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inaure-forhalla · 3 years

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because at this rate i will simply never have proper full written out bios for my muses, below the cut find some more detailed information about my muses that give you more info than just the vibey little blurbs i shat out at some ungodly hour of the day:

akllasqa mamani:

aklla is the daughter of a scientist that had all her titles stripped of her, and prohibited from working in the field after unethical experiments came to light. this doesn’t stop her from laying low and forming a personal lab, although under a watchful eye. she proceeds to learn and absorb all she can about genetic editing, and with the use of the CRISPR method and friends manning labs, she produces her own genetically edited egg. this is where aklla comes from, she’s planted in her mother’s womb and grows to be a girl who continues her life under a microscope. her mother is constantly poking and prodding at her, in a desperate attempt to note every deviation from regular behaviour from a girl who was tailored. aklla is diagnosed with anti social personality disorder in the future, and as a child is known to have conduct disorder. she’s been called a sociopath more times than she can count and is prone to sudden, and violent outbursts. all in all, a difficult teenager trying to maneuver through a society that works against anyone with any mental diagnosis.

jolene walsh:

honestly jolene’s the only one i have a full bio for, so because i’m lazy catch that here.

vivian han:

vivian grows up in a house that values tradition, and in particular the image of a good family. her parents are not overtly religious, but they’re devout christian’s. they got married young, and without much thought and this leads to strife in their household. they start to fall out of love right in front of her eyes, but old time tradition and religious beliefs compel them to stay together despite divorce being the healthiest option for them both. being the oldest daughter in the house, vivian often has to play peacekeeper between her parents fights. she grows weary of it, but knows her options are limited. the older she gets, the more time she spends outside of the house. parties where the music is so loud she can’t hear her thoughts, she drinks away whatever she’ll have to face when she gets home. vivian is the fun girl, and the smart girl, and the party girl, and she does whatever she can to keep up every front she has. straight a student, but beloved by her peers. and only because she tries so hard. sometimes that comes with a small mean streak to be accepted by her peers, but she grows out of that quickly. guilt wears on her conscience heavily. an unhealthy relationship is all she knows as she grows up and so it leads her into her own. she dates a boy who becomes her ruin, but she tolerates it because that’s all she knows. she tolerates it even when he pushes her against a wall and she’s worried she has a concussion. he never hits her, and that’s his excuse. she files a restraining order after much thought and push from her friends. but it only makes her wild nights even worse, she has more pain to drink away now.

gabriel and ronan:

two boys that were once part of the same band, now leading two completely different lives. gabriel has always had his head in the clouds, always dreamt of life as a musician. his parents could do little to stop what his heart wanted. as a kid he’d play in shows any chance he got at school, and even kick started his own garage band with his friends. he never wanted to be the star of the show, gabriel was more than happy in the background. and that’s how he becomes the bass player of Golden Ours. he grew up in a bustling house that knew nothing about love, and it’s what he puts out into the world. his energy comes from genuine joy, and the desire to spread kindness. he’s a humble star from humble beginnings, and does his best to not let fame get to his head. naturally, there are slip ups, ones he does his best to hide. but all in all, he makes for pleasant company. not much tragedy in this one, rather typical if you ask me.

ronan on the other hand grows up in completely different circumstances. the accident child of an alcoholic and a junkie, he never really knows stability in his life. his parents never have a good means to finances, and he picks up odd jobs as a kid to support himself if not his parents. he holds his father’s anger and defends himself after each bark and bite from his parents. he doesn’t grow up in a good house, and he doesn’t know if he likes them more when they’re sober or completely out of their minds. he swings a fist at this father at eighteen and is met with his ass on the curb. with little to nothing to his name, he sofa surfs as long as he can, gets himself jobs here and there, nothing that lasts too long. he comes across gabriel before the band hits the charts and it begins as roommates soon turned bandmates. he joins as lead guitarist. ronan’s one to butt heads with the band often, but at the end of the day, they’re family and family was meant to fight. but the disputes only heighten when ronan pushes them to take deals that come their way. change their look, change their sound, change change change for the mainstream media. they won’t take it, and so ronan does. leaves the band behind and embraces life as someone he doesn’t recognize in the mirror. he goes from alt indie rock to more mainstream pop rock. his manager decides what he wears, what he sings, what he signs up for. the money’s good, but he hates himself. but the money’s good.

mira deol:

mira lives a quiet life for the most part. second oldest daughter of five, their family is never without festivities. she’s a good student, not the top of her class, but trying. she sits in the middle of everything, never too loud, never too quiet. mira seems to breeze by life in the background and a part of her itches to be at the front of the show. she knows she’s not built for it, so instead she’ll smile and nod through it all. her life flips upside down, she becomes part of headlines when her family is killed at sixteen. in the middle of the night, the confront what they think to be a robber. her father and his broken english yelling downstairs, threatening to call the cops when a gun’s pulled out on them. mira, silent, watches from the top of the stairs while her entire family is sat down on the rug. one by one, they’re lined up and taken out with a single shot to the head. execution style. she scampers into a closet, and her hands search the dark floors for the gun she knows her dad has. and she sits there, as quiet as ever, hands shaking as she holds the gun in front of her. she thinks he’s left until she hears the creaks up the stairs and the closet door swings open. she closes her eyes and empties the bullets into her assailant without a second thought. mira’s found with blood, both her own and his, on her body. she hasn’t left the closet when they find her, a neighbour calls when they hear the last round of gunshots. her face takes the newspapers by storm and she’s a charity case. without any other family overseas, she moves in with her next door neighbours. a girl she knows from school. she suffers from traumatic mutism for a year. rehab and therapy get her to open up, and she cries anytime she speaks for another year. her life is spent in and out of therapy, and when she finally moves out and manages to get into university, she lives alone. everything about her life screams at her to live with company, but fear of what happens to company around her forces her into living alone. currently, mira is still healing. it’s been five years since her family’s death and she’s pushing herself back into society slowly. her emotions are hard to handle, and she’s incredibly clingy when she gets attached.

