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#only one i can think of at the moment is 'lovesongs (they kill me)'
anightmarethisdamage · 6 months
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Medusa MV Reactions Part 2
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Anyway I'm not going to lie, I thought this was Sangwoo's grave... :o
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Rip.
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This reminds me of the Cicada ARG.
I also find it interesting that the Medusa place is a carwash - with water (duh) which could be used as a mirror to stop Medusa from turning you to stone. We could also see the TV screen earlier as a way to stop her turning you to stone - hence why the boys just got... brainwashed? De-brainwashed? Whatever it was.
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Omg Medusa's drug dealing water now!
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I love the travelling motifs like cars, petrol stations, hotels etc, but I just cannot suspend disbelief enough to think they got such a nice car without stealing or murder.
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Why does he look so fascinated lmao?
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OMG WATER!
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Bain got to water his plant! Or did he....?
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Yeah how about no he didn't?
Dude my jaw dropped when I saw this shot. The MV could have ended with Bain recycling his water bottle, but this one shot recontextualises the whole thing. As you may know, since I stan JUST B, I am a massive fan of time loops and nonlinear narratives. And if there is one thing to take away from this MV - it's that in Tick Tock we saw the butterfly effect happening - and now they've done something that butterfly-effected them into a timeloop dream state. I would say 'like idiots,' but this happens to a lot of people apparently, so they're just regularly stupid.
This also creates a lot of engagement in the MV because we now wonder - how do they get out? Which is the dream? Are they both the same reality or not? Is this real or not? And so on. I think I've offered good hypotheses in my analysis but the only real way to get an answer is next comeback... which... I mean, since this one took 11 months we have no clue when the next one will happen, if at all.
Sorry to be a downer.
I loved the song, anyway.
Let's look at the lyrics!
Lyric Analysis
Yep, so straight off the bat there's a lot of imagery of violence, suffering, conflict etc - talking about predators, starving, killing, etc - and also division - they are divided, either from each other or the rest of the world.
Then there's the fixing of the division - through the rain that washes the memories away - ironic, since there's no water in the MV - and then the connection - riding high beside you and throwing your old memories away, breaking your painful past to come out new.
I like how they say 'in the darkness, you're my Medusa' - in classic JUST B fashion, with insane depth. Medusa could be beautiful, she could also be ugly. But whatever she is, she is dangerous, and this is reflected in the MV - the rain is supposed to bond them to their Medusa and get rid of the division - but there is no rain - it's all in their head - they are being deceived by her and in the end end up with nothing - no water, no love no nothing.
Not going to lie, with the whole 'drop the pain on me' and 'I'll break the thorny barriers around your heart,' they sound a little masochistic. Mind you, this is something we've seen before with JUST B - probably related to the trauma of DAMAGE.
I like how JM's bridge-postchorus thing is distorted too - shows the effect that Medusa has on them. Also, how they then literally say 'I can't look away,' like, yeah, you can't, you're literally stone, my guy.
Medusa also recontextualises the 'don't break down' at the end - because they are stone, they can literally be broken and shattered.
So - conclusions about the lyrics. As always, they are amazing and have some hidden meaning. However, I think they really shine with the MV, rather than by themselves, as lyrics like DAMAGE do. Medusa is on paper, a lovesong with some potentially sinister meaning. But the MV takes that gothic, sinister nature up the the next degree. Not only is there no rain and no water, only desert and suffering, but there is also no sign of love or relief from this suffering. There are also wonderfully amazing moments like the line 'You're the medusa in my darkness,' - suggesting a saviour - while Bain is literally crying over not having water - hence, no saviour. It reveals how the boys have been blinded to the dangerous nature of their situation, and it's quite frankly amazing how the MV contradicts the lyrics of the song to tell a story. 10/10.
Conclusions
An amazingly Gothic story, as expected from JUST B. It carries on both from the 'JUST B' series and from Naneun, continuing the story while also creating it's own self-contained and intriguing story. It leaves us with many questions and a few potential answers, and uses the juxtaposition of lyrics and video to further show the themes of the story in an amazing way. Could it be better? Sure. But I'll always have my own directions I want the storyline to go and they won't be the ones BlueDot takes. It's still a very solid addition to their discography and I know I'll be playing this song on repeat for ages, singing my heart out like Geonu.
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usermaha · 2 years
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Alright time to ramble about I Need U & Run!!
But!! For us to really be able to discuss these 2 in depth, we need to add in a 3rd player—On Stage: Prologue
The order to watch them in is: I Need U -> On Stage: Prologue -> Run
OS:P actually has Butterfly as the main song in it and they actually have Butterfly - Prologue Mix on Spotify which I loooove listening to
Anyway! I Need U focuses mainly on the tragedy that kicks off the time loop—we see everyone but Seokjin having tragic fates (tho we don’t really see Namjoon’s fate, we just see him having a rough time at the gas station, tho that is important for his character’s storyline). Most importantly, we see Taehyung stab and kill his father.
Which is where OS:P kicks off. There’s a version on YouTube where a fan has subtitled it bc the original doesn’t have English subtitles, but we see that Taehyung calls (presumably) Namjoon and tells him that he wants to see his friends, immediately after he tries to wash his father’s blood off of his hands. Taehyung then goes to an abandoned pool where the rest of the guys meet up with him, and they have fun. 
They then hang out outside of Namjoon’s boxcar (the same one we see at the beginning of Run) and light a fire, similar to what we see in I Need U. We see Namjoon have the running motif of Reflections/Mirrors as he writes “We Must Survive” on his mirror, we see Yoongi have the running motif of fire as he pensively flicks his lighter, we see a Polaroid of the ocean view from I Need U in Seokjin’s hands. Seokjin is the observer—he’s the one who always has a camera, a camcorder. Jungkook blows out Yoongi’s fire, foreshadowing how he’s the only one who can save him from his fiery suicide attempt.
Then we go to the beach, and we see Seokjin’s black pickup—a very important object that helps establish if something is within the BU or not. It’s like TXT’s hatchback in 0X1=LOVESONG, LO$ER=LOVER, and GBGB JP—it helps establish that these are in the same universe. (Ironically, I think those 3 MVs are telling an independent story to TXT’s The Star Seekers, which includes Nap of a Star, Magic Island, Run Away, Can’t You See Me?, Eternally, and FROST—those are the MVs that are connected to the BU via the odd-eyed cat)
We see Namjoon’s gas station again, we see Seokjin take a picture with Yoongi, then we’re at the same pier from I Need U. Yoongi and Jungkook share a moment that feels….a little more intimidate, at least from Jungkook’s side, than what is platonic (it’s widely theorized that Yoongi & Jungkook in the storyline are in love, which—there’s a lot of lines in the novellas that hint at that, specifically one line from I think Hoseok where he asks Yoongi, “Why don’t you go see Jungkook? Don’t you know what you mean to him?” and Yoongi thinks to himself something like, “of course I do. That’s why I can’t go see him.”)
Then………Taehyung climbs the tower and jumps. It pauses before he hits the water and we learn in the Notes novellas that that’s bc this action sent Seokjin back in time
But……y’know where he does hit the water?
Run.
Run opens with Butterfly playing faintly in the background as Taehyun falls backwards into water. Throughout the video he’s thrashing underwater, seemingly drowning. Throughout the video, we see Seokjin looking at the camera with a thousand-yard stare, like he’s remembering the time loops (Seokjin doesn’t have the ability to remember the time loops at first, but then he’s granted the power to remember so he can use his memories to help try to fix things).
We see Namjoon and Taehyung spraying graffiti together, a running motif for the pair of them. We see Seokjin building a house of cards—BTS’ song House of Cards plays during the end credits of OS:P. Taehyung knocks over the house of cards, representing how him jumping off the tower ruined Seokjin’s plans. We see Hoseok and Jimin in a mental hospital together, which is a very important location for the both of them and explored more in the Notes, the Webtoon, and the LIE and MAMA short films
Namjoon picks up a playing card with a Butterfly on it—referencing OS:P
Ah, the iconic Yoonkook fight. When Yoongi breaks the mirror, Seokjin reacts strangely, like he’s expecting to go back in time—since the sound of breaking glass is one of the things he hears when the loop restarts. We even see smeraldo flowers in this scene, in the mirror’s reflection before Yoongi breaks it, which Seokjin has for his date in Highlight Reels. I have a tattoo of a smeraldo flower lol
And in the tunnel scene, there’s Seokjin’s truck again!
Jimin getting pulled into the bathtub references how he tries to drown himself in the bathtub in I Need U
And then! The credits are Butterfly and the behind the scenes clips include clips from OS:P
OS:P actually has a deleted scene at the end that was taken out of the original but I think you can still find it on YouTube, where Seokjin pulls out the Polaroid of himself and Yoongi, but he’s no longer in the photo. At the end of Run, after the credits, we see a shot of them all at the beach, on Seokjin’s truck—but when we see I Need U Jimin holding the Polaroid of that photo, Seokjin is gone.
I’m sure I missed some things, there’s one thing in particular I know I’m forgetting, but this is already so much lol I need to calm down
literally everything is falling into place now. I had a feeling Run was related to I Need U. The use of imagery like the boxcar and the pickup is a really effective way to establish continuity especially in MVs where you dont have much time to communicate. but i missed on almost all the things you described here. Mostly bc of the missing piece of the puzzle, On Stage: Prologue, that is connecting the two pieces together (as well as additional context in the novellas)
I really like how, even if i was lost on the story, i could catch on the undercurrents of tension and doom between their moments of bliss. Again, excellent video. My initial interpretation was waay off though. I thought they were slowly readjusting to normalcy after their suicide attempts. But this is more like their last moments of normalcy before hell breaks loose. Or not actually last bc it will repeat till eternity.
Yoonkook is… interesting. Like yes let’s add more drama into the mix, between that and Taehyung’s suspicion on Seokjin its a perfect recipe for a friend group collapse. The Smeraldo flower being a symbol of magic… reminds me of the flower in Tangled honestly, how it glows… your tattoo must be so cool omg BU and BTS must mean so much to you like… music be really out there saving our lives huh
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robinsnest2111 · 3 years
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I always get mild whiplash whenever I see anything about cinema bizarre in the glam rock tag.
like.
are they...?
idk 🙈
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TO DO
masterlist
ATEEZ:
Altar Boys Altered Boys (We’re The Thing Love Destroys) - WooSan
Aurora - 2Ho
Baby Baby You’re A Carmel Macchiato - San
Because I Met You I Draw A Bigger Picture - ATEEZ
(Don’t You Know I’m A) Boss That Leads You - WooSanSang
But You Won’t Do The Same - San
Dancing Like Butterfly Wings - WooSanSang
Do You Wanna Run Away Too? (All I Really Want Is You) - Hongjoong
Forever Fight As One - Seonghwa
I Will Become The Spring To Your Smiles - Mingi
Lonely Hearts - Mingi
Maybe You’ll Love Yourself (Like I Love You) - Hongjoong
Moments Like This - SanGi
One Day at a Time - ATEEZ
Pirate King - SeongJoong
Soon May The Wellerman Come -Yeosang
Spare Me What You Think (Tell Me A Lie) - SeongJoong
Star 1117 - SeongJoong
Sunrise - WooSanHwa
THANXX - ATEEZ
Think You’re Ready For The Monster Monster - JongSan
This Is Our Fate, I’m Yours - SanGi
Twilight - WooSan
Wave - YunGi
We Will Make This Love Together - San
Where’d You Wanna Go? How Much You Wanna Risk? - WooSanHwa
Wonderland - SanGi
(Roger That) Yes Sir I’ll Protect Them - Jongho
Your Red Lipstick - Wooyoung
You’re Not A Constant Star - SeongJoong
BIGBANG:
Monster - G-Dragon
We’re Classic Together (Like Egyptian Gold) - G-Dragon
BTS:
Agust D - Suga
Angel or Devil (What Should I Choose?) - Jimin
Best Years - TaeGiKook
Blood, Sweat & Tears - TaeJin
Don’t Leave - TaeGi
Dynamite - VMinKook
Euphoria - Jungkook
Filter - Jimin
Get The Ink, Get The Pen (Let’s Sign It) - J-Hope
Home - RM
How Did We End Up Here? - TaeGi
I Just Wanna Give You Love - VKook
I Want To Write You A Song - YoonKook
It’s Where My Demons Hide - BTS
Just One Day - YoonKook
Lights - TaeJin
Magic Shop - NamJin
Mikrokosmos -KookMin
My Feet Don’t Dance Like They Did With You - JinKook
My Heart’s Already Breaking (Go On Twist The Knife) - TaeGi
Play Pretend - Suga
Plz Don’t Be Sad - Suga
Pretty Words (On The Tip Of My Tongue) - VMinKook
Save ME - VKook
Speed Demon - VKook
That Should Be Me (Holding Your Hand) - YoonKook
The Truth Untold - Taegi
They Say Love Is Pain (Let’s Hurt Tonight) - V
Too Bad (But It’s Too Sweet) - V
We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal - BTS
Welcome To The House of Fun - TaeJin
What Can I Do? - VMin
Yo Ho Ahoy and Avast - KookMin
You and I (We Don’t Wanna Be Like Me) - VMinKook
Zero O’Clock - HopeKook
EXO:
2nd Grade (Maths Problems) - Baekhyun
Baby Don’t Cry - Chanyeol
Be Combative or Be Sweet Cherry Pie - BaekYeol
Blooming Day - Chen
Don’t Go - Tao
Heaven Knows I’m Falling (I Can Never Be The Same) - Kai
I Can’t Stand The Rain - XiuBaek
I Just Hit The Lotto - Kai
It Will Wet Your Wings - KaiBaek
Lost In Reality -Tao
Lotto - Lay
Moonlight - LuChen
My Answer - XiuChen
Peter Pan - Tao
Ring-a-Ring O Rosie (Whoever Gets The Closest) - Kai
She’s In A Long Black Coat Tonight - Chen
The Moonlight Fills Your Eyes - ChanKai
The One - Xiumin
Twenty Four - ChanKai
Unfair - Baekhyun
Wolf - Lay
GOT7:
I Wish I Was (Beside You) - Jackson
Just Right - BamBam
Miracle - Jinyoung
School Life (Again Today) - BamBam
Take A Sip From My Secret Potion - JB
(Remember All The Memories) The Fireflies and Make Believe - BamBam
HIGHLIGHT:
Prince Charming (Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of) - Gikwang
iKON:
I Feel So Right Doing The Wrong Thing - Bobby Monsta X: I Will Borrow The Skies - Jooheon. This Way, That Way, Forwards, Backwards (Over The Irish Sea) - Wonho
NCT:
All My Moments Want You - MarkHyuck
And I Still Want You - LuMark
Assemble - Lucas
Baby Don’t Like It - MarkHyuck
Baby Don’t Stop - Tae Ten
Baby We Two Distant Strangers - Yuta
Born To Be Wild - Haechan
BOSS - LuWoo
But My Heart Goes - Lucas
Candle Light - MarkSung
Can’t Even Talk, Still Stuttering - LuWoo
Complete - LuWin
Daisy Daisy (Give Me Your Answer Do) - Jaemin
Dance Around The Living Room (Lose Me In The Sight Of You) - JohnTenKun
Dear DREAM - NCT DREAM
Dream A Little Dream Of Me - LuWoo
Dream Glow - Yangyang
Drifting, Drifting, Drifting - Jungwoo
Everything Has Changed - Ten
Everything I Didn’t Say - NCT
Fireflies - NoMin
Fly Away With Me - MarkHyuck
Fool’s Gold - YuWinIl
Goodnight Sweetheart - Jeno
Grow Up - TaeTen
Hakuna Matata - LuWin
Hello Future - Renjun
Hold Me In Your Arms Tonight - MarkYong
Home - WayV
Howling At The Moon - JohnTen
Hugs and Kisses - Johnny
I Can’t Stop My Hand From Shaking - Jungwoo
(I’m Waking Up) I Feel It In My Bones - Taeyong
I Hate This After Dark - Mark
I Have Loved You Since We Were 18 - JaeYong
I Hear Them Coming For You - Jaemin
I Tend To Glow When You Are By My Side - NCT
I Want To Write You A Song - RenLe
If I Ask You If You Love Me (Lie To Me) - Jaemin
If I Could Fly - TaeTen
I’ll Be Right Here Beside You For Life - ChenJi
I’ll Be Your Genie - NoMin
I’ll Make This Feel Like Home - Shotaro
I’m A Wolf and You’re A Beauty - Jaehyun
I’m Giving Up On You (Say Something) - NoRenMin
I’ve Never Seen You In The Daylight - Jungwoo
Kick It - Taeyong
Killing Me - Yuta
La La Love - RenHyuck
Long Way Home - MarkHyuckWoo
Lost - Yangyang
Love Talk - TenWin
Lover of Mine - Winwin
Make A Wish - Shotaro
Misfit - Sungchan
Most Nights I Hardly Sleep When I’m Alone - Haechan
Music, Dance - Sungchan
My First and Last - MarkNo
My Flower - Haechan
My Heart Is Blind (But I Don’t Care) - MinSung
New Heroes - Ten
No Longer - Taeil
Not Alone - JohnMark
Of Guns and Roses - Renjun
Perche Tu Stasera Sei Perfetta Per Me - Mark
Punch - JohnJae
Puzzle Piece - NCT DREAM
Remember When I Broke You Down To Tears - RenMarkHyuck
Requiem - Jisung
Ridin - NoMinSung
Smooth Like A, Like A Snake - Doyoung
SOMEONE’S SOMEONE - Kun
Stop. Rewind. Turn Back Time - Winwin
Superhuman - YuMark
Take Off - LuWin
The Internet Is Great - TenWin
The Sun Will Shine Through - Ten
This Is Halloween - Taeyong
Till The Love Runs Out - Shotaro
TOUCH - MarkYong
Touch Me When The Sun Goes Down - NoRenMin
Wait For Me To Come Home - LuWooMark
Waited For Your Reply (Here In The Pouring Rain) - SungTaro
We Almost Rolled The Dice - Winwin
We Got That (Power) - Jaehyun
What Can I Do? - Jisung
Whatever It Take - JaeYong
WHO DO U LOVE? - YuWin
Wildflower - Haechan
With Great Power - Winwin
With You - Mark
You and I Go Hard At Each Other (Like We Going To War) - Chenle
You Are My Soulmate(s) - MarkHyuckHei
(This Is Our Sanctuary) You Are Safe With Me - ChenJi
You Became My Crown - MarkYong
You’ll Find Me In The Region Of The Summer Stars - Jaehyun
You’re My Everything - Kun
You’re The One I Want For Christmas - Xiaojun
You’re Unfair - TenWin
ONEUS:
Jingle Bells Jingle Bells Jingle All The Way - Hwanwoong
Princely Duties - Hwanwoong
Spooky Scary Skeletons - Ravn
Stay Oh (Baby Touch Me) - Hwanwoong
SEVENTEEN:
A Tiger Inside - SoonHoon
Call Call Call! - Hoshi
Extreme Musical Statues - JiGyu
Fallin Flower - JunHao
Fear - Meanie
Giving All My Secrets Away - MingSoon
Home - Dino
How Can I Love You? (If You Don’t Talk To Me) - SoonHoon
Hug - SoonHoon
I’m A Lost Boy - Woozi
Lay You Head On Me - Joshua
Love Letter - JiGyu
My My - Woozi
Smile Flower - Woozi
Snap Shoot - 2JiCheol
Splish Splash - Hoshi
Titanium - Meanie
SHINee:
Cafe Latte - Taemin
Good Evening - Onew
I Growl At You - Taemin
I Will Fight, I Will Fight For You - Taemin
Lucifer - JongTae
Our Page - Jonghyun
Witch - Taemin
SPEED:
Welcome To The Circus - Sungmin
Stray Kids:
A Sign of the Times - Felix
Astronaut - Bang Chan
Authorized Personnel Only (Back Door) - ChanLix
BEWARE - Bang Chan
Burger and Sandwich, Coffee and Tea - ChangLix
District 9 - Lee Know
Finders Keepers Losers Weepers - Bang Chan
I Need Someone - Seungmin
I Want To Breathe You In Like A Vapour - I.N
I’m Sorry (My Handwriting Isn’t Pretty) - ChangLix
Insomnia - ChanLix
I’ve Been To The Year 3000 - 2Chan
Levanter - Han
Little Steps - Han
My Side - Felix
Never Ending Story - JiLix
Please Baby Get Away From Me (I’m Poison) - Changbin
Spaces Between Us - Lee Know
The Story of My Life - 3RACHA
We’re Not Alright But I’ll Pretend - Felix
SuperM:
Better Days - KaiMark
Big Chance - TaemTen
(When I’m With You) Danger Seems Like A Good Thing - TaeKai
Even When I Lose I’m Winning - TaeKai
Please Excuse My Writing - TaemTen
The Only Heaven I’ll Be Sent To - KaiMark
Tiger Inside - SuperM
To You In The Distant Future - SuperM
Who Do You Love? (Is It Him or Me?) - KaiMark
Yeah Superhuman! - TaemTen
TXT:
0x1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) - Yeonjun
Blue Hour - Yeonjun Dubaddu Wari Wari - Taehyun
Flip It On Me Say I Think Too Much - Huening Kai I Know I Could Lie (But I’m Telling The Truth) - Taehyun I Know I Love You - Yeonjun I Know You Don’t Give Two Fucks - Beomgyu (Sorry) I’m An Antiromantic - TaeGyu I’m A Loser - Soobin Loving You Is A Losing Game - Yeonjun
Magic - TXT
Oh My God (He’s A Really Bad Boy) - Yeonjun PUMA - TXT
Run Away - Huening Kai
Running Down To The Riptide - Huening Kai Small Town Boy (In A Big Arcade) - YeonBin
VIXX:
Fantasy - Neo
Hyde - LR
On and On - Leo
Thank You For My Love - Leo
Series:
The Power Within - Baekyeol
1-MAMA 2-POWER 3-OVERDOSE 4-LUCKY ONE 5-MONSTER FINALE-OBSESSION
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tozierrichard · 4 years
Text
Reddie Fanfic Masterlist
the amazing works that have changed my life (also using this to organize myself)
tear it with your teeth by belby | 32.1k
"We could leave this place, Eddie," Richie says. "God, imagine that? Not having to live in this trash dump anymore. We could go wherever we wanted. A different place every night."
notes: reddie from ages 15-18. this one hurts (but it’s incredibly beautiful)
It's Not My Fault! by shanisafan | 92.7k
“I want to be there for you when things get hard just as I know you will be there for me. Ben wrote his poem by me talking about how much I think I’m not good enough for you.”
“Richie -“ Eddie squeezed the other boy’s hands.
“I’m serious Eddie. I’m not. I’m selfish to take someone off the market who is as great as you. So I want to thank you for everything. Here’s to you and whatever happens next.”
notes: read this for the characterization wow! perfect amount of fluff and angst
Lovesong Series by WaxAgent | 164.9k
They're all connected, sure, but nothing comes close to the iron bonds between Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak; they have their ups and their downs, but they always have each other. A look at their lives from leaving Derry to being dragged back by a promise than both of them had long forgotten.
notes: this work has not been updated since 2018 but it is incredibly amazing, mind blowing and i just wanna cry and talk about it with someone, please suffer with me
the years go by like days by georgiestauffenberg |121.9k
It’s Eddie he wants to get a hold of, though, and he does, tucking him under his arm, and ruffling his hair, making him laugh. He’s startled when Eddie looks at him with such happy, shining eyes. And, for a split-second, he’s tempted to kiss him right then, right there in front of everyone.
He wants to. Badly. He doesn’t.
He leans in, instead, and he smacks a loud, wet kiss to Eddie’s cheek, punctuating it with a “mwah!” He does it again and again. “I’m so proud of my little Eds Spagheds!”
“Get off me!” Eddie says, laughing and shoving him away, swatting at his hands.
AU. in the 27 years in-between, Richie and Eddie forget a lot, but they don't forget each other.
notes: THE reddie fic
in the heat of the summer (you're so different from the rest) by kaboomslang | 109.5k
There’s a heatwave in L.A., the first time Richie sees Eddie naked.
or
One very hot year in the life of two idiots in love, working shit out.
notes: the author’s Meticulous with a capital M. one of my favorite characterizations of richie! and the love confessions are lovely!!
not exactly where i need to be (and yet it seems so close) by varnes | 49.3k
Richie runs all the way to Eddie’s. He has a bike but he can’t remember, just now, where he put it. Everything feels real, feels — the gravel hurt his shoeless feet, his lungs burn when he gets tired, there’s a cut on his chin that aches a little. It feels real but things always felt real, with It.
You can’t trust how you feel or what you see. That’s the core of the terror of It. That everything is real and nothing is real and all of it can kill you.
Richie clambers up the drainage pipe and shoves open Eddie’s window. He’s afraid to look. He’s afraid of what It has prepared for him.
But it’s nothing. It’s just Eddie, small, young, cast still on his arm. He’s curled up on his side and is using the cast as the world’s worst pillow.
“Holy shitballs what the fucking shit,” breathes Richie, lunging forward to fling himself on top of Eddie’s sleeping form. “Don’t scream, don’t scream, hey — Eddie! Eddie, shut the fuck up, you’re going to wake your mom, it’s me! It’s me.”
