don’t know how to talk to people or i can’t be vulnerable enough for people to relate to me or feel any sympathy for me. in group settings i feel outcast and people either put me on a pedestal or see me as cruel for reasons outside my control. i am just a person with feelings who is struggling at any given moment to stay alive and i wish people understood that rather than expecting the impossible from me, or deciding to treat me like i can’t comprehend suffering.

i know i’m isolating myself from my friends and from socializing in general so i can’t even be upset that i feel alone really, but i also wish that others would care for me and take care of me instead of always having to be the person giving until i can’t anymore. it feels selfish to want that and i know it isn’t even a possibility given my situation, but it’s still something i desire theoretically and something i don’t think i’ve ever had. especially in the aftermath of this breakup, it feels impossible to do enough for anyone and i keep catching myself going out of my way to be the person giving support in whatever way possible and i am emotionally exhausting myself but i don’t know how to just stop and let things be. because now i’m being conditioned to believe that the things i do for others are being tallied up and if i don’t meet some threshold unknown to me, i might as well have done nothing. people in my life can easily see me as worthless and still let me keep trying to be something they know i can never be. even people i think love me and see me as genuinely worth having around, because that just happened to me after 2 years of being led on.

reflecting in general on this past relationship, i am realizing so many things that just absolutely destroy me emotionally, and it feels like there’s no catharsis in this. there’s no way to make things feel better again besides waiting things out and feeling what comes to me, but it’s too painful to deal with. i think about dying a lot, but know i couldn’t handle the aftermath in the event of (another) failure.

i have lost my ability to write or draw, which were my two main methods of expression and entertainment. so now i sit by myself every day when i’m not at work and i do nothing, because there isn’t anything that really matters to me and i can’t find the energy or will to put attention into something that might help me. so i just do nothing. i just exist in complete silence. i go weeks without buying groceries or cooking now. sometimes i remember to take my meds (none of which are for mental health). i tried to read a book and read less than 100 pages in three weeks and had to return it to the library. sometimes i open comfort content and look at it for a minute and put it away again because i can��t play/read/watch/consume it comfortably, ironically.

everything is bad. i want to feel like something is good again, but i can’t. i’ve suffered for 3 months straight. my ex broke my heart. i have to get extensive dental surgery that i could be using the money for to move and will take my entire tax return. i feel like my friends and partner hate me because now i have to be afraid lest i be betrayed again in such a huge way. i have no outlet. i have no idea how to process my feelings.

#if the cut doesn't work i'm sorry but otherwise i don't apologize for any of this

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allyourprettywords · 4 years

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“Floaters,” Martín Espada

Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry, like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river, like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float. And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body, to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.

And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles, names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints: Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos. See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves.

Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven, sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos, Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river.

Now their names rise off her tongue: Say Óscar y Valeria. He swam from Matamoros across to Brownsville, the girl slung around his neck, stood her in the weeds on the Texas side of the river, swore to return with her mother in hand, turning his back as fathers do who later say: I turned around and she was gone. In the time it takes for a bird to hop from branch to branch, Valeria jumped in the river after her father. Maybe he called out her name as he swept her up from the river; maybe the river drowned out his voice as the water swept them away. Tania called out the names of the saints, but the saints drowsed in the stupor of birds in the dark, their cages covered with blankets. The men on patrol would never hear their pleas for asylum, watching for floaters, hearts pumping coffee all night on the Texas side of the river.

No one, they say, had ever seen floaters so clean: Óscar’s black shirt yanked up to the armpits, Valeria’s arm slung around her father’s neck even after the light left her eyes, both face down in the weeds, back on the Mexican side of the river. Another edited photo: See how her head disappears in his shirt, the waterlogged diaper bunched in her pants, the blue of the blue cans. The radio warned us about the crisis actors we see at one school shooting after another; the man called Óscar will breathe, sit up, speak, tug the black shirt over his head, shower off the mud and shake hands with the photographer.

Yet, the floaters did not float down the Río Grande like Olympians showing off the backstroke, nor did their souls float up to Dallas, land of rumored jobs and a president shot in the head as he waved from his motorcade. No bubbles rose from their breath in the mud, light as the iridescent circles of soap that would fascinate a two-year-old.

And the dead still have names, names that sing in praise of the saints, names that flower in blossoms of white, a cortege of names dressed all in black, trailing the coffins to the cemetery. Carve their names in headlines and gravestones they would never know in the kitchens of this cacophonous world. Enter their names in the book of names. Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos. Bury them in a corner of the cemetery named for the sainted archbishop of the poor, shot in the heart saying mass, bullets bought by the taxes I paid when I worked as a bouncer and fractured my hand forty years ago, and bumper stickers read: El Salvador Is Spanish for Vietnam.