buster jones:

buster lives a comfortable life. his parents work good jobs and they don’t expect much from him. as the youngest of a trio of boys, he’s the family’s baby for most of his life and he milks it for all it’s worth. he spends most of his time gaming, eating, or hanging out with friends. never the best student, but he manages to pull through with the tutors his parents throw at him a countless number of times. he doesn’t tell them that he’s paid kids to do his homework and essays, they don’t need to know that. but when both brothers leave the house, grow old enough to make it out on their own, the attention turns back to buster. buster who does nothing for the family but eat half the contents of their fridge, which can no longer be excuse as the appetite of a growing boy. so his parents make him take up a job, any job, they tell him, and so he goes to work at a mcdonald’s. he reckons it’ll be the least amount of effort he’ll have to put in, and impossible to get fired from. plus, free fries anytime he so pleased. he’s working through his last year of highschool, projected to have to take a fifth year if summer courses fail him. when he makes it to college he takes up criminal justice. not with the dreams of being a lawyer like his mother so hopes, but with the dream of getting into the fbi. only because it looks cool on television and he swears they know everything about area 51, and the gps’ that babies are injected with. an avid reader of conspiracies that he spouts like his life depends on it, what he doesn’t have in book smart, he also doesn’t have much in street smart. how buster makes it through the day, everyone wonders. but somehow he does.

elena castillo:

she grows up doted on. an only child, given the world at her every whim. her father loves her, her mother loves her, but doesn’t have to love as much since her father takes care of that part. her father dies when she’s eight, and her mother doesn’t take it well. elena had shown various talents at a young age, and the one her mother hones in on is her ability to skate. never having taken professional figure skating, her mother says it’s time for her to try. she doesn’t protest much, knows just how pushy her mother can be. she’s a good child for the most part, prone to temper tantrums, but mother knows best. elena’s mother focuses all her energy on her daughter, and it becomes obsessive. like a pageant mom, she signs her up for every competition under the stars. elena is bound to win most of them, and that’s because her mother doesn’t let her rest until she gets her routine down pat. elena’s perfectionism is taught and forced down her throat, it doesn’t come naturally. it doesn’t take long for the girl to embrace that figure skating has become her life. pulled out of classes on a whim just to participate in competitions, she learns how to catch up with classwork quickly without disappointing her mother. she never admits it, but she seeks validation from the one parent she still has. thinks maybe she’ll gain the same love she got from her father if she does it right. elena is quick to snap as she grows older. becomes her biggest critique, and with it comes a sharp attitude that she’s quick to lash out onto others. she projects her own insecurities, and drags people down to bring herself up. she’s now a professional figure skater, one of the best of her age at twenty. but it didn’t come easy, and she’s not willing to give it up easy. in front of the cameras and the crews she waves and smiles. once the lights drop, so does the facade and she doesn’t bother to lift a finger for anyone she deems not worth her time. she becomes more like mother, and over the years, they become more like partners than mother and daughter. their relationship is never healthy.

luciana pereira: prev lucarus

has the sexiest bio it deserves a read here

imogen, willa, devna mini bios coming soon !

#( 𝚘𝚘𝚌 . ) happy shitposting day .#truly the closest thing to a bio we'll get for a while omg

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wlw-lovestruck-fiction · 4 years

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Onyx tells Mc she’s pregnant. They hosts a party for everyone to announce of Onyx’s pregnancy. How they announce it and how everyone react are up to you!

Written by @evoedbd

WARNINGS Mentions of abuse Mentions of miscarriage Potentially offensive attempts at humor

Chanouncement

Cali was good with weird. Completely fine. The last year had seen her life absolutely flipped on its head. Perhaps rolled over by a truck, chopped up, tossed into a woodchipper, fed to gulls, shat out across the country… the picture was quite morbid.

Cali had foolishly thought her life couldn’t get any weirder. After all, she was dating the nicer of two near identical twins, who both so happened to be supernaturally selected demon slayers. The “evil” twin had turned Cali into a well of Supernatural energy and used said power to give the demons a massive level up. That wasn’t all, she’d also watched said twin, whilst possessed, gut Onyx, the love of her life and watched Onyx emerge a dragon. If that wasn’t unusual and morbid enough, Cali had literally shouted her romantic love at a literal dragon, who had once been her five-foot nothing girlfriend. Cali had been dating a literal dragon. In love with a literal dragon. That should have topped the weirdness charts. But no, Cali had then become the next Envy herself, and thus the only human bridge between a mod girl reincarnated into a brown bear, and her dead girlfriend. If that wasn’t enough, she’d been part of a ritual to bring her girlfriend back into human form, and to top it off, Cali discovered that her blood was the literal key to her girlfriend’s soul and destroying it. Nothing too serious. Just casual lesbian disaster stuff. Only, neither she nor Onyx were actually lesbians. Both of them appreciated men. In the sexy way. In the “Onyx had dated a man who abused her until her twin sister had gutted him like a pig and stolen his supernatural powers”, way. That kind of bisexual… no wonder some people were a little intimidated by the Queer community. Between U-Haul lesbians not checking for demon possession and world ending bisexuals, that was all pretty scary.

Though not as scary as what she and her lady love planned to do. As fate would have it, if fate was a wonderful arsehole conscious, Cali had been delivered a further dose of weirdness in her unusual life. Weirdness in the form of her formerly dragon, formerly dead girlfriend discovering she was pregnant under the potent influence of ritualistic magic, which had restored her human form. Given that these circumstances would have been terrifying for anybody, even without the added fact that she was now vulnerable for a demon demi-devil’s possession and the prime target of an apocalyptic plot, it made absolute sense that Onyx was anxious. Cali had been there, she understood how end of the world pressure like that could mess with a girl, which was why it was imperative to bring the team up to date on the latest development… and no, that was not a kidney, not yet. Onyx wasn’t that far along.

