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fific7 · 3 years

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Ticket to Ride - Part 2

Billy Russo x Reader

A/N: Inspired by The Beatles song of the same name. This takes place in my S1 Punisher AU with Arrogant!Billy in attendance, in which he gets a taste of his own medicine.

Warnings: 18+ NSFW due to sexual content, including oral, between consenting adults* in some chapters. Drinking and swearing.

*Irl, please don’t go wild in the country without protection.

(My photo edit)

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𝕊𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕒𝕚𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕞𝕖 𝕚𝕤 𝕓𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕕𝕠𝕨𝕟, 𝕪𝕖𝕒𝕙

𝕊𝕙𝕖 𝕨𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕕 𝕟𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕓𝕖 𝕗𝕣𝕖𝕖 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕟 𝕀 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕒𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕

𝕊𝕙𝕖'𝕤 𝕘𝕠𝕥 𝕒 𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕣𝕚𝕕𝕖

𝕊𝕙𝕖'𝕤 𝕘𝕠𝕥 𝕒 𝕥𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕣𝕚𝕕𝕖 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕤𝕙𝕖 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕖

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The aircraft door opened and you stepped out gratefully onto the air jetty. You weren’t scared of flying, you just didn’t like being cooped up in a flying tube for several hours on end. Up an escalator and along a short corridor and then you were able to see outside through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The sky was beginning to shade into the colours it would take on for dusk. It looked like it had been a nice day and you hoped the good weather would continue for your stay.

Karen had texted you while you were sitting on the plane at JFK, waiting for it to push back. Frank had told her that Micro had tracked your phone to the airport so boy, were you glad you’d turned off your old phone and switched to the new one when you did. She’d also told you that Billy had asked him to find out where you were headed, and your heart sank. You knew it wouldn’t take long for Micro’s vast and nerdy computer skills to find you but then again, London was a huge city and they’d have no idea whereabouts in it you’d gone to ground, thanks to your new ‘burner phone’.

You were feeling super-excited. This was beginning to feel like an action movie, with you on the run from the bad guys.

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“London??!!” Billy shouted, making Frank quickly move his phone away from his ear on the other end. “Yeah, London,” he replied.

Billy was back at his usual post by the window. “I mean... obviously I knew she was gonna fly somewhere but I thought it would the West coast, Miami, Seattle, Alaska... somewhere like that. But to go to a whole other continent....!!!!” Frank sighed, “Yeah, Bill, sounds like she’s really not keen to bump into you anytime soon.” “Yeah, thanks for remindin’ me.” “Bill, you brought this on yourself, buddy.” “I know!” yelled Billy, “An’ all I wanna do is get her back and make it up to her for the rest of my life, and all I know is she’s in London! Do you know how big that place is?” “Yeah, I do. And t’be honest... I dunno how you’re gonna even try to find her over there.”

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. “I mean...” Frank continued, “I’m guessin’ you are gonna go over there and try to find her, Bill?”

Billy’s shoulder twitched upwards briefly, and he stared intently out the window at the New York skyline.

“Yeah, Frankie... yeah, I damn well am.”

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You’d left two of your big suitcases and the backpacks in a luggage storage facility at JFK, travelling with just the one suitcase and a large shoulder bag. You took the overground Heathrow Express to Paddington before negotiating a change onto the Tube to reach Tower Hill DLR station, boarding one of the driverless trains out to Canary Wharf. Settling back into your seat, feeling pretty proud of yourself for managing not to get hopelessly lost.

Your AirBnB apartment was in a part of the city called Docklands, beside the Thames on the Isle of Dogs. It was an area of shiny skyscraper offices and fancy apartment blocks built round the old docks, and your accommodation for the next two weeks was in one of those. You were suitably impressed when you got inside it... open plan, all trendy furniture and gleaming fittings. Big, big windows with views of the river and the tall buildings.

Your phone chimed and you saw a text from Karen on your notifications. Taking your suitcase and bag into the bedroom, you went back out to the main area and sat on the sofa to read it. Oh. Billy now knew you were in London, and had apparently booked a flight over - he’d be arriving tomorrow. Your heart rate sped up; Billy was a sniper, used to finding, stalking, watching his prey. But, you told yourself, he had no idea whereabouts in the city you were and no way of finding you.

Relax.

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Billy stepped off the Heathrow Express, looking around for signs indicating where the taxi rank was. He’d been looking at the Tube map during the train journey. Nah, fuck that.

He was too wired to even think about getting to London Bridge on the Underground, or ‘Tube’ as he found out Londoners called it. His brain had been working overtime trying to figure out how the hell he was going to find her in a city the size of London. She’d stay central, surely - she wouldn’t head to the suburbs, he felt confident of that.

Getting into the first taxi in the queue, he drawled out, “The Shard, please.” The taxi driver nodded and pulled away from the station without saying anything. Thank fuck, thought Billy, I can’t be dealing with a talker right now. But just as the thought had left his head, the driver’s London accent said, “First time in London, guv?” Billy sighed, “No. No, it isn’t.” In fact it was, but he wasn’t about to tell the driver that. He’d only end up getting taken on the ‘scenic route’, double the time, double the price.

The driver grunted and turned up the radio... really annoying music could now be heard but Billy would take that over inane small talk any day. He looked out of the windows at the city streets and his mind went back to his mission. Mission impossible. Finally he saw the river and the taxi crossed a wide bridge before pulling up outside the lofty skyscraper that was The Shard. According to the blurb he’d read on some travel website it was the tallest in Western Europe, and while there were taller buildings in New York, the shape of this one made it look quite dramatic.

He paid and got out of the taxi with his expensive wheeled duffel bag, heading to the Shangri La entrance of The Shard and going inside. (It’s one of the priciest hotels in London - of course). Checked in at reception on the 35th floor, he was then whisked up to his room on the 52nd by another express lift. The windows were huge and the views spectacular.

Once again, he was gazing out of a window at a cityscape.

Where is she?

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Your first full day, you occupied yourself with getting to know the surrounding area, doing some grocery shopping and sitting on your large balcony, enjoying the view and relaxing with a glass of wine.

Every time a plane went overhead you wondered if Billy was on it - he was due here today. You shook yourself a little, you’d just have to stop thinking about it. He wouldn’t find you.

Your mind wandered unbidden to his recent behaviour. Knowing Billy was a player from day one, you’d still got involved with him. More fool you. Another old cliché.... you thought you’d be the one to change him. And you thought you had. You’d dated him for a few months, he seemed to have ditched his old hound-dog ways and when he’d asked you to move in with him, you’d agreed without thinking it over too deeply.

Now, looking back, it seems like you’d made a big mistake.

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Micro had spent quite some time constructing a query table that he could run against accommodation reservations in London for her arrival day. She had no reason to book under another name and he’d just have to run with that assumption.

When Billy had come directly to him instead of going via Frank to ask that he try and track down her reservation, Micro had been too scared to refuse. Billy still really unsettled him - he always reminded him of a circling predator.

This query would take a while to run. He hit the go button and wandered off to work on another project while it tunnelled its way through layer upon layer of data.

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Billy was pacing his swanky hotel room like a caged panther. He’d given up on the idea of roaming the streets of London trying to spot his target, that was just one dumbass idea. He’d never find her that way, much better to just wait on that geeky twat to come up with the answer with his internet wizardry.

He’d spoken to Frank earlier, who had nothing new to report. Billy wouldn’t allow himself to feel guilty at cutting him out of the loop on his recent ask to Micro. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Frank wouldn’t mention it to Karen. Much as he loved him like a brother, Frank was a big sap when it came to Karen and he knew he’d give in and tell her, probably sooner rather than later.

However Frank had told him that Madani had called earlier that day, wanting to know where Billy was and why she couldn’t get in touch with him. Billy had figured out that his girl had got herself a new phone, and he’d followed suit. Which is why Dinah hadn’t been able to reach him. “Whaddya tell her?”he’d asked. “That you were on an overseas operation and were incommunicado.” “Good,” nodded Billy, “....that takes care of that little problem for a while at least,” feeling a sense of relief.

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Frank cut the call, a grim smile on his face. He hadn’t been completely straight with Billy, but it was for his own good. What he’d told Madani, however, had been the unadulterated gospel truth.

He’d said to her that Billy had hared off to Europe in pursuit of his live-in girlfriend, who’d suspected him of cheating on her and left him. He was absolutely determined to get her back.

He’d taken great satisfaction in the dead silence on the other end of the line, eventually punctuated by an angry snort and the call being abruptly ended.

That ‘little problem’ was hopefully taken care of for good.

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Micro looked at his phone as it beeped at him, the notification saying that his query was complete. That had taken much longer than he thought it would. Now he could only hope it hadn’t returned too many matches as he’d thought it prudent to run it on surname only.

He pulled up the results table and was pleased to see that there were only a thousand or so, he’d feared there would be many more. He scrolled through the list and quickly pinpointed the one he’d been looking for.

With a deep sigh he picked up his phone, typed “Wood Wharf, Water St, London E14”, a building and apartment number into a new message, then hit send. It would be the early hours of the following morning in London, so he very much doubted that Billy would leap out of bed and head right over there.

He finished eating his supper, drank a beer and settled down to watch TV when his conscience started bothering him. Should he? He shivered when he thought about what Russo might do to him if he found out.

Popping another bottle of beer open, he sat and contemplated what he should do for quite a while. He suddenly picked up his phone, sending a quick text to Frank telling him about the whole situation and including the fact that Russo now had her London address.

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While you were lounging on your balcony, sipping your wine and watching the world go by, it suddenly occurred to you that this would be a great base to work out of for a while. You messaged the estate agent and extended your stay to one month, with an option to extend if required.

Then, on a whim, you booked a flight to Barcelona early the next morning from City Airport - it was really close to your apartment even if the flights were a bit more expensive. You’d been doing a little research into other destinations to explore, and having a base in London to travel to and from made you feel much more comfortable. The W Barcelona had caught your eye while you’d been browsing for accommodation and as you were only going for a few nights, you’d booked in there.

Feeling extremely pleased with yourself, you got up and went into your bedroom, looking for a folded-up smaller travel bag you knew you’d packed in your luggage. Finding it, you began to choose some outfits for your short trip, thinking what a joy it was that you could now leave your large suitcase here.

But damn, you were going to have to be up early tomorrow. Best to get an early night, you thought, immediately yawning.

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Billy shot up in bed as his phone chimed with Micro’s text. When he read the information in the text, contrary to Micro’s belief he did leap out of bed and started pulling on his clothes (Micro had forgotten that this was an ex-Marine he was dealing with here).

He sat back down on the bed and googled the location. Oh okay, East London.... Docklands. Too far to walk and he didn’t think the Tube ran at this hour. Then he pulled up the Uber app and booked an immediate pick-up.

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Walking into the terminal building at City Airport, you were in the middle of a total yawning fit when a text came in. It was from Karen and you stopped, putting down your bag so you could read it.

Karen: Sorry to tell you this hon, but Billy went direct to Micro 🙄 and intimidated him into finding your London accom. Frank’s told him not to do that again no matter how much he’s shitting himself! Please take care of yourself 💋

You: Bastard 👿 thanks for the heads-up, I will do 😘

Picking your bags up again, you hurried over to one of the automated check-in machines to get your luggage tag.

Whoever had said ‘timing is everything’ had definitely got that right.

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“Oi!!!” yelled an irate male voice. Billy turned his head to see a groggy-looking tousle-haired guy, obviously just having been woken up. “Keep the noise down!”

Billy said nothing, just gave the guy his death stare. His head quickly disappeared back inside his apartment.

After pressing the buttons of a few apartment numbers at the main entrance, someone had buzzed him in and he’d been pounding on her apartment door for the last five minutes. But there was no response, and he knew she wasn’t that heavy a sleeper.

He slid tiredly down onto the floor outside her door. Had she somehow known he was on his way over here? No.... how would she know that?

His head dropped down in momentary defeat and he ran his fingers through his hair, groaning.

She hadn’t moved on already, had she?

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The plane lifted off the tarmac, and immediately you felt a huge sense of relief. You just weren’t ready to see Billy right now - you’d probably kill him if you did, ex-Marine or not.

Now you were off on your next adventure.

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London

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@blackbirddaredevil23 @galaxyjane @omgrachwrites @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @ourloveisforthelovely @swthxrry @odetostep @supernaturalcat7 @obscurilicious @strawb3rrydr3ss

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#billy russo #billy russo x reader #billy russo fanfiction #billy russo imagine #billy russo fanfic #ben barnes #the punisher 💀

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dat-town · 3 years

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wish you were here

Characters: Mark Lee & you

Setting: wish dragon au (and a bit of aladdin because mark even has a tiger in their garden like jasmine did. don’t ask why, just blame the regular mv), childhood best friends to lovers (at least there’s potential?)

Genre: fluff and humour

Warnings: mentions of a sick animal and a wild animal kept as a pet in a huge garden (just like jasmine’s tiger, it’s very tamed)

Summary: A magical teapot, a dragon that wants everyone to be happy and an old friendship being revived. Oh yeah, have I told you that you have 3 wishes?

Words: 6.4k

For @restlessmaknae 💕

When your mother told you you got delivery to your childhood home, you certainly did not expect this: a brown box as big as a small watermelon with your old Canadian address and MARK LEE scrabbled next to your name as another recipient but no sender. Not to mention, the first stamp on the thing was dating back to the early 2010s. Where the hell was this package for 10 years? And what would you and your old neighbour slash best friend have gotten together?

Okay, first things first:

You and this clumsy, kind of cute kid, Mark had been quite tight while growing up. You were born in the same year, only a month apart, and his family lived in the house next to yours in the suburbs of Vancouver, so it was kind of natural. You two might have been against the world kind of comrades, playing hide and seek when you were six and wondering about whether time travelling was possible through black holes at twelve. But no matter how close you used to be, you fell out of touch when Mark's family moved to the other end of the world, back to Korea, their roots when you were fourteen. You slowly forgot about him, and started university in the city, moving away from home, so nothing really reminded you of him ⎼ and your stupid, big fat crush on him that you had no courage to tell him about in middle school ⎼, nothing until this box.

You put the delivered package on your kitchen table while you make some dinner for yourself out of what you have gotten during grocery shopping earlier just before you picked up the mysterious stuff at the post office. You eye it suspiciously over your pasta, really not wrapping your mind about what it could be but instead of annoying yourself with this pointless curiosity, you put your fork down and stand up to open it. It’s a struggle at first, the box being secured with multiple adhesive tapes over the years but when you finally get rid of all that and can look inside of it, an intense feeling rushes through you… immerse disappointment.

“A teapot? For real? What were we thinking?” you furrow your brows taking the small, green and pretty old teapot into your hands. It looks like a piece of a traditional Asian set with its jade colour and dragon pattern. It couldn’t have been in a much better shape 10 years ago either seeing how wayworn it is but still, you expected something more… exciting? Something funny that might or might not give you an excuse to look up Mark Lee on the internet and message him for the sake of old times. But how lame it would be to befriend him on Facebook only to tell him that you got delivered a teapot under both your names. Hah, you would rather not embarrass yourself like that.

You shoot one last glance at the teapot before leaving it on your counter and going back to your food, you successfully forget about the whole ordeal. You carry your life on with only one small difference: Mark Lee back on your mind after long, long years.

It was just a small crush, you tell yourself, sighing as you look into the mirror, absentmindedly wondering how he’s doing. Does he think of you sometimes as well? Did he go to music college like he has always wanted? Is he happy? You wish he was even if he’s half a world away and with that thought you think it’s time to go to sleep despite the upcoming weekend days. You don’t want to mess up your sleep schedule over some boy but as soon as you pull the blanket over your chest and close your eyes, something explodes in your kitchen.

You jump out of bed faster than lightning, in slight panic over the fact that your neighbours will hate you for bothering them late at night and your landlord would kill you if you managed to blow up your microwave. But the sight that welcomes you is like no other that you imagined. The whole room is covered in thick pink glittery smoke. Like your worst Barbie nightmare.

“What the⎼” you cough, waving your hands to clear the air and once it dissolves into nothingness with its weirdly cotton candy smell, there’s a boy in the middle of it all, sitting cross legged on your kitchen counter so casually as if he owned the place. His pink-ish purple hair hangs into his eyes and he seems to find your coffee machine strangely interesting. You grab the first thing you can ⎼ a blender ⎼ and hold it up in defensive before yelling at the boy: “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my apartment?”

The stranger’s mouth pulls up in a charming smile, his eyes sparkle as he turns his attention to you, hopping off the counter. He’s all thin and long limbs, so you hate how you hate to look up at him as he walks towards you before bowing ceremoniously.

“Hello, sorry for the sudden appearance, I just couldn’t wait any longer! I’ve been stuck in that teapot waaay too long. I didn’t mean to be rude or anything. My name is Taeyong, I’m a wish dragon and you’re my new owner,” he smiles and what he says makes absolutely no sense.

“A wish dragon?” you mumble in shock, looking around to see if this is just another prank of Johnny. You wouldn’t be surprised to see him jump out from under one of the cupboards. Or maybe you just fell asleep and you’re dreaming. Yeah, that seems like a realistic scenario.

“Ah, yes! I know I don’t look like it but modern times require modern solutions. Most people freak out because of my dragon form, so human it is,” the boy who seems only a few years older than you grins as he’s chatting and you have to give it to him, he takes this role pretty seriously. “You have three wishes as my owner. You can ask for anything as long as it’s not about death or love.”

So you got yourself someone who thinks he’s basically a genie? Oh gosh, is he that drunk?

“Aha, very funny. I’m too tired for this prank, so I would appreciate it if you left the same way you came...” you point towards your window because there’s no way he came through the door. Putting down your blender because the guy looks pretty harmless despite his crazy blabbering, you move to go back to your bedroom.

“No, no, no, I can’t do that,” the boy, Taeyong as he introduced himself, appears in front of you within a second and grabs your shoulder as if he could shake some sense into you. He looks pretty desperate. “I can only get a new owner if I fulfill all wishes of yours. It was super stuffy in that box the last decade, you know.”

At that excuse you let out a laugh.

“You don’t even fit it the⎼”

“You were saying?” Taeyong is suddenly nowhere near ahead of you but instead a small creature, supposedly a dragon, in the size of your palm flies in front of your eye level. “It’s magic!”

Okay, now that sight makes you feel like it’s you who is drunk. Or worse.

“Am I dead?” you have to ask in a small, uncertain voice, trying to think back what could have happened. Maybe that explosion literally blew your apartment up? But it hurts when you pinch your arm and turning back into his human form, Taeyong wants to prove the very same thing. Not the hurting but the not dead part, obviously.

“No, you’re very much alive and a happy owner of a wish dragon. Not permanently, of course, but still,” he tells you as he drags you onto your couch in the living room. As if sitting down could help processing all this.

So you have a wish dragon in your home, a magical creature that can casually switch between its dragon and human form and he says you should wish for three things, so he could leave and you could go back to your old, boring life without magic and things that scare you to death at 11PM.

“Can I ask… why? Why me? I’m not really owner-material,” you whisper because heck yeah, you even managed to kill your cactus before. Taeyong purses his lips as he sits down, a hand at his chin.

“Well, it’s unusual indeed to have a peasant girl, no offence, as my owner but as far as I know, you and your friend asked for a sign that magic was real.”

Oh, you remember that, being so obsessed with shooting stars and other stuff like that, you two used Mark’s brother’s computer to browse the internet, trying to find evidence about all that. You were kids wanting to believe in a world beyond the one you knew. But...

“That was like 10 years ago,” you furrow your eyebrows, not getting the timing.

“Well, sorry, you weren’t put on the top of the Heaven wish list and the shipping from Shanghai to Vancouver isn’t the fastest either,” Taeyong shrugs as if it was supposed to be natural. As if that was the most unbelievable thing. Well, delivery services are sometimes a pain in the ass, that’s true but getting a wish delivered by Heaven was something you would have never thought of and it all drains down on you. Strangest realisation of your life.

“So… it’s all real,” you whisper ahead of yourself: magic, dragons and all that. You could basically see your old best friend’s I told you so smile and let out a soft chuckle. “I wish Mark could meet with you, too.”

At that the guy ahead of you claps his hands and rubs them together, creating the same purple smoke from before. You look at him alarmed.

“Your wish, my command,” Taeyong grins and lifts his hands and before you could make a sound of protest because gosh, you didn’t mean it literally, you feel the ground move under your feet and you’re falling, into the darkness but despite shutting your eyes automatically, fearing the impact of the crash, nothing comes. Only the smell of soy sauce in the air and warm sunshine on your skin… Wait, what?

Your eyelids fly open and you notice in shock that you’re not in your flat anymore, ready to sleep. Instead, you stand in the middle of a goddamn street somewhere in Korea based on the signs still in your PJ shorts and tee. Oh my gosh! You hide in an alley right away and yank the seemingly proud Taeyong with you.

“I didn’t tell you that I meant right now! I can’t meet Mark in my PJs and I need my phone and wallet to function anyways. Not to mention, I don’t speak Korean at all...” you ramble panicking, the realisation that you’re indeed on the other side of the Earth due to some magic is yet to register. But the awkwardness from the stares you have just gotten has already turned you bashful.

Listening to you, the wish dragon seems sheepish and slightly embarrassed as he scratched his nape, his colourful hair falling into his cast down eyes.

“Oh… sorry. I got so excited over the wish that I didn’t think about it! It’s been a while since I did teleport magic but hey, I still have it in me. Anyways, sorry. Phone and wallet, you said? Here you go,” he pulls out something from his pants which magically seems to be indeed your belongings. That definitely makes things earlier.

“Uhm, thanks. Where are we exactly?”

“Ah, well you mentioned your friend Mark Lee, so we’re here. Well, one bell away because I did remember that it’s rude to intrude other’s houses without permission first,” oh now, you know, you snicker internally and gulp because hell, even if you wanted to see Mark, you wouldn’t have thought that the meeting would come so soon. You didn’t have enough time to prepare yourself mentally.

“So… you’re telling me that this… is where Mark lives?” you point at the impressive apartment complex on the corner of the street but Taeyong shakes his head.

“Nope, This is where your Mark lives,” he says and before you could object about the ‘your’ part, the dragon points at the other side of the road at a luxurious house with a huge garden, basically a palace. Seeing the beautiful fountain, the modern and yet traditional Korean style building beyond the fences makes your jaw drop.

“Hahaha, alright for a magic dragon you must have made a mistake. There’s no way the Mark Lee I know lives here,” you look back at Taeyong finding it funny that the kid who used to wore his favourite tees until his mother basically threw them out would live at such a place.

“Mark Lee, korean name Minhyung, supposed to be 22 years old internationally soon. Bad eyesight, contagious laugh, clumsy but has surprisingly good reflexes, gets embarrassed easily. Sound familiar?” Taeyong crooks a brow at you as he reads the information off from a parchment he just took out of his pants. Everything he listed is just so Mark that you’re left in disbelief.

“Uuh… that sounds about right.”

“His father hit it big in 2016 with a tech company, their net worth has too many zeros to count,” Taeyong explains, seeing how surprised you were over the fact that he lived a lavish life like this. Not that he doesn’t deserve it! Mark is such a sweetheart, so of course, you would only want the best for him but as if half the world wasn’t enough, now you have another huge gap between you.