When the last bubble of breath escapes the body, may the men who speak of floaters, who have never seen floaters this clean, float through the clouds to the heavens, where they paddle the air as they wait for the saint who flips through the keys on his ring like a drowsy janitor, till he fingers the key that turns the lock and shuts the gate on their babble-tongued faces, and they plunge back to earth, a shower of hailstones pelting the river, the Mexican side of the river.

#Martin Espada #Dante Di Stefano #poem #poetry #injustice

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commonsensewizard · 6 years

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Make No Mistake: Bill Maher is Anti-American

I just finished watching Bill Maher talking about how power begets power, lamenting the Bret Kavanaugh soon to be confirmation to the Supreme Court and how my great state of Texas gerrymanders so ‘citizens’ don’t have the right to vote. The latter is so laughable it doesn’t merit a response. What does merit a response is Maher believes the Electoral College mars presidential elections, since Gore and Clinton both received more popular votes. He believes every state having two senators, regardless of population, is wrong. He cries over the Democrats being out of power, when only two years ago they had just finished holding the White House for eight years! For the first two years of Obama’s presidency, they held the House and the Senate! I have to admit that Maher, at times, is funny. In this video, he claims the population of Maine is Stephen King, two lobsters and a bear. That was funny. What isn’t funny is the platform he has, and uses, to belittle our country and then to hear the raucous applause and cheers for the trash that spills out from his pie-hole.

Maher bemoans the fact that power begets power, and that Kavanaugh will be confirmed to be a justice on the Supreme Court. He blames conservatives, Republicans, the Republican Party, gerrymandering, the lowly red states between California and New York, and all other things he considers evil. What Maher fails to mention is that Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed because of a Democratic senator from Nevada named Harry Reid. It was Reid who changed the rules so Obama could get his own justice on the court. Instead of requiring 60 votes in the senate to confirm a justice, Reid made it where only a simple majority vote could do it. McConnell told him then he would live to regret it. And now, he has. It was one of your Democrats, Mr. Maher, who made this possible. Why don’t you drag HIM through the mud that you live in and place the blame where it belongs? But, you can’t do that, can you? That wouldn’t play into your disgusting narrative of wishing to destroy the very principles this country was founded upon.

The reason what comes out his mouth is trash is that what he wants, as well as all other liberals and socialists in this country, is a true democracy. They want ‘mob’ rule. This goes against every concept of government the founding fathers set up. We do not live in a democracy, and everyone...liberals, conservatives...everyone, should be glad we do not. The founding fathers set up a republic, where the few would not be stampeded and crushed by the many. They set up a government that was meant to protect the minority, giving the same power of representation to everyone, especially in the senate. I am grateful to the founders that Rhode Island has as much say in the senate chamber as New York, California or Texas. I am grateful that the coastal behemoth states can’t run roughshod over Delaware or Wyoming. If Maher and his minions have their way, California and New York would run this country and everyone else be damned. Maher even went so far as to verbally belittle Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and as mentioned earlier, Maine. As if the people in these states, no matter how sparsely populated, should never have an equal say or matter at all. No, let the majority rule! Let the mob run rampant over the rest of us. That is Maher’s mantra, and it flies in the face of the representative government set up by the Constitution of the United States. Maher, and everyone who thinks like him...which includes Hillary Clinton as she has suggested the Electoral College should be expunged from our process...are anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-Bill of Rights, and simply anti-republic. When the mob rules, you eventually get a dictatorship of the many over the few who are permanently disenfranchised. Maher and those like him refer to everyone between California and New York as the ‘fly over’ states, as if not only we don’t matter, but we shouldn’t matter. Maher went so far as to suggest in the video that nobody cares what people in a coffee shop in Iowa think. I do. I care a lot about what they think. For when we stop caring about what our citizens think, from the fewest and the smallest, we find our condition where we are now. A fractured, divided, screaming nation of factions that are acting like three year old children who want what they want and they want it now. Bill Maher lives in a Hollywood bubble of elitists who have no idea how this government was set up and why it was set up like it was. He talks about the Republicans cheating but never mentions all the shenanigans pulled by the DNC and the Hillary campaign to skewer Bernie Sanders and derail Donald Trump. She and her peeps pulled every dirty trick under the sun...had the DOJ and the FBI helping her...had Fusion GPS and a poorly trained ex-British spy create false material...had Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman Schultz pulling every cheap trick they could...and she STILL lost to us nothing ‘fly over’ states.

Maher is a cheap trick himself, and a trickster extraordinaire, who has no clue...none...about what a republic is and why it is so beneficial not only to him, but for every American. He touts California, while its cities sink in a veritable cesspool of its own liberal policies’ making. He holds up California as some kind of holy example, when its cities are filing for bankruptcy, Los Angeles can’t be seen for the smog, and its deficits and tax increases are driving people out of the state by the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps Maher should walk the streets of San Francisco and count how many piles of human feces he steps in within a block of where hundreds of homeless live. Maher should be taken for what he is. A ‘kind of’ comedian who sometimes gets a joke right. Other than that, he should be exposed for what he is. He is an enemy of our republic, who wants the mob to rule over all others. He should be careful. Mobs tend to get out of control. The winds of their discontent change like the weather. And if he gets his way, the mob might just turn on him, and rend him to shreds.

