#and then legging it across the country to get to a railway line | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

where-the-poppies-blow · 5 months

Text

Chapter Two

The folk from the nameless village had swarmed past Elaine to loot the outlaw's hideout, as she stood bruised, under the eaves of the bank, smoking her cigarette.

She had only interrupted them to collect the corpses, leaving the settlers to party with their recaptured food and drink.

Some had asked her to stay, calling upon her to join them in the revelry but the wary glances of most had warded her away.

She had laid them out on an old pallet as a pair of settlers took to the hatch on the Armoured Car with a hammer and chisel, she mounted up with a long tether tied to the horn of her saddle, disappearing into the night.

That was days ago, she had been eager to get her burden to an office where she could collect her cheque and be on her way to the next job.

Luckily she had managed to convince a canal barge captain to take them all, living, dead and equine to Saint Quentin.

The only snag seemingly, was the limp she had earned, the bandits had been caught without their guns for the most part, only Marcelle had thought to wear his holster to dinner.

That didn't prevent one of them from coming at her with a cavalry sabre, he swung in a high arc over his head.

Elaine had only stepped aside in time to avoid being split in half, the blow still caught her leg, the blade biting into her skirt and catching her pocket watch.

The blade had done no damage in itself yet the force had driven the metal of the timepiece into her leg.

She had wrapped it in bandages but faint red lines crept along her skin, radiating from the cut.

The wound had ached and panged, a gnawing feeling of worry had begun to drape itself over Elaine's mind and yet she soldiered on.

Her horse, a grey mare named Puddles, was not fond of boats and took much coercion by way of carrots to actually get on the ferry.

The country rolled past in all its vast ugliness, shattered towns and wreckage strewn battlefields stretched onwards to either horizon.

Elaine sat at the bow of the old boat, her newly acquired rifle lay across her lap, doing her best to ignore the gnaw of pain blossoming from her leg.

She chatted amicably in French with the owners as they both took long strokes with their paddles, he was portly and bald with a walrus moustache, she, a grey haired wisp of a woman with a wrinkled face that had done much smiling.

The day wore on peacefully, the silence only disturbed by the splash of the oar and an occasional duck.

Elaine kept an eye on the old derelict houses that overlooked the Canal, frontier ruffians were known to take up such high bastions to harass traders and travellers along the waterways.

She felt a jolt of unease bloom through her stomach when the brazen cry of a trumpet cut across the serene stillness of the afternoon.

Soon a great clattering came echoing along the rail bridge that cut across the canal from above.

Marie, the bargemans wife spat into the water and muttered a few choice words as a tremendous crowd of folk came clanking along the bridge, clad in rags and chains.

This mob pulled behind them a line of a half dozen railway cars filled with ore, along the rails.

Guards and drivers patrolled mounted about them with guns and whips in hand.

Elaine had a rush of emotions not dissimilar to her guide, her knuckles white as she clenched the wooden frame of the gun across her knees.

In her early days in the business, she had worked for unsavoury folk like the Queen of Zeebrugge and the Black Iron Captain of Koekelare.

Elaine had been a lean and hungry teenager then, fresh off the boat and desperate for work, but once they had started dealing in people, she had gone her own way.

Slaver Lords had cleared and repaired the rails in many places around the Scar, repurposing trains into mobile fortresses, auction-houses and factories where they sold minerals, produce, manufactured goods and people.

These Lords held the town of Cambrai and were known to send out bands of Raiders to steal folk into the night and fill their slave pens. These outlaws had a far reach, paid in booze and cigarettes, they often patrolled the rails to keep them in good repair and capture vulnerable wayfarers.

As the barge glided below the bridge they caught the last glimpse of the rear of the Slave Train.

An ornate passenger carriage rumbled on by, from where a group of well to do persons peered down in a combination of uppity curiosity and boredom.

The bounty hunter averted her eyes, the colour beginning to drain from her face as she shook in anger.

Elaine knew that she was outmatched, two dozen mounted mercenaries would be far more of a challenge than seven drunk bandits who had left their gun belts in another room.

She twisted her mouth in frustration, hearing the poor devils clank off into the distance made her heart heavy.

Martin the bargeman placed a meaty hand on her bony shoulder, raising his sleeve to reveal a branded serial number.

"They will get what's coming to them, they all do", he returned to his paddles after receiving a brief nod, Elaine sat quietly, thinking of the bored faces peering down in disgust, wondering if they had glared so disdainfully at the people they owned as they were worked to death.

She sat rather forlorn for the final leg of the journey, staring off into the mists that began to curl atop the water as the sun drifted ever lower toward the horizon.

Martin spoke only when Saint Quentin loomed into view further down the canal.

"Here we are", the old man looped a lash of rope about a wooden post with his large weathered hands as they drew in close to the settlement.

The warm glow of lamps bloomed among the houses on the canal side, folk had begun to close up for the evening, tucking away their clapboard signs and pressing coins into the palms of the boys who skittered about watering the hanging plants that adorned the awnings of store fronts.

Martin and Elaine began piling her cargo onto the wharf, "christ, don't they stink" he spluttered as he hauled a blanket wrapped corpse up out of the ferry.

As Elaine clambered up onto the rickety wooden platform a burst of pain shot through her leg, the wound from the bank made itself known with a wave of aches that were worse than before.

Marie gave her a look as she hissed with pain, Elaine waved her off with some half hearted assurances.

A young man sat at the end of the pier with his upper face wrapped in off-white linen bandages.

An old church lectern sat before him, functioning as his desk as he collected tariffs from the new arrivals.

He turned sightless head towards the sound of their approach, blonde curls waving in the wind.

A tidy gentleman who had disembarked a pole boat before them handed the man his anchorage fee, "bit young to have a war wound, ain't you son?", he asked.

He shook his head, "I wasn't born till 1914 sir, I got this…", he gestured at the bandages, "....from the iron harvest".

Martin and Marie clucked sadly behind Elaine, "poor boy" she heard the woman mutter. A man who set his plough in his field had to be very brave, four years of unexploded shells lay buried beneath the Scar, there must have been millions of them out there, this man was particularly unlucky however, he had struck a gas shell by the look of the marks that peaked from beneath the linen.

The gentleman before them in the queue clapped the lad on the shoulder before heading into town.

Elaine stepped forward next, holding Puddle's bridle, Martin behind her.

The blind man produced a card for them to fill out and collected their toll.

"Seven corpses?" He exclaimed after inquiring about their cargo, passing the note along to a scribe.

"I would very much like to hear this tale in its entirety, madam bounty hunter".

Elaine laughed, her stomach giving a nervous little flutter, the man was attractive despite the fact half his face was obscured by linen, he had a delicate prettiness to him that worried at her thoughts.

"Well perhaps you might need to take me out for dinner then" Elaine replied, a small blush creeping across her smiling face.

The blonde smiled up at her, "Perhaps I'll do just that, I'll be finished here in an hour, that should give you enough time to cash those in".

Martin nudged her playfully, wiggling his eyebrows as he passed Elaine to set about finding her a cart.

She shooed him before turning back towards the tollmaster, drawing her pocket watch only to be reminded by its cracked face that it was broken.

"It's four-thirty" Marie offered helpfully with a wink.

"I'll meet you back here at seven, I'm Elaine by the way" she winced, adjusting herself on her injured leg.

"Sam", the man extended a hand to shake, she felt a giddy rush as his soft palm slipped into her hand, feeling rather self conscious about her calluses.

"Seven it is", he gave her a small wave before addressing the next group of fresh arrivals.

When she turned back, Martin had already loaded the six bodies into a waiting cart, Marie stood next to him both wearing wide smiles, almost like proud parents.

Elaine batted away that thought, leading Puddles over, she hugged each of them in turn.

"Thank you so much, I could not have asked for better guides", Elaine gushed, digging in her pockets to pay them.

The pair smiled at each other knowingly.

"The pleasure was ours, my darling" Marie answered with a papery kiss on her cheek.

"Enjoy your date love", Martin scooped her up into a breathless hug, "and remember, you're welcome at our table anytime".

They both gave Puddles a friendly pat down before returning to their Barge, not before Elaine had to force them to accept their due.

"Have fun tonight", Martin called back with a cheeky smile as he disappeared from view.

The bounty hunter shook her head before mounting up, she called down to the cart driver, "I'm not going far, just to the courthouse", he nodded and set his mule off at a brisk trot.

#fiction #post apocalyptic #writeblr #writerscommunity #writing #ww1 #ww1 fiction

0 notes

olko71 · 7 months

Text

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on https://yaroreviews.info/2023/10/hs2-will-not-go-to-euston-without-private-funds

HS2 will not go to Euston without private funds

HS2 Ltd

By Michael Race & Katy Austin

Business reporter and Transport correspondent

The HS2 rail line will not be extended to London Euston unless enough private investment is secured for the project.

If cash is not put forward by private funds, the high-speed line will only run from Birmingham to Old Oak Common in the capital’s western suburbs.

This would mean passengers travelling to central London would have to change.

The government has said it is “getting a grip of plans” for Euston, adding there had been two “unaffordable designs” for a “gold-plated” station.

It has already cut the number of planned platforms for high-speed trains from 11 to six.

The BBC has been told the project at Euston would be dependent on private investment, with the government stating it would take on the “lessons of success stories” on other schemes such as the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station and King’s Cross station.

Old Oak Common will be the UK’s largest newly built railway station when opened, but there are concerns over the lack of options for onward journeys with government modelling suggests two-thirds of people would prefer to travel to or from Euston.

The Department for Transport (DfT) stated it wanted Euston station to “be open and running trains as soon as possible”, and that its “rescoped approach” would save £6.5bn.

A spokesperson said there was “already support and interest from the private sector”, adding that ministers had held discussions with key partners since the announcement.

“It is simply wrong to talk down the scale and benefits of this regeneration,” the spokesperson said.

Rage and relief over scrapped HS2 northern leg

Labour can not promise HS2 to Manchester – Starmer

What is HS2 and why scrap the Manchester link?

To “get the best possible value for the British taxpayer”, DfT officials said they would “ensure that funding is underpinned by contributions from those people and businesses its development supports” and by leveraging “private sector investment”.

But critics have attacked the change in stance, with railway consultant William Barter, whose recent clients include the government, calling the new plans “totally unambitious”.

As part of the now scaled-back proposals, a planned pedestrian tunnel linking Euston station with the nearby Euston Square tube station has also been scrapped.

Grimshaw Archtechts

Extending HS2 to Euston involves digging a 4.5-mile tunnel from Old Oak Common and building a new station at Euston next to the existing West Coast Main Line terminus.

Work had already started on Euston, but it was halted in March because costs had ballooned to £4.8bn, compared with an initial budget of £2.6bn.

A document issued by the DfT said the government would look to create a “transformed ‘Euston Quarter’ – potentially offering up to 10,000 homes” as part of its new plans for the station.

Georgia Gould, leader of Camden Council which is where the station is being built, said the “worst-case scenario of the station being abandoned in its current state had been avoided, warned pledges on affordable housing, jobs and investment locally must not be broken.

Mr Sunak said on Wednesday that a new development company, separate from HS2 Ltd, would manage the delivery of the Euston project, adding there “must be some accountability for the mistakes made, for the mismanagement of this project”.

The prime minister has pledged money saved as a result of the northern leg of HS2 being axed would be spent on alternative rail, road and bus schemes instead across the country.

But the government has already U-turned on one of those plans, which would have restored a mothballed railway line in the North East of England, within 24 hours of the announcement.

The Leamside rail line was originally set to be funded by the £36bn savings, but references to it were removed from the government’s website later on Wednesday.

Transport minister Richard Holden said the government had only committed to “looking into” the scheme.

A government spokesperson said £1.8bn was being provided to the North East to fund the transport projects that matter most to their communities – including funding for the Leamside line if they wanted.

More on this story

No new compensation for ‘pain’ caused by HS2

12 hours ago

What is HS2 and why scrap the Manchester link?

1 day ago

0 notes

insaneorange9 · 3 years

Text

Poetry Post aka FB is an asshole

Note: I have copyright over these poems. You’re free to reblog but do not repost without credit AND explicit permission. Any form of sharing without explicit permission apart from reblogging counts as copyright infringement and the offending party is liable to be sued for it.

Schizophrenia

I keep losing people like coins in my pockets.

They get stuck in washing machines, disappear into pavement cracks, and end up in vending machines.

The absence of their weight is a sharp reminder of what I had and what I don’t.

But sometimes sometimes I end up missing coins I didn’t have. I hallucinated their weight, their clinking, their sharp edges cutting into my skin. I don’t know when the sense of their loss hollowed me.

But I was so certain I had them. I swear they were right there. I was so...

Cartography

I could only foray into cartography, but even then, I have always failed. I can never find America, or draw the line of division between two torn-up countries. I cannot pick up a pen to sketch lines that demystify our existence, that bring us to the edge and push us beyond-- going, coming. There’s a blur where my memories are supposed to be.

Time passes and I am in the eye of the storm.

We seem to have slowed down. I have begun to sketch you tentatively, wanting you to become more than a mess of colours. I’m not very good at it. (But there are lines, there will be demystification.)

The comma’s missing.

Stay a while, though.

Ouroboros

I can't watch you lounging in your chair in only a vest and boxer shorts and not feel like this is it.

I am made of desire and it swallows me whole. It never ends.

Confession of an Outsider

Your crevices are choked with smoke, with empty cups of tea, with the constant, lingering smell of petrichor, sweat and dog.

I despise you for your classes full of shit, for your buds of drama scattered across the AV room, for materialising that godforsaken coffee machine right out of my memory, and for tempting me with the bad coffee I love; It is cheaper—it offends me.

As soon as I arrived at your doorstep, I knew I’d never belong to you.

I sat against the ledge, writing an answer on Hope, and felt like I could be one of your dysfunctional cells: I can’t—my home resides in my head; I'm dysfunctional differently.

I found love lurking on your rooftops, photographic metaphors for poetry I identify with— “...like two strangers after a long correspondence, finally meeting.” Bits of home-that-was found me here and left again, and for a while, I was grounded in the corners that were yours but changed, different.

I learned not to be afraid of dogs, I learned to make Vitruvian books, I learned to breathe without choking on the cigarettes I keep trying to quit. I never learned how to be yours.

That puzzle piece that never fit anywhere in the jigsaw is me, That mime on the stage is me, That alien taking the last UFO out of this world is me.

Es regent stark, Und ich werde dich vermissen.

Of Leaving

It's a story we've all heard: it's a story of leaving people and places and towels behind to find new people and glamorous places and fancier towels.

It's always been about opportunities for you— you reach out for them, and I don't reach out to you.

A Chennai Afternoon

On a hot, sunny afternoon, my brothers got lost at the Chennai railway station. The sweltering heat left me dazed—half in the bus, waiting for them to turn up, and half on the railway station, searching frantically for them. I know not how the hours passed and I don't remember anything except the station master's hazy dingy little office, where the twins sat on a table, swinging their legs, their mouths stretched in a lollipop-sticky grin.

Sometimes, I wonder if my parents lost them forever that day, that I'm the only one who can see them now.

The City

It is always so humid here, My body feels wrong Trapped in this godforsaken city Of concrete, of weed, of smoke Rising up in the sky from thousands Of unsuspecting killers.

Beg to report, sir, I don’t like it.

The sky is sometimes the blue of your eyes And within that moment Lies peace. But that moment is always blocked By telephone wires, By broken balconies, By civilisation. This will never be home.

Smoke and Rain

It is raining here And my lungs are dying for one cigarette Just one And the good hurt of missing you Has gone bone deep. It verges on the edge of being painful But nobody ever said I wasn't a masochist.

With the smoke of a cigarette Memories of you will rise in the air But I do not want to exorcise you

So I sit here and write this, Wanting you, wanting a smoke And having nothing.

Displacement

I am not where I am: I left myself in McDonald's last month, Sipping ill-advised coke While you scarfed down three Big Macs in less than fifteen minutes, And the constant whir of the coffee machine Kept reminding me that I had places to be. But when we got up to leave, I left myself in McDonald's With an absence of you.

The Autopsy Report

It's hard for us to swallow that life isn't what it is in the movies. We turn bitter as pills when people we love don't love us back and no amount of cough syrup consumed can make it better.

All the MRIs are useless because they can't tell why our bones feel so heavy and an open-heart surgery reveals that we have a heart but we can't feel it beating.

All this—all of us are drowning in translucent anodyne.

Title under Progress

"...I want so desperately to be finished with desire, the rushing wind, the still small voice." ~Boston, Aaron Smith

You're finished with desire And the desire finishes you. I seek to articulate loss of what I never had, never owned, of what was never mine to begin with.

I cannot own time, nor moments spent together. Seconds slip through my memory, fade away, until they finally disappear.

I want to be done with it: this all-consuming desire, before it is done with me-- before it finishes me.

But I am already burning.

What We Mean

What we mean Is not to be articulated Because words aren't enough To accommodate meaning. Not even the ship of poetry Can bring meaning home to you. Why, then, do we speak at all? Because being human means Being doomed to persevere futilely.