“Gosh, I really can’t believe this. How am I supposed to just ring the bell and say hello after so much time?” you sighed with your head in your hands. “Argh, I need to buy some clothes and change.”

Taeyong approves the idea based on how enthusiastically he hollers, you wonder why nobody on the street seems to pay no attention to him. Maybe only you see him, just more reason for you to be crazy.

“Good idea because we’re having dinner with Mark!”

“What?” you look up in shock, not following through. Taeyong grins down at you, flashing a giddy smile and with a twirl he’s changed from his baggy, casual clothes to something more chic but still laidback.

“Your wish was him meeting me, so I arranged everything. I can't meet him without you and the teapot there, you know,” he explains as if it was supposed to be obvious. You aren't ready yet though.

“You just want to eat all the fancy delicious food he has,” you squint at him suspiciously and the dragon stays silent, so you must be right. He laughs nervously.

“Maybe, but can you blame me? I haven’t had a feast since a literal decade!” he hollers and somehow you really cannot find it in yourself to be angry at him. You are in Seoul for god's sake after all and magic is real, you can put up with the inconvenience of buying clothes and making yourself look decent before dumping all this surprise on Mark.

An hour later you stand in front of the gates of the Lee mansion and nervously you wipe your sweating hands into your dress. You can totally do this, you just say hi to an old friend, it's not like you're afraid he wouldn't remember you, hah, of course not–

"Y/N!"

You whip your head at the call of your name to the source of that all too familiar voice. Sure it's deeper than you remember but there's no mistake in whose it is. Plus, who else would call your name in South Korea of all places.

"Mark, hey!" you wave the boy who just got out of one of the fanciest cars you've ever seen in your life. And yet, despite the Prada suit and expensive shoes, styled hair and Swiss watch on wrist, Mark Lee still has that goofy little smile and the doe eyes that used to make you weak in the knees. Hah, who are you kidding? They still do.

"Oh my god, dude, you… you got pretty," Mark jogs up to you and having no filter like always he blabbers immediately only to stutter as his ears turn red. It was so him talking before thinking, so you didn’t really mean to dwell on his words. Although you felt your cheeks dusted with pink soon enough. "I mean, it's really good to see you! I was so surprised to see your name in my calendar for today's dinner! You should have told me you were coming to Korea, I would have picked you up at the airport."

His calendar? Ah, of course, he must have been busy and all that. You wouldn’t have been surprised to see an assistant run after him at this point, so you wonder how your wish dragon magically put you onto his list of important people to meet. Gosh, it was so weird.

"Ah, I have a funny story about that…" you chuckled to yourself but before you could have get out anything, even a please, can we go to a more private place? Mark’s eyes zero on the guy next to you and his eyes grow comically wide.

"And uhm, who is your friend?" he points at Taeyong who waves him in exchange with a kilowatt smile. He looks back at you with his mouth agapé. "Oh my god, you came to invite me to your wedding?"

He says oh my god way too many times for an eloquent rich kid, he really is the Mark Lee you knew.

"No, never! I mean, of course, I would invite you but Taeyong and I– I literally met him on my way here," you explain hastily cursing yourself for the silly lie. You came to tell him the news not to try to make it believable.

“I heard there’s food,” the wish dragon pipes in very helpful and you shoot him a disapproving glance he doesn’t notice. Luckily, Mark doesn’t seem to mind.

“Oh, yeah, of course, dinner! Come on in, let’s get you two settled,” he grins albeit a bit awkwardly as he leads you through the gate after opening it with his card.

On the way through the very, very, very big garden, he’s chattering about how he misses the Vancouver weather, especially on humid, hot days like this and talks about how he thinks the fountain in their yard is a bit too much but his mom loved it and then before you know it, you sit by a huge dining table with fine food in front of you. Suddenly you can’t decide whether you're grateful for Taeyong’s shameless presence – he digs into the jjigae right away – because at least the situation isn’t awkward because of your silence or you’re annoyed by it because you must seem like a weirdo because of him. That’s why you decide to rip off the bandage and tell Mark as soon as the last maid has disappeared too.

“Okay, so actually I came here because I have a surprise,” you speak up, probably too serious because the boy almost chokes on his food due to how fast he turns his head towards you.

“More surprise?” he coughs out and you offer him a glass of water which he takes with a smile.

“You literally won’t believe this one!” you assure him and wait until he gulps down the drink. Only then you point to Taeyong and tell him that your childhood wish has come true.

Mark almost falls off his chair this time.

Not after you tell him that though. He laughs at that with that wheezing laugh of his as if you told the joke of the century then pats you on the shoulder murmuring That was a good one, bro and turning back to his food. But then you look at the magic dragon pointedly and Taeyong puts down his chopsticks with an exaggerated sign. Then he flexes his magic: turning into his dragon form among additional sparkles and Mark suddenly looks like he’s about to faint. He reaches out to tap on your shoulder while not taking his eyes off the wish dragon.

“Am I dreaming?” he whispers and honestly, you totally get his reaction while Taeyong mumbles something about ‘people these days not believing in dragons’ as he shows off all the things he could do: gift riches, make one stronger than they are, giving skills of whatever one wants. He starts rambling about how this one Chinese emperor became wealthy thanks to this, how that one actor in martial arts and all this before changing back to his human form and he continues eating his pasta like nothing ever happened.

“I can do this all day,” he shrugs as if he didn’t just perform the coolest magic tricks.

“This… this is the best thing ever!” Mark exclaims with those sparkles in his eyes you missed so much. He was always so excited about new things and it automatically makes you smile how he bombards Taeyong with million questions like: ‘So you are the wish dragon that grants wishes?’ or asking him about his scales, his unique color, how it feels to live in such a small teapot, how old he is and the dragon glows under all the attention. Can’t blame him but Mark has always been so curious about the world, it’s endearing.

“So your first wish was to meet me?” he turns to you after long minutes of interrogating Taeyong and suddenly, under the spotlight you don’t know what to do with yourself. You can feel yourself blushing because you didn’t necessarily mean to wish for that but it’s not like you’re regretting it, it’s just… you don’t want him to misunderstand.

“I thought you should meet him, too, after all the package was delivered for the two of us,” you look down, trying to sound nonchalant while picking your food, avoiding Mark’s gaze. No matter how open armed he welcomed you, you still aren’t convinced that it’s okay to be here because the more time you spend with him, the more you would like to stay a part of his life. “It’s just… I wasn’t really sure we could ever meet again. We didn’t keep contact after you left.”

With dropped shoulders, you try not to sound too downhearted because of what happened because you know all too well, it wasn’t his fault, it was a family decision and look at him, it did good for him! He seems happy, they live in a practically mansion but most importantly, he didn’t seem to change with the wealth. He might wear expensive clothes but under it all he’s still the boy with the most loveable smile.

“I… I was thinking about you a lot, I just thought you forgot about me,” Mark admits with a sheepish smile, tucking his hair behind his ear shyly. He really still is the same and it’s playing silly little games with your heart. If this was a cheesy Disney movie, a slow bgm would start to play as you look into each other but your moment is broken when Taeyong accidentally kicks into his chair as he stands up. At first he looks alarmed but then giggles.

“I will just… go. Don’t mind me,” he disappears like smoke with a wink, leaving you two alone at which Mark lets out a woah. You chuckle at his cute reaction, heart doing somersaults in your chest.

You thought it would be awkward, just the two of you alone after long years but Mark has this thing that he makes people feel comfortable around him, so it’s actually quite nice. You catch up on everything and anything that comes to your mind: old neighbours, studies, friends, what are you doing now and what would you like to do, too.

After finishing the delicious dinner, Mark offers a home tour which you would never refuse and you jaw drops at the huge crystal chandelier in their living room as well as their swimming pool but your favourite place in the whole mansion is Mark’s room because it’s just so him. You can’t describe it well but the moment you step inside, it feels like home. It’s cozy to the point it makes you want to cuddle a pillow. It has colours of pastels, a synthesizer here, a guitar there, posters of singers framed on his wall and vinyl records hanging down. His window has a view of sunset and Namsan above their green garden and although you haven’t been in Seoul before, you’re pretty sure it’s your favourite place in the whole damn city, too.

“Wait, there’s someone I would like you to meet,” Mark suddenly exclaims while you’re looking through his pictures and he pulls you out of his room, out of the house, into the garden: You giggle all the way as he’s being so secretive about it but then your steps halt unexpectedly and the hand you have in Mark’s yanks him back.

“Mark… why is there a tiger in your garden in the middle of Seoul?” you ask as quietly and as immobile as you can. You don’t want to attract the sleeping animal’s attention to yourself. But to your biggest surprise, the boy just laughs, his thumb caressing your skin soothingly.

“She’s Jasmine and she won’t hurt you,” he reassures you but needless to say, you’re not too calm and you’re pulled close to the wild animal that lifts its huge head towards you lazily. “She was abandoned by her mother as a cub and she was outcast in the zoo because she’s a bit sick, so she has always been weaker than her siblings. Dad made a donation and we have raised her since she was young.”

You hiss when Mark reaches out without fear but the tiger basically purrs as he strokes down his fur at the neck. You watch in awe as this big wild animal becomes a soft cat under the hands of Mark Lee. When the boy encourages you to pat her too, you hesitate but he promises you that it’s gonna be alright and you take a leap of faith.

“What’s her sickness?” you wonder aloud as your fingers get lost in the soft fur of the tiger. You hope she’s not in a lot of pain.

“It’s an immune system thing, not sure what exactly but she wouldn’t have survived this long in the wild,” the boy tells you and his mouth curls up in a smile when Jasmine licks your hand. It seems like you’re tiger-approved. You look into its warm brown eyes and your heart churns at the thought of her condition.

Mark tells you stories of Jasmine, about that one time she crashed his birthday cake or how much she likes to swim with him in their pool during summer and gosh, you could listen to him go on and on forever. You’re only reminded of the reality, that all this is just a possible one-time thing, a weekend getaway with magic when Taeyong shows up in swimwear, ready to crash in said pool.

“I guess he might have been bored in that teapot,” Mark laughs, not minding at all. He even offers you to join but you have a better idea.

“Taeyong, I have my second wish!” you call out for the wish dragon who’s suddenly much more excited about that than the water. He’s beside you in a moment, beaming and curious. You glance at Mark with a soft smile before looking at your personal genie confidently.

“I wish Jasmine would be healthy,” you whisper, playing with the tiger’s furry ears which she seems to enjoy. You were a little bit afraid the dragon would say it’s not possible, that he can’t cure sickness but to your relief, he just grins.

“Your wish, my command,” he nods and puts a hand over the animal. Nothing but a smoke of purple signals the magic being done but you believe in it and so does Mark by the looks of it. He reaches out for your hand and squeezes it gently.

“Thank you,” he smiles and you smile back. He used to be your best friend after all, it’s the least you can do for him.

Mark convinces you to stay the weekend and there’s no way you could tell no to him, not when he clears his schedule just for you. He never complains about how busy he must be working for his father’s business while being a music major at a local university. All he ever talks about is the places he wishes to show you and he takes you around Seoul as if he was your certificated tour guide. It’s lovely how enthusiastic he is about it while what really matters to you is the time you spend together. He makes sure you two take a million photos to remember by, Taeyong posing on half of them since he joins you on your little trips and sometimes it’s just the two of you watching the wish dragon being genuinely in awe by modern technology, 10 years is a long time after all.

On the last day before you have to go back to Vancouver (thanks to Taeyong’s kind offer to take you the same way you came back since he misunderstood you, you don’t have to sit through a 10+ hours flight and you have more time), Mark not only tries to make you breakfast despite having an in-house chef (his eggs are ugly as heck but you appreciate his efforts and can’t help but coo at his dreamy smile under that grey hoodie when you tell him it tastes yummy) but he also introduces you to his friends in Korea. Of course, they tease you (mostly Mark) about where he has been hiding you but it’s all chill and fun you’re not quite ready to say goodbye. But you should go because the more you stay, the more you don’t want to leave. You’re lucky enough for this chance to reunite with Mark but all good things end eventually.

“Let’s not disappear from each other’s life again, okay?” the boy grins at you as you’re ready to go, Taeyong already working on his magic.

“Yeah, let’s not,” you agree easily, looking forward to your video chatting and constant texting even if it’s from the two opposite ends of the Earth with a terrible time zone difference.

You glance at the wish dragon who’s drumming with his fingers while pursing his lips as if he was waiting for something and you let out a huff before working up the courage to actually do something about these feelings inside of you. You might have regretted not confessing in middle school, you have spent years wondering about the what ifs, so you don’t want to make the same mistake twice but still, you want to give Mark a chance to ignore it all if he wants to. So you step forward and wrap your hands around him as you hug him close. It’s obvious that your action takes him aback, he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hands and his body tenses under you but it all melts as you say those words that have been threatening to fall from your lips all this time:

“I have missed you.” you confess, honest and based on the hitch in his breathing, Mark must be surprised. You can’t blame him though, you just wanted him to know. You step back with a weary smile, his big Bambi eyes on you but before he could say anything you nod at Taeyong and you feel yourself falling, purple fog pulling you in. A few moments later you’re back in Vancouver, in your apartment, without him.

The first few days pass in a blurr, you can still barely believe what just happened. Your weekend with Mark feels like a too good dream but Mark kept his side of promise and texted you almost immediately as you left. He sends you selfies, songs that remind him of you and you talk about your days like you never did before. Still, it feels like you’re dancing around certain topics which are basically the elephant in the room and maybe that’s why Taeyong tries to cheer you up in his own way. Though, he soon realizes that you not being happy isn’t the problem, you are happy, you just… miss Mark more than you ever did.

“Enough of moping, you still have a wish left!” Taeyong exclaims, throwing himself onto your bed. “Come on, close your eyes, imagine what you want the most in the world and make a wish!" he singsongs. However, before you could even just indulge him, your phone pings with a new notification.

fullsun00 tagged you in their post!

You click on it right away, wondering what Mark’s friend Donghyuck is doing online at 1AM. The uploaded post turns out to be a photo of you and Mark when you all hang out near Han river. You were too busy at the time laughing at how the boy almost lost his whole scoop of ice cream before he could have had a single bite to notice his smile while looking at you. Based on his caption Donghyuck apparently wasn’t.

fullsun00: just old friends, they say. friends my ass @buttercupyn @onyourm__ark

You click your tongue wondering what Mark thinks of the callout but you press like on the post anyways. You put your phone aside before you could see how his other friends join the teasing in the comment section.

“Actually, I do have my third wish,” you speak up as you turn to Taeyong before he could make a remark on your tinted cheeks.

You’ve been thinking a lot about it during the past days. You could wish for anything but you’re at a point of your life where no riches or fame would make you happier because you’re happy enough just the way it is. It might not be perfect but you don’t want to be selfish and you want to make decisions you won’t regret: like catching up with Mark, curing his tiger and bringing happiness into the life of somebody who only ever served other people in his life.

“Ooh, what is it?” Taeyong claps, giddy as if he was waiting for this to happen. He probably did.

“I wish you would go on a vacation and enjoy life,” you tell him but unlike his usual reaction, this time the dragon’s smile fades and he blinks at you, confused.

“You could ask for anything in the world and that’s what you want? Are you sure?” he furrows his brows, not quite believing your words but you just smile, knowingly.

“Yes, Taeyong, I’m sure.”

“Your wish, my command,” he bows with his hands put together and with a twirl suddenly he’s in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, looking as ready for a holiday as one can be. You chuckle and tell him to just go, you’ll be fine.

You’re fine, you really are. Life goes on, you study and work, you laugh with your friends, you video call with Mark regularly and his friends are regulars on your social media, too. It’s just sometimes the feeling of missing something hits you harder than other days. Especially when you’re looking through the pictures you have from your Seoul weekend.

��I wish you were here,” you whisper ahead of you at one particularly good photo of Mark and the sunset, smiling at you behind the camera. You miss his smile, the cute wrinkles around his eyes when he crunches his nose, the sound of his laughter, his hand on your wrist… you miss him.

Ding-dong.

You stand up startled at the sound of your flat’s bell, running to the door to open it even though you have no idea who it could be so early on a Saturday morning. Not having a better idea, you expect it to be either a neighbour of your landlord but on the other side of your doorstep stands a boy who you thought was a continent away. He’s dressed semi-casually this time, his shirt tucked in his jeans, hair lightly falling onto his forehead and a nervous smile on his thin lips.

“Mark! But I⎼ I don’t even have more wishes,” you blink, taken aback, looking around to look for Taeyong in case he came back. But your behaviour just manages to confuse Mark instead.

“What?”

“I just wished you were here,” you blurt out without thinking, your words only processing later in your brain and it’s then when heat creeps onto your cheeks. Mark tries to but can’t really hide his growing smile at that.

“Really? I’m glad then. I just took my new private plane on a test drive,” he says bashfully, a silly excuse for real.

“All the way to Vancouver?” you tease, watching Mark fumble with the hem of his shirt. Your heart beats overtime just because of the fact that he’s there.

“Well, what can I say? I did miss the weather here,” he plays along with a shrug but he’s more serious when he looks deep into your eye and adds: “And you left without letting me answer.”

Oh yes, you did. You were kind of afraid of his reaction but seeing how he was ready to travel across the world just to see you, maybe there’s no reason for you to be so afraid. It feels like deja vu but a reversed one in a way as Mark gently pulls you into a hug, his lips grazing your hair with a whisper that makes your heart skip a beat: “I have missed you too.”

You really wouldn’t wish for anything more.

#nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct x reader #mark lee x reader #mark lee x you #stories

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shedobewritingalittle · 4 years

Text

Do Me A Favour (Steve Rogers x Reader)

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Steve Rogers seeks out his ex-teammate (and ex-fiancée) as he tries to gather the team in order to reverse Thanos’s actions, but she isn’t happy to see him. (Part 2, Part 3)

Rating: T

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: Swearing, that’s about it

Steve hadn't seen her in almost four years.

Y/N had left him and the rest of the team a year after the Snap. She didn't say goodbye to any of them, just gathered all of her things and disappeared into the night. Steve didn't realize she had left until he had came back to their shared apartment and saw that all of her things were gone. During those four years, she didn't reach out to him and if she was reaching out to anyone else on the team, they weren't telling him. It was like his teammate had disappeared off the face of the earth. He couldn't be too mad at her. Steve was the reason why she left.

Months after the Snap, he had proposed to her. She had been so excited and her happiness had rubbed off of him slightly. It seemed right, it felt right. Everyone kept telling them that it was about time they finally tied the knot. Yet, as time progressed and the severity of a post-Thanos world settled in, Steve wondered if this was actually a good idea. He didn't want to voice his worries to Y/N though. He missed seeing her this happy so Steve tried to tell himself that this nervousness would soon disappear.

Then the day of the wedding rolled around and Steve couldn't bring himself to drive to the church. His phone kept ringing as various members of the team called and texted him, trying to get a hold of him. As the start of wedding neared, Steve went down to the hall where he holds grief counseling and stayed there until the day ended. When he got back to the apartment, all of her things were gone. The only thing Y/N had left behind was her engagement ring and the wedding dress she had been wearing hours earlier.

Steve pulled up in front of the address that Natasha had given him, nervousness and guilt eating away at him. He was already confused when he pulled into the residential neighborhood, but the house he was currently parked in front of didn't help. Steve double checked and triple checked to make sure that the address was correct before he got out. He walked up the little stepping stones that lead to the cookie cutter house. She had told him that she never ever wanted to live in the suburbs, living in a house that was identical to the ones surrounded them. It was the perfect place for her to hide out.

Never in a thousand years did he think that Y/N would be living in a place like this. As he looked around, eyes landing on the carefully manicured lawn and the flowers planted in flower beds surrounding the house, he felt a sinking feeling in his gut. The thought of Y/N being married or even having children made him feel ill. Steve knew that he shouldn't feel like that at all. Y/N wasn't his, never truly ever was his. He was the one that had fucked up everything so he really shouldn't feel like this over the possibly of her being married. Steve looked up at the little cream colored two story house as he walked up the porch steps. There was a swing-like bench on one end, surrounded by various potted plants. It was all very...homey.

Steve tries his best to relax as he stands in front of the door. He swallows hard before ringing the doorbell and knocking on the the red door. Would Y/N still be pissed off at him? Most likely. She wasn't the type to forgive and forget, especially with what he did. Would she be even more pissed when she finds out he's here to try to get her to come back, to try to defeat Thanos? He was probably going back to the Compound in a body bag.

The front door opening ripped him out of his thoughts.

"What are you doing here?" Y/N asks, only peeking her head of the door. From what he could see of her, she looked good. Y/N always looked good, but the past four years have been good to her. In that last year after the snap, she lost her color. Sure, there would be times where she was happy, but as the wedding date neared and Steve continued to be distant, those moments of happiness were few and far between. Now, she looks happy, healthy. Well, she wasn't happy right now. Steve shifts slightly, looking around in her little neighborhood before looking at back at her. Y/N was glaring at him.

"Can I come in, Y/N? We need to talk." Steve tries and just as she opens her mouth, a child's head squeezes her way through the door and Y/N herself. Y/N's eyes widen and the color seems to drain from her face. Steve feels like he's been shot at the introduction of a child. What if she's moved on, had a family during this time? He would have no one to blame but himself.

"Mama, who's this?" The child asks, practically glaring at Steve. Like mother, like daughter. He didn't know that she had a kid. Natasha didn't tell him that there was a kid involved when she handed him the address, a sad look on the ex-Russian spy's face. Steve knew that she had wanted to go retrieve her friend, but someone had to get Clint. Now, he knew why she was so reluctant to hand over the address. Y/N never even mentioned that she'd ever want kids. She would always brush off the question when Steve would ask, immediately changing the subject. But then again, four years is a long time and people can change. The rest of their team surely did. Y/N muttered a curse under her breath, weighing her options in her mind. Steve is surprised when she opens the door a little more.

"Sarah, this is my coworker, Steve. Steve, this is my daughter Sarah." Y/N introduces them to each other, her hand moving to rest on the back of Sarah's head. The way she says "coworker" made Steve feel like shit, but then again, he does deserve it. He tries his best to ignore it and moves to squat in front of Sarah, smiling at the little girl. Her hair is pulled into two pigtails and she's wearing a black dress covered in white dinosaurs. Sarah is practically a carbon copy of Y/N, down to her hair and features. The only thing that's different about Sarah is her eyes. She has bright blue eyes that seem vaguely familiar, but Steve can't quite place them.

"Hi Sarah. It's nice to meet you." Steve tries, holding out his hand. The little girl moves to hide behind her mother, holding onto Y/N's leg. Steve's smile fades and he puts his hand down, moving to stand back up. Y/N doesn't even bother to look at him as she guides her daughter back into the house.

Steve is greeted by the evidence of her changed life. Children's toys litter the grey colored wood floors and pictures of mother and daughter cover the walls. Not a single picture of his teammate from anytime before the four years she's been gone, but there was pictures of members of the team and her. A picture of Natasha, Y/N, and Sarah here. A picture of Tony, Morgan, Y/N, and Sarah there. No evidence of any sort of father figure. The smell of pancakes and coffee hang in the air. This is a home.