So far, the plan of a joyful distraction had gone off without a hitch. The common area was alive with laughter flowing from the Sin Troupe. Alcohol flowed relatively freely, along with several bowls and bags of typical party food such as potato chips and popcorn. The floor was already littered with crumbs, mostly from the boys throwing scraps at Wrath between rounds of charades. One thing Cali had learned tonight was that for a group that entertained for a living, a group also responsible for concealing the fact the world was woefully fucked from the general population, they were horrific actors. Now the money and tickets made sense, for even the most deluded of fans would surely notice the cracks if it was left to their acting skills alone.

“Shaving! Um, WHIPPED! Oh! BDSM KINK SHAMING!”

“Moron.”

“Darius… how did you even get that from dancing?”

“Oh? That’s what it is? I thought Wrath was possessed.”

“She’s Britney Spears. Cal’s her circus boy.”

“Well we aren’t all DJs here, Malakai. How was I supposed to get that from whatever she and Cal were doing?”

Cali didn’t tune into the words after that. She was back to anxious, or perhaps the woman tucked under her arm was. It was difficult to tell with the bond so active, causing the teeth marks on her shoulder to burn with the heat of a dragon’s love. Try as she might, she was caught between two violent sensations. The magic of the mark; memories of heat as playful nips had become a serious bite, a possessive one from a Dragon unlike the world had ever seen, or ever would. It wasn’t like anybody had seen Onyx as a dragon… except two sold out nights of the Sin Circus, a carnival ground and a shopping mall full of super excited fans and everyone online. Ok, that was a lot of people who’d seen Onyx as a dragon. That could be a problem. Which led to the anxiety. The type which made sweat prickle in all the uncomfortable places and her stomach do terrified flips. She wasn’t even the pregnant one. Onyx had to survive a pregnancy, targeting and contain a literal dragon’s soul.

All Cali had to do was make the statement that she had an announcement to make like a normal human being. She had to ignore the sweat trickling down her palms, tickling every crease, and how her heart skipped several beats in the past minute; rushing faster and faster until she could hear in her ears when she closed her eyes. Slower Blinks. She had to be normal. Be normal. Be normal. Be normal.

All she had to do was make a single little announcement, that was admittedly life changing. It wasn’t like these people would judge. After all they were supernatural Demon assassins chosen by mystical powers based on the Seven Deadly Sins. If there was any group which were not judgemental it would surely be these people.

“I have channouncement to make.” she said with a rather high-pitched voice and a casual smile just a little too tight to be completely relaxed. In a room full of assassins she might as well have been waving a red flag saying terrified med school dropout alert. This was the time for the royal skill of fake it till you make it mixed with an impossibly large dose of denial. Anxious? Cali? Hah! No way. She had nailed it.

“What she means is we want to tell you something. Since we’re already playing charades, we want to try and see if you can guess.” Onyx chimed in, snuggling playfully under Cali’s arm. The mechanic grinned, letting her goofy affection conceal another wave of nerves. It was easier if she just stared at Onyx and let her face do what it would do. Give in to the muscles making her smile as she got lost in the most dazzling green eyes the world had ever seen. The dusting of blue eyeshadow really made those eyes pop, like emeralds offered to thieves on booby trapped pedestals. Hah, boobs! Cali liked those. Especially Onyx’s. No matter how Cali tried to avoid falling for the emerald trap, she found her gaze lingering, feasting on how the light shone across dark lashes and the rhinestone piercing just beneath Onyx’s right eye. It kept focus away from tender pink lips, from subtle little bites that portrayed a mix of excitement and nerves. Cali doubted the others would realise Onyx was anything other than playful. Afterall Onyx was a master of faking it until she made it, even to her closest friends. It showed in how loose her body was, how genuine her show stopping smile seemed. If Cali hadn’t felt the flickering within the bond, she may have bought Onyx’s act. That and the affection. How Onyx’s arm around her waist pulled that little bit too tight to be casual. Or how trimmed nails tried to dig into the grey fabric of Cali’s shirt; dragon talons clinging to the finest treasure. A scared girl seeking reassurance.

“Right. And to make it a team Envy experience, I’m going to tell Rip how to act.” Cali explained out loud, barely restraining her laughter as Ripley’s eagerness flooded her mind.

“Alright! I’m the best at charades! My acting is on point. Everyone thinks I’m a bear.”

Cali didn’t have the heart to tell Ripley that her “bear” act was entirely too adorable to be terrifying. Ripley may have the body of a bear, her soul, however, was still that of a tender human. Her soft eyes would strike terror into the hearts of the masses, along with her awkward attempts at snarls and finely groomed coat. Every gesture of her paws would see her painted pink claws drip sparkles, which admittedly might be horrifying to cishet folk. Ripley as always, was dressed for battle, wearing a fearsome checkered neck scarf, complete with an adorable little bow…truly, Ripley could intimidate the world into movies and cuddles. She could terrify little girls into dropping popcorn into her open maw as she scrolled an iPad and lamented the fashion she could no longer wear. She was oh so very, very terrifying. Cali had fallen for the bear terror for five seconds when they’d met, that was true. Then again, Cali had also believed Vinca a completely evil maniac who killed Onyx’s boyfriend, who was a loving and uplifting man, just to steal his powers and fuck with Onyx. She had assumed Dorran had loved and cherished Onyx until his dying breath. Cali had assumed Dorran had trained her, protected her, instead of abused her and hurled her at demons. Cali’s track record with assumptions was pretty horrific, actually. Horrifically awful.

