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gallusrostromegalus · 7 months

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Okay but given that crows are ready to Throw Down with eagles at the slightest opportunity, I have to know- 1) are there crows in the Seireitei and 2) how much of their Daily Enrichment is causing problems for the 11th Division on purpose?

There absolutely are crows and jays and even ravens in the Seireitei and very nearly all of their daily enrichment is causing some level of mayhem at every division of the Gotei-13,

...except the 11th.

See, Zaraki has the distinct advantage over most eagles in that he is also a human, with a canny eye for social dynamics, and he's worked out a deal with the local corvids. He noticed the pair of ravens on the roof of the 11th the first afternoon he was there, made a note of them, carefully folded it up, and put it in his mental back pocket for later.

The ravens didn't actually notice him that much on the first day because there was an entire bisected corpse of the former Kenpachi and the medics were delayed in retrieving it for some reason so that meant lungs and liver and a spleen and gallbladder and a special course of freshly exposed brains before an eyeball each for dessert while some poor wretch from the 4th completely failed to chase them off with a broom. They did very much notice him in the middle of the afternoon on the second day, when he returned from the early morning captain's meeting they had slept through, on account of yesterday's food coma. -But even still sluggish with guts full of guts, they still sat up and took notice of a man wearing, loud, shiny and extremely steal-able BELLS.

A-ho, A-ho! Called the first raven from the middle boughs of the pine in the courtyard as the new Kenpachi sat down on the porch that surrounded the small and rather pathetic little garden, sighing deeply. What's this that jingle-jangles in like a jester and sighs and settles like a corpse at the bottom of a lake?

A great way for your mate to lose her beak if she gets any closer. He growled back, and the raven on the roof behind him startled, flapping away out of his blade's reach.

A-joke! A-joke! Don't hiss and rattle so! She huffed, joining her wife on the pine and ruffling her feathers.

It might be amusing sport on another day, but I have no humor to speak of. He clattered, turning his patch-covered eye to them in apology. I have suffered a bereavement.

A-no! A-no! Who is it who has died? Asked the first raven.

One who granted me the knowledge of letters, and further so, the wisdom of tales- in telling, and moreso in listening. Thrice blessed by her I was, and only now do I learn of her demise, fifty years too late. He explained, rubbing his temples and shaking his head, trying to soothe himself.

A-woe! A-woe! cooed the second raven in agreement. Any who teaches is a living saint, and their passing the most terrible loss.

A-woe, A-woe! the first raven cooed in sympathy. She didn't leave clutch or wife for you to look after?

She had a husband, but I do not know his name, and he is apparently deceased as well. The Kenpachi frowned. Her brother yet lives- he is my colleague even, and how I learned of this. A wretched way to meet someone she spoke so highly of- but you are right, he needs looking after. He is... unwell, and was never thriving to begin with, but the same sort of saint of words as she, and much braver than his body should allow. Of course, I will look after him for her, as is right.

A-woe, A-woe- A wretched meeting but the right and honorable thing to do. Nodded the second raven.

A-woe, A-woe, but this is not the source of your miserable sighing? asked the first. No, his care does not worry me- The Kenpachi shook his head, folding a leg up and resting his elbow on it and his cheek on his hand in turn. It's that I am left to wonder- If I had known sooner, or even before this catastrophe, if there was something I might have done. But you are interesting company so I will divert myself from useless morose- what do you call yourselves, carrion queens that live beneath my roof?

I am Mun-Yin! Declared the second raven, that spoke only in statements.

If she is Mun-Yin, might I then be Hau-Yin? Asked the first, who spoke only in questions.

You might. The Kenpachi nodded.

A-so? A-so? Who might you be that wears the shredded rags of a dead man like a pauper, but speaks with the grace of a prince? Hau-Yin asked, hopping from the pine to a closer boulder, cocking her head at him.

A-ho! A-ho! It may be your house that supports our nest, but we live above your roof, not under it! Mun-Yin laughed, hopping closer as well.

I am Zaraki Kenpachi, Captain of the 11th division! He smirked at the birds who rolled their eyes at him.

A-no! A-no! Pouted Mun-Yin We didn't ask for your NAME!

A-no! A-no! Sulked Hau-Yin Who ARE you?

The Kenpachi regarded them for a moment, then lifted his head from his hand and leaned forward, a conspiratorial grin on his face. Would you like to know a secret?

A-yo! A-yo! We love a secret! Said Mun-Yin, bouncing in excitement.

A-yo! A-yo! Do we not spend all day learning all the secrets of the city? Giggled Hau-Yin.

Then I will offer you a trade- The Kenpachi grinned, beckoning then closer. -I'll tell you who I am if you promise to leave my hair-bells alone.

Hmmm... the ravens considered, then shook their heads.

A-low, A-low, those are some very shiny jingle-jangle bells, and that's but one measly little secret. frowned Mun-Yin

A-low, A-low- Agreed Hau-Yin. That's not much of a trade is it?

On the contrary, it's a very good secret! Maybe the best secret in all of the Seireitei! The Kenpachi wagged his finger at them. Nobody knows it but me and my daughter, so it's very exclusive! And the risk is all on my end- some secrets are dangerous to know, but in this case, it would grant you great advantage- it would be DEEPLY embarrassing for me if any of the humans -and whatever Komamura is- were to find out.

Hmmm... the birds considered again, and nodded this time.

A-Quo! A-Quo! Very Exclusive and Deeply Embarrassing Secrets are The Best! We will take very good trade! Agreed Mun-Yin

A-Show! A-Show! Who are you, that we will leave your bells alone? asked Hau-Yin, hopping closer and bowing her head, looking up at him with a mischievously glittering eye.

I am Zaraki Kenpachi, Captain of The Eleventh Division, Father of Yachiru, Great Sword Bastard of the North 80th District, and most relevant to you- Youngest and Most Beloved Son of She Who Rules The Sky.

The ravens stared blankly at him for a moment.

What that fuck? Asked Hau-Yin.

Didn't realize we were speaking to ROYALTY. Muttered Mun-Yin

See? It's a VERY good secret! The Prince Kenpachi grinned, leaning back and lounging a bit- someone like him could make even a bare wooden porch look like a throne. -Also, you see how you DO SO live under my roof! He added, pointing up at the clouds.

The ravens shuffled a bit nervously, reconsidering him.

A-so? A-so? Hau-Yin asked, cautiously, shuffling a sideways to him.-How does Your Highness come to be a Shinigami then?

A-so! A-so! nodded Mun-Yin. Your Highness and We alike are strange enough birds for taking Names, but to take a JOB is unheard of!

It has it's benefits... The Prince Kenpachi shrugged. Alas, I may be Her Majesty's Son, but I did not inherit my mother's wings and guts, so I cannot live on the wind and whatever I might find by the roadside alone. Still- like a Name, a Job both restricts and offers opportunity- I am bound by duty, but I also am gifted a dry and sturdy nest and all the meat I may eat in exchange. And better still- My daughter now has her choice of tutors and scholars to learn greater Wisdom than I ever will.

A-sow! A-sow! Mun-Yin considered. You do reap well in that exchange!

A-though, A-though- considered Hau-Yin. Would you have the chance to reap in such fashion had you the wings of your mother? Are you perhaps Blessed in strange Human fashion?

The Prince Kenpachi laughed. Perhaps I am! Perhaps you may be even more blessed than I- you have wings and carrion-guts, but you are not bereft! I can offer you similar employment, if you should find it agreeable.

A-ho! A-ho! You are in a fine humor now, My Prince! Chirped Mun-Yin.

A-ho! A-ho! What is this Job you have in mind for the like of us? Asked Hau-Yin, intrigued.

I am in much better humor now, thanks to you both. The Prince agreed, offering Hau-Yin an outstretched hand and patting his knee to indicate Mun-Yin should join him too. There is naught you may do against death, but you may yet ease my bereavement- I am am saddened by the loss of my friend, but it's the lateness of the news that worries me. You say you spend all day learning the secrets of the Seireitei, and that you greatly desire Shiny Jingle-jangle bells?

A-so! A-so! Mun-Yin bobbed excitedly, hopping onto The Prince's hand. All over, all over from the high pillars of the execution grounds to the lowest grates where the sewers open up, we fly all over all over My Wife and I! And we see and we hear and we remember all the secrets of the city!

A-stow? A-Stow? You poses yet more shiny shiny bells? Hau-Yin clicked with interest, hopping onto his knee.

I happen to have two such golden bells, even bigger and louder than these, and will happily give them to you- with a Doll's shiny ribbon so you may wear them if you so desire- and other shiny and noisy things as I find them, if you tell to me all the secrets of the Seireitei.

Hmmm... the ravens considered.

A-yo, A-yo- It is a good deal. Nodded Mun-Yin. -But sometimes the winter is cold or the pickings are lean, and there is only so much comfort a shiny jingle-jangle brings when it is so.

A-yo, A-yo- Agreed Hau-Yin. Maybe sometimes a secret is worth a night out of the storm or a scrap of meat instead?

You are both very wise. The Prince Kenpachi nodded and the ravens preened with the praise. I am amenable- The ribbon-bells for all the secrets you know right now, and we can work out what payment is best in the future, when you discover more secrets for me?

A-Yo! A-Yo! crowed Mun-Yin, flapping with excitement. Your Highness is as generous as he is wise!

More, I hope! Laughed The Prince Kenpachi. I promise, I am a colossal fool!

A-Yo! A-Yo! crowed Hau-Yin What secrets would you like to know first? And may I have a Pink Ribbon?

I would like to know all you know about- hm, that's a tricky question actually.- There are so many things I wish to know! He considered, rubbing his chin, then jumped to his feet, making them hop, an Ancient Bird Game. Let me go get your ribbon-bells first, and make up my mind!

A-ho! A-ho! the Ravens laughed, hopping down the hall after him.

---

"Hey Boss, I found the payroll forms but fuck me if I can make heads or tails of- what's wrong?" Ikkaku called out as he came into the courtyard half an hour later, only to find Yumichika standing in the doorway, frowning pensively with his hand over his mouth.

"I'm not sure anything is wrong, per se-" Sighed Yumichika, waving at the scene before him.

Zaraki was seated on one of the boulders in the courtyard, delicately fastening one of Yachiru's shiny pink hair ribbons around the neck of an exceptionally smug-looking raven in an elaborate bow with a large golden bell in the middle. A similarly adorned Raven perched upon his shoulder, chattering excitedly between fondly preening where his eyepatch parted his hair.

"-but I can't help but think I've seen this scene before..." Yumichika muttered.

"They look like they're all having fun?" Ikkaku shrugged as Zaraki finished the bow and the raven ruffled her feathers into place, making it jangle and Yachiru giggle and applaud from where she sat on her father's knee. The Newly-belled raven hopped around to croak and click at him as well, flapping excitedly, and he put a hand up to stop her, asking her something in the shrill hiss and click of his native Aquiline tongue.

"You ever get the impression The Boss is way more articulate in Eagle than he is in Japanese?" Ikkaku frowned.

"Darling, he learned his Japanese from Bandits and Buskers and in Brothels, his Eagle has GOT to be better than that." Yumichika rolled his eyes.

"-ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Zaraki suddenly bellowed, shaking his finger at the raven in his lap.

Both ravens cawed in objection.

"-THIS IS NOT UP FOR NEGOTIATION! SO LONG AS YOU TWO LIVE UNDER MY ROOF, YOU LEAVE KANAME AND HIS EYEBALLS ALONE." he growled.

The Raven on his shoulder tipped her head, speculating.

"-He is TOO using them, they're there to keep his eye sockets and brain from getting infected with gods-know-what flesh-eating bacteria or whatever. NO. PECKING."

Both Ravens hunched up their wings and turned away, pouting.

"What's-His-Ass in the Fifth? The faintly greasy one that looks like a sad mop? His glasses are fair game, if it will amuse you." Zaraki relented, and both birds perked up. "-Might be worth a bag of potato chips if you can bring me a pair intact." he offered.

"Oh Gods, he's not gonna make me try to add a pair of BIRDS to the payroll, is he?" Whimpered Ikkaku.

#AEIWAM #an elephant is warm and mushy #Bleach #bleach fanfiction #kenpachi zaraki #Look you don't hand me an old man with an eyepatch for me to NOT give him a pair of ravens #long post #It's fun though

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ahepaseniorliving · 9 months

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Making a Difference: Empowering Seniors and Enriching Lives | Ahepa Senior Living

AHEPA Service Coordinators Provide Care, Confidence, and Comfort

We have the daily honor of aiding and assisting our residents who are navigating new ways of living and personal and environmental changes. At times, many of our residents find these changes to be disorienting, but we’re always happy to step in and lend a helping hand or an ear to listen. Recently, a few of our residents experienced some challenges, and our caring Service Coordinators (SC) happily jumped at the opportunity to provide help.

Keeping Up in an Ever-Changing World

A resident of an AHEPA affordable housing community in Texas informed his service coordinator that he was consistently late paying his electric bill, and his electricity had been disconnected twice. The resident was distressed, and the situation had begun to take a toll on his self-esteem. When our SC found out about the resident’s plight, she was quick to provide reassurance and encouragement to the gentleman. She also immediately began to educate the resident on money management. She patiently assisted him with setting up budget billing with his utility company so that he would know exactly how much his monthly bill would be. She also helped the resident set up automatic bill pay so his payments would be on time every month.

By making these small but impactful changes, the resident avoided lease violations and even possible eviction with power disconnection. Because of the care and compassion of our dedicated staff, this resident can remain in his apartment and continue to age in place.

Dignity and Quality Care for All

During a new resident assessment at one of our communities, our service coordinator discovered the state had condemned the new resident’s previous home for its unsanitary conditions, and he was only allowed to take his medications and clothing. The gentleman was out of options and stayed at a shelter for a month while on the waiting list for an AHEPA community. The resident also confided in our SC that he had no food, clothes, money, or furniture.

Upon hearing this, his SC immediately sprang into action to assist. To start, she began calling the two nearest grocery stores, explained the situation, and submitted letters on behalf of the resident. The SC secured $200 in gift cards for him to purchase food and other necessary personal items. She also contacted a local food pantry and picked up several bags of food and toiletries for the resident, and she didn’t stop there! Wanting to help him feel more at home, she contacted several churches and Goodwill locations in the area for household items and furniture donations.

Because of the SC’s passion for quality care and dignity for all, our resident was given a new bed, sofa, and other home items. While many of us take everyday things like this for granted, to an older person in need without other options, these items are their link to security, comfort, and dignity.

Passion for People

While it may sound cliché, caring for others is at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to creating safe, healthy, and inviting communities for our residents and providing them with the tools and help they need to age in place.

If you or a loved one are interested in affordable housing or assisted living, we invite you to contact us today to learn more about our communities.

#Assisted Living #Affordable Senior Housing #Independent Senior Living #Affordable Apartments For Seniors #Best Independent Living Communities

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vitalneedsseo · 1 year

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sustainable fish feed

We at Vital-needs are all about supplying only the highest quality sustainable fish feed supplements manufactured using the most advanced fine particle chemistry and production technology. Checkout Fish Feed Cost! Africa, Development & Aid, Featured, Food and Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition, Food Sustainability, Headlines, Humanitarian Emergencies, Poverty & SDGs, TerraViva United Nations Food Sustainability Efforts to improve nutrition of breastfeeding mothers has resulted in an innovative maize product which includes small fish which often go to waste. Credit: Zany Jadraque/unsplash BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 12 2021 (IPS) – During the COVID-19 lockdown in Uganda, a breastfeeding mother struggled to improve the health of her malnourished child. With the closure of her local health centre, she worried the child could die without urgent medical treatment. Her child was saved. The mother was given a fish-enriched maize meal, developed by a local team of researchers under the NutriFish project and donated to the local Mulago Hospital in Kampala. It is not hard to see why the food innovation was effective. The fish-enriched maize meal flour is packed with essential micronutrients and protein. A 200g serving of the fish-enriched maize meal, known locally as posho, provides up to 50 percent of a mother’s daily requirements in terms of calories, vitamin A, iron, and zinc. “Posho is good for me even though its appearance can put one off, it is delicious,” a breastfeeding mother wrote in hospital comments after receiving the maize meal, developed to help tackle widespread nutritional deficiencies, particularly among women of reproductive age and children under five years. According to the 2017 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey, 29 percent of children under five years are stunted while 4 percent are wasted, and 11 percent are underweight. Furthermore, about 32 percent of women aged 15-49 are anaemic, making it vital for them to access foods rich in micronutrients such as iron, zinc and calcium, which are found in fish. A nutritionally enhanced maize meal suitable for breastfeeding mothers has been developed by the NutriFish project and donated to hospitals in Uganda. Credit NutriFish “The fish-enriched maize meal was evaluated by breastfeeding mothers to improve their ability to produce adequate breast milk to feed their babies,” Nakimbugwe told IPS. NutriFish researchers are helping reduce losses of underutilized small fish and Nile Perch by-products through improved post-harvest and processing technologies such as solar tent dryers. The NutriFish project is an initiative of the Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF) Fund, a partnership between Australia’s Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre. The project promotes the handling and processing of small fish to improve the quality and shelf life and avoid waste. Researchers from the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI) estimate that up to 40 percent of the small fish caught in Ugandan lakes are lost due to poor handling and rudimentary processing methods. These losses have negative implications for fish supply and the incomes of actors in the small fish value chains, particularly women who dominate fish processing, says Jackson Efitre, a senior lecturer in fisheries and aquaculture at Makerere University and the NutriFish project’s principal investigator.

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#sustainable #shrimp

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djarinsbeskar · 3 years

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Rachelllll - something I've always wondered...

In your mind, what is Medics dress sense. What does she wear on the daily? What would she wear if she went out somewhere fancy? What's her work outfit?

I merely need to paint a more vivid picture of her in my mind, as I am too in love with her.

Lils, my love---💛

What you are unleashing with this question oh my god...

Fashion is of secondary importance to Medic in most aspects of her life, whether that's working in a clinic, during the Rebellion or indeed while she's living on the Razor Crest. Because of that, she does actually enjoy making an effort when she can.

**Just a quick disclaimer that these are all just inspiration images that fit into the GFFA universe and are not the definitive indication of Medics appearance/hair/body shape/taste. That is all up to the reader to interpret, but given her profession and the culture I've created around her, I thought it might be fun to share some of the thought process around it.

On the Razor Crest: when she's not in Din's shirts - which is at least 70% of the time - she prefers practical, comfortable clothing. Loose fitting jumpers and soft, durable leggings for warmth when she's not tangled with her Mandalorian lover.