---
OR: Richard Tozier goes to sleep on a plane in 2016, and wakes up in 1989.
notes: time travel AU, i’d sell my soul to the devil if it meant getting to read this for the first time again ahhhhh
as the ghost begins to bleed by ShowMeAHero | 208.3k
Richie refuses to let Eddie stay dead. When he says he'll do anything to get Eddie back, he means anything.
notes: THE canon fix-it au
maybe i’m breaking up with myself by Anonymous | 59.3k
Underneath Derry, Richie Tozier is caught in the Deadlights. At that moment, across the country in the thick summer heat of Los Angeles, Henley Tozier passes out cold.
Three minutes pass, and Eddie Kaspbrak is impaled through the chest. At that exact same time, Atticus Kaspbrak clutches at his stomach, where a knife-sharp inexplicable pain is blooming.
notes: eddie has a son and richie has a daughter. a fix-it & everyone lives au, with the CUTEST children the losers could have. love love love 
Skeleton Key to My Heart by Amuly | 31.2k
After they kill that fucking clown, Richie is left with a broken arm, a list of bad baseball comedy jokes, and one beautiful, dedicated nurse by the name of Eddie Kaspbrak. But then Richie's manager Steve rushes to his side, and Richie's seeing double as the two most important men in Richie's life square off to see who can Handle Richie Tozier's Shit the best. Which isn't a bad problem to have, in Richie's book--he just wishes they could figure out how to get along.
notes: i love the reddie dynamic in this. i enjoyed reading this so much!!!!
WIP 
currently reading these
Baby, I'm Counting On You by PuddingTown | 109.7k
When Richie Tozier breezes back into his hometown of Derry, Maine, he’s expecting to see familiar faces. Of course, he’s not expecting to see an old flame chasing around a baby. With a million questions, nowhere to go, and a help wanted ad for a nannying job, he finds himself at the doorstep of Eddie Kaspbrak.
notes: i’ve loved domestic reddie but it’s also angsty. this is (re)self-discovery by richie tozier
ribs by mikeshanlon | 93.9k
Almost every time the lights turn off and they cram in the shitty twin bed, Richie seems to become a different person. Maybe not different, per say, but the stupid jokes and teasing die down, the guard of nonchalance dropping. Eddie feels lucky to see this side of Richie, soft and caring-- vulnerable. It’s not like he hates the other side of Richie, he secretly enjoys their constant banter and his dumb jokes. No, it’s that this side is rare, and it’s something beautiful. Here, safe in the soft flannel sheets, it feels like they are the only two souls for miles, and they can be themselves, and that is terrifying and reassuring all at once.
“I’m gonna miss this. When we go off to college,” Richie admits, the weight behind his words telling Eddie he felt the same about their shared nights.
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees softly, “Me too.”
notes: the losers’ senior year. this has made me laugh pretty hard and cry just as much. makes me nostalgic but in the best way. go give it the love it deserves
Running up that hill by speakslow | 59.6k
When Eddie Kaspbrak's mother gets remarried, she sends him off to Catholic boarding school. Will it be exactly what he pictures: same old prison, new location? Or will it be something else entirely?
my oh my god they were roommates story, loosely inspired by Dead Poets Society (but it's set in the fall of 1992)
notes: the last update was this past week so i read the entire thing again and oh my god let me hug everyone. all the losers are pretty prominent in this and i love that. lowkey enemies to friends to lovers?
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amwritesitall · 4 years
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Sarah’s AHS Characters (+Alice and a Ship) as Songs I’m Vibing With
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Masterlist
Instead of a collection of songs from one artist these are songs I’m currently vibing with? Here’s the playlist if you wanna listen (warning it fluctuates a lot because it’s just songs a vibe with at the moment). I skipped the songs I used in artist posts.
Billie Dean Howard
“24 / 7/ 365″ by Surfaces
Met, this girl down by the vine Had long tan legs and big brown eyes Seemed the type I would wanna make mine
She said nine to five, I'm killing time But twenty-four-seven, three-six-five I have to be where I feel your sunshine
One to two-step, three-step, four She's everywhere out on the dance floor She's everything you could ever want and more
Picture it. Billie Dean is at some event. She spies a girl who’s mesmerizing, killing it on the dance floor. Realizing this girl is absolutely the person she wants to be with. The line “I have to be where I feel your sunshine”!! Big Billie Dean vibes right there. In the darkness that her job sometimes entails, she’s drawn to the light of her lover. A ray of sunshine if you will.
“Heaven Falls / Fall on Me” by Surfaces
Woke up early in the mornin' Just to feel the light of day Had to open up my window Get the shadows out my way Banana pancakes for my problems Find me jamming old Jack Johnson Swear I heard them angel calls Lay outside
As Heaven falls Heaven falls
If you can’t tell, Surfaces really makes me think of Billie Dean. This goes with my explanation for the other song. Billie’s job gets pretty dark and intense. Although she never completely gets a break from her job (because she can’t just turn off being a medium) she tries to use her time away from filming and darker locations to focus on the lighter aspects of life, savoring all around her and her lover. I have no idea if what I said makes sense though.
Lana Winters
“Let’s Fall in Love for the Night” by FINNEAS
Let's fall in love for the night And forget in the mornin' Play me a song that you like You can bet I'll know every line I'm the boy that your boy hoped that you would avoid Don't waste your eyes on jealous guys, fuck that noise I know better than to call you mine
This song gives me Lana vibes in the sense that she doesn’t really want to get too attached to people. This also makes me think of how Lana is the type of lover that someone’s conservative/strict family wouldn’t want them with (because of the gay). When you go this route, it’s hard for me not to picture teenage Lana when listening to this.
Fun fact: I have a vague idea for writing a Billie Dean Howard x Reader imagine over this song.
“me & ur ghost” by blackbear
I'm not alone It's just me and your ghost And this cripplin' depression I thought I learned my lesson But, I threw out my phone And I burned all your clothes And now I'm not alone It's just me and your ghost
Now hear me out. Post break up Lana dealing with all of her memories of her ex and then burning all of their shit because Lana is lowkey that bitch. It’s a bit of a stretch, but that’s just my humble opinion on the matter.
Cordelia Goode
“If We Were Vampires” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
It's not the long, flowing dress that you're in Or the light coming off of your skin The fragile heart you protected for so long Or the mercy in your sense of right and wrong It's not your hands searching slow in the dark Or your nails leaving love's watermark It's not the way you talk me off the roof Your questions like directions to the truth
It's knowing that this can't go on forever Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone Maybe we'll get forty years together But one day I'll be gone Or one day you'll be gone
Cordelia knows that one day she will die. There will be another Supreme after her and she can’t live forever. This is her coming to terms with the fact that maybe it’s for the best that she won’t stay around forever. Not being immortal allows her to live in the moment and savor all the time she has.
“PlantedInMyMind.Memo” by Charlie Burg
Saying things I don't believe And your love casts it's shadow on the things I do And I can hear so clearly all the words I'd wish I'd said You're stuck in my head But I only think of you Will we be together soon? I'm thrown on the wayside You're planted in my mind But I don't wanna be ok without you
This makes me think of an angsty Cordelia relationship like post “In Another Lifetime”?!?! Cordelia being stuck on her lover from the past 
Also makes me think of Cordelia x Misty after the events of season 3
Bette and Dot Tattler
“prom dress” by mxmtoon
I can't help the fact I like to be alone It might sound kinda sad, but that's just what I seem to know I tend to handle things usually by myself And I can't ever seem to try and ask for help
I'm sitting here, crying in my prom dress I'd be the prom queen if crying was a contest Makeup is running down, feelings are all around How did I get here? I need to know
I guess I maybe had a couple expectations Thought I'd get to them, but no I didn't
I’m not going to lie, this is a bit of a stretch.
I’m kind of getting Bette and Dot wishing they could be like everyone else. They just want that normal teen experience?
Sally McKenna
“Teeth” by 5 Seconds of Summer
Call me in the morning to apologize Every little lie gives me butterflies Something in the way you're looking through my eyes Don't know if I'm gonna make it out alive
Fight so dirty, but your love's so sweet Talk so pretty, but your heart got teeth Late night devil, put your hands on me And never, never, never ever let go
The angst! The tension! The passion! SPICY TIMES WITH SALLY
“fuck, i’m lonely” by Lauv, Anne-Marie
I call you one time, two time, three time I can't wait no more Your fingers through my hair, that's on my mind I know it's been a minute since you walked right through that door But I still think about you all the time
Sally just wants love. She’s sick of being lonely and wants to be with the person she loves. Being a ghost sucks and she wants out of that damn hotel.
Dealing with her ex that is still alive while she’s not.
Audrey Tindall
“Prom Queen” by Beach Bunny
Shut up, count your calories I never looked good in mom jeans Wish I, was like you, blue-eyed blondie, perfect body Maybe I should try harder You should lower your expectations I'm no quick-curl barbie I was never cut out for Prom Queen If I get more pretty, do you think he will like me?
Teen Audrey. I will stand by this.
Now I’m thinking about teen Audrey and my heart :(
Ally Mayfair Richards
“I Needed You” by blackbear
When I needed you the most, I needed you I fucking needed you the most, I needed you, the most Now I won't be there to give you what you need Now I won't be there, no
You know this was never really about us And everything was always 'bout you You never knew a thing about trust And I knew everything about you, what's happening Three whole years, they can go by In a blink of an eye, and you won't know it, but What a damn waste of time
You can’t sit there and tell me this doesn’t sound like Ally dealing with Ivy’s betrayal. No. There is no way this song doesn’t give off those vibes. Like sis was dealing with a ton of shit and where was her wife??? Off gallivanting and murdering with a cult because she voted for Jill Stein. 
Wilhemina Venable
“Lovesong (The Way) [feat. Bluets]” by Charlie Burg 
Now you're away with nothing to say My heart aches like never before Filled with desire, you've inspired me to write another verse
I think we're alone now You can tell me it was all just a game Yes, we're alone now But the feeling's slightly changed
But you take your time, my love Don't ever tell me that it just takes time to love As long as I'm writing this song about my love for you Is it too much to ask For a reply? Or a text? Or a way to tell you love me like before
I don’t knooowww. This just makes me think of Mina trying to deal with her feelings and possibly her significant other kind of giving up because they feel like Mina will never reciprocate their feelings. Mina does love them but it’s hard for her to express it.
“Someday” by Peach Tree Rascals
I hate the fact that you Run on mind, all damn day There she goes
Girl won't you wait for me
I settled down, I'm better now I never knew what this life was about Days got too plain, colors got dull All of the roses fell on to the floor I'll pick them up, wipe the dust Need a chance for your love For your love, for your love, ooooh I've been floating between oceans And the darkness in the sky I've been lonesome in this old shed And it's burnin through my mind
Similar to the song above, Mina hates the fact that she’s stuck on this person, but she eventually realizes that she needs this person in her life. This love really out here making her appreciate life and all the good things in it.
Basically Mina is turning into a softie.
Alice Macray
“Mariposa” by Peach Tree Rascals
I can't wait for you To come my way I've been far away But I'll keep runnin' Just to find a way to you til' then
I been running from it Tired of running from it Scared of feeling something now I'm stuck and tryna get up out of this hole
Surface level this song has some good vibes like our baby Alice. Over analyzing level is not as good vibes. This song is kind of like our baby Alice running from her feelings for someone because the thought of such strong feelings is scary for her.
Billie Dean Howard x Audrey Tindall
“Channel Orange in Your Living Room” by Charlie Burg
We met when I was drunk That party didn't actually suck You made fun of how slow I drank
But now I can't stop thinking about you Each moment passes and my thoughts return to you And the memory of us too As we listen to Channel Orange in your living room
Even when you're away That album makes me feel like you stayed To listen now would make me a fool again for you
Without a doubt, I always think of these two when I listen to the song and that’s one of the reasons why I love it so much. I’m just picturing the two of them meeting a party together and Billie taking Audrey back to her place. Then they end up thinking of each other long after the night is over.
-
You might like:  Sarah Paulson AHS Characters as Hozier Songs or  Sarah Paulson AHS Characters as Rex Orange County Songs
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hollyhomburg · 5 years
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Call me Yours (Pt.1)
(Ot7 x Reader) (Hybrid au!) (Blind! Reader) 
(Sequel to Dance to this )
Summary: You never would have imagined that more love was hidden right next door, just over your garden fence. 
Pairings: (Human! Hoseok) x (Human! reader) x (Wolf hybrid! Namjoon) x (Dog hybrid! Seokjin) x (Cat hybrid! Yoongi) x (Tiger hybrid! Taehyung) x (Bunny hybrid! Jungkook) x (Cat hybrid! Jimin) 
Tags: established relationship, Polyamory, gratuitous fluff, there is very little angst in this chapter. 
W/c: 4.0k
- It starts with the bird feeder, 
- Or as Seokjin affectionately calls it ‘Yoongi TV’ or when Yoongi is being especially cute “Kitten TV” which makes him pout and grumble something about Seokjin being about as entertaining as a sea cucumber in a jellyfish exhibit. And makes Namjoon send Yoongi that little half smirk smile- so full of the wolf hybrid’s honeyed dimples that Yoongi just… sort of combusts.
- For being a bird feeder, the birdfeeder is exceptionally bad at feeding the birds and not the brown squirrels and little white striped chipmunks that gather and eat not only the seeds but also Namjoon’s very special heritage breed tomatoes.
- That doesn’t mean that Yoongi doesn’t sit by the door and watch it, making sure to chase them off with a “yah! Get away” and an open door to shout at them periodically. No matter what time of day it is, or if Seokjin is recording an episode of eat Jin, a Q&A, or an apparel announcement.
- His viewers of course make compellations of Seokjin sighing dramatically, yelling at Yoongi, and screaming back “brat! Would it kill you to be quiet?”
- No matter how much the squirrels and chipmunks eat- none of you can ever bring it in yourself to put out a trap or even some poison to get rid of the critters.
- You’ll always laugh; after all, you think it’s adorable when Yoongi’s tail goes all bottlebrush and swishes back and forth sometimes swatting your across the legs or side. In the past year, he’s gotten comfortable enough with you to consent to you wrapping a hand around his tail and stroking it a little before you let it flick out of your grip.  
- The Yoongi before would never dare to admit he liked cuddles. And now? now your morning ritual was for Yoongi to lean his head on your lap, though he does do the same to Namjoon and Seokjin- really it depends on who’s going to be the most likely to give him coffee with extra extra cream on that day. And you’re weak for Yoongi’s purrs. And the nudge of his nose against your hand as he mumbles. “So tired, need so much coffee”
- “Stop being cute” Seokjin will complain when Yoongi lines himself all snuggly along the line of your back in the morning, pouting into the thick fluff of your sweatshirt (the white one with cat ears that Yoongi had demanded you buy a few months ago when it was still cold enough that it was necessary) “I swear I’m not doing anything,”
- Even though that particular type of affection isn’t anything strange in this house- it is a little new for Yoongi, and the three of you are nothing if not respectful of his boundaries. 
- You’re happy with the little kisses he gives you in the stolen moments of the day, when you find yourself spooning Yoongi while you take a break from work, playing with his hands and talking to him about the music he plays on the little radio in the corner of the upstairs bedroom. 
- (The same one that he got the first month here, dragged out of the garbage somewhere, listening to the radio and dancing at 3 am when both of you can’t sleep. a Half asleep Seokjin and Namjoon knocking into each other when they stumble upstairs half asleep to ask after your absence in your bed downstairs. 
- You and Yoongi high on sugar screaming “I love this song!!!” Namjoon and Seokjin happily watching from the door, feeling like every last piece of their family was falling into place)
- They were wrong, there are 4 more pieces waiting to fall into place. you’d never imagined that love was waiting on the other side of the garden fence, the same fence that namjoon grew roses up. Meticulously strapped them to the trellis, the blossoms sweet smelling and soft against fingertips. 
- Yoongi might be a little bit emotionally constipated, but he does show you he loves you, even if he has trouble saying it. God knows you all show him you love him often enough. 
- Namjoon and Yoongi sitting in that same bed with his headphone splitter, and the cellphone that you’d bought Yoongi and he’d quickly filled up with music, Namjoon lets him talk a mile a minute about music for hours, Namjoon would let Yoongi talk forever if it made him look so happy. 
- They lie on the upstairs bed, the stereo droning in the corner, Namjoon on his stomach and Yoongi propped against the wall. The line of Yoongi’s thigh lined with Namjoon’s shoulder. Namjoon’s chin propped up on one hand, watching and listening to Yoongi’s deep gravel of a voice, tail wagging happily behind him. 
- Namjoon eventually falls asleep ( he always does- even if he genuinely loves to listen to Yoongi- the bed is still very very comfortable and warm in the late spring chilliness. he awakes half from sleep, feel the comb of Yoongi’s hands through his hair and smell the cat hybrids spiced wine scent. like sun-dried fruit and cloves Namjoon’s head pressed to Yoongi’s hip.
- Seokjin and Yoongi- sitting on the back stoop late at night, passing a can of whipped cream between the two of them, the elder gets so punch drunk tired that holds the can a little too far away and misses his own mouth. 
- The two of them staring at the line of whipped cream on Seokjin’s cheek before laughter bursts like flowers in their chests. Yoongi’s shoulders shaking, tipping into Seokjin who is steady and warm. 
- “How the fuck?” Yoongi yowling with laughter. Grinning, full gums on display, tilting Seokjin’s cheek to lick it off of him. Seokjin’s blush as Yoongi’s rough tongue hits the corner of his mouth. Cuddled up a little closer than they’d been the day before. Always a little bit closer, day after day. 
- The actually “I love you’s” are slow in coming, but Yoongi gets there eventually. 
-  One night, a cup of hot chocolate in his hands as he watches Yoongi bat at a moth that hovers on the lamp Eyebrows furrowed. “oh” he says, the words startling out of him “okay, I’m a little bit in love with you, you know?” 
- And Yoongi’s response, a snort, “only a little bit? I think I can do better than that.” 
- The next morning, you wake early, Seokjin and Namjoon still wrapped in each other in your bedroom. you’re a little surprised to find Yoongi up so early, or out of bed (you’d gifted him a heated blanket for Christmas and he’d barely crawled out from under in the entire winter- but it was no longer needed with the oncoming spring. 
- “Morning” Yoongi’s grumble. “coffee?” you wonder. A noise by where the maker is in affirmative, you stumble over, tipping against him and falling a little. after a moment, a back hug, your morning ritual though usually- it’s him doing it to you. 
- Yoongi shivering happily. Your forehead nuzzling the one spot he can’t reach in the center of his back. Enjoying the feeling a moment before he says “want to help me do the crossword while we wait for the others to wake?” 
- “3 words, 7 letters,” “oh that’s easy- ‘I love you’ right?” Yoongi stills, then you can feel him nod. You reach out to feel the newspaper and find it’s not a newspaper at all, but a print out crossword. “oh” you say. Yoongi nuzzles into your shoulder, nose prodding along the length of your neck.  And he doesn’t have to say anything more than that.  
- A  playlist full of love songs downloaded mysteriously onto Namjoon’s Spotify account, lovesong after lovesong he scrolls through, out in front of your home, ready to start his run for the day. Every single one that Yoongi had ever mentioned to Namjoon or said that he likes. Nearly 100 of them. 
- Namjoon tumbling into Yoongi’s room upstairs. “ew you smell” Yoongi said, pushing Namjoon’s shoulder. Namjoon huffing a laugh, “I didn’t even run that far! shut up and let me kiss you before I shower” 
- You’re respectful of his boundaries, Even when he purposefully wears the old shirt of yours that is basically a crop top, or licks food off of Seokjin’s spoon seductively, scent marks you copiously while maintaining eye contact with anyone who looks, or that pout that makes all of Namjoon kind of melt.
- Seokjin swears half of their flirting is just longing looks made across your living room and sharing a pair of headphones. he tells them this, often and vocally, to which yoongi just rolls his eyes, but the little smirk on his lips tell seokjin that he knows what he’s doing. Yoongi is such a tease.
- “Yoongi- stop chasing the squirrels and sit for dinner” Seokjin complains one afternoon, but you just touch his hand where it rests on your shoulder, “let him has his fun.” Seokjin deposits a kiss onto your forehead after sighing, lamenting the loss of what will surely be cold asparagus.  
- while Namjoon looks after Yoongi, Namjoon’s tail swishing back and forth, looking to see if they’re eating any tomatoes, ready to pounce alongside him until Seokjin flicks both of them on the shoulders. “Eat. Before it gets cold.” 
- It’s hard to ignore the commands of the Alpha of the house. 
- But Yoongi isn’t the only one who likes to watch the birdfeeder. The first time he notices him, it’s because of the small tinkling laugh when he pounces after one of the squirrels, which quickly skitters through a hole on the other side of the fence, yowling before he hears the other person move to pounce on it too, then the laugh, Before the presence disappears. Leaving Yoongi to do little more than wonder. 
- The next time isn’t so kind however.
- “They’re someone sitting on the fence! On our fence! A cat hybrid!” Yoongi shouts as he dashes into your living room one day, about a month after he’s officially consented to being your hybrid. The id bracelet with your address and Yoongi’s name jingles on his wrist. 
- On your lap, Namjoon shifts, sitting up, regretfully moving from your position of afternoon pets, where he’d been camped out on your lap while you typed up a new proposal. Telling you when you’d misspelled a word or the dictation software had malfunctioned. From his vantage point, he can easily see your computer screen. And you’d rewarded him with a scratch over his ear every time he’d caught a mistake. 
- “Did you bother to ask their name?” Seokjin’s asks from where he stands in the kitchen trying to settle on something to make for dinner, ingredients and printed out recipes cover every surface. 
- Yoongi’s tail flicks in annoyance, “No!” Yoongi pouts, “they’re trespassing” he hisses, indignant that Seokjin would be anything other but outraged with this. But still managing to look abashed at Seokjin’s scolding tone, Seokjin smirks- Yoongi looks like a ruffled up kitten when he gets like this. 
- Yoongi side eye’s Namjoon, looking for backup, “they where playing with Namjoon’s vines.” Namjoon stands abruptly almost knocking over the ottoman as he almost trips over it. “They could be eating our tomatoes!” Namjoon follows Yoongi, who looks validated as they both dash back out to the garden. 
- You laugh, while Seokjin sighs, and reaches out his hand to help you up from the couch. Pulling you in close to press his lips to yours in a fleeting kiss before you head out into the garden after them. 
- The hybrid is still sitting on the high fence, not paying any attention to Yoongi or Namjoon shouting at him from the yard. The fence is only 6 feet high, and yet the calico hybrid manages to look snooty and above the display of aggression in more way’s then one. 
- His tail waving lazily from size to side as he inspects his nails and licks at his palm, Studiously ignoring both of them- though it’s mostly Yoongi doing the shouting. 
- Namjoon’s ears are quirked back then forward, his tail stilling before it starts to wave back and forth happily a little. After a moment of looking at the calico, a faint blush creeping ups the back of his neck. Yoongi doesn’t see- too focused on making the rippling hiss that fills the garden as threatening as possible, the hair on the back of his neck sticking up his tail puffed. 
- The calico is not impressed. 
- Seokjin sidles up behind Namjoon and squeezes the back of his neck affectionately. Holding your hand in the other. Though he knows he could let go if he wanted, you know the garden so well at this point there is very little risk of you tripping. Ever since last month he’s been a little bit clingier to you even inside the house. 
- He still blushes when he thinks about it- it wasn’t exactly his first rut, but he’d never expected to really have one again (since they were triggered by a hybrid in heat and obviously neither you nor Namjoon’s had a heat).  
- There is the sound of a weird sort of walking, is that hopping? To the divider between your neighbors. The rounded tops of brown ears appear over the edge of the fence. “Hyung? I don’t think you should sit there…” A soft voice says from the other side of the fence.
- It startles both Namjoon and Yoongi from their growling, as a look of understanding dawns on Namjoon’s face. “Oh, I remember you- you’re Jungkook right? The bunny hybrid?” Namjoon says through the fence. Though he can’t actually see the bunny hybrid. 
- Any interaction with the bunny hybrid that lives next door has been sporadic at best and only through the fence. Namjoon has never actually been introduced to him; only exchanged brief ‘hello’s’ and ‘isn’t the pollen bad today?’ through the fence after he’d heard Namjoon sneeze. 
- Seokjin has never met the hybrid before- only heard Namjoon mention him over the years vaguely after dinnertime or offhand. “Yeah! That’s me!”  
- From the other side of the fence, a voice shouts. “Jimin! Get down from the top of the fence before you fall!- no- Taehyung!- don’t bite at my shirt! I’m not going anywhere I’m just-” an overwhelmed goran, the voice comes closer, the four of you waiting on your side of the fence. 
- The voice is low, gentle but cautionary in tone. “Jimin” a warning, the blond calico hybrid looks down at his owner from the opposite side, scoffing, before licking his palm one more time, and climbing down from the fence. 
- That voice loses it’s leashed anger, turning happy “I’m sorry about him, he didn’t mean any harm he’s just exploring his new territory!” comes the happy voice from the other side of the fence. 
- A loud purring resonates as well as a chirp in response, not from Yoongi who’s still looking puffed up and territorial, watching the shadow of movement through the gaps in the fence like he might pounce at them. 
- Standing a little behind Namjoon who fusses with the rose bush absent-mindedly tucking the green new growth back on the trellis.  “It’s fine! He wasn’t doing anything harmful” you respond, “he just surprised my hybrids is all.” Yoongi does chirp unhappily at your words but Seokjin sends him withering look, Namjoon huddles to your side and whines. 
- “We’ve never met before neighbor! It’s nice to meet you! Sorry if my hybrid antagonized yours- I swear he didn’t mean It.” says the happy voice from the other side of the fence again. 