She realised her lingering rage must have echoed through the bond when a soft touch to her forearm drew her attention. Once again, she was drawn into the trap of green, found herself beneath the crashing wave of Onyx’s gaze. This gaze, however, was different. It was sympathy and confusion, a jumbled mess of understanding which stood secondary to the fact Onyx wished to soothe. A small flick at the corner of Cali’s mouth let Onyx know the gesture was received, the storm had passed, at least for now. She didn’t need to keep her gaze on Onyx to know that the former Envy Assassin’s expression mirrored her own. Cheeky grins and eyes twinkling with mischief as Cali allowed her mind to sink into the images and emotions she needed to convey, needed Ripley to convey. Onyx was their awareness, her approval expressed in delighted cackles and birdsong laughter, by her touch on Cali’s arm shifting with her small body.

The bear started out stiff, walking in shorter, wider strides on hind legs as forelegs awkwardly extended before her in a zombie like attempt of curves. A few strides in, Ripley fell forwards, catching her weight on her forepaws, before attempting her waddling all over again. This time, poor Ripley tried to bring them to her back, only to manage to reach her hips; range of motion not allowing her any further. The awkward waddling, paws on hips appeared like something off a runway full of models who had indulged in too many illegal substances. The display had everyone howling with glee, even Ripley within the Envy Trio’s heads. Eventually, Ripley ceased the arms, instead waddling awkwardly around as crew shouted out their guesses.

“Zombies!”

“Onyx got a Runway offer!”

”Did you buy a petting zoo?”

Both Cali and Onyx laughed, shaking their heads to every shout. Ripley let forth a beastly groan as she lowered herself to the ground, then rolled onto her back. After some awkward shuffling, the bear eventually lifted her feet straight into the air, spread apart as far as her beastly hips would allow. The pose was awkward enough for a human, let alone a bear, with her little tail all fluffed up and her long arms gesturing in awkwardly small arcs across her rather fuzzy stomach.

“Onyx is getting a feature in a music video!”

“She’s designing for a dance studio!”

“Onyx has put on weight!”

“We’re meant to guess an announcement, moron, not state an obvious.”

“Cal, manners.”

“It’s true, she is a bit bulkier since she became human again.”

“You know, it’d be easier if you just told me what I was acting, instead of having me rolling around like a pregnant whale.” Ripley sighed through the bond, rising halfway before freezing. She seemed shocked beyond comprehension. Had she been human, Cali was sure Ripley’s face would have lost its hue. The Envy trio stared at each other. Onyx’s face had gone ashen with fright, concern filtering through her tight smile. Her apprehension flooded the bond, all her concerns jumbled together in a tide which threatened to wash both Ripley and Cali away. Fear that she might lose the approval of her sister figure. That she might garner disapproval or be judged for something beyond her control. That everyone would hate her. That she’d be alone again.

“Onyx is…?” Ripley’s question never came through completely.

The moment Cali realised what was happening, her mind was there. She stormed Onyx’s consciousness, shield raised to deflect every horrific thought and fear before she lashed out. Snapshots of fantasy, impossibilities given life for a few seconds. A scent more appealing and delicate than anything else the world could offer. Soft baby blonde hairs that appeared almost white against more tanned skin. Emerald green eyes glistening with nothing but utter adoration. The rush of family, how the feeling of their support could provide wings. Onyx, belly rounded, cheeks flushed and eyes twinkling with delight, toes kicking through a gentle stream. A loving smile from Vinca, the sharpness abandoned as she cooed over an innocent child. How tiny a child would be in Wrath’s large arms, yet how tender the brawler would be. Malakai’s warm smile as the baby traced his tattoos. Darius, dangling his chain just out of their reach as the babe giggled. Cal, strumming his guitar as the three men sung to the babe, who slumbered in an older Avi’s arms.

“Oh my god! Onyx is-” Again, Ripley never finished the though. Her eyes rolled backwards, almost as if she were being possessed in a hammer horror film. Her legs gave out, her body crumpled to the ground. Cali found herself swaying, her vision filled with black dots as the intensity of their emotions washed over the trio, sweeping them away in the tsunami. She clung to Onyx, fighting to keep the smallest Envy assassin on her feet. Onyx seemed to feel the same way, given how she clung tighter to Cali, preventing the Chinese woman from falling. A loud crash let Cali know that Ripley had indeed gone through the bowls of supplied snacks, along with the table they rested on. Chips flew everywhere, spraying across the penthouse along with shards of broken bowls. The laughter stopped, everyone half rising, half looking towards Cali.

“… That wasn’t part of the announcement.” Was the only thing Cali could offer to the expectant assassins. The room went eerily silent, enough that one might hear crickets chirping, or the din from the streets of Vegas echoing to the top floor of the hotel.

“She’s having a baby!” An entirely too cheerful voice broke the deafening silence, drawing everyone’s attention to Cal’s little boy. Avi stood in the doorway to the common area, his little yellow hood pulled up over sleep tussled black locks. His deep brown eyes shone like melted chocolate, filled with a tired child’s innocent delight and excitement. Cali couldn’t help but smile at the boy, giving him the smallest nod of approval, which only made him smile so delightedly that his white teeth stood starkly against his dark skin.

“How does that tie into O- oh…” Malakai started out confused, only for realisation to flood his rich eyes. His mouth fell open, brows arching towards his hairline as his gaze travelled between Avi, Cali then to Onyx. Cali couldn’t read him, couldn’t tell what that meant. Oh? That was ALL he had to say? Just oh? Oh, that was, OH, so very helpful.

“Oh?” Wrath began, her own eyes following the same path Malakai’s had.

“Ohhhhh…” She drew out, seeming to have reached the same conclusion he had. Cali felt herself bunch up, muscles rippling beneath her skin as if they were infected vines. Did they not realise what they were doing? Could they not see how Onyx shrunk away from them? Could they not tell how close to tears she was? It flooded Cali’s body, overwhelming her with its chill. As if winter had fallen for a thousand years across all her nerves until only an aching numbness lingered. The subtle tensions through her screamed her protective intentions as she angled herself defensively between the troupe and Onyx, shielding the anxious woman from such evident attention. If the troupe were going to hurt her, then they had better be prepared to face the wrath of Two Envy Assassins… or at least a sassy bike mechanic.