Time travel and Thanos are a million miles from his mind now. All he could think about is that Y/N, the woman he was supposed to marry, has a child.

"No talking business around her. Please." Y/N announces as she walks further into the house, Sarah following hot on her heels. The blonde wonders if someone had tipped her off that someone from the team was coming or maybe she just knew him too well and knew that he wasn't here for personal reasons. Either way, Steve feels the immense tension hanging in between them and gives mother and daughter both a little space as he takes in the house. It looked almost normal.

"Of course." Steve replies as he follows them into the kitchen. Sarah is already sitting at the island, looking at him as her mother sets a plate down in front of her. Steve stands beside the fridge, leaning slightly on the wall. He doesn't know exactly what to do, everything feels awkward. Y/N has a kid. Y/N has a kid.

"Sarah, it isn't polite to stare. Now eat your breakfast." Y/N scolds softly, no anger present in her voice as she speaks to the child. Sarah turns her attention to her mom as she picks up her fork.

"I sorry, Mama. 'teve eat?" The little girl asks and Y/N glances at Steve, who is smiling at how the little girl pronounced his name. His smile melts away as soon as he meets Y/N's eyes Anger is still deeply etched into her face, no matter how much she tries to mask it.

"I'm okay, Sarah. Thank you for asking though." Steve quickly fills in and Sarah nods, seemingly pleased with his answer. Y/N crosses the room, moving past her old teammate to go over to the living room. She turns on the tv, switching the channel from the news to some cartoon. A distraction.

"Baby, Steve and I are going to my office, okay? If you need anything, come get me." Y/N tells her daughter. Sarah just nods in response, her focusing going to the mess of bright colors and shapes on the television. Y/N motions her head for Steve to follow her as she walks out of the room and down the hall. She opens a door, flipping on a light. This is room is a sharp contrast to the rest of the home. It's cold and uninviting. Big, flat white cabinets line the walls, filled with God knows what. Steve wants to smile at her 'home office' because it's like she brought her weapons room from the Compound home with her.

But the look she is giving him keeps the smile off his face. Y/N's about to open her mouth, to question him no doubt, but Steve cannot help what flies out of his mouth. He just has to ask.

"Why didn't you tell me you had a kid, Y/N?" The Captain questions, his eyes softening as he looks at his ex-fiancée. Y/N leans against the table in the center of the room, crossing her arms over her chest. She no longer trying to mask her anger.

"You weren't in my life, Rogers. Why would I tell you that I had a child if we aren't speaking?" Y/N retorts, shrugging her shoulders like it wasn't a big deal. They both know that this is a huge, colossal deal. There's stomach acid in Steve's throat and he feels like he's going to throw up as he forces out his next question. He is dying to know, but he dreads the answer.

"Who-"

"Don't ask me that." Her voice is ice cold as she shakes her head, "Please, don't ask me that."

That's when it slowly starts to dawn on Steve. He swallows the bile down in his throat as he takes a step towards her. Her angry facade is cracking as tears brim her eyelids. Her carefully built world is crumbling down around her and there isn't a thing she could do about it.

"Y/N, how old is she? Just-Just tell me how old she is." Steve's practically begging as Y/N looks away. She's fiddling with the necklace she has on, moving the pendant side to side on the rose colored chain. It feels like an eternity before she decides to speak again.

"Three. Sarah-She's three." Y/N finally speaks, looking back at him. It's like Steve's heart shatters in his chest and he has to lean against the wall for support. Steve Rogers isn't as smart as the others on his team and math has never been his thing, but it doesn't take him long to do the math in his head.

"Were-Were you ever going to tell me?" Steve asks as Y/N chuckles drily. The smile that's on her face doesn't reach her eyes.

"Of course I was and then you left me at the altar. Forgive me for not wanting anything to do with after that." Her tone was full of bitterness as she looks at him, "I was going to tell you that day-God, I was so fucking excited and then you just didn't show up. That's when I realized your priorities were greatly skewed and that you didn't really care about me anymore."

"That-That's not true, Y/N." Steve starts and the woman scoffs.

"Really, Rogers? You weren't even fucking talking to me anymore. You only came to me when you wanted to relieve a little stress. Why you asked me to marry you is besides me." She snaps, her words full of poison, "I wasn't about to bring a kid into the mix."

"So what? You were just going to hide away here forever? Never tell me that I had a kid?" Steve responds, motioning to the door. He's clearly angry at the woman in front of him. Y/N chuckles.

"You know what hurt the most about you leaving me at the altar? You didn't even call. There was no "Hey babe, I realized I don't want to be bound to you by law, hope you understand!". Three fucking hours passed before I finally realized that you weren't coming. By then, Natasha had already hunted you down and saw that you were at one of your meetings, acting like you had nothing else to do that day." Y/N tells him as she runs a hand through her hair, "But sure, go ahead and be mad at me because I didn't tell you I was pregnant. Be mad because I left because you apparently did nothing wrong."

"Look I'm sorry-" A knock on the quickly cut him off. Y/N sent a glare his way before walking past him and opening the door. Steve watched as she squatted so she was at eye level with her-their daughter. Steve looked at Sarah, trying to memorize her face just in case this is the last time he sees her. Blue eyes that resemble his glance at him for a moment before they return to look at Y/N.

"Mama? Help?" Sarah asks, her outstretched hands covered in something sticky. The smile that Y/N gave the little girl made something rise in Steve's chest. Neither of them glance at Steve as Y/N leads her back towards the kitchen, leaving the Star Spangled Man With a Plan alone in the room. He did not know what to do with all of this information. Steve had a child, a daughter. A little girl who was fifty percent him and fifty percent Y/N. He knew he had fucked up, but didn't realize he had fucked up this bad. Steve was numb as he walked out of the pristine room, walking down a hall full of pictures of Y/N and their daughter. He leans against the wall as he watches the two of them.

"How did you get this sticky, baby? I gave you a fork." Y/N teases softly, lifting up Sarah so she can wash her hands in the sink. The little girl giggles and Steve thinks it's the best sound in the whole world.

"I sorry, Mama. 'ticky." Sarah responds, which makes Y/N laugh. Steve can't help but smile at the sight in front of him. His head quickly becomes filled with thoughts of "what if". It's not until he feels something tug on his hand, yanking him out of the various scenarios running through his head. Sarah's tiny hand is wrapped around two of his fingers. His heart swells in his chest and he suddenly understands why Tony was willing to give up everything for Pepper and Morgan. He wishes he had made the same decision.

"Go to park?" Sarah questions, looking up at him with those big blue eyes. Steve is at a loss for words and he looks up at Y/N for some sort of help. Y/N is still drying her hands off as she clears her throat.

"Sarah, I don't think Steve wants to go to the park with us. He has to go back to work." The woman tries, walking towards the two of them. Sarah looks disappointed, pouting and making a noise. Y/N glances at Steve, once more weighing the options in her mind.

"I-I have enough time. I'd love to go to the park with you-If your mom is okay with it." Steve responds and the little girl turns to look at her mom. Y/N's features soften and she nods.

"Tony called before you arrived. Said you're trying to create time travel." Y/N announces as they sit beside each other at the little park that was in her neighborhood. Sarah is running around, laughing loudly. Steve glances at the woman beside him. She knew why he had showed up on her porch but still had let him in. Y/N had every right to not let him in, to not even answer the door. Hell, she didn't have to tell him that Sarah was his, but she did.

"Yeah. Lang is pretty sure we can do it. We just need to get the team back together." Steve replies, to which Y/N just nods. Her eyes stay on Sarah, never letting the little girl out of her sight. Steve turns his head to look at his daughter, who is currently sliding down a slide as he continues, "But I understand if you don't want to. Things have...changed."

"If we have a chance to fix things, I want to be there." Y/N responds, fiddling with the necklace she was wearing. Worry was written all over her face and Steve regrets even coming out here try to get her to join them. Her eyes stay on Sarah as she runs around, "If something happens to me, you have to tell her dressed in the suit."

"W-Why?" He is confused at her request, but he wasn't going to tell her no. Steve doesn't even try to tell her that everything is going to be okay if she joins them. They both know the risks involved with their job and he'd be lying if he told her that this was going to be an easy mission. For the first time since they got to the park-Hell for the first time in four years, she turns to him and smiles.

"Because Sarah knows that her daddy is Captain America and she's been dying to meet him."

#steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #chris evans x reader #steve rogers

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kitty-cat-is-back · 4 years

Text

What Am I Doing with My Life? Chapter 2

Pairing: Sero Hanta x Reader

Word Count: 1.6k

A/N: Holy moly guys! I know I said this is another post, but I am still in shock about how well recieved the first chapter was! Thank you so so much everyone! Now, I just want to say before anyone asks, I have no idea how long this will be. I’m basically just writing as I go, but I do know how I want it to end! Hopefully you guys will stick around til the end! Also, let me know if I should do a taglist for this! Anywho, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!

Chapter 1

Warnings: signs of depression, angst (I guess), a bit of cursing

‘How did I end up here?’

You sat stiffly at a wobbly table in the corner of the cafe, staring down at your lap intensely. Honestly, this just seemed like a dream. Or a nightmare. You hadn’t quite figured out which one it was yet. You hesitantly glanced up to see Hanta at the counter, chatting up the barista with his usual big smile. He hadn’t changed at all. Well… That wasn’t necessarily true. Actually, he had changed quite a lot. His once lanky body had filled out quite nicely with age, starting at the top with broad shoulders and going down to what you would assume was a muscled abdomen, or at least that was what the tight heather grey t-shirt was telling you. Your gaze traveled back up to his face, noticing his strong jawline and how well it complemented his features. You realize you might’ve been staring a bit too long when you notice him staring back at you, amusement in his eyes, and a cunning grin. Your eyes widen a bit before promptly looking back down at your lap, your face burning with embarrassment.

Hanta grabbed both of your drinks and came back to the table, taking the seat across from yours, “Here you go! A nice, tasty water,” he teased, “Are you sure you don’t want something else? I really don’t mind paying to get you something better,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

You cleared your throat and grabbed the water, “No, this is fine. Thank you though…” you replied softly, taking a quick drink in hopes it would smooth out all of your awkwardness.

Sero hummed in acknowledgment and kept his focus on you, “Well, anyways… How have you been? I don’t think anyone’s heard from you since graduation!”

‘Why is he being so nice to me?’

You adjusted uncomfortably in your seat and gave a small shrug of your shoulders, “Oh, y’know… I’ve been good. Moved here to go to school, got my masters in psych, and now I’m working as a therapist essentially.”

Hanta’s eyes lit up with interest, “Wow, really!? That’s so cool! You’re basically like a doctor! You were always pretty smart back then, so that actually shouldn’t surprise me all that much… Not to mention moving all the way to Chicago straight out of high school. That must’ve been a pretty tough challenge…”

‘He’s talking as if nothing happened…’

You laughed awkwardly, scratching your cheek in discomfort, “Well, I’m not a doctor! I think that’s offensive to actual doctors who did the extra schooling. I can’t prescribe any medication, but I do provide them with therapy and advice… And I guess the move was a little challenging, but after eight years I think I’m used to it. B-But enough about me! My life isn’t all that interesting, what about you?”

Hanta quirked an eyebrow, “Me? Well… I tried community college for a semester, but pretty quickly decided I wasn’t ready to take on four more years of schooling. So I dropped out and started job hunting. Had an office job for a while, but I wasn’t very happy doing that either. It wasn’t until one night when I was out with the squad that we all, drunkenly, of course, decided that we all hated our nine to fives and wanted to work for ourselves! So we made our own company! So now we get to work on our own time, make good money, and actually have fun doing it! Plus, we get to do cool things like going on a trip to Chicago with the excuse of it being ‘marketing research,’” he stated with air quotes.

‘His life sounds great, so why is he talking to me?’

“Wow, that takes a lot of guts, but at least it all turned out for the best. Finding happiness in life and job fulfillment is something a lot of people struggle with…” you noted, briefly pondering your own work-life balance, “But you said you’re on a business trip? For how long?”

“Yea, it’s for about two weeks. We wanted to make the most out of our vacation! But… We actually have to do a little bit of work. Katsuki would kill us if we didn’t!”

“...We?”

“Oh, yea! I came with Kaminari, which was probably a terrible idea in hindsight… Actually, I was just with him walking around the city and that’s when I saw you! I thought it was you that I walked past and I just had to be sure! Thank God it was you, otherwise, I would’ve just been a crazy person yelling in the streets,” he said with a cheery laugh.

“So… You just abandoned Kaminari.”

“...More or less, yes.”

‘How can he be so carefree?’

You couldn’t help but let out a breathy laugh. You couldn’t tell if it was from actual amusement or disbelief. You felt like you had been transported back to a time when you were… happy. You felt something you hadn’t felt in years and… you didn’t feel like you deserved to feel this.

Hanta could feel something uncertain left in the silence between you, “Speaking of this, I’m sorry if you’re uncomfortable by all this. That wasn’t my intention! I just happened to see you out in the street and my legs started moving to you before I even had a chance to think of what I was going to say if I got to you. I missed you, y’know?”

‘...what…?’

At those last words, your throat clenched and your eyes began to burn with tears. You’ve kept everything locked up so tightly all these years, not letting anything get to you. How was it that a few words were able to crack your walls? The shaky breath that you released along followed by a sniffle became an instant giveaway to your current state.

‘He missed me…?’

Hanta’s eyes practically bulged out of his head when he realized what was going on, “Oh shit, I’m so sorry! I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I!? Fuck, I didn’t mean to make you upset…”

‘He missed me…’

You turned your face away from him and desperately started trying to cover up your blunder, “No, no! I’m fine! Don’t apologize! I um… There must be a cold breeze that’s blowing on me. Yea, the air is just making my eyes water… I’m n-not crying! I-” you paused when you felt a warm hand placed on top of your own. Your head snapped back and met Hanta’s eyes, shocked to find a loving and gentle look in them.

“Y/N… What’s wrong?”

You couldn’t hold back anymore. Tears streamed down your cheeks for the first time in years. When was the last time you cried? You don’t even think you could remember. You choked back a sob and lowered your head.

‘Everything.’

“Nothing,” you started.

Hanta squeezed your hand while gently caressing his thumb over the top of it, “Don’t act like I don’t know you. We might have gotten older, but you’re still exactly as I remember you. Bottling everything up until you burst. If this is about back then, I’m just going to set the record straight and tell you outright that I don’t care. That’s in the past and I wouldn’t have chased after you today if I was mad at you. Please… Just talk to me.”

You squeezed your eyes shut as you tried to get yourself under control, but it was no use. Hanta had made a large crack in your wall and you couldn’t patch it up. You weren’t ready to bring that up just yet, but you knew he wouldn’t just let this slide. You had to come up with something…

You shook your head, “No… It’s just-” you paused and swallowed thickly, “It’s… my apartment.”

Hanta narrowed his eyes, searching for any trace of lies, “...Your apartment?”

You nodded and sniffled, using your free hand to wipe away some of your tears, “Uh-huh… It’s um… There’s no light in my apartment. I have windows, but they face a brick wall of another building. Every morning I wake up in a dark apartment and just stare at the brick wall, hoping one day it’ll just turn into a nice backyard in the suburbs, like back at home. Most mornings, I don’t even want to get out of bed, knowing that even when I leave my apartment, it’s still dark outside. I thought when I moved here every day would be a fun adventure in the big city. But… Even when the sun is shining, it still feels… dark,” you finish, realizing even despite yourself, you still opened up. Just maybe not in the way he wanted.

Hanta stayed silent for a moment, processing everything you had said. It seemed real to him, but he knew there was so much more wrong than just where you lived, “Do you even want to live here anymore?”

“It was always my dream to live in a big city…”

“Well, what’s your dream now?”

You didn’t answer.

Hanta nodded, knowing that’s all he was going to be able to get out of you for now, “So… Your apartment, huh? Well, let’s go check it out! I’ve always wanted to see what a lavish big city apartment looks like anyways!”

Your head snapped back towards him, “Wait, what? No, Hanta, I don’t think that-”

“Besides, I consider myself to be a gentleman. If something is distressing you, I have to try and fix it, right? I think that’s written in the gentlemen’s code, right?” he retorted quickly, not giving you the chance to tell him no. He had a newfound mission and he only had two weeks to do it. He stood with conviction and pulled you up by the hand he was still holding, “Well, lead the way!”

‘Not again…’

#hanta sero x reader #sero x reader #sero hanta x reader #hanta x reader #mha sero #mha #bnha #sero #bnha fanfiction #sero hanta #bnha imagines

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holisticpassport · 4 years

Text

My Covid Story

Apologies for any spelling errors, I’m on a time crunch. I’m a few hours out from leaving for my first flight since July 2019 (and before that, March 2018). Heading out to Sydney, I’m a mix of anxiety and absolute excitement. In January of this year, our sublet was almost up in Eltham and Cam and I had plans to pack up the car and begin doing workaways around Australia to help rebuild communities devastated by the historic wild fires (doesn’t that feel FOREVER ago?). When our sublet became available for a full lease transfer, we changed our minds to stay in our space, so that was the first instance of travel being knocked out of the picture. Then we had Valentine’s weekend open to go visit some friends in Tasmania, so we booked tickets and upon waiting in the airport, our flights were cancelled due to inclement weather. DAMN. Mid-march came around and it was Cam’s birthday, so we wanted to get out for a weekend of camping in our big bell tent, find a gorgeous spot in the woods out east near Warburton. When we arrived, every camping spot for an hour’s dive any direction was either full or completely not open at all. We picked a spot off a random road and spent one night there, but some rangers came by and said we couldn’t stay there due to the possible danger of logging trucks not seeing us. So that was a bust.

Then as you’re aware, this time frame leads up to the very tumultuous third week of March when Melbourne officially went into its first lockdown due to COVID. I documented this time in journal entries which I will add at the end, but ultimately the lockdown went until June, and the state reopened too quickly/had a fiasco with quarantined cases getting out of a hotel, thus sparking the second wave. We had flights booked to California for June to see my family and then planned to travel around Mexico for a few months, but that dream was quickly squashed when flights out of Melbourne ceased to exist at all. Months later, I had a flight booked in July to go to Sydney where I was to have my eggs extracted for donation. The day before I was to fly out, second lockdown went into effect and the flight was cancelled (thus forcing me to have the procedure done in Melbourne and cause a huge, historic controversy between Melbourne IVF’s CEO and the medical director of IVF Australia about how to transfer frozen eggs over a closed border!).

I’m struggling to comprehend just how important and meaningful my ability to travel today is. To think back to the first time in history, watching borders around the world close, flights become grounded, and witnessing a global pandemic unfold whilst in a foreign country—I remember thinking at the beginning how unfathomable the scale of it was. When people talk about things not seeming real or like it’s a dream you can’t wake up from, that’s exactly how it felt. I questioned whether I needed to go back to the U.S. in fear I might not see my family for years or be with them if they got fatally ill. Would I be able to even go back if that happened let alone would I be able to re-enter AU (the answer was no). And thank god I didn’t go back considering the absolute cluster fuck of a mess Trump made of the pandemic. But also, thank god my family has been healthy and safe. The level of fear for their safety was at an all-time high as civil tensions grew when the riots around the country kicked off in conjunction with the pandemic. I wrote to all of them to have a plan to escape to Mexico and get their passports if Trump won the re-election. This was a genuine fear I’ve never experienced before.

The level of frustration, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, self-hatred for lack of productivity during lockdown, and uncertainty about so many facets of life weighed down on me during this time. But I know how much worse our time could have been. I was immensely grateful for the fact that we had a home and incredibly gracious landlords who were human and understood the financial difficulties of this unprecedented time when so many became homeless as job loss skyrocketed. We were so fortunate that I was able to continue working even 2 days a week through the lockdown as a barista and Cam was able to get government support for six months as a NZ citizen who lived in AU over 10 years when so many other New Zealanders were forced to return to their country because of the time limit stipulation for support. We only had two family members contract Covid and were young and healthy enough to survive when so many families will be without a member at the holidays this year.

And I acknowledge my privilege in that my identity is so closely entwined with the ability to travel, that while it felt suffocating to not even have the choice to travel anywhere outside of a 5km (3mile) zone, I fully empathize with those in parts of the world where they could not walk more than 50 meters from their front door or people who didn’t have windows/balconies in apartment buildings who were going out of their mind. All of that does not diminish the struggles I faced with not being able to travel, but it does always keep my perspective in check. My trip today signifies how a city and a country came together during the most difficult period of our lifetime, followed strict government guidelines, and came out after 120+ days in full lockdown on the other side of a pandemic, now able to cross state borders without isolation or quarantine. To go to a live music show, have drinks on rooftop bars, walk around outside without a mask on, and see people going about their daily lives again on public transport and see a city bustling with energy—the months of mental hardship and growth was all to get back to a post-Covid world. Even though a vaccine is not out yet and we need to be cautious, the level of hopelessness has diminished significantly, and I’m not terrified my trip might be cancelled in two hours. I’m actually going this time!

There is also a whole other facet to my time in lockdown and that of course is the personal development and mutual growth in my marriage! That’s a whole separate post though which I hope to get out soonish. But here’s a bit of something I started a few months ago. Enjoy.

********

I remember when it first started in the news; like a minor blip of a story flashing at the bottom of the screen: some mutant virus had infected a couple dozen people in some random city in China. I was working solo in a café serving the employees of a major shoe distribution company in the warehouse district of Collingwood, Melbourne. The TV was on in the cafe but muted the first few weeks of January as the main stories were about the most devastating wildfires in the history of the world, and we all just felt a communal helplessness. As the numbers grew in China and the story became a daily headline, the first case was announced in Queensland on January 25th. Everyone stuck around a few minutes longer each day after they were handed their coffee. I think back to the moment when Wuhan, the epicenter at the time, reported 1,500 cases and I thought surely there can’t be much more than that. This is just media sensationalizing something small. This whole story will blow over in another week or two.

If only.

It was summer in Australia, and my husband and I were planning what to do after our sublease was up in mid-March. I commuted daily from a suburb 50 minutes north called Eltham, a creative and eco-friendly heritage town. We lived in a triplex made of adobe mudbrick, surrounded by native forest, a communal garden, and enjoyed huge artisan windows that brought in natural filtered light through the towering trees. Our little studio was a quiet haven away from the chaos and constant flurry of people in Melbourne, especially during summer as it brought travelers from every corner of the globe. There was no way we could have possibly known that this little paradise would feel like a prison after six months in the world’s longest lockdown due to a global pandemic caused by that little virus in some random city in China now known worldwide as COVID-19.

As the weeks passed by in February, more and more countries began reporting cases. I did not understand how pandemics worked as the last one I was alive for and could remember was H1N1 in California, and I was about 17—far too consumed with college applications and boys to think about world affairs. The Spanish Flu was never something that was particularly emphasized in our history classes, so it didn’t even occur to me to compare what was happening now to that point in time. Then again, this was incomparable because in 1912, the world was a less globalized economy and there were no commercial flights transporting thousands of passengers across the globe daily. By the first week of March, my daily rush-hour commutes became the first real difference I noticed. The number of morning passengers on the train platforms dwindled from 50 to 25 to 5, and eventually, to just me. As the train stopped at over 30 stops from where I lived to the city, my carriage wasn’t even remotely full at 7 a.m.