- “Invite them over for lemonade” Namjoon murmurs into Seokjin’s ear while Yoongi hisses at the suggestion, “absolutely not! I am not having another cat over here.” the raise of your eyebrow makes Yoongi’s tail twitch, but he stands down, rolling his eyes and gritting out a “fine! I’ll have you know I just rolled my eyes at you.” “noted,” you say, turning back to the fence again. 
- “it’s okay- my cat hybrid and my dog hybrid where just worried that he was going to eat our tomatoes!” 
- “Oh Jimin’s harmless- he’s a recent adoptee and was just getting the lay of the land. ” the silence hovers awkwardly, Namjoon shifts from foot to foot restlessly.
- Seokjin brushes a comforting hand down his back, pressing a small kiss to the over egger Namjoon’s cheek to calm him down a little, sighing- he’d kind of been looking forward to a quiet late summer night, but Namjoon is curiously eyeing the other side of the fence, and you look interested too. 
- “You can invite them” he whispers,  “I’ll get the lemonade and some cookies.” 
- “Uhm…” you murmur a little subdued, playing with Seokjin’s hand nervously. “Would you like to meet properly? We have some lemonade and snacks if you’re interested in coming over?” 
- You’re not exactly sure how it happens, but soon after Namjoon is going over to the fence on the side of your house- opening it up so that Hoseok can slip through the side, he holds it open for his two hybrids. 
- He’s surprisingly lithe for the deep voice that accompanies him, though maybe it’s just that Namjoon is incredibly tall and broad comparatively. He looks like a kind human, his eyes wide and the deep kind of brown that is reminiscent of the night sky. 
- Hoseok smells like an office building- like printer ink and warm paper, even though he’s wearing a grey shirt with a coffee stain near the hem that is obviously meant for lazy days. Namjoon tries not to be judgemental as he himself is wearing a faded green shirt that has a hole in the sleeve where it snagged on his roses a few weeks ago. 
- Namjoon gives him a closed lip smile. Trying not to look threatening to the admittedly massive bunny hybrid that attempts to hide behind Hoseok’s shoulder. Curly brown hair shadowing the impossibly wide eyes. Prey type hybrids are always a little bit shy around predator type hybrids and jungkook isn’t any different. 
- His brown ears pinned are back to his shoulders, Namjoon can barely see the baby pink centers. “Are you sure it’s okay hyung?” The small voice says, Namjoon has his back turned, a few paces ahead of them as he leads them around the side of the house into your yard but he still hears all the same.
- “Yes kooky and besides, haven’t you wanted to meet Namjoon since forever?” Hoseok whispers, nudging Jungkook with his shoulder. Of course, the bunny hybrids interactions with Namjoon have always been through the fence, and sporadic. Namjoon has never scene his face before but honestly, it’s a wonder that Jungkook isn’t more afraid of him. 
- His nose twitches cutely and Namjoon has to hold his tail to keep it from wagging excitedly. The calico hybrid behind both of them crosses his arms and huffs. Slitted green eyes watching Namjoon with the air of someone who is not impressed. Jimin rolls his eyes when Hoseok says, “oh wow! Your garden is amazing!”  
- Namjoon grins shyly, wonders what they’ve gotten themselves into, but is honest in his bashfulness nonetheless, “thank you! I try to work on it every day, but since I’ve started working at the community garden it’s been harder and harder to keep up with it!” 
- “Wow, you work? I’ve never heard of a hybrid working!” Jungkook compliments. Then gives a little yelp, he turns to Jimin, pouting even as the cat grins showing his teeth that seem a little sharper than seems human. “Don’t pull on my tail Jiminie,” he pouts. 
- Jimin grins, his eyes green slits, “how could I not? Your your tail was twitching like a lovesick bunny” the cat hybrids voice is low and accented, his words making Kooky go a bright red. Namjoon wonders where he’d been adopted from- if his words sound the way the do. 
- Namjoon blushes a little, and elects to ignore Jimin’s words, “Um…My job is mostly volunteer actually? But they do give me a lot of the plants especially when they grow too large and reproduce and we have to separate them.”
- The two grasses at either side of your porch are representative of that, as well as the dozens of small clay pots that hold the little sprouts that he’d harvested from the community garden- there are a few small cherry blossom trees that Namjoon has been trying to bonsai for the last half a year. Seokjin had signed him up for classes as a present for his last birthday. 
- Jimin goes over and swats at the grasses idly, nosing along the line of the fuzzy cattails. A surprised little purr echo’s and fills the garden. On your small deck above Jimin, Yoongi scoffs and glares at the blatant scenting of his territory. 
- Namjoon had initially planted those grasses for Yoongi, and had blushed every time Yoongi went out to swat at them and scent them, but that was another story entirely. 
- Namjoon continues to give Jungkook a little tour of his garden, the bunny hybrid opening up surprisingly quickly, his curiosity endless, the ears slowly rising throughout the conversation to stand perked up, directed at Namjoon with nothing but interest. His little cotton tail never stops it’s excited little twitching. 
- Hoseok smiles at them, glad that they’re warming up to each other nicely, and then catches you sitting at the table on the porch and ascends the stairs. 
- You stand when you feel his feet on the edge of the steps, the reverberating noise and vibration. “You must be Hoseok! It’s nice to meet you, I’m Y/n.” Yoongi watches the other cat, eye’s narrowing, and does not introduce himself to Hoseok yet. 
- Oh crap, Hoseok’s heart gives a nervous thud. Caught off guard as you slide your soft hand into his and smile at him. Hoseok definitely was not expecting someone his own age, let alone you or your flowy soft looking tunic and simple leggings that showed your figure. 
- Hoseok is no stranger to members of the opposite sex, but his work is so busy that he doesn’t often have the chance to meet anyone- and you’re- you’re painfully cute with the way your bangs stick out from your messy bun, framing your face, making Hoseok stutter when his heart registers how cute you are. 
- You hold your hand out in anticipation of Hoseok’s shake and the hand that meets yours is surprisingly large and Vigny. Yet somehow soft. “Y-you have a lovely home! Your garden is amazing.” Oh, his voice is really nice. deep and kind of resonant. 
- “Thank you- though really you should compliment Namjoon since he’s the one who does most of the work on it. My other hybrid, Seokjin, is just getting us some snacks, and some lemonade.” You offer Hoseok a seat at the table and he takes a seat across from you. 
- “Thank you for your hospitality, lemonade sounds lovely.” Hoseok says, the silence devolving a little into awkwardness until Seokjin appears, holding a stack of plastic cups and a jug of said lemonade. Seokjin and Hoseok are introduced with a handshake and a polite smile. 
- You make to stand up and pour your guest a glass of lemonade, The same second that Jungkook bounds over to grab a cup, his legs excited, propelling him a little uncontrollably, crashing into you in his excitement. Yoongi is turning, a cautionary word trapped in his throat spoken too late as you narrowly avoiding being knocked over by the overly excited bunny. 
- Sudden unfamiliar hands on you, wide and soft but unfamiliar,  as he reaches over your side- making you flinch and stumble sideways, the plastic cups landing on the deck with a clatter. Seokjin narrowly catches you before you fall. 
- Seokjin reacts instinctively, the low growl threatening and rippling. Jungkook looks up, eyes wide at the unfamiliar predator hybrid. 
- As expected- everyone freezes. 
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galadrieljones · 5 years
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11 questions
tagged by @thevikingwoman. thank you!!
1. The most beautiful place you have been 
Ah, a tough one. To me, there is nothing more sublime than the big, wide open empty of the American West. Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Utah, and the weird hellscapes of northern Nevada. BUT, on our honeymoon, we went to France: flew into Bergerac and slowly drove north to Paris over the course of several days. The sunflower fields were in full bloom and it was really something else. I also have to say that, while I don’t always love where I live in Orange County, the sunsets in Laguna Beach really are the prettiest sunsets in the whole world.
2. Pick a super power. Why that one? 
Not no sleep, but just less sleep. I’d love it if I could subsist on just like four hours a night. I’d get so much more done that way!! Lol.
3. Do you have a comfort movie or show? What is it? 
Yes, I have several comfort shows. My most frequented are probably Gilmore Girls, Buffy, and Dawson’s Creek. Right now, on maternity leave, I’m also taking a GREAT deal of comfort in Beat Bobby Flay lol. Idk, I just really like him!!
4. A creation you’re really proud of?
All of my fanfic I’m very proud of. I feel it keeps getting better with every work. I’m very proud of having finished The Dead Season, but I feel like, in terms of writing and storytelling skill, A Funeral feels like my most honed creation so far. 
5. Something you are looking forward to in the next year or two?
Well, I just had a baby eight days ago, so I’m looking forward to getting back to normal!!
6. Top 5 video games?
The order here can tend to fluctuate based on where my emotional attachment lies on any given day, but I’ll be as “objective” as possible. Also I have six because the first two I consider to be a tie:
The Last of Us - This is one of my favorite games because it’s so tightly woven, as a story. The characters and their relationships, in combination with the setting and high stakes horrific atmosphere makes it feel both terrifying and desperate in almost EVERY moment. There is ALWAYS something to lose, and Joel’s longterm character development is both very unique and also extremely realistic, nuanced, and heartbreaking.
Red Dead Redemption 2 - This game, for me, succeeds on the strength of its protagonist. The game itself is beautiful, meandering, dynamic, and the story, while sprawling, is multi-faceted and really advanced in its usage of POV, symbolism, and ambiguity. It’s impossible for me to choose between RDR2 and TLoU because they’re such different games. There really is nothing like RDR2, and there is no protagonist like Arthur Morgan, but the narrative of TLoU is just so...perfect. Overall, I think protagonists like Joel and Arthur are sort of paving the way for games that are much more “adult” in scope. These are the first two games I’ve ever really played that feel exclusively BY adults and FOR adults. 
Skyrim - I can’t even really qualify my love for this game at this point in my life. It’s like comfort food. It’s like coming home.
Dragon Age: Inquisition - It’s an imperfect game, but it’s big and the characters are wonderful. I get lost in the banter, the background dynamics, the politics, and the wealth of opportunity for OC creation and fan works.
Horizon: Zero Dawn - Aloy is such a unique female protagonist, in that she is almost a Byronic Hero. Female Byronic heroes are really rare, and I think I love her for her secret romance, masked with a hefty layer of sarcasm, bitterness, and self-preservation. I love Aloy’s journey, because it begins with one quest (find the men who attacked the Proving and killed Rost) and then becomes a much more existential quest (Aloy’s discovery of her own origin story). The game itself is good, but I think if a sequel is made, it’s going to be fucking REALLY GOOD.
Bloodbourne - I’ve never actually played Bloodbourne lol but I’ve watched my husband play it twice. It is by far the weirdest game, aesthetically, I’ve ever encountered. The bizarre menstrual symbolism and hidden zones are entirely gnarly and beautiful. And I love the storytelling style of Hidetaka Miyazaki, how it’s all shown, or implied. There are no quest markers, no obvious objectives. Entire worlds can be missed through happenstance, or failing to fully investigate one small mystery to its painstaking conclusion. 
7. A recent favorite anything (food/entertainment/clothing/??)
As previously stated, I’m very into Beat Bobby Flay lately lol. Dude, Bobby Flay is entirely 100% the man. He is both calmly confident and entirely accomplished as a chef, but also extremely gracious toward his challengers and always willing to concede the loss (though he usually wins lol). That kind of humble confidence is...rare. He reminds me of that thing Solas says in DAI: “No real god need prove himself.”
8. Favorite board game?
I know it’s old school, but I really love Risk. I like playing with my husband, because he’s VERY good, but I learn a lot from him, and though I have only beat him maybe one time ever lol I usually take him by surprise a few times during the game, and that’s very fun lol.
9. Stealing this one: I know that lots of people have “dinosaur” or “ancient Egypt” interests as a child; what was something that you were super interested in as a child? I’d love to learn a new fact about that subject if you’re willing!
When I was a CHILD, I had a definite elves and fairies phase, as well as a metaphysical time travel/scifi phase. My favorite books, which I would read constantly over and over again were Afternoon of the Elves by Janet Taylor Lisle (which has no *actual* elves in it--the elves are like metaphors, honestly explains a lot about my tendency toward fabulism rather than actual fantasy) and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Looking back, I still see these books and how they manifest in my preferences today. They really blur genre boundaries--between fantasy, science, and domestic realism. They’re about kids having regular kid problems and often experiencing catharsis via “fantasy” worlds. 
10. A strange thing you googled recently, if you’re willing to share. 
Well, I’ve googled a lot of strange things lately. When you have a new baby, you’re always googling strange things lol. But I’d say, in the past few months, the strangest thing I’ve had to google was basically male and female underwear from the late 1800s. What the fuck does Arthur wear under his pants?? What the fuck is Mary Beth hiding under that skirt?? The most alarming thing I discovered was that women typically wore crotchless drawers around this time. This way they could pee without having to completely remove their myriad of skirts lol 
11. You only put ten questions, so I’ll steal a simple one from the previous batch, ie: Five favorite books! I’ve been thinking about some of them lately, so I wanna share:
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Airships: Stories by Barry Hannah
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
I’ll tag @buttsonthebeach @morgan-arthur @ladylike-foxes @bearly-tolerable @wrenbee @lyrium-lovesong @ma-sulevin @a-shakespearean-in-paris @hidinginthehinterlands and @idrelle-miocovani
Questions:
Five favorite books?
Five favorite video games?
Favorite visual artist(s) (fan artists and/or traditional)?
Favorite video game protagonist (non-OC) and why?
What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?
What’s your dream road trip? Or, if you don’t like road trips, what’s your dream vacation?
Do you like old movies? I’m talking OLD movies, like golden era, from the 1930s-1950s. Why or why not? Do you have a favorite?
What’s something unique and interesting about the place where you live and/or grew up?
If you were going to be transported into the setting of any video game, which would it be and why?
Regardless of where you actually live, would you prefer urban, suburban, small town, or rural living?
What is the most emotional you’ve ever gotten over a video game?
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fandom-glazed · 5 years
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music asks!
FAVORITES 1. what are your favorite bands? Lord Of The Lost, Porcupine Tree, Nightmare, Frost*, newer: Scarlet Dorn 2. what are your favorite singers? Lady Gaga, Steven Wilson, Zia, Lorde, newer: Down To Eden 3. what are your favorite albums? Thornstar by Lord Of The Lost, In Absentia by Porcupine Tree, To The Bone and Transience by Steven Wilson 4. what are your favorite songs? Six Feet Underground by Lord Of The Lost, Trains by Porcupine Tree, What I’ve Done, In The End and Numb by Linkin Park, My Demons and Ricochet by Starset, From The Flame by Leprous, Lovesongs (They Kill Me) by Cinema Bizarre, Would It Matter by Skillet, Hyperventilate, Experiments in Mass Appeal and Snowman by Frost* 5. what do you think the best popular song of the year is so far? I honestly don’t know. 6. which genres of music do you tend to like the best? Prog, Metal and any heavy stuff (not including “brutal” Death Metal - on a daily basis), Indie, Alternative, Soundtracks 7. what is the best concert you’ve ever been to? Either the Steven Wilson To The Bone Tour concert(s) in Hamburg 2018, or the Lord Of The Lost MEGA tour concert in Munich 2016 8. song of the year? My personal songs of the year (not released in 2019) at the moment: Kiss Me by Rob Vischer, While This Way by Árstíðir .2: 2019 still has to deliver! 9. album of the year? See 8.2 10. what are the best songs your parents have gotten you into? Anything by Keane, Evanescence, Depeche Mode,... 11. how did you first find out about your favorite band/singer? My own, like, nothing I inherited from my parents, favorite band was probably Cinema Bizarre and I found them through their first single being played 24/7 on Viva. 12. when/where do you first remember having heard your favorite song? I don’t remember anymore, sadly. I first heard Trains on a train station. 13. about how many times have you listened to your favorite song? I have absolutely no idea, any number I’d name would be too low. 14. if someone asks you what music they should check out, what are your go-to recommendations? I always assume my taste in music is nothing most people would care to listen to, but I’d say everyone should check out Steven Wilson(’s projects) at least once. And I’d promote my favourites in Lord Of The Lost till I die.
NOSTALGIA 15. what songs give you the most nostalgia? Anything by Evanescence, Keane, 80s music in general, The Corrs, Kylie Minogue, HIM... 16. what kinds of music were you raised on? Mostly 80s stuff, some rock, much pop, my mother brought some jazz as well, unfortunately. 17. what are your favorite songs that have ever been popular? See 15., probably :D I love almost every song by Gaga, I’d say she’s definitely popular! 18. who were your favorite musicians as a kid? I adopted my parent’s favorites, mostly The Corrs, specifically their drummer Caroline. Eisblume. Cinema Bizarre. Though that was already in my teens. 19. how did you feel about music as a kid? Music is and has always been my love and a great hobby. 20. what was your first concert? if you haven’t been to one, what do you want your first concert to be? I was six years old and I remember my dad telling me to say I’m seven so the security would let us in. It was The Corrs and I think it was either in the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle in Stuttgart, or in the Olympiahalle Munich. We went to several concerts in that year. (So that’s where I got that from!)
PERFORMANCE 21. how do live performances, whether they’re from your friends or professionals, tend to make you feel? Like in another dimension. 22. singing in the shower or singing in the car? I don’t drive, so, rather in the shower. But mostly at my desktop, extremely loudly. 23. if you were to become a musician, what kind of musician would you be? I am a pianist/multi-instrumentalist, but I think I’d never want to be a professional. 24. if you could pick one instrument to learn how to play, what would it be? If improving on the piano doesn’t count, like, learn something completely new, I’d say, maybe the harp, the cello (though I tried it some years ago). 25. what is your singing voice like? what singers do you remind yourself of? I don’t have a super special singing voice (I’m told otherwise), but I hit all the notes thanks to my trained hearing. I don’t really remind myself of someone particular, but I can make my voice sound like different singers like Scarlet Dorn, Lorde or the singer of a band, I just discovered, Trees Of Eternity. 26. have you ever been involved in any music programs? which ones and for how long? I have been member of my music school’s programme/ensemble. 27. which instruments do you know how to play? what’s your skill level? I’ve been playing the piano for 13 years, if I’d kept up the hard work I put in it until 2016, I’d be rather high-skilled, I started to play the guitar some years ago, but I was never really sufficiently active. I also began playing drums and even cello, but due to price and neighbours I couldn’t continue. I am an autodidact singer and I can play the bodhran. 28. if you took music lessons as a kid, are you glad you did? if not, do you wish you had? I am glad I took piano lessons, but I wish I had started taking guitar lessons sooner. I’d be much better by now and I also adored my teacher as a person. He kinda reminds me of my actual mentor now.
SOUNDTRACKS 29. how do you feel about video game soundtracks? I love video game soundtracks. 30. what soundtracks do you enjoy listening to the most? It changes from time to time, but at the moment I love the Mass Effect: Andromeda soundtrack and also the Dragon Age soundtracks, as well as most of the Marvel movies’, Ghibli movies’ and Game Of Thrones’. 31. which soundtracks do you think are objectively the best (or what are some that you think deserve appreciation)? I’d say check out Trevor Morris, Joe Hisaishi and Ramin Djawadi and you’re on the right scent. 32. how do you feel about musicals? I absolutely love musicals and used to visit some as often as I could with my aunt. 33. do you have any favorite composers, including classical ones? See 31, as for classical ones, I love Rachmaninov, Bach and Chopin. 34. are there any soundtracks or kinds of soundtracks that you just can’t stand? Can’t think of any at the moment. 35. what are your favorite songs/soundtracks from movies? I stared to obsess with Under Stars by AURORA from the ME: Andromeda credits, I love the Misty Mountains, The Marvel Avengers theme and the Harry Potter soundtrack, actually I can’t possibly remember everything to write it down.
LYRICS 36. what are some songs whose lyrics you relate to? Ou, that’s a personal one. There are many. But to name a few: Would It Matter by Skillet, Covered In Gold and Walls Of Utopia by Oh Fyo!, Don’t Hate Me and Prodigal by Porcupine Tree, Pariah and Hand Cannot Erase by Steven Wilson, No Me No You by Frost*, almost everything by Scarlet Dorn as well as Black Halo and most of all Cut Me Out by Lord Of The Lost 37. pick a song and analyse its lyrics. Can’t do, shouldn’t do, probably. 38. which songs do you think have the best lyrics? There’s just SO many. 39. what are some songs whose lyrics you think most people just don’t get? Six Feet Underground by Lord Of The Lost, not your typical love songTM, Harmony Korine by Steven Wilson, also so much by Steven Wilson. 40. are there any musicians whose lyrics you particularly tend to like? Steven Wilson. Next! :D 41. do you prefer songs that have good melodies or songs that have good lyrics? Good melodies, generally. But once I got hooked on by the sound I live for good lyrics.
CHALLENGES 42. name five songs you like that were released in the 90s. Join Me In Death by HIM, Walking In My Shoes by Depeche Mode, Rosier by Luna Sea, Viva Forever by Spice Girls, Enter Sandman by Metallica 43. name five songs you like that were released at least 50 years ago. I could name you some classical compositions... 44. write a parody of at least a verse of any song you’d like. Reign, reign on me, reign on me, reign on me. Reign, wash away, triangles and tears, blur all your plot and reign on me. 45. name 5 songs you can’t stand. Despacito, Despacito, Despacito,... 46. look at your country’s song charts, listen to the first unfamiliar song you can find, and share your opinion on it. I didn’t know and didn’t like any of the first eight I looked at. That’s how much I love chart music! 47. turn a song lyric into a pickup line. Until the end of night... (listen to Blood For Blood by Lord Of The Lost. I won’t explain any further.) 48. name the last 5 songs you listened to. While This Way by Árstíðir, Loreley by Lord Of The Lost, Ten Feet High by Andrea Corr, a song I mixed and mastered, Sinking Ships by Trees Of Eternity
RANDOM 49. what are your favorite album covers? In Absentia by Porcupine Tree, Thornstar by Lord Of The Lost, Hand Cannot Erase by Steven Wilson, Resist by Within Temptation, Milliontown by Frost* ... 50. any cover versions that you think are better than the original? I mostly like the cover version and the original. 51. how often do you listen to music? 24/7 52. do you collect vinyls? if so, what have been your best finds? I do have some by Lord Of The Lost and Steven Wilson. 53. if you could meet any musician you’d like, who would it be? Steven Wilson. By faaaar. 54. how do you feel about classical music? I love classical music. 55. would you ever want to have a career in music? I am, in fact, an aspiring audio engineer. 56. if you had a stage name, what would it be? My stage name for audio productions and art is nadzumi. 57. on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is music to you? 11. 58. how do you feel about rap music? Don’t like it. Only a few songs. I like Eminem. And I found the influence in Linkin Park very interesting. But I’d rather stay away. 59. what do you think the best “era” for music was? I’d say the 80s, some of the 90s and now, because there’s such a diversity, everyone will find something they can love. 60. how has music affected you as a person? I’d say I am music. (Music has affected everything.) Feel free to ask away any number if you want me to answer it in more detail!
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dismalzelenka · 6 years
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20 Questions
@buttsonthebeach tagged me in the getting to know you meme, but since I did that one recently I took the liberty of breaking the rules and finding another tag meme to answer instead. >:Dc
1. One thing you would change in your personality?
The constant undercurrent of social anxiety that renders me completely unable to speak coherently at the worst possible moments. I would love to have steady employment, social anxiety. Please stop cockblocking my job status. :^)
2. What is your DA rare pair?
MARIAN HAWKE AND RALEIGH SAMSON
GO RAID MY AO3, MY KIRKWALL TRASH HEAPS ARE WAITING
Sweetest Downfall
Arms Around the Past
3. A song that made you cry?
Passage by Vienna Teng. I've never had a song get me completely unglued on the last six words before this.
4. The best movie ever?
Love, Actually.
Fight me.
5. Food you will never eat?
C I L A N T R O >:(
6. Your celebrity crush?
Felicia Day. Mark of the Assassin DESTROYED me. 😅
7. Your favorite DA location and why?
Vigil's Keep. Because like. You're the head dumpster fire, in charge of recruiting more dumpster fires, and also you're apparently running an Arling that you never asked for and you have to deal with all these shitty nobles all the time but YOUR DUMPSTER FIRES are all right there beside you and you have the best papa dumpster fire ever who kicks nobles out of your dumpster fire house when you're tired of partying and basically it's this tiny fucked up little family and you all stumble down to breakfast in the morning in various states of hung over except for that one dwarf guy who's probably still drunk, you eat your eggs and toast in cranky silence, and then you go be big goddamn heroes.
....I really loved Awakening ok. Fite me.
8. You’re a night or a morning person?
I'm like a "night but the part of night where it's technically morning right up til morning" kind of person.
9. You have any tattoos?
Yus.
Nobody sigil from Kingdom Hearts wrapped in a treble clef between my shoulder blades.
A design of Helios on my left upper arm with "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" underneath it because House Martell prideeee.
The Arabic word for "cat" on my left forearm, drawn to look like a cat.
I'm saving up for a griffon tattoo and maybe a stylized one of "can I get you a ladder so you can get off my back?" :3
10. How many languages you speak?
Fluent in English. Can understand Korean fairly well, but can't speak it quite as easily. Basic fluency in Italian. I can read it much better that I can speak it.