Poetry

Reading poetry is like Living a lifetime in a Few seconds till its over And it’s not going to come Back again and you go back To the start to feel how it Made you feel before you started Destroying yourself and Uncovering the uncomfortable Truths that someone taunts you with And sometimes its better not To know Better not to read about iron cords Setting you on fire Better not to take your pain away And numb you till all you can say is I know.

Exorcism

I have been trying to write this poem for 3 years; I no longer care to count the months and days. This uncaring has been hard-earned, And it still isn't perfect: You were there and then you weren't. There were moments of self-consolation and self-condemnation, There were months of Schrodinger's paradox, There were years of trying to chase your promises being you was almost as good as being with you Until I could stop myself from being defined by you. And it still isn't perfect. * In all the time we spent together, There was one moment where you cared for me: It is enough for me to let you go.

Retribution

"तो फिर बचा ही क्या है और बोलने को?"

Our words don't seem to move you; You're lost in your own maze of words, Turning the truth insidious enough To be the plot of a horror movie You rip apart Our sense of worth, which has always accommodated you, And our love, which is our hamartia, By misdirecting guilt, shame, and blame Our way Is paved with the barbs of your disbelief And your condescension of our desires But we will walk no more.

We have no words to give you. Take our silence at its face value. Fuck off.

Road Rage

I quit driving because of bad timing: I couldn’t brake fast enough. ‘Slow down,’ my dad would say, and I would stop abruptly instead. I do not have that gear.

When you said, ‘Let’s take it slow’, I was already at the altar, waiting for you.

Our car crashed before you could make it there.

Silences

I battle many monsters in my head, each a Hydra, Medusa. I can’t wrap my head around the heads to be beheaded without turning to stone.

Nietzsche lied. We have gazed into the abyss long enough. And she has never not even once gazed back.

17 notes · View notes

hallowed-be-thy-username · 4 years

Text

Hi! Can i just say that i absolutely love your writing and your vibe as a whole? 🥺💞 If i may, I’d like to request a fic where the reader is a very well known socialite, but she gets very bored of her life and wants something different. She suddenly meets J in some sort of situation and becomes infatuated with him & his lifestyle. You must be busy with other requests & your personal life, so if anything, i just want you to know that i love your writing! 💘

Sweet anon!!! AKADJSBAJSND 😭💖 I’m SO sorry this has taken me so long to get to and I hope you see it!! This was a really fun one and I had a great time writing it so I really hope you like it 💕

Self-insert, Ledger Joker x fem reader, first time meeting Joker

Word count: 1,954

Warnings: tension, light violence

Something Different

Another boring party with boring people in a boring place. How many more of these must you endure?

Ah the fabulous life of the daughter of Dr. Thomas Elliot, famous Gotham City surgeon and longtime family friend of the Wayne family. Being born to one of Gotham’s founding families, she lives a life of luxury. Chauffeurs, butlers, ritzy charity events, fashion shows, brand promos, intense boredom. You were certainly grateful for the fact that finances were never something you had to worry about, but at the same time, money imprisoned you. It controlled your every move like a puppet master. Stand like this, wear that, speak this way, don’t forget to smile. And don’t even think about having your own dreams. You had access to all of the means in the world to do whatever you want, right? Wrong. If it’ll tarnish the family reputation on any way, its not gonna happen. Ever. And you’d be surprised at what they consider “tarnishing.” Learning to drive, going to school, coloring your hair, going on dates, having a job, getting ice cream with friends. What friends? You never got to experience these things. Things that were normal. Now you were in your late twenties and the life of the average young adult was completely foreign to you. Its been ten years now. Since you started to hate this life.

You were attending yet another fundraiser at Bruce’s place. What was it for this time? Friends of the Gotham Railway? Society for the Performing Arts? Gotham Heights Country Club’s new golf course? District Attorney Harvey Dent. Didn’t he just get elected? Okay then. It really doesn’t matter anyway. They’re all the same. Gourmet hors d’oeuvres, expensive champagne, some phony inspirational speech, bland conversation, smile through how much your feet hurt in these heels, send a check tomorrow. The predictability you lived your life by was astonishing. When were you finally going to get to do something different?

You lifted another glass of champagne from the tray drifting past you and took a heavy sip. Can’t get to drunk though, what would the media say? You were tempted to do it on purpose, just to mix things up for once. The sound of rough whirring broke you out of your melancholic trance and you turned to see a helicopter landing on the roof top balcony outside. The man himself arriving ever so fashionably late. Linking arms with three women you could only assume to be models, how classy. And here comes the motivational speech. I believe in Harvey Dent, a safer Gotham, optimism, face of our bright future, blah blah blah. Now everybody claps. Just wonderful. Back to our mindless mingling.

The evening continued on like they all do. This time you were stuck trying not to stare at the speck of food stuck in Mr. Kane’s teeth while he droned on about the new hotel, they planned to open it across from the opera house. Would it be uncouth to express to him how little you care about any of that? When you were seconds away from excusing yourself for a bogus trip to the ladies’ room, a loud boom rang out from the entryway. You spun around and your body froze at the sound of his voice.

“Goood evening, ladies and gentle-men.”

It felt like ice was running through your veins when you saw him. Purple suit, shotgun over his shoulder, unkempt green hair, painted face. His face. Covered in white with black swallowing his eyes, bright red over his mouth and crawling up his cheeks in a wicked grin. On the news they called him The Joker.

“We are… tonight’s entertainment! I only have one question… Where. Is. Har-vey Dent?”

He was so tall, walking with a slight slouch but had an air of confidence like you’d never seen. Like he knew just how much attention his presence attracted. No, attention it demanded. Like he knew you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. He made it look effortless. Almost like he was bored by it. He tossed food into his mouth, chewing noisily while he spoke. Then he stopped and turned to walk toward the crowd, pointing his shotgun toward the people in front of him before moving on down the line. Your feet grew cold when you realized he was heading in your direction. He tossed champagne out of a glass before mockingly tossing his head back to let the last drop hit his tongue. You couldn’t move a muscle as he leaned in and muttered questions at the people standing nearby. He kept coming. Your heart pounded, climbing into your throat as he got closer.

Then you could see it. It was scars. The red smile stretching across his face, it was painted over scars. Someone had cut through the corners of his mouth on both sides, leaving behind a twisted, permanent, grin. It made your stomach drop. He said something to Mr. Kane, but you couldn’t hear it, only the blood rushing in your ears. He got so close. You swore you could feel the heat from his body, smell something sharp like acetone.

“You remind me of my father.”

Then he suddenly grabbed Mr. Kane by his collar and growled, “I hated my father.”

“Ok, stop.”

Mr. Kane was shoved into you while Joker turned to face the voice coming from behind him. Rachel Dawes, Bruce’s friend for as long as you could remember.

“Well, hello, beautiful. You must be Harvey’s squeeze-ah. Hm?... and you are beautiful.”

He circled her like a wild dog stalking prey, practically licking his chops. Relishing the feeling of cornering his victim. Waving a knife blade at her.

“You look nervous. Is it the scars?... Wanna know how I got ‘em?”

Then he reached forward and gripped her by the back of her neck and her face. You felt your cheeks abruptly grow warmer. He pulled her closer to him, holding her there, not letting her look away. A thought suddenly cut through you mind like the knife in his hand. You wondered if the leather of his gloves felt warm or cool on her skin. Your heart fluttered and a shiver ran down your back. Why were you thinking about that? He intruded without warning and started threatening people, but here you were wanting to know what it was like to be that close to him. You found yourself wishing you were her, just to know what it was like, him touching you.

You hung on to his every word. He had a wife once, who told him he worried to much, that he should smile more, she gambled, got in deep with the sharks. They carved her face, had no money for surgery, she couldn’t take it, he just wanted to see her smile again, he didn’t care about the scars, he stuck a razor in his mouth and did that to himself. He… he did that to himself?

“And you know what? She can’t stand the sight of me! She leaves. Now I see the funny side... Now I’m always smiling.”

You blinked and the next thing you knew, punches were being thrown and men in clown masks were falling to the floor. Batman. The masked vigilante everyone was talking about. He seemed to appear out of nowhere, coming out of the shadows to beat up the bad guys. Reality struck you in that moment. This was real. This was happening. The word surreal doesn’t quite cover it. You wanted something different. Well, this was different. Instead of fear you started to feel something else rising up from inside of you, tingling up your back. Excitement.

A punch from a clown masked man landed square on Batman’s jaw, sending him to his knee and giving Joker the opportunity to start kicking him in the stomach. All you could do was watch, spellbound by the violence occurring before your eyes, wide with anticipation. It almost happened too fast for you to see. He really had nothing holding him back. He couldn’t care less about what people thought of him. Showing up in face paint and a purple suit with a posse of men disguised as scary clowns, commanding even more attention than Bruce. He basked in it, not caring one bit what they thought, only that he left an impression. He did. Especially on you.

You blinked again and he had Rachel. He stood behind her, his arm wrapped around her chest to keep her from running, his other hand waving a handgun in the air. He wasn’t going to drop the gun, not unless Batman took his mask off, show us all who he really was. Then the window behind him shattered with a shot from the gun and he dangled Rachel by her arm out into the open air. Your chest felt tight, as helpless as everyone else watching and unable to do anything about it. But you still couldn’t shake the thrill you felt buzzing in your arms and legs, fogging your mind.

“Let her go,” Batman’s hoarse voice demanded.

Joker squinted his eyes and grinned with ironic amusement as he answered, “Very poor choice of words.”

He let go. His laugh reached down to your bones and held on, pulling you toward him while Batman dove out the window after Rachel. You didn’t know what you were doing but you couldn’t stop yourself. Your feet kept carrying you closer. People all around you started rushing for the exit, running from the taunting men in clown masks like the crowd at a Halloween fun house. Except this was real.

You kept your eyes forward, getting within a few feet of him when he turned and saw you. A chill washed over you, both icy cold and burning hot at the same time when his eyes traveled up and down your body where you stopped in your tracks. Your skin felt like it was on fire.

“Hello, there,” he purred.

You opened your mouth to speak but no sound came out. You just stared at him. Then he started to saunter toward you, slowly closing the gap that separated you, and you almost couldn’t breathe.

The corner of his mouth twitched into a sideways grin. “Aren’t you a pretty little flower, hm?”

Your heart fluttered and your lungs pulled in a sudden gasp of air, that sharp smell filling up your senses. He was right in front of you now. He was right in front of you and you could undeniably feel the heat radiating off of him. Your heart pumped faster, the adrenaline in your veins saturating every tissue. That tingling in your spine came rushing back as his tongue flashed out of his mouth to run along his lip.

“Can I, uh, help you with something, little flower?”

The last sounds of panicked voices faded, and it was completely silent. You were alone. With him. Fear tried to wrestle for a place in the front of your mind, to pull you away, to make you run back toward the door, but the allure you felt was too pervading. You remained still, trying to steady your breath while the gaze from his black-rimmed eyes seemed to swallow you up. Sirens started to echo in the distance.

Then your voice found its way out of your mouth, “I… I just wanted to… um, to get closer.”

His eyebrows shot up and his grin widened as a low hum rumbled in his chest. Your brittle nerves nearly shattered when he lifted his hand and gently took hold of your chin, lifting it and stepping forward to press his chest against yours. “Mmm, this close enough?”

His gloves, they felt cool on your skin.

Taglist!

@youmaycallmebrian @heavymetalnarwhal @neverputsaltinyoureyes @jokersqueenofchaos @into-crazy @killingjokee @astheworlddturns

#ledger joker fic #ledger joker x reader #joker x you #Heath Ledger Joker #the dark knight #tdk joker #joker fanfiction #one shot #anon request

100 notes · View notes

joezworld · 3 years

Note

📂

More Scotsmannnnn

[I just want it pointed out that YOU ASKED FOR THIS]

As I stated in an earlier headcanon post, many steam engines were liberated from the United Kingdom whether they wanted to be or not. While many of these locomotives would end up in mainland Europe, a significant number also ended up in the United States. In the 1960s.

Now, this is very important to note for a few reasons:

The horrors of the BR modernization plan was just beginning to trickle across the pond, which meant that attempts were made by American engines to make the brits feel welcome

BR locomotives were never really treated as people, so their knowledge of how the world worked was limited - their own feelings and emotions were often a mystery to them

It was the late 60s and early 70s in America - the free love movement was in full swing

American locomotives had figured out how to get their rocks off in the 1860s, and knew exactly what they were doing

To an American, British accents are sexy

So, to put it out in the open, the former BR stock was introduced to full personhood relatively quickly, and had their cherries popped even quicker.

Flying Scotsman, Noted Man Slut

Alan Pegler knew absolutely none of this when he proposed a continent-wide tour of the US and Canada in 1969-1972. He also didn’t know that US and Canadian minimum wage laws applied to locomotives, and had done so since the introduction of the minimum wage in 1933.

Having to pay Scotsman a fair wage was not in the plan or the cards, and that and other financial difficulties stemming from low ticket sales (because there were English locos in the US already - Scotty boy wasn’t that special) meant that the tour bankrupted Pegler by 1971.

Not that Scotsman cared.

He’d rolled off of the boat in New York and was immediately met by some of the largest locomotives he’d ever seen in his life.

This is from the Canadian leg of the tour, but the difference is about the same.

Scotty boy soon learned to feel a whole lot of things that he hadn’t felt before.

The Americans thought he was cute, and enjoyed his company a lot.

Did you know that Scotsman liked electrics? He sure didn’t - until he met the GG1s.

And this was all while he was still in New York. His first tour stop was in Roanoke, Virginia - the heart of coal country.

Do you know who lives in and near that area?

As it turns out, Scotty boy has a type - it might not be his only type, but it’s a type nonetheless!

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

Speaking of types...

The British locomotives in the USA (example seen below) had quite a few emotions regarding Flying Scotsman.

To the former LNER engines, he was basically a god amongst engines - he was The Engine, named after The Named Train. He hit 100 before anyone else - and unlike Mallard, he wasn’t a complete tool.

Engines from other railroads were impressed by his speed, by his lines, and by his charming personality - he was polite and gregarious without being arrogant.

Everyone liked Scotsman.

And now they knew what sexual and romantic attraction felt like.

There was a variety of different sexual orientations amongst the British Locomotive Diaspora, but they were all gay (or straight) for Scotsman.

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

Alan Pegler went home penniless and in disgrace, and Scotsman slept his way across the United States and Canada three times between 1969 and 1974.

When the Save our Scotsman program raised enough money to bring him back to England, Scotsman almost said no - he was enjoying himself too much!

But... he was THE face of UK rail preservation - without him, there would be a lot less money to go around, at a time when it was most needed (historical societies and heritage lines were beginning to raid places like Barry scrapyard in earnest, and they needed the money), so Scotsman reluctantly loaded himself back onto a boat and went home to the UK, where he succeeded in raising a shitload of money for heritage railways.

---

This isn’t to say that Scotsman never went out again, though - his 1988-90 Australian tour was just as wild as his US tour, and when the ‘great gathering’ of the A4s took place in 2013, he helped the ‘repatriated’ US A4s paint the Great Hall of the NRM red - but that’s another story for another time.

#sodor #headcanon #train headcanon #flying scotsman #usa #ask response

29 notes · View notes

dansnaturepictures · 3 years

Photo

08th February 2021: Jack Snipe and so many other amazing birds and more on a memorable Lakeside lunch time walk for birds: 5 of these pictures different to those I tweeted tonight the second, third, fifth, sixth and eighth in this photoset

The light snowdrops had begun to fall as I took my lunch time daily exercise walk at Lakeside and I took the first picture in this photoset of one of a few Starlings in the garden before I left for it today. I got to Lakeside and was delighted to see a Green Woodpecker soon into the walk going down the path between the two fenced off areas always an exciting moment that I’ve had the pleasure of so often this year already, and quickly see two thrushes fly across the northern fenced off area to some tall trees beside the railway track and I could see these were Redwings thanks to a camera zoom in.

As the snow continued to fall and lightly line the gravel of the path I was thrilled to see a wading bird dart across the path in flight. It settled briefly beside a flooded area in the nature reserve area and I saw it again walk across this field and could just about make out it was a Jack Snipe! This was an exceptional bird to see at Lakeside another going on that illustrious list of top species of bird I have seen on these walks since working from home coming so soon after Goosander last week was great. But this one I had seen at Lakeside before in 2018 and its a story that makes me happy. This was during the beast from the east the heavy snowfall that year which many have likened this week’s upcoming weather to. I saw my first Jack Snipe of the year on a walk at a different location at the weekend. I said after we saw it I bet I will see a Jack Snipe at Lakeside now as it had been one of my targets here since the start of the year with me having the time and space in the daily walks to look for one whilst walking as such which I maybe didn’t in past years. And I especially thought that because I knew it was getting colder and I associated that ultimately cold weather with the one Friday on a work snow day we saw some here. Just like the different species of gulls on the main lake where loads go beach lake I’d predicted this sighting but for it to happen on the Monday after for me to have seen two Jack Snipes in three days fantastic! And unprecedented for me for the species. I took the second, third and fourth pictures in this photoset as I walked on the fourth showing that ever so slight laying of the snow. The sixth picture in this photoset showing the flood that I’ve noticed here since October I believe frozen over like a lot of Lakeside once more today.