Day to day outside the Razor Crest: This is not too different to what she would have worn during the Rebellion, an example of which can be seen below (credit to the artist!). Durable, comfortable clothing that offer her plenty of cover and protection. During the Rebellion she would have had her own version of a bandolier for quick access to bacta shots, tourniquets and sedatives for immediate care before she could work on a casualty properly. She had a diagnostics scanner holstered at her hip for ease of access. She dresses much the same now day to day minus the gear she needed strapped to her to treat wounded rebels on the battlefront but durable leggings and lots of layers for the many different climates she and Din come into contact with is a must. Instead, Din has adjusted an old blaster holster of his to fit her, and very much enjoys the way it looks strapped to her hip.

Formal Wear: oh our girl likes a dress it has to be said. Soft, flowing material that feels like water, feels like air-- feels as though when she or Din runs their fingers over it, it hardly exists. Chiffon layers that drape over her shoulders and cascade down over her front in a dangerous V to her midsection, held closed only by a belt woven delicately to loop around her waist (a beskar belt eventually given as a gift by an enamoured Din), the most beautiful contrast of the strongest steel and softest fabric, "just like you, kitten..." Din would whisper while his fingers trace down over arms she likes to leave bare, devouring her reflection in the mirror he would have her stand before. Colour wise, she favours pale blues, silvers and whites, hints of green to enrich the coolness of the tones. She's a vision beside him, the wispiness of her gown paired beautifully with the immovable strength of his armour. This is obviously what she would wear in a highly fancy situation, which doesn't come around often! She likes to feel free and unrestrained in clothing that she can choose for something that's not merely for functionality.

(yes Danaerys dresses do come to mind they're simply stunning ok)

Pamarthan Formal Wear: Medics own personal style reflects Pamarthes traditional wear but hers is quite a bit more... sensual shall we say? Given the windy, temperate climate of Pamarthe, you'll find heavier fabrics with long loose sleeves that fan open wide. This sort of gown is only worn for holidays of special significance or annual meetings of the clans before the heads go to sit on the council and discuss the planets management as a whole.

Her day to day wear on Pamarthe isn't too far off what she currently wears now as discussed above, the only difference - an element she definitely misses - is a cloak, a large hooded cape that nearly everyone wears on Pamarthe to combat the elements should it rain or storm at a moments notice. Many people use ponchos instead these days, but the women on Pamarthe still have a fondness for the way the cloak looks on them and you can find many pilots, completely decked in uniform wandering the cities and towns of Pamarthe with beautiful, detailed cloaks-- some of which carry traditional clan insignias and others boasting the latest fashion trends in the Core. She left all of her beautiful burgundy, white and green cloaks at home when she joined the Rebellion - such colours would be a target to imperial sharpshooters so she really enjoys it when Din gives her his own to cover her is he thinks she's feeling cold, it's a reminder of home.

I'm quite inspired by a combination of Celtic, Norse and Saxon attire so while we have the wonderful advancements of the GFFA, I enjoy thinking of Pamarthe as an unusual symbiosis of modern and traditional wear.

Like I stated before, this is simply my own inspiration from a cultural and artistic point of view since I simply can't do anything by halves and Medic is (hopefully) portrayed in whatever style the reader wishes!

#stitches!extras #don't get me started I'll never stop #I was going to add accessories and nightwear she prefers #but let's be honest she doesn't wear a scrap of clothing when Din is in bed with her looks off #lils the angel #THANK YOU FOR LOVING THEM AS MUCH AS YOU DO #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian #stitches!hc

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alsbesluit · 3 years

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mafia au / name tbd

this new au is harry potter canon based, drastoria & involves the familial relations between the blacks.

“summary”

we start in order of the phoenix. draco, in his fifth year, hears about dumbledore’s army and is silently fuming over the fact that apparently just hufflepuffs, ravenclaws and gryffindors siding with harry potter need to learn defense against the dark arts, and not slytherins with the common sense to understand that not everything about harry potter is sunshine and rainbows. the most petty course of action would be to side with umbridge and catch them in the act, but that’s not what draco ends up doing. no, draco unstead contacts his cousin nymphadora. he talks to her during a hogsmeade weekend, meeting her for the first time, and while they have very little in common in terms of their belief system they do agree that everyone has a right to education. the next hogsmeade weekends (there are more than in canon bc canon makes no sense) nymphadora and remus tutor whoever draco brings with him. nymphadora refuses any pay, glad to get a chance to help out at all and meet and bond with her nephew, but draco throws in the ultimate trump card: wolfsbane. incredibly expensive for everyone else, easy to get for the malfoy heir whose parents own an apothecary. draco insists that everyone has a right to medical care and that wolfsbane is essentially that, an approach nymphadora can’t disagree with. just like that, an alliance is made. the battle of the department of mysteries goes down very differently. sirius lives, the death eaters get away and the only direct result is that minister fudge has to acknowledge that voldemort is back. with lucius in hiding but alive draco never takes the mark and stays out of death eater business. because of his new close relationship to nymphadora and remus, however, he feeds death eater intel to the order of the phoenix, whatever he can eavesdrop on, as nymphadora and remus keep teaching him and his friends. during draco’s sixth year the lesson come to a halt, as they have a teacher that is considered qualified enough to teach them dada. however, it is around that time that draco recognizes the flaw in scrimgeour’s politics. the new minister is the exact opposite of fudge and is much too strict, scaring everyone into obedience and paranoia. potions like wolfsbane still aren’t available to those that need it and in interaction with nymphadora and remus draco has learned how vital it is. with the room of requirement available, draco recruits a number of his friends to start running an illegal potions lab in which they make and teach other how to make a number of expensive potions, either using malfoy apothecary ingredients or stealing them from snape. once done, they get them to hogsmeade, where they meet remus and nymphadora to distribute them to those that need them most, people often in contact with the order. this list of potions includes, but is not limited to, wolfsbane potion, draught of peace, oblivious unction, invisibility potion, polyjuice potion, sleeping draught and wiggenweld potion. for draco anything goes, however, and snape just so happened to borrow draco his copy of advanced potion-making and draco doesn’t intend to give it back to him. draco supplies monthly doses of polyjuice to sirius, made for him personally, as his name still hasn’t been cleared and scrimgeour wouldn’t blink before throwing him back in azkaban, as well as a continued supply of wolfsbane for remus. by the time the death eaters take over the british wizarding world, the operation has gotten completely out of hand. all the slytherins that take potions can’t seem to fail a class, which can not be written down to slughorn’s favoritism since he doesn’t favor any of them, and both draco and theo create labs in their parents’ manors to continue over the summer, with their friends coming and going on the daily. the name of the operation, black’s potions, is out there now and the requests are coming in faster than they can handle, but draco refuses to let anyone down. they continue over the course of their seventh year, none too bothered by their new teachers who have their hands full with the new dumbledore’s army to realize the slytherins took over a potions classroom ‘’for practise’’. the existence of black’s potions causes a split in the order of the phoenix; those who think it’s wrong to work with slytherins, the bad house, and death eater children claim the order as theirs with a new headquarters. sirius makes sure they’re no longer a part of the fidelius charm by doing it anew. this time draco is included in the charm and they work over the winter holiday to turn 12 grimmauld place into their new headquarters. draco can’t deny he doesn’t see the immorality of the situation; the potions can only be made because he comes from a place of privilege and they can only be given to those that know where to find them. he wouldn’t allow his work to go to anyone that he can’t stand. it’s his operation, in his name, and he calls the shots. when harry potter defeats voldemort and the death eater trials are concluded, there is a public outcry over the fact that lucius malfoy is going to jail. the government is shocked over this; malfoy is a death eater and all the evidence is poitning towards it. what they don’t know and failed to figure out is that the company that lucius ran all these years was the reason many could be supplied with the potions to make their daily life much more bearable. narcissa, who of course knew what draco was doing, started helping him to get supplies and ingredients alike, knowing full well that if the death eaters lose the war they would need a contingency plan. the name malfoy is all over black’s potions now and the public knows it. draco doesn’t go back to school. he has investors lining up for black’s potions, but refuses to go above ground knowing full well the government will put a stop to the operation immediately. with the help of the investors, his mother included, he buys a diagon alley store. it has a front as a bakery but after a password whispered and a spell cast by an employee, one gets access to the back where a part of the supply is waiting for their customers. draco insists that everyone that uses their potions writes down their name and addresses for future deliveries. soon enough, it becomes a subscription for many, with employees packing up the potions to send by owl or bringing them to their houses personally, whichever has their preference. the store gets gifts in money, loads of money, and a lot of other gifts sent to it, as well as the occassional threats that draco laughs at and throws into the fire. people should be afraid of him, not vice versa. the government starts to worry. they send aurors to malfoy manor and to the store, only to find absolutely nothing wrong. yet other potion makers and suppliers complain that hardly anyone is buying their potions anymore. draco isn’t stupid either, of course; their array of products keep expanding, and by now they’re actually making money with the free ingredients from malfoy apothecary, the bulk products they buy and the gifts they receive. when aurors show up at draco’s apartment door (and find nothing), narcissa’s had enough. she tells draco to step up for the family and get married. he lets her pick the girl. unknowingly to her, she picks a girl whose sister has been involved in black’s potions since the beginning. astoria greengrass is her name. while the wedding is being arranged, draco creates a spell with the help of nymphadora that swears everyone to secrecy about black’s potions, an unbreakable oath. people either took it or were out indefinitely. loyalty can be bought as long as the ones closest to draco are true, and he knows they are. the day of the wedding is also the day that black’s potions expands into black’s magical items, supplying a number of things that could come in handy for wizards and witches looking to enrich their lives. draco’s not concerned about the legality or the morality of it anymore. a lot of wixen, as it turns out, aren’t extraoridnarily good at charming objects, and so invisibility cloaks, charmed parchments, two way mirrors, advanced remembralls and bags with an undetectable extension charm on them are all the rage. the marriage is a sham, of course. narcissa wanted to make sure to keep their reputation intact and the greengrasses wanted astoria to marry draco for the advancement of their own social status while also attempting to keep an eye on whatever draco is up to. the government, which includes astoria’s parents, can sense draco is up to no good and taking daphne down with him. draco keeps astoria at arm’s length, explaining a day into their marriage that he has no intention of being married to her in any way beyond the public eye. she is welcome to do whatever she pleases and spend his family money as long as he stays out of his business. he wakes up to her, has breakfast with her and goes to bed with her in the evening most of the time, and that is all there is to it. all draco’s earliest allies have specific positions in black’s enterprises to ensure they stay filthy rich. theo is head of the potions department, daphne and blaise are in charge of the diagon alley and hogsmeade store fronts, vincent and gregory form the intimidation team and pansy is the head of recruitment. remus claimed he was honoured to be a part at all, but draco shoved a quill into his hands and told him the magical items department should really be his, since he was the inspiration for enterpises to begin with. he works alongside sirius, who is in charge of the business of charming items. draco runs the entire thing, keeping his people in line, making sure the vows work and delegating, occassionally with a smirk on his face. tonks, who still works as an auror, is his right hand and makes sure aurors get send the wrong way. on daphne’s wedding day, where he was theo’s best man, draco finally realized that the empire he started had a name as he had daphne’s parents glaring at him while he congratulated the bride and reassured her with words softly spoken in her ear that the present she wanted was definitely waiting for her at home. the government was afraid of them and their power, which was undoubtedly larger than that of the government itself, and the people of the british wizarding world relied on them. it was illegal, both the products they sold, the way they obtained and made their products, and what they let their customers do. it was fight club, no one spoke of it outside of their buildings. they had a specific code of conduct, certain rules to obide by, a brother- and sisterhood where no one was left behind, a will and a way to go. the term used in everyday culture was mafia. to draco, it was everyday life. there was a flaw in the plan, however, and the flaw was called astoria greengrass. she was too close to the operation, yet not close enough to know anything at all. she was the uncomfortable in-between that draco wanted to have a more specific place, either in or out, but astoria seemed perfectly content being in mafia limbo.it had to stop and draco knew it. someday after his twenty-fifth birthday, surprisingly, it did. astoria wanted in. all in.

#( mafia | au ).

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tepiddreamer · 5 years

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do you know anything about why amaya is raked up right now? have the trainers offered any explanations? it would be nice to hear from them as there is a lot of speculation but no definitive answers

So I have heard nothing outside the normal trainer lines such as ‘raking is a natural form of discipline among killer whales’. Which is half true.

It is true that wild Orcas rake just like they do in captivity. But in captivity it is much more prevalent and even signs of abnormal behaviors amongst captive individuals.

In a wild pod, you will mostly see calves, adolescents, and males with rake marks*. Out of the entire group the youngest will have the most rakes. A mother will rake a calf for attention or punishment. How severe the raking is determines on the behavior, and other members may join in on the action. I have seen wild calves being tossed by pod members, or in some cases the rakes came from siblings attempting to assist a ailing calf. In the wild alloparenting is common, in that younger animals will be raised or ‘babysat’ by other members of the pod while the mother is off hunting or resting. But this kind of behavior is resolved quickly, and not as frequently as in captivity.

In the wild the animals spend a great deal of time traveling from one place to another for food, socializing, traveling again, pod integrations, resting, and what can be considered play time. But the animals are constantly expending energy and being stimulated by other animals, sounds, objects in the water, and food.

In captivity the animals are given their food requirements, and spend less energy traveling or being mobile. While most animals do some kind of behaviors throughout the day to raise heart rate and trainer interaction (stimulation), the caloric burn is not equal to those in the wild. So they log. Or hang at a gate. Or elicit attention from a trainer. A calf will pester or bother another pod mate. And that pod mate now has free time and energy to expend on that calf.

I hate to ever use a human comparison to animals, but this is the best way to explain this. Human children between the ages of 3-7 enter what is known as the ‘push button stage’. A normal child this age is somewhat verbal**, mobile, and likes to explore. This energy can be creative or destructive. They will knock items over, tear them apart, kick/punch other individuals, ignore given commands, purposely or defiantly go against a rule or instruction, act out to garner attention, soil/disrobe themselves, enter/leave a forbidden area, and various other activities to illicit a direct response from parents/caregivers. Basically: what can I do to make you mad and give me what I want, and if I don’t get it I will act out, sometimes violently, to discipline my caregivers.

If you have never had children or worked with them, I recommend a quick view of one of those Supernanny programs. A tantrum/meltdown over not getting chocolate milk is a good example. A frustrated parent will give verbal warnings, put them in time out, and suffer as the child has a complete meltdown for not getting what they want and not being able to communicate their thoughts/feelings. Behaviors observed in baboon and great ape species so negative behaviors by juveniles and are punished by dominate family individuals, either by chasing/biting/grabbing the animals in submission.

Killer Whales have a similar process. Except they lack appendages like hands/feet. So they use a warning call, chase the individual, roll them over/hit with their tail flukes/rake with their teeth. A raking is a direct punishment, it does cause pain, although how much pain depends on how deep the rake is. A superficial rake will probably come down to a shock factor, a deeper rake is more than likely a painful reminder. A calf may not come when called, stray to far from their mother, rough play with another animal, may take a EED away, persistently want to nurse or ask for food, general aggravation of a tired mother.

In captivity is where the aberrations really start. And these aberrations differ from animal to animal and park to park. Here we see Shouka vocalizing before she purposely went after Ulises and went after his tail. A minute later Kalia and Shouka began fasting chasing each other then rolling/balling. This is a reconcile effort, in that touch can reconcile bad feelings. What set Shouka off is unknown, however in the last year I have seen her become aggressive towards the males and even Amaya. In Kalias case she would rather spend time with the trainers than with her daughter Amaya, who is very independent. Shouka will often be paired with Kalia and Amaya, and the 3 of them are a force to be reckoned with. Shouka has taught a great deal of behaviors to Amaya, and Kalia has passed her assertiveness onto her daughter as well. But this assertiveness has gotten her in trouble, she has a tendency to bully Ulises who will turn around and give it right back. Shouka seems to have a shorter tolerance for Amayas habits, and will quickly roll and rake Amaya, even with Kalia in full view. Amaya is pushing buttons, how far can she get within another whales personal space before they react. Kalia seems to become jealous of her daughter getting attention by the glass and by trainers, she has pushed Amaya away. Amaya has energy to burn and wants to be stimulated, but in a gated pool with bored adults its not happening, so she plays with the gate, or interacts with guests, baits birds, plays on the slide outs, elicits responses from Shouka, and wastes time.

Makani has lost his mother, the former matriarch of the San Diego pod. As a juvenile male, he is the bottom of the ladder, and the first to be disciplined. Luckily Makani has been taken in by Corky, but Corky is a no-nonsense whale and will quickly put Makani down. Recently Tilikum16 posted a video of Orca Encounter being interrupted by Makani after he tried to nibble Corkys tail, and Corky chased him into the show pool. Corky resolved the tension herself, but Makani stayed in the show pool. Ikaika is submissive to Makani, Keet does well, Nakai has rolled him, Ulises has raked him several times. The females don’t tolerate him well. This is not to say that this wouldn’t be happening if Kasatka was still around, he would still be on the bottom and raked up. Makani is testing his limits of what he can get away with and his own environment. He will push EEDs over a gate and vocalize until a trainer retrieves them.

photo@Makaiolover_lisag

Makaio is the youngest of the Orlando pod, and currently one of 5 whales in the pod. While he does have some raking, he is not as bad as the youngsters in San Diego.

photo@LunaBeluga

Sakari is also another juvenile whale in San Antonio, a member of 5 whales. She as well has superficial raking (notably on her saddle) but again not as prominent as the San Diego pod

So what is wrong here?

Well for one is pod size. The San Diego pod is now at 10 whales, 5 females/5 males. There is a good mix of Older female (Corky), Older Male (Ulises), Middle Age (Keet, Orkid, Shouka), Teenage (Ikaika, Nakai, Kalia), and finally juvenile (Makani, Amaya) These whales are often broken into 4 groups with Dominant/Cycling (Kalia, Shouka, Amaya), Intelligence (Orkid, Nakai, Ikaika), Balance (Corky, Keet, Ikaika, Makani), Size (Ulises, Keet). Throughout the day these smaller groupings will be intermingled or switched out from pool to pool for husbandry or shows. Some whales do not do well mixed (Corky/Ulises), are direct family (Kalia, Amaya, Makani, Nakai) or are used for high energy behaviors (Ulises, Kalia, Shouka, Orkid, Nakai). Some animals like Corky and Ulises are put into underwater viewing due to ‘tank pacing’, they swim in circles all day long and keep park guests interested. Others log all day like Keet. But by keeping them separated they cannot form a cohesive pod. Dominate behaviors from Kalia and Shouka lose traction with other whales like Orkid or Corky when they are kept in different pools for days at a time. They can hear each other, they can maybe see one another, but cannot enforce matriarchal behaviors until they are in the same pool together. Kalia and Shouka were recently kept separate for 43 days due to not being on birth control, this further adds tension to the group, then possible hormonal/sexual frustrations from being placed back on BC. This group cannot easily be put entirely together due to tensions within the pod.