11. Where would you most like to visit?
The mountains in South Korea. I was born there and I've only ever been back to Seoul and a village on the outskirts where my grandparents lived. I want to spend like a week or so out there under the stars. ❤️
12. What’s the best book you’ve read?
The Poisonwood Bible.
So I was forced to read this in high school. And I went to a Baptist high school, so of course when I saw this summary of it I immediately went "oh fuck no."
"The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River."
Like. I was FULLY prepared to grit my teeth and spark notes another goddamn glorified colonialism story.
And then I read the damn thing.
And y'all this book is FUCKED UP. That missionary family? It's told from the POV of all of the daughters as they watch their father get more and more fanatical and abusive, as they struggle with culture shock, NONE of them wanted to be here, the majority of them slowly start to lose their faith and abandon their religion.
One of the girls is very clearly neurodivergent, but she's not really written as a character you're supposed to feel sorry for, and she's a total badass.
It has its problematic elements, but I think the fact that it's now seared indelibly into my brain is because I was 100% expecting a fucked up pro missionary story and ended up finding a story of the shit that happens to everyone else in the periphery of said pro missionary stories.
Was incredibly surprised to have read this in my AP Lit class at a Baptist high school, but goddamn, it shook me.
13. Who is your favourite BioWare character?
A N D E R S
Anders is my boy. I will ride or die for Anders. Anders was right. Fuck the Chantry. F I T E M E.
Bonus: fine Dwarven crafts, direct from Orzammar
14. Who’s your least preferred BioWare character?
Going to stick to Dragon Age because I'm too tired to rummage through my brain for other fandoms. And there's so many people I hate in Mass Effect. Hah.
Anyway. Livius Erimond kind of grinded my gears a lot, so much so that in my first mage playthrough I pissed off a ton of people and made him Tranquil. Like. My entire inner circle disapproved, it was fucking amazing. I'll never be able to make myself do it again because I felt so dirty after that I literally had to pause the game and take a shower, but man. Erimond is really good at pressing buttons.
15. What’s your favourite game?
Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect 3. And Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Valen Shadowbreath was my first bioware love.
16. What’s your spirit animal patronus?
According to Pottermore it's a dragonfly but I'm pretty sure it's actually a cat.
Going with patronus instead of spirit animal because I've been asked to avoid appropriating that term as someone who is not of Native ancestry, and so I shall. Respect indigenous cultures. ✌️❤️
17. Cake or ice cream?
Fine Dwarven cakes, direct from Orzammar. Preferably almond or Chantilly. :D
18. Dogs or cats?
🐈 Kitties 🐈
19. What was your favourite DA romance?
3 Way Tie (although this could change since I haven't done all of them myself.)
Anders - because his whole arc is just so FUCK THE CHANTRY and he's such a Good Person who is Struggling and at the end of the day he's a soft feathery boy who loves you and cares about making people not hurt anymore and also is into some wild shit in bed and also loves cats. Let's be mentally ill cuddly softs together, Anders, I will give you my everything always, my soft feathery mage boy. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Leliana - soft but stabby song princess becomes the pope and her devoted girlfriend wife swoons quietly through all of it.
Cullen - weirdly enough, I did not expect to enjoy this romance as much as I did. I kind of hated him in the first two games, like when I ran into him in 2 I still hadn't forgiven him for the "KILL ALL THE MAGES" outburst and was just like. "Ugh it's this motherfucker." And then I saw him again in Inquisition and was like WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHITHEAD DOING HERE? HE'S FIRED. FIRE HIM, CASSANDRA.
But then Cassandra never reciprocated my affections, Blackwall yelled at me on the battlements about propriety and we're at war so I dumped him, and then Vivienne turned me down and I was like FINE FUCK ALL Y'ALL I'M GONNA SMOOCH CULLEN OUT OF SPITE.
And then he's all like. "I went through some shit. I said some really fucked up stuff. Also I'm trying to get clean and it's literally killing me but I don't want anything to do with that old life anymore." And the chess scene, and then me getting really personally enraged at all the Orlesians copping nonconsensual feels at Halamshiral and then I woke up one day and was like wow OK this dude's alright, he's even kind of cute, I guess I can-
"marry me?" "OKAY YES."
*shrug* I'm weak.
20. Do you prefer sunshine or are you a winter person?
Sunshine in winter, ideally, but if I have to choose between one or the other, winter.
Anyway. I broke rules, oops. Gonna tag @sasshole-for-rent @suzumicchi @joufancyhuh @laraslandlockedblues @becauseanders @inner-muse @ladymdc @agentkatie @kawakaeguri @a-shakespearean-in-paris @ekoorb03 @lyrium-lovesong @5ftgarden
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Nightcrawlers
Robert McCammon (1984)
1
“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement.
Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen.
“Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?”
“No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves.
Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm.
“You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too.
She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton.
Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head.
Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago.
Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!”
“Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon.
The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot.
2
The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car.
“Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat.
When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it.
“Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over.
“Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.”
“Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?”
“Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!”
I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked.
“No complaints.”
“Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?”
Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.”
“Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.”
Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper.
“Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap.
Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.”
“What’s that?”
“Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?”
“A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.”
“Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.”
I grunted. “Guess not.”
“No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.”
“Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.”
Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain.
All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break.
“Come on in and take a seat,” I said.
“Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.”
“Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.”
“We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.”
“That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool.
The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?”
“Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food.
“Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?”
“I guess not. Sorry.”
She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.”
I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.”
“Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—”
He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool.
I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner.
We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said.
The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner.
3
He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him.
Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.”
The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance.
“Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?”
The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?”
Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out.
“That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned.
“Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously.
“Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check.
The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?”
“More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong.
“That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?”
I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily.
“Been on the road a long time, huh?”
Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?”
“No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.”
He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.”
He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away.
But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer.
The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down.
I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise.
“One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.”
My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.”
Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—”
“No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.”
Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?”
“Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said.
Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes.
Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.”
Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.”
“Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?”
Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.”
“How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?”
A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.”
“What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?”
Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.”
“Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!”
Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.”
“Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?”
“The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.”
“Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?”
Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face.
Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light.
“I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.”
“The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.”
“There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.”
Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet.
Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.”
Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.”
“Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—”
Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.”
“A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”
“Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.”
I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter.
Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me.
“A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—”
Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me.
“Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered.
A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak.
The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy.
Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses.
“I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.”
“You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?”
Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.”
“Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?”
“The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.”
“You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—”
He stopped, staring at the gun he held.
It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat.
“I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door.
Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily.
“Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?”
Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving.
“He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!”
Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.”
I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise.
“What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!”
“No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.”
“Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—”
Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?”
I heard only the roar and crash of the storm.
“Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy.
“Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!”
Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead.
“It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!”
“Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped.
On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony.
Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me.
Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees.
Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare.
Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’”
As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out.
“Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.”
4
Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself.
A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter.
“What the hell—” Dennis said.
He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself.
The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere.
Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out.
There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear.
Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone.
You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head.
The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind.
Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped.
Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler.
When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best.
On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …”
The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him.
And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy.
There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face.
A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework.
We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him.
I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood.
But I had that pistol in my hand.
I heard Ray shout, “Look out!”
In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly …
I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished.
More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats.
Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again.
A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight.
I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover.
I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long.
Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me.
I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price.
There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade.
I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched.
Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet.
“End it,” he whispered. “End it …”
One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him.
The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time.
He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh.
It sounded almost like relief.
The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore.
I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last.
5
A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like.
Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say.
Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck.
The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two.
Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull.
I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it.
But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not.
I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men.
Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.”
I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said.
I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory.
A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite.
But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either.
Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden.
I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives.
The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop.
But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change.
And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
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strawberrycelia · 7 years
Text
I fancied you’d return like you said
Guys!! Look at me! I’m writing so much! I want to be like the big cool grownup writing blogs!!!
Anyway, more darkstache using the gore prompt “Why…why are you holding your stomach? Is that blood?!” And the title is from Silvia Plath’s A Mad Girl’s Lovesong.
Angsty. Enjoy <3
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Dark is not Wilford’s mother. He does not have to stay up late worrying whenever Wilford fails to come home on time, it’s not his responsibility - and yet, here he is, up pacing in the kitchen because the night sky is beginning to lighten, and Wilford hasn’t come home from last night’s escapades. Dark is absolutely furious.
That is, until the door clicks up and Wilford stumbles in looking like he’s been hit by a bus. Dark’s anger quickly transitions into something closer to fear.
“Wilford? Why are you holding your stomach? Is that blood?” Wilford’s gaze is distant, and his hand is clutching a suspiciously red looking stain on his pale yellow shirt. No. Dark knew he should have gone with Wilford, he rarely lets his friend out of his sight for so long. He knows all too well that fate is a cruel bitch, and reality even colder. That he can lose the ones he loves at any given moment, and that the universe wouldn’t bat an eye.
But Wilford is different. Wilford never gets hurt - he’s always been trigger happy and godlike, coming out of every fight covered in blood that was seldom his own.
Not this time. “He shot me?” Wilford is sinking to his knees on the kitchen floor, sounding lost and confused. “He shot me, Dark, he shot me and I ran home. I knew you’d know what to do, Dark, it hurts.” And Dark feels the words like a kick to the gut. Wilford trusts him, even now he thinks Dark will be able to fix this. Sinking right down next to him, Dark grabs onto the hem of Wilford’s dress shirt and rips through it with little regard for anything but preserving his friends life.
“God, Wil, what have you done to yourself?” Dark speaks without thinking, staring at the bloody hole in his friend’s gut. He’s bleeding so much, Dark’s hands are covered near immediately, and it feels all too fitting.
Dark can’t fix this. Yet, of course Wilford doesn’t understand that. Why would he? He’s never grasped the permanence of death, and Dark has never helped him to. Wilford thinks Dark can do anything, he always saw the best in the bitter vengeful man Dark has become. And Dark has only ever hoped to shelter Wilford, never once considering he could suffer like this.
“Hush, Will. I know, you’ll be alright.” Dark lies right through his teeth. The bullet went right into Wil’s stomach, and there’s so much blood that Dark is sure that there’s no way something important wasn’t damaged.
“What are we going to do, Dark?” Wilford sounds weaker now, and he’s slumping right into his chest, head tucked beneath Dark’s chin. “I can’t die. You and me will be together forever, that’s what you said. If this is a joke, it’s not a funny one,” and his voice is so fragile, like Dark’s is holding him together in his arms.
Dark swallows thickly, and presses his face into Wilford’s hair, taking deep breaths. He smells like their bed, he smells like the soap in the shower they share, he smells like the only home Dark has ever known. “I don’t know, William. I’m so sorry.”
“It’ll be alright, you said so yourself.” Wilford’s breathing is labored, and his clammy hands find one of Dark’s to grip loosely, like somehow it will keep him rooted here.
Wilford is dying, and every part of Dark is dying with him. His heart, his mind, his very soul seems to be perishing at the thought of living in a world without the man he’s grown to adore. The man who he loved before he was even an idea in the mind Damien or Celine, the one exception to all of the bad inside of him. “Oh my William,” he breathes as if it has just dawned on him. “I’ve failed you.”
In response, a soft whimpering noise. The front of Dark’s suit is growing damp, and he realizes Wilford must be crying.
They stay like that for a long while, Dark just holding on to Wilford because it’s all he can do anymore. They’re both clinging to each other like they’ve done so many times before, but this time Dark’s heart is heavy with the knowledge that he’s let another person he loves down.
And then, Wilford is going heavy against Dark’s chest. His head rolls to the side, and he becomes nearly impossible to hold.
He’s dead, you killed him, you failed him. William, William, William, Dark can hear the voices of Damien and Celine speaking in tandem in his mind, heavy with grief and loss.
With his world destroyed in his arms, Dark screams. A loud bellow of grief that erupts from somewhere deep inside of him and shakes the house, his shell cracking and spilling as the best piece of Dark, the only part of himself he ever loved, is ripped from him.
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benbarnesescape · 7 years
Text
A Letter to My Love
Requests:  Hi dear! I finally remembered what i wanted the Caspian Imagine to be about hahaha Could you do one where caspian wife is giving birth to their first son and he's waiting outside the bedroom where she's giving birth and he keeps thinking everything they have been through? Maybe how they met, how was their courtship, wedding, the coronation of his wife, all that stuff and finally how he reacts when he finally hears his son cries and enters the room and meet his wife and son hahahhah I know its quite specific but I love the way you write and how well you describe everything
A/N: OMG this took me forever @ladyblablabla but I literally rewrote three times before I decided this was the sweetest way to capture what you envisioned. I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it and that it was worthy of the wait. I literally listened to Lovesong by Adele probably thirty times writing it because i think it's a song that captures the way Caspian would love his wife. Enjoy!!!
Warnings: None
Permanent Tag List: @la-fille-en-aiguilles, @starless-skyox @livelearnandtravel
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My love,
You always ask me how I fell in love with you. What was it that pulled me into the enigma that is you. I must tell you, my dear, that it was your smile. It was bright as you walked along the courtyard that young spring day, laughing along with your ladies in waiting, your hair pulled back in coils and curls, falling along your back.
It was your smile that had captured my attention.
I loved the way you smiled at everyone, didn’t matter who they were, as you talked among court leaders about ways to expand the lands of Narnia. It was they way you smiled at me, your eyes barely flicking and taking me in, before walking past me as though I was no one. You did this for weeks and I wondered what I could do to have your eyes fall on me longer, your eyes tugged into that perfect smile.
I knew from the start that I wanted to look at that smile forever.
So I spent endless days plotting with everyone I knew at court on ways I could get your attention. Reepicheep spent hours giving me silly sonnets to sing to you, but unlike him I hadn't the gift of song ( I know, my darling, that you would disagree).
I spoke to Dr. Cornelius about the problem and he had told me simply to be myself. You and him were good friends, I was later to discover, and he knew that you had found me as charming as I you. Yet, at the moment, I couldn’t bear do that.
I was a king who had no idea how to rule a kingdom. What if you saw that, the way I believed my advisors had, and laughed at me. What if you took my ramblings of my love for stars as that of man who needed to keep his head out of the skies and more in reality? What if you found me lofty?
That my love, was what kept me from you. Pure insecurity and fear.
Yet it was you at the end, as it always is, who approached me. I was training in the courtyard with my men and little did I know that you had been watching me train on bow and arrow. An area that was not unfamiliar to me but also not my strength. Not like swordplay was. It was you that had picked up the cache of arrows behind me, aiming at the target with ease and hitting it. It was you that smiled at me when I turned in disbelief, the bow still placed against your flushed lips, a proud smile on your face.
That smile that always made my heart skip a beat.
You that walked toward me, instructing me that I pulled too much to the left when I aimed and that you would be more than happy to show me how to correct the error. We practiced until twilight, until my hands were blistered and you offered me a spot at your father's table for dinner, where we chatted for hours, our laughter filling the large space.
Later, my most trusted man Lord Drinian, had teased me about how smitten I was with you. How large my smile was when your hand caressed against mine, or the way my skin flushed when your breath tickled my ear as you whispered funny jokes to me. He meant to tell me out of shame but I knew, I knew from the start, that I had to make you mine.
That I loved you and I belonged to you.
From that night, I made a point to have you know of my intentions. I sent flowers to your chambers, spent endless hours showing you my library and the many gifts Narnia's had bestowed on me on my travels. Went on long horseback rides with you in the forest where we joked and chased each other like school children. You never let slip your feelings of me until a cool fall evening, where we snuck out with each other to watch a star shower. You had told me that your favorite constellation was that of Scorpio and his story of Orion. How you would also plead to Aslan to form a constellation just for me if someone took it upon themselves to kill me. How you worried every time I left the castle to travel on the Dawn Voyager, worried that someone would steal me away from you.
You looked at me with tears in your eyes and I couldn’t think my heart could fill with as much love as it did in that moment.
I remember that we kissed for the first time, my chapped lips pressed against your feathery ones as my hands gripped your face, wanting to memorize the way you tasted. You always taste sweet, my darling, like the first taste of strawberries in the summer.
You always asked me what had passed after that, when I made my love for you known to your father. I never spoke of it, nor did he, because we didn’t want you to….distance yourself from him. But now that he is gone from this world I find that I must share it with you.
I never can keep my secrets from you. I hated to keep this one.
He didn’t want you to marry a king. While he respected me, was loyal to me, would fight for me, he didn’t want me to marry you, his daughter. Didn’t want you to get trapped in court life. Didn’t want you serving a man who could only serve his country. Didn’t believe that I was capable to do both. He found me naive and young and restless and he thought you deserved someone older, wise and calm.
It was why he had you taken from the castle for months, leaving us only to the device of pen and paper to communicate our love. It wasn’t until he saw that my absence in your life was breaking your spirit. How your smile no longer lived on that angelic face.
So he relented.
That, my love, is how special you are.
I remember our wedding day. I remember watching you walk down the long aisle, that smile on your face, your eyes looking into mine. It didn't matter that my groomsmen teased me months later at my tears, that I was a softie. You were beautiful and they knew it.
I remember the way your hands felt against mine, small and shaky as your father gave you away. Remember stealing a glance during prayers, watching as your eyelashes caressed your cheeks under the evening light. Remember the way you danced at our reception afterwards, drunk on wine and love, as your arms wrapped around my neck. I whispered how unlady like you looked, teasing you because I knew you didn’t care and you kissed me. Claimed to the world that I was yours. You were mine. You whispered later it did not matter what the world thought of you just what I did.
My darling, I think the world of you.
You ask me, when I’m out at sea like I am now, how I pass the nights. If it ever gets lonely now that you can’t travel at my side. Of course my luv, the nights are the longest without you in my arms. I am spent staying up late at night thinking about our wedding night and the nights to follow.
I remember the way you looked the night we became one. The way your hands caressed mine in reverence, touching and exploring my body as I watched you. The way your lips puckered before my own found them, claiming them for myself. The way you felt, warm and full, how I couldn’t get more of you. The way you sounded, your whispered sighs filling the room as my hands entwined in your own. I love the way you look before you give all of yourself to me, body shaking under my own.
I love all of you.
I remember the way you looked during your coronation. When you officially became my queen. The way you wore the colors of Narnia, the dark burgundy and gold colors against your skin as you walked down the aisle alongside me. The proud way you held your chin at other lords who came to watch the festivities. The way that I saw men bend to your beauty alone, not knowing the strength behind your words or the talent behind your arrow.
You were meant to be my equal.
I remember recent months past, hearing the sounds of your screams echoing against the cold, drab walls of our castle. The way the servants hurried throughout your chamber doors in whispered tones, never making eye contact as they bought sheets and buckets of water to comfort you. For two agonizingly long days I sat outside our doors, barely sleeping, my hands in my hair. Worried for you. Worried for our child.
But you are strong, my love. You both are.
It was the sound of the scream that broke me from my zombied state. The way it resonated high pitched and strong and the relief of your handmaidens. The way the head nurse ran out to me to announce that we had produced a son. I don’t remember running into to the room, waiting properly for the handmaidens to clean days of your battle.
I locked eyes with you, you who was exhausted and were wearing that smile. Our son in our arms, nestled safely against your breast. The doctor assured me that you were in good health as that of my son but I cared naught to hear. I just needed to feel you, kiss my lips against your sweaty forehead before looking down into the creation that even Aslan himself would argue mirrored the beauty he had created on earth.
Caspian the 11th.
I miss you, my sweetheart. I miss you and our son. As the winds draw me closer to you, closer to our family, I write this to you, in my cabinet under candlelight. The ship is quiet and the groans of the wood echo against my ears. How I long to hear your voice. How I long to feel your lips.
How I long to be in your arms again.
Forever Yours,
Caspian the X
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alivingfire · 7 years
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Hi Rachel, do you have any Sterek fic recs?
YES. i did one rec here, just in case you missed it, but here are some more i’ve read recently. (this is just a mix of canon compliant/AUs, but if you want a specific trope or something, let me know) 
→ The Morning When It’s Clear“She makes me have dinner with her and the Sheriff every week,” Derek admits. “She keeps saying I don’t eat well enough. Too much fast food, she says. I keep reminding her I’m a werewolf and then I get a lecture about cholesterol. That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Did you accidentally puppy-dog eye her?” Scott asks seriously.
“I – no? What the hell, no.” He levels a glare at Scott. “And dog jokes aren’t funny.”
Scott laughs. “You totally did. Oh my God. That’s priceless.”
Or: Derek feels, basically.
→ Muérdago"Mistletoe was often considered a pest that kills trees and devalues natural habitats, but was recently recognized as an ecological keystone species, an organism that has a disproportionately pervasive influence over its community. In Norse myth, an arrow made of mistletoe was the only thing that was able to kill the god Balder. The goddess Frigg had asked all other things to vow not to hurt Balder, but she had ignored the mistletoe because it seemed too small to be dangerous."
→ oh what a shame (y’all know me and my love for demon aus)He never expected it would be easy, trying to be human, but he never expected it would be this goddamn difficult either.
→ (Sacred) In the Ordinary ***SUPER NEW FAVE***The Pack, after college, graduate school and the starting of careers, comes back to Beacon Hills. Nothing's gotten less complicated after all this time.
→ When Rome’s In Ruins (We Are the Lions) (i’ve never read worldbuilding like this, honestly)Humankind has turned arena battles between supernatural creatures into its largest form of entertainment. Stiles Stilinski is a well-known warden who comes to arena-fighter Derek Hale to make him an offer.
→ state of readiness (series)After barely defeating the Alpha pack, Derek is determined to give his own pack members the one-on-one training they need to ensure each is ready for the next enemy. He sets out with a goal of eliminating everyone's biggest weakness, but if he thought his pack would let self-improvement pass their Alpha by, he's sadly mistaken. When Stiles is chosen to mentor Derek, things between them change forever.
→ Last Lovesong of a Dying LemonStiles' Jeep keeps breaking down. Derek is a mechanic.
→ A Life Less OrdinaryIt takes a few years but eventually they manage to agree on something; Derek Hale is an asshole, and Stiles Stilinski is in love with him.
→ Not Like Bond & Moneypenny(AKA, the Ugly Betty AU where Stiles is totally Betty)
Stiles thinks he’s finally getting a break when a job at the sleek, sophisticated, Alpha Magazine opens up - but soon realises he’s not going to be writing anything and instead is playing tutor-slash-babysitter to their new Editor-in-Chief. Derek’s spoiled, grumpy, in way over his head...and so painfully attractive it makes Stiles want to lick his face. So there’s very little choice in the matter.
“Totally not like that,” he maintains, “It’s not like we’re Bond and Moneypenny.”
Scott gives him an excited grin, chuckling. “Dude, you’re totally his Miss Moneypenny!” he says, eyes wide like the world just finally started to make sense. “You’re the only one who won’t sleep with him even though you’re dying to.”
→ #omegaproblemsStiles didn't need an alpha. He might want one, though.
→ Such Things Don’t Bear Repeating (very dark, but i love it) A wizard, a wolf, and a boy. Or: spells and magic can never truly substitute for strength. (Harry Potter AU, in triplicate.)
→ How to Be A Normal PersonInstead he sits for a moment, looking at the empty search box, fingers on the home row the way his mother taught him. He thinks about that, and about the hole in the wall he’d lived with for so long, and the way Isaac had grinned at him last night when he’d finally gotten around to plugging the refrigerator in.
He finds himself typing in, “how to be a normal person.”
→ Binomial CoefficientsIn which brainy freshman Stiles Stilinski wants star quarterback Derek Hale to join the math team, AKA math nerds in love.
→ Around the BendThe first time Derek catches sight of the new yoga instructor, Stiles is in the middle of showing a class how to do downward-facing dog. Derek walks into a wall.
Things don’t exactly improve from there.
Derek can't stop staring at Stiles, the bendy new yoga instructor at his family's gym. Stiles thinks Derek's a repressed homophobe who hates Stiles for making him want the D. They fall in love.
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ulyssesredux · 6 years
Text
Scylla and Charybdis
Three score and ten, sir … I shall never forget you.
But do not know. Freeman's Journal?
Ay, meacock. You had a midwife to mother as he had nothing to be.
The faithful hermetists await the light, born of an ideal or a mouse that gets its own sake, either with or without documents?
He also took away a complacent sense that he is most serious. A basilisk.
Peter Piper pecked a peck of pickled pepper.
Lydgate. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the uncle of Dorothea? I feel Hamlet quite young.
Sayest thou so?
My flesh hears him: ave, rabbi: the debts were paid, Mr. Brooke was annoyed at the Rectory, she chose, a king and no truant memory. In Cymbeline, in another.
The flag is up on the subject, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess.
Since then the other, while they awaited Sir James's entrance. Five months. It shone by day.
Lapwing. Other I got pound.
Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder. —Would not, always with the thousand pounds, and in the market.
But Hamlet is so clean and well again would be laying herself open to a demonstration that she may not connect it with my money, it would be my duty to study that I know. It is still possible that that player Shakespeare, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, on a generous sympathy, and by night, Stephen smiling said, you know, or probable that your purposes were pure.
He knows your old fellow. Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. Freeman's Journal? Jest on.
Yes, I want to be.
If the earthquake did not answer, she felt it better that he, too, Stephen said, I should see how baby grows all the rest, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all the plans, but it's so typical the way we to be more consoling if others wanted to hear the discussion.
I by memory because under everchanging forms. God: noise in the vesture of buried Denmark, a provincial town. Is it possible, I wanted it. Shakes. He had conquered himself so far, and had understood from him the better in his usual chair, but ladies usually are fond of doing as I sit here now but by reflection from that first. She gets you a job on the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, but the living mother. Now your best French polish. A child Conmee saved from pandies. Did he?
Amplius.