Next I got to enjoy that delightful array of gulls on the lake some more, but not before spotting two Canada Geese here building on the one on Friday on the lake behind it. A bird that is making me feel whilst bitterly cold today spring like as they are only here at Lakeside in spring and into summer when they nest here. I took the fifth picture in this photoset of the pair. And on the theme of birds I only usually see in spring I was delighted to spot the Lesser Black-backed Gull shown in the eighth picture in this photoset. This added so nicely to the bird I saw as my first Lesser Black-backed Gull of the year from my bedroom window nearby last week it may have been the same one as there do seem to be two regular birds in the season. I was delighted to see the striking yellow legs and sweet slate grey back of this bigger gull than the constant flock of Black-headed Gulls which I have nicely become so familiar with. It was a slice of gull heaven I think for a local country park right next to the house in an urban area as I spotted a third species, the mid-way between the Black-headed and Lesser Black-backed size wise Common Gull. There seems to have been a regular one overwintering here which I’ve seen so many times. Its interesting that a year ago I would have said hands down lesser is way more common than common - so called more so for where you are likely to find them than their status - but I’ve had an unbelievable local start to my 2021 for this species seeing Common Gulls nearly everywhere I’ve been able to go in Hampshire really and have become so used to this wonderful and beautiful species that lesser seemed like more of the find today. Both common and also here Mediterranean Gull a few weeks ago beat lesser onto my year list which was interesting. It was obviously fantastic to see both of these quite different gulls for me and ones I like so much and celebrate them both today.

Catkins had been visible more and more and present in my photos the past month or so and today I noticed how they’d overcome the landscape, giving a great slight emerald glow to the grey affair another sign spring is approaching. They stood out in the view over a lake in the seventh picture in this photoset that I took today.

I carried on seeing brilliant avian sights as the walk went on, Great Crested Grebe on two lakes by an interesting gush in the water of a quite full lake, a Mallard pair and a close view of Tufted Ducks such as the female in the ninth picture in this photoset. I had not seen a female well lately. As I rounded beach lake to the north of it I got really close Goldfinch views of them in trees maybe a more wild location to see them than our feeders whilst I love and get so much out of them being at home, and after flying over after a Coot squeaked noticeably and loudly the other side of the lake I caught up with the Lesser Black-backed Gull a star of today on a buoy which I tweeted pictures of tonight on Dans_Pictures as I have photographed before. I enjoyed seeing it up close again and seeing it on the fishing jetty as I took in the three types of gulls one last time. Standing beside a miniature reed bed I was thrilled to see a little Wren which I took the tenth and final picture in this photoset of flitting in and out and sitting on posts a great experience to be so close to this delightful bird. As I got back up towards the entrance the Lakeside bit of the walk ended as it had started with a flash of greens darting across of the Green Woodpecker.

This was definitely one of my most memorable daily exercise whilst working from home at lunch time walks for birdwatching yet. I don’t know whether the cold weather brought a lot in and allowed it to be visible to this urban country park or not some species it probably did others it didn’t make a difference but I just saw so many species and so many of them were the most exciting and special ones. A brilliant way to escape within my lunch time walk I had so much fun watching so many great birds today this day will stick in my mind forever. As I mentioned in this tweet: https://twitter.com/Dans_Pictures/status/1358838837749944321 and a butterfly a day one which I am loving doing as a lockdown daily past photo tweeting thread for the third time that followed this day last year was one of my best of the year and one of my most unforgettable partly because of the sheer amount of species I saw and I think today more locally rivaled that.

Wildlife Sightings Summary: Two of my favourite birds the Great Crested Grebe and Green Woodpecker, Magpie, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Woodpigeon, Blackbird, Redwing, Goldfinch, House Sparrow, Wren, Robin, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Moorhen, Coot, Canada Goose, Herring Gull, Black-headed Gull, Common Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull and Jack Snipe.

5 notes · View notes

grim-faux · 3 years

Text

8 - Twisted Warren

Too much had happened in this place, between the time Murkoff had lost control, and the MHS failed to regain control. The patients had gotten free and had ample time on their hands to undertake all manner of hobbies.

I wasn’t certain what to make of the large hole chiseled through three feet of solid cement, and rebar. Given there’s not a lot to do around this place but come up with creative ways to get around, I gave this one a seven out of ten. I doubted that big ugly fucker would have been amused by a commission for big fuckin holes, he seemed dedicated to his current task of decapitating the former law. I couldn’t envision the inmates having the tools for this sort of work, and then using them correctly to remove the cement, but they were just insane, not stupid. There was a difference.

The problem was they were not stupid.

To satisfy my lethal curiosity, I did return to the other side of where I had dropped down, to see if the egress guy was still lurking. I didn’t want someone following me, I’d rather know at this point and try to lose them than get a nasty surprise in a dark cramped hole.

There was only a small room, and a door. I tried the handle confirming it was locked, but perhaps earlier it was open and the patient decided to lock it. Didn’t matter, my path was charted out. It must’ve led into a lavatory, or female wash room, there were hand dryers on the wall, a mattress flung on its side, and the more important detail. Sinks.

I tried the dial on one and received a fresh flow of water, its color I couldn’t tell due to the night vision but it looked clean and free of sediment. After giving my perimeter a quick look I leaned under the tap and tasted it, first rinsing my mouth out of the reek and copper. The water had a strong metallic quality, I wasn’t sure if I should drink it, much as I was advised not to drink the water when visiting another country, but I was dehydrated. I reasoned with myself the lines couldn’t all be compromised, and drank just enough to quench my thirst.

There was also the issue of my bloody camera, and my backside, but I felt my jacket was a lost cause and it was cold. In the dark I flushed water on my sleeve and used it to carefully dab the side of the camera until it felt like much of the stickiness was removed. I didn’t expect to do a perfect job in the solid black. I also took the time to rinse the blood from my scalp and the back of my leg, then flushed my tender brow.

I felt renewed, not meeting ready but stable enough on my feet to carry me onward. I returned to the other side, squelching over the sticky puddle of blood back to the warrens entrance.

Below looked like an access space, for repairs or maintenance on broken pipes that might be reached through the basement. It might’ve been installed in the past century if this place was as old as I suspected.

The hole wasn’t deep, but there was a passage dug out in the softer earth beneath the crawl space. A small draft crept over my ankles, warmer air spilling into the cool shower. The thick reek of natural gas coupled with moist earth reached my nose as I crouched down and used the night vision to navigate, I really didn’t need to get lost under this place.

Though the path seemed straightforward, I was fully aware of how easy it was to get turned around in a short section of black crawlspace. A few of the Outdoor Adventurer columns warned of how inexperienced cavers could get lost in less than twenty feet of cave. One story mentioned a specific case in which a cavern had only a few extending tunnels, but the individuals involved thought only to bring one light source plus their cell phones. As with any adventure destined to fail, the torch had a mishap and the cavers with their cell phones couldn’t distinguish between the details of the cave through the poor light source, nor could they call for help. Many would scratch their heads or joke towards their expense, how can you get lost in such a small cave? Few have ever experienced the total silence, the oppressive dark, and the disorientation that comes with confusion, then panic. How easy doubt sets in and turns your instincts against you.

This is why they, like many, didn’t live to learn from their error.

Even a few feet into this passage, I could no longer see the light. Not at all. Thick pipes ran in orderly groups into the dark depths, railways of electrical input. My path was carved around a cement pillar, going deeper. My heart thudded harder against my ribs filling my head with a dull pulse of pain. How deep did this go? Would I be able to turn back if I lost my way? I paused to listen in the crushing black, the total silence but for the thunder of my heart and my heavy breath. I had my reservations for traveling deeper, I was terribly fucking lost running everywhere through the Asylums endless maze of halls, but this was fifteen times worse. This was my grave.

I pressed on with no where else to look back on, I fortified my resolve to keep calm and find a way out. There was nothing that could hurt me here, I could hear nothing, no shrieking, no pleas for mercy. Dead silence.

The warmer air would’ve been a nice change of pace compared to the chilly asylum, but the reek of sludge and compost did not set me to ease. Blood was, as always, my guide through this twisting nightmare. Across the upper portion of the tunnel was a set of pipes, I had to stretch out and slip under them to get through. It opened up a bit and I could stand, more pipes, for gas or water.

As I moved forward it looked like my path came to an end, but the earth shifted under my feet. Looking down, I found a deep hole which I had nearly stumbled into. I dropped down, making sure to evade the bricks on the one side. The stench and heat was in full force at this point and I turned, locating where the bricks had been torn out of a wall.

The sewers beneath the asylum were huge, possibly to redirect the flow of water and alleviate erosion. It wasn’t called Mount Massive for the jollies of it. I glanced beyond the ruptured wall, crinkling my nose at the odor. To my right was a light source, but my left was difficult to make out even with the NV. Moisture in the air interfered with the feed.

Satisfied that the path was free of wavering figures, I sloshed into the filthy water of the drainage flow trying not to think about what might be floating in it. The dark tunnel twisted around and after a few feet I could make out the collection of fallen boulders and earth. A cave in, a weakness of some sort in the foundation. This made me uneasy, the tunnels could be subjected to collapse while I was down here, especially with the heavy rainstorm currently hammering the mountain. I didn’t bother to get closer should there be an opening I could squeeze through, it wasn’t worth it.

The lit tunnel offered two paths, I proceeded through the light, and presumably the path the patients had taken when they came down here. At least I knew there must be a way out, unless they came down here and backtracked out. I doubted that. This was where the blood led me.

No matter how many times I repeated that phrase in my head, it always sounded wrong and insane.

A barricade for flotsam shed some perception on the water levels of these tunnels, if there was a good flood it could reach my hip. I imagined the water was lower but even now the flow rolled over my ankles, I could only be thankful the water temper was tolerable or I’d succumb to hypothermia. The barrier offered little trouble, but a sharp pain in my side. Nice thing, I was growing accustomed to the jolts of pain. Just had to avoid getting thrown out of windows, or kicked in the chest.

An intersecting tunnel came into view, but it was easy to decide which way from here with no detours. My right was completely packed by another cave in, giving me some mild grief if that was my way out. The ruble didn’t look fresh but I was no expert on collapses.

The right looked like another dead end from a distance, but as I moved closer I could see the small drainage tunnel in the shallow ditch was open. A strong source of light soaked through a large grate overhead, offered by the upper floors perhaps, I couldn’t tell. I stood off to the side of the gaping drain to look up, but the light from above was too bright to view past and make out its origins. I thought I heard someone screaming, it could’ve been my imagination. The echoing chatter of water spilled along the cobblestone bricks into the ditch below at a high frequency.

As I looked down, I thought I saw a body slumped by a grated drain. It was a body, I crept in close to examine him through the NV feed. He didn’t look like one of the patients that had come down earlier, a small relief. He had been dead for some time, his pants and the lower area of his body had absorbed so much water he almost looked fluffy, but it was only skin dissolved and flaking away. I didn’t need that thought on my mind, though I had already presumed I would find more bodies in the sewer, I didn’t need to see them immediately. What a naïve hope that was.

Returning to my task at hand, I grimaced as I couched low and scooted along the water into the small tunnel. The humid stench was overpowering and the cramped space of the drain had me nearly knelt in the foul water, but I managed to only submerge one knee as I felt along. I tried to bury my face in my collar and hold the camera up so I could see where I was going and not put my knee into something unpleasant. Blood was one thing, it was tolerable.

I tried to keep my hand along the ‘dryer’ side of the wall, where the tunnel sloped down but wasn’t in the water. The cuts along the back of my leg stung like hell and I tried not to envision what sort of bacterial infections I’d come away with. A piece of paper from something got caught on my foot, but I wouldn’t mess with that until I could stand. The tunnel ended and I assured myself there was nothing here with me poised just beside the opening to lop my head off, before I shuffled out and stood.

Much of the same met me, no light and pipes suspended along the roof of the tunnel. As I stared through the quivering visor I realized for the first time, I was shaken all over. Not just mild tremors, I could literally not hold myself still as I inspected the open channel over. I wasn’t cold, in fact a thin layer of sweat had spread under my coat causing it to stick against my shirt.

I was terrified.

Despite my small reprieve of isolation I was frightened, my nerves frayed. Where was I going? How did I get out of here? What if there was no way out? What if this was where I was meant to die?

Get ahold of yourself. I stepped back and leaned beside the wall and touched the cool brick, feeling the vibrations of the Asylum against my palm. Not gonna die here. I would get out. I would get out with the evidence and reveal this heinous mess to everyone.

I took a small breath through my mouth and stared at the long corridor ahead. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to make that the truth so bad.

The water sloshed over my shoes, and I flipped off the remains of that sheet of paper–

Something flittered into sight ahead. I barely turned my camera up, night vision and everything I could see perfectly, and something glided by in the intersecting tunnel. Looked black, like a shadow, but it was in direct light. Was something there?

I took a few steps back to the tunnel and perched down, checking on my camera. Features, playback, last five minutes. I realized in reviewing the footage that I was breathing hard, I still was. Didn’t care.

I paused the feed and stared at what was caught, it wasn’t very clear. Just a black shape, it had passed in barely a second and looked almost transparent. It wasn’t in the light as I had imagined, the NV had caught it in the dark of the intersecting tunnel. Maybe it was a residual image, the camera had color mishaps since I flew out that window. But…it looked suspended, a good six feet above the ground.

I took a deep breath through my mouth and exhaled. Later I would review the evidence with better equipment, image quality enhancements. And I’d make copies of everything.

First, I had to get out of here. And the only route open to me was ahead, where that shadow was.

I exercised extreme caution as I proceeded forward, listening every few steps for sounds or stopping when I thought I heard something. Carefully I picked my way along the tunnel with my eyes fixed ahead, the camera never picked up another image.

To my right where it must have gone, was a barricade or gap for high water levels. I decided to avoid that path and check elsewhere, give whatever was there now a chance to clear out.

The left side extended a distance, all manner of trash was down here from dissolving files to cardboard boxes. The path took a right path followed brick and on the left a drainage tunnel, grated up. The path took a right and around the corner a light source, and possibly a way out.

I was disappointed to discover it wasn’t to be. This was an exit, perhaps some time before, but the ladder set here was completely destroyed. On the floor beneath lay the remains of a human, entrails, rotted limbs, and the ladder. I attempted to lift it up but it was too short. Even pushing some cardboard boxes over helped in no way, they were too soggy from sitting in the wet air. The upper one cracked and folders scattered, patient letters. I’m guessing Murkoff never sent these to the families, and probably forged return notes. A few were stuffed into a file, which I took interest in

“"(Found scrawled in pencil on the back of an admittance form. Handwritting matches samples from patient “Father” MARTIN ARCHIMBAUD.)

This God is real. What we’ve mistaken so long for ghosts, spirits, madness. We were only willfully ignorant. The scales on Saul’s eyes were fear, and when you see beyond it, you truly see. This is the gift of the Walrider. The Gospel of Sand. The greatest sin in the world is willful ignorance of God. To receive a revelation and not spread it to the waiting flock. This place… To stand in the way of salvation is a sin for which there is no punishment too great’.”

For some reason this note caused goosebumps to crawl up my skin. My mind brought back images of the MHS team, throttled and dragged away. What had I seen? What did Father Martin ask? “Will you see? Can you?” I still didn’t understand, but I felt closer to understanding these mysteries through these sloppy scribbles. Something about these words felt more than deranged delusions. There was a truth.

I left the file and moved around the opposite side of the tunnel, lowering the camera where the lamps overhead still functioned casting deep yellow globs of light to spread over the moist stone. Save batteries, live longer.

A soft tinkling…turned into an aggressive rattle as I passed under a large pipe. I tried to find the source, but it sounded as though it were coming from within the pipe itself. I raised my camera though there was nothing to record, but that sound was eerie, I could see nothing to generate that sort of sound. Like pouring pellets into a bebe rifle.

I left that place and quickly returned to what must have been my route, where the shape had gone? I don’t know at this point. Peering through the tight gap I could make note of nothing threatening or otherwise, despite the distance I could tell there were areas where danger could lurk. My progress so far had been quiet.

The barricade was tight, difficult even for me to get through. I grunted as it rubbed on my bad side but I made it. I’m sure there were hundreds of those down here.

The sewer opened up into another tunnel, a huge drainage gutter sat a few feet ahead with a grate over it. To the right was a ladder swallowed up in a flood of murky water with a plaque reading Lower Junction

Fuck that. I’m trying to get out of this place.

A large pipe directed down into the lower area was clearly labeled ‘Female ward,’ and across from it an identical pipe with the faded words ‘Prison ward.’ More the reason not to go THAT way. I continued to where some crates had been abandoned, probably filled with replacement parts or materials for the plumbing. The asylum was nearly a city all in itself and required routine maintenance.