They also can’t escape one another. Ulises will relentlessly be bullied by Shouka and Kalia for hours and trainers will ignore it (my last visit in July I was privy to this first hand in that Ulises had new rake marks by the end of the day, and was chased during a dine program, yet trainers made no move to switch him in to another pool). Amaya will hang at a gate while Kalia and Shouka log near trainers. While Corky does adore Makani, I sense she wants time away from him sometimes. When the whales have a ‘disagreement’ I do argue that sometimes separating them needs to be done sometimes. You mix them up daily for enrichment and stimulation but ignore the warning signs that they are not a cohesive group.

In San Antonio Takara and her 2 daughters are often together with access to another pool, the 2 youngster often entertain themselves with following trainers or splashing guests. The 2 males are often separate in another pool, except for main shows. Takara gets plenty of trainer time and alone time.

In Orlando there has been a great deal of disruption. Medical problems, separation due to cycling, storm interruptions (rain delays and show stops can frustrate a animal that is used to routine), loss of the UV area to interact with guests, and new/unconfident trainers. But it is still a smaller group that can be easily separated or put together as one if needed.

TL:DR Amaya and Makani are heavily raked due to aberrations in a captive environment. They are basically toddlers pushing their nearest tanks mates buttons and suffering the consequences. These consequences are exacerbated by confinement, irregular groupings, boredom, and frustrations.

Wild whales rake but captive animals act out.

* males with give each other rakes during sexual play with another male. Also mammal eating or stranding ecotypes may have more skin damage from the type of prey they are hunting

** In the last 15 years cases of Autism and lower brain development have increased. The number of non-verbal children by age 5 has drastically increased. Even with a limited vocabulary a child can convey basic feelings, but can become stressed or frustrated when they cannot come across clear or what they need. Scientific studies and research must be updated to account for the raising numbers of children who are non-verbal or limited vocabulary after the age of 5. I did not included children in late stage prepubesent/puberty as hormonal changes due alter behaviors.

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atomicowlking · 4 years

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Response to girlwiththeorcatattoo and orcinus-ocean

I saw a couple posts by orcinus-ocean and girlwiththeorcatattoo about the Miami Seaquarium’s controversial care of Lolita, their star Orca. Girlwiththeorcatattoo posted some information from the Miami Herald about an attorney by the name of Stephen Helfman and his comments that the Seaquarium was faking its past legal battles to expand Lolita’s habitat as a mask to absolve itself of criticism. Helfman’s statement was backed up that the MSQ was completely available to do whatever it wants without the city of Miami’s approval and that they were given the chance in sept of 2001 but the 9/11 terrorist attacks squashed it. Helfman further stated that it has been 19 years since that and the MSQ has not returned to its rebuilding plan. He states that the MSQ is hiding behind its legal battles in the 90s to paint a false positive light about it. I don’t think so, because I did some research and it turns out the the MSQ did in-fact tried to expand Lolita’s habitat in 2003 and still had legal obstacles in the way.

https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2003/09/08/story8.html

“Expansion of the whale stadium, home to Lolita, one of the oldest killer whales in captivity, is under way, Hertz said. He expects to start working on the 2.5 million-gallon stadium tank - about five times bigger than the current one - in a couple of months.”

Of course that was a decade ago and it was acknowledged in the Miami Herald post that Girlwiththeorcatattoo linked that the MSQ’s plans to expand Lolita’s tank was ultimately cancelled and the marine park gave up on updating the orca’s exhibit. But, contrary to what Helfman stated, the MSQ did in-fact tried and tried again to expand Lolita’s tank two years after it was, according to him, ruined by the 9/11 attacks. I think maybe the MSQ tried a few times again in the 2000′s but they did finally gave up. But it doesn’t matter anymore to be honest, because Lolita has been alive and healthy for 50 years now, she has good medical care, fresh food, toys, companionship with the dolphins and her trainers, and the performance shows are a good form of enrichment and exercise for her. If she was suffering at that tank, she would’ve died a long time ago due to stress and melancholy. Ceteceans aren’t resilient to mental deterioration as humans are. But she is one of the oldest orcas in captivity and has so far no history of illness, despite her small tank. So the MSQ did something right to keep her alive for so long and I think Lolita doesn’t even care about how small her exhibit, I think she is content and wouldn’t even like to be placed in a bigger pool as it is described that she is resistant to change in any form and that she can feel very stressed out from any change of her daily life, show schedules, or changes in her tank. The fact that there is debate about keeping Lolita at the MSQ is proof that the aquarium does a good job as she is living, and if she died decades ago this heated debate would not happen.

#orcinus-ocean #girlwiththeorcatattoo #miami seaquarium #captivity #lolita

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naturecoaster · 5 years

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Rescued Bear Cub to Live in Homosassa

The Ellie Schiller Homosassa Wildlife State Park is part of a cooperative effort between the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and state-wide bear rehabilitation facilities. Each year, up to 11 rescued Florida Black bears are given to the park for rehabilitation and release back into the wild, but Park visitors never see them. “We have a 100% success rate for our rehabilitated bears,” shared Andrea Junkunc, Park Services Specialist, at the first viewing of their latest project, Maximus.

Maximus, the Orphaned Baby Black Bear to Live at Wildlife Park

On Wednesday, July 31, 2019, the six-month old bear cub was introduced to the public at the Park. A bundle of ebony fur, Maximus bounds into his life as the newest permanent resident at Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park! He was rambunctious and curious when NatureCoaster visited, playing with the water in his trough and eventually sat up in it, like a bathtub. He climbed the walls of his chain link temporary habitat, pulled on saw palmetto leaves, tasted sticks and everything else he could.

Maximus the orphaned Florida Black bear cub got into his water trough, using it like a bathtub when introduced to the public Wednesday, July 31, 2019. Image by Diane Bedard. Max was simply adorable. Being the first day he was interacting with the public, the Wildlife Care team had several members looking after him. “We are pleased with how well he is doing on his first day of seeing so many new people,” Trisha explained. Although he has been bottle-fed, cleaned, crate trained, and bonded with his caregivers, it is a big first step for an orphaned wild animal to meet a crowd – even if they are all fans. Max seemed to take it all in stride, playing with everything within his grasp like a little bear should.

There is an entire Wildlife Care Team at Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, headed up by Trisha Fowler. Together they rehabilitate some of Florida's orphaned wild animals. They came out on Wednesday to help Max transition to his public encounters. Image by Diane Bedard How Maximus came to Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park Born in the wild in February, young Maximus was orphaned by his mother in the Florida panhandle for unknown reasons. He was found by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) weighing a mere four pounds at the time of rescue. Fortunately, Maximus’ mother is a tagged and collared Florida Black bear, so FWC was aware of the situation.

Max playing in the rehabilitation area of the Wildlife Park. Image courtesy of Joe Dube. The tiny young bear received medical care and around-the-clock supervision, requiring frequent feedings. Despite caregivers’ best efforts, FWC deemed the young bear non-releasable and it just happened that there was space available for a permanent resident bear at Homosassa. Maximus the Orphaned Bear Cub receives Committed Care at the Park At the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Wildlife State Park, Darin Wilson was given the opportunity to care for Maximus. As a Ranger who has been part of the Wildlife Care team for 2 years, Darin is thrilled to be working with ‘Max’.

Darin Wilson interacts with Maximus. Darin has been given the job of bonding with Max to help in his care and training. Image courtesy of Diane Bedard Max was about 11 pounds when he came to the Wildlife Park in March. Darin has been working closely with the bear cub, bonding with him. He teaches Max crate training, as well as cleaning and feeding him. “How many people can say they bond with a bear for their job?” Darin tells me with a wide grin on his face and palpable joy. “The bond is great for enrichment for Max, and for me.” Max is nearly 40 pounds now. He is fed fruits, vegetables and omnivore food. He also gets dog food as a protein source to help him grow strong - and two smoothies a day!

Maximus the baby bear will be on display at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 2:30 - 3:30 pm. Image courtesy of Joe Dube. Homosassa Wildlife State Park helps to Rehabilitate and Release Orphaned Bears Year-Round “Florida’s only Wildlife State Park not only works in cooperation with FWC to rehabilitate orphaned black bears and release them back into the wild, but also has the facilities to house several non-releasable bears,” says Kate Spratt, the Park’s Service Specialist. There are facilities to rehabilitate up to 11 bears at the Park. These are behind the scenes and manned by the Wildlife Care team, headed up by Trisha Fowler.

Trisha Fowler leads an amazing and committed team of wildlife biologists, specialists and volunteers who rehabilitate Florida's orphaned wildlife. Here she is answering questions from the public as she interacts with the Wildlife Park's newest resident. Image courtesy of Diane Bedard “Bears are typically born in February and brought to the Park by June for rehabilitation. We try to get them ready to go back to their natural environments by January of the following year when they are big enough to safely integrate,” Andrea Junkunc explains. “FWC tracks the bears and none of our bears have been found after release.” Managing and Integrating Homosassa’s Newest Resident with the Park “We will be bringing Max out on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 2:30-3:30 for the public to see until he is old enough to safely enjoy the Park’s bear habitat without supervision,” Trisha Fowler tells the onlookers, “He will be living in the bear rehabilitation area until then. When he is mature enough, we will bring him to the Florida Black bear habitat for a day, with Biddy living in the rehabilitation area and then exchange them, giving both an opportunity for solitude and public interaction.”

Each orphaned bear is taught the skills that its mother would have trained it for by the staff. Because Max was so young and tiny when rescued, FWC deemed him unable to return to the wild. He will be an ambassador for his species at the Park. Image courtesy of Joe Dube. With Max not being Biddy’s offspring, it is unwise to put them together. Florida Black Bears are part of Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park’s History Prior to Maximus’ arrival, the State Park housed one adult Florida black bear, Biddy. She arrived with her twin brother, Brutus, as cubs in the early 2000s, residing at the Park ever since. With the passing of Brutus in 2018, Biddy has been the only resident Florida black bear in the park.

Brutus and Biddy were brother and sister black bear residents of the park until Brutus passed away in 2018. Photo by Joe Dube “Bears tend to be solitary creatures,” Andrea explains. “Biddy enjoys her solitude as bears in the wild typically keep to themselves.” Keeping this in mind, Biddy and the newcomer Maximus will spend time on exhibit separately, following a rotating schedule like that of the panthers who reside at the Park. Volunteers are the Heartbeat of this Wildlife State Park On Wednesday, July 31, Park volunteer Mary Ann Desimone explained about Florida Black bears, including their eating habits, life expectancy, typical lifestyle and range. She answered questions for the 40 or so visitors who came to greet Maximus on his first day interacting with the public.

Mary Ann Desimone, 24-year Park Volunteer is a two time graduate of bear college where she learned about the Florida Black bear and how to best communicate that information to the public. She is seen here on July 31, 2019 answering questions at Maximus' first public exhibition. Image by Diane Bedard “I have been to bear college twice in the 1990s, the ‘Cubs for Kids’ training. I love animals, teaching and interacting with children,” Mary Ann explains about how she acquired her knowledge of Florida Black bears. She has been volunteering at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park for 24 years. Interested in coming to the park to view the young Maximus?

Come to the Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park and meet Max. He is so cute and full of energy that you will be glad you did! Image courtesy of Joe Dube. Maximus, the orphaned Florida Black bear, will be in a special exhibit located on the Wildlife Walk across from the bobcats on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 2:30pm to 3:30pm, weather permitting, until he is mature enough to release into the bear habitat. Visitors to the park may see Maximus at that time and speak with a ranger about him. The park entrance is located at 4150 S Suncoast Blvd. in Homosassa. Hours are 9 am to 5:30 pm daily, with last entry at 4:45 pm. The cost for entry is Adults (age 13+) $13, Children (ages 6-12) $5, Children 5 and under, free. For more information, call the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park office at 352-628-5343. Postscript: Special thanks to Joe Dube for the excellent photos of Max and to the Wildlife Care Team at Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park for taking the time to answer our questions - and their commitment to Florida's wildlife. Read the full article

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madscientistjournal · 5 years

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The Parts of Him That I Can Help With

An essay by Stephen L. Thayer, as provided by Gordon B. White Art by Errow Collins

My younger brother Cameron never understood what working from home meant, so when he called me at 2:30 pm, I was wrist-deep in a twitching half-cadaver. Normally I wouldn’t have answered, since I was practicing stitching a double set of lungs for an upcoming necromodding commission, but I’d been stymied by what to do next, and I also had to pick Dylan up from school by 3:30, so it was as good a stopping point as any. Besides, what is family for if not to answer your call?

I pulled my hands out of the writhing thoracic cavity and peeled off my surgical gloves. The talc inside always makes me squirm when I rub my fingers clean, so I grimaced beneath my paper filtration mask–which I never remove while in my garage laboratory–and swiped my cell phone to speaker.

“Cam,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I need your help, bro.”

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

He paused. “A little.”

A little was fine. We’re brothers, so how else were we supposed to talk?

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Do you remember my last serious relationship?”

I had to think back. I was pretty sure that was Brandon and that had been a year before? Two? Cam had never been good at relationships, but I’d forgotten how bad he was.

“Sure,” I said. “Tall, dark, possibly rheumatic.”

“You make him sound so sexy.”

“Not my type.”

“Anyway, I was out with Tyler.”

“Who?” I asked as I walked across the room, away from the twitching body and the faint burning smell rising from the wires in its cranium.

“Never mind with who,” Cam said, too quickly. “The point is that I ran into Brandon.”

“With your car, I hope?”

“Nice dad joke, bro.”

“Speaking of, I have to get Dylan soon.” An hour wasn’t really soon, but anything to give Cam a ticking clock. He’s the kind of guy who if you ask him what he did last night, he’ll end up telling you what he did this morning.

“Bro, this is serious,” he said. “Seeing Brandon reminded me of how terrible I am at everything.”

“What about this new guy?” I said, desperate to deflect the conversation. “Clearly you’re not completely unlovable.” Since launching my necromodding business, I’d had enough people calling me up for freebies that I was hoping to stem this off before it escalated. That double-lungs commission was the first paid job I’d had all month, although given how poorly it was going, I worried it might be the last, too.

“It isn’t going to work out,” Cam said. “I’m not good enough.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” I said, but I immediately regretted that brotherly sarcasm as I heard a glass hit the bar on Cam’s end. I could just about smell the booze through the phone. If I were there with him, maybe he could have seen on my face that I didn’t mean it, but what could I say?

“I need your help to get a boyfriend,” he said. “A serious one. A real one.”

“One who calls you back?”

“One who thinks I’m hot.”

“I don’t know any blind and deaf guys,” I said, unable to help ribbing him further. “Besides, I haven’t dated anyone in, well, forever. I really can’t help.”

My wife Cynthia and I had been together basically forever. We’d dated for almost a decade, been married for something like seven years, and Dylan was five, so contemporary hook-up culture or any online presence more than my freelance necromodding website were absolute mysteries. Despite the skills at my disposal and the bodies in my garage, I didn’t know what I could do to help Cam.

“Bro,” Cam said, “I don’t need your dating advice.”

Oh thank god, I thought, although I was also a little offended.

“Then what?” I asked.

“I need to be a different person.”

“Can’t help you,” I said. “Try therapy?”

“I mean, I need a new body.”

The half-cadaver twitched on the table, the crown of electrodes in its skull stimulating it into smearing its coagulating intestines across the metal gurney as its torn throat wheezed through the half-sewn double-set of lungs. Seeing how helpless it was, twitching there in the approximation of life, made me feel bad that I hadn’t had Cam over in a while.

“Fine,” I said. “Come by tonight after dinner. No earlier than seven.”

“Look who it is,” I said to Dylan as we opened the door.

“Uncle Cam!”

As Cam hoisted Dylan up, I took a moment to do my pre-clinical once over. Cam and I shared a party mix of the same genetics, so I didn’t think he’d been too let down, especially because if I’d received our parents’ brain Chex, he’d gotten the pretzel bits of good physique. Decent shoulders and long arms, a full head of hair that was mostly not gray as he pushed into his thirties. While beer had softened him up, his spare tire was a bike wheel at worst, not a full radial. I was noting that his glutes were adequate if not extraordinary when I realized that he was airplaning Dylan into the kitchen with Cynthia.

“Hey, Cindy,” he said, using a nickname she hates, perhaps accidentally.

“Hey, Ron,” she replied, purposefully using a nickname Cam hates. “Can you not steer my child into the Bolognese?”

“Into the Bolognese!” Dylan squealed, and I could envision the downward arc occurring in the other room. Suddenly, I was hit by the pungent tomato sauce simmering over the sweet fat of the beef. It’s funny how you don’t recognize some comforts until you’re just on their periphery.

“Ron,” Cynthia said.

“Cindy,” he said.

“Bolognese!” Dylan yelled.

I joined the family circle just in time and took Dylan from Cam’s outstretched arms. Dylan pouted, but Cam ruffled his hair and then turned to me.

“So, what’s for dinner?” Cam asked.

“Let’s talk in the lab,” I said, steering him towards the mudroom and the locked door to my lab in the garage. “We’ll give Cynthia some room.”

As Dylan latched onto Cynthia and I escorted Cam out, she gave me that look that asked “Are you really skipping dinner?” I shrugged in apology and hoped my eyebrows, wriggling like caterpillars on a hotplate, said “What else is family for, right?”

Out in the garage, the overwhelming smell of antiseptic spray is deceptive at first, but I offered a full respirator to Cam, which he wisely accepted. Whenever I open the storage drawers, the smell usually overwhelms the unprepared. It’s the primary reason that Cynthia made me spring for airtight locks, because while she’s fine with me being a stay-at-home dad doing freelance necromodder work, she doesn’t want to be known as that family.

“How’s business?” Cam asked, looking around at all the shiny equipment.

“Honestly, not great,” I said. “It’s really tough starting out. So far mostly just cranks and perverts.”

“But this is all so, so cool,” he said.

“Clients don’t trust necromodders without a deep portfolio.”

“I trust you, bro.”