“Oh.” Wrath concluded. It was simple but telling, accompanied by the pinch of her brows. Confusion and consideration warred within her eyes, yet her face remained remarkably blank. It was enough to have Onyx’s breath escape shakily as she clung to Cali’s arm, squeezing until she was sure her nails would be biting through the colourful cloth of her hoodie. If Cali felt pain, it didn’t show, she simply stood silent. A guardian. A woman ready to fight tooth and nail to protect what she loved. The magic within her mark burned immensely hot, scorching Cali’s skin as its darkness flared, much like a panther swishing its tail in agitation. Despite everything, Onyx couldn’t help but lean closer, pressing her forehead into the mark she had left so long ago.

“Yeah. Big Oh.” Cal agreed, his own eyes shifting between everyone, calculating in his sharp, judgemental manner.

“A bad oh?” Cali challenged, unable to endure the strain of not knowing for a second longer. The calculating glances, the wide-eyed silence, everything screaming silent judgements. Cali couldn’t stand it, and if she couldn’t then she knew Onyx would be drowning. The blonde seemed to cower, tucking her head into Cali’s collar as the Asian woman unleashed her inner dragon upon every Assassin with a pointed glare. Cali’s arms encased Onyx, a fortress of flesh and bone protecting the scared princess. Despite her height, Cali found herself playing prince and dragon, both warring to keep the princess safe in their ways. It would be so easy to protect with nothing but love, to embody the princely hero and do no evil. Let the Princess make her own mistakes and swoop in to clean up the mess. However, Cali had always been more of a dragon. Someone to shield those she loved from harm with all her might, to try to prevent them ever leaving to make the mistake in the first place.

A universal flinch rolled through the Assassins, ricocheted like a bullet from Cal’s gun once they realised just how they had come across to the smallest yet brightest of their number.

“Girl, you’re gonna be a baby momma? I get to be an uncle?” It was Darius who brought the excitement. His seductive eyes shone with barely restrained glee; glee which bubbled through to his most dashing smile. His whole body appeared to vibrate, as if he was giving everything in order restrain himself. His glee was infectious, seeping into Cali’s muscles with a gentle warmth until they thawed. She allowed herself to relax a little, giving Onyx an opening to lift her head and give a shy nod. At that nod, sparks flew, igniting the warmth within every assassin. Darius practically flew forwards, wrapping his arms around Onyx and Cali in his excitement. Malakai was right behind him, scooping the three huggers into his humongous arms and giving a gentle squeeze. Finally, Onyx laughed with relief so potent it was as if the air itself heaved a sigh.

“I’m so happy for you.” Malakai whispered, lowering his head into the pack so that he could press an adoring kiss to Onyx’s cheek. Darius seemed determined to copy the gesture, planting his own lips to Onyx’s forehead in a few lazy pecks. Onyx giggled, squeezing whomever she could grasp. Cali didn’t kiss, not this time, she simply rested her forehead to Onyx’s temple, offering her own silent support.

“Congratulations, Onyx.” Wrath’s gentle voice was flooded with warmth, with unconditional love as she wrapped her own arms around the group, holding her team as if they may shatter under the intensity of her love. That thought was enough to make Cali smile. Wrath loved as she lived, hard and intense. When one had Wrath’s affection, they had the weight of her heart on their sleeve, the promise of an Arch Angel named for a sin. The warmth of Wrath’s hug was potent beyond the physical, it seeped into the soul. Wrath warmed from the inside out with her embrace, turning everyone mushy and relaxed. None relaxed further than Onyx, who trusted her weight to the men and women wrapped around her. Cali was perhaps the only one who denied herself the safety, instead raising her challenging glare to Caleb North. The only Assassin yet to give a reaction.

“Avi, cover your ears.” He finally began, letting forth a soft hiss of breath between his teeth. Long, callused fingers brushed through his supermodel locks, pushing them away from his glistening forehead as he waited for his ward to obey. Avi, innocently as ever, clamped his little hands over his twee ears. Only when Cal was sure that Avi was blocking his ears did the Sloth Assassin begin.

“I don’t understand how you’re all taking this so well. Especially you, Cali. Even a med dropout should -”

“I didn’t cheat!” Onyx’s outraged cry was enough to have everyone flinching. Onyx was a pool of wrath, sickly tar bubbling to a boil in a cauldron precariously positioned above the archway of a door. Or above the gates soldiers of shame might siege. Cali turned her focus back to Onyx, watching how her nostrils flared, reminiscent of her dragon form. Cali fancied she saw a haunted gleam in Onyx’s blazing green eyes, which had narrowed in utter fury, causing her piercing to gleam like a blade in the light. Gone was the whimpering, terrified maiden within that accusation. Onyx had already been that for two people. Now, Onyx stood confident, challenging the world instead of shying from an abuser. As terrified as she had been of her family’s reaction, Onyx was done running.

“I didn’t even think that!” Cal fired back, as if offended on Onyx’s behalf that such a thing were even considered. It was then Cali could see it. The concern waging war with cautious joy in his deep blue eyes. It was noticing that which kept Cali from lunging into the fray, instead giving Cal a chance to redeem himself in their eyes. Or dig his own grave.

“But pregnancy is stressful enough without adding demons, and the fact that you turned into a dragon! Ask yourself, with everything going on, is this really the time to start playing happy family? Is it safe? You see what I go through with Avi. What if you die, or die again in Onyx’s case? I’m worried about you. A child is a serious responsibility, not something to dabble with in the honeymoon phase of your re-“

“Honeymoon phase? That’s what you’re calling -” Cali fired up, her own dark eyes igniting with rage. Cal had dug his grave with construction grade machinery. She could feel the mark burning, instinctively knew it was the angriest it had ever been, as if rebelling along with the rest of her body. Her vision blurred, weakened legs causing her to half stumble. She could barely hold herself up, yet she wanted nothing more than to lunge at the Sloth assassin. Honeymoon phase? Is that what he thought? There was nothing honeymoon about dying! Nothing honeymoon about offering your soul to a lineage of power just to let the one you love have a single coherent thought!