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allakinwande · 5 years

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Pat A. Robinson

CHASING DEMOCRACY:

The attack on the American voter.

BY: JB Hanna

_______________________________________________

"Now many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo-goo syndrome.' Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

-Paul Weyrich 1968

TARRANT COUNTY TX.

In 1827, Edward E. Tarrant had established himself as a wealthy man, probably the wealthiest in all of Red River County. A veteran of the war of 1812, now a sheriff, he left his mark in Tarrant County Texas, the namesake of the former officer of the “fourth brigade.”

On September 29, 1843, Tarrant along with Texas state attorney general George Whitfield would draft The “Bird’s Fort Treaty.” Which surreptitiously states in Article XXIV, that; “The government of Texas has the right of working all mines that have been discovered or will be discovered on the territory of the Indians.”

Just as surreptitiously as the terms of Crystal Mason’s signed affidavit that stated she was not eligible to vote as a convicted felon, some hundred and seventy five years later in that same Tarrant County. Mason was on community service on November 8, 2016 for a her 2012 conviction on tax fraud. Only voting after the urging of her mother, Ms. Mason was sentenced to five years in prison on voter fraud charges, for a provisional ballet vote that was never counted.

Crystal Mason’s unfortunate miscarriage of justice is the oddity, not the model. The model being the strategy adopted by many incumbents on the right, while the left has historically supported voter registration initiatives, conservatives (since the voting rights act of 2013) have practiced down presser tactics with almost surgical precision. From good ol fashioned jerrymandring to voter caging and voter roll purges.

Stories like that of Crystal Mason, no matter how rare, are aggressively publicized and spun in efforts to paint a fanciful portrait of voter fraud gone wild. These trumped up horrors however, have never been substantiated.

Max Faulkner/Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Getty Images.

During the presidential campaign of 2016,

Vice President nominee, Mike Pence came under scrutiny from voter rights advocates when Indiana State police raided the voter registration office of Patriot Majority USA, in October of 2016. Indiana progressives called conspiracy on the would be VIce president.

The nonprofit Patriot Majority, had registered over 45,000 voters, mostly African American. Just one week from the voter registration deadline and 5,000 voters short of their 50,000 target at the time of the raid. Founded in 2005, PM was accused of registering voters twice, in addition to applications that had missing or unverified zip codes and addresses. This is often a problem with grassroots voter registration initiatives staffed by everyday citizens, the lack of experience, training, and in many cases, after work hours by constituents looking to supplement their income, have always bore such inconsistencies. Though well meaning, these efforts give way to questionable voter registration applications, that ones opponent will rightfully pounce.

When you open Patriot Majority’s web sight, the home page is striking. Waves of red and white stripes, the famous Washington crossing the Delaware painting emblazoned on the header. With the current political climate, rife with its suede patriotism and the far lefts deepening dive into a socialist creed, one might expect Patriot Majorities home page to spawn links to diatribes of pro gun advocacy and states rights. But PM claims to be a bipartisan movement. While it seems that the issue is the shotty work of some canvassers, Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP have filed a federal lawsuit against Marion County of Indian after the raid on charges of voter suppression by closing early voting in a sector with over 700,000 registered voters. Former Indiana governor mike Pence, now ironically, head of the Elections Integrity Commission, boasts “What is historic here is that our president-elect won 30 to 50 states. He won more counties than any candidate on our side.

The Georgia State showdown

Georgia’s Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams finds herself in a historical yet tight race in Georgia’s gubernatorial midterms. The Gulfport native faces off against opponent Brian kemp, the self proclaimed “politically incorrect conservative.” The cautionary view in mid August was that Kemp could have a strong surge in the last two months leading to the peach state showdown, much like Nathan Deal in 2014. But as of reporting, the race is still in a dead heat. Kemp has been mocked for his ads that some on the left liken to a Dave Chapelle or SNL skit. But while democrats laugh, Brian Kemp is practicing more “politics as usual” than his campaign readaric may assert. Kemp’s influence on voter registration as Secretary of State should be no laughing matter to democrats.

The heat was on as the summer closed out in Randolph County Georgia, a sort of patient zero for the National attention to suspected voter suppression. The Georgia county quickly beat back a move to close seven of nine polling places in the historically black canton. But the victory, while sweet, is little to stop the suppression of voters in the rest of the state. Like Tarrant in Texas, Randolph county is named after another slave owning statesman, Ol’ John Randolph of Roanoke. A career politician who also served as prosecutor of the associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Samuel Chase on charges of impeachment. Chase would later be acquitted by the senate. Roanoke famously stated,

“The most delicious of all privileges, spending other people’s money.” Might be proud of his states insidious politico operandi.