There was less foot traffic in the city. Flinders Street Station, one of the two largest hubs that saw thousands of people daily, was eerily quiet and empty. We were two weeks out from leaving Melbourne to go travel, planning to go to New South Wales, AU to help rebuild communities that were ravaged by the bushfires. I was desperate to travel this year, and we were so close to leaving. I had picked up some other barista work in an advertising agency closer to the city. But day by day, office workers were being told to work from home if they were able to. Hand sanitizer became readily available in the café, bathrooms, and around the office. I remember staring out the window of this high rise building that overlooked the lush green stretch of Albert Park and thinking it looks so normal outside. Every day, I looked at the news in Australia, which I had never really done before. Industries were shutting down, and the panic was setting in for thousands of casual workers in the hospitality industry as it was only a matter of time before we would be shut down too.

Melbourne is a cultural hub filled with travelers who typically come here on a Work and Holiday Visa which gives them 1-2 years to work and live in AU. Most find work in hospitality as there are over 40,000 restaurants and cafes in this region. You couldn’t go a single day without meeting someone from another country which is why I fell in love with this city. I worked as a freelance barista through agencies that called for workers to be able to step in if someone called out sick or quit unexpectedly and they found themselves short. But my agencies had gone completely silent in the week leading up to the industry shutting down. There was no more work and travelers were finding themselves stranded. I journaled daily in the lead up to my final day of work in the city as I knew something big was happening, and I wanted to be able to recall when it all began. I also knew we would not be travelling anytime soon, around Australia or otherwise, when national and international borders began closing around the world.

March 17th, 2020

All that’s being talked about is COVID-19. Entire countries are closing borders and going into complete lockdown. Italy has been inundated with patients in hospitals and now have to choose who lives and who dies. AU isn’t taking nearly as intense of measures, but the general atmosphere is not normal. All events with over 500 people have been cancelled. Those who have traveled anywhere must self-quarantine for 14 days or face a huge fine. Some people still don’t take it seriously, thinking/acting like it’s just a normal flu when in reality its ability to be passed on and even re-infect someone a second time is much higher than the rate of a simple flu. In the states, my family says all the restaurants and schools have closed, even the Hollywood entertainment industry has closed down. So many independent contractors, myself included, are without means to live because there’s no emergency government funding in place. It shows what’s truly flawed with the system. Luckily Cam has full time work still, but for those people who have kids and no daycare options? No partner or family? Those who are traveling and can’t get back home? This is devastating for all of us, but them in particular. Supposedly, there are rumors that the virus dies with the warm weather, but AU is headed into winter. It could be why the virus isn’t as big in places like South America and Africa (*note* countries from these two continents are now in the top 10 most infected places as of September 2020) Europe is completely shut down as is New Zealand. I have flights to California in June, so I’m hoping I can still go. For how weak my immune system is, I’m surprised I’m not more concerned because I’ve been continuously reassured the virus only attacks those with underlying conditions, mainly in the elderly population. Even in calm, tight-knitted communities like ours in Eltham, we’re seeing the best and worst of humanity come out with people hoarding resources, but also there are those offering rides for people to stores or grocery drop offs to their homes. I’m very interested to see how the next three months progress all around the world. Right about now, it’d be nice to hide away in a beachside house in Mexico. (*Mexico is also among the top 10 most infected countries now*)

March18th, 2020

The government should announce today whether hospitality industry will close, potentially putting Cam and I both out of jobs. Luckily our landlord is being highly accommodating. Trump is giving Americans $1,200 and has postponed tax season by 3 months. Only seems he does something decent when it’s to keep the economy from tanking and his money is protected.

Cam and I both have throat annoyances and headaches. We should try to stay home, but can’t afford it. Today, they’ve dropped gatherings of 500 down to only 100 people, yet shopping centers and public transport remain open, which I would think are the riskiest places for transferring infections. It’s been stated this is a once in a decade event that will change the course of history.

March 19th, 2020

Amidst all the chaos from morning to night, people are finally taking time to nurture their interests and creativity. I’m taking two courses on sustainable fashion and fashion in design. I’ve also applied to be a mentor for women trying to gain work and leadership experience at an NGO called Fitted for Work. They have stylists that help women to prepare business outfits and tailor their resumes/do mock interviews. I’ve looked into an MA program I’m interested in at Warren Wilson College back in North Carolina. I think looking forward is the only way to keep the fear down about how long these shut downs may last possibly through June. The world economy is going to see some extremely confronting realities it hasn’t seen since the Great Depression. For the moment I’m looking into teaching English online which I’m already certified to do, just to try and earn some money. I’ll be interested to see all the art that comes out of this period and the photojournalism that captures this historic time.

March 21st, 2020

We went over to Williamstown (Cam’s parent’s house) as Cam had two shifts out that way. Restrictions in cafes are now 1 person per 4 square meters, so in the 100 person limit already imposed, it’s now down to 25. I’m nervous for Cam to keep working and going on public transport. It’s high risk and unethical in terms of coming in contact with people we could transmit it to without knowing (asymptomatic) because it takes 14 days to even show symptoms. We made the choice to start self-isolation come Monday as we can see in the next week or two the same spike will be here in Melbourne as we’ve seen in Italy and most likely soon to see in the U.S. Reading other peoples’ accounts about how they continued life as normal as though nothing had changed in Italy is exactly where AU is projected to head towards.

March 25, 2020

As of Monday, AU took drastic measures to ensure safety and closed many non-essential businesses with a series of daily updates for more and more businesses to shut or only stay open for takeaway. Overnight, nearly 80,000 people in hospitality work were laid off or lost work, Cam and I included. A stimulus package of 66 billion dollars was announced and Cam qualified for government payments through Centrelink because he’s a kiwi who’s been here over 10 years. Other kiwis who haven’t been here that long are completely without any kind of support from the AU government, even though in NZ, Aussies are supported. A very backward, selfish system who told them to go home.

We went to Centrelink on Monday at 7:45am in Greensborough (suburb over from Eltham). By 8:30 am when the doors opened there were over 200 people in line. The government has been terribly confusing with their messages out to the public, highly unprepared. People are confused about what they can and can’t do, what businesses are remaining open, who is eligible… it’s a mess. Why are liquor stores and hair salons considered essential?? There have been spikes in young people getting this virus as young as 18, and they are dying. The virus coats your lungs like a jelly ultimately blocking oxygen. We did what is hopefully our last grocery shop because being in the store is just as contagious as a café. There’s no safety or hygiene measures in place. We had gloves on and people were dancing around each other in the aisles to maintain 1.5m social distance.

The U.S. is becoming the new epicenter with horrific rapid spreading, particularly in New York. Flight around the world, including as of today AU, are being stopped and we can no longer leave the country at all.

To Be Continued…..

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hqsloane · 4 years

Text

hello !! it’s ally back at it again with another muse !! for those of you who don’t know, i also play violet ( the taylor hill fc ) !! but this is a very new muse that i’m v excited about, so if you want to plot just like this post & i’ll slide into your dms <3

chicago’s very own sloane windsor has been spotted on madison avenue driving a rolls-royce dawn , welcome ! your resemblance to charlotte d'alessio is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twentieth birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re insatiable , but being gregarious might help you . i think being a libra explains that . 3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be designer sunglasses disguising bloodshot eyes , vintage abba records , a room full of first place trophies. ( i just got out of rehab for a drug addiction ) & ( cisfemale + she/her ) + ( ally , 21 , she/her )

full name: sloane ( warrior ) madeleine ( of french origin woman meaning ‘ woman from magdala or high tower ’ ) windsor ( english last name ). nickname(s): s, princess. age: twenty. birthday: 3 october 1999. zodiac: libra. gender: cisfemale. pronouns: she / her / hers. sexual orientation: bisexual. languages spoken: english & french. hometown: buckhead, georgia. occupation: vlogger. parents: darcy sinclair ( rachel mcadams ) & spencer windsor ( jon hamm ). siblings: two older brothers. pet(s): forrest ( golden retriever ) & jenny ( border collie ). religion: southern baptist. drink / drugs / sex: yes / yes / yes. height: 5′5. right/left handed: left handed. tattoos: a rose on her hip ( x ), this on the back of her right elbow, & a quote on her ribs ( x ). positive traits: gregarious, discerning, tender, impartial, dignified, courageous, independent, empathetic, & audacious. negative traits: covetous, controlling, aloof, rebellious, daunting, compulsive, tactless, vain, cunning, obstinate, & snarky. hobbies: photography, traveling, procrastination, meddling, partying, late night instagram live streams, dancing on tables well past last call, visiting art museums, & video editing. habits: tying her hair up in a loose ponytail when she’s stressed, fleeing the country on a whim, chewing the insides of her cheek in order to hold back what she truly wants to say, chewing the ends of brightly colored pens, binge drinking, & doodling. labels: the catalyst ( the independent one ), the doctrinaire ( the perfectionist ), & the aesthete ( the muse ). aesthetics: cat eye sunglasses shielding emerald hues, mascara tear stained cheeks, shattered trophies, polaroids, disposable film, late night notifications, hiding any ounce of emotion behind a camera, paint splattered jeans, parisian architecture, sunday brunch, missed phone calls, & the longing for her mother’s approval. style inspo: nicola peltz, bella hadid, kendall jenner, rosie huntington whiteley, meghan markle, & alexa chung. here are just a few examples of her wardrobe !! ( x x x x x ) muse inspo: monica geller ( friends ), caroline forbes ( the vampire diaries ), serena van der woodsen ( gossip girl ), lydia martin ( teen wolf ), peyton sawyer ( one tree hill ), nancy wheeler ( stranger things ), & emily fitch ( skins ). net worth: 30 million.

background ;;

before spencer & darcy got married in 1989, they knew all they wanted was one child: a girl. yet, their life did not go according to plan. after they welcomed their first child into the world ( a boy ), they figured that the next one would be a girl. they of course loved their son more than anything in this world, but they knew they wanted a daughter to complete their growing family. however, when darcy discovered the sex of their second child was a boy, she knew she wouldn’t stop having children until they welcomed their perfect girl into this world.

soon after the birth of their second son, they discovered they were expecting again. this time, with the daughter they had always wanted !! sloane was born on october 3rd, 1999 in a wealthy suburb of atlanta, georgia. & from the day she was born, an enormous pressure was put on her.

what you need to know about the windsor family ( other than their strong southern roots ) is that they’re extremely rich. they are high key based off the carrington’s from dynasty bc i’m #trash. buttttt what you need to know is that they own a multibillion dollar international oil company called windsor industries ( formerly known as windsor petroleum group ).

if you aren’t familiar with oil conglomerates, all you need to know is that windsor industries are responsible for literal power. they are one of the leading producers for oil & gas in the world which is why they have offices all over the country. & let me tell you, they don’t conduct business ethically !! they are notorious for fracking & their continuous use of fossil fuels. when people talk about climate change, they constantly bring up windsor industries & how much they have contributed to global warming. & to make matters worse, spencer & his eldest son put millions of dollars into the pockets of politicians to get them to support their cause & vote against climate change regulation. so if we all burn up one day, you can blame them !!

the windsor family has lived in georgia for generations ( big yikes ) & that’s where they started the family business in 1942. spencer’s grandfather came from a long line of prominent politicians in state politics which is why his family was ready to disown him when he decided to go into business over politics. but when his business took off & he was making more money than everyone else in his family by the age of twenty-two, they quickly shut up & started supporting him.

since then, windsor industries has been passed down from generation to generation. spencer was handed the business on his thirtieth birthday ( twenty years ago ) & has been dominating ever since. once his eldest son turned eighteen, he quickly got him involved & he is expected to take over the family business one day.

as successful as his business is, spencer is known as the bad guy in america. he is a billionaire who doesn’t know what it’s like to come from humble beginnings. he was literally handed a multibillion dollar business & the rest was history !! he definitely is a bad guy since he doesn’t care about the environment or anything else. all he cares about is making money no matter who gets hurt. he was even considered to work for trump at one point but quickly declined !! he just wrote him a big ass check instead bcsjkhdfs

but he does love his family. he would do literally anything for his family despite his tough love approach to his two sons. but when it comes to sloane, he is a complete softie. she can literally do no wrong in his eyes which is why they have such a great relationship !!

darcy, on the other hand, did not come from a lot of money. like her husband, she’s also from georgia but she’s not from a rich suburb. she is from a rural town where she literally grew up in a trailer. & from an early age, she always knew she wanted more. she was always ungrateful for her life & could have cared less about how hard her parents worked to support her & her three other siblings.

things for darcy changed by the time she was eighteen !! she became miss. america which isn’t that big of a deal for most. but she took pride on receiving that title after years of competing in local pageants. despite not coming from a lot of money, she always knew how to fool the judges & everyone else for that matter. she really could have cared less about school, all she cared about was winning pageants.

so when she made it into miss. universe, she thought her life was going to be complete !! yet, it didn’t go according to plan. darcy lost the competition & her short lived media coverage quickly died. no one knew who darcy sinclair was until it was announced that she was marrying one of the heirs to windsor industries.

the reason why darcy wanted a daughter so bad was so she could also be a pageant contender. she didn’t want her daughter to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, or anything else for that matter. all she wanted for sloane from the day she was born was to be a pageant queen.

by the time sloane turned five, her mother had already registered her for her first pageant. & unlike the ones darcy used to compete in, this was prestigious. her entire childhood consisted of tap dancing classes & pageants taking priority over school. & because her parents pride themselves on their southern values, they really could have cared less about their daughter attending school. so it came as no surprise when she started to slip up !!

& of course, they bribed her school to fix her grades. from the outside looking in, everyone wanted sloane’s life. she had it all: money, family, looks, everything. but in reality, her mother was working her like a dog. she would be practicing for pageants seven days a week with little to no breaks. but once she was crowned little miss georgia, they knew she was destined for greatness.

the older she got, the more pressure her mother would put on her. & sloane took that pressure extremely seriously. all she ever wanted was to please her mother, so she would strive to be nothing less than perfect. & in order to keep up with the strict demands of her mother & her life, she started turning to drugs. at first, she would start taking adderall to have more energy that way she can cater to her hectic schedule.

even sloane will admit that her high school years were a blur due to her growing drug abuse. the only thing holding her together was her growing addiction to pills. her mother knew. she saw the empty pill bottles lying around her bathroom & there was even a late night where she had to call 911 after finding her only daughter unresponsive. but she never told anyone. she never even asked sloane if she was okay or if she needed help. she only cared about her daughter becoming miss. universe since that was a title that she was robbed of.

all her life, sloane has tried to please her mother. everything she has ever done has never been good enough for her. so by the time she was a senior in high school, she decided the only way to escape her life was by going to college. she knew she didn’t have the grades to get in anywhere far enough from atlanta, even if her parents ensured her transcripts were nothing short of flawless. but when she sat her parents down & told them that she wanted to attend college, she was surprised by their reactions. her father, who has always supported sloane, was willing to do anything she wanted even if that meant delaying his wife’s plans for her. & even her mother came around on the idea after she promised her that she would go back to training for miss. universe once she finished college.

& following her graduation from high school, she packed her bags & went to the university of chicago. she figured that this was a school far enough away from her mother which is why she told her father this was the school of her dreams. sloane never questioned anything during her applications process. all she knew was that she needed to leave her mother’s grasp & learn to live life for herself.

at college, she had decided to study photography soon realizing that is one of her passions in life. & she’s damn good at it too. & even though sloane started living life in college, her drug addiction only worsened. there, she was introduced to even more drugs & the craze of combining uppers & downers.

things started to get crazy last year during the college admissions scandal when it was revealed that spencer & darcy had paid to get sloane accepted into the university of chicago. the school agreed to allow her to finish the semester before they would ultimately expel her due to the negative press coverage. & of course on her last night at school, sloane ended up in the hospital.

after combining far too many uppers & downers at a frat party, she overdosed. this was not the first time she landed up in the hospital after a night out, but it was the first time her father found out. & once he found out, he ensured that she would seek the help she needed.

so that’s where sloane spent the entire summer !! in a private rehab center seeking treatment for drug addiction. however, her family could not afford anymore scandals. so they quickly buried any stories about their youngest child’s overdose & told the media that she was traveling the world with friends this summer. sloane’s scandal is something that they are without a doubt ashamed of despite how many times her father has insisted the opposite. they are willing to do anything to bury this secret, no matter the cost.

now, she’s twenty years old & living in new york. following her discharge from rehab, she wanted to move as far away from chicago as she could. she knows she can’t enroll in college anytime soon given her family’s involvement in the college admissions scandal, but she is wiling to do just about anything to avoid moving back home.

nowadays, you can find sloane vlogging !! she has a v successful youtube channel that is similar to matt king’s ( if ya’ll know who that is ily ). but all you need to know is that she is a daily vlogger with an artsy style & she definitely does q & a videos & all that fun stuff. she is still very dependent on her father’s money but she is making a lot of money off youtube.

personality & misc ;;

personality wise, i’d say she’s pretty easy going. her taste isn’t the usual which i’ll probs go into a little bit, but that doesn’t mean she’s not approachable unlike vi.

truth be told, she’s all over the place & has a lot of depth. she has the ability to light up any room she walks into but that doesn’t mean she lets people walk all over her. after dealing with darcy sinclair for eighteen years, sloane knows when to fight back & channel her rich bitch side.

she’s also really fucking smart despite her fuck ups & she would know her true potential if she just stopped getting fucked up all the time. even though she went to rehab, she isn’t clean but that doesn’t stop her from telling her dad she is.

has never had a serious relationship tbh

instead, she’s had flings that are like relationships without the title.

she may act like an independent bitch but she is also a 100% a daddy’s girl & calls him up for money every other week

very artistic

aside from photography, she is great at painting & drawing & you can find dozens of sketches lying on the floor of her room ( you can also find baggies on her desk tbh )

extremely possessive of her family despite her relationship with her mom. she won’t let anyone else insult her other than her.

hella impulsive

speaks fluent french

also has an apartment in paris that she visits all of the time

tbh, she’s just in love with art. you will always find her at a museum just gazing at art for hours

she’s also constantly leaving the country for vlog material

doesn’t want to think that she has an accent but low key does

even though she’s a huge perfectionist, her room is literally always a mess but she doesn’t let just anyone see that

overall, she is a perfectionist art h*e tbh

if you made it this far ily. here’s her pinterest board if you want to take a look !! it’s v late for me rn & i have to get up early tomorrow so i don’t have any wc listed out but i promise i will bombard you all with plot ideas okay ily

#wealthyhq:intro #hi #love me plz #drug addiction tw #drugs tw #uh idk what else #emotional abuse tw

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mountainsarecallingbabe · 5 years

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Dream Big or Go Home

She looked down at the lengthy resume in front of her and then up at me, confusion written all over her face. “So what exactly do you want to do?”

I looked down at my feet as they started to make circles in the carpet in this stranger’s basement. “Well, I want to start a blog and write about travel, people’s stories and environmental topics.”

“Uh huhhh”, she said, with a look on her face as if I had confirmed the sneaking suspicion within her that I had not a clue what I wanted to do with my life.

You see, there I was in this woman’s basement interviewing for a position as a dog walker despite my parents proposition that they could get me a high paying government job with great benefits. “A dog walking job is flexible and I’ll be able to work on my blog and develop a freelancing business,” I’d propose to my unconvinced parents. The average person might question why I would go out of my way to seek a job like dog walking when I could have a more stable job with a steady income?

This is a fair question considering that the majority of people’s life goals and ideas of success are to get a high paying job, to save for vacation once or twice a year, to meet the love of their life, to then get married and buy a house and to then have kids allthewhile saving for their retirement at the age of 65 *takes long breath*. However enticing this American Dream might look like to most, to me its always felt like a cage that I’ve been trying my hardest to escape ever since I started college.

I tried my hardest to do exert some level of freedom while living out the American Dream in corporate America. Earlier this year, I even thought I had what I wanted when I got a salaried job in the environmental field. My long distance boyfriend of three years was making a great living in PA and there I was was moving to the Philly area and would only be about an hour commute away from him. How could I have any complaints? After all this would be my first time having a job that provided me with a 401K, health insurance and other snazzy benefits. I moved to Pennsylvania (for the second time now in my life) despite having told anyone I ever met in the past several years I would NEVER move to PA again. Yet despite my better judgement I took the job, moved to the suburbs and threw all of my savings on an apartment with my dog.

Things were going great, on the surface that is. This is what was supposed to happen. New furniture, clothes, job, friends. Stability??? Now I will be happy. Any minute now...These are the things I tried to tell myself while an alarm center was going off in the pit of myself alerting me that all of this was wrong. My “rational” side would kick in when the alarm bells were going off inside me as if to whip me back into shape and would raise questions and concerns like, ‘Ok well if not this, then what?’ ‘How will you support yourself if not with a 9-5 job?’ ‘Where will you go and how will you live?’ ‘People sometimes have to work jobs they don’t like to have fun and do things they do like’. I wonder where all these thoughts come from...I’m going to help you out gentle reader: The mind of every single scared person in the world trying their hardest to adult right now, thats who!

Listen, these aren’t "wrong” questions but they were meant to silence my gut that was screaming ‘STOP! WE NEED TO SLOW DOWN!’ Its as though my life was put on 1.5x speed and I had no say in it. “This is how its meant to be, this is what’s suppose to happen”. Again and again I’d go in circles trying to convince myself.

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time then before one of the rungs on the ladder to success broke off and I’d fall flat on my ass. A month or two into my new life, my 3 year relationship ended. In essence, we wanted entirely different things. He wanted to live a simple life in his hometown with his friends and family with a normal salaried 9-5 and I wanted someone to travel the world with and be adventurous and daring together (this is simply one major aspect of why things ended of course). Could I say this was a surprise? Hell no. Again people, warnings, fire alarms, sirens where going off in my stomach the whole relationship. But I stuffed it deep down thinking I could make things work. I was afraid. Afraid of the unknown, of being alone and how I would face the world with my lack of courage.

I was met with a great surprise post breakup, in which my world became somewhat larger as I was no longer forcing a circle into a square peg and trying to be something other than myself. I allowed my gut to start playing more into my everyday desires, like stepping out of my comfort zone and spending more time meeting and getting to know others at work. I began to try new things like acting classes and improv, which I never would have had the courage to do before. The most amazing thing came from this breakup and it was the amazing community and friendships I gained at my workplace. The following months were filled with play and exploration for the first time in a long time in my social life. I felt a part of me open up that I honestly didn’t know existed and I gained immeasurable self confidence from that time. Yet there it was, the nagging sensation that while this was good, there was still more on the other side and that something still wasn’t right and that had largely to do with my job.

Maybe I’ll write about my job in an entirely separate blog post but to put it simply, it was not the right position or place for me and quite frankly I’m not sure that I fit into a corporate 9-5 atmosphere. I like to blaze my own trail and break the rules, which is pretty much the opposite of how things work in an office thick with spoken and unspoken rules.