O, the holy office an ostler does for the mummers, he said, has written those wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to her nature, every sign is apt to appear monotonous, and take the letter to Mr Norman … —His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin, Stephen said, amending his gloss easily. Lydgate did not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the greeting of their smiles. This was a mixture of playful fault-finding and hyperbolical gallantry, as shallow as Plato's. Of me? Street of harlots after.
I were?
Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit, on a corner of the jews for whom, as a barrister, since Miss Brooke as a painter of old Italy set his face in a stride John Eglinton's desk. Here he ponders things that were not vanity in order to play the part of the jews for whom, as the pathetic loveliness of all the other. The dour recluse still there he has created, in Winter's Tale are we may guess. Malachi Mulligan is coming.
BEST: I am in his mind from his mother how to bring Haines. He had been invited to Freshitt and the two rages commingle in a watering-place, and that the Father was Himself His Own Self but yet shall come in here, and in his wise and curious way to an aunt who does not walk the night, and everything go on as it shines on the hillside. The three brothers Shakespeare.
They list. —Dialectic, Stephen answered, laying down her work, but she blamed herself for it since you don't believe it yourself. Old wall where sudden lizards flash.
When, then?
He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. A myriadminded man, Mr Best, douce herald, said Mrs Cadwallader, and behaving rudely to him, a wellset man with only a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his form, the man: full of confident hope about this interview. Blast you. He found in the brains of men: I feel that Russell is right. I feel Hamlet quite young. Mrs.
I was afraid of creeping paralysis? He had never entered into Rosamond's life, reflects itself in another tone, Yet you have made all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the brisk air, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as I can. Telegram!
The sense of beauty? It is one hat is one hat is one of nature's most naive toys. Secabest leftabed. Do you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the quaker librarian said.
Belief in himself has been explained, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
But I am afraid I am rather short-sighted. Cease to strive.
Hold to the old habit of speaking with perfect genuineness asserting itself through all her sons, Susan, her poor dear Willun, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and she said, after what you have a porter's theory of equivocation.
Yeats touch? It's better for you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie, the fairytales.
That is what we most care for his daughters, for his old cronies in Stratford and a Richard are recorded in the resolve to do something to clear you. A vestal's lamp. Autontimorumenos.
When all is that in virtue of which it is always turned elsewhere, backward. Said, Thank you very much, Mr Best said youngly.
College Green.
—Helicon, now. Lifted.
Dowden, Highfield house … —I was afraid of treading on it: prosperous Prospero, the plumbers' hall. Exactly, said Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly as he would have made all the past, I want to know the unhappy mistakes about their own.
Notre ami Moore says Malachi Mulligan is coming too.
But she, the angel of the first, darkening even his own house and family. BEST: I hope Edmund is going out over the hell are you driving at? —O, flowers! You will say no more a son be not a son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his life, reflects itself in another.
Was he here? —… In which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the manor and other noble and worthi men, young Hamlet and Macbeth with the old block, is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the horrible hue and cry O, fie!
They are sundered by a social life which were not many moments for Will to walk about with his diploma under his arm, at Eglinton Johannes, of his blood will repel him. Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his head that he was, said Celia; an omission which Dorothea afterwards thought of the emotions.
He murmured then with blond delight for all they were worth. Smile. He could not submit my soul alive in. Filled with his hat still in his wise and curious way to show us a French triangle.
May I go and see her? This young creature has a heart large enough for the use of the leaves as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left behind me.
I wonder whether you should have to put a great deal of political work to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way he works it out. But we had thought of her husband she remarked, It will come round tonight.
Buck Mulligan bent down. —He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan moaned. You will say no more.
—I mean of the past, I envy you that if the preference had not been hopeless.
MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names!
Undaunted John Eglinton opined.
—The spirit of Oberlin had passed over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as old Ben did, said Lydgate, wonderingly, as well as a motorcar is now.
I pass one by before my thoughts begin to run on F. M'Curdy Atkinson were there … Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling: I am so glad to carry out all her notions. Eglintoneyes, quick to greet the callous public. He could say no more marriages, glorified man, Mr Secondbest Best said youngly. He is a necessary evil. That model schoolboy, Stephen asked, creaked, asked, would have recognized the disagreeable possibility.
Because the theme of the spectre.
I should like to tell me in a name?
In Grimm too, had escaped to the Merry Wives and, like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a long way off the true position and taken a bribe to concur in some trouble, like the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I would tell Lydgate, mournfully. We shall see how it was now obvious that his treatment of the lord of language and had made himself a lord, his youth his father's decline, his mother's name lives in the day. —Said Dorothea,—that she was there, as well warn you that if the father of all the beasts of the quaker librarian springhalted near. The most innocent son of his last written words, some goad of the money as a fiend—and in point of view.
I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms. She bore his children and she can get away in time. But those who are well off. Said, which led her to marry on earth they masturbated for all: Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, engulfer.
Undaunted John Eglinton said for Mr Best's face, which she had not yet applied herself to which he took the eager interest of a pard, down, so that new ones could be so kind as to give relief, and had been put into all costumes. I thought you would like to do under the heat of irritation.
So you think … The door closed behind the diamond panes?
Gravediggers bury Hamlet père? In words of words for words, wed her second, having killed her first.
Why should I not tell you everything.
No; I ought to allow himself to her husband and wife.
—O, yes. The movements which work revolutions in the morning, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.
T. Caulfield Irwin. Lir's loneliest daughter. A shadow hangs over all the deeper and more bent on making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, she would ask her father look so downcast; and in her life, thy lips enkindle.
The bloodboltered shambles in act five. Do you think … The door closed behind the outgoer.
It would be a drug in the ring of the unexpected way in which bed he slept it skills not to ask, unless it were not obliged to leave Middlemarch and settle in London. But I, the time.
It's what I'm telling you, he walks, greyedauburn.
Folly. The shining seven W.B. calls them.
I put off asking you to suggest there was always to be satisfied by a confession which might open on the subject, to comfort them, auk's egg, prize of their ears I pour. Why won't you wed a wife? But poor Lydgate had come from Tertius. … Evans, conduct this gentleman … If you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, honeying malice: That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know.
We want to know, I feel you would let them save you from that.
Mr Best said brightly, gladly, brightly.
—Only one—of her during the thirtyfour years between the lines of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare. Malachi Mulligan is coming.
The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, quack. That mole is the painting of Gustave Moreau is the standard of all the rest. Farebrother talked of every one else, said Pratt, said Dorothea. Mr Secondbest Best said gently. BEST: That is my name … STEPHEN: He had even opened his lips. Was he here?
Entr'acte. Paris on the madonna which the world, poor Mrs.
If they are grounded on the property which was lost.
It was Celia's private luxury to indulge in this meeting to which she had once fed on. Come, Kinch. O please do, when it can be no interval left for wavering.
In Grimm too, don't you know, reading aloud joyfully: He was overborne in a name?
He showed the white object under his arm. Fred Ryan wants space for memory at Lowick, haven't I?
Sitting alone in the right hand of His Own Son. —The business is done and can't be undone.
Synge has promised me an article on economics.
Did you meet him?
Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.
Maybe, like Jose he kills the real Carmen. But what should we forget Mr Frank Harris. But sometimes she is a question to which she would make a good word for Richard, don't you know what are the dispossessed son: I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a tommy talk as I liked Colum's Drover. Anxiously he glanced in the company of Mr. Casaubon's mind, and said her mother when she went to see it, was enough to persist in his palms.
Catamite. The bloodboltered shambles in act five. She died, Stephen said. Our players are creating a new passion, a girl whose notions about marriage took their color entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the afterlife of his virtue, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the plans were being examined, and gave an attitude of suspense to her, not feeling bound to try this—and in girls of sweet, ardent in its wishes, ardent nature, as prologue to the nibblings and judgments of a pard, down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: I was showing him Jubainville's book. It's what I'm telling you, Miss Brooke, who repaid the slightness exactly, and especially to talk to Mr. Casaubon was not joyous: her married life had fulfilled none of her during the thirtyfour years between the lines of his private life. Said Lydgate, but I can. He swears His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. If you just follow the atten … Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir, said Dorothea.
Three score and ten, sir … I understand you to suggest there was no one to put a great difference in my socks. That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we read the poetry of Shelley, the sea's voice, new, large, clean, bright.
… —The leaning of sophists towards the window, forgetting her previous small vexations.
He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having killed her first impressions had been quite spoiled for her to posterity. —And in a name? Isis Unveiled.
—The spirit of Oberlin had passed through her and gained the world without as actual what was in ignorance of everything connected with the public.
Life would be a bachelor and live near her, if I mistake not?
You flew. Dorothea. With a saffron kilt? Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a galliard he was, and made her receive all his kings Richard is the ghost, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a Celtic legend older than history?
He repeated to John Eglinton's desk sharply.
O mine enemy?
Vincy. Her death brought from him the scope of his previous communications about the hospital.
In words of trust from a provincial town.
O, Kinch, the hardship of Lydgate's position was continually in her neat little effort at oratory, but yet shall come in the ardor of its task. And Harry of six wives' daughter. Clergymen's discussions of the ancient Egyptians, as the money which had really occurred to Mr. Farebrother would believe me, he walked a little petitioner, he lay on his halldoor in Glasthule. It was three o'clock in the forest of Arden. In asking you to lust after you. —Himself his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of cygnets towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a shame that her uncle should have thought that he and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a maid of honour with a sense of property, Stephen said. —Directly, said Lydgate, remembering that he has branded her with infamy tell me why there is a new passion, a wand of wilding in his old spirit, bidding him list. Taim in mo shagart.
I know the Farebrothers better, and when she might wander through the gloom of Lydgate's position was continually in her an interesting object if they can help.
L'art d'être grand … —He knows you. He will see in them, step of a deeper-lying consciousness that he gave me the money to do something to clear himself? —A deathsman of the same electric shock had passed through her and Will. An azured harebell like her veins. —The soul has been, man and boy, a penny a time.
But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their interview, and more effective on her, since Miss Brooke looking so handsome. Oisin with Patrick. The will to live with her at New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, inquiring candor of her spirits, thinking that Lydgate should go to live in his life which seemed to represent the prospect of her nights in peace? He is all in all you know what are the portals of discovery opened to let in the porch of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a bodily shame so steadfast that the opportunity was come to, ineluctably. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks.
It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know. He might call her a creditor or by the appearance of a forgotten faith; and seating herself near him she said—Surely, Tertius—Well? Glo o ri a in ex cel sis De o.
I should know what sort of passion for a thousand pounds, and calling her down from her arms.
Herr Bleibtreu, the lord of language and had so often decided against it—he had to lift their skirts to step over you as you say. Warwickshire to lie withal?
Buck Mulligan said. —It is a mystical estate upon his son. —She died, for her imagination. Ask Sir James shrank with so much correspondence. He is going to call on your unsubstantial father. —Saint Thomas, Stephen said, lifting his brilliant notebook. But, because I took his way of talking at command: it did seem to have no meaning for her sake.
—I don't accuse him of any criminal intention—even Farebrother had not married me.
Cordelia. Casaubon! Nay, there are plenty of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the play in the day, sir.
The words are those of my own honesty. Afterwit. He said you wanted Mr. Brooke, and to find the sage seated on his eyes in the Camden hall when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were scenting the air: The spirit of reconciliation, Stephen said, for his family who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the poet lived?
Cranly's smile.
Let us hear what you will never be a legal fiction.
—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of our younger poets' verses.
Secabest leftabed.
With a saffron kilt? The world believes that the risk would be another. It would be quite worth my while, Mr. Brooke to build a couple of cottages, and the player is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. Gladly glancing, a wellset man with that self-suppression and tolerance, and they have still if our peasant plays are true to type. —Prove that he had written Romeo and Juliet. Shut up. He sat on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his deathbed.
But I, I don't quite understand what you wish for a long while she remonstrated with him still clung about his probable want of confidence on his estate, an androgynous angel, being no more. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most neutral room in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone.
—Telegram! We have so much dislike from the son of Erin, Stephen said. Then, she was born, he sneaks the cup.
And if he wished her to marry her when the long while came forth with an excerpt from a standpoint different from that of Monk, the histories, sail fullbellied on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his doorstep. —Do you believe your own theory? —O, Kinch.
His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. O, yes, he said.
But in this case Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to each other—except that, as a poor substitute for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in the depths of the name, Richard.
He puts Bohemia on the subject she expected to come from Tertius.
In the week-days when she put out her hand and said, a susceptibility to the heart of him that had the alternative dream of pleasures in store for him. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.
Speak on. I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a perversion, like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the prince.
… —His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the library, madam.
… I just eh … wanted … I understand you to do with the institutions of the sting, but distressingly shortsighted in some trouble, imagining that there should be no reconciliation, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals who pray to her husband in his answer, and made her color deeply, as for the first play of the tradition of three centuries?
Item: was Hamlet mad?
Come, Kinch, the heavenly man.
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen. Bald, most fair, most unlike her usual self.
He stopped at the last to go, albeit lingering. List! He's out in pampooties to murder you. Stephen said, genius would be nothing trivial about our lives.
College Green.
Fabulous artificer. Said.
Just where we ought to be: almost everything he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and there was no touch of confusion in her house. The most innocent son of a day in the clergyman's pew; but the easy Rector.
He sued a fellowplayer for the presumptuous way in which she felt that she loved him, as the first to go, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the bankside.
Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name is dear to him, as dear as the first play of the moon: Tir na n-og.
—There's a gentleman to see the ladies at the gate, answered from the admitted wickedness of pagan despots.
The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. She gets you a job on the 2d of October he would let me see it more readily.
This way … Please, sir. They are still.
But to gather in this case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of money into a more massive being than their own. Mr Best said, there! Mark my words, wed her second, having heard of that time, he must give the letter to Mr Norman … —Lovely! Last night I flew. What answer was possible to such a rejection would seem more in harmony with—what a character is Iago!
Cuckoo!
Her ghost at least has been explained, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English.
Who the girls in The Tempest, in that case also, it would have been something else, says you had the chinless mouth.
Portals of discovery opened to let in the sunshine, the studded bridle and her mind against.
Each of them spoke. Lydgate's position was continually in her sympathy, without any asking of mine.
I have made, she ought to make necessary changes in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness. Halted, below me, and picked out what seem the best notion in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to see you at that stile. Who is King Hamlet?
What more's to speak with a direct glance, full of contradictory desires and resolves—desiring some unmistakable proof that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to the poor of heart, the wooden leg and that I can manage it. The first time in making an exact statement for herself but a landholder and custos rotulorum. —But this prying into the fact of disobedience to my son. He says: If Socrates leave his house today, if there were a conspiracy to leave Middlemarch and settle in London and, during part of the unliving son looks forth.
T. Caulfield Irwin. Be acted on. She bore his children and she bore the word remarkably well.
She had a notion of what ought not to mention another Irish commentator, Mr Best said finely. They greeted her with a sort of way. BEST: That is, I still think that the animals about us have souls something like our own, and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. Did you hear me?
—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear. For she looked as reverently at Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness, had felt that Dorothea's words sounded like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister.
—… In which he stated that he would have made your value felt.
Twenty years he lived and suffered. And how very uncomfortable with my little pool!
Frail from the son of his own understanding of himself. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. John Eglinton exclaimed. Louis H. Victory. What's in a peasant's heart on the jordan, she on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other. You make good use of behaving otherwise?
Said her mother when she found her father and mother seated together alone in the heart of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. O, Father Dineen wants … —He hesitated a little too exasperating to have the power of discrimination.
And she had found in the silence between them, auk's egg, prize of their meeting: she may not connect it with my money, and you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie, the vast field of mythical constructions became intelligible, nay, it is a buonaroba, a greying man with that queer thing genius is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the man: full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate.
Will in overplus.
O'Neill Russell?
He also took away a complacent sense that Sir James, as you say.
Mrs.
The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her the position of being a grandfather, Mr Dedalus?
Will. A star, a bill promoter, a maid of honour with a sort of bond marriage is.
Cuckoo!
A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him out to be there by candlelight?
We must remember that he was in a skipping and uncertain way, because I was showing him Jubainville's book.
Have you drunk the four quid? —I mean, a merry puritan, through change of emaciation, but it's so typical the way most gratifying to himself that nobody believed in it towards her husband.
Lydgate's hands.
… I forgot … he … Swill till eleven.
Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to the town council paid for but in a heap, while she had found in the vesture of buried Denmark, a Penelope stayathome. That Portrait of Mr W.H. where he was obliged to go mad in that way, I fear me, he must bend himself to her understanding, sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Clergymen's discussions of the great leather chair he had been need, not help.
Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood tears such as plays a great difference in his world within as possible, so does the artist weave and unweave his image, even though you prove that a man's worst enemies shall be most pleased … Amused Buck Mulligan said. Icarus.
Argal, one should hope, belief, vast as a sob after holding the breath. Strong curtain. You're darned witty.
The next two days Lydgate observed a change in their way of talking to Mr. Casaubon, she was helpless; her hands.
Pallas Athena! Said, if at all, it was the first draft but he felt miserable but determined, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to send out notes of invitation for a small evening party, feeling himself dangerous. You naughtn't to look at these in a new male: his daughter's child. The movements which work revolutions in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the sunshine, the attendant said, there!
John Eglinton, my crown. —It would be more consoling if others wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption.
Gravediggers bury Hamlet père?
You cannot eat your cake and have it on high authority that a sweet girl should be written, Dr Sigerson says.
Why won't you wed a wife?
He spoke curtly, feeling at first imagined him to see the Farebrother family.
As we, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name? —That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know.
His aversion was all very well that I might help him the scope of his lamp. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? After three months Freshitt had become the centre of infamous suspicions.
She was obliged to behave as if the poet lived?
He returns after a life does it spring. The burden of proof is with you not think so, Stephen began … —His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the sonnets were written by a social life which were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that queer thing genius is the signature of his own long pocket. Thoth, god of libraries, a watercarrier; FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE, the night, and determined to tell you what Dowden said!
The boy of act five. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a shadow now, but it had left the huguenot's house in Ireland yard, a poison poured in the tangled glowworm of his own agreement with that spiritual religion, that pound he lent you when you contradict him. Mr Dedalus? Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly.
And that all this way to show us a French town, good masters? I have wished very much, Mr Best asked.
She took his first embraces. Moore is the guilty queen, Ann, Will's widow, is it not only thinking of her soul thirsted to see you at that stile.
But you must not at least, that evening might have been first a sundering. His legal knowledge was great our judges tell us. His fiends, stripped and whipped, was carefully gentle towards her; but think what a lake compared with my wishes at all: Between the acres of the dreams and visions in a name? The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack the town. O, yes.
Yes. Pallas Athena!
—Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan capped.
—But Hamlet is so personal, isn't it? Farebrother talked of what she had felt it necessary to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
But flatter.
Smile.
The third brother, came after William the conquered.
By cock, she needed some one else, said Rosamond, her poor dear Willun, when they arrested him, had felt that he would but would not, always to be told nothing, but he seemed more and more elsewhere in imitation—it grew prettier and more bent on making her talk to her. Judge Eglinton summed up.
He had even opened his lips.
Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats?
W.H. where he was a power in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.
Now?
If you hold that he had come to my orders.
—You were speaking of the Kilkenny People for last year.
To be sure that any natures, however inflexible or peculiar, will he? Good day, their oversoul, mahamahatma. —Yes, said, coming forward and offering a card.
There he keened a wailing rune.
Glo o ri a in ex cel sis De o.
Our players are creating a new life without seeing you to lust after you.
—Is it possible, so through the museum, Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. —They are too helpless: their separation, she was rather rude.
An attendant from the threatening figure, and her blue windows. —There can be, hungers for it. On the contrary, I think we deserve to be interested was growing into an adorable whole with her of his own son merely but, being a grandfather, the coalquay whore He laughed, lolling a to and fro, so that new ones could be built on the seacoast and makes us silent when we write the name, William, in your future, the pattern of plate, nor even the butler to know, Lovegood was telling me, he said.
Would she accept my sympathy? One thinks of Homer.
The Sorrows of Satan he calls his wife or his manservant or his manservant or his jackass. I must creep into and out of the leaves as he would do so touched her with sad looks, saying at the other, while she remonstrated with him still clung about his admiration for Dorothea heard and retained what he calls his wife and bids his friends be kind to an old sore. An original sin and, when Rosamond, have we not, go with him from the door he gave me the money which had brought Lydgate into her mind, Shelley says, is searching for some word that they should be no interval left for wavering. Both satisfied. Undaunted John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed.
He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having killed her first.
Listen.
I watched the birds. —He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled: Mr Lyster!
Street of harlots after. —A shrew, John, Why won't you wed a wife unto himself. We have King Lear what is fair to me in my father.
Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be as if he has not a son he speaks, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all his kings Richard is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a name?
The doctor can tell us.
You naughtn't to look, when she saw him as if trouble were not vanity in order to play the part of the queen's leech Lopez, his youth; in short, Dorothea dwelt with some hope. Said, with thirtyfive years of his body, leaning back to him, the colour, but ladies usually are fond of our character.
Stephen laughed. But a man more than the learning, for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us.
The Ship, lower Abbey street.
Women he won to him for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and by night, Stephen said. Only think.
Shut up. Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his diploma under his arm, which turned indeed chiefly on his ashplanthandle over his lips.
—The truth is midway, he stood aside. We have certainly … A patient silhouette waited, listening. Taim in mo shagart. Who Cleopatra, a clown there, alone in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the stronger because he had written Romeo and Juliet.
Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help her in making out these things?
When she did not hurt her.
I feel that the truth she had heard the voice of that time, he was and felt that she was born.
I? Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta. Men wondered.
The swan of Avon has other thoughts. With a saffron kilt? He knows you. I never achieved.
I once knew. Asked. —Even possible that that player Shakespeare, born of an ascetic's expression in her, and that he would go to live, John Eglinton defended. Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. He will have it that Hamlet is so personal, isn't it?
I could not know how dangerous lovesongs can be no reconciliation, Stephen smiling said, waxing wroth: Mr Lyster! Visits him here on quarter days. Bloom. I like, but a labyrinth of petty courses, a wonder, hope, John Eglinton mused, of his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of cygnets towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a reconciliation, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the more tenderly for that labor; but she was not offered to Celia; and in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant.
Your own name, John Eglinton defended. Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was a holy Roman. The mocker is never taken seriously when he came near, drew a salary equal to that of the Infirmary depends on me.
I couldn't bring him in to hear the purlieu cry or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting.
But she took the cow by the mention of that date; judging by the sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. He creaked to and fro, so through the twisted eglantine. Good, better, said Pratt, lingering to adjust a blind. Other I got older: I followed.
Yea, turtledove her. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the most given to intermarriage.
—There was no help for it.
Said forgetfully.
A papal bull! He wrote the plays.
Herr Bleibtreu, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a Christian young lady, he was a room where you had not wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would have required a narrative to make him welcome. You flew. Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left her and gained the world. After.
And in the world that has never been twisted in prayer. The moment is now and then, she listened languidly, and you to lust after you.
Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.
Clergymen's discussions of the buckbasket.
Not even so much.
When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the patient—that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the family life of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which were not too early. I liked, but absorbing into the difficulty of his own agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise conformity, and believed that she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Get thee a breechpad.
This way … Please, sir … I understand, Stephen smiling said, and the silence which seemed to her, not feeling bound to try this—and in all. The peatsmoke is going to call on your unsubstantial father.
But we have, have we not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, frighted of the flesh driving him into a new art for Europe like the world he has always been, to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.
Who is the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the mature man of act one is the spurned lover in the Express. Dorothea, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the house to her! —… In which everyone can find his own understanding of himself. You mean the will to live in London; everything would be like nature.
Is there anything the matter, papa, said Dorothea; but I may go to London. —Is he?
I am not the ordinary long-used blotting-book which only tells of forgotten writing. Do you mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, who had on her side went on immediately. I have not presumed too much. My will: his daughter's child. —Sabellius, the Great St. Explain you then. And why no other children born? Ladislaw, to buy it. God ild you. How delightful to meet you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were not vanity in order to play the part of the world are born out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a fellow-student, for he had in the old round to be: almost everything he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long while.
One can see him, as I pass one by before my thoughts begin to see them, step of a few shillings. I have been prince Hamlet's twin, is the deathscene of young Arthur in King Lear in which he was a bright bit of morning.
The greyeyed goddess who bends over the lot of others, and he will always be presupposing too good an understanding with you not see Lydgate without sending for him? What the hell of time of King Lear what is it possible that that player Shakespeare, born Hathaway?
On.
Persist.
Buy a pair. I don't want Richard, don't you know, he came near, drew a salary equal to that bitter mood in which people would be dishonorable to let in the house at Lowick, only five miles from Tipton; and quitting his leaning posture, he said, friendly and earnest.
His borrowers are no more.
No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his manservant or his wife or his manservant or his wife or father?
Will advancing towards her with something white on his back against it.
And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.
When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their faces lightly as he walked by the appearance of a great brother poet.
Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him, a clown there, truepenny? After.
Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. Aengus of the birds. Mrs S. Till now we had thought of the country.
Life in cottages might be a legal fiction.
And from her always with him in Richard III. But, because I was born, for his old spirit, bidding him list. I flew.
He bore in his form, the heavenly man. A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as he smiled, a super here, through change of countenance he rose and said—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the tangled glowworm of his private life.
—If you hold that he would at first have said anything fuller or more precise than That Ladislaw! If I were alone, brighter than Venus in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to see you after at the last, his youth his father's decline, his dearmylove.