Several groups, including the Georgia Democratic Party, Common Cause and the NAACP, have called on Kemp to step down from his position as secretary of state while he runs for Governor.

Greg Palast, the New York based investigative journalist and author of the compelling

The best democracy money can buy, has been hunting down Kemp and also, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for the past several months. Armed with a Federal subpoena accusing Kobach of purging hundreds of thousands of Kansans from the voting rolls. Like his counterpart in Georgia, as Secretary of State, Kobach has oversight of the states voter rolls and similar to Brian Kemp of Georgia, Kobach has also successfully closed polling stations in low income counties as well.

As Carol Anderson of the New York Times put it, “Brian Kemp is a master of voter suppression.” For example, Kemp made a statement in 2014 regarding another lawsuit his office faced regarding over 40 thousand names of voters disappearing from the Georgia voting rolls. The Secretary of State emphasized that “The lawsuit filed by 3rd sector development, is frivolous and totally without merit. The claim that there are over forty thousand unprocessed voter registration applications, are false.” Kemp went on to contravene with the 6,525 voter applications his office found had issues of no longer being with us, had no valid date of birth, where convicted felons or provided no county or address. ( some states report day of birth instead of DOB, which substantially increases the chance of two records being reported for the same person.)

Kemp also provided a Potboiler about an application filled out by, Johnny B Cool, who’s city was listed as, Yo’ Town. While this smacks of incompetence of the registrating body or the voting applicant themselves, it seems a stretch to think that a political scenic, who would name themselves Johnny B Cool who Haile’s from Yo town would be a tactical move that any well minded voter fraud conspirator would employ. But the great voter fraud conspiracy rolls on. Kemp, by the way,

Was found to be guilty of voter suppression in 2014.

GETTY IMAGES

LOCKED AND LOADED

Prior to Shelby v Holder, (2013) Texas, along with the several other Jim Crow states had coordinated a preemptive lockout of minority, elderly and millennial prospective votes in anticipation of provisions 4 & 5 of the voting rights act being overturned. The first domino to fall was that unsuspecting, overlooked little Diddy called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, or the MUD case. The stories of out of town voters using the address of a local motel to vote illegally, harassment of MUD’s minority community and a strange cloud of mystery preceding the Shelby v. Holder decision, stains the “Municipal Utility District,” just north of Austin.

That was 2009, and four years later, Shelby county found it unconstitutional for the federal government to suppress their ability to molest the Hispanics, black, elderly and young voting populous. The Supreme Court would concede that, “voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that.” But the 5-4 decision of the highest court in the land would contradict their own logic by wiping away the voting rights act protection of historically disenfranchised constituents, specifically articles 4 and 5.

But back in Tarrant Texas, and many other counties in the Lone star state, there’s been a battle raging to oppress voter turnout since voting became public freewill. Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke are in the mezzo of a 12 round barn burner as the country tumbles towards it’s midterms like a radioactive meteor with no direction. Could it be, the land of steers could finally be done with Ted Cruz? Or is Beto’s hype just that? Progressive turnout or conservative suffragist subterfuge may answer these questions.

And yet, one of the few cases of actual voter fraud, ironically in that same state of Texas, is more doleful than relevant. Crystal Mason began her five year sentence for voter fraud in September. After being walked through the provisional ballet process by a state appointed election official, she still stands condemned by adjudication. Alison Grinter, of Mason’s legal team explained, “the federal government has stepped over the state and found Crystal guilty of violating the law.”

In august an 11 year old child hacked a Florida electronic ballet in this years DEFCON 26,

The annual hacking convention held this year in sandy Las Vegas. Emmett Brewer and 30 other kids ranging in age from 8 - 16 years old where all able to hack Florida’s faulty system. The national association of Secretaries of State responded to DEFCON with one of many proclamations in their

(Long comment regarding a proposed Exemption under 17 U.S. code 1201)

The senate stated to ES&S, the countries largest supplier of voting machines;

“Currently there are significant barriers that prevent states from working with independent, qualified, good faith researchers to conduct cyber security on election systems.”

Now it seams, after the midterms, ES&S May have to deal with not just the Senate but the people.

But the talk is done. Bluster deflated. Red and Blue candidates enter November 6th like combatants on the world stage. Like heavyweight champions with the future of democracy on the line. I’ll be watching the fight on November 6th just like Crystal Mason.

Hoping the country does right by its future.

#voter suppression #afrofuturism #stacey abrams #brian kemp #georgina #missouri #blackvotesmatter #gun control #democracy #donald trump #black woman #africa #african woman #black man #black journalists #black writers #me #my writting #my writing

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