“You have to say that,” I said, but I smiled beneath my paper mask. I didn’t know if Cam was being sincere or just trying to butter me up, but it was working.

“What’s that?” Cam asked, pointing to the halo of electrodes I’d been using to reanimate the half-cadaver with the double-stitched lungs. Cam had been in the lab enough to recognize new equipment, even though he didn’t know what any of it was.

“Sort of a test drive system for bodies so I can try new mods before putting them in living clients,” I told him. “The hope is to one day use it to amp up living brains, too, but that’s a long way off.” A very, very long way off, in fact, and not being able to get it to work stuck in my craw as yet another failure.

“No chance you can fix this then?” Cam thumped himself on the forehead.

“Nothing can fix that,” I said. “What’s Option B?”

“Bro,” he said, “I need a boyfriend.”

“Believe me,” I said, “that would make all of our lives easier.”

He ignored that comment, which was bigger of him than I expected. As the older brother, it was always both surprising and fulfilling to see sparks of maturity in Cam. Perhaps I sometimes pushed him too hard to find them–spraying his pants with water in middle school to teach him an ill-defined lesson about humility, for example–but whenever those moments emerged naturally, I could just about cry.

“I want someone to love me like Cynthia loves you,” he said.

I didn’t tell him that sometimes it takes a lot of work, but I was a sucker for romance. If I could help him, at least a little, wasn’t that my brotherly duty?

“So I need a new body,” he said.

“It’s expensive,” I said.

“It can be my birthday present.”

“It comes out of my pocket,” I said, but Cam looked pointedly at me, and I knew what he was being too nice to say about Cynthia in the other room. “Our pockets,” I corrected myself. “Do you really want to take the Bolognese out of your nephew’s mouth?”

“Birthday and Christmas.”

I stared at him.

“For two years,” he added.

I sighed. “And I can use pictures for my website.”

“Fine,” he said, “if I can also use them for my dating profile.”

“Fine,” I said. “I love–”

“Me?” Cam interrupted.

“A challenge,” I concluded. “So of course I will help you.”

There’s a sort of code that we necromodders undertake–whether it’s a full-time modder doing celebrity jobs in a fancy foreign clinic, or just a dedicated freelancer who left the hospital’s daily grind and whose wife supports him while he builds up a portfolio on low-paying commissions–that we’ll do our best to bring our clients’ visions to fruition, despite our own preferences. I’d seen plenty of things on the professional message boards–literal eyes in the back of heads, third arms in places arms don’t usually go–that I personally didn’t think looked good, but which somehow made the end users feel complete. Although I think of necromodding as an art, most clients see it as design, so far be it from me to deny anyone their aesthetic preferences. As a medical professional, however, I did have one other complicating factor.

“I’ll do it,” I said, “but as your doctor–” I trailed off, hoping to prompt him.

“Really?” Cam asked. “Again?” He knew what was coming, since I’d given him a new middle toe a year or so ago.

“Tell you what,” I said, as I punched in the codes to the cold storage. “If you can paraphrase the warning, I’ll consider that informed consent.”

“Let me see,” Cam began as he joined me to watch the various hunks and chunks of cadavers slide out of the freezer. “As my doctor, you have to warn me of potential health effects related to body modifications using deceased tissue.”

“And?”

“There’s no guarantee.”

“That?”

“That the process is effective or reversible.”

“And?” I asked.

“And what?” he asked

“You’re of sound mind to make decisions that could result in your death.”

He swallowed. “Yeah, bro.”

From inside the coolers, corpses and extra bits peered out. I didn’t keep a lot on hand, but I always had a few stock bodies–inoffensive types that were easy to cut and shape for after-market mods–so I could easily do a head swap, then touch Cam up afterwards. With our health care system, there was never a shortage of parts.

“Finally,” I added, “as your brother, and not your doctor, I think you’re great and have a great personality. Don’t fix a thing, blah blah.”

“I love you, too, bro,” he said.

“I never said that.”

I cut off Cam’s head and stitched it to the stock body that most closely matched his skin tone. He’d asked me about maybe trying out a different one, but that would just open up questions of bodily appropriation that I hadn’t the energy to parse with Cam. Nevertheless, we had gone over the alterations he wanted and, once his original body was safely wrapped and secured in Refrigerator B and his head was hooked up to the new one, I was ready to start.

He wanted bigger muscles, and although the stock body was fairly normal, Cam had picked out globs of the red ropey fibers for me to put in. The sizing was ridiculous, but the more I’d warned him, the more he resisted. Then he said it was okay if I didn’t know how to do it, which I’m pretty sure he did just to egg me on. Sure, a procedure of that level was just a smidge outside of my comfort zone, but I wasn’t going to give Cam the satisfaction of thinking he’d asked for something I couldn’t do, so I went to work snipping out the default tendons at the muscle heads and reattaching bigger ones. It was like trying to overstuff a batch of viscera dumplings, but I finally got it done.

When I finished, I brought him back out from sedation and rolled the full-sized mirror over to where he lay on the table. He grinned and flexed, and I worried that the glue in the skin wouldn’t hold, but although he bulged, he didn’t pop. I’d had my doubts, but seeing it finished, I swelled with pride, too.

“Isn’t this a little excessive?” I asked, even as I snapped a picture for the portfolio section of my website.

“You just don’t understand the male gaze,” he said and kissed his bicep.

“Come again?”

“Like, looking at stuff.” He paused. “Also, that’s what he said.”

“That’s so juvenile.”

“You’re the older brother,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be too mature.”

“I need to look more mature,” Cam said, back in my lab after less than a week. “I have a baby face.”

“You have a childish face,” I said. I was already twisting his face this way and that under the light, though, figuring out what I could do with the soft tissues. Normally I wouldn’t have been doing more work so soon after the first procedure, but working on Cam had really energized me. Prospective clients were contacting me, and in a spurt of inspiration, I’d finished the double-stitched lungs and even improved the corpse-animating electrode helmet. Besides, Cam seemed to enjoy coming over for the post-op check-ups, even sticking around to come with me to pick Dylan up from school.

“What do you want this time?” I asked.

“Thinner cheeks,” he said. “And maybe a beard.”

From Freezer A, I pulled out a box of frozen samples. Inside the compartments, little swatches of hair curled like sleeping gerbils in multiple hues of blonde, auburn, ginger, and black.

“You can have a beard of this, this, this, or this,” I said, pointing out some.

“What about that?”

“That’s a dog.”

“That?”

“Pubes.”

He considered it for a moment longer than I’d have liked, but then finally pointed to a nice normal brown swatch. “I’ll take that one,” he said.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Stop second guessing me.”

So I put Cam under again. I made incisions beneath the zygomatic bones, then slit all the way down the jaw and back around. I took extra time to stencil out around Cam’s lips before I peeled away his lower face, leaving him raw from closed eyes to throat. The yolk-colored globs of baby fat clung to his cheeks as I peeled them away, then laid them in the “Base” box to store in Freezer B alongside his original body. We were getting into alterations that weren’t as simple to undo as a head swap, but I’d given him the spiel and, since he’d used up his allotment of gifts already, he’d promised to pay in cash–just later, of course.

I unfurled the main roll of beard and skin, measured off a swatch, and then snipped it. The surface was itchy, and I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting it on their face or anywhere else, but according to the message boards, it was popular among other modders’ clients and, of course, the customer is always right. It was a pain to smooth down and arrange all the follicles the right way, but it felt good getting into the granular work again. The bliss of losing myself in the details reminded me why I’d fallen in love with necromodding in the first place.

Once everything was perfect, I woke Cam up and rolled the mirror over. “This is good,” he said, rubbing his new hirsute jawline while I took a picture for the site. “This is will be the one that does it.”

“The beard isn’t doing it,” Cam said at dinner. He’d shown up unannounced but had become a regular enough intrusion that Cynthia had a plate ready. He was still adjusting to his beard, though, and the egg from the fettuccine carbonara glistened in the hair.

“My problem is that I get too drunk,” he said as he took another swig of Primitivo. He was still adjusting to the muscles, too, and so all of his movements were outsized and reckless. “I need the alcohol to open up, but then it hits me too hard.”

“Drink less?” Cynthia recommended.

“Or he can give me a bigger liver,” Cam said.

“An enlarged liver isn’t healthy,” I said. “It’s pretty much the opposite.”

“I know that,” he said, although clearly he didn’t. “Then give me more livers.”

That might work and, if nothing else, would hopefully keep Cam away for a while. My work had been picking up recently–at first it was new clients looking for muscle and beard work after seeing Cam’s pictures, but referrals and repeats kept rolling in. Besides, I’d been working on my electrode helmet and was on the verge of a breakthrough. Cam just didn’t understand my need to work during the day or the importance of family time with Cynthia and Dylan afterwards. His continued interruptions at dinner and frequent calls just to chat during the day were reminders as to why I’d stopped hanging out with him so much.

“Fine,” I said to Cam. “Whatever you want.”

After dinner, I took Cam to the lab and sliced him open, then clamped the flesh apart to root around. I wasn’t shocked to see the paces he’d already put this current liver through. It looked scaled and pebbled, and oozed like a pickled beet. Even through my ventilator, the rich, briny smell hit me. Gagging, I took the extra livers–my Burke and Hare men had been coming through like gangbusters recently–and started wedging them in. The healthy organs were more pliant, but as I sutured them together, the knot of muscle got less and less manageable. In the end, I had to lean on them like I was packing a suitcase while I stapled the wound together. Despite being pleased with my innovation, this one wouldn’t get a picture on the website. Probably just a text description.

As I brought Cam back around, I told him, “Be careful.”

“I always am, bro.”

He sat up on the gurney, swaying under the new imbalance.

“Should we do shots to celebrate?” he asked.

Cam banged on the front door on a Thursday night at 12:30 am. Cynthia and I were in bed, with Dylan down the hall asleep, and she was none too pleased at the interruption.

“He needs to learn boundaries,” she said.

“I don’t disagree,” I said, but I was already out of bed and pulling on a robe. She wasn’t wrong, of course, but it’s hard to ignore family even when you want to. Besides, if I had to choose which one to deal with at that moment, Cam was probably the easiest.

Downstairs, I barely recognized Cam as I let him in. His body was getting strange; the muscles bulged in odd ways and all the livers seemed to be throwing him off balance. The beard hadn’t been trimmed in days.

“Do you know what time it is?” I asked, dragging him into the garage laboratory. At least the insulated walls would keep his disturbance to a minimum.

“I need one last one,” he said.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he responded. “So? You going to judge me for that, too?”

“Someone has to.”

“Too bad it isn’t someone who ever has something nice to say.”

That stung. It took me a moment to respond. “I can’t,” I finally said. “It’s too late.”

“Please, I need it. You sort of owe me.”

“For what?”

He didn’t answer. “Just please. Do it and I’ll leave you alone. Forever.”

“Don’t be such a martyr,” I said.

“I just need you to make me taller, bro. Just an extra vertebra or three.”

“You dope,” I said. “It’s not your height. It’s not your muscles or your beard. It’s just you.”

“What do you mean?”

There are conversations that need to be had, and there are conversations that need to be had in a particular way. I knew this was the latter, but I was too tired. Besides, someone had to tell him, right?

“You’re a weirdo,” I said. “It’s not how you look or how big your liver is; you’re the kind of person who gets people’s names wrong. You don’t understand that you can’t show up late or that you talk a lot or ask too much.”

“Then fix that.”

“I can’t fix that,” I said. “That’s just you.”

“Zap me then.” He pointed at the electrode crown I’d been working on, the one that let me reanimate half-cadavers enough to test out mods before using them on paying clients. It had come a long way recently and I was sure it was going to launch me out of necromods and into actual biomodding, but it wasn’t ready to supercharge a living brain. Probably.

“I don’t care,” he snapped. “I already agreed you’re not responsible if I die.”

“It’s untested,” I said.

“I believe in you,” he said.

“It’s not about believing.”

“I don’t care,” he snapped. “I already agreed you’re not responsible if I die.”

“You moron.” I’d reached my limit, too. “Of course I’m responsible. I’m always responsible for you.”

“Stop treating me like a child,” he said. “If I could do this any other way, don’t you think I would?”

What was there to say?

“Just zap me,” he said again.

“Stop being so dramatic.”

“I’m sorry I’m not perfect,” he said. “Maybe if you didn’t leave me behind after you went to school, after you got married, I could have learned from you.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Help me,” he said.

“I didn’t leave you behind.”

“I feel like you did.”

“Fuck your feelings,” I said.

We didn’t talk as I put him under. Stewing, I drilled into his skull, then attached the headgear and pushed the little wire skewers in. That was it. If it killed him, well I’d warned him, right?

I pulled the lever, hard. Because he’d asked for it.

The lights dimmed like I expected as it warmed up; but then it hitched. The lights flickered, then everything surged, bathing us in the miasma of green and red LEDs. All the shifting colors made me nauseous and I shaded my eyes, squinting at Cam’s body under the waves of putrescent light.

Then it exploded.

Everything went black. As all the machines whirred to a stop, I couldn’t hear or see anything. I sat there, in the silent dark, wondering if I’d killed my brother. Wondering how I would explain it and wondering, afterwards, just how much worse it could feel.

Those were my first thoughts. My next was that the brain-charger was also an obvious failure. My equipment was a failure. My skills were a failure. Sitting there, unable to see anything, the whole necromodding pursuit felt like a vain delusion. I was a dinner theater actor, alone in the dark among the empty tables and the cold buffet.

Then the red emergency lights came on, but all the monitors were still dead. I wondered if Cam was, too. I couldn’t bring myself to check for life the old-fashioned hands-on way, so I waited by the machinery. Maybe by refusing to check for myself, I could wait and blame the instruments.

It was the longest thirty seconds of my life.

Then the backup generator kicked on. One by one the monitors popped back up, flickering open like eyes. They ran through their reboots. Cam’s heartbeat came up. His breathing levels stabilized. I brought him back around and he opened his eyes.

“What happened?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

He looked around at the red room and then down across his body and all the changes we’d been making.

“I gotta go,” he said, sitting up. “I’m late.”

And that was it. I glanced at the emergency report printouts and data, but I was too tired to deal with any of it, so I sealed the lab and went back to bed.

For the first day that I didn’t hear from Cam, I was fine with it. I needed some space and figured he probably did, too. I took Dylan to the park after school and just avoided the lab all together. After the second day without hearing from Cam, though, and then a third, I was worried. He didn’t answer his phone. He didn’t text me to ask for additional procedures or anti-rejection drugs. The kinds of modifications we had been doing had a fairly a short active life without follow-ups.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Cam. I’d really failed him, and not just as a necromodder–although that blow-up had me wondering if I should just give up, sell everything, and get a regular job again. No, I’d also failed Cam as a brother. It wasn’t the things I’d said, since I stood by those, but that I’d said them in that way. That I’d made him feel that way. That he was willing to risk dying with my half-baked brain overcharger rather than have to deal with me as a brother any more. That I’d been too proud or too stubborn to stop him. It was a dark time.

So I did what I always do when I have serious doubts and questions about life.

“What’s going on?” Cynthia asked as she answered her cellphone. I’d expected her voicemail, but apparently I’d caught her in-between meetings.

“It’s Cam,” I said.

“Not Dylan?”

“No,” I said. “Cam.”

She didn’t hang up. She paused, though, but then continued, “What’s wrong with your brother?”

“I don’t quite know,” I said. “I mean, I know you don’t like him–”

“I like him,” she cut me off. “I think you two have issues, but he’s family.”

“Right,” I said.

“Your family,” she said.

“Right.”

We waited for a second there.

“What about him?” she broke the momentary silence.

“I’m worried,” I said. “He hasn’t called me since that last thing.”

“Maybe it worked?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Regardless, there are these anti-rejection drugs that he knows he needs.”

“Shit,” Cynthia said.

“I know,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Go find him, of course,” she said.

I shook my head, even though she obviously couldn’t see it. “He hasn’t asked for my help.”

There was silence on the other end. Then Cynthia said, softly, “What do you think all of this has been about, then?”

“I mean–” I began.

“Go help him!” Whatever pristine office halls she was in must have echoed, because the reverberation carried onto my end of the phone

“But he might–”

“He’s our family!”

She was right.

So I drove to Cam’s apartment complex on the other side of town. I’d been there a few times before to pick him up for family events or to visit someone in the hospital, but it took some poking around and checking mailboxes before I found his building again. The door to his unit was unlocked, yet even before I entered I could smell the rot.

Cam was sitting in the dark, sagging in the center of his rent-to-own couch. The putrescence seeping out from around his midsection was soaking into the fabric. The muscles I could see–biceps, triceps, traps, and pecs–were purple and mustard yellow clots beneath the skin. The edges of his beard were peeling down.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said. “Let’s get you back to the lab.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“Don’t start,” I said. “Not now.” I picked my way around empty silver tallboys swimming like fish on the stained blue carpet.

“I’ve just been thinking,” he said. “I can’t do anything but think after what you did.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. I grabbed his arm and began to pull, but it was slack and, without his assistance, I worried my fingers would sink in and tear out big chunks.

“You broke my brain, bro,” he said and sunk down deeper. “All that zap did is made me depressed.”

“The machine didn’t do that, you dolt,” I said. It was true: when I’d reviewed the data that night, it was clear that the machine hadn’t worked. It had fried during the warm-up and although it blasted everything in the lab, there’d been no sign that it had any effect on Cam. “If you’re thinking about how shitty things are, then that’s on you.”

He had nothing to say to that.

I sighed. “And on me, too. I guess.”

Cam grunted.

“I’m sorry I said those things. For now, though,” I said, “as your doctor, I need to get you back to the lab before you have catastrophic organ failure.” I pulled again, but although he didn’t actively resist, he didn’t move his bulk to accommodate me either.

“What do you want from me?” I finally asked.

“You could tell me you love me.”

“Well, I won’t do that,” I said. “But, as your doctor–as your brother, I’d be pretty upset if you had caststrophic organ failure.”

The lab door is triple-sealed so that smells don’t seep into or out of the house, which is why it wasn’t until Cam and I opened the door that the wave of rot pushed out past us. The sweet and sick burst curled into my nostrils and even Cam–decaying from the neck down–winced at the ripe odor.

We stumbled into the lab, but I already knew what had happened. The power surge had blown the freezers and they hadn’t reset with the other equipment. When I opened Freezer B, as the smell had foreshadowed, everything was ruined. Cam’s original body was beyond salvage.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

Somehow in this tragedy, Cam had found equanimity and so he shrugged, one of the seams around his neck popping loose and green pus oozing out. For a moment, I felt that swell of pride in how mature he was acting.