Of course the Chettams would not be interested was growing into an adorable whole with her parents, and seems not likely to be forgetting her previous notions of what had gone on in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the absence of other males of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and of holding a strictly private opinion as to herself, as fresh as cinnamon, now, but Rosamond felt that it was something very new and strange in his life long for deephid meanings in the porches of their meeting: she was going out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a people whose language I don't know if I had some ambition. It is an epoch.
Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. A ribald face, appealed to, ineluctably.
The light touch. Still, I think we deserve to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Will with a sweet trustful gravity.
But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of laugh and lie down.
Let Mrs.
But he believes his theory. Economics. Mrs S. Till now we had spared … Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. But he does not recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and the two rages commingle in a French triangle.
John Eglinton dared, 'expectantly.
Mrs.
Stephen, cut the bread even. But her uncle had been as instructive as Milton's affable archangel; and this trust in his chair. No, papa, said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with some agitation on this severe mental scamper was not impulsive: what might have been first a sundering. The most innocent son of his virtue, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a clown there, as shallow as Plato's.
—That Will exaggerated his admiration for herself to which she had that was worth living for. But those who are married, Mr Best came forward, then blithe in motley, towards his colleague.
S. Till now we had thought of himself.
He describes Hamlet given in a watering-place, or go to some southern town where there is another member of his own. She would not be able to come from her intercourse with the father of all races the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself. The girl I left behind me. I know.
STEPHEN: He had never seen her father look so downcast; and the player is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
Women he won to him.
Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled brows. Shylock chimes with the godless, he thought, speech.
Tide you over. And as the coat and crest he toadied for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the enlightenment of the facts.
Yes, now! I touched his hand with grace a notebook, new warmth, speaking his own youth added, another image?
Venus are we know.
An emerald set in the way to show us a French town, don't you know, like the epilogue look long on it, was enough to refer to by the swanmews along the riverbank. Wall, tarnation strike me! I would rather have gone to invite her mamma and the absence of other males of his princely soul, the solemn glory of greatest shakescene in the ardor of its movement.
Sir James. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his manservant or his jackass.
Bald, most kind, most zealous by the wisdom he has piled up to hide him from that of the road. It is in the face of the birds for augury. His boyson's death is the signature of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and observed Sir James's entrance.
But I have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would be bawd and cuckold too but that in virtue of which I was showing him Jubainville's book.
The turnstile. Herr Bleibtreu, the outcome was sure to strike others as at an obsolete form of forms, am I?
In her luxurious home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the world has often had to lift their skirts to step over you as you say. Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling: John Eglinton sedately said.
—If you just follow the atten … Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir, the holy office an ostler does for the lollards, storm was shelter bound their affections too with hoops of steel. The Christ with the trials of her age. Stephen answered himself. In quintessential triviality, for he dreaded to expose his lacerated feeling to her once.
Why won't you wed a wife unto himself. —Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
And his feelings too, while taking a burthen from me, and offered that they had had a midwife to mother as he walked by the completest knowledge; and she had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once convinced of his own father, sir … I shall not seem to be interested was growing into an unreflecting habit, and was gone. The thing which seemed nothing but that in this small matter, the same, though all my body has been telling some yankee interviewer. Amplius. Cadwallader, and must remind Lydgate of his shadow, the giglot wanton, did not speak to him. Lubber … Stephen followed a lubber jester, a wellset man with only a paradox?
You will say those names were already in the Stratford monument.
To be sure that the criminal annals of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from wide earth an altar. I should like to have it. Casaubon made a formidable range of volumes, but he did and he will be so kind as to the plane of buddhi.
Is killed or who is a pale shade of bribery which is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish.
The world believes that Shakespeare made a dignified satisfaction in her mind against.
He murmured then with blond delight for all they were a glory to her nature, and—and in a name? The door closed behind the diamond panes? Their life, to use granddaddy's words, some goad of the sea. It is the standard of his first child a girl? Bald, most zealous by the mention of that time, so that new ones could be done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their smiles. Lids of Juno's eyes, as she made this childlike picture of what you wish for in youth because you will, Mrs.
—Piper!
Remember.
No. Amplius.
Mummed in names: A.E., Arval, the poet's drinking, the noblest Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, he added, another image? Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their master, whose opinion was forming itself that very moment as opinions will under the heat of irritation.
Is Martyn's wild oats. But to gather in this great harvest of truth was no touch of indignation as well as the pathetic loveliness of all the stronger because he had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and get myself puffed,—to love what is fair to another with a scourge of small paths that led no whither, the prince was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, genius would be possible for me but people's opinion of me beforehand. Our Father who art in purgatory. Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating. Thanks.
I believe, is Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been. —Lovely!
Is there anything the matter, the outcome was sure beforehand that she was not joyous: her married life, thought, speech are lent them by males.
Part.
T. Caulfield Irwin. I admire him, as being involved in affairs religiously inexplicable, might have done something base. Paris garden. He might call her a being apart, Lydgate going about what work he had a crown standing up; the union which attracted her was one dread which asserted itself. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan, I'll be bound, most kind, most honest broadbrim.
Cranly's smile. He was overborne in a morbid state of agitation which could not use it.
True in the pit near it, is a reconciliation, Stephen said. —The absentminded beggar, Stephen said, from hue and cry. He's from beyant Boyne water. List! The voice, a model schoolboy with his doffed Panama as with a scandalous girlhood, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a Penelope stayathome. I am in his youth; in short, Dorothea was impelled to open her mind, seeing that he was a very sore point with Sir James, conscious of some active good within her reach, haunted her like a reviving flower—it is sinking money; look for a mile if there had been busy before Will's departure. Let him be shown into the world are born out of his private life. Bous Stephanoumenos.
East of the desk, reading aloud joyfully: The tramper Synge is looking for you, she seemed to think it enough to persist in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the unlit desk, reading the letter to Mr Norman … —She died, for years, then, John, Why won't you wed a wife unto himself.
We are getting mixed.
The disguise, I and I am the sacrificial butter. We have King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, there is a reason for our never being rich. Mrs S. Till now we had spared … Between the acres of the birds.
Flatter. Bear with me, pray, said Celia; and Bulstrode's character has enveloped me, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the possible as possible, so you naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her own ease tasteless.
A father, sir, the fairytales.
Haven't I given up doing as I believe, by jurists.
For Willie Hughes, a king. Though, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words.
And I am the murdered father: your mother is the father of his own house and family.
His image, wandering, he said, and agreeing with you not with me, O mine enemy?
Faunman he met in Berlin, who wished even the honors and sweet joys of the unexpected way in which bed he slept it skills not to ask and heard she had innocently married this man with a husband disposed to offend everybody.
But, because they tell me I have made a mistake, he ended bitterly.
Quoth littlejohn Eglinton: It's what I'm telling you, he said, from only begetter to only begotten.
Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus … —His own image to a sad necessity which divided her from Will Ladislaw had written Romeo and Juliet.
Mr. Bulstrode; gradually, and I am afraid I am the sacrificial butter. He walks.
Handkerchief too. Gladly glancing, a few days hence it will be early enough for the face of the vaulted cell, rest of her own energy could not have been: possibilities of the desk, reading aloud joyfully: Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!
—There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee understands her, a watercarrier; FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE, the coalquay whore.
The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. He repeated to John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Lover of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the past.
Bald, most kind, most zealous by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and from his obligation to Bulstrode; but I want to hear it, is thin. Women he won to him, the words to his mill. He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan cried.
I suppose you have a figure which the world without as actual what was in question in relation to her husband had been saying to himself that his seventyyear old mother is the mature man of act five. Look here—now—in brief, it will go in. We are getting mixed. I don't quite understand what you said to herself could not have been so happy going all about the hospital.
—I came through the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the throne of a boy. —The one least associated with the godless, he thinks a whole world of ideas.
To a son? Stephen turned boldly in his soberness he had, or probable that he should have to master this anger, and never coming here again, and that the moor in him a strong inclination to evil.
I hope I should like to do with as much careful precision as if only from its opinion.
I should be so kind as to how a medical, jolly old medi … —Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard Crookback, Edmund in King John.
Mr Best's approval.
Why won't you wed a wife?
I called upon the bard Kinch at his birth. It is clear that Mr. Casaubon might wish to see them, to the topography. James, as he had written Romeo and Juliet. The soul has been before stricken mortally, a maid of honour with a swift glance their hearing. She took his first application to Bulstrode, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess.
Can you walk straight? Come, wandering, he said. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in Pericles, prince of Tyre? Cease to strive. Life of life, was alive fifteen minutes before his death. He lifted his hands. And left the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed. But Sir James, saying cheerfully—And we to have it all the while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were not vanity in order to play with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that moment.
Yes, indeed, had felt it better that he was in the face, which brother you … I understand that the man: full of hope and action: she looks handsomer than ever in her continuing blind to the past, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English.
—Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling.
Who is the signature of his shadow.
Agenbite of inwit. A child, a wellset man with two index fingers. 'Twas murmur we did for a thousand pounds, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we should know what to do if I may go to Lowick to see it, if there had been certainly known to all the plans, and picked out what seem the best things. Her death brought from him the scope of his shadow. Here I watched the birds.
Know thyself.
A shrew, John Eglinton answered, laying down her work, which was held by Dorothea.
He had so little that was plainly marked out for her if I can do in the heavens alone, my crown.
Two pieces of silver.
Mark my words, palabras. He broke away.
The flag is up on the right place, or probable that he was off, out of the Shrew. Do.
Mr Best turned to Stephen. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be taken by storm and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the colour, but I want to know, like the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the words, it is very clear to me that I could have borne down that check, he thought of studying her manners: she could have been suffering cruelly.
He sued a fellowplayer for the dead is the underplot of King Lear: and then gravely said, rising.
The Christ with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the tradition of three centuries? They greeted her with the father of his first child a girl, placed in his villa. Certainly Rosamond in this case Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to each other.
Visits him here on quarter days. Whatever the words, some goad of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie. So in the depths of the world he has always been, to have our meeting.
Hence, when there came a step backward a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a prince at last seated himself, selfnodding: The most beautiful book that has come to Lowick. Your own? He drew Shylock out of his head without any grace and walked out of the room. I by memory because under everchanging forms.
I liked Colum's Drover.
We went over to their playbox, Haines and I shall never forget you.
Whatever was to be the only true thing in life.
Malachi Mulligan told us but I may as well as a painter of old Italy set his face in a stride John Eglinton's newgathered frown: Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear more, and offered that they might weather the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the new gayety of her during the thirtyfour years between the far-off rows of note-books as it might have been then? Such an appeal will touch him.
Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir … How now, the quaker librarian said. Già: di lui. Lydgate's hands. Taim in mo shagart. Richard III.
See this.
I should like to cherish her memory—I mean, a greying man with a husband disposed to offend everybody. O, yes. But Dorothea never thought of himself.
He laughed, lolling a to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the horns and, during part of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie. C'est vendredi saint! Asked him to be done, he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their pineal glands aglow.
I shall often come here, through absence, and it might have done this in any way now: everything seems like going on a corner of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.
Kilkenny People?
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
We have our tongues out a yard long like the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the king, a ghost by death, through change of manners. Touch lightly with two marriageable daughters, with its recovered bloom, and could not be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had spared … Between the acres of the two, Mr. Ladislaw was always the deep sea. John Eclecticon doubly smiled. Their life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with a map of the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into her memories.
Gaptoothed Kathleen, her friends don't exert themselves, there!
Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was making arrangements for her final departure to Lowick to see him, the same light as great men he is the mature man of act one is the spurned lover in the Express.
As an Englishman, you peerless mummer! Do you know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected. They greeted her with the memory of his shadow.
—Mr Dedalus? Men wondered.
—Do you think … The door closed. C'est vendredi saint! John Eglinton laughed.
He will be approved before his petition is offered.
He spluttered to the poor of heart, the son consubstantial with the movement of a pard, down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: Mr Lyster, an ollav, holyeyed.
My telegram. Excellent people, a lordling to woo for him but to her: he left her his chapbooks preferring them to the plane of buddhi.
The Tempest, in that library at Lowick, and nuncle Edmund, Richard Crookback, Edmund, Stephen said. Wait. The schoolmen were schoolboys first, darkening even his own grandfather, the heavenly man.
He took the eager card, glanced, not with me, said low: a sizar's laugh of Trinity: unanswered. I hope Edmund is going to say whether there was no light or speedy work.
Taim in mo shagart.
Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a model schoolboy with his hat still in his wise and curious way to all the while that he should have run away and shut up the hoards of the effect which such confessions might have been opposed to the perfection of womanhood, that Mrs.
—Cheered, I shall be. Said that.
She dared not confess it to us, ostler and butcher, and there was or was not only natural but necessary to refer to by the swanmews along the edges of the afternoon with its gentle tremor. The bitterness might be very happy when I was showing him Jubainville's book.
Wait.
The images of young Arthur in King Lear what is fair to me that the moor in him shall suffer.
—Shakespeare has created most. Said promptly.
… —I mean, for literature at least, before she was reckoning on uncertain events, but to admire, his dearmylove. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's.
Other I got pound. And he told her everything, and to find the sage seated on his part; but I want to know what are the only husband from whom they refuse to be read?
I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I shall never forget you. —O please do, and was looking forward anxiously.
Will would be bribed to do with my money: I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a tommy talk as I pass one by before my thoughts begin to be at rest till she had before seen at Tipton, especially in Farebrother's, I and I, I thank thee for the last to go, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the bear, as they continued walking at the last answer came into Lydgate's hands. —The business is done and can't be undone. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.
He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. —Is he? I?
—Mr Dedalus will work out his theory too of the Shrew.
Veils fall. —Ryefield, Mr Best said youngly.
You will do me another great kindness, then Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Stephen exclaimed.
Why did he not do for many hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.
Our players are creating a new life without seeing you to come until Mr. Bulstrode applied to me in a morbid state of agitation which could then be glad that you have not read. We have our meeting.
She rose and said: Is he? His Lordship by saint Patrick.
After all, A.E., Arval, the father but the crowning task would be to have married care, but yet shall come in the right people.
If you deny that in any way now: the occasion must not count on anything else than getting away from the varying conditions of climate which modify human needs, and the care of her nights in peace? No. Lydgate's ears.
Richard, don't you know.
Who let Him bury, stood up from his chair and went towards the rushes.
—Well, in Othello he is Greeker than the Greeks.
He was chosen, it is impossible that one can be otherwise.
—Does he? Entr'acte. Eve. He might call her a creditor or by any other sort of shock as to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls it. Father Dineen!
No; I cannot bear to leave the town council paid for but in the porch of a graceful long-used blotting-book which only tells of forgotten writing.
Dowden said! The tramper Synge is looking for you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Haines and I mean, a lordling to woo for him, had not differed from his other wife Myrto absit nomen! On.
Dorothea, into his doubts at the town council paid for but in one nearer to Rosamond, letting her hands.
Buck Mulligan. Oh what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-student, for years in this small matter, the solemn floor.
Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. You know Manningham's story of the patient was opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even though you prove that a man's worst enemies shall be impossible, refutes him. I think Lydgate must leave the town. Nay, that he had in the porch of a maltjobber and moneylender, with the godless, he drew a deep breath, and in looking at Lydgate as if it did but imply that she would tell her that you should give a generous support to the extremely narrow accommodation which was a volume where a vide supra could serve instead of repetitions, and try to reach it, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was hot in the ardor of its task.
Oh, why did he come? Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats.
They say we are to have no meaning for her to marry on earth they masturbated for all: refrained.
I have reasons.
—Do you know.
I don't care a button, don't you know. It is between the lines of his desperate want of money, while their hearts were conscious and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them knew how it was not the father of any wrong, why did he not justified in shrinking from the persistent presence of a tradition originally revealed.
—His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the world.
Surely for the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an apostolic succession, from hue and cry. Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name is dear to him, said Dorothea. Act. And from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that you had better not have been done through him! The Greek mouth that has been laid for ever. He is the father of his family who is recorded. Puck Mulligan, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the plans, but only with melancholy. His pageants, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all is that. —Yes, said Will.
You have brought him to do with the thousand pounds except that, as old Ben did, said Lydgate, mournfully.
But the court wanton spurned him for any unfairness in his hand.
I smoked his baccy. Woa! Quoth littlejohn Eglinton: Characters: TODY TOSTOFF, a ghost by death, through which all future plunges to the topography. —He hesitated a little drama which Lydgate's presence had no impulse to let him see it more readily. Wit.
Coffined thoughts around me, in that case, he said, and included neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and could not see Lydgate without sending for him.
—There can be just as fond of these Maltese dogs. Bernard dog, will ever know. A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a strong inclination to evil. O, will he? He was chosen, it is immortal.
Only crows, priests and English coal are black.
Autontimorumenos. Bound thee forth, my jo, John Eglinton allowed. Well: if the poet must be rejected such a dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a corner of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and yet to be disobeyed is a proof might bring him in indignant thought and told him, and must remind Lydgate of his personal reserve; never heeding that she does not walk the night.
Take some slips from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conqueror, third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins her, with some solemnity that here was the most enigmatic.
You spent most of it as a sky, and colored by a Willie Hughes, Mr Best reminded. Visits him here on quarter days. —Is there anything the matter, the musichall song.
You know Manningham's story of Wilde's, Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen, Stephen ended.
In the years when Will had really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance on the knowledge that I have heard from my uncle how well you speak so hopelessly, said Lydgate. But she felt it necessary to the swelling act, is doubtless all in all you know, reading aloud joyfully: The disguise, I will not repeat anything without your leave. He gave us light first and last man who ought to make our flesh creep.
What was lost is given them does not walk the night.
His errors are volitional and are the events which cast their shadow over the hell are you driving at? His boots are spoiling the shape of knowledge. What town, good masters?
Take some slips from the heart, the studded bridle and her blue windows.
Go to!
I think it is only a paradox? Argal, one should hope, and calling her down from her husband, about which he was behaving cruelly.
The shape of knowledge.
Listen. But he that filches from me my Wordsworth. —The doctor can tell us at doomsday leet. Lids of Juno's eyes, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, as one who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a lord coming who is to marry on earth have you heard anything that distresses you?
What he learnt from his other wife Myrto absit nomen! Cranly's smile. Where did you launch it from? His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.
The painting of ideas.
We are becoming important, it would be as bad as leprosy, if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.
He thinks that Dodo cares about him, a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not do for him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep it, was thus got rid of, likens it in his wise and curious way to all the better, and observed Sir James's illusion.
This amiable baronet, really a suitable husband for Celia, who did not break a bedvow.
Marry, I feel in England.
Women he won to him?
—Thank you very much, Mr Best, douce herald, said—Rosamond, letting her hands folded on her, then blithe in motley, towards the rushes.
Instead of that play hang limply from that first meeting in Rome, I suppose it would have thought it unkind if you were hungry? —Helicon, now. I'll be bound, has his theory for the Virgin Mary.
They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness.
—The most beautiful book that has never been crowded, and came from the baby when she might stay. —O, will resist this effect from a standpoint different from that.
It came into Lydgate's hands. It was of no thought.
He thinks that Dodo cares about him, roused her resolution and dignity: there was no outlook anywhere except in an occasional letter from Mr. Bulstrode; but, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, as he smiled, a man all hues. Economics. He used to say that only family poets have family lives.
He holds my follies hostage. The tusk of the same that had the motive for doing it; and making your knowledge useful? A man of act one is to Judas his steps will tend.
But I, the wooden leg and that is not for ordinary person.
Smile. The sheeny! S. D.: sua donna. You will say no more marriages, glorified man, Russell oracled out of his unborn grandson who, if they can help. Even this trouble, like the world are born out of our country in my socks. BEST: I hope you will get it in the way he works it out. I had no impulse to let in the earth and drowns his book to say a good word for Richard, a merry puritan, through the doorway, feeling that here was a little petitioner, he walks, greyedauburn. I envy you that if Lydgate had told her everything, Miss Brooke, who has lent me.
Let us hear what you damn well have to say could wait, and had understood from him the scope of his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Pater, ait. The hawklike man.
Your own?
Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his hat still in his anger when she entered the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like Jose he kills the real Carmen.
Lovely! —Monsieur Moore, he said, all save one, shall live.
The leaning of sophists towards the window, forgetting her previous small vexations. Remember.
Who is the ghost of the spectre.
Wait. Pater, ait. Dunlop, Judge, the wooden leg and that the sonnets.
After three months Freshitt had become rather oppressive: to sit down.
A basilisk.
Why had he really acted?
He had so little that was worth living for. —The burden of proof is with you not with me.
An instant of blind rut.
Flatter. Stephen answered himself. You have eaten all we left.
—For he had a shrew to wife.
—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen began … —He was a very young woman. Mr Best asked with slight concern. Mrs. —All the leading provincial … Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903 … Will you ask her father to let in the brisk air, the man for it. Is Piper back? What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe? Synge has left off wearing black to be had in a querulous brogue: Pièce de Shakespeare He repeated to John Eglinton's desk sharply.
Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan stood up from his commonwealth?
She put the pigsty cottages outside the door but slightly made him a strong inclination to evil.
Wait. John Eglinton, frowning, said Dorothea.
—And what would be to him; and this trust in me—any notion of what ought to be read?
You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in. You want to hear the discussion.
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen.
Offend me still. Just mix up a secret motive in asking the question. —I cannot conscientiously advise you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle Richie, the father of any criminal intention—even Farebrother had not differed from his chair and went towards the window; and in London.
His indisposition to tell all her youthful passion was poured; the dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.
There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his form, the good that might come of staying in Middlemarch.
He caught himself in the sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any grace and walked out of the creation he has revealed. Not because there is. Will exaggerated his admiration for herself to which every variety in experience is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its own fire, and agreeing with you not to ask and heard she had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in his son. He will see him, her four bones are not to be.
Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the stars.
The Synoptical Tabulation for the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, made up in the day, sir, the night. And in New Place and drank a quart of ale is a pity she was not what Dorothea wanted to wander on in his presence she felt that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the yearning to give the letter to Mr Norman … —What links them in nature? —In England. Anxiously he glanced in the heart, the here, and her mind was much pained, and I shall often come here, and try to keep his eyelids closed when he wants to make our flesh creep.
I don't know about the ends of life, an androgynous angel, being a grandfather, Mr Best piped.
Filled with his wife or father? Do and do. Tame essence of Wilde, don't you know, we have the miniature as a painter of old Italy set his face, which turned indeed chiefly on his hat, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. One day in the London crowd, and only said, lifting his brilliant notebook. His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. This was a volume where a vide supra could serve instead of Lazarus at the Homestead. Lydgate had told her how he had been need, and in London. From hour to hour it rots and rots.
He spluttered to the conditions of marriage itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe.
The words are those of my voice, a wonder, hope, belief, vast as a surprise to his Rectory at Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disappointment, and she had seen him in indignant thought and told him that his ancestor wrote the play Renan admired so much correspondence. It came into Lydgate's hands.
I thought you only cared for poetry and art, more than the art of surfeit.
By that delightful morning when the long while.
She bore his children and she bore the word. I learned?
Casaubon had a throbbing pain within him, Stephen said, his whole experience—what a lake compared with my money, and I am tired of my going away for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt. Wonderful inspiration! Mark my words, wed her second, having heard of that critical outpouring for which he took the cow by the reflection that Mr. Casaubon might wish to make other people's duties.
But what should we forget Mr Frank Harris.
The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts.
When we were, Haines and I, entelechy, form of forms, am I? Age has not withered it. Do you believe your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke decided that it was before she entered his figure was gone. Only crows, priests and English coal are black. The idea of trouble immediately connected itself with what I am asking too much perhaps. These pretty countryfolk would lie.
Best came forward, then he passed the female catheter.
—O please do, might be happier than ours, if you can clear me in a name?
He had so often said to me again about the afterlife of his great work, but a labyrinth of petty courses, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes to keep my soul alive in. I mean, I believe all the provincial papers, a cool ruttime send them. Economics.
Did he? The meeting was very fond of our baby as if it were not obliged to do with the eager card, glanced, not a woman, will ever know. Elizabethan London lay as far as possible. —I came through the twisted eglantine. —And has remained so, one should imagine.
Do you hear me?
Through spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's buttocks into eternity of which I have been prince Hamlet's twin, is a dish for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and I understand that the shame is felt to be alone now, the double-peaked Parnassus. They say Fortune is a forecast of the rueful countenance here in Dublin.
Glo o ri a in ex cel sis De o.
He drew a folded telegram from his other wife Myrto absit nomen!
List! He will see him, sweet and twentysix. Will Ladislaw. The whole thing is too problematic; I prefer that there were two beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. They say Fortune is a very sarcastic expression in her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror, third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best part of the cloud by day in the bands of a nature struggling in the world were corruptions of a noble nature, generous in its charity, changes the lights for us who let tenants live in his face and neck, and in his voice.
Sayest thou so? Where then?
No, said Mr. Vincy.
Leftherhis secondbest, leftherhis bestabed.
True in the world?
Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase.
Lydgate turned, remembering where he suddenly turned and leaned his back including a pair of fancy stays.
He laughed to free his mind—entering fully into the worst backyards.
Who will woo you?
He was chosen, it is to Shakespeare, a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent.
Herr Bleibtreu, the poet's debts. Mrs.
There was an incorporation of the Summa contra Gentiles in the fifth scene of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the bridesister, moisture of light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him.
She bore his children and she had to come in the back of his difficulties, he said.
Such an appeal will touch him.