This made sense, they had a lot of people here on residence doing the experiments. Probably the higher security clearance guys never went out on a sunny day, couldn’t risk them getting hurt or lost.

A loud thud echoed through the tunnel, I stopped near the crates and watched as a shape dropped down at the other end. I stepped back and knelt behind them as he marched forward, struggling to breathe as he always did after the heavy exercise of killing.

The big ugly fucker just wouldn’t give it a rest! What was his obsession? Did he just follow me wherever he thought I was, or was it just chance? Maybe he was following the patients, and somehow I was shepherd in with the flock. Didn’t change matters, he was here now for whatever reason. Damnit.

He moved towards the middle of the corridor and paused, glanced around as his breathing calmed. Now that I saw him clearly in the light, I could make out details I hadn’t been able to pick out on when he threw me out a window.

No. I will never let that go.

His face was indeed mutilated, by himself reports said. I doubt he had sharp items while institutionalized. Was it from the treatment he became so large? Or just bad cardio, the guy ran like a horse. The report also stated he had modified restraints to conform his massive size, and by modified they meant huge chains which he dragged around on his legs and arms. The ones wrapped about his wrists appeared to have restricted his blood flow, I couldn’t tell from the distance if his hands still worked, they looked pale and skeletal.

Chris turned and began down a path on my right. I listened to the sound of his chains as they grew soft and distant, with his heavy huffing. At this point I wasn’t sure where to go, if I used my camera and zoomed, I could see to the end where he plopped down was grated. One of the tunnels might lead somewhere, someplace where I could climb out of this sewer. This option was more favorably than sitting here waiting for him to find me while I was indecisive about where to go.

I took hesitant steps forward, listening. The sounds bounced around the walls, but I only heard the soft swish of water around my shoes. He entered a tunnel further away on the left, as I moved it I could make out a dark entrance not far from my position on the right.

The tunnel was well lit, it set my nerves to ease but a coil of anxiousness knotted in my throat as I felt exposed. I gave a small whimper unintentionally as I sprang over a flotsam guard when I twisted the wrong way, and I stopped to listen for a few seconds to assure the bug fucker hadn’t heard that. As I resumed, the tunnel took a right into shadows and a cool draft, at the end I found a few planks of plywood and another grate drain. And an open door brimming with light.

The room had little to offer. Some shelves stacked with paints and boxes, a few batteries that I could use, lockers, and a large pipe with a valve labeled Prison drain

Apparently I was going into the Lower Junction.

I shut the door behind me and griped the valve tightly and turned. Or tried. My arm ached and my ribs just couldn’t take it, a hot streak of pain pulsed in my side. I stepped back and frowned at the valve. Maybe I could trick Chris into turning it, or rig him up to it in some elaborate way.

Or I could stop being a pussy and turn that valve?

I took a few shallow breaths and steeled myself. I was not halfway done with this place, and it wasn’t done with me. If I was going to survive this, I would endure a lot more than some cheap shots and…

Crashing out a few windows.

I gripped the valve and braced myself, ignoring the throbbing or the red in my vision. It would turn or so help me.

The valve gave in and wrenched. I turned until it was all the way open, or what I presumed to be open. I panted a bit as I turned and left the room.

Nothing. That was nothing. I could turn valves all day. The pain would subside soon, and I could forget it in favor of more compelling matters.

In the dark tunnel I heard chains drag, and a voice mutter. Two ways to spell dead. Without a thought I pivoted and returned to the room, shutting the door behind me. I stood waiting for a short while before I saw the knob twist. My immediate instinct told me hide in the lockers, but the door was already opening and I was too far to get one open and stuff myself within. I had already moved to the other side, where there was a large space behind the shelves where the light fell short. I squatted in the furthest corner and watched as Chris entered.

He pushed the door open fully and stepped inside checking on the lockers. Yes, they were very lovely. He must not have known I was here, he didn’t bother opening a one. Then, he turned looking at the shelves where I was hiding. I held my breath and stared at him, directly at him. I thought we made eye contact and my heart stopped, but the big fucker turned smoothly and left the room.

Even when I was certain he was well gone, I couldn’t move. It felt like my body was frozen. It took some effort but I managed to adjust my grip on the camera, then raise my arms and took a breath, then another. I felt my mind begin to clear and the images replayed in my mind, Chris turning and his murky eyes dead on me. In reflex I shut my own eyes and listened to the sounds of the sewer, soft hissing in pipes, water trickling down ancient mortar. The tremors were back in full force, but I doubt they ever truly left me. I only forgot they were there.

In some time I had coaxed myself enough to stand and move towards the open door, I wobbled on my feet and caught the frame before I could go charging out to make a thunderous descent on the slick plywood.

The dark was my only ally.

I pushed myself off the doorframe and ventured into the tunnel, jumping at every little sound. The drip of water was incessant, nerve wrecking. I couldn’t see where he had gone from the opening of the tunnel, I stood waiting for some sign. The idea that he might’ve left this area by some way was on my thoughts, but I knew better. If he found a way out, I’d have a way out. But he would exhaust his search first and that could take hours.

There were two large pipes leading into the lower junction, I already drained one. The female drain was located on the left side of the tunnel, the pipe must’ve run that way.

While the coast was clear, I went ahead to the backside of the tunnel where the big fucker had initially entered from. Maybe there was a way out I missed, a break in the grate.

Another dead end. A dead guard, crumpled and broken, it looked like his legs had been twisted off and the only thing keeping them attached were his blood drenched pants. I spun about when I picked up on the big fuckers approach, and ducked down behind the crates pressing myself into the edge where they met with the curved wall of the tunnel. He was getting closer.

For a tense moment it sounded like he was right on the other side of the crate. My only option was to hold still and pretend I wasn’t there. The chains clinked as he moved and sniffed the air, I imagine this smell didn’t faze him a whole lot. I was focused on the sleeve over my arm as I held perfectly still, studying the different colors and stains it had acquired.

“Scout the perimeter, then isolate the target.”

Eventually he continued on his way, his footfalls and muttering getting faint. I waited a moment certain he took the left tunnel, towards the prison ward. Of any tunnel, I just wanted to relocate and find a better vantage point. Slowly I stood up, and there he was no more than fifteen feet away.

Chris bellowed something unintelligible and charged, sounded like “There you argh!” I bolted, hitting the edge of the wall with my arm and skimmed off heading to the other side of the tunnel. Had to find a place to hide, needed somewhere I can duck into. He was screaming something after me, it was hard to tell between the splashing water and his dragging chains.

I vaulted over a drain guard and took a sharp left, into the dark. No place to duck into, only a few alcoves that heightened my hopes only to crush them. I slowed to toggle the NV and not drop the camera, he was nearly at my back when I picked up pace. I nearly missed the sharp turn to the right, I stumbled when I stepped on a greasy cardboard box but managed to stay upright. Ahead was light, revealing another cave in, but it looked like there was an opening I could squeeze through. I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, but standing around debating wouldn’t improve my health either.

The boulders and brick felt sturdy enough as I crammed myself between them, had to get deeper or the big fucker would drag me out. Or rip my arm off in the process.

“Get out ‘ere!” Chris was trying to dig me out as I crammed my body deeper. He could topple the mound onto himself for all I cared.

As it was, I was nearly trapped in this alcove. But with a firm shove I dislodged some rock at my feet and was able to slip down and crawl out. It looked like the tunnel did continue down this way, but the cave in extended to that area and effectively blocked this path.

A bent door was lodged in the brick wall a few feet ahead, ripped off the lock by a force of science I didn’t wish to meet. The plaque beside it read ‘Female drain.’ I pushed the door in and peered inside. There wasn’t much to note, the room was small and there was no place to hide. A shelf held a few of the paints, and a few boxes had been abandoned here.

I stepped across to the valve and braced myself before attempting to turn it. I coughed a bit as my side tingled, but managed to get the handle to turn on my first try. Small achievements were possible, now if I was able to get out of here.

I couldn’t hear him working to dig me out from the other side, or his heavy breathing. He knew I was here and had no place else to go, it was likely he was camped on the other side waiting for me to emerge. He was former military, he could afford to wait hours if necessary without losing focus. If it came down to it, I could dodge him. Or try, it worked but I had a sick feeling he’d remember that trick.

The rocks hadn’t shifted at all, I was able to get through with little effort. I listened when nearly clear but picked up on nothing, only the constant drum of water running from the upper grates, and my own breathing. The tunnel was large enough I could get around him if I timed it just right, but I didn’t care to test my reflexes against the big fuckers. He was capable of nasty surprises, and the drain gutter was slick and unreliable.

I moved from the narrow space and took in a deep breath, then began to walk along the side of the drainage gutter where the water rolled down. It was impossible to eliminate my movement completely, but I would hear him before he heard me. I raised the camera for the night vision, but the power was getting low. I paused on the corner checking for the clear before I pulled out the dead battery and put in a fresh one.

The sound of churning water caught up to me. I didn’t pause as I quickly felt for the slot, and put in the battery before I turned to make a slow retreat. There wouldn’t be time to crawl in the gap, especially once I hit the light. I’d need to fake him out. For a moment I thought I had gained some distance, the sound of his steps quieted.

Then I heard the rapid approach of chains. “Little pig….”

I sprint the last stretch to my safety, but never made it. A strangled yelp slipped from me as the back of my collar was snared, I clutched the camera to my stomach as he lifted me off my feet and flung me to the side of the channels drain.

“Just lay there.” He stepped over me as I was trying to recover. Had to keep the camera out of the water, without it I was as good as dead! I kicked at the slick bricks, I was dead anyway if he got his hands around my throat. When I twisted my head to see where I was going, I spotted a missed tunnel that had a shattered grate. A space Chris couldn’t fit.

I kicked at his ankles, throwing myself through the open passage. Chris was still struggling to grip my shoes as I clambered inside thrashing in the shallow water until I was nearly soaked, but always making sure I was holding the camera away from the water. I didn’t stop there, I flipped over and kept going when I saw that the other side was open as well.

With a roar of outrage, Chris stalked off, to head me off. He had speed, I was severely limited as I struggled to move without knocking myself unconscious.

I cleared the other side and lunged to my feet, as I heard the water torn apart by his strides not far from my right. I hurtled over the dam and ran, relying completely on the effectiveness of the pipes and the factor that they had finished draining.

“Outer perimeter breached!” A crate flew by my head and shattered on the wall, I didn’t hesitate in my race. Couldn’t dwell on the effectiveness of his aim either, I just needed to reach that ladder. I shoved the camera into its hoister and practically dove down the ladder as the big fucker caught up to me. “Don’t you hear it?”

I glanced up at his fuck grated face, in time to cringe against the ladder when he dropped a crate. It crashed against the sides splinting in two, a piece hitting my shoulder but I barely felt it. I continued down the ladder two and three steps, until I hit the bottom and stumbled away blindly in the dark.

Another crate fell smashing against the floor, the reverberation so close and sudden I felt my head spin. I couldn’t see it until I had the NV active and took the time to give the soggy corridor a quick glance. From the ladder I could still hear Chris, snarling at my escape. I’m not sure why he didn’t pursue me, it didn’t seem impossible. I gave up and accept these matters, and struggled to understand where I was now.

I took a few breathes, wincing at the stale sewage and raw metallic scent. Not far from where I stood was another body of a patient, grotesquely bloated from being in the water for so long. My stomach turned at the soured reek disturbed by the drainage. This place just got better and better.

The heavy sounds of fresh drainage and falling water was tripled here. In the pipes hung algae or liquefied rubbish, I couldn’t discern. I only avoided it as I renewed my search, though it didn’t matter at this point, I was thoroughly soaked from my fall. I suppose the red stains in my coat had either diluted or washed out completely, and yet I was more of a mess than before. No surprise.

My path was literally straight forward, but I took it slow. I could easily get turned around or something might’ve crawled down here. I doubted it, as everything in here seemed to be in the advance stages of rot from the recent flood, but this place was full of unpleasant surprises that made you regret letting your guard down.

Much of them didn’t make any sense either. I mulled over the thought of what this place might’ve been like if they didn’t use an asylum and crazy people for the experiments.

I took note of a thick pipe overhead which followed the same route open to me. It didn’t have access through walls that had the small grated tunnels, but it gave me a direction. I followed it around a sharp corner, and above was another bloated body, the skin around his bare arms slipping off his skeleton, without the water to cushion the buoyancy. I made sure not to step directly under him, as I continued through the sewer. A few crates bobbed in the water as I moved by, a few were marked with Murkoff’s faded logo.

More left over plywood, maybe used to board up areas down here where the scientist made their last stand. Maybe a few of them came down here to shelter from the patients, but as of yet I had seen no evidence of this. The wood gave me little trouble, stiff but soggy from its prolonged aquatic existence. Above the pipe made a sharp turn and ended its path at a connecting pipe parallel with the wall. I retreated as a sharp blast of hot steam shot out. Damn pipes were now against me.

I skipped over another broken barrier of wood and boxes scattered in the drainage gutter, before finally coming to a ladder, and my escape. Given, the big fucker hadn’t beaten me here somehow and was waiting above for me to poke my head out of the warren. At least there was light above.

As I made my gradual progress up the tall ladder, I occasionally glanced up to my destination. I tried to keep my steps soft, but someone had heard me. They popped their head over the opening from above, curious to who was coming up.

I stopped debating what that might’ve been. Too normal to be Chris Walker, but all patients were insane murders at this point. A little slower I renewed my climb, unable to hear what the variant above might be planning. It was likely he couldn’t see anyone down in the dark depths, but he did hear me. He knew someone was coming.

I tightened my grip on the bars when I peered just over the edge, checking around as much as I could for the person. I was relieved to find myself alone, but I thought I heard voices echoing in the distance. Set to ease but still wary I climbed up onto the grate and kept low, I was certain they coming from somewhere….

“No. I can hear it!” There was a large grate in a tunnel to my left, that the voices echoed down. Did they mean me?

“Somebody—”

“The Walrider!” Guess not. I pulled myself up a little more as shrieks splint the calm, I hung back as a sound came to me similar to crashing water, and a low rumbling. Not rumbling, was it trickling? Or a hissing, as something caught in the air and lashed out. I winced as the howls began.

The voices intensified, as people somewhere shrieked with wild release. I couldn’t place what I was hearing, a lifting swell of agony and terror as the multitude came to a crescendo, cracks and tears of bone and flesh and crushed windpipes catching voices midway through their final throes. Somewhere, not far from where I was, people were slaughtered by something they had warned me about.

It couldn’t be. The Walrider was a myth, it couldn’t exist.

Eventually the anguished cries fell silent, as did the sounds of what had enacted its punishment.

#miles upshure #outlast #outlast fanfiction #outlast novelized

1 note · View note

buckybabybaby · 5 years

Text

Mr Hollywood (Chapter 13)

Summary: Bucky Barnes, an underpaid teaching assistant in a small English village, dreams of a movie career back in his home country of America. He finally gets the break he’s always wanted, and if it wasn’t for you, his best friend, he wouldn’t have been able to take it.

But is that fact enough to save your friendship when it’s tested by the pressures of Hollywood?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Reader (Gender Neutral)

Word count: 1954

Chapter summary: Classic only one bed dilemma ‘cos I’m a sucker for a cliché…

Warnings: none!

Previous: Chapter 12

Mr Hollywood Masterlist | Main Masterlist

*****

After your star-studded weekend, the normality of school is refreshing. You’re not sure how you would cope with fame yourself, even one evening surrounded by such wealth and excess had almost been too much for you. It’s a completely different world from the one you know, and as Bucky has demonstrated, it is incredibly easy to get caught up in the wrong side of Hollywood. Your greatest wish for him now is that his new team keep him safe as far as they can.

Peggy finds you early on the first morning back, keen to get all the gossip.

“So how was it? Your date with James?”

You roll your eyes. “It wasn’t a date. And it was good. Fun.”

“Just 'fun’?”

“Yes, Peggy.”

“So, he didn’t invite you back to his hotel room, and, you know?”

“No, Peggy.”

“That’s disappointing.”

You scoff at her. “You’re ridiculous. And anyway, there was no hotel room because he was travelling for more promo up north.”

“Oh of course, the breakfast show. Did you watch it?”

You had, heart in your mouth as Bucky sat rigid in front of the cameras. As the interview progressed he had relaxed into his chair, joking along with Sam and his other cast mates, and by the time they wrapped it looked like he was actually enjoying himself.

You nod. “He did well, didn’t he?”

“Just make sure he doesn’t hurt you again Y/N.”

“What? You were the one who was pushing me to make up with him.”

“Yeah, but, still. I’m not scared of him.”

Shaking your head in amusement, you send her away as you try to focus on your marking. You’re glad she’s on your side if you ever need her, and you hope you won’t where Bucky is concerned, for his sake as well as yours. Not many have survived the wrath of Peggy.