We moved over to the table and I sat him down. All of my lab equipment seemed to be working fine, but there was nothing in the freezers I could use. What a pair our mismatched reflections in the full-length mirror made–me standing there slicked with gore and my younger brother falling apart like a poutine. I was trying to be strong, holding it together, but then Cam had to go and get sentimental.

“It was really nice spending time with you,” Cam said. “But I feel like you’ll be better off without me.”

“I never wanted to lose you,” I said. “I just wanted, you know, less of you.”

“Well, you’re in luck. There isn’t much left.” He tried to laugh, gesturing to the pile of meat festering below his neck.

“Oh shit,” I said.

“What?”

“There might be a way.” Less of him. “It might be too complicated, though. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Bro,” he said, and flopped a mushy hand onto my shoulder. “I believe in you.”

“You kind of have to say that,” I said, wrestling the tears back as best I could.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I feel like you know it’s true.”

I sniffled, just once. “Fuck your feelings.”

Then I cut off Cam’s head.

“Swipe right,” Cam said.

“Don’t yell in my ear,” I said.

“I’m not yelling.”

“Well it sounds like it.”

That was because his head was attached to my shoulder, so his mouth was right next to my ear. Normally he didn’t get this excited, but while we were sitting at the dinner table with Dylan, waiting for Cynthia, Cam had decided he absolutely needed to show me this new dating app. I didn’t really want to see, but I’d been trying to be more supportive lately. It was his life, after all. Mostly.

Cam whispered, “Swipe right.”

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not taking you on any dates. Wait until your replacement body gets in.”

“Then I’m not doing any more surgeries with you.”

That wasn’t okay. Ever since I’d posted about our successful head graft, the commissions were rolling in. Not only that, but with Cam by my side, I finally felt like a true professional.

“Fine,” I said. “But just one date. Make it count.”

“Fine,” he said. “Now swipe right.”

I swiped right, and the next image popped up. I gasped.

“Can I see?” Dylan asked from across the table.

“No!” Cam and I said in unison.

Cynthia came out of the kitchen, bringing out a bowl of salad. “No phones at the table,” she said.

“Sorry, Cynthia,” Cam said. Over the past week, he’d been making a real effort to get her name right and to be a better houseguest in general. For her part, Cynthia had been much more understanding about all of this than I’d had any right to expect. Of course, she rightly insisted that Cam and I sleep on the couch downstairs. It’s funny, but you never realize how much you might miss some people until you’re just on their periphery, I guess.

“Dinner time is family time,” Dylan chimed in.

“That’s right,” I said, but as I went to put the phone in my pocket it rang, playing “Sunshine of Your Love.”

“Whose ringtone is that?” Cynthia asked.

“Tyler,” I said, reading off the Caller ID.

“Who’s Tyler?” Dylan asked.

I suddenly felt light-headed as the blood from my body rushed to Cam’s face. He’d turned bright red, and I felt the heat of his ear next to mine. I worried for a moment that our sutures might spring a leak.

“Just some guy I was seeing before all this,” he said. He swallowed, and the movement of his esophagus shook my collarbone.

“Just some guy, Cam?” Cynthia said. “I’ve never seen you this flustered.”

“I’ll call him later,” Cam said. “Dinner time is family time.” I could feel him straining, though, as he looked at the phone. I admired his attempt at impulse control, but then I looked at Cynthia, and she smiled wearily.

“What else is family for?” she said.

“No really,” Cam said. “It’s okay, I–”

I swiped the phone open and held it to Cam’s ear. I rose from the table and as we walked out Cam began, adorably, to stutter a hello.

Cynthia was right: What else is family for, of course, if not to answer your calls?

Stephen L. Thayer is a freelance necromodder operating out of his home laboratory in a discrete, secure suburban neighborhood. After receiving his MBA and spending several years in corporate finance, Stephen left the rat race to follow his passion into the burgeoning field of functional and aesthetic bio-enhancement utilizing cadaverous tissues. Although he performs standard cosmetic, muscle, organ, and/or bone alterations, Stephen considers his necromodding a blend of art and science striving towards transcendence. He is always eager to discuss exotic and/or custom commissions. A representative portfolio and anonymous client testimonials are available upon request.

Gordon B. White has lived in North Carolina, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. He is a 2017 graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop, and his fiction has appeared in venues such as Daily Science Fiction, A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession, Nightscript Vol. 2, and the Bram Stoker Award® winning anthology Borderlands 6. Gordon also contributes reviews and interviews to various outlets. You can find him online at www.gordonbwhite.com or on Twitter at @GordonBWhite.

Errow is a comic artist and illustrator with a predilection towards mashing the surreal with the familiar. They pay their time to developing worlds not quite like our own with their fiancee and pushing the queer agenda. They probably left a candle burning somewhere. More of their work can be found at errowcollins.wix.com/portfolio.

The Parts of Him That I Can Help With was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Errow Collins #Gordon B. White #Necromancy #Stephen L. Thayer

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letmewritefreely · 5 years

Text

By Your Side: Part 3

Demetri Stevens had spent the last few years of her life in the skybox for a crime she didn’t commit. One morning she woke up to a huge commotion in her cell block and before she knew it, she was on a dropship. She was sent from the Ark, a space station that had spent the last 97 years in space, down to Earth to see if it is inhabitable with 99 other prisoners. Once on Earth she reconnects with her old best friend, makes new friends, steps on some toes, and helps the 100 survive as they have returned to what was their home once before. With each test and trial; things change, people change, and feelings change. This is a new start for the 100, will Demetri allow it to be a new start for her as well? Or will ghosts of her past keep her stuck, well, in the past?

A The 100 fanfic written by letmewritefreely Bellamy Blake x OC: Demetri Stevens warnings: based off the tv series; gore, mentions or implications of sexual content, angst, fluff, violence, death, gets darker as the series continues. A/N: Here’s part 2! feedback, any feedback, is good feedback! Let me know your thoughts!

Parts: Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

By the next evening not much has changed, work on the wall around camp continued and those not working on the wall gathered supplies or worked to re-enforce the tents. Monty had refused to leave Jasper’s side, opting to work on re-establishing communications right next to his best friend. Leaving Demetri to meander around camp. When she wasn’t helping Clarke with Jasper or organizing the dropship she was helping outside building the tents and shelters for 100. Jasper had been moaning and panting since they found him at the tree, he would have barely caught his breath every time the girls took turns giving him sips of water trying to keep him hydrated. While it wasn’t a pleasant sound, it at least meant he was alive and while Demetri would rather be somewhere quiet she stayed close to him.

“I’m going to get some fresh water. Demi, you good to stay here?” Clarke asked, knowing Demetri had been in the dropship with Jasper since late that afternoon.

“Yea, go ahead. I’ll stay with him.” Demetri kept sketching in her notebook, working to recreate the wonders she had seen the day before. Clarke quietly took their canteens and the larger container they kept near Jasper to keep his wound clean and she left the dropship.

“Your sketches are really good.” Monty pulled her attention to him.

“Thanks Monty, I like to record what I see.” Demetri’s pencil stopped, “Plus it’s something I do to clear my head.”

“Do you have more?” Demetri nodded, “Do you mind if I see them?” Monty got shy at his request.

“Sure, just a sec.” Demetri dug around in her backpack for an older notebook, which was full of sketches of things from the Ark and people. Monty started flipping through the pages, eyes wide with wonder.

“Demetri, these are amazing. They’re so detailed and realistic.” She blushed at the compliment. “What have you drawn since we��ve been down here?”

“Mostly the scenery. This is a waterfall we passed by getting Jasper.” She turned a few pages back and showed Monty that picture. “And this is the leopard that Blake shot. Oh! And the mutant deer we saw!” She got a little excited to show him. “And the one before that is a sketch I drew our first night out in the woods.”

“I’m at a loss for words.” Monty handed the notebook back with a wide smile and Demetri stashed it amongst her other ones.

“Thanks Monty,” Demetri gave him a shy smile, “but it’s a useless talent. Being about to draw is nothing compared to being able to hunt or understand engineering.” She motioned towards what Monty was working on.

“A talent is still a talent, the world would be a little more shitty if you didn’t have such an amazing one. My night would be shittier if you hadn’t shared those with me.” Monty assured her. “Thank you for enriching my night.” Demetri tried to hide her grin.

A loud moan from Jasper pulled both of their gazes to the boy before them, a worried look exchanged between the two.

“And Clarke has a talent for helping people, she’ll help Jasper.” Demetri nodded as she picked up a rag and dabbed at his forehead. “He’s strong, he’ll make it.” Monty nodded the worry clear in his forehead wrinkles, Demetri really hoped her words would ring true. When Clarke returned she wiped the sweat from Jasper’s upper body and cleaned the wound again.

“Demi, get some sleep. Monty you too. I’ll stay up with Jasper.”

Demetri nodded, knowing in a situation like this letting Clarke have her way would save everyone a lot of trouble. She stood and patted Monty’s head, before she gave Clarke’s shoulder a squeeze and left the dropship to sleep in the tent she had finished putting up earlier that day.

---

A few days passed, everyone was given a job to complete daily and they soon fell into a routine. Most of the focus was on getting a nice collection of food and working on completing the wall, which was almost done by now. There were still some people working on putting up tents, it took a while to get enough up for everyone. Most people paired up, allowing Clarke and Demetri to become roommates again, just like when they were kids. Most of Demetri’s time was split between helping with the wall and helping Clarke take care of Jasper and any other small injuries. She had to admit that helping Clarke care for the rest of the 100 as they got hurt allowed her medical knowledge to grow. She watched longingly as every afternoon the hunting group would go out in search of food for the next day or two. Bellamy and Clarke agreed that they needed to try to start up a steady food supply. On top of the nuts and berries gathered in the surrounding woods.

Demetri started to notice just how often pairs would disappear and reappear looking less put together than when they had left. She never said anything because it was never her business but when she was trying to find Octavia one afternoon and watched a half dressed girl about Clarke’s age dash out of Bellamy’s tent she almost lost her lunch. Bellamy left his tent, shirt in his hands, moments later to see the Demetri frozen outside and he felt sick to his stomach too. Demetri mumbled some lame excuse and bolted when Bellamy tried to explain himself. She couldn’t look him in the face for the rest of the day. The images of the two together plagued Demetri’s mind and it shouldn’t have bothered her but it did, it bothered her immensely. She kept herself busy in hopes of forgetting the implications of what she saw. The next few nights she laid awake on the cot opposite of Clarke wishing she had remained ignorant to girls who passed through Bellamy’s tent.

The third morning after getting back came and the day began, Jasper was still moaning in pain. Even with her eyes barely open, Demetri could feel how it was affecting the camp. A nervous energy was buzzing through camp. People were getting antsy, they’d glance at the dropship every time Jasper made a noise. She woke herself up before ascending to where Clarke was still taking care of him.

“Clarke, we’ve got to do something. Anything to help him or quiet him down. If we don’t the camp might take the matter into their own hands.” Demetri moved to Jasper’s side, the back of her hand pressing against his clammy forehead.

Clarke pulled the cloth away and poked around the wound as Demetri moved to hold one of Jasper’s hands. She bit her lip nervously as Jasper panted from the contact and tried to weakly twist away from Clarke.

“I can do something but I’ll need all of your help.” She looked in turn to Demetri, Finn, and Wells who had just crawled up the ladder. “Hold him down and keep him still.”

They watched Clarke take a small knife and place it in some still burning coals left over from a small fire. Wells moved first to hold down Jaspers’ legs, Finn held down his upper body, and Demetri and Monty each took an arm.

“I’m not gonna like this am I?” Monty gulped.

“No, you’re not.” Demetri confirmed, and patted his arm before moving back to hold Jasper down.

Clark removed the knife from the coals, the tip just slightly glowing. She looked at everyone in turn before nodding and steeling her own nerves.

“I need to cut away the infected flesh.” Clarke took a deep breath before leaning over Jasper. “This won’t be fun.”

The moment the knife touched Jasper’s chest his moaning increased tenfold. He started thrashing around and he was so loud that Octavia flew into the dropship and up the ladder moments after Clarke started. She looked panicked and scared as she saw them all around Jasper as Clarke cut into his chest.

“You’re gonna kill him! Stop!” Octavia was on the verge of tears.

“She’s trying to save his life!” Finn retorted, glancing up at Octavia as Clarke sucked in a sharp breath.

Clarke froze when tears ran down Jasper’s eyes and he passed out from the pain. She quickly cut away the rest of the infected skin around the wound before she pressed a damp rag over it and tried to clean up the wound again.

“It’s not worth it.” Bellamy’s voice broke the sudden silence, everyone turned to watch him finish ascending the ladder.

“We didn’t bring him back just to let him die.” Finn piped up from his place watching Bellamy walk further into the room

“He’s not gonna make it. If you think he is, you’re deluded.” Bellamy found Demetri bent over Jasper across from him with a stern look of disapproval meeting him.

Clarke turned on Bellamy and glared at him. She handed the rag over to Monty who held it against Jasper’s chest as she moved. She faced him and took a few steps forward, stopping just before him.

“Sorry Jasper is an inconvenience to you, but this isn’t the Ark. Every life matters Bellamy.”

“He’s been like this for three days Clarke, he hasn’t gotten better yet.” Bellamy didn’t like having to be the one to point this out, he didn’t want the kid to die.

“She knows what she’s doing Blake.” Demetri spat.

“Even so, he’s driving the camp crazy.” Bellamy turned to Demetri and watched the way she glared at him. “If he’s not better by tomorrow evening, I’ll kill him myself.”

“You’ll have to go through me then.” Demetri stood and moved in front of Jasper and the others. “We don’t have the numbers nor the resources to be letting our people die when we can help them.”

Bellamy didn’t say anything, the glare he turned back onto Demetri was seen by everyone in the room. He didn’t want to fight with her which was tough because she was stubborn as hell. After one last hard look at the girl before him he moved back to the ladder.

“I’m staying here Bell, I’m helping Clarke.” Octavia spoke before Bellamy even had a chance to speak.

He spared his sister a look, but left without a word. The only sound was his feet hitting each rung of the ladder.

“Power-hungry, self-serving jackass.” Monty spat after a moment, “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.” Monty glanced at Octavia, “No offense.”

“That’s right Monty, but he happens to be right.” Finn sighed, earning himself a few glares.

---

A few hours later Jasper was still knocked out and he’s sleeping a little bit peacefully. Clarke ran into the dropship saying they knew how to help Jasper and to not leave his side till they get back. Then she took off with Finn and Wells. Octavia and Demetri took turns getting clean water and cleaning around the wound on Jasper’s chest. Monty worked diligently while occasionally taking breaks to check on Jasper. With Jasper having quieted down the camp was more at ease. Octavia and Demetri were at ease too, until Bellamy joined them.

“Sweetheart, come with me.” He stopped when his head poked through the hatch.

“That is not my name Blake.” Demetri’s eye twitched at the tone he used.

“Go, whatever it is, it’ll keep him occupied. Please.” Octavia grabbed Demetri’s hand. “I’ll take care of Jasper, we won’t leave him alone.” Monty nodded along.

“I’m waiting Sweetheart.” Bellamy called from the lower level.

“Octavia, I’ll need strength, so I don’t kill your brother.” Octavia sent Demetri a small smile before shoving her towards the ladder.

“What do you want Blake?”

“We’re going hunting for tonight’s dinner and I want you to come along, you can be useful.” Demetri eyed Bellamy warily. “Take this as payback for dragging me along on that rescue mission.”

“You won the support of the majority of the camp, I don’t owe you anything.” Demetri’s breath hitched when Bellamy was suddenly right in front of her, his entire being bearing down on her.

“We could use your brain, let’s go.” Bellamy left no room for argument.

Bellamy tugged Demetri behind him by the sleeve of her jacket. As he gathered the hunting group he asked Murphy to stay back and watch the camp. Bellamy pulled a knife made from the dropship from his jacket and handed it Demetri, she noticed it was different than the one he used the night he removed her bracelet. Again before she could open her mouth she was hauled behind him as they went off as a group into the woods to the east to look for dinner.

It didn’t take long before one of the scouts spotted a wild boar. The group quickly fell into a formation to drive the boar towards two people waiting ahead to kill it, an idea Demetri helped come up with. They were close, the boar was within their grasp just a few meters from the waiting hunters, when a loud horn-like sound echoed through the forest. Then the boar disappeared, as if it were never there. The two guys waiting further up started screaming in agony.

“Atom? James?” Bellamy took a few steps forward, ready to run up to help.

“RUN!” That one word, so scared and animalistic, lit a fire in everyone else and they scrambled to get away from an unknown assailant.

Moments later a light greenish-yellow fog started twisting and swirling towards them, swallowing the forest as it went. Bellamy grabbed Demetri’s hand and pulled her along behind him, bee-lining for the caves they passed on the way.

“The caves! Go for the caves!” He yelled to the rest of the hunting party as they took off.

Demetri was struggling to keep up with Bellamy’s long strides and would have gone down if he hadn’t been so forcefully pulling her along behind him. They made it to one of the caves just as the fog starts to wrap itself around Demetri’s ankle. Her whimpers make Bellamy practically throw her into the cave deeper. She collapsed onto the cold cave ground that was covered in moss and she quickly removed her boot and sock and pulled up her pant leg. There was a slight burn around the bit of exposed skin, it was red and itchy but Demetri knew she shouldn’t touch it.

“My bag.” She panted, the pain from the burn more than she could comprehend in the moment.

“Here!” Bellamy unzipped her bag and sat it in front of her, millions of thoughts ran through his mind.

Demetri pulled out the little canteen she had fashioned out of some tarp and some hardware and slowly poured its contents over her ankle. The liquid immediately soothed the pain making Demetri extremely thankful she could think clearly in such a panicked state of mind.

“How’d you know to do that?” Bellamy watched her empty her entire canteen onto her ankle before she grabbed a handful of moss and pressed the cold plant on top of the burn.

“Did you pay attention to any of your classes?” Demetri laughed at the situation, the burn lessened as time passed.

“I went to enough to not fail.” Bellamy rolled his eyes, his attendance record a real disgrace.

“Me too, but I actually studied.” Demetri resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

“I had Octavia to take care of.”

“Fair enough Blake.” She took a few deep breaths as most of pain had subsided and she could move her ankle around. “Thanks Blake, for having my back out there.”

“I asked you to come along.” He looked guiltily down at her ankle.