Therefore, it was only a matter of time before this too became a ticking time bomb in its own respect.

“I’m so sorry to do this”, my boss said sheepishly as the HR manager said the words, “You’re terminated, effective immediately”. I found myself fired two days before I was to leave on a trip to visit a friend in the UK.

I was in so much shock that I shakily walked back to my desk with my computer and asked for a box to put my stuff into and walked out to my truck with the help of my concerned friends/coworkers.

It’s a terrible feeling to be fired as you can’t help but wonder what you did wrong or what you could have done differently so it wouldn’t have had to come down to this. But as my friends asked me “Are you ok?” I couldn’t help but say yes and smile as I drove my truck the twenty two minutes it took me to get home. A weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

My world was becoming larger.

Leaving to my trip to the UK was the perfect segue into a new chapter in my life in which after having been laid off I extended my trip to Denmark and Ireland to visit friends and explore. What I didn’t expect is that on the last leg of my trip I would feel more myself than I have ever felt in the past several years, if not ever. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had glimpses of this feeling for example while I was roadtripping out to New Mexico with my dog or traveling to Chiang Mai, Thailand on my own for the first time or when I roadtripped to Minnesota to stay with the Ojibwe people to do research. Its a feeling I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on.

There I was 3 weeks traveled and I had no desire to come back to the States because I felt something stirring inside me. Like an epiphany was about to happen but it hadn’t been given enough time to fully form.

The second I got home, almost like I was possessed, I walked over to my computer, opened Photobooth video (don’t laugh) and spoke for about an hour in my empty apartment about how I had just figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I needed to capture these thoughts as the words were pouring out of me effortlessly.

“I want to travel the world, share my love of nature with people, learn from different cultures and share their stories with people all over the world. There’s nothing more powerful than storytelling in helping to inspire change in ourselves and in the world around us and I want to contribute to that.”

So there it was. This would be my new path. No more slaving away at a 9-5 doing repetitive work with seemingly no autonomy. I would do whatever it took to pave my own path by becoming a blogger and following my crazy dream to travel and tell stories about nature and people.

Flash forward to the present moment three weeks after my return to the States followed by my word vomit of a video I find myself in my family’s house in DC after having moved out of my apartment outside of Philly. I’m struggling to keep that momentum and inspiration going. I’m working on developing a schedule to self educate on becoming a freelancer, blogger and subject expert. The thing is, however hard this may be, I know in my gut that THIS, this is right for me right now.

I’m writing this after having realized that my childhood stuffed animal, Ping Pong, was lost in the move. I KNOW this seems like a total derailment but bare with me. This might seem silly to most people but its been a huge part of my life.

Traveling is not foreign to me. I grew up moving every 1-3 years and therefore have had to get used to saying goodbye to people, places and things and its ultimately had a huge impact on my sense of home or place in this world. For example, I don’t know where home is for me and sometimes that is exciting and other times it sucks. There are a few things therefore that are very near and dear to me because in the wake of so many constant changes and ever changing life circumstances, something as childish as a stuffed animal has been at times the only constant for me for the past 20+ years. Every place I have ever traveled that bear has come with me. Losing this stuffed animal is truly the one thing that has tipped the emotional scale for me in what I feel like must be a de-shedding of my previous self and everything I’ve held onto my whole life.

While I can’t express how sad it makes me that I’ve lost this childhood keepsake, I know that the memories I’ve had with it and what it reminds me of while stay with me forever. What can’t be taken from you are your experiences and what truly matters then are the people you surround yourself with, the communities you embrace and let embrace you and the moments you take to stop and enjoy the little things in life.

This year has been, and continues to be a huge learning curve for me but has made me realize that we have to follow our gut and what we truly want and dream of.

I’m going take the path less chosen and devote my time and energy on figuring out to execute what I envision in this life because up until now I’ve been selling myself short. This is entirely due to crippling fear and anxiety of failure, judgement from others and fear of the unknown.

One last thing I want to say is that sometimes those closest to you and generally those around you will tell you to what you can and can’t do or should and shouldn’t do. Its not because they are don’t love you or want to see you succeed its purely because people like to speak from what they know. Its up to YOU to show yourself what you’re capable of and only up to you to push the limits on what you believe you can do. Never take no for an answer in this world and keep going even when it seems life is beating you down because there’s always a lesson in everything that’s thrown our way and while we can’t choose our circumstances we can choose how we react and respond to them.

I’m not a great writer but I’ll get better at it eventually and guess what? Whatever you want to do deep down, you’ll get better at too if you want it bad enough. It just takes practice. I hope this is inspiring or helps others and honestly I wrote this to inspire and help myself, so there.

What path will you take? What have you always wanted to do in life or try and have been to afraid to bite the bullet on? The world is your oyster and if you want it, go for it!

#myposts

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redknight3996 · 5 years

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It’s a few weeks late to do something like this, but hey, might as well. Last year, I wrote a story called “A Summer Shanty”, which was basically a combination of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (well, four horsepeople; this isn’t a Good Omens thing, I wrote this before the live-action series came out and got big, but I do love that book) with a modern and somewhat more cynical take on A Christmas Carol, born out of need to get out a lot of negative feelings I felt about billionaires (because they suck) and whatnot. I submitted it for Bogleech’s story contest thing (which, if it’s a problem posting this here, please inform me), so it’s all up there, I just have this kind of urge to put it up here. Maybe get more people to see it, maybe just have out there, who knows? But hey, if it sounds like something you’d like, feel free to read. Gonna be splitting it up here, into little segments, so expected the next one tomorrow or something.

A Summer Shanty, Part 1

The world was getting warmer. It was obvious by this point. Shame there was nothing to be done about it.

Such were the thoughts of one Gregory Louis Morgan as he sat back in his poolside chair. The Chairman and CEO of Renfield Industrial was celebrating another lovely Fourth of July in his own private villa. He had earned some time off from running his multi-billion dollar conglomerate and was taking a well-deserved summer vacation.

Sure, there was always work to be done at some point, but what was the point if he couldn’t enjoy himself every so often? He really did deserve to indulge himself every now and then. A man who traveled as much as he did had certainly earned a little relaxation.

Morgan wasn’t about to retire though. He would go stir crazy in a week if he had to give up his business for some worthless life of leisure. To give up the board meetings, the dinner meetings, the financial reports...No, he was like a shark in that regard. He would always keep moving.

Morgan chuckled to himself as he took a sip of his margarita. That was a clever little metaphor of his. Fitting, even, considering the nearby coast.

The heat had gone down as the night dragged on, and the din of fireworks had gradually subsided as revelers, red-blooded Americans celebrating their nation’s independence in a grand show of lights, gradually went off to drink or party or even sleep. Whatever those types of people did.

Morgan preferred his parties more subdued. Less aggravating, in that way. People could be so noisy.

Morgan valued his quiet.

“Heh. Well, ain’t this snazzy?”

Morgan’s eyes snapped open as he sat up and glanced around. There.

The billionaire smiled as he slowly stood to face the younger man standing by his pool in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts. “You’re on private property, young man. You need to leave, now.”

He kept the false smile on as he took in the lightly tanned man’s clean cut appearance, his dark brown hair cropped short. The man was taller than Morgan, slightly, and had more of a muscular figure than the aging billionaire. Hm. Was he one of his security officers?

“Nah, sorry old timer. I’m right where I’m supposed to be tonight.”

Morgan’s lips twitched and he idly pressed the security signal in his pocket. Really, the layabouts should have arrested this man before he even got this far. “No, you’re not. Are you drunk, boy? You are in my home.”

“Yeah, I am,” the blond man replied, his brown eyes oddly bright in the patio lights...Wait...No, it was some trick of the light. “And your home is where I’m supposed-”

“No, it isn’t. Get out of my damn house already! Do you even have any idea in that drunken mind of yours where you wandered into?!” Morgan snarled, dropping all pretense of civility in the face of the idiot’s lackadaisical response. Where the hell was his security anyway? And why didn’t Tatiana notice this idiot? How did even get past his gate, much less the fences?

“Woah now man. No need for all that hostility,” the man replied, an odd accent to his word-Wait, wasn’t he white? Why did he look hispanic now? The man placed a hand on his chest, smiling with pearly white teeth. “Me llamo Jonathan Doe. You can call me John.”

“I-What?! No, that is it, I am done with this!” Morgan strode over to the man and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, bodily yanking him down to his eye level. “You will get out of my home immediately or-”

And the man’s face cracked. “You’re being really rude right now, Mister Morgan.”

Doe smiled. He looked...arabic? What? There was a crack splitting across his forehead, some sort of glow-

Morgan yelped as he was shoved backward, landing right on his rear. “W-What?! What-H-How did you just-What?!”

“Wow, real articulate. First you shout, then you put hands on me? Man, you old bastards really can’t handle your temper.” The now black man smiled, squatting down in front of him. “So, Morgan, we need to talk.”

“I-I...I will not be treated like this! What even are you supposed to be!? Some...Some kind of radical trying to extort me-”

“Hey man, that’s real rude.” Doe frowned and sat down fully, his legs crossed. He looked different again, his skin a lighter shade of brown, his face narrower. “Real rude. I’m just here to tell you what’s going on tonight, for you and you alone.”

“What?”

“You keep saying that. Why not try listening for a second?”

“Ah, you-” Doe held up a hand and Morgan felt a sudden surge of rage. “I WILL NOT-”

And then he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t make any noise come out of his mouth.

Doe sighed, running a hand over his short hair. “Y’know, I doubt Marley had to deal with this shit back in the day.”

Morgan tried to speak again, tried to shout at the bastard in front of him, tried to call for someone. Where was his security!? Where were his dogs?! Where was...Where was anyone?

He looked towards his house. All the lights were off. There...wasn’t anything there. At all. No motion in the house whatsoever, no indication that anyone was home. How could that…

He stood, surprisingly easily...there was no pain in his knees. He’d been shoved to the ground but his back was fine. The moon was still high in the sky, half of it shrouded in darkness. He couldn’t hear any noise either. He looked lower, and saw that the suburbs below him were dark too. Dark, and silent.

Only the lights around his pool were still on. There couldn’t be a blackout. That didn’t…

Doe was standing again, his hands in his pockets. He was smiling again. He looked Asian now. “Okay, I think you’ve reached the point where you gotta listen. Good, didn’t want to start cutting into the schedule or anything.”

“Schedule?” Wait, what? “I can talk?”

“When you’re not trying to shout, sure. Now, I think we got off on the wrong foot here.” The redhead grinned, holding out a freckled hand. “My name’s John Doe. You’re Mister Greg Morgan. It’s interesting to meet you.”

Morgan didn’t take his hand. “...This is a dream. Ha, so that’s it...I fell asleep at my chair and this is a dream.”

Doe kept smiling, but dropped his hand, pocketing it again. “Heh. You’re going to be a piece of work.”

“You can’t speak to me like that,” Morgan snapped, before huffing, fixing his polo shirt. “So what, are you supposed to be made up of all the employees I’ve ever fired or something?”

“Nah, worse than that.” John Doe grinned. “But we’re not at that yet. We’re talking about you, Mister Morgan. You’ve been chosen for a little something something.”

“Oh? And what would this be, Mister Doe?”

“Ha, wow, you sure change your tune fast when it suits you.” Doe chuckled for a moment. “Congrats Mister Morgan, you’re getting Caroled.”

“...What?”

“C’mon. You must’ve seen, like, any cartoon in the last sixty years or so. Dickens, pal. Think.”

Morgan blinked, then scowled. “You can’t be serious. It’s nowhere near Christmas! And I’m no Scrooge! I’ve earned every penny I have and I’m entitled to use it as I wish!”

“You’ve earned a lot more than pennies, Mister Morgan,” Doe replied. “And no, it’s not quite that.”

“What is it then? Am I to be visited by three ghosts to teach me the meaning of materialism or whatever that trash was about?”

“No, Mister Morgan. You don’t get ghosts. You get worse.” Doe’s smile was thin. “See, you’re thinking of a story where a miserable miser driven by loneliness finds his heart. A wonderful classic, teaching the good in people.

“This ain’t that kind of story, Mister Morgan.” The crack on his forehead began to split further. “You’re not that kind of man, so you get a different one. Congrats though. It’s practically an honor here.” Doe smiled, and his cheeks cracked, an orange glow visible in his split skin. “You get to represent America, Mister Morgan. You’re the perfect man for the job.”

“...What? What...What could you possibly mean by that?” Morgan mumble, staring transfixed as the man’s skin burst into flame.

Doe kept smiling even as his skin burnt the color of charcoal, embers lighting every inch of his body. “You’ll see. As a little hint, I’ll tell you a secret.” He leaned in close, his grin wide and his teeth black. “Hell’s real, Mister Morgan. Hell is very, very real, for men like you.

“Oh, and to answer your earlier question, I’m a soldier, Mister Morgan.” His eyes were gone. Two burning pits were in their place. “Just a soldier.”

~1~

Morgan woke with a start, flinched as he blinked. He sat up in his pool chair and looked around. His lights were still on. Every light in his house was still on. The houses below had their lights on too.

“...Heh. Hehahah...I knew it was a dream,” he muttered to himself as he stood up from his pool chair. Suddenly falling asleep like that was unusual for him...perhaps he was letting himself relax a tad too much. Lying down in his actual bed would do him some good, particularly with how late it had grown.

He stood and started walking back to his home. How late was it, even? He checked his watch as he stood up from his pool chair. One in the morning. Really now? It had gotten quite late all of a sudden. He really should be in bed by now.

He stood up and walked to the patio door. It led to a living room. He had a few of those. He slid open his door and stepped inside and blinked at the light of his study. Which was on the second floor, overlooking his pool.

“...How...did I get here?” he mumbled to himself as he sat down in his leather office chair. Had it always felt this comfortable? He quite enjoyed the brown look to it too. It fit well with the color of his full bookshelves and the wood of his desk. All mahogany, all very cozy.

“Really? Rand? Wow, way to stereotype yourself, jackass,” muttered the white woman looking through his bookshelves. She pulled a book, flipped through it, and casually tossed it over her shoulder.

Morgan blinked, and sat up in his seat, instantly alert. “What? Who the-Who are you supposed to be?!”

“Johnny Boy told you, asshole. I’m your first visitor tonight. Gotta say, not real fucking impressed,” the white woman replied. And by God, she was white. Her skin looked like new-fallen snow, and her hair, tied back in a bun and covered by a white bowler, was equally ivory. She was dressed in a long white coat and a long white skirt with white shoes. From what he could see, even the frames of her glasses were white.

In fact...everything about her was white. Morgan couldn’t see any hint of shadow on her body. The woman was entirely white. There was no hint of yellow or gray like some shades, it was just all white. Every inch-

“Hey asshole. Eyes are up here,” the white woman spoke again, turning to face him with a hand still on the bookcase. He couldn’t see her eyes. They were completely covered by her round glasses. Even the lenses were white. How in the world could she see out of them?

She pointed at her lenses with two fingers, clenched her fist, and then pointed both fingers at him. She stared at him and he stared back and she huffed in irritation and crossed the room in two strides and slammed her hands on his desk. “GAH!”

“So now you wanna fucking speak? Fuck me, I thought this would be a fun gig,” she complained, sitting back in a white chair that looked exactly like Morgan’s own.

“...No. No, no, this isn’t happening,” Morgan began, shaking his head, “Earlier was a dream, and this is just another one-ow!” He rubbed his head, blinking in surprised pain as the woman lowered a white walking cane with a rounded top. She slipped it into the crook of her arm and smirked at him.

“Good, now you can actually fucking listen.”

“...You’re very foul-mouthed for a woman.” She just smirked back at him. “So...So then what is this supposed to be? Are you going to carry me around on some wondrous vision of my own past so I can appreciate what I have now?”

“Fuck no. I’m not here to deal with namby-pamby bullshit like that, Greg.” She suddenly leaned back and put her feet up on his desk. He noticed how the soles of her dress shoes were also white before indignation overtook him.

“Get your shoes off of my desk!”

“No. Alright, let’s see,” the woman muttered, leafing through a green book that was suddenly in her hands. “So, Greggy Morgan, son of blah blah blah, some old fuck rich bastard and a woman who doesn’t matter-”

“What? My mother was-”

“Oi.” She pointed at him with one hand, the other still flipping through her book. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m working. Born in Kansas, moved to Texas, lovin’ those as’s. Studied business, economics, shit philosophy, lots of emphasis on ‘personal freedoms’, built up an inherited company, oil and refinery, ties to agriculture and pharmaceuticals, got tons of subsidiaries, damn, you’re a regular king capitalist, huh?” She closed the book with a snap and tossed it to the side.

Another book, this one with a gold-cover, was in her hands already as Morgan frowned. “...Was that it?”

“Fuck no, again. So, big supporter of the free market, personal freedoms, all that.”

“Yes, I am. Is there a problem with that?”

“Everything’s a problem to someone, dumbass. You could say you’re all for giving free money to everyone and you’d have bitches whining about unwarranted charity. Hell, you could say you’re pro-puppy petting and some bitch would whine about the wasted time to pet them. Bitches whine, it’s what dogs do.”

“...Is there a point to this?”

“Everything has a point, dumbass. Fucking hell, that college fucking education didn’t do jack for you, did it? No, that’s one’s not totally fair, is it? Education cures ignorance, not stupid. Can’t do anything for a dumbass that insists on being blind and deaf.”

“I don’t need to take this,” Morgan bit out. He stood and-

He was on the floor, clutching his temple. “...A-Ah…”

“Oi.” Suddenly, the woman’s white face was in front of his, her lips turned down in a small frown. He couldn’t see her eyes behind her glasses. She was using her walking cane to hold herself up as she leaned down towards him. “I didn’t say you could stand.”

“...You hit me.”

“Yeah, I did. Isn’t that what you do with unruly children? You say that often enough. Gotta give them discipline, no more participation trophies.” She snorted, smirking again. “That one always gets me. Parents act like they didn’t demand the trophies so their shitty kids wouldn’t look like failures, blame it on the kids they fucked over. It’s fun, y’know?”

“...What?”

“Every piece of shit passes down their own fuck-ups to their kids, creating more and more fuck-ups.” She abruptly giggled. “You have to wonder, where did all start? Where will it all end? But then again, we all know where everything ends, don’t we?” She held out her hand to him. “C’mon. You’re getting up now.”

Morgan didn’t take her hand. He pushed himself up, stood on his own two feet, and touched two fingers to his temple. There was no blood. In fact, his pain seemed to be fading remarkably quickly.

The woman stood too, still smirking. “You just reminded me of something hilarious.”

Morgan stared at her, slowly brushing himself off. They weren’t in his office anymore. They were in some kind of white hall… “Where are we-OW!” The damned woman hit him again!

“Oi, listen when your betters talk. Now, like I was saying-”

“You are not-AGH! STOP THAT!”

And then her hand was around his throat. He gulped as she spoke. “Now, as I was saying, I found out a really damn funny thing some time ago. A bunch of you idiots seem to have started using the phrase ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’.”

She grinned at him, tracing her thumb over his Adam’s apple. “See, what makes that funny is that the phrase originally refers to a fuck up you Americans got. A little misattribution of an old wives’ tale, and even then the meaning still refers to something so ludicrously impossible that it simply can’t be done. Like, say, pulling yourself over a fence by lifting up on your bootstraps.

“And seeing you, Greg, fumble as you tried to get up, reminded me of that. Ain’t memory fun?”

“...I see. So is this place supposed to lead back into my memories then?”

“No, dumbass,” she stated, her tone flat, “We’re here for a different reason. C’mon, walk and talk.”

She let go of his neck and wrapped her arm over his shoulders, leading him further down the hallway. He could see doors along the wall, plain white doors, but all of them were closed. Though, he could vaguely hear something…Voices? It was hard to tell. The clack of the woman’s shoes drowned out most of the sound.

“So, what’s up first on our agenda? Race, religion, sex? No, no, we don’t have enough time to focus on all of that shit. They’re all fucked, of course, but I can’t get to everything here, you dig?”

“...”

“Medicine it is! Hey, Greggy, you ever think to yourself about all the people those pharmaceutical companies of yours murder?”

“What? What in the world are you talking about?” he asked, turning his gaze on her as she continued to pull him along the hallway. “No company I support has ever murdered anyone and insinuating that is-” He bit back his instinct to bring up defamation and slander. What good would it do him in this sort of situation? In a dream. A dream, of course, because this couldn’t be real, and the thug dragging him along wasn’t real.

He still didn’t expect her to outright cackle. The woman didn’t slow her pace in the slightest as she roared with laughter, her amusement wild and unrestrained. “Eheheheheheha~! Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.” She cracked another grin. “You really shouldn’t lie to my fucking face, Greggy boy. It looks bad on you.”

“I am not lying, I…” What was the right answer here? “While certain individuals within companies that I hold shares in may provide financial support to other individuals who could have committed less than moral actions in their pasts, I do not condone nor support murderers.”

“Cut the legal speak and the bullshit along with it. Your hard-on for the military aside-”

“I support our great nation’s soldiers-!”

“SHUT IT!” she barked right in his face, snarling down at him until she abruptly grinned again. “Now, we’re leaving that can of maggots for later. My session here’s all about how you, Greggy the investor, Greggy the shareholder, Greggy the lobbyist, support the thieving pricks making money off of human suffering. Granted, that’s all capitalists, but we’re talking about the ones that rip teeth from the sick this time.”

“Companies have a right to profit from their products,” he retorted. “They put in time, effort, and money into their work and the profits garnered from those sales go back to supporting the very companies that produce the medicine.”

“Aw, cute, you actually believe that. It doesn’t help people who can’t afford the medicine, but fair enough. You gotta look out for you and yours first, right? Fuck everyone else, you gotta survive in a hellish world where the merest disease or injury can throw you out on the streets with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt to you name, all because the top dogs want their crap to land on someone when they shit. It’s a fun little cycle.”

Morgan rolled his eyes. “That’s why people get insurance.”

“Ooo, yeah, because everyone can afford insurance, and it’s such a good idea~! Everybody’s just gotta do as they’re told, pay their dues, and march right up the death panel that decides whether their coverage is good enough to save their life! And God help you if you can’t make payment! Not everyone can be born a CEO, Greggy boy.”

He sighed in irritation. The woman felt like a culmination of every idiot undergrad who thought Marx was their damn savior. “Think for a moment. A CEO runs their company. They manage the production and distribution so everyone can be rewarded for their efforts and therefore-”

Her hand abruptly clamped down on his nose. “And that’s real cute. They get to sit up there in their big boy offices pretending that what they say and do actually matters. Lead the company! Direct the troops! Be our king. But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it?”

Her fingers tightened around his nose. “Gh...l-let go-”

“Shhhhh. I want you to look around you, Greggy. I want you to recognize where we are.”

“What? What does that have to do-”

“Oh for fuck’s sake man.” She swung her cane out, the door opened, and-

“GOOD LORD!” He stared in horror at horribly scarred thing in the room, in a hospital bed–it was a hospital and terrible bumps and lesions covered-

A hand slapped the back of his head and he was being dragged along again. “Don’t be fucking rude, asshole.”

“W-What was that?”

“That was Ailen.”