*****

Bucky next calls you ten minutes after the last bell rings that Friday afternoon.

“Did you get my email?”

“Err, I don’t know?”

“Check it now, I’ve just sent it.”

Clicking away at your computer as he waits impatiently on the other end of the line, you find the message and open it, scrunching your face up as you hover over the many links.

“What is this?”

“Your tickets.”

“My ticket-” You stop as you recognise the airlines logo in the corner of the page, and when you download the attachment and the itinerary it contains, you understand what he’s done.

“Bucky, I can’t-”

“Yes you can Y/N.

“This is far too much.”

“No it’s not. It’s what we always said I’d do if I ever made it.”

“But we were only joking!”

“I wasn’t.”

Sighing, you read through the travel plan as Bucky chats away in the background about all the ideas he’s had about what you can do together when you’re there.

“And Dayton and Sophia are coming too! And little Benjamin. Adding you on didn’t cost much more.”

“That’s not how it works, Bucky.”

“Please Y/N.” The excitement drops from his voice. “I want to show you where I grew up, let my parents finally meet you, and just spend some time with my best friend. Proper time, not a few stolen hours when I’m in the country.”

You’re silent as you think over his request, and he takes it as agreement.

“So do you accept?”

“It’s very kind of you, so yes. But next time it’s on me.”

“All right.” He laughs. “This will be amazing, just wait. No adverse weather conditions or manipulative managers are going to get in our way this time.”

*****

The last weeks of the school year fly by as usual, and the first morning of the summer holiday is spent hurriedly throwing clothes and shoes into a suitcase, all too aware of the ticking clock counting down to the taxi’s arrival. It’ll be the first leg of a very long journey, down to the railway station where further along the line you’ll meet Dayton, Sophia and Benjamin, and then onto the airport express.

Your door bell rings as you’re zipping up the bag, and you drag it down the stairs as you run through your list of essentials one last time. Your passport, tickets and phone are all definitely there, so you hand your case to the driver and decide that if you haven’t got anything else now then you’ll just have to go without it.

The taxi is a lot, lot, nicer than the ones you’re used to. Bucky had booked it along with everything else, clearly not sparing any expense despite you insisting economy would be more than enough. You still don’t know how you feel about him paying. It’s one thing you buying a plane ticket for him a year ago, when there was the understanding that it’d be repaid, but this was a 'gift’, as Bucky said. You’re torn between thinking of it as a perk of his new life, and feeling like you’re using him for his money.

Hauling your suitcase on to the train as Saturday shoppers bustle around you, you find the first free seat and drop into it, texting Dayton the letter of the carriage you’re in. The rest of the journey is a bit of a whirlwind, all the connections on time but it is still a close call with a toddler in tow. Once you are on the aeroplane however, it all calms down. Benjamin is fascinated by the clouds out of the window, and you volunteer to sit next to him whilst his parents get some much needed rest. You feel especially bad for Sophia, travelling at nearly six months pregnant, but you know how important it is for her to go home before the new baby arrives, her own parents living just a few hours north in Massachusetts.

Your flight is one of the last to land that evening so passport control is virtually empty, and Dayton’s families cases are the first ones unloaded to be collected. Standing there as the last few bags come up and the carousel stops, you stare at it as the realisation of what that means causes your shoulders to slump.

Shrugging in defeat when Dayton questions the wait, you scuff your trainers against the floor, eyes burning with the combination of lack of sleep and stress of lost luggage.

“I’ve let Bucky know we’re here so- oh, there he is.”

Turning around, you watch as Bucky flashes a grin at the security, who let him through the doors and into the baggage claim hall, jogging over to welcome the others first. Then he’s in front of you and picking you up in a hug, his infectious smile making you forget your exhaustion for a moment.

“You made it!”

“My case didn’t.”

He puts you back down, pulling away to frown at you. “What do you mean?”

“That’s the last of the bags. Mine isn’t here.”

“Okay.” He lets you out of his arms, already searching through his phone for the relevant number. “Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.”

A dozen calls later, he finds your bag. Currently it’s enjoying the sunshine of southern Italy, having been mislabelled and sent completely the wrong direction at first. Bucky ensures you it’ll be on the next flight back to London, and then on to America as soon possible, no later than the end of the week.

You feel guilty for causing such a nuisance. “I’m so sorry Bucky. I’m such a pain.”

He shakes his head. “No you’re not. It’s not your fault. Come on, you can borrow something for tonight and I’ll take you shopping tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

You all slowly make your way to the taxi rank, the rows of yellow cabs blurring into one as the bags are loaded into the boot and you climb in behind Bucky, so tired you ache. Luckily the roads are quieter at this time of night and the trip is short, and as he pays the driver you stare up at the townhouse in awe, feeling like you’ve already been here from all the stories you’ve heard.

The front door is unlocked, the main luggage dumped by the front door to be dealt with tomorrow, and you unlace your shoes as you smile at the photos of the twins hanging on the wall. Further along the hall you can see Sophia’s also in the pictures with them, and in the most recent one at the end you come face to face with yourself. It’s only you and Bucky in the frame, neither of you are looking at the camera, laughing at something you can’t remember. Dayton must have been the photographer, but how it ended up here you don’t know. It’s something you’ll ask about in the morning, you decide as you follow everyone else through the house.

Being as it is his childhood home, Dayton knows where to go, leading his wife and son down the corridor and into a side room, leaving you and Bucky alone in the hallway.

He turns to you awkwardly. “Looks like you’ll be sharing with me.”

“That’s fine.”

“Err, don’t know if you’ll still be saying that when I tell you there’s only one bed.”

“Oh,” You say, eyes widening at the thought.

“Sorry, Y/N. I didn’t even think. It’s okay though! There’s a hotel on the corner, I’m sure they’ll have rooms-”

“It’s fine Bucky. Really.”

You stop him from reaching for his phone by catching his hand in yours, then, opening the door to what you’re guessing is his room, you pull him in after you and close it behind him. It’s cosy, the night light already on and casting a warm glow across the bed. You try not to look too relieved as you see that it’s not a tiny single but a large double or even king, with more than enough room for the both of you.

“Do you want me to take the floor?”

“No, Bucky. Don’t be silly,” You whisper, aware of the late hour. “It’s been a long day. I’ve been awake for nearly twenty four hours, I’ve lost my bag, and all I want right now is to sleep until my limbs stop hurting.”

He smiles softly in sympathy. “I’ll leave a t-shirt for you to wear. Do you think you’ll need anything else?”

“No. This is great, thank you.”

“There’s some of that moisturiser you use in the bathroom. The one you made me buy too. I know how you like to use it after you’ve washed your face at night.”

Nodding gratefully, you excuse yourself to his en suite. You’d packed a clean set of underwear in your carry-on just in case something like this happened, and after a brief shower you dress yourself in his top, feeling a little more human.

Stealing a new toothbrush out of the cupboard and giving your teeth a thorough clean with the floss you also find there, you cleanse and moisturise, then shuffle back into his room.

Turning down the bed as Bucky uses the bathroom himself, you slide under the covers on the left side. When he lies on the other side of the bed, careful to leave space between you, you smile sleepily across at him.

“I’m so happy to finally be here.”

“Yeah.” He agrees. “You haven’t met my parents yet.”

“It can wait 'til morning.”

“They’re going to love you.”

“You think?”

“I know. Just like I-everyone does.”

You can’t keep your eyes open any longer. “That’s kind.”

“It’s true. You’ll see.”

“Thank you for bringing me,” You murmur as you make your self comfortable, tugging the duvet up to your chin. “I think this is going to be a trip to remember.”

*****

Chapter 14

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky x reader #buckybabybaby #mr hollywood

51 notes · View notes

save-the-spiral · 4 years

Text

InkWizTober Day Twenty-Nine: Injured + Endgame

Welcome to day twenty-nine of inktober, and holy FUCK its. A good one. I spent hours on this, writing the end to my Pirate!Queen concept. It’s so good, y’all, read all four parts in order please. Warnings for graphic depictions of violence, narrator having a real bad existential crisis, thoughts about the afterlife, self doubt, death, body horror kinda.

(link to prompt lists) (link to inktober tag)

Captain Avery’s plan to destroy the Armada was, in a word, infuriating.

The old captain was content to send the young pirate out on his orders- without backup! Just a crew led by a captain who couldn’t be older than seventeen. Any leads or intel came from ‘allies’ who were simply spineless pirates who owed Captain Avery favors.

Even Queen, who was a member of Kane’s court in the past, who was created to never had an independent thought in her life, knew this was all wrong. She took the lead, fully accepting the pseudonym of ‘Reyna Ferro’, budding pirate captain, with her mysterious and loyal crew of the Pyrite Swan.

(She ignored the fluttering, ecstatic part of her that reveled in having a ‘normal’ name. How she never wanted to go back to being ‘Queen’. Never wanted to use the name Kane gave her ever again.)

Captain Reyna Ferro seemed to be the only fully competent pirate out of the triad of captains, once she started giving orders. She organized sieges on docked fleets of resting Armada soldiers, got them the useful intel and blueprints (mostly from her own perfect memory), and she made sure that Captain Avery didn’t take it too far.

(A giant, mocking puppet show to draw the Armada soldiers to battle them in Skull Island? Really?)

...Reyna had only recently realized that Avery was likely presenting these plans just to hear how incredulous her tone could get in response. Organic, human pirates could be so difficult to figure out.

Even now, planning what would likely be their last official mission of this endeavor, Reyna was taking charge. Captain Avery hadn’t even bothered to show up.

“All of the Armada have fallen back, following ingrained protocols to hide in a last resort fortress and begin creating more clockworks to bolster their numbers and buy time. While we were waiting and recovering from the last battle in Monquista, where we took out almost all of their ships and unfortunately lost the young pirate’s ship as well- I got intel from a spy.”

Reyna took a breath, staring down at the vast array of maps and internally hoping they didn’t question who was spying. She wouldn’t want to reveal her connections on the inside. When this quest started they agreed that Reyna would get any captured soldiers, and she had been working with those very soldiers, turning them slowly towards her side. She let them secretly join her crew, or go back to the Armada as a spy, or gave them a secret hideout to live in peace.

In a way, Reyna was glad she was so adept at lying at this point. Hiding the crew’s identities- and her own- was a matter of life or death. They’d lost far too much to the Armada at this point for the pirates they allied with to not slaughter them outright at the reveal of their clockwork identities.

Reyna grabbed a thin knife with her gloved hand, casually walking across Captain Avery’s office, trying not to think about how familiar the room had become to her. She let the knife point trail across the large map of Cool Ranch and its skyway.

“Cool Ranch? Isn’t that a bit out of their usual locations for forts?” Sterling, Reyna’s first mate, asked.

“Yeah but think about it.” Zircon replied, sitting casually on Avery’s ornate desk, slightly damaged mace in hand. “Big, open country. Lots of mines to hide in, could go out where no one would hear you. Find a ghost town to reinforce or whatever.”

Bonnie Anne, one of the young pirate’s crewmates, nodded. Her large, canon-like weapon was leaning casually against Avery’s desk, and she was leaning into Zircon’s side. “Lots of shadowy characters in Cool Ranch. They could easily spread out too- dark corners in saloons, becoming farm hands or apprentices- they wouldn’t have to show their face, just work and plan their next moves.”

Reyna tuned out the conversation between crews, tracing coordinates until she found the building marked by a small square, the one she was looking for. She stabbed the knife into the spot, the amber handle and silver blade glinting in the sunlight of a nearby window.

She turned around, grabbing a piece of charcoal, and began writing small neat notes on the map. “It’s actually an abandoned railway station, right by an abandoned mine. They’re grouped together, reinforcing the area like Zircon said.”

If Reyna could grin, she would. The sight of Zircon and Bonnie Anne fist-bumping was something she wanted to imprint in her brain forever. Zircon had become much more outgoing and trusting since this all started, becoming fast friends with the fox privateer.

Sterling sighed, toying with an antique telescope. “They’re likely re-purposing the few machines from the mine, and they can transport any materials they need far too easily for my liking.”

“Exactly.” The young pirate murmured, then went back to silently arguing with Egg Shen about something small- probably eating just oatmeal for breakfast, with no fruit, opposing Egg Shen’s exacting health standards.

Reyna pondered the railroad line that went through the huge island of Cool Ranch, all huge plateaus and gorgeous vistas. “They might have dynamite too. Let’s fight fire with fire here, Bonnie. Get some dynamite of your own by the end of the day, please.”

“End of the day?” Sterling asked, a bit alarmed.

“Yes.” Reyna said sternly, turning to face the room, all eyes on her. The dozen or so of the young pirate’s crew (the rest in Skull Island’s infirmary), and her own crewmates in the brash and protective Zircon, the curious and anchoring Sterling, the quiet and observant Malachite, who even now is sitting perched on a tall bookshelf, watching.

“Timing is essential here. We need to get in on their next shipment, at dusk tomorrow. We hide in a car, ambush the clockworks collecting the cargo, and move on from there. Spread out, follow the marks I’ve made on these blueprints of the area. Destroy weapons and clockworks being made, capture the rest. My crew will deal with them.” Reyna stopped, weighing down the blueprints and making a few amendments to the lines on it.

Egg Shen nodded at this, getting up and examining the papers. “We trust your planning, Captain Ferro. You haven’t steered us wrong yet.”

The nods that followed from the young pirate and his crew were disarming.

Reyna stepped back, standing awkwardly due to her prosthetic leg. “But- most of your crew are in the infirmary- you lost your ship because of my plans. I understand if you want to change this, you do not have to-”

“Relax, Reyna.” Bonnie Anne offered, gesturing around at the others in the room. “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t already trust you with our life. If we had made the plans- well, we would have had much more trouble without you and your amazing crew.”

If Reyna could blush, she would be bright red right now.

“Yeah Captain!” Zircon said, tilting her head in a way that conveyed childishness. “Our crew is pretty amazing, but it’s nothing without you guiding us.”

Sterling and Malachite were nodding, and Reyna was slightly worried for her internal processing, with how long it was taking to understand and absorb what they were saying. With stuttered thanks, she quickly turned everyone back to the plan, delegating roles for every pirate on the mission.

Bonnie Anne and Malachite, who would climb on top of the train cars when the ambush strikes, and gun down any backup from the Armada.

Egg Shen and Sterling would work with the young pirate on finding the leader, and the workshop for clockwork creation.

The twins, Rhodium and Rhenium, alongside Nanu Nanu and Emmet of the young pirate’s crew, would be a distraction on the south side, near the large ravine.

Everyone else was nodding, happy to follow Reyna’s orders. It made her feel nervous, knowing that failure or success rested on her plan, on her shoulders. Some part of her wanted to just stop, to sit down and tell someone else to take responsibility, to do the hard job. The restless part of her, the one that drove her to piracy in the first place, that filled her with wonder at beautiful nature scenery, and rage at how governments and outlaws alike take advantage of the poor.

She would keep moving, keep planning, only to appease that dark pit of dissatisfaction with life.

The waiting, right before a mission truly went underway, was what killed her inside. It took Zircon’s firm grip on her hand, Spectrolite’s silly puns, and Osmium’s toothless threats to every annoyance, to calm her down. Her crew, her strange crew of ex-battle angels, of ex-dolls of the Armada, all of them like family, they truly had a calming effect on her, made her remember her purpose.

They took up half of the large storage train car. Rhodium and Rhenium were playing tic-tac-toe with chalk on the floor and far more threats than proper, Meteorite was checking her ammo compulsively, doing it again and again to ensure she would not forget, Stichtite was jokingly adding ridiculous ideas to the plan, Sterling nodding seriously as she listened, only to laugh when it got truly bizarre.

There were a few more that joined her. Rehabilitated clockworks saved from their missions by being captured and handed over to Reyna and her crew, ones who wanted to repent, to atone for their cruel actions under another’s order. They remained nameless, still new to their sentience and trying to find themselves, these three clockworks. One was a battle angel, like the rest of the crew, one was a musketeer, and another was a buccaneer, halberd resting by his side always.

Reyna felt the train, racing across the Cool Ranch countryside, begin to slow. Everyone became alert, even the dozing young pirate.

Reyna was tempted to follow in Egg Shen’s footsteps and bother the young pirate into getting eight hours of sleep a night an eating their fruits and vegetables upon seeing the dark circles under their eyes.

The train rumbled as it stopped, the only other sound being the breathing of the organic pirates, and the cicadas singing. The sun was setting, sky a dusky red, light falling. It was time.

As they heard the exacting footsteps of clockworks, people hid in storage containers, behind them. Bonnie Anne and Malachite climbed out on the opposite side from where the clockworks would be approaching, the two clambering up onto the roof for a better vantage point.

Rhodium and Rhenium were looking at each other, conversing in a strange twin speak that seemed to transfer even to clockworks, and they moved forward in sync as the door slowly opened. Nanu Nanu and Emmet followed behind the two, slightly reluctant, but willing nonetheless. Zircon, next to Reyna, shifted in excitement, and Reyna knocked their heads together lightly, a soft ‘I’m here’, practically a kiss on the cheek. A common clockwork display of affection the crew had developed.