“Forced, you forced me to come along.” She looked down at Bellamy kneeling before her and flicked him on the forehead. “If you drag me anywhere like that again I’ll kick your ass.”

“Fair enough, how does your ankle feel?” His small smile making her feel better.

“I can move it.” Demetri slowly stood up or rather attempted to.

“It can’t handle much weight.” Bellamy commented as Demetri almost went down onto her knees when her ankle gave out, his hands quickly stabilizing her.

“What’s an acid fog doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Demetri changed topics as Bellamy lowered her back onto the ground, “Because this,” she pointed to her red and splotchy ankle, “is an acid burn.”

“You don’t think the grounders are capable of this are you?” He paused, “Do you have bandages?”

“Here.” Demetri dug a roll of gauze from her bag and handed it to Bellamy, “I don’t want to write it off as a possibility that they aren’t.”

Demetri’s train of thought derailed as she watched Bellamy slowly start wrapping her ankle, both to cover the burned area and to allow a bit of support for her. His hands were slow and steady, his full attention on the job before him. Bellamy thought nothing of it as he also carefully slid her sock on over the bandages and then followed with her boot. He was busy lacing up her boot so it wasn’t too tight when Demetri sighed. Bellamy looked up to find a sweet look on Demetri’s face as she rested her head on the palm of her hand.

“When you act like this I get really confused.” Demetri muttered.

Bellamy didn’t say anything as he finished lacing her boot. He walked over towards the mouth of the cave to see the fog still shrouding the outside world in a green cloud. He slowly trotted back into the main area of the cave to see Demetri digging around in her bag. She pulled out a flashlight and turned it on before setting it in the floor before her.

“We’ll probably be here for awhile so we might as well rest.” Bellamy settled beside Demetri with his back against the wall.

“I hope the others are okay.” Demetri nodded, but she didn’t lay down like Bellamy thought she would.

Instead she pulled out the sketchbook she’d been drawing in the night before and went back to work on perfecting the waterfall. It was harder than normal for her to get an image from her mind to paper because she only had a few moments to really look at the waterfall and it was driving her crazy, she’d already redrawn it three times. Bellamy had made himself comfortable and was just listening to the sounds around him when Demetri’s annoyed sigh made him open his eyes. He sat forward and peeked over her shoulder to see what she was doing. He couldn’t see what she had in her hands too well so he scooted himself forward enough to see.

Demetri didn’t even notice him because she was so focused on the drawing. Bellamy stopped when he was right beside her, his arms resting on his knees, and his chin resting on his upper arm as he stared between her and the notebook in her hand. If Demetri had looked up she’d see a look on Bellamy’s face she hadn’t seen since her dad was around, a look of pure adoration.

“Did you draw a lot on the Ark?” Bellamy asked quietly, fearing he’d break the tranquil atmosphere if he spoke too loud.

“As often as I could.” Demetri’s reply was just as quiet.

“What do you mainly draw?”

“Everything.” Demetri’s paused to look up at Bellamy, noticing for the first time just how close he was, his freckles visible even in the dim light. “This notebook is full of drawings from the last few years in the skybox.” She handed him a worn, simple brown notebook. She quickly looked away from him and back to the notebook in her hands.

Bellamy flipped through the pages slowly. Images of what he assumed her cell looked like, the view she had, the various cell mates she had had, the design of the cell block were all so realistic. There were incredibly detailed drawings of things she had owned, books and trinkets, people around her, even a sketch of a sketch. It was amazing but Bellamy really wanted to see what she was working on now.

“Can I see what’s in that notebook?”

Without a second thought Demetri handed it over, taking the old one and putting it away. She wiggled around to get into a more comfortable position when a thought passed through her mind. Bellamy was still idly looking at each page, at each drawing. Demetri quickly went to reach for it to take it back but Bellamy pulled it out of her reach.

“I’m not done looking.” He tutted at her.

“Blake, c’mon give it back.”

“Oh, was this what you didn’t want me to see?” Bellamy flipped the notebook around for Demetri to see a pair of sketches of Monty and Jasper. “They’d be honored to know you drew them so well.” He deflated, but kept flipping.

Demetri giggled at Bellamy’s reaction to the portraits. She didn’t say anything even though she started to feel anxious as he got closer and closer to a specific sketch, she let him keep looking. A few pages later Bellamy’s uninterested gaze froze, his entire body jerked forward.

“You drew me too?” His voice was quieter than before. He took in the lines and curves of his face reflected in the drawing, the soft smile lines and the freckles she drew.

“I draw what I see.” Demetri became instantly thankful the flashlight casted a yellow hue onto everything because she hoped it masked her insane blush. “I see you everyday, of course I’d draw you eventually.” She tried to act nonchalant as she tore the notebook from his hands and shoved it back into her backpack. “I’m gonna take a nap.”

Demetri rolled till she was facing away from Bellamy and used her backpack as a pillow. She zipped up her jacket and crossed her arms over her chest and she curled in on herself. It was quiet for a while, she wasn’t sure if Bellamy had moved. Demetri just started to untense her body when Bellamy once again broke the silence.

“What’s with you and Wells?” Bellamy questioned as he turned to look over at her.

“You really do ask a lot of questions.” Demetri rolled over to face him.

“How will I ever learn if I don’t ask?” He inquired, amused by the glare he received. “But I’m serious, he’s in love with Clarke and Clarke is your best friend, surely the two of you would be at least nice to each other.”

“Wells has only ever cared about Clarke, ever since I first noticed he had liked her. I’m older than Clarke and we’ve always been super close. He told me once that I was too close to her and as long as I was in the picture she’d never see him. He’s always tried to drive us apart so I don’t care for him.” Demetri found if she answered Bellamy’s questions he’d leave her alone quicker. “He’s disliked me on this whole new level ever since my last birthday before I got arrested, I’m sure he threw a party the day I got locked up.” Demetri grumbled, rolling on her back and staring up at the ceiling of the cave.

“What happened?” Bellamy turned to lay on his side as he listened to her.

“You know I draw.” Bellamy nodded. “I’d used up most of the pencils I had and had been telling Clarke about it. I only had a few color pencils left before I was completely out. She had told Wells she was trying to get her hands on at least one and because Clarke wanted it, Wells made it happen. He lost his mind when he came over a few days after my birthday to see me using the two color pencils he’d gotten for Clarke. He snatched them away and yelled at me for using the gift he got for Clarke before she told him the whole reason she had wanted them was for me. From that day on, Wells didn’t see me anymore. He acted as if I had forced it all to happen, as if I had made Clarke use him to get two measly color pencils.” Demetri shrugged from her position. “Frankly, I didn’t care much. I only got angry when I came back one day to see them both broken in half on my desk. Wells pretended to be shocked and confused but I saw the smirk he had when he was behind Clarke, who apologized profusely. He’s a total dick.” Demetri rolled her eyes.

“Breaking them was pretty petty.” Bellamy agreed, watching Demetri glance at him.

“But it’s in the past, if he ever apologized for being a massive asshole we could move forward, but he hasn’t so I couldn’t care less for him.” Demetri let out a deep breath before she closed her eyes, hoping Bellamy’s questions had ended. The silence only lasted a few minutes.

“Are you cold?” His voice was quiet and smooth, it was soothing.

“A little.” She replied honestly. “There’s nothing separating us from the cold ground.”

“Can I help?”

Demetri slowly rolled over to face him.

“How would you do that?”

Demetri blinked and Bellamy was right in front of her. He pulled her head forward to rest on his arm and then he scooted their bodies closer. He pulled a piece of tarp from his bag over them and held her flush against his body. Their body heat warming the air under the tarp quickly.

“Is that better?” Bellamy looked down at Demetri to see how she reacted to him, to see how she reacted to being this close to him.

“Y-yea, it is.” Her quiet voice was loud in his ears, she looked everywhere but at him as the blush from earlier returned.

Bellamy was sure Demetri could feel his heart beating out of his chest and if she did, she didn’t say anything. Bellamy slowly tucked the edges of the tarp around them. As Bellamy settled, he finally relaxed when he heard the steady breathing beside him, which caused him to melt a little bit. He looked down at Demetri curled into his chest and he felt like his heart had stopped. He wished he could stay there, relishing in the moment forever. However, no matter how much he wanted to stay up and bask in the moment, the exhaustion from the day’s work and running for their lives earlier won and he drifted to sleep as well.

---

The distant yelling of her name woke Demetri from her cozy and warm slumber. She twisted around to see she was still in Bellamy’s arms and pressed tightly against his chest. Her face felt like the fire pit back at camp as she wiggled free and moved to the mouth of the cave after being careful to not wake Bellamy yet. When she noticed the clear air and the sunlight peeking through the canopy above she rushed to wake Bellamy.

“Blake, come on. The fog’s gone and we need to check on everyone.” Demetri pulled the tarp from him and started folding it up.

“How long were we asleep?” His voice deeper and scratchier than normal.

“It’s bright outside, so either a few hours or through the night.” Demetri handed him the folded tarp and he stashed it in his backpack, then he stretched before nodding towards the cave entrance.

“Let’s go then.” Demetri followed behind him, hoping the blush was gone by the time they left the cave.

Neither of them would admit it, but that was the best either of them had slept since they landed on earth. Demetri had lied awake the last few nights until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore only to wake up a few hours later when the sun rose. Bellamy just didn’t sleep well down here, there was too much unknown for him to relax enough to sleep.

They worked to retrace their steps and met up with a few of the others from the hunting group. When Bellamy heard that neither James or Atom had found them, the group set off to find their missing members. Demetri and Bellamy went back towards where the group was together last as the others searched the caves close by.

“I hope they’re okay.” Demetri mumbled, stepping lightly as she looked everywhere for a sign the guys had been there.

“They are.” Bellamy sounded too confident.

Demetri looked over at him, the lines in his forehead a dead giveaway. She stopped and faced him, stopping Bellamy in his tracks. Wordlessly she reached out and grabbed his hand, hoping it was comforting. Bellamy looked down at her smaller hand gripping his larger hand and couldn’t stop the grin she elicited with the small gesture.

However the moment is short lived because a quite gasp draws their attention away from each other and towards the burned and immobile Atom laying beside a tree a few feet away. The pair rushed to him, falling to their knees on either side of him. Demetri’s hands hovered above Atom afraid to touch him as her sight blurred.

“Bell,” Atom gasped, his burned eyes looking around slowly, tears leaking from his eyes. “Kill me.” He begged.

“Atom.” Bellamy whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Bellamy didn’t move. He sat back on his legs and just stared at the state Atom was in. His body was covered in blisters and rashes, he wasn’t sure Atom could even see with how destroyed his retinas were, and his lungs were probably burnt to crisps. Atom laid there, staring up at the sky, repeatedly asking Bellamy to kill him with tears in his eyes but Bellamy just stared at him.

“Atom,” Demetri’s voice was thick with unshed tears. “I’ll help.” She wiped his tears and started to hum a quiet lullaby as she comforted Atom for a few moments, letting the melody surround him. “Rest now, may we meet again.” Demetri continued to hum as she shoved the knife Bellamy had given to her the day before into the side of Atom’s neck. He took one last breath before his body stilled.

“How did you do that?” Bellamy asked. “How did you manage to do it?”

“It was better than him suffering, Clarke couldn’t have helped him.” Demetri rose to stand and wiped the few tears that fell from her eyes.

Branches snapped to the right of the pair and Demetri’s attention snapped there to see a young girl staring openly shocked at them. Demetri took a step forward the girl when she stepped on a twig herself, the snap shocked the girl back to the present. She bolted before Demetri could say anything. Whatever that was worried her, but she moved to help Bellamy lift Atom onto the tarp they’d used as a blanket earlier and they dragged him back to camp. The pair met back up with the rest of the party, James included, a few hundred feet from camp. Demetri quickly filled them in on what happened with Atom and suggested to always go out in pairs from now on. Two guys took over dragging Atom’s body back to camp allowing Demetri and Bellamy to follow the group the rest of the way back.

“O’s gonna lose her mind.” Bellamy muttered, a hand running over his face.

“There was nothing we could do.” Demetri tried to ease his worry.

“I know but they--”

“They liked each other and you tried to keep them apart.” Demetri stated, turning slightly towards Bellamy as they walked. “I’ll be honest, Octavia has told me a lot. She’s very upset with you for being so overprotective.” Bellamy gawked at her.

“I--”

“Far as I’m concerned, I have a small piece of advice. The tighter you hold onto her, the more she’s going to fight you.” Demetri placed her hand on his shoulder as she looked up at him. “She’s going to be pissed and hurt, let her deal with this in her own way.”

They made it to the outskirts of camp at the same time Clarke, Finn, and Wells returned. The tension around the trio was thicker than the fog from the night before. Clare saw Demetri before Demetri saw her and ran straight to her, pulling her away from Bellamy and towards the dropship telling her about everything that had transpired. Demetri saw Octavia as she was being drug away and pulled away from Clarke to stop Octavia from running towards Bellamy and ultimately, Atom.

“Octavia, just know it was the only choice.” Demetri hugged Octavia tightly before giving her a sad look.

Octavia flew to Bellamy and looked him over before seeing the body behind him. She fell to her knees when she realized everyone was accounted for except Atom. After checking to confirm her suspicions she fought back the tears as she stood and moved towards the dropship.

“Get Clarke whatever she needs.” Bellamy’s voice was loud and clear. “And get him taken care of, please.”

In less than ten minutes, a cup of tea made from the seaweed the other group had collected was finished and Clarke slowly poured the tea into Jasper’s mouth. He managed to get half the cup down when Monty and Octavia confessed that Murphy had tried to storm the top level and kill Jasper while everyone else was out. Clarke had nothing to say as she continued to care for Murphy but Demetri did. Demetri climbed down the ladder and found Murphy being shoved away from Bellamy. She took a deep breath to prevent herself from killing the guy and stormed up to him.

“Listen to me Murphy, if you ever touch any of my friends or try to hurt them in any way from this point on, the next time I punch you in the face I will break your fucking jaw. Do you understand?”

Murphy just stared down at Demetri, a blank stare was all Demetri received. She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and jerked him down to be eye level with her. Which would have been an amusing sight had there not been a darker reason behind the situation.

“Do you understand me John?” Her eyes flitted between his, trying to read him. “Every life matters down here, including Jaspers; including yours. Make it fucking count.” Demetri shoved him away from her, watching Murphy stumble before he righted himself.

He watched silently as Demetri marched back towards the dropship. He turned towards Bellamy and thought about what just transpired. Murphy didn’t hate anyone around him except for Wells and that was because of what Jaha had done. Yet Murphy felt this heat start to simmer in his chest every time he talked to Demetri now, even though she practically saved his life once before, this weirdly intense feeling started to get stronger after each interaction. Murphy turned his attention to Bellamy who watched after Demetri with a strange look on his face. Murphy had seen the same look on Bellamy’s face a few times now, so he knew at the very least that Bellamy felt something for Demetri. Information he was planning to use later on.

As it got dark outside those by Jasper’s side were getting nervous, he hadn’t moved or made much noise since the seaweed tea. Monty was sitting beside Demetri filling her in on what she had missed, Clarke was working on another batch of tea, and Octavia sat beside Jasper reminding him that he had to pull through and that she’d be angry with him if he died. Jasper sputtered a few moments later and made a joke to announce that he was back with the living. A sigh of relief escaped the room as they all rushed to his side, the questions about him flying before Jasper coughed and silenced them all.

“So did I get speared in the chest or was that a dream?”

“It happened and you’re a total badass for surviving it.” Demetri patted his knee in an attempt to hold back her tears.

“Thank you for not dying.” Octavia pressed a light kiss to Jasper’s forehead, “I don’t think I could have taken it if you did.”

“I second that.” Clarke grabbed the cup from the table on the side and held it to Jasper’s lips, “Drink a bit more so the medicine is in your system for the night.”

With Jasper out of harm’s way the camp was in better spirits that night, especially since there was a plant that offered medicinal help now. Demetri walked around camp, relishing in the calm after the long and eventful day when she found herself walking by Bellamy’s tent again. This time coming face-to-face with a different girl as she leaves his tent pulling her shirt back on, she missed the annoyed look on the girl’s face. Demetri didn’t hang around as she scurried off to her tent, so distracted she didn’t notice the figure in the tree watching the camp. The camp is much calmer and quieter as Demetri climbed onto her pallet and hid under her blankets in an attempt to run away from the mixed emotions and thoughts overtaking her at the moment. Eventually she falls victim to a restless sleep, missing the deep sleep she had gotten in the cave.

#the 100 #the 100 fanfic #the 100 fanfic adaptation #bellamy blake #bellamy blake x oc #OC: Demetri Stevens #letmewritefreely #clarke griffin x OC #best friend clarke #bellamy blake fanfic #bellamy blake story

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itsyourchoicedevotionals · 2 years

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Baking Cookies

“Then Peter came to Him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!” Matthew 18:21-22NLT

Forgiveness is a touchy subject with billions of people. No one wants to be hurt by someone else. At fifteen I didn’t ask to be raped. It happened. There was an entire gamut of emotions to be dealt with. Then Jesus says “forgive.”

Robert Morris’ daily two minute radio message was on forgiveness. Lord speaking: ‘You need to forgive them for that.’ Morris: ‘But God that really hurt me. You expect me to forgive them for hurting me.’ Lord speaking; ‘You don’t forgive someone for baking cookies for you, do you? No forgiveness is given to someone who has hurt you, not done you good.’

Lou and I went to a marriage enrichment seminar in 1982. At one point, the psychology team brought up to us the necessity for forgiveness. Starting with the spouses, we worked our ways back through our lifetimes, extending forgiveness to everyone. Physically and emotionally exhausting, Holy Spirit guided us through this. He brought each occurrence to mind. Out of my body came ripping pains. Roots of personal agony were pulled out.

Another couple at the seminar were in the throes of divorce. He’d coaxed her to attend in one last ditch effort. She experienced the same teachings. But leaving the seminar she said, ‘what he did was so awful, I can’t ever forgive him— no matter what.’ They ended in divorce. Will God judge her by the words of Jesus? “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:14-15NLT. Only Yahweh knows.

We’ve all got a multitude of things to forgive people for. What our government is trying to do to us is nearly unforgivable: note I said ‘nearly.’ People have lost precious family members because of misinformation and botched medical care. Makes me want to wring some government people’s necks, minimally wipe the smirking faces of some with barnyard-goo. Scriptures don’t say I get to repay, rather “…never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” Romans 12:19ESV. I must choose to forgive them of all their evil, asking God to deal with them as He chooses. For me….. the struggle is real.