“Enough.” Wrath didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. The note of finality in her tone was more than enough to bring Cali’s instinctive outrage grinding to a halt long enough for her to take a soothing breath and blink away the haze from her vision. She felt Onyx do the same, even as Malakai, Darius and Wrath untangled from the cuddle huddle and respectfully gave the Envy assassins their breathing room.

“I think Cal is just as confused as we are as to how this happened.”

“The gay club doesn’t know?” Darius’ gasped interruption drew the eyes of the entire room, much like metal shavings to a magnet. Despite his crude wording, his shock that nobody else knew was evident, painted across his dashing face as if it were a canvas hanging in the Louvre.

“Darius. I’m not gay.” Onyx’s correction was gentle, delivered with an amused tilt to her lips.

“Errrmmmm, I’m bi.” Cali lifted a hand timidly, akin to how a child might raise it when unsure of the answer in class.

“I wasn’t invited to any club.” Malakai’s comment was delivered quietly, his brows arched in a mocking display of confusion. Wrath, dutiful as ever, simply crossed her large arms, muscles flexing deliciously with every subtle movement. Her head fell forwards, face meeting her awaiting palm as she bluntly informed everyone.

“There is no club.”

“Code then? So the Bi-bies are having a baby and broke the queer code? Like, aren’t don’t you queers have some form of secret club? How did the Lesbian not know? Aren’t you all meant to be experts on lady parts? Malakai might get a pass as a pan man. Queer people always seem to know everyone’s-”

“Darius.” Malakai began, stepping forwards. The sound of chips crunching beneath his boots was enough to draw a tiny snicker from Cali, though her amusement was quickly smothered by the exhausted frown on Wrath’s face. Her usually blazing eyes held poignant gleam. Something so deeply cut, as if her heart had once more been shattered. The mechanic didn’t even realise where Wrath’s mind had gone, not until she felt Onyx also tense beside her. Oh… that was too telling. The last time Wrath’s sexuality had come into the group, half the group had died. Her family had been torn apart as she helplessly cradled a broken heart heavy in a hollowed out chest. Darius had just toed a landmine; one he didn’t even realise he was prone to step on. Even Cal held his tongue, watching his leader with a softened expression that was all the more lancing. A joust of agony straight to Cali’s chest, or perhaps it was Onyx’s chest. At this point, it didn’t matter, both hearts beat to the same music, each complimentary and connected by the existence of music.

“Stop digging yourself into that hole, man, its deep enough.” Malakai concluded. Darius looked puzzled for a moment as he looked around the room before sudden realisation dawned in his eyes. Never had Cali seen him shuffle as awkwardly as he did then, steadfastly avoiding Wrath’s gaze.

“Right… but yeah, wow, congratulations baby girl, or baby momma now.”

“Thanks.” Onyx muttered, offering a small yet undoubtedly genuine flick of a smile.

“Cali, I gotta say, I did not peg you for… you know?” Darius powered on, earning several confused looks from the group. Genuine awe shone in his eyes, mixed with an overly heaped spoonful of respect. The concoction of emotions was potent, yet it only left Cali blinking in confusion.

“I do?” She drew the sounds out, shuffling awkwardly until she untangled herself from Onyx. With a flick of her chin, she attempted to clear a sweat slicked bang from her face, only to have it catch across her lashes. Her eyes watered, stinging with the saltiness of sweat, punishing her perhaps for not seeing what was going on. Where was Darius going with this?

“Like, wow. I guess we should have known you were packing from all the noise you two make, but I did not even notice.”

“Darius!” Onyx gasped, her tone scolding and scandalised even as the most awkward giggle imaginable bubbled in her throat. The beautiful slopes of her cheeks flushed brilliantly, showing through the layers of makeup in splotchy pinks. Only Cali knew that underneath, Onyx would be brighter than a tomato; her blush the embodiment of coals when left bare to the world.

“Noise? Packing?” Cali inquired, continuing to wipe at her offended eye as she tried to puzzle what Darius was saying.

“Like, your tuck job is insane! And it hardly looks like you’re wearing makeup at all! And your boobs, like, they look real, man.” He powered on like a trooper, gesturing to her chest area.

“Um… they are?” Cali’s questioning tone became even more befuddled. Why was he commenting on her chest? How did that tie into Onyx’s pregnancy? It was not like Cali was going to be providing breastmilk, so what else was she missing?

“Oh! I didn’t realise you were on treatments. That totally makes sense-”

“Hold on… do you think I’m-” Cali tried to interrupt. Treatments. Packing. Tuck job. Breast surgery. All of this pointed towards one thing.

“I’ve seen some bad tuck jobs in my day, I mean like, slipping from under the dress levels. Your tuck-”

“I DON’T HAVE A DICK DARIUS!” Cali shouted, sending the entire room into silence. Instantly, her hands flew to her mouth, covering it in utter shock at her own outburst. Embarrassed didn’t begin to cover it, she was utterly mortified. Both for her outburst and that her sex was even in question. Then, guilt washed over her. Guilt that she was embarrassed over an assumption, that she was even edging on potentially phobic behaviour. She had been born female; born the way she was meant to be as a person. That she was embarrassed as being mistaken for trans felt as if she was insulting the trans community somehow. That thought alone made her feel sick.

“…Oh.”

“We really needed to hear that. I don’t think downstairs heard you.” Cal’s particular brand of snark earned a soft snort from several people, which only made Cali’s cheeks burn hotter. Despite this, she uncovered her face, taking a deep breath before speaking.

“I’m not trans. Also, that is so rude! If someone is trans you don’t just casually tell them you’ve made them! That’s so hurtful! Come on, man.”

“Not cool, Darius. Not cool.” Malakai added. The other assassins nodded, murmuring their agreement.