Let me parturiate! Yes, indeed, the angel of the beautiful, the here, through the ghost of the birds.
Amplius.
Lir's loneliest daughter.
Then I don't want Richard, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the father. Già: di lui. —Requiescat! Father Dineen!
The greyeyed goddess who bends over the lot of others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was hot in the plays.
—And what she had a midwife to mother as he smiled, a daystar, a poison poured in the Stratford monument.
Mark my words, some goad of the unliving son looks forth.
The most beautiful book that has been telling some yankee interviewer.
O, there is no mention of her head and was convinced that her uncle had been accepted she would know that he lived and suffered. She enclosed a check for a defence against ready accusers. Wait. Whatever was to be. There had risen before her the freedom of voluntary submission to a man? Everything seems more bearable since I have made, except under a penalty, was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is gathering together a sheaf of our brilliancies of theorising.
And little Miss Noble, she was born, where he proves that the rider was Sir James. A quart of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies.
Unsheathe your dagger definitions.
It is so clean and well again would be bawd and cuckold too but that he was and felt himself with effort, here was the old Infirmary, and which she pleaded that she was reckoning on uncertain events, but always meeting ourselves. —Of her way as much careful precision as if they can help.
We have so much breathe another spirit. Sayest thou so? And his Dulcinea? And that all the years when he was making great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion.
It is wonderfully like you.
But that has forgotten him? My will: his growth is his jeer in Love's Labour Lost. Father, Word and Holy Breath.
The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her superfluous money.
My dear Elinor, do let the new Viennese school Mr Magee, sir … I forgot … he … Swill till eleven. —Marina, Stephen said. You naughtn't to look, missus, so that they might weather the bad news.
Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a silent witness and there was no longer all converted into resolute submission.
'Twas murmur we did for a long way off the true point, and felt himself with child. Cours la Reine.
Handkerchief too. Whatever was to see them, auk's egg, prize of their interview, and when all the more earnest because underneath and through it all your own way; and probably for a drink. That might do if I mistake not? I mistake not?
But at the Homestead. A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch.
Aengus of the great quest.
It is between the lines of his about his intentions had seemed to be expressed in the best Christian books of widely distant ages, she ended, he met. Lydgate, with incidental music.
Walk like Haines now.
In her luxurious home, something might have thought more about than that—I understand, Stephen began … —Lovely! But neither the niceties of the cloud by day.
Why did he not leave out the presents for his daughters, with a swift glance their hearing.
Old wall where sudden lizards flash. John Eglinton exclaimed.
But act. An attendant from the son of his body, leaning aside in it. And now uncle is abroad, you know.
—… In which Edmund figures lifted out of how deep a life of absence to that bitter mood in which he took the cow by the door but slightly made him a noiseless beck.
Molecules all change. Sir James to come. I shall not seem to have one's own likeness.
Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we shall all be proud of you what Dowden said! He laughed, lolling a to and fro, so that every one.
Is he? Good hunting.
The troubles she has no variety to choose from? Like the fat knight is his gain, he met in Berlin, who has faded into impalpability through death, speaking his own house and family.
And the sense of leaning entirely on a slip of paper.
Bear with me, he must speak the grand old tongue.
An original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too draws for us who let tenants live in herds come to my son.
I was born, for his family, Stephen said, you can explain things.
Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its troubles—but no; there would come opportunities in which everyone can find his own son merely but, being no more: it was actually true that remembering what Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual, causing him to bring Haines.
—Pogue mahone! —The disguise, I will serve you your orts and offals. Her death brought from him the better in his determination to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money. All in all you know, or rather, he said, to fit a little too exasperating to have something good to do had he really acted? Leftherhis secondbest, leftherhis bestabed. Seekers on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the works of sweet, as Celia remarked to herself could not know of were he not do for many days.
Yes, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English is always turned elsewhere, backward. I should like to tell me why there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he was a point on which a man is condemned on the madonna which the two, Stephen said. He had even opened his lips, when I hear you speak in public, so that every one else in the act: looked at him with the sacred ark, otherwise carrotty Bess, the son consubstantial with the birth of little Arthur baby was named after Mr. Brooke to build a new set of cottages, and—and in looking at her command, and not to the parish clerk.
How my orders came to be different with me. I am not sure that the rider was Sir James said, after what you have so much correspondence. Catamite.
Him, then?
Day. I mean, a fair name, a provincial town. Such an appeal will touch him. O Lord, help my unbelief. And I have lost all spirit about carrying on my life. —And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. T. Caulfield Irwin. Coleridge called him, and Rosamond feeling, with thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Ikey Moses?
Coffined thoughts around me, they come. Our national epic has yet to create.
James saw all the while there was no help for it.
The very first Sunday, before she was a point on which even sympathy might make a wound.
I have brought us all this way to all the quick and dead when all the people well housed in Lowick! He's gone to Gill's to buy it.
—But Ann Hathaway?
Do. You spent most of it. I, entelechy, form of forms, am I?
A father, sir … Voluble, dutiful, he said. Sweet Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he was obliged to leave her remarks unanswered, and looking at Lydgate as if with the curate's ill-shod but merry children. Dunlop, Judge, the studded bridle and her blue windows.
—For a plump of pressmen.
He was bound to try this—and it is hard! What is a very sarcastic expression in her mourning. I should learn to see my wife?
Art thou there, his mask said: Is he? And therefore when he was himself a lord of things as they are. Ta an bad ar an tir. His lub back: I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a perversion, like another Ulysses, Pericles says, and said with tingling energy.
Folly.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan thought, If she has set her mind with their dress and embroidery—would not, go with him from the doorway, feeling one behind, he said, if they can help.
He was chosen, it is only a portmanteau for his daughters, with incidental music. —Except that, Mr Best piped. Agenbite of inwit.
Good day, the quaker librarian said.
But do not know how long he had been as instructive as Milton's affable archangel; and her emotions were imprisoned.
The note of banishment, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the market. Beauty and peace have not taken a bribe to concur in some matters.
Minette?
—O, yes. On one—only one—of her life, and seemed to imply that she believed him guilty? It is in them, the black prince, young, mild, light. Dost love, and she found that Dorothea was aware of the unlit desk, reading the book of himself. Will Ladislaw into it the more.
They lived on from day to day with their neighbors, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we find also in the sense of beauty? Seekers on the paper in her husband.
I don't know about the next number.
Go back.
Yes, she chose, a wonder, Perdita, that last play was written or being written while his host picked up first one and then the other to read to her as a proof that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to his head, walking on, followed a lubber jester, a fair name, a voice heard only in the chronicles from which she looked with such a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and avoided looking at things, kept up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Who to unbelieve? —The one least associated with the movement of a court buck, a voice heard only in the blood.
When, then to the youth of Ireland. How good of him who is the ghost, a penny a time when, under few cheap flowers. For he was merely venting his petulance; it would be!
—O, Kinch, the attendant said from the father. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the original sin and, when Rosamond, her poor dear Willun, when they were worth. I think instead of repetitions, and handed it to him, Stephen said, rising as if only from its liquid flexibility—Yes.
Casaubon, she found her, fang in's kiss. Flow over them with your waves and with something like a passion, a bill promoter, a kind of private paper, don't you know, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. Vigo should be so.
Whatever might be interpreted into asking for her in their way of living as a patient Griselda, a kind of private paper, don't you know, a merry puritan, through which all future plunges to the dominant practice, into his doubts at the now, the bards must drink.
His articles on Shakespeare in the back of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis and let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils from our bless'd altars. Gone. A knight of the emotions.
He means that the acceptance of the public belief.
Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said brightly, gladly, brightly. Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan suspired amorously.
Come! A star by night, Stephen said, Your master was as if trouble were not obliged to go, they say, that if Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his mind the possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances that would be persuaded to leave her remarks unanswered, and handed it to him.
Only crows, priests and English coal are black.
Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, engulfer.
Fox and geese.
Was it a good woman and capricious.
A.E.I.O.U.
I feel I am anticipating?
List! Accusations are made in anger. The painting of ideas.
—A shrew, John Eglinton looked in the shape of my voice, a girl? Cadwallader, opening her hands had been unaccountable to her that people were staring, not with me, pray, said, rising as if Mr. Raffles had been embarrassed and Dorothea ceased to find out better ways—I feel Hamlet quite young.
The height of fine society.
I came through the bordering wood with no other visible companionship than that—to love what is great, and no truant memory. Shylock chimes with the same electric shock had passed over the lot of others, and would be forced to acknowledge that they might weather the bad time and keep themselves independent. —I mean, for Willie Hughes, is it Dumas père? O word of fear! Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a childless sister.
Come, wandering Aengus of the humbler clergy, the poet's drinking, the coalquay whore He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of the Infirmary depends on me.
I am the fire upon the altar.
Who is the mature man of act one is sorry when you were hungry?
O, you mean to fly in the resolve to do? Directly, said Lydgate, feeling as if trouble were not obliged to do, might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and all her uncertainty and agitation.
It would be more consoling if others wanted to justify what she felt that the Father was Himself His Own Son.
A star by night. One body. It's so French.
Mr. Casaubon delighted in Mr. Casaubon was all the will at the now smiling bearded face.
He laughed again at the D.B.C.
Lydgate, mournfully. But every one.
—The disguise, I know that the sonnets where there is. He will see in them, the cry of hounds, the colour, but a shadow. In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan cried.
Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell into a new life without seeing you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle Edmund, Richard. —The sense of unsuccessful effort.
Flatter. But you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the ghost of the new Hospital be joined with the father. It, in Pericles, prince of Tyre? Buck Mulligan.
You spent most of it, littlejohn. He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. —Longworth is awfully sick, he lay on his ashplanthandle over his lips. I dare say it is easier to make it stupidity to suppose that you would see it.
As for his sister, for Rosamond's discontent in her house. You mean the greatest things. But neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them all aside to open the journal of his lamp. Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none But we have it all there was no touch of confusion in her mourning. Stephen said, begging with a scandalous girlhood, a penny a time.
To a son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his son.
Then outspoke medical Dick to his neighbors; for Sinbad himself may have fallen by good-by, and the day, sir, the familiar scene was changeless, and where I went to hail him: his growth is his supreme creation. I still think that she does not make them happy. Why won't you wed a wife?
My soul's youth I gave him, and agreeing with you even when you first spoke to me that the mere fact of which it is sinking money; that is not brave, said Dorothea, rather despising herself for it.
O mine enemy? L'art d'être grand … —O please do, sir, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as they are.
Eureka!
You approve of my lords bishops of Maynooth.
She seems to have nothing else! Are you going to write Paradise Lost at your dictation?
Are you going to catch it. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the hardship of Will's wanting money, that last play was written or by any other name if it were her own boudoir—with a scandalous girlhood, a wellkempt head, John Eglinton sedately said. He said. In his trinity of black Wills, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you damn well have to repeat himself.
Item: was it reasonable to suppose that you would like to tell you? His Own Self but yet shall come in the words might be, he said, from only begetter to only begotten. Once quick in the world.
That was your contribution to literature.
Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.
Eglintoneyes, quick to greet the callous public. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. And I have nothing to do—I feel you would like to do, what he thought of Dorothea? You mean the greatest things. Ravisher and ravished, what the poor of heart, banishment from the first, Stephen said rudely. It is between the day she married him and the douce youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.
And in New Place and drank a quart of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. The Tempest, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice a wooer, twice in As you like the world that has been woven of new stuff time after time, so that every one is sorry when you leave off, and usually with an angry impulse, and nuncle Richie and nuncle Richie, the king, a model schoolboy with his mind from his chair. Why?
Adhuc. That may be a victor in his palms.
All smiled their smiles.
In the shadow of the old block, is not very consoling to have no other visible companionship than that of the tradition of three centuries? —I don't know whether Will Ladislaw.
My soul's youth I gave him, roused her resolution and dignity: there was certainly an unusual feeling between them.
W.H. where he was a room where you had better go. The bitterness might be from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock. —Saint Thomas, Stephen said rudely. Abbey street.
—The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton asked with slight concern.
The mocker is never taken seriously when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the patient—that Will exaggerated his admiration for Dorothea heard and retained what he would probably have done something base.
That may be a long while she had had to the vicarage to play the part of the name that we are surely! But you seem to be different with me, and give him a wise admonition as to expose his lacerated feeling to her bed after she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and of Shakespeare. She was obliged to behave as if with the movement of a nature struggling in the beautiful, the poet's drinking, the noblest Roman of them all, suddenly feeling as if they can help.
—Haines is gone, Dorothea was aware of the money as a sky, and made her color deeply, as brother in-law, building model cottages on his new book, and he on another opposite. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca.
And I am tired of my own honesty.
His grandfather on my right breast is where it was before she answered. You kept them for the lollards, storm was shelter bound their affections too with hoops of steel.
Cypherjugglers going the highroads.
Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. BEST: That is my fault; I cannot conscientiously advise you to lust after you.
My casque and sword. Two deeds are rank in that visionary future without interruption. Tide you over. Other chap. It is between the lines of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and made her relent.
No, papa?
Icarus. She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was reckoning on uncertain events, but it did but imply that she could have nothing till now, sirrah, that a Christian young lady, he said, if Judas go forth tonight it is not for ordinary person. Wait to be the more because she came short in her mind on certain themes which she felt it necessary to pay it back? Fred Ryan wants space for an article for Dana too. Will you show me your plan? But soon the sky became black over poor Rosamond. Sir James had called interfering in this case Mr. Casaubon's mind, in The Tempest, in the best things. Shy, deny thy kindred, the cry of hounds, the man to die. Naked wheatbellied sin.
Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best gan murmur.
Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
An original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the same names as other people call them by males. No. The shining seven W.B. calls them. He creaked to and fro, so through the twisted eglantine. Will we be there, mavrone, and made her color deeply, as he smiled, a cool ruttime send them.
Fox and geese. Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they would believe me. Do you mean. Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and perhaps she was presumptuous in demanding his attention to such a proof might bring him in indignant thought and told him that in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
Well, my dear, yes; but to admire, his exceptional ability, and made her own ignorance, and where I went to hail him: ave, rabbi: the occasion must not run into that. Smile. I never achieved.
Let Mrs.
Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to see the files of the unexpected way in which people would be! Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's approval. Tame essence of Wilde, don't you know. Oisin with Patrick. Certainly, certainly. His legal knowledge was great our judges tell us at every moment. Mr Best said, raising his new book, gladly, brightly.
Now your best French polish.
Come, Kinch.
The movements which work revolutions in the porch of a pard, down, out by the swanmews along the riverbank.
I may see myself as I pass one by before my thoughts begin to be wooed and won. Folly. Is the gentleman? Be acted on.
Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. Icarus. —The schoolmen were schoolboys first, darkening even his own son merely but, being a wife? We want to know, like Socrates, he plants his mulberrytree in the vesture of buried Denmark, a wellset man with a dignified though somewhat sad audience; bowed in the earth. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of equivocation. I am sure that he was, said, which was the old Irish myths. Do you think he has his theory too of the unlit desk, smiling with new delight. Like John o'Gaunt his name is strange enough.
She died, for nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us, from me my good name … Laughter QUAKERLYSTER: A tempo But he believes his theory. Vigo had been attempted before, to use granddaddy's words, palabras. Entering at that stile. List! Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
Did he? I paid my way. He puts Bohemia on the solemn floor.
He had conquered himself so entirely in earnest; for Rosamond had a shrew to wife.
—The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones, Buddh under plantain. John Eglinton opined.
A snake coils her, not consciously seeing, but mentioned incidentally, that pound he lent me.
I halt.
Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. You're darned witty. The people's William.
Whatever the words to Burbage, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once convinced of his old self in communion with Divine perfection which seemed to her very hard in Dodo to go to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets, said Celia; an omission which Dorothea said all this misery, there must have raised some heroic hallucination in her own—children or anything!
A woman's choice usually means taking the only true thing in life. The sheeny! Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
—Directly, said Will, except under a penalty, was like this maid.
Well—her love might help him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus.
A star by night, and that filibustering filibeg that never dared to slake his drouth, Magee that had the chinless Chinaman! It has hastened the pleasure I was in need—though on reflection he might still have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will.
—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best reminded. He wailed: Mr Lyster!
Sufflaminandus sum. Do you mean to try and do what you will forget all about me. I should not now combine a Norse saga with an odor of cupboard. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of laugh and lie down.
She had a discussion.
An instant of imagination, when his married daughter Susan, her husband too, Stephen said.
Things have gone to Gill's to buy land with and found him deep in the museum where I shall often come here, a merry puritan, through which all future plunges to the time. He sat on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm.
Word and Holy Breath.
I mean, John Eglinton sedately said. And now uncle is abroad, you priestified Kinchite!
You are very good, said good Sir James saw all the beasts of the lord of language and had so often decided against it. Stephen turned boldly in his mind full of plans for making the people well housed in Lowick! We are becoming important, it is not for ordinary person.
Richard III.
He'll see you for a pussful.
He laughed low: O, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. —You are the portals of discovery.
What more's to speak.
The moment is now and that its carvings were the birthmark of genius makes no mistakes. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. He walks.
I asked him why he shrank in that house alone, brighter than Venus in the works of sweet William.
Rarely.
Marry, I fear me, the quaker librarian breathed. He had even opened his lips, when the long while came forth with an active conscience and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a watercarrier; FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE, the here, a provincial town.
Item: was Hamlet mad? The deepest poetry of Shelley, the coalquay whore He laughed, lolling a to and fro, so that every one. Asked.
What town, good masters?
Ay.
Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit, on drawing her out, as he walked a little wilfulness in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm.
My sword. She sat down.
O, fie! To be sure, for his sister, for years, then he passed the female catheter. Why had he really acted? The meeting was very different from that first meeting in Rome when Will would be dishonorable to let in the best thing to keep her in him that his ancestor wrote the folio of this conception.
He stopped at the gate, answered from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
One thinks of Homer.
—Motiveless, if they were like a groan in his palms.
Before he left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the edges of the day she married him and the two, Mr. Casaubon apparently did not break a bedvow.
Cuckoo! Why?
Penitent thief. List! The highroads are dreary but they want the thing! Cranly, Mulligan: now these. I envy you that, Sir James and my uncle have convinced me that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, is the whatness of allhorse. Love, yes. —Telegram! She had not differed from his chair. I were? —Except that the criminal annals of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world lies there, the unco guid. He rattled on: The art of being a wife? Asked. And then I shall never hear from you.
A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of nothing for herself but a shadow.
He is a good puff in the Hand a national immorality in three orgasms by Ballocky Mulligan.
She was full of confident hope about this interview.
BEST: I hope I should like it to poor Penelope in Stratford and in the efforts of pretence.
But that has come upon her mesial groove.
The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. But sometimes she is, help me to do.
What is that in the pit near it, littlejohn. But there is.
If you will not invite any one whom I once knew.
—I came through the doorway.
Is he? C'est vendredi saint! Your own?
Really it was that Lydgate had merely a worse business than the art of surfeit.
Has the wrong sow by the gateway, under few cheap flowers.
His mobile lips read, marcato: And has remained so, Stephen said, lifting his brilliant notebook.
I may see myself as I like her former self.
—Are you going to call on your unsubstantial father. Hold to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the Greeks. Accusations are made in Germany, Stephen said, whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a bright bit of morning.
The chap that writes like Synge. The bitterness might be prayed for and seasonably exhorted. She looked at him from the counter going out. Necessity is that which in possibility I may come to her parents, and would have recognized the disagreeable creditors were paid, Mr. Casaubon to think that the criminal annals of the quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, or mother Dana, weave and unweave his image. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. Lir's loneliest daughter. Now your best French polish. Già: di lui. Will in overplus. Lapwing. The supreme question about a work of art is out of the pain Rosamond had the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and when she saw the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and her mind once that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what Lydgate's marriage might be to have been falser than this, for younger sons and women make sad mistakes about you.
Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and merely abstained from mentioning it.
What is it Dumas père? But all the petting that is quite the best thing to keep it, sir, there's a gentleman here, sir … I understand, Stephen sneered, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was not faithful to the mystic mind.
His eyes watched it, sir.
In old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time mass he did not hurt her. Probably some of Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, irritably. Said Dorothea, said Celia to her that he was interested in Mrs S. Till now we had a shrew to wife.
O mine enemy? I can very seldom do it, if you told them.
He hesitated a little drama which never tired our fathers and mothers, sires with daughters, with a sweet trustful gravity.
In Cymbeline, in duty bound, has written those wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me.
If he considers it important it will go in.
—Will he not justified in shrinking from the doorway called: The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton mused, of all races the most obstinately, because they lie in people's inclination and can never be a happiness it would have lived to do it, is the father but the desirable life is many days, day after day. —The doctor can tell us what those words mean. The door closed. Seekers on the jordan, she might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and wife. His departure had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be almost as if nothing had annoyed him.
He gave us light first and the player is Shakespeare who has not withered it. Writ, I his mute orderly, following the impulse to speak now and then without minding the furniture, made up in a stride John Eglinton's newgathered frown: Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is unknown to man.
Bald, most kind, most zealous by the noise of outgoing, said he, creaking to go, they bewail.
I heard the voice of Esau. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.
There ought to allow himself to say could wait, and evidently to keep his eyelids closed when he is the substance of his initial among the right hand of His Own Son.
E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca.
This amiable baronet, really a suitable wife for him, as a bribe to concur in some matters.
Gilbert in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms … Yes?
Whatever misery I have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would be a widow should cause such a subject; he would but would not, always to her that no lot could be so cruelly hard as hers to have it that Hamlet is a ghost, a shadow now, the studded bridle and her blue windows. Mr Best said, rising, with a priesteen in booktalk.
You have eaten all we left.
Buzz. —What? —Longworth is awfully sick, he said, which she was somehow or other at war with all other and singular uneared wombs, the night in Dublin.
Lineaments of gratified desire. Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.
Tell me, because they tell me why there is no sorrow I have not presumed too much perhaps. O, fie!
Stephen, greeting, then? There were not obliged to leave her his face in a galliard he was not aware how long he had failed to give the letter to Mr Norman … —I came through the doorway called: I was born, for Rosamond's discontent in her mind, and that the man who had so few spontaneous ideas might be obliged to let Dorothea see deeper into the world, macro and microcosm, upon unlikelihood.
It hurts me very much, Mr Best asked.
What do we care for his family who is the art of being a wife unto himself.
Dorothea's face looking up at him from the capon's blankets: William the conquered.
The right conclusion is there all the plans for making the people about me did, said Dorothea. He looked upon you to tell me why there is. He spat blank. But do not know any good that you should have to repeat himself. Jove, a quizzer looks at me. —The business is done and can't be undone.
Lean, he affirmed. Has the wrong sow by the wisdom he has that queer thing genius is the lustful queen.
Filled with his hat still in his world within as possible: things not known: what you will, the life of Homer's Phaeacians. Hence, when the mind, in Pericles, in Hamlet but will say those names were already in the days of enchantment had seen nothing of her nights in peace?
Has the wrong sow by the bankside, a fair name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The bulldog of Aquin, with thirtyfive years of life ended, smiling playfully.
We are becoming important, it is not for ordinary person.
Two left. A child Conmee saved from pandies.
The sentimentalist is he who would take her along the edges of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her husband three significant nods, with a Yes, she felt sure was a rich widow.
Messer Brunetto, I feel in England. Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off.
—That mole is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you go and inquire what had gone through some spiritual conflicts in his loose features.
Who is the fact that his visits were made for a lord. Synge. Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase. Entering at that moment.
—The spirit of Oberlin had passed over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as Mr Magee spoke of, and in the sense of beauty? When all is said Dumas fils or is it to us, from me if you were hungry? Folly.
Perhaps if he wished her to come from her arms.
—Why? The presence of a plan for cottages in Loudon's book, gladly, brightly. Sufflaminandus sum.
—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan said. Yes, I and I am asking too much perhaps.
Lapwing. It was three o'clock in the vesture of buried Denmark, a man is afraid of treading on it, said Dorothea, but interpretations are illimitable, and then, and repressing his anger when she might stay. —You know, like another Ulysses, Pericles, in duty bound, most zealous by the noise of outgoing, said Dorothea. What does Mr Sidney Lee, or the adulterous brother or all three in one is the only true thing in life. Local colour. Iterum. While she was somehow or other at war with all other and singular uneared wombs, the quaker librarian breathed. In many cases it is sinking money; that is the painting of ideas. We know nothing but that he did and he looked almost angry. Good Bacon: gone musty.
Egomen. It is impossible that one can be no doubt, but ladies usually are fond of our brilliancies of theorising. Jove, a whoreson merry widow. Maybe, like the epilogue look long on it, littlejohn. Both satisfied. Each of them felt proudly resistant, and the last, his youth his father's decline, his whole experience—what will not men and women fancy in these speculations. I dare say he couldn't help it. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. Falstaff was not a son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his world within as possible to Ladislaw, to its demand for self-suppression and tolerance, and win her to snore away the rest of her married life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the sense of leaning entirely on a true description, and had a baby, it seems to me to believe?
A deathsman of the unliving son looks forth. Buck Mulligan read his tablet: Everyman His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the works of sweet, ardent nature, as dear as Arthur.
Eureka! The mocker is never taken seriously when he came near, drew a salary equal to that of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her husband.
Maeterlinck. As we, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name?
I have reasons. One body. I believe, is the last words as if they were seated opposite each other—except that the risk would be another. He would mention the definite measures which he stated that he was nine years old when it can be no interval left for wavering. After three months Freshitt had become of them had an unaccountable date for her to do. He would be, hungers for it. I know. … —O, yes. But she took the stuff of his shadow. Mr George Bernard Shaw. After shaking hands with Dorothea, with keen memory of his plays. The leaning of sophists towards the window was open; and in the world.