There are some choices to forgive which can only be made through Christ Jesus. Saying ‘I choose to forgive— easy.’ Doing it— another story completely. Satan keeps dragging up the harm repeatedly to keep the pain fresh and raw.

Jesus suffered while we suffered. Remember His kneeling, praying, sweating blood in Gethsemane? He knelt— His Spirit-Man walked through the annals of time taking every sin ever committed upon Himself. Colossians 2:14NLT “He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.” THEN: Every emotion and physical hurt was taken upon Jesus at the same instant, during prayer in Gethsemane. Isaiah 53:3-4ESV, “He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as One from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely HE HAS BORNE OUR GRIEFS AND CARRIED OUR SORROWS…” (emphasis mine.)

Only Jesus can forgive “seventy times seven” one person for the same offense. We can’t. The remedy to this is to— pray— ‘Lord Jesus I choose to forgive. Only You can take this choice and create heartfelt forgiveness. Here’s my choice.’ —Can you pray this prayer? It’s your choice. You choose.

LET’S PRAY: Lord God help us to choose forgiveness. Please make our choices reality, and free us from this pain caused by their actions, in the name of Jesus Christ I pray.

#Jesus Christ #lord of lords #Word of God #Holy Spirit #God #it's your choice #devotional #baking cookies #forgiveness #hurt #offense #emotions #judge #love #hope #faith

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years

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A Padre Pio Inspirational Story

I feel all your troubles, as if they were my own. – St. Pio of Pietrelcina

A Testimony by Fr. Louis Solcia, CRSP

Amelie Gonzales was a little girl at our parish who taught me many things. She taught me much about both life and death. Her short life was a blessing to her family and to all those who knew her. It certainly was a blessing to me.

Amelie’s mother, Amata, and her grandmother Marlene, regularly attended our Padre Pio prayer group at Our Lady of the Rosary. The family was very devout. Amelie, who followed the good example of her mother and grandmother, was a very spiritual child. Amata told me that when she took Amelie to the store each week, Amelie always wanted to buy a bouquet of roses to place in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Amelie was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer called Pluropulmonary Blastoma. It is a cancer that occurs most often in infants and children but has also been reported in adults. The doctors hoped that chemotherapy treatments would arrest the cancer. Finally, the doctors told the family that they had done everything in their power to save Amelie. They had used every modern medical means at their disposal. There was nothing more they could do.

Amelie grew weaker as the cancer progressed but strangely enough, she never looked sick. She had a desire to receive Holy Communion. Children ordinarily do not receive their first Holy Communion before the age of seven. Amelie was just five years old. But because she had a spiritual maturity beyond her years and because of her terminal diagnosis, I was able to give her Holy Communion.

Amelie told her mother that Padre Pio had come to her and had given her a blessing. One day, near the end of her life, she was lying in her bed, looking up at the ceiling in her room. Suddenly, the ceiling disappeared, and in its place she saw the evening sky, studded with brilliant stars. Jesus and Mary were there in the sky and they were smiling at her. Later, her mother showed her a holy card of Jesus. “Amelie, did Jesus look like this?” she asked. “No, he didn’t,” she replied. “He was so bright!”

Our Padre Pio prayer group had prayed for many weeks for Amelie. We all hoped in our hearts that she would be healed. But it was not to be. Amelie died peacefully in her mother’s arms on December 14, 2009. On the day that she died, she saw a white butterfly. “Mommy, don’t you see the butterfly?” she asked. But her mother could not see it. No one saw it but Amelie. After her death, Amelie truly looked like a little angel.

I had a desire to visit the cemetery where Amelie was buried and I went there on several occasions to pray. Beautiful red roses in a heart-shaped pattern had been placed on her grave by her mother. In my heart, I felt a great sadness. I wondered why God had taken such a beautiful little girl and left us all with such heavy hearts. I especially felt sorry for Amelie’s family because of their grief. But then I reasoned to myself that God never allows something bad to happen unless He can draw good out of it. I have been a priest for more than fifty years and I have always believed that. But in this situation, I struggled with God. Although at the time, I could not see past the pain of the situation, soon I would see the good that God would draw out of Amelie’s death.

Amelie’s best friend was her eight-year-old cousin, Alexis. The two girls were inseparable. After Amelie’s death, Alexis’ sister, Cassandra, had a vivid dream. In her dream, Amelie was looking everywhere for Alexis. “Where is Alexis?” she asked. “I want to find Alexis!” It was shortly after Cassandra’s dream that Alexis announced that she wanted to take instructions in the Catholic faith and be baptized. Everyone in the family was surprised. Alexis’ desire seemed to come out of nowhere. There was certainly no one in her family encouraging her to take that step. Alexis’ mother had no religious affiliation and she never took the family to church on Sunday. However, she was willing to let Alexis take instruction in the Catholic faith. I had the sense that the dream of Amelie was instrumental in Alexis’ desire to become a Catholic. Amelie’s mother now brings Alexis to our parish once a week. I am giving her the instructions myself and preparing her for baptism, confirmation and for her first Holy Communion.

God can and does draw good out of the hard and painful situations in life. We only have to look and we will see.

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven – A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot … a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones. – Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 __________________________

Joey Finn of Hudson, New York had been coping with severe asthma for most of his childhood. In 2005, when Joey was ten years old, he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, an incurable disease that makes it difficult to breathe and eventually destroys the lungs completely. Joey’s lungs already showed the damage from the disease and he would have to have breathing treatments twice a day for the rest of his life. The median survival age for those who have the disease is in the early thirties.

Shortly after Joey’s diagnosis, his mother, Melissa Finn was introduced to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a nonprofit organization which offers children with chronic, life threatening diseases, the opportunity to make a wish and have it granted. For the youth who daily struggle with incurable illnesses, the chance to have a wish come true can lift their spirits and enrich their lives. It gives them something positive to look forward to in life. The Make-A-Wish Foundation, in its ministry of compassion, has brought happiness to countless children.

When Joey said that he would like to submit a wish to the Foundation for consideration, his mother assumed that he would request a trip to Disney World in Florida. However, when he told his mother what he wished for, she could not have been more surprised. Joey wanted to travel to San Giovanni Rotondo to pray at the tomb of Padre Pio. He also wanted to see the holy father in Rome. Where did the desire come from? That is a good question. Joey did not grow up in a particularly religious household. Although the Finns were Catholics, they did not attend Mass on Sunday. As it turned out, Joey had seen a documentary on the life of Padre Pio on the History Channel which had greatly inspired him. He learned about Padre Pio’s stigmata, his prayer life, and his deep faith in God. Like Joey, Padre Pio had suffered most of his life with poor health. He was afflicted with chronic breathing problems, including asthma and bronchitis. It was an acute case of asthma that was a contributing cause of Padre Pio’s death in September 1968.

In thinking of her son’s wish, Melissa had one deep concern. She was afraid that Joey would be crushed if he expected a miracle from Padre Pio and did not receive one. She talked to him about it and he assured her that was not the case. He had a devotion to Padre Pio and wanted to pray at his tomb. He intended to offer up his prayers for all the people in the world who were stricken with cystic fibrosis and to pray that there would someday be a cure. He was certain that there would be no disappointment in that.

One recalls that Padre Pio felt a great call to help the sick and suffering, not only through his daily intercessory prayers but also through concrete action. He founded the Home for the Relief of Suffering for that very reason. He spoke of it as his “earthly mission.” There were many scoffers and detractors who doubted that the project could ever succeed. But against all odds, the Home grew and prospered and has helped countless lives.

Joey Finn’s wish was certainly one of the most unique that had been submitted to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Some of the popular requests included a shopping spree at the mall, an outdoor playground, and a trip to the Super Bowl. Occasionally, children requested a trip to Honolulu or Hollywood. But the request to visit San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy had to be a first. The Foundation checked with Joey’s mother to make sure that it was his wish and not hers. She assured them that she was just as surprised as anyone else when she found out Joey’s wish. Joey’s request was finally approved and in June 2007, twelve-year-old Joey along with his mother, father and thirteen-year-old sister made preparations to travel to Italy. Their first surprise came, shortly after they boarded the plane. The pilot came over the loud speaker and proposed a question to all the passengers. “Is it true that Joey Finn, who is sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, is on board the plane?” the pilot asked. Joey’s excitement intensified when the pilot asked him if he would like to step to the cockpit and turn the key to start the airplane. His reply was an enthusiastic, “Yes!” It was the beginning of an extraordinary journey for the entire Finn family.

The first stop on their remarkable pilgrimage was to Rome, where they toured the Vatican. They spent time at the beautiful Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Catacombs, the Holy Stairs and more. Along with a multitude of others, they were able to see the Holy Father and to receive his papal blessing. Joey took many excellent pictures of the Holy Father.

In San Giovanni Rotondo, the pilgrims who were waiting in line to make a visit to Padre Pio’s tomb, prayed the Rosary while they waited. Joey and his family joined in the prayers. They literally just squeezed into the church as it was closing that evening. Melissa was the very last person allowed to enter before the doors were locked.

Padre Pio’s tomb was below the main altar of the church and was surrounded by an iron enclosure. People were able to draw very close to the tomb but the iron enclosure prevented anyone from actually touching it. On the evening of the Finns’ visit, the little iron gate was unlocked and opened. All those who were present that evening were allowed to place their hand on Padre Pio’s tomb. Melissa Finn was later told that the iron gate is customarily closed and locked at all times.

The Finn family never imagined the impact the trip to San Giovanni Rotondo would have on their lives. Melissa Finn felt compelled to go to confession while visiting the monastery church of Our Lady of Grace. She had not been to confession in more than twenty-five years. Joey told his mother that when he stood and prayed at Padre Pio’s tomb, he had the sense that Padre Pio had heard his prayers. “Padre Pio has taken our family in as his own,” Joey said to his mother.

For the Finns, the time spent at Padre Pio’s monastery was a time of spiritual renewal and positive change. After returning home, they began to attend Mass together every Sunday as a family. It was something they had not done for a long time. Joey had a desire to learn more about his Catholic faith and to serve the Church. He soon became an altar server each Sunday at Mass.

Joey had been able to purchase some very meaningful souvenirs of Padre Pio while in Italy. Back in Hudson, New York, he set up his own little shrine dedicated to his patron saint and placed it on display in his home. Quite unexpectedly, he even received a third class relic of the saint. A nurse who had heard about Joey was touched by his story. She sent him a very special gift. It was a Rosary which had been blessed by Padre Pio. One of her elderly patients had given it to her. “I believe that Joey found something in Italy which is of equal value to finding a cure for his disease,” Melissa Finn said. “He found his faith, the strength that he will need in his lifetime to endure the challenges that lie ahead of him. He prayed, he listened, he learned … He did this of his own free will and with great determination.” In the final analysis, the greatest healings of all are those that take place in the human soul. __________________________

Judy Hayes of Holiday, Florida woke up one morning to find that a large lump had appeared on her neck. She went to the doctor that very morning and was put through a multitude of tests. The results were not good. Judy was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma in stage four, the final stage. The cancer had already spread to her bones.

Before her first chemotherapy treatment, Judy went to a Catholic Gift Shop. She wanted to get some prayer and novena cards of her favorite saints. She was nervous about receiving chemotherapy and planned to pray throughout the treatment.

In the Catholic Gift Shop, the prayer cards and novenas were on a small rack that could be turned in a circular fashion. Three times Judy turned the rack and three times it stopped at a holy card of Padre Pio. However, her devotion was to St. Jude, St. Anthony, and the Infant of Prague. When she found what she was looking for, she made her purchases. She was just opening the door to walk out of the shop when she stopped and turned back. Judy felt guilty. It truly seemed like the little prayer card of Padre Pio had been calling to her. “O.K. Padre Pio, I will take you home with me,” Judy said silently. “I pray that you will be with me and heal me of the cancer.”

The chemotherapy and radiation treatments made Judy very ill. In December, she came down with pneumonia and had to be admitted to the hospital. She became weaker by the day. She lost the ability to walk. Her condition seemed to go from bad to worse. She developed dangerous blood clots and had to be treated for congestive heart failure. She was in and out of the intensive care unit. She had to go into surgery to have her gall bladder removed. Finally, after many months in the hospital, she was sent to a nursing home. However, she soon developed an infection and had to be readmitted to the hospital.

But her condition did not improve. She was placed on a ventilator for nine days. She drifted in and out of consciousness, barely holding on to life. Through the long days and nights, she petitioned Padre Pio to help her. She prayed to him, dialogued with him, entreated him, begged him. For some reason, it was Padre Pio that she addressed her urgent prayers to rather than to the saints that she had been devoted to for years.

One particularly day, as Judy lay silent and immobile in her hospital bed, she heard the nurse supervisor talking to some of the other medical staff. “Before you leave your shift tonight, prepare Judy Hayes’ death certificate,” the nurse supervisor said. “Make sure you have the doctor sign it before he goes home. I have been observing her throughout the day. She is going to die tonight.” Judy was devastated by the words. Everything within her cried out against it. She didn’t want to die. She couldn’t die! She begged Padre Pio to help her.

People everywhere were praying for Judy Hayes. One of her dear friends, who was in a nursing home, prayed a Rosary for Judy every morning at 2:00 a.m. To the amazement of everyone, Judy’s strength slowly returned. She was eventually discharged from the hospital and was able to return to her home.

After Judy’s recovery, she had a great desire to promote Padre Pio. She was convinced that she was alive and well because of his intercession. She made it a habit to keep Padre Pio prayer cards in her purse at all times and she found many opportunities to give them to others. People were inspired by her faith and trust in God. Many people were helped, just by meeting Judy.

One afternoon when Judy was enjoying an afternoon out in the Florida sunshine, she happened to see a woman that she felt urged to speak to. The woman was a complete stranger to her. Not knowing what possessed her, Judy went up to the woman and asked her if she was a Catholic. Judy was not in the habit of asking people their religious affiliation, especially not a perfect stranger. It simply did not seem like an appropriate thing to do. The woman however, did not mind the question at all, and answered in the affirmative. Judy then gave her a Padre Pio prayer card. She told her a little bit about Padre Pio and showed her the beautiful prayer on the back of the card. “Oh, you are an answer to my prayers!” the woman said to Judy. She then went on to explain her situation. For weeks, the woman had been taking care of her dear husband who had a terminal illness. She had become very depressed as she watched him slowly dying. She had not wanted to leave her husband that day but she had done so at the insistence of a friend. Her friend was adamant that she take a needed break. Her friend was taking care of her husband in her place that afternoon.

The woman explained that she had been praying when Judy came up and spoke to her. “Oh God,” she prayed, “Please send me a sign of hope. I need greater faith in You and I need strength to go on. I am so depressed. Please send me someone who will help me!” With her eyes brimming with tears, the woman thanked Judy for the holy card of Padre Pio and assured her that she would pray to him. __________________________

Marsha Jacques felt very fortunate to possess four shirts which were blessed with a first class relic of Padre Pio. The shirts had also been blessed by a holy priest. Marsha decided to give one of the shirts to her neighbor, Julie Bouldin. Julie suffered from chronic pain and many serious health issues. Julie, who had a devotion to Padre Pio, was very happy to receive the shirt.

Julie was not the only person in her family who could benefit from the relic of a saint. At that time, her brother-in-law, Jim, was in critical condition at the hospital. Jim had suffered a massive heart attack not long before which required quadruple bypass surgery. He made it through the surgery but soon after, he developed pneumonia. His condition deteriorated and his bodily organs began to shut down. He finally had to be placed on life support.

The days passed but there was no change, no improvement in Jim’s condition. He was in a deeply unconscious state and machines were now keeping his body alive. After some time on life support, the doctor told Jim’s wife, Mercy, that Jim was not going to recover. It was just a matter of time. He said that it was time to talk about the idea of discontinuing the life support.

Mercy was in a great state of distress when she called Julie, her sister, to tell her the news. Julie advised Mercy not to make any quick decisions. It was almost Christmas. It would be too hard to even think of removing the life support at Christmas time. She advised her to wait until after the holidays to consider it.

Julie wanted to bring the shirt blessed by the relic of Padre Pio to the hospital and pray for Jim. Mercy thought it was a wonderful idea. Jim was not a person of faith. He was an atheist. Although he did not believe in the power of prayer, his wife and his sister-in-law certainly did.In the Intensive Care Unit, Julie and Mercy placed the blessed shirt over Jim. They prayed the Novena to the Sacred Heart for him and put their complete trust in God. Jim remained completely still and unresponsive.

The next day, when they returned to the hospital, his condition was the same. But on the third day, there was a change. When they went into his room, Jim’s eyes were open. He seemed to be trying to communicate with them but he was not able to since there was a large tube down his throat. Mercy told him that they were praying the Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for him. She spoke to him of Padre Pio and told him about the relic that they had placed on his chest. She asked him if it was all right with him if they continued the prayers for his healing. Through the expression in his eyes, it seemed as though Jim was trying to tell them that he was glad they were praying and wanted them to continue.

Each day of the novena, Jim became a little more aware, a little more conscious of his surroundings. The doctor was incredulous at his improvement. “Even if he lives, he will be permanently disabled,” the doctor told Mercy. “He will have to spend a long time in a nursing home, relearning motor skills. He will never be able to work again.” But Mercy was not concerned about that. Her husband was now slowly recuperating. Her prayers and her sister’s prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had been answered.

Jim was discharged to a nursing home where he received physical therapy and continued to improve. He insisted that the blessed shirt remain with him at all times. He was either wearing it or had it right beside his bed. His atheistic beliefs are now a thing of the past. He was eventually able to return to his full time job. Jim is convinced that he has been given a second chance at life through the prayers of his family.