“Then how are you two so loud? We’ve had to invest in earplugs, and your noise has chased off four girls this week!” Darius’ lament was met by a loud scoff from Cali.

“Seriously? That’s what you meant by noise, Darius? You’re Lust, literally, and can’t think how to get loud without a …?” She trailed off, making several awkward gestures with her hand. Her fingers curled, forming a loose cupping shape as flicked her wrist back and forth, hand around the height of her stomach. Her gesture didn’t last long before Onyx’s shoulder playfully bumped into hers, earning a playful tap in return as the women swayed into one another.

“There have been noise complaints… and a cleaning bill for the elevator. Also, a note to visit lost and found. Something about clothing?” Wrath dutifully informed, fighting off the dusting of pink across her cheeks as valiantly as she could. Several pairs of eyes fixed upon Onyx, who suddenly seemed to shrink into Cali’s side. The Chinese woman felt Onyx’s body heat up, enough that she was convinced steam should have been hissing from Onyx’s ears like smoke from a coal train. In the heat of the moment, neither Cali nor Onyx had stopped to think about anything save each other. Clothes had been abandoned across Vegas, and the elevator… the memory of trees flooded the bond. Onyx climbing Cali like one. The dirt filled roots of the tree Onyx had gifted Cali when she was a dragon. Innocence and seductive depravity bubbled within the bond, only increasing the heat in both their faces.

“Can I be dead again?” Onyx squeaked, covering her face with Cali’s hoodie. The idea of Onyx dying again was agonising, enough that a sharp retort bubbled on the tip of Cali’s tongue. She swallowed it, pushing her tongue down into the cavity of her jaw to resist crying out. If she was in the position of being told to retrieve her clothing from lost and found, Cali probably would have felt the same way.

“Hold on. I thought we were discussing how Onyx got knocked up.” Darius cut in. Instantly, Cali was conflicted. His bluntness was a smack on the snout, though it did save them from a far more awkward conversation.

“Darius…” Cal’s hissed warning was enough to send a chill through the room.

“Which we are all crazy happy for, baby girl, but it is a big change.” The Lust assassin continued, earning a loud snort from Onyx.

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

“She didn’t cheat, and we didn’t exactly plan for it. Nahara told us there could be a cost for restoring Onyx to her human form. The possibilities included a physical manifestation of the bond between the barer of the mark and Envy.” Cali explained. She stepped up a little, moving to wrap her arm securely around Onyx’s shoulders. Such lithe shoulders, despite their muscle, that bore the weight of the world. Such smooth skin beneath her fingertips as she massaged the curve of Onyx’s far shoulder, trying to ease even a fraction of her burden. Cali’s fingers traced odd patterns, even tickling down the divots of Onyx’s muscled biceps.

“Which arguably could be you. You’re both now, Cali.” Malakai commented, tone thoughtful. His dark eyes narrowed, as if he could read the answer from the bare air if only he focused hard enough. A large hand came to his strong chin, scratching at it thoughtfully.

“That’s what I thought too, but…” Cali trailed off, turning her gaze to Onyx. This was too close to Onyx’s demons, to the secrets she still kept. Cali desperately wanted to speak, yet she found herself tongue tied. Lost in the pain she saw in bright green eyes. Lost in her own loyalty. Could she even physically make herself betray Onyx in this way? Was it a betrayal to reveal the rest of what had been said? Internally, she pleaded, letting her emotions touch the bond between the Assassins. She needed Ripley to validate her, needed Onyx’s consent and understanding. She was falling, plummeting off a cliff with no wings to fly and no claws to cling to the stone she might be able to reach.

“She also mentioned something from the past could return to my future… well, our future.”

The moment the words left Onyx’s mouth, a soft grunt from the table drew Onyx’s attention. Ripley had managed to work herself into a sitting position, something which Cali found rather comical. The bears legs were spread apart, much like an awkward toddler, whilst her back was ramrod straight, akin to a woman forced into an impossibly tight corset. Ripley didn’t flood the bond with her words, she simply watched and listened, apparently trying to understand the responses from Wrath and Cal.

“From the past? When wer-“

“Dorran. Those weeks he increased your training.”

“WEEKS?” Cali exploded, viciously demanding an answer. Everything was red, hazy and hot, as if she’d been looking into the sun too long. Even behind her closed eyes, circles and swirls of color danced across her vision, hammering in time with her racing heart. This was worse than when she’d ridden her bikes to exhaustion or suffered sunstroke. Worse than the migraines that had occasionally followed. This was all of them at once, assaulting her body until only Onyx’s deceptively strong arm around her waist kept her standing. There was no question of whether or not she’d collapse, Onyx wouldn’t allow that, but the intensity burning through her was enough to make her remaining words slurred, gasped out between clenched teeth.

“He did that for weeks until h-” She never finished. Images assaulted her, striking her like books falling from a shelf above her head. An exhausted Onyx offering her best effort of a reassuring smile. She could take it. The deep barking voice. She’ll never learn if you don’t push her. How could she? Onyx wasn’t an assassin! She was barely on her feet. Its ok, Ripley, I can take it. Obedience… denied. She couldn’t. Not anymore. That harsh voice. Then I’ll do it myself. Go be useful. Hospital. Sirens. All my fault. All… Ripley. These were Ripley’s memories. It was sickening to realise this. Ripley had been part of it, she’d been right there and had trusted her leader. Trusted Dorran to protect Onyx. That sick man had used her connection to Onyx as a tool, had weakened Onyx with someone she loved unconditionally first… Cali’s tongue was bathed in bile, hot and thin, save for the chunks of chip swimming in the liquid. Dorran hadn’t even been man enough to do all the work himself. He’d manipulated Ripley too. With a soft snarl, Cali swallowed, refusing to let herself become any weaker than she felt in her directionless rage.