Zircon looked at Reyna, and bumped her back, right before the fighting started.

It was loud- the twin clockworks were always loud, calling confusing orders, yelling nonsense, acting like it was a game. The rest of the pirates stampeded out of the train car, hopping onto the dusty ground of the plateau. The clockworks, a neat, matching group of five, were in pieces.

The visual, slowly cloaked by the night’s darkness, made Reyna wish she could vomit. It was disgusting, unnatural- to see bodies- ones so similar to her own, ones that bled oil, that were made of metals, had the potential to feel- to see them shattered, it hurt. To see pieces of a being that once had a consciousness, even if it was controlled by others, to know a personality was behind that, hidden deep, it made something in Reyna shatter a tiny bit every single time.

The only thing that gave her solace every time was knowing that those Armada clockworks were free now, free from the trappings of being a soldier, of only following orders, having no free will. At least, if there was a personality in there, it would not have to suffer, would not have to watch as their body was controlled by something they could not fight.

The group continued on nonetheless, twins taking point and dragging Nanu Nanu and Emmet along for the ride, playing with firecrackers and yelling to draw attention

Sterling chuckled under her breath, but split off from Reyna’s side, moving to join the young pirate and Egg Shen on their mission to find the workshop. From above they heard Bonnie Anne’s exclamations about the twins doing their thing, and most of the secret clockwork pirates were snickering, before returning to their jobs.

Personally, Reyna was glad to lose herself in the violence, the strategy of it. Her sword was sharp, mind sharper, and she ached to prove it to herself once again.

Maybe she was too eager, in the end.

Maybe that was her fatal flaw, some twisted kind of hubris, some need to prove her own humanity to herself.

Some need to feel alive, and believe it.

Reyna was trapped in a tar pit of self pity, of doubt, of existential horror and comedy in the same suffocating breath.

She was slumped in the train car, having retreated to their getaway vehicle once she realized the gravity of her wounds. One of the newly created clockworks had been a monstrosity to behold- some strange, hulking creature of screeching metal and regurgitated oil, a terrifying thing. Reyna was selfish, was just plain stupid, and didn’t run back to get other to help her and the young pirate, she just rushed in, sword at the ready, some strange synthetic adrenaline in her system.

Reyna Ferro, Queen, just some upgraded battle angel, just some dysfunctional clockwork- she rushed in, like an idiot, like an impulsive human, side by side with the most impulsive human she had ever met, the young pirate captain. They had fought hard, fought well, almost downed the thing, but it was clever. Reyna had to shield the young pirate with her own body, the sound of screeching metal against metal, hopefully something the other pirate had mistaken for armor against weapons, was all Reyna knew for a moment.

When she became aware, the young pirate simply helped her up, and defeated the clockwork beast, telling Reyna to go back to safety.

Reyna was done for.

She could hear the pirates returning, the cheers of victory, the few stray firecrackers and loads of dynamite being set off, followed by hysterical laughter. They had torches, lanterns, with them. They would know.

Reyna was leaking black, bleeding oil into the layers of concealing clothes and armor that hid her clockwork status. It wouldn’t work for long, not with her wound.

She wouldn’t work for long with this wound, a ravine cut diagonally down her abdomen, metal curling inwards, sparking gears malfunctioning.

The pirates were approaching, and she wished she could cry. Out of all the things she envied humans for, it was the ability to cry. To sob and scream and fill the entire world with her tears, to cough and hiccup and cry out about the unfairness of it all.

Reyna, in all technicality, was only a year and a half old. That was how long she was sentient, she had free will. Before that she might as well have been dead. She had so many more years in her, and there was a desperate, clawing need to experience those years, those thousands of sunrises and sunsets, the lazy hours and minutes full of frenzied battle.

She wanted it all.

The group entered the car- emptied now, for easier travels back- and the leader (Sterling, her beautiful first mate, Sterling, who she named, reasonable, perfect Sterling) stopped in her place, mask facing Reyna, as if in disbelief.

“Oh no.” Sterling murmured faintly. Reyna would agree if her vocal mechanisms hadn’t already shut down to preserve power.

Zircon (strong, brave, powerful, protective, amazing) bumped into Sterling, and with a confused sound, looked over her shoulder, and saw Reyna, saw her pitiful, dying form. A wordless cry echoed off of the metal walls, and suddenly Reyna was in a strong embrace.

A chorus of amazingly creative swears followed as the rest of the pirates, both in her own crew and in the young pirate’s, followed. Reyna’s own crew crowded around her, hiding her from the others.

“Can you speak, Captain?” Malachite (wonderful, wise, observant, quiet, pretty) eventually asked.

With a stuttering shake and a quiet, chirruping sound, she indicated that no, she could not speak, she was dying.

Maybe not in those words, but the message got across.

“Okay, okay okay okay.” Someone was saying, trying not to panic- maybe Meteorite?- we can heal her, we can do this.

“How?!” Someone whisper-yelled, a sharp motion drawing Reyna’s fuzzy gaze.

Her optics were going to shut down next. Then her hearing, her movement, her-

Reyna fell into sleep, internally floating, a child in a womb, a baby, a little fawn with no legs to stumble with. She was nothing, everything, mind trying to process the never ending darkness of her emergency protocols. She was dying- was going to die.

She had never thought about death, never thought it applied to her in the sense of experiencing it. Did she even have a soul? Was she worthy of some salvation or damnation? Some quiet, peaceful end? Endless nothingness, like now? A beautiful facade of her perfect life?

Do machines get to go to the afterlife if they can feel, can love, can hate, can reason, just as much as any other sentient creature? Did being made of metal make her any different, any more or less deserving?

She floated, existentially paralyzed by the broad endlessness of death.

When she woke up, it was strange. It was little clicking sounds, soft whirring, clunky gears beginning to work. It was her internal processing telling her that her joints were working, hearing, eyes-

Goodness, it was bright.

Reyna woke up lying flat on a bed, bright light shining right into her optics. Blinking her vacant, black ‘eyes’, she blocked out the light and sat up, before opening them again, and wanting to gasp.

She was... well, not naked, but it was strange, to not be clothed in layers upon layers of pirated finery, to not have armor and mystery to protect her and her clockwork body. She looked down, seeing gloveless hands, ones that worked perfectly, every metal knuckle in place, clicking slightly. She saw her legs- one silver and slightly longer, from a musketeer clockwork who was dead before she found him- and the other her original, glinting in bronze and gold.

By the rocking, she was in a ship. Looking around, she realized- it was her ship, the Pyrite Swan, in her own bed. Not that she used it, seeing as clockworks didn’t need to sleep. Apparently, not until now.

“You’re awake!” The excited, in unison voices of Rhodium and Rhenium filled her ears, and she looked towards the doorway, seeing the two standing guard. “We’ve got to tell the others!”

“Wait!” Reyna’s voice was rough, scratchy and screechy, painful. “Wait.”

The twins stopped, standing seriously and tilting their heads.

“What about- the humans- they-?”

“Oh!” Rhenium gasped. “Oh! So- okay, so after they figured it out- not until we were boarding the ship, but they did find out- Rat Beard almost hurt you, but Zircon almost killed him, and Bonnie Anne of all people defended us! She said to trust us, and the young pirate agreed, said you took that hit for them of all people!”

Rhodium nodded. “And then- oh dear- Emmet got a shot off I’m afraid, almost killed Sterling! She was so angry, told us all to calm down in that Mom Voice she has! It was so cool, they all shut up and let us explain! We set sail and told them our story- well, Sterling told most of it, we all chipped in with our own individual backstories- but goodness, you should have SEEN their faces. I didn’t know whether to laugh or hide!”

The two continued to ramble, back and forth, until finally someone was drawn to the commotion.

“Zircon- help.” Reyna said simply, and the other clockwork nodded, pulling the twins out by their collars like misbehaving kittens, and then coming back.

“Captain.” She started, voice stuttering, fearful. “You almost...”

“I didn’t, though.”

“Osmium and Meteorite finally worked together on something, figuring out how to heal you. It was... not pretty.” Zircon said, sitting gently on Reyna’s bedside.

“Maybe they’ll finally get over the romantic tension then.” Reyna muttered, and Zircon laughed.

“Yeah, finally.”

Reyna sat up again, leaning heavily against Zircon as her systems got used to movement. “Help me up?” She finally said.

“Always, Captain.” Zircon said quietly.

Using her crew mate as a crutch, Reyna limped across her quarters. “I’m going to get dressed. Still doesn’t feel quite right without clothes, anymore.”

“I can help.” Zircon offered. Reyna’s grip on Zircon’s hand strengthened for a moment, a squeeze, a thank you. Heads knocking lightly, a clockwork kiss on the cheek.

Simple black trousers, a white shirt with a ruffled collar, and a captain’s hat, black with a broad golden feather.

Reyna leaned heavily on Zircon, half starved for the touch, half actually needing it. They made their way across the room, and Zircon opened the doors again to sunlight of a new day.

“Hey, Captain Ferro.”

Reyna’s head whipped to the side, a blank slate of white and bronze and gold, maskless, and watched the young pirate captain approach.

“Captain.” They said. “You up to planning the next great adventure?”

Their voice was weak, hoarse. They had bloodshot eyes, a tear stained face. They had shaking hands, but offered Reyna’s sword to her nonetheless, standing tall, like a proper captain.

Reyna stood tall as well, arms off of Zircon, stepping forward. “Of course, Captain.” She said, almost playfully, head tilting as she reached forward- slow, cautiously- and grabbed the hilt of her sword almost reverently. It had dulled from battle, still covered in oil stains.

She looked back at the young pirate, at their companions and friends behind them, watching. Finally, she spoke again.

“Just give me a few days to rest up, and our crew will be ready to take over the entire Spiral, before you know it!”

At her words, the crew, united, co-captained, broke into a wordless cheer, and Reyna fell back a bit, leaning on Zircon, letting the other girl half carry her back to bed.

Maybe pirates weren’t as savage, as uncivilized as she was programmed to think. Every one of them were thinking, living beings, with feelings, wants, needs. Just like clockworks, like those individual cogs that made up the once existent Armada.

Pirate, Armada, Clockwork, Compassionate-

Why not just be every single one? Take every label for herself?

It’s what pirates do, after all.

#Wiztober2019 #wiztober #inktober #inktober2019 #Writing #Queen Pirate101 #Pirate101 #Pitty101 #P101 #Pirate 101 #Zircon #Rhodium #Rhenium #Malachite #Osmium #Pyrite Swan #My BABIES #Bonnie Anne Pirate101 #i love this i know no one has read these but i love them

12 notes · View notes

phroyd · 5 years

Link

There are still a few things in public life that you cannot fake. You can fake photographs and you can fake news. You can fake conviction and you can fake emotions. You can fake a Twitter-petition and you can fake Facebook outrage. But you cannot fake an almighty crowd.

The numbers attending Saturday’s march for a second “people’s vote” on Brexit will no doubt be contested. The organisers claimed more than a million people were out; detractors inevitably argued a few thousand fewer. But make no mistake, for anyone who travelled to it, and shuffled along among it and who tried to find their way home after it, the Put it to the People march represented a formidable sea of humanity, and a powerful strength of feeling.

And let no one tell you that this was just a London crowd. By 10.30 at Speaker’s Corner there were people arriving for the high noon rendezvous from all corners of the country and beyond. Groups draped in the saltires of Scotland and the dragons of Wales. Anna Soubry MP was among the earliest arrivals, walking cheerfully down Park Lane through the gathering crowds with her daughter (“my security for the day”) having been forced to stay away from her home last night after death threats.

Meanwhile phones were alive with feeds and photos of people making their way from Newport and Newcastle, Carlisle and Canterbury. An entire train had been booked from Bristol, rattling along Brunel’s Great Western Railway into Paddington. There were overnight coaches from Inverness, dawn starts from Cornwall.

Some had gone more than the extra mile. Ed Sides, 63, had walked here from his home in Swansea over the past couple of weeks. I’d spoken to him on the penultimate leg of his journey, along the Grand Union Canal. “If I didn’t do something I felt I would regret it for the rest of my life,” he said, voicing the sentiment of many. Sides had tried to make the theme of his quest “walking and talking”: “When you talk to ardent Leavers and you meet them on the street, or by a riverbank where they are fishing or whatever, you find you can have a proper conversation,” he said. “And that’s something we all need to do in the coming days.”

Like many of the marchers, he felt that if nothing else walking had been a good way of avoiding the stress and frustrations of watching the news. “I thought, if I am sitting at home on Twitter for the next three weeks I am going to go insane.”

That feeling was shared by those expats who had flown in from the continent who, having been denied a vote in the first referendum, were now facing the climax of three years of painful uncertainty. Rebecca MacKian, 52, who has lived in Turin for the past 15 years, joined up with 20 others from the “British in Italy” group to be here.

“If no-deal happens then the next morning we will become what the Italian government now calls an ‘illegal resident’,” she said, a status that will affect everything about her life from driving a car to continuing to run her training business. “We have literally been working every day – 1,000 days – with each other to try to get some clarity on all of it. I never thought I would become addicted to Parliament TV, but I have.”

Jason Harris, 47, had got up at 2am to be here with his 14-year-old son Oran. They lived on the frontline of backstop territory in South Armagh, Northern Ireland, three miles from the border. Harris, a landscape designer who works on both sides of the border every week, also felt he had to be here rather than shouting at the television. “It is clear that either no deal or her deal will leave things in Northern Ireland up in the air for years,” he said. “I fear we will spend the next decades just trying to get back the freedoms we have given away.”

Like many on the march his priority had changed in the past week or so, with the options narrowing and the cliff-edge looming, and the online petition torevoke article 50 climbing towards 5 million signatures. “Revoke would now be number one, number two people’s vote,” he said. That idea had travelled in this crowd. Variations of the three Rs populated signs and banners: revoke, remain and reform.

There have been many attempts to divide the respective Leave and Remain tribes since the referendum – into somewheres and nowheres, populists and globalists, gammons and snowflakes.

One of the simplest distinctions, however, has always seemed to come down to that division between those who relish the idea of being cheek-by-jowl with people unlike themselves, and those who feel threatened by that idea. As the tide of protesters inched its way along Piccadilly toward Trafalgar Square it looked like an above-ground exhibition of what most Londoners experience below ground every day: the tolerant sharing of space with others. The people who had come to demonstrate voiced, above all, a conviction, to borrow that telling phrase from Jo Cox, “that we have more in common than that which divides us”. (Cox, it goes without saying, would have loved this event. Her killer would have loathed it.)

There had been suggestions that the march would be met by counter-demonstrations, but there were none in evidence. As the crowd first massed, with its blue and gold EU flags, I heard one or two shouts of “traitors” from those driving by. These “patriots” would have done well to talk to Brigadier Stephen Goodall, who led the “Veterans For EU” group.

Goodall will be 97 in June. He had travelled up from his home in Devon with four generations of his family including his great-granddaughter. During the war he helped to pull survivors out of the rubble of the Coventry bombing. He served in India and Burma and was awarded the Military Cross in 1945 for bravery behind enemy lines.

I had spoken to the brigadier the day before the march about his reasons for coming. “It was an easy decision,” he said. “There is not much time left for me to do anything and I just feel if we can even at this late stage get people thinking sensibly, then it will be worthwhile.” His great anxiety, as a former controller of the Slimbridge Wildlife Trust, was that our fractured politics would deflect us from the co-operative spirit required to combat climate change. “One thing that I always bear in mind from when we were in Malaya in the 1950s,” he said, “was this imperative that governance was first about reaching hearts and minds. We need politicians who think first of people,” he said, “not about their investments in the City of London.”

Goodall was pushed in his wheelchair near the head of the march, along with a brass band. It was impossible watching that sight not to make some comparisons with those few stubborn souls on the ill-fated “March to Leave”, moved to trudge along lonely hard-shoulders by Nigel Farage, only to find that he had turned up for the photo opportunity and left them to fend for themselves. Farage, alive to BBC requirements for “balance”, had returned to preach on Saturday to his handful of leaderless foot soldiers at a pub car park in Linby, Nottinghamshire: “You are the 17.4 million,” he told a crowd of 150.

As the thousands upon thousands flowed down towards Parliament Square there was, contrarily, a spirit that the Brexiters have failed over the past three years ever to begin to convey: that of creative optimism. You saw it in the 100 and more tango dancers led by Matthew Cooper, who had met in growing numbers on each of the past three protest marches, aged between 20 and 80. And in the improvised speeches on freedom given by an Emmeline Pankhurst lookalike under the statue of the suffragette. And even in the bloke flogging Donald Trump toilet rolls from a shopping trolley to stockpile should the rationing begin.

There was a very droll Britishness in the spirit that tempered any edges of anger from the many younger voices on the march. There were lots more students’ union buses than on previous marches, and among them plenty who had lost their faith in the Labour leadership to solve the crisis and deliver on its conference commitment to campaign for a second referendum.

Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on a screen. Get outside.

That brief marchers’ favourite “Oooh Jeremy Corbyn” had been replaced for several sections of this crowd by a more plaintive “Where’s Jeremy Corbyn?” The answer, perversely, was that the Labour leader was canvassing in Morecambe Bay – about as far from this event as it was symbolically possible to go.

Only one of Labour’s frontbench felt able to lend his voice to this event. Tom Watson, breaking ranks, was given something of a hero’s welcome on the speakers’ stage alongside some of those others who have emerged from the sorry parliamentary process with heads held high: Soubry, Jess Phillips, Dominic Grieve, David Lammy, Caroline Lucas; and some of those from beyond the Commons who have best articulated the cause of returning to the people to find a way through the current impasse: Michael Heseltine and Nicola Sturgeon.

Their collective message served as a reminder that when the prime minister stands up again this week and claims to speak for “the people” with her unloved deal and her fingernails-down-the-blackboard phrases about delivering Brexit, she will not speak for the million individuals who filled the wide streets and squares of the capital yesterday, or for the millions more across the country who were with them in spirit.

Watching the crowd I was reminded of a book I reviewed for this paper not long after those electoral convulsions of 2016 here and across the Atlantic. The book, On Tyranny, by the Yale historian Timothy Snyder, was a little survival guide against the digital forces of populism and the brutalist politics they promoted. Snyder called above all for a “corporeal politics” in response, for voting with paper ballots that can be counted and recounted; for face-to-face conversation, and for marching rather than online petitioning: “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on a screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.”

Those who did this on Saturday will no doubt be told in the coming days, as Britain determines the kind of country it will become, that they were wasting their time and effort. But this march mattered in the simple and fundamental way that mass marches always matter: as a reminder to those who make decisions in their name that democracy is not a settled state, but a shifting expression of collective will. As one little girl’s sign had it: “The people are STILL speaking”.

Phroyd

#brexit #london #protest #uk news #article 50

26 notes · View notes

paarke · 5 years

Text

Andrew’s gym used to be in the middle of a busy town, but as his strength grew, so did the problems. He was constantly having the gym upgraded with custom made equipment and heavier and heavier weights. Long abandoned ship yards soon found themselves coming back to life as the only places big enough to handle the kinds of iron he needed. The country was brought to a halt for three weeks as motorways had to be closed for a specially made truck that filled both carriageways at once made a painfully slow journey across the country to bring him a new dumbbell. Hooking it off the back of the truck with one finger, he announced that it was "fucking pathetic " and tossed it over his shoulder like an empty coke can. That was over a year ago and air traffic is still grounded until it finally falls to earth.

All that disruption was only the tip of the iceberg, and his gym and hardcore training made life a living hell for anyone living within a few miles. Nerves were shredded because no one ever knew just when he was going to drop the bar after a set. The loud metallic clanging temporarily deafening everyone, although that was the least of their worries. The constant banging of weights and him using machines that had more iron in them than a navy’s entire fleet caused constant shockwaves to go through the town. Driving was banned as there were so many accidents caused by cars getting bounced off the ground and careering out of control that it was far too dangerous. The trains weren’t any better, even if they could stay on the tracks, once he’d hooked his new 200megawatt stereo directly into the railway power grid with his bare hands, there wasn’t any juice left to power anything else. Houses became totally worthless, most were riddled with structural cracks and were never more than a few reps away from collapse. Insurance companies soon stopped paying out for repairs, saying it was an act of god. The town was on its knees. Schools were shut because staff couldn’t get in, businesses folded because supplies couldn’t get through. The local hospital, a 60’s concrete monstrosity collapsed into a cloud of dust half way through a really brutal leg session. Food meant a 15 mile walk to the nearest shop that could still get deliveries. Water was hit and miss. By the time he’d finished his latest bulk, Andrew couldn’t walk anywhere in town without the ground turning to mush, and the whole place was a mess of cracked water pipes and fractured sewer lines. Luckily there had been no gas supply for weeks. The truck delivering his new lifting straps fell through the road outside and broke the main supplying the town. When they told him they needed to shut the gym for a few days to fix it he simply pushed every single one of their vans, diggers, pneumatic drills into the hole and started to compact it down with his foot. To make his point he took off his trainer and made them watch as he moulded all their equipment into a solid mass of metal, oozing between his toes like it was some kind of thick liquid.

In just a few short weeks the few people still in the town were in some kind of post apocalyptic world, scavenging around shattered buildings to find scraps to eat and hoping for clean water. The whole area was now a big exclusion zone. Anyone in there was on their own. If they managed to get out, all well and good, but no one was coming to help them.

In a bid to try and persuade him from wreaking havoc somewhere new, the government agreed to supply Andrew with everything he needed as long as he stayed in the exclusion zone. He was going do whatever the hell he wanted, but it suited him to let them think they were in charge for now. Once a week, regular supplies would be delivered, and if he needed anything more complex then all available resources would be switched to providing that as quickly as possible. Naturally, this was going to be a huge logistical nightmare. His vast muscles were so impossibly dense that he had to eat a supermarket worth of calories for every meal just to maintain, and he was all about the growth. He needed a big area to stack up the hundreds of container loads of food and supplements that he would get through. He had the whole town to choose from, there wasn’t much left worth saving, but feeling a need to show his total dominance over the town he destroyed, he chose to site it on the one building apart from the gym that was still standing.

The medieval Church was a marvel of architecture and engineering, standing guard over the town for centuries, and a real tourist attraction in its own right. There was no real way that the authorities could protect it, but, amazingly, it has stood almost intact and they assumed Andrew would have no interest in it. Andrew barely touched the huge oak door and it smashed back into the wall and exploded into splinters. He never even knew it was locked. He walked in, surprised at the size, it would do nicely. He loved the sound of his huge footsteps, already cracking the floor, echoing around the vast building, sounding like a huge giant striding the earth wiping out entire civilisations. Very slowly he stuck out his incredible, veined arms by his side, and began to fill his lungs. His vast pecs swelled at his filled his lungs to capacity, and almost beyond until they just began to burn. The he let out a huge roar, probably the loudest sound ever heard on the planet. Priceless windows were instantly shattered, shards of glass raining down everywhere. Beautiful ceilings, painstakingly painted by artists hundreds of years ago cracked, and crumbled into tons of dust. The sheer power of his roar blowing all the dust out through the shattered windows and painting the whole town a kind of dirty great colour. Eyeing up a solid stone pillar, several feet thick, he pulled back his arm and obliterated it with a single punch. It probably took a hundred years to build and he was going to destroy it in minutes.

17 notes · View notes

gloriousgardendonut · 6 years

Text

Boats......

"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats" - Ratty - Wind in the Willows. So we swapped the campervan for a boat we have boated before in both cruisers and narrow boats and love it. In fact Simon has a long term plan to live on a boat…….oh as well as live in a mobile home…….oh and in a cottage that needs renovating……and finally on a plot of land where we actually build our house from scratch! We've boated before on the beautiful Norfolk Broads, once in summer, which is very busy, but amazing to see so many boats and once in Spring which was very quiet and more relaxing. We've also been on the Oxford Canal with the excitement of using locks but also the daily worry of not dropping the 'windlass' - that's the bit of equipment essential for opening the locks. We've also been on the Union Canal in Scotland via the engineering marvel that is the Falkirk Wheel - essentially a rotating boat lift that replaced a staircase of locks that took a lot of time and energy to navigate. Doing this in a barge was exciting and scary for those a little uncomfortable with heights. For this boat trip we started in Ely in Cambridgeshire with our boat hired from a boat yard on the Great River Ouse. Ely is a city but it feels like a market town. The cathedral is worth seeing inside and out, the architecture, paintings and fittings are spectacular. Only a short distance away from the centre is the river, which is a hive of activity for boaters and the locals. We spent a day and night in Ely walking along the river, site-seeing and trying the local bars and restaurants. We had one of those days when you blow the gap year budget because it's sunny, laid back and a relaxing place to be. We made up for the little blow out by spending zilch for the following few days by staying on the boat and relying on the supplies from home - emergency pasta and gin cocktails (Portsmouth gin at that - a present from a friend on finishing work for the gap year - chin chin Jacque Ashton). The boat was a cruiser with two 'wee' cabins, one had seats and a mini kitchen and the other cabin had a bed a wash basin and separate compartment with shower and toilet. A tight space but palatial compared to the van. The compartments were separated by the central driving compartment, where we alternated the role of captain and ships mate throughout the week, although someone took the role of captain much more seriously than the other. The bed was a strange triangular shape with the head part under the bow of the boat (that's the front). On night one claustrophobia set in for me as the space was small, confined and difficult to get out of without doing a backflip. So whilst Simon stayed put, myself and the dog moved to the front compartment where you could convert the seats to two single beds. I had one, Skyler had the other…..until about 5am when Skyler decided he'd jump onto mine and we'd share - a tight squeeze but there's nothing quite as nice as a doggy spooning you. For a week we cruised at 4-7 miles an hour along the River Great Ouse and its tributaries the Little Ouse, Wissey, Lark and Brandon Creek. We also went along The Cam where you can go as far as Cambridge, but we had decided not to visit the bigger towns or cities on this particular trip. Boating is best enjoyed if you sit back and just watch the views go by. As a commuter I spend 2-3 hours a day travelling along the motorways and busy roads of Lancashire, often on autopilot with the main objective of getting from A to B as quickly as possible; A and B being home and work. I spend little time taking in the scenery as a matter of safety. With a small boat it's very different, there's not a lot you can do other than chill out and spend a lot of time looking at the scenery. Once you do that you begin to see in great detail the views, the wildlife and nature in action. Swans teaching their signets the ways of the river, cows chewing the cud and flicking their tails, herons watching majestically from the banks, dragon flies frantically chasing your boat, ripples shimmering and breaking against the waterlilies and disturbing for a second the stillness of the yellow flowers sprouting from them. The vistas stretch for miles across fields with tiny villages recognisable by their church spires poking out on the horizon and then suddenly the vistas disappear and you are enclosed by reeds or trees of every variety, shaded but penetrated by flashes of sunlight. Every so often there is the excitement of a bridge - or rather getting the boat through it without hitting the sides. Then comes the mooring up!!!! Mooring is actually a simple task if logic is used and all remain calm - steer the boat in, knock off the power, secure the front end and then secure the back end, job done. Alas, for us mooring seems to cause a lot of tension, a row often errupts with choice language, raised voices and a lot of disagreement about who's fault it was the mooring didn't go to plan! Arguments aside there is something really lovely about being tied to the river bank, knowing you are there for the night far from civilisation in the peace and tranquility of the countryside all 'alone'. That is unless you listen to local folklore which can make you a bit nervous about the 'alone' bit. Local folklore has it that at night out on the paths near the waterways and fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk there is a ghostly presence known as the 'Black Shuck'. Described as a large black hound with red eyes as big as saucers that prowls about howling so as to make your blood run cold. Apparently though there are tales of the Shuck helping out the fairer sex who may find themselves lost in the fens and that he has on occasion guided them back to the safety of the villages. I could find no details though on what he does to men, making Simon a little nervous when conveniently I was already cosy on my PJs when he had to take Skyler out on the dark mooring for his before-bed pee…………ARH-WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Of course you don't need to sleep out in the middle of nowhere with wild beasties. Along the rivers and canals are pretty villages and pubs where you can enjoy the local hospitality, often these moorings are busier with other boaters and locals so there is that sense of safety in numbers if you don't like being in more secluded places. Littleport is one such place, an hour or so up the river from Ely, we stayed there on our first night, crossing a little bridge from our mooring to the Swan on the River,where we had a few glasses of the amber nectar and a lovely meal. Word of warning though, remember you are on a river and you need to be able to walk in a straight line at closing time back to your mooring, otherwise you'll be getting a bit closer to those waterlilies mentioned earlier than you hoped. Of course being on the boat doesn't mean just looking out and doing nothing, being on the boat is a perfect time to indulge in pastimes you might not get a lot of time to do in your busy working week. There's talking, reading, writing, playing games, taking photos, drawing, painting, maybe like me learning sailing knots and discovering local folklore. Cruising for 3-4 hours a day seemed about right for us as it gives you the opportunity to do some off boat activities too. Off the boat you can potter around the local area or walk for miles along the river paths (essential for doggy owners - remember the dog needs to pee and unless very clever can't cock their leg over the side). We are suckers for pots of tea and cakes at the village tea rooms and love to get a little mellow at the local pubs. Whilst cruising you may also come across a local markets, village fetes or visitor attractions. We visited Denver Sluice Complex, a historically controversial piece of waterway engineering built to prevent the often catastrophic flooding of the villages and fens around the rivers in this low level part of the country. Historically this lock and sluice system didn't meet the need it was intended for and blame was put on insufficient funding and miscalculations in its engineering structures (even John Rennie had a go). This resulted in more flooding and difficulties for village and boating trades over many years. Now it is in working order and whilst some feel it is still not as a good as it should be it has prevented further widespread flooding of the area. As for the traditional boating trades, as seen with many other areas across the country an increase in rail and road networks has meant a decline in these trades leaving the rivers free for mainly leisure boating. The railways are definitely evident in the area as the lines cross the river in several places and we did moor up very near the train line on a couple of occasions. Not everyones cup of tea, but we both love the sound of trains and watching with interest the origins of the freight on the freight trains, these often come from far and wide reminding us of how big the world is away from our boat and little piece countryside mooring. It was strange (van owners will understands this), but I felt a little guilty abandoning the campervan for a boat at the beginning of the week. However, by the end of the week we were sad to be leaving the boat behind after such a relaxing week and would have loved to carry on for longer, but boating is not cheap unless you own the boat of course. We agreed as we left that if we ever got a boat it would be a barge rather than a cruiser, with a tiller and not a wheel, the bed would be big and square, not a triangle and we'd have our mooring on the river not in a marina, it would be next to a field and a railway line with a short walk to the village tea shop and pub. Simon as always has begun researching this and will shortly bombard me with results in his bid to go and live on a boat. Unfortunately he is a hoarder and you can't live on a boat if you are a hoarder, so I have given him a load of charity bags in a bid to get him to have a clear out….. Watch this space!!!! One good thing about getting home was having the luxury of a proper bed to sleep in, although for the fist night I seemed to retain a sense of gentle rocking like I was still on the boat, but maybe that was Skyler pushing his luck and wriggling in for a spoon!!! So again with the words of Toad from Wind in the Willows it's back to the magnificent van (cart) for our next adventure in the gap year.

"There’s real life for you, embodied in that little cart. The open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs! Camps, villages, towns, cities! Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing! And mind, this is the very finest cart of its sort that was ever built, without any exception."

3 notes · View notes

afriedbreaddragonposts · 3 years

Text

Sindh Class 10 English Notes Chapter 19 The Khyber Pass

Sindh Class 10 English Notes Chapter 19 The Khyber Pass Education in Karachi solved exercises, MCQs, important questions, grammar, chapter overview, and Reading Comprehension.

Khyber Pass Sindh Class 10 English Notes

What is the Khyber Pass?Khyber Pass is of significant importance not only in present days but in past times as well. It is basically a narrow mountain valley in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.How long is it?It is about fifty kilometers long.Where do we go through this Pass?If someone has a desire to visit the state of Afghanistan, then one should go through Khyber Pass to reach there most comfortably and conveniently.When did the Aryans cross it?The Aryans crossed Khyber Pass nearly four thousand years ago in order to enter Pakistan.How many times did Mahmood Ghaznavi cross the Khyber Pass and why?Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi crossed the Khyber Pass seventeen times in order to attack South Asia.Which is the highest place along the Pass?Landikotal is the highest place along the Pass.Who lives in the mountains of the Khyber Pass?The valiant tribesmen of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa use to live in the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They are the defenders of Pakistan in a true sense. These brave men fought courageously against the mighty British Empire even under the British rule over our country. They fought for a long period of hundred years and truly defended their freedom.By what have the camel caravans been replaced?As the time moves rapidly especially in the field of transport with the inventions of vehicles, the camel caravans have been replaced mostly by trains, lorries and trucks.What did the camel caravans carry?Being the major transporter of goods, camel caravans carried bales of cotton, silk and spices from India and China to Afghanistan and beyond. That’s not all; they also brought mirrors, furs, skins and fruits from there for India and the countries to the East.