As for me, I will always have hope, and I will praise You more and more. – Psalm 71:14

#padre pio

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bloojayoolie · 6 years

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Being Alone, Anaconda, and Andrew Bogut: Good little Girl who has been beautifully cared for. Kymbella slept in bed with her owner, comes when called ans sits nicely on command. She is very playful, likes toys likes to cuddle and gives sweet little kisses in return. anhattan ACC 6 yrs oldi 40 lbs Kymbella ID#22518 RETURNED 06/19/18 / Reason: Landlord Issues again (was Returned to Owner 03/17/18) >> NEW PICS and NEW POSTER for lovely Kymbella <3 KYMBELLA IS A GOOD LITTLE GIRL who sadly lost her beloved human and her home due to housing issues. Please share dear litty Kimbella for a beautiful new home <3 A volunteer writes: Kimbella seems to have been a one-man(woman)'s best friend, although she is said to be welcoming of strangers and children. She comes with excellent recommendations, slept with her person, was house trained, very playful and a good girl when left alone in the house. Kimbella has been beautifully cared for by her former owner, is perfectly groomed in a silver grey brindle coat, healthy, well mannered and was surrendered into our care because of housing issues. She is acting a little shy here at the care center but complies with whatever is requested from her. She is a great walker, does her business on the way, ignores birds and other dogs, sits on command and comes right away when called. She does not like it when her peers are too pushy or bark at her. She enjoys being free in the yard, hops on the bench next to me, squeezes against my chest and accepts caresses, giving kisses in return. She lightens up at the sight of a ball and runs briefly after it. Kimbella most likely likes her space, gentle manners, soft words and well-behaved people and peers. She would likely be a wonderful friend to the new human looking for a loyal companion. Kimbella is at the Manhattan Care Center, dreaming to be yours. Another volunteer writes She's so sad it's palpable. Surrendered due to NYCHA. Her former owner said she pulls on leash but she walked beautifully for me and another volunteer later in the day. She stops walking all of a sudden and flops over to roll around on her back - she did it twice with me, once as we were crossing the street on First Avenue! She gives kisses,likes to cuddle, and although she apparently bit a dog in her building I venture a guess it's because the dog bothered her. observed her with multiple dogs of all sizes and when they ignore hershe ignores them. It's only if they bark or pull towards her that she responds in kind. She's really so sweet, and volunteers are singing her praises. She's a Level 2 only because of the dog issue which is SO easily manageable and controlled, even in NYC. VIDEOS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D_90zTXPgE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w45qZdSXALE KYMBELLA ID# 22518 MANHATTAN ACC 6 yrs old, 40 lbs GRAY / WHITE SPAYED FEMALE Owner Surrender / Landlord Issues (again :( ) Medical Behavior: Blue Intake Date: 6/29/18 SHELTER ASSESSMENT: EXPERIENCED HOME Single Pet Home OWNER PROFILE June 2018 Date of Intake 29-Jun-2018 Spay/Neuter Status Spayed Basic Information: Kymbella is a 6 year dog that was surrendered due to issues with the landlord. Previously lived with: 1 adult How is this dog around strangers? Kymbella is friendly around strangers. How is this dog around children? Kymbella has never been with children. How is this dog around other dogs? Kymbella has a previous bite history with another dog which required vet care. Kymbella barks at other dogs. How is this dog around cats? Kymbella has never been around cats. Resource guarding: Kymbella's owner has never taken away her food, toys, or treats. Bite history: Kymbella bit another dog in December 2017. That dog required veterinary care. Housetrained: Yes Energy level/descriptors: Medium Other Notes: Kymbella is not bothered by storms or fireworks. If someone unfamiliar approaches Kymbella barks at them. She is not bothered by being restrained, given a bath, brushed, or having her nails trimmed. Has this dog ever had any medical issues? Yes Medical Notes Kymbella is overweight. For a New Family to Know Kymbella is used to being an only dog. She is reactive to some dogs on leash, but not all. Her owner described her as friendly with people, affectionate, playful, and curious. Kymbella is housebroken and likes to urinate on any plastic surfaces she can find outside. If plastic is not available, she will use the cement. She is used to getting her daily exercise through two walks per day and through playing fetch with a hard rubber ball with her owner. She is well-behaved when left home alone. She is used to eating twice a day. She usually receives Purina dry food, and her owner filled her bowl to the top. Kymbella is not bothered during loud storms or when fireworks are going off. She will play and pull back on the ball when her owner tries to take it back. She has primarily been kept indoors. Kymbella either sleeps in her dog bed or in bed with her owner. Kymbella usually has her tails trimmed by the vet. Kymbella enjoys bath time. She someone unfamiliar is in the hallway, she will run to the door and watch it without barking. Her owner stated that she rarely barks. Kymbella is not bothered when strangers approach her owner. She also stated that if she is awake, Kymbella typically is. She goes for slow walks with her owner. On the leash, Kymbella pulls hard and consistently, even when given a correction. BEHAVIOR NOTES Kymbella scanned positive for a microchip. She pulls hard. She was not interested in treats. She allowed all handling and for her picture to be taken. Date of intake: 29-Jun-2018 Spay/Neuter status: Yes Means of surrender (length of time in previous home): Owner Surrender Previously lived with: An adult Behavior toward strangers: Friendly Behavior toward dogs: Barks and lunges at some dogs Resource guarding: None reported Bite history: Yes, Kymbella bit a small dog in December 2017 that was in her building. The dog required veterinary care. Housetrained: Yes Energy level/descriptors: Kybella is described as friendly with people, affectionate, playful, and curious with a medium level of activity. SAFER SCORES: Date of assessment: 1-Jul-2018 Look: 1. Dog's eyes are averted, with tail wagging and ears back. Allows head to be held loosely in Assessor's cupped hands. Sensitivity: 1. Dog stands still and accepts the touch, eyes are averted, and tail is in neutral position with a relaxed body posture. Dog's mouth is likely closed for at least a portion of the assessment item. Tag: 1. Dog follows at the end of the leash, body soft. Paw squeeze 1: 1. Dog does not respond at all for three seconds. Eyes are averted and ears are relaxed or back. Paw squeeze 2: 1. Dog does not respond at all for three seconds. Eyes are averted and ears are relaxed or back. Flank squeeze 1: Item not conducted Flank squeeze 2: Item not conducted Toy: 1. Minimal interest in toy, dog may smell or lick, then turns away. Summary: Kymbella approached the assessor in the assessment room with a soft body. She was social during the assessment, allowed all handling, and displayed no concerning behaviors. Summary (1): 3/11: When introduced to the helper dog on leash, Kymbella is tense, hard barks, and growls. Due to described discomfort and bite history involving another dog, a single dog home is recommended. Date of intake: 28-Jun-2018 Summary: Kymbella was social and allowed handling. Date of initial: 29-Jun-2018 Summary: Kymbella allowed handling. ENERGY LEVEL: Kymbella's previous owner described her as having a medium level of activity. IN SHELTER OBSERVATIONS: Kymbella has remained highly soft and social with her human caretakers throughout her time at ACC, enjoying time out of her kennel with staff and volunteers. She allows all handling and shows no wariness of novel people. In her kennel she displays highly stressed behavior (constant whining, panting etc.) and does not engage with enrichment while in her kennel. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION: EXPERIENCE (suitable for an adopter with some previous dog experience, especially with the behaviors outlined below) Behavior Asilomar TM - Treatable-Manageable Recommendations: Single-pet home Recommend no dog parks Recommendations comments: Single dog home/no dog parks: Due to described discomfort and bite history involving another dog, a single dog home is recommended. Potential challenges: On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration Potential challenges comments: On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration: At the care center, Kymbella has been observed to react to other dogs on leash, lunging towards them, barking and growling. This behavior was also reported in her previous home. Kymbella may need positive reinforcement, reward based training to teach her to look at you rather than other dogs. We recommend a front clip harness or head halter to help manage this behavior. MEDICAL EXAM NOTES DVM Intake Exam: Estimated age: 6yrs (o reported) Microchip noted on Intake? Y Microchip Number (If Applicable): History: o/s d/t issues w/ landlord Subjective: BAR, energetic Observed Behavior – worked up but compliant for exam, less restraint better Objective:T = DNP P = WNL R = eup BCS 7/9 EENT: Eyes clear, ears clean, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam: Mild tartar and staining, no significant dental dz noted PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: NSR, NMA, CRT < 2, lungs clear, eupnic ABD: Non painful, no masses palpated U/G: Spayed female MSI: Overweight; ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate – no signs of neurologic abnormalities Rectal: Externally normal Assessment: overweight, otherwise apparently healthy 6yr FS dog. Prognosis: good. Plan: ok for placement ---------------------------------------------------- NOTES FIRST STAY - Intake 3/10/18 KYMBELLA@MANHATTAN ACC Hello, my name is Kymbella My animal id is #22518 I am a desexed female gray brindle dog at the Manhattan Animal Care Center The shelter thinks I am about 6 years old, 53 lbs Came into shelter as owner surrender 3/10/2018 Reason Stated: Landlord won't allow (nycha) Kymbella is at risk for behavior reasons. She is highly stressed in the care center, and whimpers and shakes whilst in her kennel. Kymbella is social with people, but due to her behavior with other dogs, we recommend she be the only pet in the household. Medically, Kymbella has been treated for conjunctivitis and dermatitis whilst at the care center. My medical notes are... Weight: 53.8 lbs Vet Notes Medical Assistant 10/03/2018 [DVM Intake] DVM Intake Exam Estimated age: 6yo Microchip noted on Intake? neg Microchip Number (If Applicable): History : O/S. Dog reactive, did bite another dog last December Subjective: BARH. Friendly and well behaved during PE and med handling. Muzzled just in case. No growling or other signs of aggression. Observed Behavior - Evidence of Cruelty seen - n Evidence of Trauma seen - n Objective T = P = wnl R = wnl BCS 6/9 EENT: OU periocular alopecia and erythema. Ears mild brown/black ceruminous debris, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam: mild dental calculus PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: NSR, NMA, CRT < 2, Lungs clear, eupnic ABD: Non painful, no masses palpated U/G: FS, spay scar, no MGTs, no vulvar dc MSI: Ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate - no signs of neurologic abnormalities Rectal: normal externally Assessment suspect allergies otherwise, apparently healthy Prognosis: good Plan: diphenhydramine 50mg PO BID x 7 days ctm until transfer / adoption recommend allergy diet post placement SURGERY: spayed 12/03/2018 Reportedly not eating over the last 24-48 hours; started on diphenhydramine for suspected allergies but is not taking medications with food S/O -BAR, appears friendly but anxious; hard barking at kennel door and very reactive to noise -no nasal discharge, sneezing or coughing -OU: moderate periocular erythema -appears eupnic A 1. Dermatitis, suspect underlying allergies 2. Inappetance-suspect behavioral secondary to stress of shelter environment P -entice to eat with different diets -if starts eating, consider adding trazodone during stay in shelter to ease anxiety 14/03/2018 I discussed pt's behavior and poor appetite with the Behavior team today. They report that pt is very sweet outside of the kennel, but is terrified of other dogs. S: Pt comes to the front of the kennel and wags her tail and whines. O: -Small mass on OS lower lid -No ocular discharge, nasal discharge, coughing or sneezing A: -Fearful of other dogs, not eating well inside her kennel -Small eyelid mass P: 1. Discussed pt with volunteer and had the volunteer walk pt, feed her outside on a walk. Pt ate well. I also had the volunteer feed pt 100 mg trazodone - at 3:30pm this afternoon0. 2. Continue 100 mg trazodone BID - consider increasing to 150 or 200 mg depending on response. 3. If eyelid mass irritates pt's eye, consider excision 1088 14/03/2018 Started on trazodone (100 mg PO BID) yesterday due to inappetance which was suspected to be secondary to anxious behavior S/O -BAR, appears friendly and much more relaxed/docile but not sedate -no concerns with appetite today -no nasal discharge, sneezing or coughing noted or reported -OU: mild conjunctivitis, mild periocular dermatitis A 1. Inappetance, appears resolved 2. Anxiety, appears to be responding to trazodone 3. Conjunctivitis, periocular dermatitis-suspect underlying breed related allergies P -extend trazodone at 100 mg PO BID x 7 days -add neo/poly/dex OU BID x 7 days Details on my behavior are... Behavior Condition: 2. Blue Behavior History Behavior Assessment Upon intake, Kymbella was friendly and receptive to touch. As noted by her owner, she does pull very hard on her leash. She was not interested in treats, but did sit down for a photo nicely when she was less distracted. Date of Intake: 3/10/2018 Spay/Neuter Status: Spayed Basic Information:: Kymbella is a six year old spayed female medium mixed breed dog. She came in as an owner surrender due to landlord issues involving NYCHA. She most recently saw a vet in 2016. Previously lived with:: 1 adult How is this dog around strangers?: Kymbella is friendly around strangers. How is this dog around children?: Kymbella has not been around children. How is this dog around other dogs?: Kymbella is not often in the company of other dogs. When walking, she typically does not pay much attention to other dogs. She will bark and lunge at some, but not others. She bit a small dog in December of 2017 within her apartment building which resulted in that dog needing vet care. How is this dog around cats?: Kymbella has not been around cats. Resource guarding:: Owner has never tried to move or touch her food or treats. Bite history:: Kymbella bit a small dog in December 2017. That dog did require veterinary care according to its owner. Housetrained:: Yes Energy level/descriptors:: Medium Has this dog ever had any medical issues?: No For a New Family to Know: Kymbella is used to being an only dog. She is reactive to some dogs on leash, but not all. Her owner described her as friendly with people, affectionate, playful, and curious. Kymbella is housebroken and likes to urinate on any plastic surfaces she can find outside. If plastic is not available, she will use the cement. She is used to getting her daily exercise through two walks per day and through playing fetch with a hard rubber ball with her owner. She is well-behaved when left home alone. She is used to eating twice a day. She usually receives Purina dry food, and her owner filled her bowl to the top. Kymbella is not bothered during loud storms or when fireworks are going off. She will play and pull back on the ball when her owner tries to take it back. She has primarily been kept indoors. Kymbella either sleeps in her dog bed or in bed with her owner. Kymbella usually has her tails trimmed by the vet. Kymbella enjoys bath time. She someone unfamiliar is in the hallway, she will run to the door and watch it without barking. Her owner stated that she rarely barks. Kymbella is not bothered when strangers approach her owner. She also stated that if she is awake, Kymbella typically is. She goes for slow walks with her owner. On the leash, Kymbella pulls hard and consistently, even when given a correction. Date of intake:: 3/10/2018 Spay/Neuter status:: Yes Means of surrender (length of time in previous home):: Owner Surrender Previously lived with:: An adult Behavior toward strangers:: Friendly Behavior toward dogs:: Barks and lunges at some dogs Bite history:: Yes, Kymbella bit a small dog 4 months ago that was in her building. The dog required veterinary care. Housetrained:: Yes Energy level/descriptors:: Kybella is described as friendly with people, affectionate, playful, and curious with a medium level of activity. Date of assessment:: 3/11/2018 Look:: 1. Dog's eyes are averted, with tail wagging and ears back. Allows head to be held loosely in Assessor's cupped hands. Sensitivity:: 1. Dog stands still and accepts the touch, eyes are averted, and tail is in neutral position with a relaxed body posture. Dog's mouth is likely closed for at least a portion of the assessment item. Tag:: 1. Dog follows at the end of the leash, body soft. Paw squeeze 1:: 1. Dog gently pulls back his/her paw. Paw squeeze 2:: 1. Dog gently pulls back his/her paw. Flank squeeze 1:: Item not conducted Flank squeeze 2:: Item not conducted Toy:: 1. No interest. Summary:: Kymbella approached the assessor in the assessment room with a soft body. She was social during the assessment, allowed all handling, and displayed no concerning behaviors. Summary (1):: 3/11: When introduced to the helper dog on leash, Kymbella is tense, hard barks, and growls. Due to described discomfort and bite history involving another dog, a single dog home is recommended. Date of intake:: 3/10/2018 Summary:: Kymbella was social and allowed handling. Date of initial:: 3/10/2018 Summary:: Kymbella was social and allowed handling. ENERGY LEVEL:: Kymbella's previous owner described her as having a medium level of activity. IN SHELTER OBSERVATIONS:: Kymbella has remained highly soft and social with her human caretakers throughout her time at ACC, enjoying time out of her kennel with staff and volunteers. She allows all handling and shows no wariness of novel people. In her kennel she displays highly stressed behavior (constant whining, panting etc.) and does not engage with enrichment while in her kennel. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION:: EXPERIENCE (suitable for an adopter with some previous dog experience, especially with the behaviors outlined below) Behavior Asilomar: TM - Treatable-Manageable Recommendations:: Single-pet home,Recommend no dog parks Recommendations comments:: Single dog home/no dog parks: Due to described discomfort and bite history involving another dog, a single dog home is recommended. Potential challenges: : On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration Potential challenges comments:: On-leash reactivity/barrier frustration: At the care center, Kymbella has been observed to react to other dogs on leash, lunging towards them, barking and growling. This behavior was also reported in her previous home. Kymbella may need positive reinforcement, reward based training to teach her to look at you rather than other dogs. We recommend a front clip harness or head halter to help manage this behavior. *** TO FOSTER OR ADOPT *** If you would like to adopt a dog on our “To Be Killed” list, and you CAN get to the shelter in person to complete the adoption process **within 48 hours of reserve**, you can reserve the dog online until noon on the day they are scheduled to die. We have provided the Brooklyn, Staten Island and Manhattan information below. Adoption hours at these facilities is Noon – 8:00 p.m. (6:30 on weekends) HOW TO RESERVE A “TO BE KILLED” DOG ONLINE (only for those who can get to the shelter IN PERSON to complete the adoption process, and only for the dogs on the list NOT marked New Hope Rescue Only). Follow our Step by Step directions below! **PLEASE NOTE – YOU MUST USE A PC OR TABLET – PHONE RESERVES WILL NOT WORK! *** STEP 1: CLICK ON THIS RESERVE LINK: https://newhope.shelterbuddy.com/Animal/List Step 2: Go to the red menu button on the top right corner, click register and fill in your info. Step 3: Go to your email and verify account Step 4: Go back to the website, click the menu button and view available dogs. It should read, "reserve in progress". That is YOUR reserve. Step 5: Scroll to the animal you are interested and click reserve STEP 6 ( MOST IMPORTANT STEP ): GO TO THE MENU AGAIN AND VIEW YOUR CART. THE ANIMAL SHOULD NOW BE IN YOUR CART! Step 7: Fill in your credit card info and complete transaction Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC) nycacc.org HOW TO FOSTER OR ADOPT IF YOU **CANNOT** GET TO THE SHELTER IN PERSON, OR IF THE DOG IS NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY! You must live within 3 – 4 hours of NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME or Norther VA. Please PRIVATE MESSAGE our page for assistance. You will need to fill out applications with a New Hope Rescue Partner to foster or adopt a dog on the To Be Killed list, including those labelled Rescue Only. Hurry please, time is short, and the Rescues need time to process the applications. Shelter contact information Phone number (212) 788-4000 Email [email protected] Shelter Addresses: Brooklyn Shelter: 2336 Linden Boulevard Brooklyn, NY 11208 Manhattan Shelter: 326 East 110 St. New York, NY 10029 Staten Island Shelter: 3139 Veterans Road West Staten Island, NY 10309

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