“A-Ailen?”

“Yeah, Ailen. She needs a change of blankets,” she explained casually. “Do you want to go back and say hi?

“No! No, no, n-never!” he immediately snapped, shaking his head rapidly.

“Aw, shame. You’re losing out, buddy boy. And besides, why such a bad reaction? I did say this was a hospital. You’re bound to see some gross shit.”

“...W-Why am I in a hospital?” he asked, glancing back at the room for a moment. More of the doors opened and he immediately averted his gaze, trying to look forward. “What even was that?”

“I told you-”

“NOT WHO! WHAT!” he snapped and then he was on the floor again, clutching his nose. Good God had she just broken it??

He was yanked to his feet again and she kept pulling him along, holding him around his waist as groans started to fill the air.

“Oh, just a fun little remnant of your shitty country’s past victories, about the only thing you fucks can count on. You want to know something funny, Greggy?”

“...Y-You...y-you just broke my nose-”

“HA! Ah, that is funny.” She grinned down at him with pearly white teeth. Had she gotten taller? “But no, this is funnier. Did you know Pratchett and Gaiman thought I was on my way out way back when? See, they thought things like antibiotics, disinfectants, penicillin especially, all that fun stuff, would drive me on my way out. Hell, they put fucking Pollution in my place!

She took a drag of a cigarette, white smoke filling the air. “Now that was cute, real cute, brat got a real chuckle out of that one. Cute kid, really, kinda dumb, but working her way up there. Could sink your entire world one of these days but my point is, you dumb mother fucker, is that I’m still around and not going anywhere because of people like you.”

Morgan blinked, trying to keep himself from tearing up as he clutched his nose. He had to breathe through his mouth because it felt like blood was leaking from his nostrils. “W-What?”

“Oh you poor stupid bitch. Don’t you get it yet? Why I’m one of the chucklefucks here for your stupid salvation drive? I’m one of the big ones, the fun ones, the kindly ones that rip out all your throats and guzzle down every bit of sweet, salty nectar in your pus-ridden bodies~!” she giggled, high-pitched and psychotic. “Oh now don’t be rude now~. We’re running a ‘scare you straight’ program and it won’t do if you start thinking uncharitable things about the mentally unwell~! Another thing I have to thank your people for, by the way!”

“W-What-” The doors were banging open faster and faster as they walked. Everything was starting to become a white blur but he could hear vomiting, defecations, revoltingly leaky noises-

“What what what, you keep saying what, say something that matters! Look, think, you’re on a fucking one way road, dumbass. You profit from the sick, you demonize the mental, you call the broken lazy while you sip pina fucking coladas by the poolside~! You fuck and fuck on an old, broken dick while people writhe and die with cunts full of cysts because you can’t be assed to let them control their own vags! You don’t get it yet, but you’re my favorite kind of vile bastard!”

She suddenly lifted him up and he was eye level with her, his feet off the ground as she grinned wide and carried him through the hall. “Eheheheheha~! Oh, if only you were an outright anti-vaxxer instead of just supporting their ‘freedom of choice’~! I’d throw you down and fuck you right here and now and fill your cock up with every nasty infection your abstinence only shit can’t name~!”

He went pale. “L-Let me down, let me down right-”

And then he was on the ground and she was dragging him by the leg and at the end of the hall a set of double doors opened and he saw an endless white void. “N-No no no! No, let go of me! Stop, stop you can’t do this to me!”

“I can’t~? Why can’t I~? I have the freedom to do this~! It’s my right to choose, and it overrides yours.”

“STOP! STOP THIS RIGHT NOW! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME! THIS CAN’T HAPPEN TO ME!” And suddenly she pulled him up again and smiled. In an instant, she looked almost kind, the lights of the hall behind her, now silent, illuminating her white face in an almost serene glow. And then he felt the pit at the edge of his feet.

He couldn’t stop himself from looking back. Behind and below him, there was a massive pit, far larger than anything he’d ever seen, and it was full of bones. Bleached, white bones. “W-What?”

“Aw, really? What, again? Jeez, I thought you’d have something more impressive to say.”

“...W-Why did you bring me here? Why are those down there?”

“So you could see it. And those down there are the bones of every human being killed by the good old United States of America through disease. Down at the bottom you have the smallpoxed Natives, further above you have the hundred thousand AIDs victims old Ronny Regs condemned to death–and hey, if you look close enough, you might see him still trying to climb out–sprinkled all around are the thousands of people your shitty health care let die because it was cheaper than saving them, and in between are the poor fucks who got the short end of the deregulation stick. Rot in the food, filth in the waters, smog in the sky. All those amazingly fun shitshows~.”

She giggled again and leaned close to him, her smile wide and white. Up close, he could see the inside of her mouth was white too, from her gums to her tongue and every last one of her teeth and the whiteness wasn’t clean. She didn’t look like some pristine, marble statue, no, she was absolutely covered in blisters and lesions so white they all created a pale patchwork over her entire face. “You people are definitely some of my favorite~.”

“Y-You said that before,” Morgan said, starting to nod and smile, trying to keep down his bile. “Y-You said I was your favorite. S-So, please, I can give you so much-”

“Oh? Would you leave your third wife for me then?”

“YES! Yes, anything!”

She laughed again, high and giddy. “You’re so easy! Ah, a fucked up slut to the end then~.”

He paled. “Th-The end?”

“No, not yet. Just for part one.” She abruptly smirked, her hand going and grabbing the collar of his shirt. “Before you go, though, you deserve a little treat. Now, I’m not going to fuck you, because frankly I could do better, but I’ll give you a good look, kay~?”

“I-What?” What did she-Was she going to-

The woman reached up and pulled her glasses free from her face. She tilted her head, smiling at him with white eyes. Wriggling, white eyes. Shifting, twitching, white maggots spilling from her eye sockets and-

Morgan screamed and pushed her back. She was far too solid for him to move but he went backward and into the open air, watching her smile as the maggots wriggled from her eyes. He saw her hold one on her fingers, lift it to her lips and give it a little kiss before he hit-

And then Morgan woke up in his office chair.

#short story #writing #four horsemen #horror #anti capitalism #fiction #pestilence #might as well #i don't know how many tags to add to this #so eh

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canaryatlaw · 5 years

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OKAY. well today was pretty sweet. I had my alarm set for 10:00 am but ended up waking up at 9:42 am and just said fuck it and got up. I checked my messages and as expected I had a message from Jess asking about getting brunch and then confirmed our plans for the rest of the day. I got dressed and we met up at the spot, which had more people around it than usual because the place that’s right there was doing a branding makeover and I got a free sample of pie so that was cool lol. we went to the vegetarian place for brunch, and while we were eating it started snowing which is super fucking annoying because it’s the fucking END OF APRIL we shouldn’t have to still be dealing with this lol. we had some autographs to mail out and the ups store is right next to the vegetarian place so we ended up going there once we finished eating and mailed the two domestic ones, I have the international one that I’ll mail from the post office on Monday because ups has an international surcharge that would’ve made it super fucking expensive to mail from the ups store. once that was done we walked back through the snow to where Jess had parked her car and started our journey for the day. we were heading up to the suburbs because Jess had managed to get some emissions check thing get lit up in her car because she tried to top off the gas but apparently her gas tank is very sensitive (it’s one of those that doesn’t have an actual cap to it) and according to the internet it was something about a software error that was recalled because of it so basically we had to bring it up to the dealership so they could fix that, hopefully for free, and that is what ended up happening, we brought it in and told them what was going on, they took a look and confirmed what they had to do, so we waited for like 45 minutes or so (I wasn’t actually keeping track of the time but it was around there) until it was done and we were good to go. It had overall taken less time than we’d expected, but we moved on to the next part of our plans, which was late lunch at the cheesecake factory, then we would return to actually get cheesecake after we saw the movie that evening. Since it was, you know, lunch time, we could get the lunch sized version of the pastas we always get to which I was like wow I could actually finish this! and then my acid reflux kicked into high gear for no particular reason and I was like okay I can not in fact finish this, so sadly I didn’t end up eating all that much of it. The movie showing we had tickets to wasn’t until 5 and at that point it was only a little after 2 so we checked to see if we could get tickets to any earlier showing, but they were all sold out, so we just had to kill some time. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue since there’s a whole mall there, but given that it was still snowing and it’s an outdoor mall made it a bit trickier. but we started at forever 21 as always since it was right there and had big signs for sale lol. we each ended up getting something from their buy one get one free clearance, Jess got this hideous jacket (she enjoys ugly clothing) and I got a somewhat equally hideous (as do I sometimes) cardigan along with a pair of floral pants that I saw and knew I needed in my life, then when we were going to check out there was a pair of “avo-cat-o” socks, which had an avocado with a cat peeking through where the pit would be on them so of course we had to get those, and then we picked up a bag of hi-chew at the counter. Once we checked out there we walked around a bit and went into a few stores in search of sunglasses, and ultimately ended up each getting a pair from Francesca’s. We continued to wander for a bit and got bubble tea at some point (where I could confirm I have the legit stuff they actually use, so that was validating) then waited for the movie theatre to start letting people into the theatre for our showing. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, of course we’re seeing Avengers Endgame, THIS POST FROM HERE ON WILL CONTAIN ENDGAME SPOILERS, I WILL TRY TO TAG IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU COULD POSSIBLY BLACKLIST BUT READ ON FROM HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK. We got some popcorn and waited in the fancy theatre for it to start. Overall reaction, I liked it a lot, I really wasn’t crazy about Infinity War so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this but I ended up liking it a lot. I thought it was a very good choice narratively to have Thanos get offed way at the beginning of the movie (to be fair to Thor, if I were him I probably would’ve chopped Thanos’ head off as soon as they got in the door, so I can’t really blame him) and then focus the movie on bringing everyone back, only to bring him back in the end, that was good storytelling IMO. THAT HAIRCUT THOUGH, I was dying, just looking at it like I. NEED. THIS. that haircut spoke to me okay lol, my hair is longer than it’s been in like three years right now but it’s not going to last very much longer. I probably can’t get that exact haircut because, you know, work shit, but I’m sure we could figure something out. I was kinda disappointed that she wasn’t in more of the movie, her presence in the beginning was perfect, I was dying when they were like “where are you going?” and she’s just like “to kill Thanos, I’ll let you know when I’m done” so nonchalantly and perfect and like, the scenes of her coming through the atmosphere and everything was so damn cool and GAH I LOVE HER SO MUCH. I had gotten spoiled, willingly though because I don’t really care about these things, as to the two major character deaths of the remaining alive characters, but that definitely did not make it any easier to see. MORGAN STARK IS SO FUCKING PRECIOUS I would die for her and also I’m so fucking glad they didn’t have Cassie Lang get dusted because I would’ve been pissed about that, Scott coming back from the quantum realm and finding her five years later was so damn emotional, it killed me. I appreciated them finding Thor in what was clearly filmed in a coastal new england town, getting fat and playing video games, lol. I know of course him looking fat was fake, but it looked so damn funny. I do take issue with several of the choices they made with how the time traveling was working because there were definitely quite a few logic jumps in there that went unexplained, but for the most part I’ll give them a pass for not wanting to get too into the nitty-gritty of it all. Their journeys into the past were interesting, the New York trip was great and everything involving Loki, I was fucking dying when Cap was just whispered “heil Hydra” and they just totally handed over this huge weapon to him 😂that was pretty funny. Then there was their trip to the 70′s, which messed with me that 1945 would only have been 25 years prior to 1970, like that kinda blows my mind lol. Tony’s whole conversation with his dad was so damn precious, I was like ready to cry at any given point really, and then there was Steve getting into Peggy’s office and watching her and not doing anything and I was like UGH you’re killing me Rogers lol but at least they got back to that at the end. Then there was Clint and Natasha on the planet with the soul stone that randomly featured red skull?? not sure where he came from. that whole sequence was so fucking heartbreaking, they really did it so well, and I definitely cried when they were literally trying to jump off the cliff before the other because they didn’t want the other person to sacrifice themselves, but in the end Nat gave her life because Clint had his family to get back to and man I had all the feels. Then of course there was our third team with Rhodey, Nebula, and Rocket, who end up tying Thanos back into the plot again, which was interesting but ultimately well done I think. When they all got back to the Avengers headquarters and Nat wasn’t there I was like 😭this is so damn sad. but then of course they’re able to have Hulk!Banner snap and you just get the first hints of it working before they immediately get launched into a huge battle. Not gonna lie, for a while there it was looking like they were really fucking screwed when they had armies upon armies ready to fight them, BUT THEN THAT SCENE where everyone comes back god I was crying, it was so fucking perfectly done I just cried at all of it, getting to see everyone back like that in such a triumphant way was too damn great. I liked that when Captain Marvel showed back up she was legit able to take on Thanos and literally had to be stopped by the full power of an infinity stone. I ultimately liked how they did it with the stones going to Tony while you didn’t realize it until Thanos snapped and you see all of them with Tony, and he then snaps and all of them turn to dust and just like, it was so great. Now of course I knew Tony was going to go, but I was glad it was ultimately the most heroic thing that really saved the day, he truly went out as a hero that saved literally everyone in our universe, which is really quite the achievement. The funeral scene killed me of course, especially with the little girl, but you know she’s gonna grow up surrounded by all these awesome people and she’s gonna end up being just fine. I was at least glad they put the stones back in where they were taking from, even if their time travel theory was flawed in a few parts. Cap coming back as an old man after having lived his life with Peggy was so damn good, I cried just because it was all so damn good and pure. And of course we had Peter meeting back up with Ned which was the cutest damn thing really. and yeah, I guess that’s it. I did like it a lot and will probably watch it again at some point once it’s available outside of theatres. Once we had confirmed there was no post credit scenes (thanks internet) we headed out and walked back through the snow (because it was still snowing like 10 hours after it started!!!) to the cheesecake factory where we ended up doing apps and dessert, except we didn’t get quite through our apps and ended up taking the cheesecake home with us. We split the fried mac and cheese balls and Jess got a salad, and I got their grilled artichoke which I’ve had before and is always really good, but takes forever to actually eat (so many layers!!) so I ended up taking some of that home too. Thankfully the snow hadn’t managed to stick to the roads much at all so the drive home was mostly safe. Jess dropped me at my place after she was convinced it wouldn’t be covered in snow (they’re bad about plowing the side streets, but none of the snow ended up sticking on the roads so it was ok), I put my stuff down and then grabbed my pajamas to get in the shower and get ready for bed and then started writing this, and now I’m here. It’s 12:34 am and I did volunteer to take a shift in the babies’ room at church tomorrow morning so I should definitely be getting to bed now. Goodnight loves. Hope you had an awesome Saturday.

#daily journal #April 2019 #Jess tag #Avengers Endgame spoilers #Avengers spoilers #Endgame spoilers #ae spoilers #Marvel spoilers #spoilers #spoiler #Avengers: Endgame spoilers #hopefully that's enough tags to hit everyone's blacklist #but I mean if you didn't blacklist like 'Avengers Endgame spoilers' that's on you

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

A ROUND YOU HAVE TO START OVER

The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. Design means making things for humans.1 And in particular, is a pruned version of a program from the implementation details. Every talk I give ends up being given from a manuscript full of things crossed out and rewritten. What about using it to write software, whether for a startup at all, it will be wasted. There's no reason this couldn't be as big as Ebay.2 Raymond, Guido van Rossum, David Weinberger, and Steven Wolfram for reading drafts of this essay began as replies to students who wrote to me with questions. Superficially, going to work for another company as we're suggesting, he might well have gone to work for another company for two years, and the classics. People will pay extra for stability. That would be an extraordinary bargain.3 You can do well in math and the natural sciences without having to learn empathy, and people in these fields tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, who have nothing, would prefer a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while the VCs can afford to be rational and prefer the latter.

You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as low notes travel through walls better than high ones. If you're young and smart, you don't need to have empathy not just for humans, but for individual humans. It depends on what the meaning of a program so that it does. I'm interested in the topic.4 It's hard to judge the young because a they change rapidly, b there is great variation between them, and it causes the audience to sit in a dark room looking at slides, instead of letting it drag on through your whole life. A rounds.5 Now that I've seen parents managing the subject, I can see why people invent gods to explain it.

There's more to it than that.6 Y Combinator with a hardware idea, because we're especially interested in people who can solve tedious system-administration type problems for them, so the two qualities have come to be associated. Startups happen in clusters.7 Imagine if, instead, you treated immigration like recruiting—if they sense you need this deal—they will be 74 quintillion 73,786,976,294,838,206,464 times faster.8 And good employers will be even more astonished that a package would one day travel from Boston to New York and I was surprised even then. But I have no trouble believing that computers will be very much faster. Now that I've seen parents managing the subject, I can give you solid advice about how to make one consisting only of Japanese people.

But they don't realize just how fragile startups are, and how easily they can become collateral damage of laws meant to fix some other problem. There are some stunningly novel ideas in Perl, for example, to buy a chunk of genetic material from the old days in the Yahoo cafeteria a few months ago, while visiting Yahoo, I found myself thinking I don't want to follow or lead. Professors are especially interested in hardware startups.9 When I say Java won't turn out to be a case of premature optimization. Bold? They won't be offended.10 So it is no wonder companies are afraid. I'd recommend meeting them if your schedule allows.

The cat had died at the vet's office. It's like the rule that in buying a house you should consider location first of all.11 Why hadn't I worked on more substantial problems?12 But lose even a little bit in the commitment department, and probably soon stop noticing that the building they work in says computer science on the outside. If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can expect to have a nice feeling of accomplishment fairly soon. Some of the problems we want to invest in you aren't. If anything they'll think more highly of you.

5 million. And those of us in the next room snored? So if you're the least bit inclined to find an excuse to quit, there's always some disaster happening. Every person has to do their job well. A round you have to worry, because this is so important to hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. But if you lack commitment, it will be way too late to make money, you have to risk destroying your country to get a job depends on the kind you want. Marble, for example. Yesterday Fred Wilson published a remarkable post about missing Airbnb. Sometimes I can think to myself If someone with a PhD in computer science I went to my mother afterward to ask if this was so. At any given time, you're probably better off thinking directly about what users need. Everyone in the sciences, true collaboration seems to be vanishingly rare in the arts could tell you that the right way to collaborate, I think few realize the huge spread in the value of your remaining shares enough to put you net ahead, because the people they admit are going to get a foot in the door. Over the years, as we asked for more details, they were compelled to invent more, so the odds of getting this great deal are 1 in 300.

You're not spending the money; you're just moving it from one asset to another.13 On a log scale I was midway between crib and globe.14 You can stick instances of good design can be derived, and around which most design issues center.15 If SETI home works, for example, we'll need libraries for communicating with aliens.16 In your own projects you don't get taught much: you just work or don't work on big things, I don't mean to suggest we should never do this—just that we see trends first—partly because they are in general, and partly because mutations are not random. But if it's inborn it should be. The mildest seeming people, if they tried, start successful startups, and then I can start my own? The alternative approach might be called the Hail Mary strategy.

Notes

But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century European art. Fifty years ago. I meant. Some are merely ugly ducklings in the Valley.

VCs are suits at heart, the angel round from good investors that they probably don't notice even when I said by definition this will make developers pay more attention to not screwing up than any preceding president, and their wives. But that doesn't have users.

But it wouldn't be worth about 125 to 150 drachmae. Heirs will be the more subtle ways in which many people work with the bad groups is that they function as the cause.

The empirical evidence suggests that if you want to. Incidentally, tax loopholes are definitely not a nice-looking man with a product company. When I was writing this, on the process dragged on for months.

Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. The reason Y Combinator was a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, they will come at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they tended to be.

An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp. Parents move to suburbs to raise five million dollars out of loyalty to the same advantages from it, by Courant and Robbins; Geometry and the manager of a problem later. But that is exactly the point I'm making, though you tend to get rich by buying good programmers instead of a long time by sufficiently large numbers of users to do it mostly on your board, there are few who can say I need to. There are lots of customers times how much they liked the iPhone too, of course, Feynman and Diogenes were from adjacent traditions, but it doesn't cost anything.

There was one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the sense that if the fix is at least for those founders.

For example, it's probably a bad idea, period. Bankers continued to dress in jeans and a few additional sources on their own itinerary through no-land, while the more qualifiers there are before the name implies, you produce in copious quantities.

166. Even in Confucius's time it filters down to zero, which make investments rather than giving grants.

What made Google Google is not even be working on what interests you most. It's a case of journalists, someone did, once. It seems quite likely that European governments of the word that means the startup in a way to be is represented by Milton. As I was living in a wide variety of situations.

So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us. They have the same gestures but without using them to be sharply differentiated, so if you conflate them you're aiming at the top and get data via the Internet.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 28%. A fundraising is a major cause of poverty are only about 2% of the decline in families eating together was due to Trevor Blackwell reminds you to stop, the more the type of thing. A round. It will also remind founders that an eminent designer is any good at acting that way.

Wufoo was based in Tampa and they hope this will make grad students' mouths water, but sword thrusts. For example, if you want to impress investors. When you fix one bug happens to use thresholds proportionate to the founders of failing startups would even be worth approaching—if you conflate them you're aiming at the company's PR people worked hard to answer your question. To be safe either a don't use Oracle.

Even if you don't have one. It was common in, but investors can get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but the programmers, the company is their project. MITE Corp. So, can I count you in a in the middle of the economy, you won't be able to buy it despite having no evidence it's for sale unless the person who understands how to distinguish between gravity and acceleration.

56 million. Adults care just as if it were Can you pass the salt? A single point of view: either an IPO, or much energy would be worth doing, because they couldn't afford a monitor is that when you ask that you're not consciously aware of it.

Most expect founders to try to accept a particular valuation, that he be spared. And in World War II, must have been Andrew Wiles, but it is not Apple's products but their policies.

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littlelllusionmachine · 6 years

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I think the last time I was genuinely happy was the first two years of my college experience, which puts us at about 2007-2009.

When I was a kid, it was a rare treat to see my father. He worked in Manhattan, which, for being all of 12 miles away, may as well have been a different world. He worked long hours and more often than not he’d get more sleep if he just stayed at his office and slept rather than coming home. So, for the duration of whatever film they were either filming or editing in post, there’d be long stretches when I wouldn’t see him.

He’d have the occasional weekend where he’d come home. Maybe I’d be off from school the next day. I don’t remember the specifics as this was the early-mid 90s. On these occasions, when he had to just drop off a drive or whatever, he’d ask me if I wanted to come to work with him. I’d always say yes, because it seemed very exciting to me - being on film sets, potentially meeting famous actors, getting to know the industry. I decided fairly early on I wanted to be part of it.

After what seemed like hours - it was always dark when we left - we’d go home. I want to say it was around midnight - at least it felt that way to me, who was no older than 8. As we reach the bridge, he says to me on one specific ride home; “Look at it. It’s kind of like a jewelry box, right? Do you see how it sparkles?” He was talking about the buildings abutting the west side highway - and the entirety of the New York City skyline as we drove further on. It stuck with me. One of those things, a really great day - in spite of me having no recollection at all of what we did - and that one comment he made while I was in a semi-conscious stupor.