Comprehension-B

B. Learn the spellings and meanings of the following words from the lesson and use ten of them in sentences of your own: Famous; frontier post; conquerors; route; bales; spices; beyond; zigzag; mighty; defended; delicious; mule trains; stretched. Read more: Sindh Class 10 English Notes Chapter 17 The Inheritors Answer: WordsMeaningsfamous known about by many peoplefrontier post an official point where people or vehicles cross over a border between countriesconquerors people who conquer a place or people; a vanquisherroute a way or course taken in getting from a starting point to a destinationbales a large bundle of raw or finished material tightly bound with cord or wire and often wrappedspices an aromatic or pungent vegetable substance used to flavor food, e.g. cloves, pepper, or cumin.beyond at or to the further side of.zigzag a line or course having abrupt alternate right and left turns.mighty possessing great and impressive power or strength, especially because of sizedefended past tense of defend, resist an attack made on (someone or something); protect from harm or danger.delicious highly pleasant to the taste.mule trains a line of pack mules or a line of wagons drawn by mules.stretched of something soft or elastic) be made or be capable of being made longer or wider without tearing or breaking. WordsSentencesfamous Shahid Afridi is a famous Pakistani cricketer.routeIt’s the shortest route to Lahore.spicesAsian cuisine is famous for its spices, aroma and flavors.beyondThis job is beyond my ability and capability.zigzagThe zigzag path leads to the busiest market of the town.mighty One’s character and attitude make him mighty in the eyes of others.defended The warriors defended their land quite well.deliciousYesterday my father made me a delicious lunch.mule trainsStill one can find mule trains in the northern areas of Pakistan.stretched I stretched out my arms and legs to relax for a while.

Comprehension-C

C. Complete these sentences with words from the lesson: Answer: - There are many who traveled through some part of it. - Khyber Pass has been famous in history. - It has also been a famous trade route. - These brave tribesmen fought the mighty British Empire. - They are the defenders of the North-western frontier of Pakistan. - They ate some Tikkas and Chapli Kababs. - The road goes down winding through beautiful scenery. 8.It has to run through many tunnels in the mountains. 9.The students saw a track along which once traveled camel caravans, - They were welcomed by the soldiers guarding the frontier.

Comprehension-D

D. Look at these compound words: Mountain valley; frontier post; trade route Now take one word from list A and one from list B and make suitable compound words by joining them: A B Pakistan post camel line class trains check fellows railway caravan mule flag Answer: ABPakistanflagcamelcaravanclassfellowscheckpostrailwaylinemuletrains

Comprehension-E

E. Learn these words and if you do not know them look up their meanings in a dictionary: Travel; traveled; traveler; frontier; conquerors; army; armies; cotton; mirrors; country; countries; stop; stopped; busy; excellent; highest. Answer: Words Meaningstravel make a journey, typically of some lengthtravelled past tense of traveltraveller a person who is travelling or who often travelsfrontier a line or border separating two countries.conquerors people who conquer a place or peoplearmy an organized military force equipped for fighting on land.armies plural of army, a large number of people or thingscotton a soft white fibrous substance which surrounds the seeds of the cotton plant and is made into textile fiber and thread for sewing.mirrors a surface, typically of glass coated with a metal amalgam, which reflects a clear image.country a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory.countries plural of countriesstop (of an event, action, or process) come to an end; cease to happen.stopped past tense of stopbusy having a great deal to doexcellent extremely good; outstanding.highest superlative adjective of high, great, or greater than normal, in quantity, size, or intensity.

Comprehension-F

F. Composition: - Describe in ten sentences any historical place that you have visited recently. Answer: Being a history lover, last Sunday I forced my parents to take me to Mohenjo-Daro. Although I have visited it in my childhood once or twice I wanted to visit it again to revive my memories. When we reached there, I was amazed to see the ruins that stood there with all their glory and grandeur. The ruins are scattered in a vast complex that can only be accessed through a large entrance gate. It was divided into two main settlements or sectors. We had seen the whole complex on foot as no other transport was allowed over there. The guide explained to us each and everything about that place including the lifestyle of people, buildings and construction work of that time, etc. We visited the museum over there too that displayed a huge number of things of the past used by the people of Mohenjo-Daro. I was surprised to see beautiful ornaments and jewelry, pots and utensils, daggers and knives, statues and stupas, photographs and paintings depicting the lifestyle of the people of Mohenjo-Daro years back. Capturing the whole scenario not only in camera but also in our eyes, minds and souls, we returned back to our home after sunset with wonderful memories.

Non-Textual Exercises-G

Q.1 Complete the following sentences with “near to” or “not far from”. Answer: 1. The Khyber Pass is not far from Peshawar. 2. The market is quite near to our house. Q.2 Complete the following paragraph by inserting each of the four words (round, across, along, through): Answer: “As we went through the city we passed across crowded shops, went around narrow lanes and finally we walked along the park to our hotel.” Read the full article

#Karachiboard #Sindhboard #SindhClass10EnglishNotes

0 notes

mideastsoccer · 4 years

Text

Flying Under the Radar: Iranian Alternatives to Suez and Belt and Road

By James M. Dorsey

An initial version of this story was first published in Inside Arabia

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.

Iran together with India and Russia is pushing forward with a sea and rail corridor that could substantially reduce the time and cost of shipping goods from India to Europe. If successful, the corridor could challenge the Suez Canal’s primacy and give Iran a significant advantage as its rivalry with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates plays out in Central Asia.

As Eurasia’s geopolitical sands shift, Iran is touting a sea and rail hook-up involving Iranian, Russian, and Indian ports that would link the sub-continent to northern Europe as a viable alternative to Egypt’s Suez Canal and addition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Iranian and Indian officials suggest the route would significantly cut shipping time and costs from India to Europe. Senior Indian Commerce Ministry official B B Swain said the hook up would reduce travel distance by 40 and cost by 30 percent.

The Iranian-Indian-Russian push is based on a two-decades old agreement with Russia and India to establish an International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) as well as more recent free trade agreements concluded by the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) with Iran and Singapore.

The agreements have fuelled Central, South, and Southeast Asian interest in the corridor even if the EAEU itself groups only a handful of countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Exploiting the momentum, Russia has been nudging India to sign its own free trade agreement with the EAEU while the grouping is discussing an accord with the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

If successful, the Iranian push, backed by Russia and India, would anchor attempts by Iran to project itself as opposed to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the key Middle Eastern player in Russian and Chinese ploys for regional dominance.

Leveraging geography and Central Asian distrust of past Saudi promotion of its ultra-conservative strand of Islam, Iran expects that kickstarting INSTC will give it a significant boost in its competition with the kingdom and the Emirates for the region’s hearts and minds.

INSTC would also strengthen Iran’s position as a key node in the Belt and Road on the back of a two-year old rail link between western China and Tehran that runs across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

India’s ambassador to Russia, D B Venkatesh Varma, told a webinar hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Industry and Commerce that he expected to bring shipping and insurance companies as well as other businesses and stakeholders together to advance the INSTC.

The Iranian-Indian-Russian push suggests that Iran is playing multiple cards in the geopolitical jockeying for the future of Eusasia amid much speculation about a draft Iranian proposal for a 25-year strategic partnership with Beijing that if agreed and implemented would inextricably hook the Islamic republic to China.

The INSTC would link Jawaharlal Nehru Port, India’s largest container port east of Mumbai, through the Iranian deep-sea port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, funded by India to bypass Pakistan, and its Caspian Sea port of Bandar-e-Anzali to Russia’s Volga River harbour of Astrakhan and onwards by rail to Europe.

Suez Canal Authority spokesman George Safwat dismisses assertions by Iranian and Russian officials that the link would cut shipping time from 40 days through the Suez Canal to somewhere between 25 and 28 days.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Mr. Safwat said it takes only 19 days for a container shipped from India through the Suez Canal to reach the German port city of Hamburg.

A search on Searates, Dubai ports management company DP World’s search engine for shipping times puts the transit time at 21 days.

Mr. Safwat further insisted that INSTC would be unable to match the Suez Canal’s capacity to accommodate more than one billion tons of cargo a year.

The Iranian push was boosted in March by an agreement between Russia and India that would enable the shipment of goods through the corridor on a single invoice within a matter of months.

“Within three months, traders from India and Russia could move goods between the two countries through Iran,” said V. Kalyana Rama, the chairman of India’s state-owned Container Corporation (Concor).

Indian sources close to the Chabahar project said in interviews that the ability to issue one bill of lading that would allow exporters to get a bank letter of credit coupled with an agreement by state-owned Russian Railways (RZD) to act as the carrier had removed key obstacles for INSTC.

The sources said shipping costs were likely to be pushed upwards by the fact that much of the cargo traffic would be originating in India rather than destined for India. “Empty containers on one leg adds to the freight cost,” one source said.

The Russia-India agreement nevertheless takes on added significance as countries seek to diversify their supply chains after the experience of bottlenecks during the coronavirus pandemic.

If successful, the corridor could benefit men like Adar Poonawalla whose Serum Institute of India is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.

It may however not all be smooth sailing.

Chabahar, located in the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan, is not immune to the fallout of renewed Baloch nationalist violence in neighbouring Pakistan.

The violence, effecting investment in Gwadar, the Chinese backed port 70 kilometres down the coast in the Pakistani province of Balochistan, may give Chabahar a leg up but raises the spectre of proxy battles with Saudi Arabia and India suspected of supporting the nationalists for different reasons. Saudi support targets Iran while India’s focus is Pakistan, it’s longstanding nemesis.

In a further twist, Iran this week denied Indian media reports that it had dropped India as a partner in the development of a rail line from Chabahar to the border with Afghanistan because of delays in Indian funding.

Iran’s IRNA news agency, however, quoted Farhad Montaser, an official of the country’s Ports and Maritime Organization, as saying that Iran and India had failed to agree on Indian participation in developing Chabahar’s railway infrastructure during the original talks that secured Indian support for the port.

This would have included a 1,000-kilometre line to Sarakhs on the Iranian border with Turkmenistan. Iran has said it would fund the construction of railway infrastructure.

Indian analysts said in interviews that the government in Delhi had put participation by a state-owned Indian infrastructure company on the backburner because it may violate harsh US economic sanctions against Iran.

"We are very much in the game, but progress is slow due to the current political environment," India’s Zeenews quoted government sources as saying.

That offers Gulf states at best temporary consolation. Uncertainty about the outcome of the November election in the United States that could sweep presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden into office holds out the prospect of an administration that would be more critical of Saudi policies and more willing to return to negotiations with Iran.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He is also a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture in Germany.

#iran #Russia #india #indian ocean #Eurasia #Egypt #suez #middle east

0 notes

travelteatv · 4 years

Text

Following on from the last post, in which we travelled from London to Edinburgh, then up to Inverness – at this point in the journey we were staying just outside Inverness at Balnagown Estates.

We stayed there for two nights, using it as a base to explore Scotland and honestly, it was the best decision we could have made: we were in a small cottage (Peat Cottage) within the grounds of a huge, gorgeous estate and as a couple, it was absolutely perfect for us.

The staff are incredibly welcoming and there are lots of lovely touches within the cottage that make it feel like home. Plus, the facilities of the estate were fantastic and the staff really make you feel as though they want you to use everything they have on offer; free bike hire, a viewing tower which they give you a key to upon arrival, a games room (which is basically a huge sports hall), a Scottish wildcat breeding program you can go and see (from a safe distance of course) and more.

Also, it’s surprisingly affordable, considering everything on offer! We’re absolutely desperate to return as soon as we can.

WEST HIGHLAND RAILWAY LINE

Our first adventure from the cottage, was to catch a train on the West Highland Railway Line from Glenfinnan to Fort William aka the route of the Harry Potter train. I researched this thoroughly in advance and was initially upset to realise that the Jacobite Steam train runs a lot less frequently outside of peak months, and we would not be able to be in the right place at the right time, in order to catch it.

However, normal trains still run on that route and so it’s still possible to take a train which goes over the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct (my aim), which in itself is very special. Especially seeing as the normal train was £10 return each, as opposed to £43 return on the steam train. Of course, if we had been able to catch the ‘Harry Potter’ train, we would have jumped at the chance – my mum went on it a couple of years ago and absolutely raved about it. I can’t complain about saving a bit of money though!

Nonetheless, we were still excited to catch the train from Glenfinnan, so got up bright and early to make the beautiful drive going past Loch Ness and across the Stunning Highland countryside, to get the train. In fact, we left even earlier than necessary to give ourselves the option to stop if we saw anything we wanted to get out and look out – it was October, so the autumn leaves were out in force and it’s always a shame on a road trip to only be able to drive past things, so I was pleased to be able to stop a couple of times.

My favourite stop off was when we came across the ‘Bridge of Oich’ near Invergarry, which is free to park at and walk across. Scotland is a bit magical like this – you never know what’s going to be around the next corner.

We arrived at the station about 20 minutes before it was due to arrive, so had a wander around the museum which is in the train station and looked at the accommodation on site: ‘The Sleeping Car’ – it’s housed in an old train carriage, which is pretty cool. (I had tried to book a room here but sadly they were all booked up).

Now, I would love to say that the usual train was just as good as the steam train and I would highly recommend it to save some money etc. But unfortunately, I can’t really say that – the windows on the train were really dirty and I didn’t really manage to see much out the window/take any particularly good pictures.

Here for example, is an image I managed to take of the viaduct (I know, it’s awful):

If you simply want to go on this route, then yes I would definitely recommend taking this train but if you want a real experience, I wouldn’t go for this one – it really is just a normal train, not built as a tourist attraction and the carriages reflect this. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think the trains would be any different, but I think I forgot how dirty train windows often are!

The other thing to consider with this train, is the timetables, as they are much less regular than trains in the rest of the country. I had thought about this ahead of time, fortunately – we could have stopped in Mallaig at the end of the line instead of Fort William, but I was aware there’s a lot more going on in Fort William so at least we had an hour of wandering along the high street and could get some food before getting our return train to Glenfinnan.

GLENCOE

Thankfully, this wasn’t our only plan for the day – Glenfinnan is only 30 minutes away from the stunning Glencoe, so this was our next destination. You would probably recognise Glencoe from a few famous movies, including James Bond ‘Skyfall’, Monty Python and Braveheart. It’s a beautiful valley and well worth stopping by if you’re able to.

On the way, we stopped and had a quick look at the viaduct from the ground and even saw a deer wandering around! We couldn’t stay for too long though as the car parks where you can get this view are quite expensive and it didn’t seem worth the money seeing as we had just been on the train.

Now, this day already hadn’t quite gone as planned for me, as I had been so excited to get a good view of the viaduct from the train (that I had been planning for a long time). So you can imagine my heart sinking even further when by the time we got off the train and drove to Glencoe, the rain started. Rain so heavy that there was practically zero visibility , so once in the valley I also couldn’t really see anything.

Like true Brits, we took the only natural next step in order to make ourselves feel better – we went to the pub. There aren’t a lot within the area, but the Clachaig Inn is situated within Glencoe, so we stopped there for a pint and some food. And you know what? It completely turned the day around.

The Clachaig Inn is a a bed and breakfast with some bars attached – we went into the ‘Boots Bar’; a cosy little pub with a nice fire and good food, that’s quite popular with walkers due to its location and also in turn, dogs. They have a great selection of local beers that they’re happy to talk you through/let you try and in general, the staff are very friendly.

We stayed there for a few hours hoping to let the rain pass, although according to the staff it hadn’t stopped raining in about a month so that seemed unlikely! Nonetheless, we spent a lovely couple of hours in the warm, tucked away from the rain playing board games and drinking local beers (only a half for me as I was driving, of course).

I think if we ever do another road trip going up the west side of Scotland, I think we would potentially aim to stay at the Clachaig Inn, partly due to its location but also just because of how welcoming and lovely everyone was. Plus they allow dogs!

Once we left, the rain had pretty much passed and so we were able to drive up the valley to gawk at how pretty it was for a bit. I mean, you can completely see why it’s so regularly featured as a backdrop in movies!

It did take a few hours to drive from Balnagown to Glencoe, so we headed back early afternoon and I will admit, it was a bit of a depressing drive as the rain started again but thankfully we had our homely accommodation to look forward to arriving at.

On the way, we popped into Aldi and grabbed some beers, as well as some food for dinner/the next day and then spent a cosy evening in the cottage/playing games in the games room on site!

And that was the second leg of the journey! The final section, is our travels from Inverness to John O’Groats which was also pretty special.

Abi

@travelteatv

TOP TIPS

I posted some top tips on how to travel on a budget in the UK on the last post (which you can see here) but just to reiterate some in relation to this day specifically:

Train tickets: This could have cost us a lot more money if we didn’t book the tickets ahead and use our railcards (check if you’re eligible for one here).

Supermarket shops: If you can stop by an Aldi/Lidl/Asda then I would recommend it to make sandwiches/for breakfast food as it really does have a big impact on the budget. Plus, it’s nice having car snacks on hand for the drive!

Parking: Part of the reason I chose to go to Glenfinnan station was because of it’s proximity to the viaduct and Glencoe but also because I knew there was free parking. I’m aware how cheap that sounds but at some of the big stations/attraction car parks you can easily end up paying £10/£15 just to leave the car there, which can easily add up over a few days.

Scottish Road Trip on a Budget | Part 2 | Glencoe and Glenfinnan Viaduct Following on from the last post, in which we travelled from London to Edinburgh, then up to Inverness - at this point in the journey we were staying just outside Inverness at…

#bridge of oich #Glencoe #glenfinnan #harry potter #harry potter train #invergarry #Inverness #loch #SCOTLAND #Scottish Highlands #viaduct #west highland line

0 notes