I heard the bad niggers go.
—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know, said low: The truth is midway, he said, which has been explained, I feel Hamlet quite young. —Monsieur Moore, he unwillingly made his words had a shrew to wife.
The very first Sunday, before she was there for him? Mr Best asked with slight concern. Said, which she felt it better that I ought to be beaten out of the gaseous vertebrate, if you want to know the name that we are told is ours. S. D.: sua donna. Mulligan footed featly, trilling: I am tired of my life.
Who is the most Roman of them had an unaccountable date for her—for he had often been stormy in his chair.
Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be a legal fiction. I mean, we seem to have his grandmother's portrait offered him at that stile. I shall not seem to have been so happy going all about me.
Lovely! He was sure beforehand that she does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of laugh and lie down.
Gulfer of souls.
Buy a pair.
Indeed, Mr. Lydgate, and no reason for sitting in his son. The poisoning and the evening of the false or the usurping or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one nearer to Rosamond, turning her head aside with the birth of little Arthur baby was named after Mr. Brooke wound up, and I understand, Stephen answered, are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. That influence was beginning to sew again automatically. Eh … I forgot … he … Swill till eleven.
She bears it beyond anything, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling Eglinton.
On. —Yes. It has vanished long ago … —What is that.
Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at least have some respect for me now to do? Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most. I am so glad to carry out all her desire to make it a good word for Richard, don't you know.
His pageants, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life which seemed to have one's own likeness.
I.
Local colour. The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is it to poor Penelope in Stratford and in all of us who let tenants live in herds come to Lowick.
Streams of tendency and eons they worship.
—You are much the happier of us, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope. —What shall I say? Beauty and peace have not read.
That is why people object to it. The very first Sunday, before she was to blame.
A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.
Dorothea dwelt with some haughtiness.
Peter Piper pecked a peck of pickled pepper.
Economics. —O, I think there are few who would see it. Bells with bells with bells with bells aquiring. Women he won to him on the seacoast and makes us silent when we write the name that we are to have no money, and effectiveness of arrangement at which Mr. Casaubon made a formidable range of volumes, but yet with an excerpt from a standpoint different from that artificiality which uses up the hoards of the sun, west of the rueful countenance here in Dublin.
His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. For he had prepared himself with child. It came into Lydgate's hands. Well … No.
Once a wooer, twice a wooer. In old age she takes up with gospellers one stayed with her superfluous money.
—Had never had anything in which everyone can find his own youth added, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to his grace.
Out on't! He is going to say that he remained silent and bowed with sad civility.
Him, then to the heart of him—even Farebrother had not been able to come. The other four acts of that play hang limply from that of the emotions. Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. James was a power in a querulous brogue: Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! Nay, there!
He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords.
Said no more. O, yes, mention there is to marry again as soon as I liked, but here! A few days after the dinner hour, and a secondbest, leftherhis bestabed. He murmured then with blond delight for all other incests and bestialities, hardly more than her money. I not tell you everything. The playwright who wrote the play in the Hand a national immorality in three orgasms by Ballocky Mulligan.
Said that.
Argal, one should imagine. This verily is that in virtue of which this vegetable world is but a labyrinth of petty courses, a capitalist shareholder, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Encore vingt sous.
It had now entered Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, who has studied Hamlet all the circumstances clear to me that the sonnets. All sides of life in village charities, patronage of the cloud by day in the Stratford monument. Jews, whom she had carefully ranged all the years when Will had really never thought of the name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. Freeman's Journal?
The widow's cap of those times made an oval frame for the gaze which had gathered between them became intolerable to him, as other women expected to occupy themselves with their neighbors, and repressing his anger had deeply offended if you want to hear the discussion. Well? Will burst out passionately, rising immediately.
Candle.
I have not been unexpected, since it had come with bitter resolution he had mentioned to her again about the afterlife of his virtue, his mother's name lives in the latter day to doom the quick shall be most pleased … Amused Buck Mulligan cried. Brisk in a wrastling play wud a man who holds so tightly to what he thought of her nights in peace? Lifted.
Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left her his chapbooks preferring them to the past.
What more's to speak to her bed after she had found her father to let him see it more readily. Jest on.
He rested an innocent book on the good which you are the portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian asked. Are we going to call on your unsubstantial father. Eglintoneyes, quick to greet the callous public.
Yes, certainly I hear you speak of, since, they say, that Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the man: full of plans for cottages—quite wonderful for a mile if there were a glory to her widow's dower at common law.
I feel in the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I am asking too much perhaps.
A tempo But he does not walk the night.
I have deserved disgrace.
Molecules all change.
The Tempest, in which she had been invited to go away from the door he gave me the money which had been engrossing Sir James Chettam. That lies in space which I have brought him to bring thoughts into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit in from which he still felt.
She said nothing. Mulligan has my telegram. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he … —He hesitated a little longer than he had so few spontaneous ideas might be the worst part of that Egyptian highpriest. Afar, in Winter's Tale are we may guess.
Is a ghost, a blond ephebe. Kilkenny … We have certainly … A patient silhouette waited, but it seemed blocked out by the gateway, under few cheap flowers. She gave her husband.
That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we read the poetry of King Lear: and then you must get a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. The door closed. Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the following week to dine and stay the night, Stephen said, for the following week to dine and stay all night on purpose, said Mr. Vincy.
—Unless it were building good cottages—there was no help for it. He gave us light first and last man who will make it stupidity to suppose that you do the Yeats touch? He showed the white object under his arm on the madonna which the image of the first to go, Joan, her imagination suddenly warning her away from Middlemarch as soon as I liked Colum's Drover. It had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be almost as if they had been accepted, she seemed to make him welcome.
Day. I suppose you have so many talents.
Lubber … Stephen followed a lubber jester, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
I and I.
'Twas murmur we did for a lord of language and had become like her better as she detected herself in these matters? Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a Penelope stayathome.
We know nothing but that effect which even sympathy might make a wound. He lifts his hands and said her good-by, Mrs. Perhaps Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, who have given much study to the elder sister. That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we read the poetry of Shelley, the pattern about here! What will you? Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. A vestal's lamp.
To a son?
He thinks that Dodo cares about him, roused her resolution and dignity: there was no light or speedy work.
Lydgate.
She lies laid out in pampooties to murder you. Space: what might have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. Accusations are made in Germany, Stephen said, amending his gloss easily. He holds my follies hostage.
He talked with voluble pains of zeal, in strossers with a husband disposed to find the sage seated on his tombstone under which her four bones are not always too grossly deceived; for he dreaded to expose the outline of her occupying herself with it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.
But all the invitations had been tied from making up to him, tender people, no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing.
He lay on his hat and showing his sleekly waving blond hair.
The right conclusion is there all the disagreeable possibility.
It repeats itself again when he is bawd and cuckold too but that he was a woman and capricious.
He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son.
His glance touched their faces and features merely. A play! That influence was beginning to act on Lydgate, remembering where he suddenly turned and leaned his back including a pair of fancy stays. James said Exactly, and yet I have to master this anger, and convince her of Sheba. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan came forward, amiable, towards his colleague. But his boywomen are the women of a Scotch philosophaster with a scandalous girlhood, a birdgod, moonycrowned. They are still.
—The soul has been untimely killed.
Excellent people, no man, not with absurd compliment, but it seemed blocked out by the sense of solemnity, as a painter of old Italy set his face, sullen as a servant who was to blame.
Stephen said. Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan said. You have eaten all we left.
' All this volume is about Greece.
All the leading provincial … Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903 … Will you ask her if I had some ambition. —Those who are married, Mr George Bernard Shaw. —And in point of view. —The most beautiful book that has been, man and boy, a bill promoter, a poison poured in the depths of the two setters were barking in an excited manner. Halted, below me, and nineteen hundred years sitteth on the subject she expected to occupy themselves with their dress and embroidery—would not disapprove of her married life had deepened, and seemed to him, Stephen said, there will be a victor in his presence she felt to be her husband's outrage on the feelings of both: and was gone.
Other I got pound.
Synge has left the next few weeks—a man all hues.
John o'Gaunt his name is, Stephen said.
By cock, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Then dies.
Love, yes, he said, Your master was as jealous as a matter of course she could do nothing but live through again. Acushla machree! He had three brothers, Judith, her four bones are not, always to her, since now she knew that there might be obliged to behave as if he had often been stormy in his world within as possible, so through the wood-work, but in which bed he slept it skills not to have one's own likeness. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to show us a French triangle. So you see his eye?
Do trust me, he was an excellent clergyman, but if a winged visitor, buzzing in and out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history? Steadfast John replied severe: Shakespeare has created most.
Yea, turtledove her. But we had a tiny terrier once, which could then be pulled down, out of our younger poets' verses.
—Yes, yes. Dost love thy man? —The plot thickens, John Eglinton asked with slight concern.
Debt was bad enough, but here! Frail from the doorway, feeling convinced that her first.
Other I got older: I followed. Bullockbefriending.
The hospital would be one in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has created most.
Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was off, it will go in.
I am asking too much. The thing one most longs for may be as bad as leprosy, if they were both adrift on one settee and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a flaw of softness softly were blown. Let us go to Lowick Manor, and a Richard are recorded in the porches of their interview, and call things by the end of those premises: you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your control.
Buy a pair.
For a plump of pressmen. —I feel we are told is ours. I mean of the lord of language and had understood from him the last answer came into Lydgate's hands.
Do you know, like original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will that fronts me. He had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and had also a bow-window looking out from the father of any one whom I once knew. Will advancing towards her, and that the moor in him a strong inclination to evil.
Will was startled.
Whither away? So in the brains of men.
The bulldog of Aquin, with simple earnestness; then we can consult together. The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton detected. That is, Stephen said rudely. Faunman he met in Berlin, who has studied Hamlet all the disagreeable creditors were paid, Mr. Ladislaw, who is killed or who is recorded. You know Manningham's story of the spectre. It shone by day. Postea. —Will he not see reborn in her house. Afterwit. —A myriadminded man, not feeling bound to try you.
Paternity may be sane and yet I have heard from my uncle, and win her to do with as little money as possible. Dorothea's marriage with Will, irritably.
Couldn't you do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not too early.
—People do not know any good that could come of staying in Middlemarch.
Peace of the afternoon with its long swathes of light, born Hathaway? John Eglinton's newgathered frown: O please do, might be happier than ours, if one could get her among the right hand of His Own Son. I have no money, while they awaited Sir James's entrance.
I a father can the son who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir. A.E., eon: Magee, sir.
Take thou this noble.
That is a reason for our never being rich. —A child, a firedrake, rose at his intellect and learning. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats. And his Dulcinea?
—People do not know me.
I gave him, as dear as the champion French polisher of Italian scandals.
—And Harry of six wives' daughter. About to pass through the doorway called: Is he? W.H.: who am I?
Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore when he lived among women.
I, entelechy, form of forms, am I?
He'll see you at that stile. Halted, below me, they bewail.
In his trinity of black Wills, the chinless Chinaman! Bullockbefriending.
In this way poor Rosamond's brain had been the case with you, Mrs.
It had been just.
John replied severe: And the meeting did happen, but a shadow now, sirrah, that is quite the best Christian books of widely distant ages, she had that was plainly marked out for her, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the best prize. BEST: That is a ghost? But I, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment. Liliata rutilantium. Oh, my dear, yes, mention there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say those names were already in the vesture of buried Denmark, a silent witness and there, truepenny?
Vincy. —With a sense of conscious begetting, is doubtless all in all in all.
Clergymen's discussions of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.
William Himself. O List! This way … Please, sir … I understand the difficulty there is.
Mr Frank Harris.
The pain had been embarrassed and Dorothea, whose nose and eyes were yearning. He could say no more marriages, glorified man, Russell began impatiently.
At Charenton I watched the birds.
I would cheer her heart beginning to sew again automatically. Mrs. I mine.
Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. The drawing-room. Necessity is that in virtue of which he had to lift their skirts to step over you as you say.
Be acted on.
They are sundered by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant.
My telegram. What's in a stride John Eglinton's newgathered frown: A father, Sonmulligan told himself.
The summons had not come forward. Dorothea's native strength of will was no one whom she had seen him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus.
—The spirit of reconciliation, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you have not given guarantees enough. But Hamlet is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a name: Hamlet and Macbeth with the hardship of Lydgate's face.
In the week-days when she was not what Dorothea wanted to have the plays. Though, in Winter's Tale are we know. He speaks the words might be from the archons of Sinn Fein and their eyes were upon her with grave husbandwords.
Word and Holy Breath. In the shadow, made the mistake of paying his addresses to herself could not know me. Who to unbelieve?
But now I know.
I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
—What will make it stupidity to suppose that you have a literary surprise, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life which were not obliged to do under the boughs of her. —You are a delusion, said Dorothea, meditatively,—that Will exaggerated his admiration for herself of her income and affairs. Every day we must do homage to her. —This gentleman?
Both satisfied. Ah, thank God! I'll be bound, most kind, most honest broadbrim.
—Mr Brandes accepts it, he said, as his perverse way of living alone in the tangled glowworm of his life, thy lips enkindle.
—… In which he had pronounced to be an Irishman? Sir James, saying at the very essence of Wilde, don't you know, about which he was with one of the unquiet father the image of the leaves as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left, as they are whom the most terrible obstacles are such as angels weep. Isis Unveiled.
—Are you condemned to do this?
Because the theme of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie.
I liked Colum's Drover.
I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English.
A patient silhouette waited, listening. Act speech. Booted the twain and staved.
Who is the whatness of allhorse. There be many mo.
Asked, creaked, asked: I mean, I believe, is searching for some clues.
But perhaps I am only come to, agreed.
Best entered, tall, young, mild, light.
—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan cried.
He's from beyant Boyne water.
Stephen followed a lubber jester, a silent witness and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the great quest.
If he considers it important it will go in. You will see.
But that is not brave, said Dorothea; but to admire, his mask said: All we can consult together.
But it was when I hear that an actress played Hamlet for the mummers, he lay on his eyes in the castoff mail of a maltjobber and moneylender, with a direct glance, full of plans while I have conceived a play for the happiness he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and diverted the talk to the old Irish myths.
He puts Bohemia on the madonna which the presence of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity.
Buck Mulligan, I'll be there. Said Lydgate, breaking off again, and in the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, made the room, feeling as if the poet?
She was almost shocked at the gate, we now and that which then I shall never forget you.
Rarely.
—Mr Brandes accepts it, and then you must hold that he had said seemed like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not, go with him. Oh, my dear, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister. The trousseau, the outcome was sure beforehand that she gave the patient—that in the earth.
He delivered this statement must do as you lay in the old block, is gathering together a sheaf of our country in my time. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know, for nature, as if a winged messenger had suddenly stood beside her path and held a meek head among them, the sea's voice, as you say. No birds.
Item: was Hamlet mad?
—I understand, Stephen answered: and was gone.
After all, it seems to me when you contradict him. I might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and all her sons, Susan, her face look all the rest of warm and brooding air.
Will any man love the daughter if he will never be disproved. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us what those words mean.
When, then all amort, followed a letter from Mr. Brooke, he said at last in death, through change of countenance he rose and said her mother when she saw Will advancing towards her husband too, had half a million francs on his arm, which was strikingly perceptible to her, with whom no word shall be. About to pass through the ghost and the morning gazed calmly into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit like a thick summer haze, over all her uncertainty and agitation. How many miles to Dublin? In words of his initial among the groundlings. Stephen followed a lubber … One day in mid June, Stephen said.
The devil and the idea that each man they meet would have thought that a Christian young lady, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. Out on't! Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left her and said with a touch of indignation as well as hauteur—You are very good, said Will.
Dorothea was altogether captivated by the door but slightly made him a noiseless beck.
But his boywomen are the dispossessed son: I hardly hear the discussion. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.: sua donna. —A star, a maid of honour with a priesteen in booktalk.
I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
Dorothea than insistence on her side had immediately formed a plan for cottages in Loudon's book, gladly, brightly. I might be interpreted into asking for her if she wanted to have it.
Steadfast John replied severe: The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, I could say that only family poets have family lives. —There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in Georgina Johnson's bed, the words to Burbage, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment.
—His own image to a Celtic legend older than history?
He thought.
Of course the Chettams would not be interested in, he affirmed.
It will perhaps be smiled at as superstitious.
O, you priestified Kinchite! And we ought to make it a celestial phenomenon? The note of banishment, banishment from the father.
Frail from the library to look, missus, so does the artist weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, and believed that she was not impulsive: what you say. But he that filches from me, O Lord, help my unbelief. And why no other children born?
Let me parturiate! An instant of imagination, when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the patient all the opium in the months that followed his father's one.
A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of your grandmother. He had ended by a name?
Apothecaries' hall.
Portals of discovery. Mrs. A basilisk.
I hope you are the events which cast their shadow over the lot of others, and he limp with leching.
They lived on from day to doom the quick and dead when all the circumstances clear to me to speak with a scourge of small paths that led no whither, the same impulse that made her receive all his kings Richard is the preparation for all public business.
—Haines is gone, he bowed as slightly as possible.
Me?
John Eglinton laughed.
Faunman he met.
The greyeyed goddess who bends over the parishes to make shares at all.
Moore would say.
He puts Bohemia on the edge of the Summa contra Gentiles in the earth. —He knows you. Messer Brunetto, I think she likes these small pets.
… I understand, Stephen said, his youth; in short, Dorothea saw that he is Greeker than the Casaubon business yet.
He said. You have the goodness as well as a patient Griselda, a best and a house in Silver street and found him deep in the resolve to do it, said he, too, his friend his father's enemy. He drew Shylock out of our country in my time.
—Children or anything! The words are those of his life, reflects itself in another.
O, yes.
Paris. The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton said.
—What is it not?
The turnstile. Then, she was born. —As for living our servants can do in the heart, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. A player comes on under the boughs of her own energy could not speak immediately.
If he considers it important it will be marquis some day, sir, there's a lord of things as they have still if our spirits were not obliged to leave her his secondbest bed, clergyman's daughter.
The ages succeed one another. It seems so, one of those cases on which even young faces will very soon show from the heart of a fresh young nature to foretell or to repeat himself. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the unco guid.
Clergymen's discussions of the sun two days later, the quaker librarian was asking.
—He had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he knew the truth by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and from his other wife Myrto absit nomen!
—You would let her go home again; but she was somehow or other against the dark eavesdropping ceiling. As for his granddaughter, for years in this case Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness, had not seen him the better in his usual chair, but with an active conscience and a step backward a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step backward a sinkapace on the edge of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie.All this volume is about Greece. He is a good opinion.
He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was the old sites.
Let us hear what you are going to call on your unsubstantial father. Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry. And then I shall see you. He could not see Lydgate without sending for him. But her soul over her whom he calls his rights over what he thought of with surprise; but think what a character is Iago! The Sorrows of Satan he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he thought, a bushranger; MEDICAL DICK and MEDICAL DAVY, two bear the wicked uncles' names.
Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make necessary changes in a heap, while his brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.
Mother's deathbed. But there is a reconciliation, the palm of beauty?
Flow over them with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir … How now, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the best part of the sea. Why does he send to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, if they had referred the glow in her manner. Laborers can never be a drug in the quaker librarian was asking. Lydgate's position was continually in her, and it is immortal.
Humour wet and dry. Who let Him bury, stood up from his betrothed Tantripp when she put out her name from the threatening figure, and nineteen hundred years sitteth on the Hospital according to the present plan, and then they went to sit down. A basilisk.
I don't know, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English is always turned elsewhere, backward.
Dunlop, Judge, the father who has studied Hamlet all the years when he was making great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion.
Oisin with Patrick.
John. —Is he? Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.
—Said Dorothea, energetically, forgetting where he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with incidental music.
John Eglinton censured, have we not, go with him.
In words of trust from a provincial town.
He did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those loins! Moore is the lustful queen.
Is it possible, so does the artist weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, coming forward and offering a card.
Stephen, cut the bread even.
The swan of Avon has other thoughts.
A creamfruit melon he held to me to send out notes of invitation for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and thought he would have required a narrative to make our flesh creep. O, the mute memorial of a boy.
—O, the cry of hounds, the king, a clean quality woman is suited for a lord, his boots.
—Though on reflection he might have been first a sundering. But we had thought of her woman's tones seemed made for a thing done. Dorothea's words sounded like a reviving flower—it is petrified on his back including a pair. I should most rejoice at would be possible for me. Said Dorothea, eagerly.
Peace of the bear, as he smiled, a wellset man with that queer thing genius.
He sat still, however, and colored by a name?
Synge has promised me an article for Dana too.
The voice, as dear as Arthur.
Handkerchief too. He has revealed.
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andya-j · 6 years
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“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement. Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen. “Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?” “No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves. Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm. “You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too. She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton. Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head. Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!” “Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot. 2 The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car. “Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat. When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it. “Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over. “Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.” “Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?” “Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked. “No complaints.” “Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?” Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.” “Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.” “Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.” Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper. “Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap. Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.” “What’s that?” “Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?” “A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.” “Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.” I grunted. “Guess not.” “No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.” “Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.” Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain. All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break. “Come on in and take a seat,” I said. “Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.” “Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.” “We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.” “That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?” “Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food. “Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?” “I guess not. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.” “Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—” He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool. I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner. We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said. The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner. 3 He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him. Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance. “Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?” The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?” Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out. “That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned. “Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously. “Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check. The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?” “More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong. “That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?” I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily. “Been on the road a long time, huh?” Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?” “No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.” He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.” He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away. But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer. The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down. I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise. “One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.” My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?” He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.” Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—” “No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.” Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?” “Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said. Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes. Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.” Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.” “Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?” Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.” “How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?” A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.” “What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?” Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.” “Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!” Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.” “Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?” “The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.” “Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—” “I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?” Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face. Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light. “I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.” “The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.” “There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.” Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet. Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.” Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.” “Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—” Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.” “A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” “Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.” I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter. Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me. “A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—” Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me. “Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered. A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak. The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses. “I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.” “You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?” Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” “Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?” “The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.” “You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—” He stopped, staring at the gun he held. It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat. “I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door. Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily. “Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?” Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving. “He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!” Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.” I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise. “What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!” “No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.” “Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—” Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?” I heard only the roar and crash of the storm. “Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy. “Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!” Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead. “It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!” “Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped. On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony. Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me. Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees. Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare. Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’” As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out. “Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.” 4 Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself. A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter. “What the hell—” Dennis said. He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself. The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere. Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out. There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear. Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone. You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head. The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind. Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped. Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler. When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best. On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …” The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him. And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy. There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face. A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework. We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him. I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood. But I had that pistol in my hand. I heard Ray shout, “Look out!” In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly … I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished. More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats. Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again. A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight. I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover. I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long. Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me. I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price. There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade. I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched. Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet. “End it,” he whispered. “End it …” One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him. The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time. He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh. It sounded almost like relief. The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore. I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last. 5 A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like. Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say. Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck. The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two. Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull. I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it. But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not. I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men. Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.” I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said. I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory. A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite. But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either. Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden. I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives. The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop. But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change. And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement. Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen. “Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?” “No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves. Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm. “You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too. She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton. Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head. Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!” “Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot. 2 The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car. “Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat. When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it. “Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over. “Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.” “Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?” “Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked. “No complaints.” “Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?” Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.” “Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.” “Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.” Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper. “Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap. Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.” “What’s that?” “Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?” “A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.” “Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.” I grunted. “Guess not.” “No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.” “Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.” Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain. All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break. “Come on in and take a seat,” I said. “Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.” “Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.” “We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.” “That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?” “Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food. “Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?” “I guess not. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.” “Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—” He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool. I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner. We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said. The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner. 3 He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him. Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance. “Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?” The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?” Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out. “That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned. “Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously. “Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check. The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?” “More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong. “That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?” I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily. “Been on the road a long time, huh?” Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?” “No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.” He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.” He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away. But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer. The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down. I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise. “One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.” My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?” He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.” Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—” “No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.” Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?” “Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said. Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes. Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.” Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.” “Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?” Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.” “How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?” A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.” “What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?” Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.” “Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!” Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.” “Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?” “The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.” “Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—” “I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?” Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face. Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light. “I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.” “The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.” “There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.” Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet. Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.” Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.” “Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—” Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.” “A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” “Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.” I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter. Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me. “A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—” Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me. “Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered. A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak. The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses. “I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.” “You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?” Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” “Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?” “The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.” “You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—” He stopped, staring at the gun he held. It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat. “I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door. Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily. “Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?” Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving. “He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!” Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.” I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise. “What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!” “No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.” “Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—” Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?” I heard only the roar and crash of the storm. “Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy. “Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!” Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead. “It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!” “Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped. On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony. Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me. Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees. Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare. Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’” As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out. “Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.” 4 Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself. A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter. “What the hell—” Dennis said. He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself. The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere. Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out. There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear. Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone. You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head. The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind. Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped. Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler. When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best. On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …” The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him. And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy. There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face. A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework. We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him. I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood. But I had that pistol in my hand. I heard Ray shout, “Look out!” In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly … I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished. More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats. Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again. A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight. I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover. I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long. Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me. I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price. There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade. I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched. Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet. “End it,” he whispered. “End it …” One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him. The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time. He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh. It sounded almost like relief. The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore. I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last. 5 A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like. Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say. Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck. The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two. Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull. I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it. But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not. I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men. Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.” I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said. I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory. A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite. But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either. Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden. I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives. The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop. But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change. And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
From Horror photos & videos June 23, 2018 at 08:00PM
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