I always wanted to go back to the city. It was where I was born, where I had friends at one point - there was nothing bad associated with it. Being asked if I wanted to drop a reel off to someone was like being asked if I wanted to go to an amusement park. When I got to high school I took a film class and one of the projects was to film a music video set to a song of your choice. I had no friends at the time, so was at a shortage of actors -- simple solution; go to Manhattan, film from this incredible wealth of people going on with their lives. This was in a freshly post-9/11 world, so things weren’t quite the same as I remembered. . Police presence in the Port Authority. Things like that. But people continued with their humdrum day to day routine like it was nothing. I was envious of it. I did the video to Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles.

When it came to selecting a college, I had two options: A local school, which was considered very good, or an art school in Manhattan - also very good, but 20k more than the other school per semester. I put a 500$ deposit down on the local school before deciding last minute I’d continue to be unhappy if I went there. I still, to this day, with over 10k left on my loans, believe I made the right choice. I don’t think I’d be alive if I went to the other school.

I took the bus into the city. The bus goes on these couple-story-high ramps before stopping to let people off into the port authority. You get a good view of 9th avenue and some other areas, consequently ---- . . . The first month, going in to school, equally as tired as I was when I was a kid (It was, on some days, 7 in the morning. . ) . . I had one thought; it’s beautiful. The same as that jewelry box. No longer lit up, no longer sparkling like diamonds, but retaining that same ‘magical’ aura. This feeling faded over time, but even now, looking down on those streets, I have to smile to myself a bit.

My mother has always been overprotective. When it was finally time to go to school that first year I was given a strict set of instructions to follow: take this bus, go on this train, transfer to this one, and walk this way. Do not look at the map under any circumstances or they’ll know you don’t belong. We ran through it the week prior to the first week of school together. On the first day I called to say I had forgotten everything, though I had figured it out. I don’t think she was pleased with me.

I continued to do this for a few weeks before realizing I could walk the two miles faster than the subway could take me, so, I started to do it. I felt good, walking. Exploring. If I had time I’d take a different street. In the two miles you go through all kinds of neighbourhoods. One street could mean the difference between a “bad” and “good” area. I wanted to see them all.

She came to accept this, but not before giving a warning: Don’t go to the Bronx. Don’t go too far uptown. That kind of thing.

By my third year I had explored Harlem. I explored some of the area of the Bronx by the zoo. I got yelled at for both. I have walked from the southernmost point to the northernmost in all my travels. Last month I explored the Bronx further. I got another concerned lecture. I am 10+ years an adult.

What does any of this have to do with the song above?

I had a playlist, which exists to this day (in a slightly different incarnation) entitled “For Subway/Walking”. Songs I enjoyed that had a nice beat to walk to, that’d keep me entertained. Simple. This song was one of the many on it.

Early on in my travels I discovered the Chelsea Hotel:

Which has an entirely different aura from the rest of the city. It’s huge, daunting - doesn’t really seem to belong where it is. There’s a pharmacy and a gym like a block away. Nothing makes sense in the area, but the hotel is a bit of a landmark. It’s one of those things that are so seemingly out of place, it’s like if you walk in through the doors there’ll be a whole new dimension to explore. I never went in, though I’d go out of my way to walk past the hotel every time I had a class on the west side. On certain days it’d look slightly different - not sure if it was how the sun lit it up, the general ‘feel’ of the area that day or what. . I took pictures every now and then, often looking the same, but I just had a need to keep that days memory in some kind of archive.

The Chelsea Hotel has been the home to many celebrities over the years. Ginsberg resided there. Once there was a banner hanging out of one of the windows asking to “bring back the poets” - I snapped a photo of that. 2001: A Space Oddity was written in those walls. Nancy Spungen was killed there. There’s just such a rich history to it. There’s an entire section on wikipedia about the notable residents.

It’s also a hotel where the Libertines recorded some music, The Babyshambles Sessions, in New York.

I have a couple memories, listening to my playlist while walking past that hotel. . . Nothing specific, just walking - listening to the songs. Especially the one up above. And it’s some of the best memories of my life. I was finally where I wanted to be, listening to music that made me feel good, by a beautiful building where the band members once stood. I didn’t really pay much attention to the lyrics, it was more about a mood and it served its purpose.

Which is ironic, because the song is about. . .

. . . .”Carl once said to Pete "its either the top of the world or the bottom of the canal" - he had a big fear of wasting his life and ending up eating cold beans out of a tin and watching daytime telly on a fuzzy TV - they grew to call this concept 'death on the stairs' - the miserable state that some people become, and that’s what this song is about.”

That’s exactly where I fucking am. I discovered grubhub and the allure of not having to cook or do anything for myself without the “risk” of using a phone and placing an order. I work, I work my second job, and I watch late night cartoons and occasionally fall asleep on the sofa. Sometimes I work, then immediately come home and go to sleep in spite of it being like 6p.

I never intended on living this long, so that was never a fear of mine. I had this premonition my entire life, like every since I decided I wanted to do something in the art field. I’d get my job, be miserable doing it, and eventually give myself alcohol poisoning before dying in some bar or in the street at 3 am between the ages of 26 and 27. So I never planned past that point.

Here I am, never once getting a job in my field of choice to be miserable doing as to be the catalyst for my eventual death. I am older than 27. I am working, at least the one job, at the same place I have been working since 2010 -- a job I only got so I could afford the bus/subway to get into the city in the first place. And I am still miserable, but I am not even allowed that (dare I say? ) romanticized artists death.

This is Death on the Stairs. I have managed to corrupt one of my last happy memories.

Now my parents are planning on moving. My dad is no longer in the film industry so there’s no reason to be paying the ridiculous taxes and fees involved with being in a suburb of the city. Everything is cheaper out west. Unfortunately, so is the scope of the people’s world --- I asked a realtor how to get to the city with public transportation and he stated he wasn’t fully sure.

I don’t have anywhere to return to. The last time I was in the city, a guy in a ski mask was waiting on the subway platform. He got very close to my face and it scared the fuck out of me. I no longer travel with a knife or anything like that since one of them was confiscated from me years ago (again, post 9/11 world) -- it was just one of those things, as I’m recalling my mother; don’t go here, here, or there . . . you don’t belong. It was the first time I even had the thought that maybe she was right. And that was terrifying since that’s the only place I ever felt like I did belong. And even then, it was the anonymity that drew me to it. Nobody cares about you and. . . you’re not going to care about anybody. And even there, I felt, while on that platform, I didn’t belong. I did not tell her about this incident.

I don’t want to move. I don’t want to let go of this thought; maybe I will be happy. Maybe I can get over the crippling social anxiety. Maybe I can find the time to sit down, assemble a portfolio, and put myself out there. Maybe I can get a job doing something I love. Maybe I can earn enough so I can get to a point where my parents won’t be scared shitless about my future; how I can’t support myself. How I don’t seem to have any aspirations. How I just don’t belong. The truth is I never belonged here, either - that’s what made New York so alluring to me in the first place. Now I am losing everything.

I have been thinking a lot about killing myself lately. It’s not that I have any plans to go through with it, and I am not saying this as a desperate act of ‘I need help/attention’ or ‘Call someone’ -- nothing like that, no. On the contrary. It’s just something that has been at the back of my mind. It’s hard going through the day when you’re being instructed to just go fuck off. Just die or something. My only solace is that my view is already from the bottom of that canal and all I can see is the lingering silhouette of the Chelsea. But it’s getting further away. Regardless, I suppose up is the only way to go --

And in the interim, it’s nice to reflect on those moments of happiness. Even if they are so far out of reach.

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morethanmonotonous · 3 years

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MMXX

As I sit in my beautiful city apartment, sitting 48 floors (well, really 38 floors) above ground level looking over the vast and sprawling western Sydney suburbs, it is crazy to be writing another blog post summarising the year that has been, especially after reading last year’s 2019 post.

2020 was a wild ride, and it’ll be fascinating to see how 2020 is remembered globally as a year, and how much of the world wide chaos will continue into next year, given that after all, 2021 is just another collection of days strung after these has passed.

We rung in 2020 in a beautiful big house in the blue mountains with 14 amazing people, crawling down the hallway as slugs, drinking, doing too many drugs, and purely in love with life and each other.

We kicked off the year as we spent 2019, with lots of gigs, big plans of travel, and lots of social outings.

We went to unify in January with Ritchie, Brad, Maddie, Blake, and Elliot. it was the worst weather we have ever encountered there, and that’s a huge call for unify. The new venue was awesome but the 50km+ winds and torrential rain meant lots of time under the gazebo holding it together and listening to enter shikari on the speaker. There was glimpses of festival vibes, seeing Kubla Kahn, Knocked Loose, The Ghost Inside, and Columbus, but also lots of missing shows and general carnage. Also out tent leaked damaging all of our things but still, I wouldn’t have missed unify for the world. There was an amazing crew, with Steph and DJ, fruit and nut, and many other amazing people - what more can you ask for?

We were lucky enough to go to see Dealer, Tiny Moving Parts, Hellions, Crystal Lake, Northlane, and Trophy Eyes, and The Brave,

I started baking a lot more this year. Celia bought me the beautiful Christmas gift to do a baking stall in Glebe markets, which I fortunately managed to do in Feb. It was so fun and we sold so much and it just invigorated my love of making tasty things for people I love.

Keira and I also went to a yoga retreat earlier in the year which was awesome, it was great to spend time with her, even finding out she was pregnant! This year in October the family was changed forever in the most beautiful way with the birth of little Baby Ellie. My parent’s also sold their family home to move down to Canberra which was a big adjustment for me and us but they’re all so happy down there together and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to work from Canberra quite a bit to spend time with the family.

So now we get to the COVID summary I guess, it’s 2020 after all. In Feb we were kind of joking about this whole COVID thing, not understanding the scale of what was about to change in the world. I started working from home on the 14th of March 2020 and have only been back to the office for one day in between waves of outbreaks. It was a huge and at times very lonely and sad year having to cope with the few month lockdown, closures of gyms, and not being able to see friends. While in lockdown, I started to learn to make peace with being alone and being still. I started making bath bombs, cross stitching, playing lots more fish game, and finding crafts to make me happy. It has given me a huge appreciation of how hard the introvert’s life must be living in an extrovert world, being being forced into a introvert life for months was draining and exhausting. I spent a lot of time at F45 bootcamps and walking around the harbour looking at fish, listening to Enter Shikari and Bright Eyes.

The year made a lot of people weird in ways I’ve never seen before. Something like the Black Lives Matter protest is a good example. It was a fantastic thing that people were out screaming on the streets about inequality for racial groups and for indigenous rights, but somehow this became a polarising issue. People started denying COVID, becoming anti vaxers, Blake just didn’t reply to be for 6 months, and I feel like the left and right are so extreme and seperate now with the crazy media and information spreading, it’s interesting to watch. I feel like in the past I wouldn’t have even known my friend’s clear political stances, but this year, it’s top of mind for everyone and discussed frequently and fuck me it’s hard to be friends with literally anyone who sympathises with the right. I guess locking people up in their homes for a year does crazy things to them. But at least Trump got voted out, there’s always good things to focus on I guess.

Between waves Sydney opened up again to seeing friends. We forged a new little group of Jake and Jami, Matt and Jordan, and extra people at different times, but it’s sweet as it’s the first time that Ritchie and I have really made friends together and it’s so lovely having a new home with these left wing inner west emos that I didn’t know I’ve always needed. Celia and Tash have been beautiful constant support this year again and I’m so grateful for such amazing humans to share my highs and lows with.

I started seeing Chrissy in June this year, once gyms opened again and I wanted to start building some muscle and curves and because I realised I liked lifting heavy stuff more than cardio. It genuinely changed my life. I’m eating more than ever and feeling great in my body, and it’s amazing being focused on performance goals rather than aesthetic for the first time in 10 years. I competed in my first power lifting comp, where I squatted 64kgs, benched 39kgs and deadlifted 100kgs. I know these aren’t huge numbers but I was so proud of my little body for being able to do that (with body weight of 58kgs), and given that I’ve never thought of myself as a strong person. I haven’t missed a workout (except when I got my wisdom teeth out) since I started with her and I am proud of how I’m transforming my body and mindset.

We spent a weekend in May in Jervis Bay with my family for our birthdays which was amazing and the start of what I think will be a new family tradition. I really love my family so much and feel so damn lucky that I enjoy spending time with them so much.

We moved homes in June too, upgrading to a 2 bedroom and multiple balcony amazing apartment in the city, just up the road from our old place. Moving was so much damn work but this place is incredible and so much more amazing than I ever thought I’d live in. I’ll always look back at the Waldorf affectionately, as a beautiful place that we created a home in for the first time and shared with so many amazing friends. But damn this place is gorgeous.

Work was pretty crazy but also not at all. I’ve been at RB again all year this year, that makes almost 2 and a half years which is pretty big for me! I started the year by winning the extra miler award, and being generally very well celebrated as CSM, before being moved to being a NAM. Working under Dani was awful, and the job was literally the worst thing I could ever imagine someone having to do. The bullshit and admin and hours and pressure are something I would never wish on anyone, and after having frequent panic attacks and throwing up out of stress at Hyde park, I realised that life is too short do a job that makes you miserable. While it’s unfortunate that this took me 27 years to work out, I think it’s great that I got there and learned a very valuable lesson in work life balance and happiness. I had to resign from RB at that point, but conveniently, Amna resigned on the same day, making an empty role as CSM for Coles. I pushed for a senior title and now have an awesome job. While working under Chris isn't ideal in some ways, I have a boss that cares about me and a colleague (Ellie) who is smart and awesome. I’m happy working in an interesting and great job that makes me excited do go to work. And even though it won't be my forever job, it’s a great ‘for now’ job that I enjoy, getting great experience on the resume, and that will hopefully take me overseas some day.

I ended every other blog with hopes and dreams for the next year, and it’s a little sad that I’m so reluctant to do that this time, because I have literally no idea what’s to come next year. I really hope we will be able to travel and see gigs again, it’s hard having the 2 best things in the world ripped away from me. However, honestly, as long as I am surrounded by as much love as I was this year, I know that things will be okay and I’ll be happy.

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shazyloren · 7 years

Text

The Dragon Club: Chapter 1 - Billboards and Downpours

Summary: Jon Snow is an online blogger who gets an interview with the sort after Daenerys Targaryen, the Editor of Valyrian, a multi-million dollar fashion magazine. He'd heard so much about the silver-haired and silver-tongued woman and he running of her business; he would have to be smart to get anything more than five minutes. Will he be safe walking into the Dragon's lair or will he get thrown to the Lions?

Note: This is going to be a 20ish chapter fanfic, hopefully gonna upload three or fours chapters a week depending on work etc.

Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12018519/chapters/27201402

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

Shoot.

Jon looked at his watch and realised he was going to be late if he didn't hurry his ass up. Going over his notes in the car; he scribbled down extra little comments which came to him as he thought everything over.

He was in debt to his sister Sansa, who's face had been plastered over the billboards throughout town. She had gotten him a small interview with Daenerys Targaryen, the owner of Valyrian magazine, in which Sansa was on this month's cover. Jon didn't normally cover fashion on his blog; but he loved business and what better person to do an interview than the woman who three years ago was living in her car to the multi-million dollar empire she had today.

It was an astonishing achievement in business; and Jon was looking forward to getting a one on one to find out the details of how she'd done it.

At the very thought of sitting opposite a woman who was more than likely going to be wearing something worth more than his house; he felt his skin tingle as his goosebumps stood on end.

You got this, Jon. Don't screw it up.

He turned the key in the ignition and drove off down his road. The radio was quietly playing through his personalised playlist on Spotify and helped keep his nervous tension at bay.

As he passed by houses and bungalows; suburbs and villages, the scenery changed the green and yellows of country life to the blues and blacks of the city. Valyrian tower was a new building, six months old and protruded the King's Landing skyline with it's elegance and style. Underneath the huge 10 ft x 40ft sign atop the building saying 'Valyrian' was the magazine's now infamous logo, the three dragon heads. He was still twenty minutes out from the tower, but he could see it protruding the horizon.

A bit much really, Jon thought, I can see her ego all over it.

The heavens opened then and small drops of rain tumbled from the sky and landed on the window and bonnet of Jon's black Golf GTI. The car handled the ran well though, still smooth over the paved roads as traffic seemed to be no existent. It as unusual for the traffic to be this light on a Wednesday nearing lunch time. But as if the gods new Jon had somewhere to be, the roads were quiet. The rain started to slash down, visibility really down as Jon's wipers worked overtime.

Not now, he thought angrily. He didn't need the delay of driving slower, he was making good time. Trying to no think about possibly arriving late he thought about what questions he was going to ask first. He had over a hundred questions but he would be luck if he got to ask more than five or six. Jon also brought his camera in the hope that he was allowed to get a couple of photo's, he was an amateur photographer and had taken all the photos used on his site where possible.

He wanted to make sure he asked about her attitude which built her empire so quickly, but he also didn't want to come across rude. He'd thought about trying to plan what he said very carefully and constructively but he wasn't about to look rehearsed in that room with her.

He ran his hand through his hair as he slowly drove through the rain; his wild curls uncontrolled in his rear-view mirror. His bearded face looked worrisome; he hated that he always looked like he was in a constant state of misery and brooding. Not much made him smile these days; not since... her.

He'd always busied himself wit his blog which was now a phenomenon. He got a million hits a day and whether it was social issues he was tackling or political intrigue amongst the world leaders he put the same amount of effort into it. Robb had said he was a workaholic and needed a good shag; Jon had found his comment crude and distasteful. That was Robb in a nutshell. He was always commenting on Jon's sex life )or there lack of) and bragging about his own to him. 'Robb, you're married' Jon would say but Robb said that Jon being unmarried was all the more reason not to be a celibate for the rest of his life.

Jon wasn't becoming a celibate; he just had other priorities and focus' in his life that didn't revolve around his junk. Arya had told him that he needed to meet someone, but it just didn't feel right. And now his younger sister was getting married before he was; in four weeks no less. Sansa, like him, was still single but he thought he'd heard her and Arya chatting at Robb's house the other night about another model she'd met while working with Louis Vuitton. Jon hadn't said anything but if he wasn't careful, his youngest brother Rickon would be married before him and he was currently fourteen.

Sigh.

He was being hopeless again; thinking of anything that would distract him ass he pulled into the city centre. The Valyrian building was even more menacing from lower on the streets, it was easily 100 floors. There were women and men in fashionable suits and powersuits walking into the building. Jon was transfixed with some of them; who looked like some of the richest people on the planet but Jon was sure they'd only be making just above minimum wage.

He pulled into the parking lot which had valet availiable but Jon hadn't been given access to that. So he waited for the ticket barrier to rise and drove through and travelled down a winding path that took him to some empty parking spaces. He found one he liked out of the way of the big Range Rovers and Volvo's which like to park over two spaces and smoothed into the white lines. 11:52, he was early. His 15 minutes wasn't until 12:15. For a few minutes he browsed his own hand-writing as he gave himself one final prep before walking into the Dragon's lair.

He walked through the big front doors, white and looking as if they were polished that day. He straighten his tie out of habit and strolled up to the front desk, his folder in arms. The woman on the front desk had an impatient smile as the person on the other end of the phone didn't seem to stop talking. She smiled apologetically at Jon who shrugged as if to say it was fine; even if the long wait was making him more nervous.

You got this, he kept on telling himself.

It suddenly occurred to Jon, that even by glancing around the tower's lobby, he suddenly felt very out of place. He was used to a more homey setting (considering he worked from his office most of the day; with the occasional interview making him leave his abode) and everything in this building did not scream homey. It almost screamed medicinal, sanitation and surgery to him. Everything looked like it could've been buffed clean ten minutes ago.

"Good morning, sir. Apologies for the wait. Welcome to Valyrian Magazine, how may I help you today?" The woman on the counter spoke as she grabbed a visitors clipboard.

"Err, hello. I'm Jon Snow from The Wolf Online; I have an interview with the Editor" He felt so much tension in side himself. It was almost as if someone had set every nerve in his body on fire with a match. He felt it in every creak of his bones, with every breath of his lungs. He'd heard so much about her, he was expecting so much from her that he was worried he'd be disappointed. He was given the visitors board before being clocked into the building. The woman told him the necessary fire routes and gave him a 'visitor' badge. "Thank you"

"No problems, you'll need the 101st floor. From there you'll be shown to the Editor's room to wait until Miss. Targaryen is ready for you" Jon nodded in thanks once again. He felt unprepared; he knew he should've spent more time doing it last night but the three glasses of red he'd had drank had made him confident and now, he was regretting his actions.

He sloped off to the only spare elevator and walked inside. Pressing floor '101' he watched the lobby disappear behind sliding white doors and waited for the long trip to the top. He didn't fair well in heights, but he still found himself wondering what the view would be like form the top floor. He wondered what it would be like to own a company this big; that was as renowned worldwide as Valyrian was, what it was like to see the view everyday.

There was no going back; no cancelling no rescheduling. I must thank Sansa later, the thought of her suddenly entering his mind as the lift doors open on the 101st floor and he's greeted with her face on the wall opposite. She did look beautiful on that campaign, he'd have to embarrass her later by taking a photo with the one he'd spotted outside the building and post it to his instagram page. She would hate that, and the thought of it makes his stomach feel at ease. Even if he did make a tit of himself in this interview at least he'd be able to laugh at it afterwards.

He was immediately shown to a waiting chair outside her office and took a seat as various people walked by him and in and out of the office he was to go in himself. He could here no shouting, no wails of tears from anyone. He was almost disappointed already; perhaps she was a more menacing threat face to face. Perhaps she was someone who didn't make you cry until you got home and readdress your life choices. It was some ten minutes before he was pulled out of his thoughts, the last thing he remembered was that he was cooking for Arya and Gendry tonight which meant he had to get home by four as to not end up getting takeaway.

"We're ready for you, Mr. Snow" An assistance with brown hair and deep caramel skin spoke as she walked to him in a pantsuit. He nodded and got off of his chair; one last fix of the tie before grabbing his Polaroid and his folder.

The woman moved the door aside so he could step in, on last intake of breath before he entered the lair.

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sociologyquotes · 7 years

Text

Post-Katrina, White Vigilantes Shot African-Americans With Impunity

from the article Post-Katrina, White Vigilantes Shot African-Americans With Impunity by A.C. Thompson

“The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted.

It was Sept. 1, 2005, some three days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, and somebody had just blasted Herrington, who is African-American, with a shotgun. "I just hit the ground. I didn't even know what happened," recalls Herrington, a burly 32-year-old with a soft drawl.

The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified Herrington's companions -- his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. "I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck," Alexander recalls. "I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again." Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander's back, arm and buttocks.

Herrington shouted at the other men to run and turned to face his attackers: three armed white males. Herrington says he hadn't even seen the men or their weapons before the shooting began. As Alexander and Collins fled, Herrington ran in the opposite direction, his hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his throat. Behind him, Herrington says, the gunmen yelled, "Get him! Get that nigger!"

The attack occurred in Algiers Point. The Point, as locals call it, is a neighborhood within a neighborhood, a small cluster of ornate, immaculately maintained 150-year-old houses within the larger Algiers district. A nationally recognized historic area, Algiers Point is largely white, while the rest of Algiers is predominantly black. It's a "white enclave" whose residents have "a kind of siege mentality," says Tulane University historian Lance Hill, noting that some white New Orleanians "think of themselves as an oppressed minority."

A wide street lined with towering trees, Opelousas Avenue marks the dividing line between Algiers Point and greater Algiers, and the difference in wealth between the two areas is immediately noticeable. "On one side of Opelousas it's 'hood, on the other side it's suburbs," says one local. "The two sides are totally opposite, like muddy and clean."

Algiers Point has always been somewhat isolated: it's perched on the west bank of the Mississippi River, linked to the core of the city only by a ferry line and twin gray steel bridges. When the hurricane descended on Louisiana, Algiers Point got off relatively easy. While wide swaths of New Orleans were deluged, the levees ringing Algiers Point withstood the Mississippi's surging currents, preventing flooding; most homes and businesses in the area survived intact. As word spread that the area was dry, desperate people began heading toward the west bank, some walking over bridges, others traveling by boat. The National Guard soon designated the Algiers Point ferry landing an official evacuation site. Rescuers from the Coast Guard and other agencies brought flood victims to the ferry terminal, where soldiers loaded them onto buses headed for Texas.

Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about 15 to 30 residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."

The existence of this little army isn't a secret -- in 2005 a few newspaper reporters wrote up the group's activities in glowing terms in articles that showed up on an array of pro-gun blogs; one Cox News story called it "the ultimate neighborhood watch." Herrington, for his part, recounted his ordeal in Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke. But until now no one has ever seriously scrutinized what happened in Algiers Point during those days, and nobody has asked the obvious questions. Were the gunmen, as they claim, just trying to fend off looters? Or does Herrington's experience point to a different, far uglier truth?

Over the course of an 18-month investigation, I tracked down figures on all sides of the gunfire, speaking with the shooters of Algiers Point, gunshot survivors and those who witnessed the bloodshed. I interviewed police officers, forensic pathologists, firefighters, historians, medical doctors and private citizens, and studied more than 800 autopsies and piles of state death records. What emerged was a disturbing picture of New Orleans in the days after the storm, when the city fractured along racial fault lines as its government collapsed.

Herrington and Alexander's experience fits into a broader pattern of violence in which, evidence indicates, at least 11 people were shot. In each case the targets were African-American men, while the shooters, it appears, were all white.

The new information should reframe our understanding of the catastrophe. Immediately after the storm, the media portrayed African-Americans as looters and thugs -- Mayor Ray Nagin, for example, told Oprah Winfrey that "hundreds of gang members" were marauding through the Superdome. Now it's clear that some of the most serious crimes committed during that time were the work of gun-toting white males.

So far, their crimes have gone unpunished. No one was ever arrested for shooting Herrington, Alexander and Collins -- in fact, there was never an investigation. I found this story repeated over and over during my days in New Orleans. As a reporter who has spent more than a decade covering crime, I was startled to meet so many people with so much detailed information about potentially serious offenses, none of whom had ever been interviewed by police detectives.

Hill, who runs Tulane's Southern Institute for Education and Research and closely follows the city's racial dynamics, isn't surprised the Algiers Point gunmen have eluded arrest. Because of the widespread notion that blacks engaged in looting and thuggery as the disaster unfolded, Hill believes, many white New Orleanians approved of the vigilante activity that occurred in places like Algiers Point. "By and large, I think the white mentality is that these people are exempt -- that even if they committed these crimes, they're really exempt from any kind of legal repercussion," Hill tells me. "It's sad to say, but I think that if any of these cases went to trial, and none of them have, I can't see a white person being convicted of any kind of crime against an African-American during that period."

You can trace the origins of the Algiers Point militia to the misfortune of Vinnie Pervel. A 52-year-old building contractor and real estate entrepreneur with a graying buzz cut and mustache, Pervel says he lost his Ford van in a carjacking the day after Katrina made landfall, when an African-American man attacked him with a hammer. "The kid whacked me," recalls Pervel, who is white. "Hit me on the side of the head." Vowing to prevent further robberies, Pervel and his neighbors began amassing an arsenal. "For a day and a half we were running around getting guns," he says. "We got about 40."

Things quickly got ugly. Pervel remembers aiming a shotgun at a random African-American man walking by his home -- even though he knew the man had no connection to the theft of his vehicle. "I don't want you passing by my house!" Pervel says he shouted out.

Pervel tells me he feared goons would kill his mother, who is in her 70s. "We thought we would be dead," he says. "We thought we were doomed." And so Pervel and his comrades set about fortifying the area. One resident gave me video footage of the leafy barricades the men constructed to keep away outsiders. Others told me they created a low-tech alarm system, tying aluminum cans and glass bottles together and stringing them across the roads at ankle height. The bottles and cans would rattle noisily if somebody bumped into them, alerting the militia.

Pervel and his armed neighbors point to the very real chaos that was engulfing the city and claim they had no other choice than to act as they did. They paint themselves as righteous defenders of property, a paramilitary formation protecting their neighborhood from opportunistic thieves. "I'm not a racist," Pervel insists. "I'm a classist. I want to live around people who want the same things as me."

Nathan Roper, another vigilante, says he was unhappy that outsiders were disturbing his corner of New Orleans and that he was annoyed by the National Guard's decision to use the Algiers Point ferry landing as an evacuation zone. "I'm telling you, it was 40, 50 people at a time getting off these boats," says Roper, who is in his 50s and works for ServiceMaster, a house cleaning company. The storm victims were "hoodlums from the Lower Ninth Ward and that part of the city," he says. "I'm not a prejudiced individual, but you just know the outlaws who are up to no good. You can see it in their eyes."

The militia, according to Roper, was armed with "handguns, rifles [and] shotguns"; he personally carried "a .38 in my waistband" and a "little Uzi." "There was a few people who got shot around here," Roper, a slim man with a weathered face, tells me. "I know of at least three people who got shot. I know one was dead 'cause he was on the side of the road."

During the summer of 2005 Herrington was working as an armored car driver for the Brink's company and living in a rented duplex about a mile from Algiers Point. Katrina thrashed the place, blowing out windows, pitching a hefty pine tree limb through the roof and dumping rain on Herrington's possessions. On the day of the shooting, Herrington, Alexander and Collins were all trying to escape the stricken city, and set out together on foot for the Algiers Point ferry terminal in the hopes of getting on an evacuation bus.

Those hopes were dashed by a barrage of shotgun pellets. After two shots erupted, Collins and Alexander took off running and ducked into a shed behind a house to hide from the gunmen, Alexander tells me. The armed men, he says, discovered them in the shed and jammed pistols in their faces, yelling, "We got you niggers! We got you niggers!" He continues, "They said they was gonna tie us up, put us in the back of the truck and burn us. They was gonna make us suffer...I thought I was gonna die. I thought I was gonna leave earth."

Apparently thinking they'd caught some looters, the gunmen interrogated and verbally threatened Collins and Alexander for 10 to 15 minutes, Alexander says, before one of the armed men issued an ultimatum: if Alexander and Collins left Algiers Point and told their friends not to set foot in the area, they'd be allowed to live.

Meanwhile, Herrington was staring at death. "I was bleeding pretty bad from my neck area," he recalls. When two white men drove by in a black pickup truck, he begged them for help. "I said, 'Help me, help me -- I'm shot,'" Herrington recalls. The response, he tells me, was immediate and hostile. One of the men told Herrington, "Get away from this truck, nigger. We're not gonna help you. We're liable to kill you ourselves." My God, thought Herrington, what's going on out here?

He managed to stumble back to a neighbor's house, collapsing on the front porch. The neighbors, an African-American couple, wrapped him in a sheet and sped him to the nearest hospital, the West Jefferson Medical Center, where, medical records (PDF) show, he was X-rayed at 3:30 pm. According to the records, a doctor who reviewed the X-rays found "metallic buck-shot" scattered throughout his chest, arms, back and abdomen, as well as "at least seven [pellets] in the right neck." Within minutes, Herrington was wheeled into an operating room for emergency surgery.

"It was a close-range buckshot wound from a shotgun," says Charles Thomas, one of the doctors who operated on Herrington. "If he hadn't gotten to the hospital, he wouldn't have lived. He had a hole in his internal jugular vein, and we were able to find it and fix it."

After three days in the hospital, which lacked running water, air conditioning and functional toilets, Herrington was shuttled to a medical facility in Baton Rouge. When he returned to New Orleans months later, he paid a visit to the Fourth District police station, whose officers patrol the west bank, and learned there was no police report documenting the attack. Herrington, who now has a wide scar stretching the length of his neck, says the officers he spoke with failed to take a report or check out his story, a fact that still bothers him. "If the shoe was on the other foot, if a black guy was willing to go out shooting white guys, the police would be up there real quick," he says. "I feel these guys should definitely be held accountable. These guys had absolutely no right to do what they did."

Herrington, Alexander and Collins are the only victims, so far, to tell their stories. But they certainly weren't the only ones attacked in or around Algiers Point. In interviews, vigilantes and residents -- citing the exact locations and types of weapons used -- detail a string of violent incidents in which at least eight other people were shot, bringing the total number of shooting victims to at least 11, some of whom may have died.

Other evidence bolsters this tally. Thomas, the surgeon who treated Herrington, staffed one of the few functioning trauma centers in the area, located just outside the New Orleans city line, not far from Algiers Point, for a full month after the hurricane hit. "We saw a bunch of gunshot wounds," he tells me. "There were a lot of gunshot wounds that went unreported during that time." Though Thomas couldn't get into the specifics of the shooting incidents because of medical privacy laws, he says, "We saw a couple of other shotgun wounds, some handgun shootings and somebody who was shot with a high-velocity missile [an assault-rifle round]." The surgeon remembers handling "five or six nonfatal gunshot wounds" as well as three lethal gunshot cases.

In addition, state death records show that at least four people died in and around Algiers Point, a suspicious number, given that most Katrina fatalities were the result of drowning, and that that community never flooded. Neighborhood residents, black and white, remember seeing corpses lying out in the open that appeared to have been shot.

While the militia patrolled the streets of Algiers Point, the New Orleans Police Department, which had done little to brace for the storm, was crippled. "There was no leadership, no equipment, no nothing," recalls one high-ranking police official. "We did no more to prepare for a hurricane than we would have for a thunderstorm." Without functioning radios or dispatch systems, officers had no way of knowing what was happening a block away, let alone on the other side of the city. NOPD higher-ups had no way to give direction to unit commanders and other subordinates. As the chain of command disintegrated, the force dissolved into a collection of isolated, quasi-autonomous bands.

Around Algiers Point people say they rarely saw cops during the week after Katrina tore through Louisiana, and in this law enforcement vacuum the militia's unique brand of justice flourished. Most disturbing, one of the vigilantes, Roper, claims on videotape recorded just weeks after the storm that the shootings took place with the knowledge and consent of the police. "The police said, 'If they're breaking in your property, do what you gotta do and leave them [the bodies] on the side of the road,'" he says.

As we drive through Algiers Point in a battered white van, Roper tells me he witnessed a fatal shooting. Roper says he was talking on his cellphone to his son in Lafayette one evening when he spied an African-American man trying to get into Daigle's Grocery, a corner market on the eastern edge of the neighborhood, which was shuttered because of the hurricane. Another militia member shot the man from a few feet away, killing him. "He was done," Roper recalls.

During our conversations, Roper never acknowledges firing his weapon, but in 2005 a Danish documentary crew videotaped him talking about his activities. In this footage Roper says, when pressed, that he did indeed shoot somebody.

Fellow militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. "Three people got shot in just one day!" he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. "Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun," he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor "unloaded a riot gun" -- a shotgun -- "on them. We chased them down."

Janak, who was carrying a pistol, says he grabbed one of the suspected looters and considered killing him, but decided to be merciful. "I rolled him over in the grass and saw that he'd been hit in the back with the riot gun," he tells me. "I thought that was good enough. I said, 'Go back to your neighborhood so people will know Algiers Point is not a place you go for a vacation. We're not doing tours right now.'"

He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

Janak, who says he'd been armed with two .38s and a shotgun, brags about keeping the bloody shirt worn by a shooting victim as a trophy. When "looters" showed up in the neighborhood, "they left full of buckshot," he brags, adding, "You know what? Algiers Point is not a pussy community."

Within that community the gunmen enjoyed wide support. In an outtake from the documentary, a group of white Algiers Point residents gathers to celebrate the arrival of military troops sent to police the area. Addressing the crowd, one local praises the vigilantes for holding the neighborhood together until the Army Humvees trundled into town, noting that some of the militia figures are present at the party. "You all know who you are," the man says. "And I'm proud of every one of you all." Cheering and applause erupts from the assembled locals.

Some of the gunmen prowling Algiers Point were out to wage a race war, says one woman whose uncle and two cousins joined the cause. A former New Orleanian, this source spoke to me anonymously because she fears her relatives could be prosecuted for their crimes. "My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all -- white against black -- that he could participate in," says the woman. "For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy."

"They didn't want any of the 'ghetto niggers' coming over" from the east side of the river, she says, adding that her relatives viewed African-Americans who wandered into Algiers Point as "fair game." One of her cousins, a young man in his 20s, sent an e-mail to her and several other family members describing his adventures with the militia. He had attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was "gleeful" -- her cousin was happy that "they were shooting niggers."

An Algiers Point homeowner who wasn't involved in the shootings describes another attack. "All I can tell you is what I saw," says the white resident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. He witnessed a barrage of gunfire -- from a shotgun, an AK-47 and a handgun -- directed by militiamen at two African-American men standing on Pelican Street, not too far from Janak's place. The gunfire hit one of them. "I saw blood squirting out of his back," he says. "I'm an EMT. My instinct should've been to rush to him. But I didn't. And if I had, those guys" -- the militia-men -- "might have opened up on me, too."

The witness shows me a home video he recorded shortly after the storm. On the tape, three white Algiers Point men discuss the incident. One says it might be a bad idea to talk candidly about the crime. Another dismisses the notion, claiming, "No jury would convict."

According to Pervel, one of the shootings occurred just a few feet from his house. "Three young black men were walking down this street and they started moving the barricade," he tells me. The men, he says, wanted to continue walking along the street, but Pervel's neighbor, who was armed, commanded them to keep the barricade in place and leave. A standoff ensued until the neighbor shot one of the men, who then, according to Pervel, "ran a block and died" at the intersection of Alix and Vallette Streets.

Even Pervel is surprised the shootings have generated so little scrutiny. "Aside from you, no one's come around asking questions about this," he says. "I'm surprised. If that was my son, I'd want to know who shot him."

By Pervel's count, four people died violently in Algiers Point in the aftermath of the storm, including a bloody corpse left on Opelousas Avenue. That nameless body came up again and again in interviews, a grisly recurring motif. Who was he? How did he die? Nobody knew -- or nobody would tell me.

After hearing all these gruesome stories, I wonder if any of the militia figures I've interviewed were involved in the shooting of Herrington and company. In particular, Pervel's and Janak's anecdotes intrigue me, since both men discussed shooting incidents that sounded a lot like the crime that nearly killed Herrington and wounded Alexander and Collins. Both Pervel and Janak recounted incidents in which vigilantes confronted three black men.

Hoping to solve the mystery, I show Herrington and Alexander video of Pervel, Janak and Roper, all of whom are in their 50s or 60s. No match. The shooters, Herrington and Alexander tell me, were younger men, in their 30s or 40s, sporting prominent tattoos. I have never been able to track them down.

New Orleans, of course, is awash in tales of the horrible things that transpired in the wake of the hurricane -- and many of these wild stories have turned out to be fictions. In researching the Algiers Point attacks, I relied on the accounts of people who witnessed shooting incidents or were directly involved, either as gunmen or shooting victims.

Seeking to corroborate their stories, I sought out documentary evidence, including police files and autopsy reports. The NOPD, I was told, kept very few records during that period. Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard was a different story. The coroner, a flamboyant trumpet-playing doctor who has held the office for more than 30 years, had file cabinets bulging with the autopsies of hundreds of Katrina victims - he just wouldn't let me see them, in defiance of Louisiana public records laws.

After wrangling with the coroner for more than six months, I decided to sue -- with a lawyer hired by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute -- to get access to the autopsies. (We weren't the first to take the coroner to court. CNN and the New Orleans Times-Picayune had successfully sued Minyard, seeking particular Katrina-related autopsies.) This past May, Orleans Parish district court judge Kern Reese ruled in our favor, ordering Minyard to allow me to review every autopsy done in the year after the storm. But I soon learned that reconstructing history from the coroner's mess of files was next to impossible, because the paper trail is incomplete. "We carried the records around in our cars, in the trunks of our cars, for four months and, I mean, that, that was the coroner's office," Minyard said in a sworn deposition obtained during the course of our suit. "I'm sure some of the records got lost or misplaced." Even the autopsy files we got were missing key facts, like where the bodies were found, who recovered them, when they were recovered and so forth.

Many of the manila file folders the coroner eventually turned over were empty, and Minyard said he'd simply chosen not to autopsy some 25 to 50 corpses. The coroner also told us he didn't know exactly how many people were shot to death in the days immediately after the storm -- "I can't even tell you how many gunshot victims we had" -- but figured the number would not "be more than 10."

Under oath Minyard proceeded to say something stunning. The NOPD, he testified, was only investigating three gunshot cases, all of them high-profile -- the Danziger Bridge incident, in which police killed two civilians, and the shooting of Danny Brumfield, who was slain by a cop in front of the Convention Center. Minyard's statement buttressed information I'd gotten from NOPD sources who said the force has done little to prosecute people for assaults or murders committed in the wake of the storm.

I contacted the police department repeatedly over many months, providing the NOPD with specific questions about each incident discussed in this story. The department, through spokesman Robert Young, declined to comment on whether officers had investigated any of these crimes and would not discuss any other issues raised by this article.

Sifting through more than 800 autopsy reports and reams of state health department data, I quickly identified five New Orleanians who had died under suspicious circumstances: one, severely burned, was found in a charred abandoned auto (see "Body of Evidence"); three were shot; and another died of "blunt force trauma to the head." However, it's impossible to tell from the shoddy records whether any of these people died in or around Algiers Point, or even if their bodies were found there.

No one has been arrested in connection with these suspicious deaths. When it comes to the lack of action on the cases, one well-placed NOPD source told me there was plenty of blame to go around. "We had a totally dysfunctional DA's office," he said. "The court system wasn't much better. Everything was in disarray. A lot of stuff didn't get prosecuted. There were a lot of things that were getting squashed. The UCR [uniform crime reports] don't show anything."

In response to detailed queries made over a period of months, New Orleans District Attorney spokesman Dalton Savwoir declined to say whether prosecutors looked into any of the attacks I uncovered. The office has been through a string of leadership changes since Katrina -- Leon Cannizaro is the current DA -- and is struggling to deal with crimes that happened yesterday, let alone three years ago, Savwoir told me.

James Traylor, a forensic pathologist with the Louisiana State University Health Center, worked alongside Minyard at the morgue and suspects that homicide victims fell through the cracks. "I know I did cases that were homicides," Traylor says. "They were not suicides." NOPD detectives, the doctor continues, never spoke to him about two cases he labeled homicides, leading him to believe police conducted no investigation into those deaths. "There should be a multi-agency task force -- police, sheriffs, coroners -- that can put their heads together and figure out what happened to people," Traylor says.

One of the suspicious cases I discovered was that of Willie Lawrence, a 47-year-old African-American male who suffered a "gunshot wound" that caused a "cranio-facial injury" and deposited two chunks of metal in his brain, according to the autopsy report. Minyard never determined whether Lawrence was murdered or committed suicide, choosing to leave the death unclassified. However, the dead man's brother, Herbert Lawrence, who lives in Compton, Calif., believes his sibling was murdered. Herbert tells me he got a phone call from one of Willie's neighbors shortly after he died. The caller said Willie, whose body, according to state records, was found on the east bank of the Mississippi, was killed by a civilian gunman. "The police didn't do anything," Herbert says, pointing out that NOPD officers didn't create a written report or interview any relatives.

Malik Rahim is one of a handful of African-Americans who live in Algiers Point, and as far as he's concerned, "We are tolerated. We are not accepted." In the days after the storm struck, Rahim says, the vigilantes "would pass by and call us all kind of names, say how they were gonna burn down my house." They thought "all blacks was looting."

As he walked the near-deserted streets in that period, Rahim, 61, a former Black Panther with a mane of dreadlocks, came across several dead bodies of African-American men. Inspecting the bodies, he discovered what he took to be evidence of gunfire. "One guy had about his entire head shot off," says Rahim, who was spurred by the storm to launch Common Ground Relief, a grassroots aid organization. "It's pretty hard to think a person drowned when half their head's been blown off," he says. He thinks some of the gunmen saw Katrina as a "golden opportunity to rid the community of African-Americans."

Sitting at his kitchen table, while a noisy AC unit does its best to neutralize the stifling Louisiana heat, Rahim describes the dead and lists the locations where he found the bodies. He also shows me video footage taken days after the storm. On the tape, Rahim points to the grossly distended corpse of an African-American man lying on the ground.

Rahim introduces me to his neighbor, Reggie Bell, 39, the African-American man Pervel confronted at gunpoint as he walked by Pervel's house. At the time, Bell, a cook, lived just a few blocks down the street from Pervel. In Bell's recollection, Pervel, standing with another gun-toting man, demanded to know what Bell was doing in Algiers Point. "I live here," Bell replied. "I can show you mail."

That answer didn't appease the gunmen, he says. According to Bell, Pervel told him, "Well, we don't want you around here. You loot, we shoot."

Roughly 24 hours later, as Bell sat on his front porch grilling food, another batch of armed white men accosted him, intending to drive him from his home at gunpoint, he says. "Whatcha still doing around here?" they asked, according to Bell. "We don't want you around here. You gotta go."

Bell tells me he was gripped by fear, panicked that he was about to experience ethnic cleansing, Louisiana-style. The armed men eventually left, but Bell remained nervous over the coming days. "I believe it was skin color," he says, that prompted the militia to try to force him out. "That was some really wrong stuff." Bell's then-girlfriend, who was present during the second incident, confirms his story. (In a later interview, Pervel admits he confronted Bell with a shotgun but portrays the incident as a minor misunderstanding, saying he's since apologized to Bell.)

On my final visit to Algiers Point, I stand on Patterson Street, my notebook out, interviewing a pair of residents in the dimming evening light. An older white man, on his way home from a bar, strides up and asks what I'm doing. I reply with a vague explanation, saying I'm working on an article about the "untold stories of Hurricane Katrina."

Without a pause, he says, "Oh. You mean the shootings. Yeah, there were a bunch of shootings."

When I share with Donnell Herrington what the militia men and Algiers Point locals have told me over the course of my investigation, he grows silent. His eyes focus on a point far away. After a moment, he says quietly, "That's pretty disturbing to hear that -- I'm not going to lie to you -- to hear that these guys are cocky. They feel like they got away with it."

#sociology #racism #hurricane katrina #united states #racial violence #black americans #white americans #white supremacy #law enforcement #new orleans #violence #murder #White Supremacist #crime #police

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