“Your abusive ex physically beat you into hospital? And caused a miscarriage? And nobody knew you were pregnant or that he was abusive? What the hell? Cal? Wrath? I though you two were assassins! How could you not realise what that piece of shit had done?” Gone was Darius’ amusement. His voice was raspy in his rage, scratching his usually chocolaty vocal cords. His eyes, which were usually dark, appeared almost black. Made of shadows and rage. He was half Wrath’s size, but the intensity of his demanding glare cowed even the brave leader, who was working her jaw in effort to find even a syllable of an answer. Tears dripped from the corners of her eyes, trailing openly down her cheeks as she allowed her gaze to fall to the toes of her bright red boots. Wrath, who was so strong, could barely stand under the weight of her guilt. Her shoulders shook, slouched in defeat. She may have been their leader. She may have been able to punch the devil out of every man, woman or child she met, but she couldn’t fight off the most horrific truth yet. She had nothing. No answer to give. No justification, even to herself.

“That’s why Vinca killed him, isn’t it? She knew about the pregnancy when that accident put you in hospital. Remind me to send her a gift basket.” Cal didn’t have an answer either, but he pushed on. His own eyes bore an unnatural sheen, one Cali quickly realised were tears. He was close to crying in his outrage. An assassin he may have been, but he was just as helpless now as when he had been possessed. Forced to watch the past rolled out in painful memories. For all the people he had saved, he was clearly struck by the potential he had failed. The possibility he had never even known about. Someone he would have loved with his whole heart, even if it was a lump of coal, and yet was powerless to protect.

“Does she know about the baby?” Wrath barely got the question out before Darius was there, snarling once again.

“Like hell.”

“With Nitsa inhabiting her? After she got my blood? We barely got Rip back, we can’t risk it. I’m not even sure if we should let Yvette know. I’m sorry, Onyx, but until Vinca is safe, I don’t want to risk either of you. I don’t want to control you, or keep you caged, but-” Cali’s imploring was cut off by Onyx’s finger across her lips, silencing her with the gentlest of touches.

“I know, you’re looking out for me. You’re not him.”

“Needless to say, Rip and I will be protecting Onyx, so we won’t be out with you. I also really don’t want Onyx combat training, or up on the highwire.”

“Cali…” Onyx playfully whined, fixing Cali with her best attempt at Puppy Dog eyes. Internally, Cali swore up a storm, using words she was sure even Darius would blush at. The bike mechanic forced herself to gaze into them, willed herself not to crumble at the adorable attempt. If Onyx was bad, how was her child going to be? The idea of baby Onyx alone had Cali cooing, turning into a pile of Oriental mush. If she hadn’t developed an immunity by the time they learned this trick… suddenly, she found herself incredibly hopeful that Onyx could be the strict parent, because Cali could already foresee ice cream for dinner. But to get there, she had to get over this current hurdle. The hurdle of Onyx’s adorableness amped up to a million and directed at her.

“Yeah, no. Sorry. Drop out Doctor’s orders. No being ten foot in the air while pregnant.”

“But the show-”

“Will be there when you’ve had your baby and are ready to return. Your health, and the baby’s health, come first, Onyx.” Wrath reminded; her tone gentle but leaving no room for negotiation. She offered a gentle smile, tears still glistening in her eyelashes. Her warmth was back, encompassing the room with a calming presence. It was enough for Cali to relax, to finally let go of everything and trust her team. These assassins were family. Onyx’s family. Her family. No matter what, she knew they would do their best to protect one another. That they’d die before allowing anybody to harm the baby. That they’d go to the depths of hell, following after Wrath’s angelic aura, to save each other. That’s just what this family did.

#answered #Anonymous #miscellaneous monday #onyx wren #onyx x mc #sin with me onyx #sin with me envy #swm envy #mentions of abuse #mentions of miscarriage #tw pregnancy #swm baby announcement

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timemachineyeah · 6 years

Text

There’s a multitude of universes, so the theory goes, infinite universes branching off of each other thousands of times with each moment playing out every possible variable.

I’ve been thinking about it recently.

“Every universe that possibly could exist, does exist.” That’s the premise. And I think it’s true. And I also think it’s not true.

For instance, I don’t think there’s a universe branching off from this one, with up until this moment a shared history, where right... exactly...

now.

I get up and walk next door and attempt to murder the people living in our neighboring apartment.

Or, like, I don’t think there’s a universe where when I typed “now” the pope woke up and went outside naked, declared god is dead, and shat on the pavement of Rome.

I don’t actually think it’s true that every universe you can possibly imagine exists. Because if everything we did were truly random and all universes splitting off at all times played out anything we could think of happening, it makes sense that in our universe you’d also see a lot more people doing the truly inexplicable. Behavior would be unanalyzable, charts of it would just be unincorporated dots of data with no trend. But, while people are weird, and people behave in strange ways sometimes, there are models for predicting human behavior. And animal behavior. And they’re at least accurate enough to be more than entirely random.

I’m not sure what this means, or what I mean by it. Does the premise that in no universe would I randomly become a murderer right now mean that I have free will, that I cannot be forced into being something I would not want to be? Or does it mean the opposite? That I cannot choose to be an impersonal murderer in this moment no matter how many times you play the scenario through, meaning really I have no choice?

There’s probably a really solid argument that if it’s true that in no universe does the me that has come to this point just stand up and start killing, that’s just physics playing out as expected. Yes, there’s no macro physical law like gravity preventing me from walking outside and trying to kill a stranger. But the neurons in my head are also run by physical laws, and the pathways in my brain are set by the physical laws that guided them until this moment, and maybe that “murder” path either doesn’t exist or cannot be accessed with the stimuli available in this environment, so it doesn’t matter how many thousands or millions or billions of universes are being created in this moment, in none of them did I just get up and start killing people. And can that really be said to be free will? I don’t know that I think it can.

But I do think that if you layered all the universes on top of each other, you’d see the things that were constant most clearly, and the things that shifted would be a blur. That there would be a well trod center and increasingly blurry halo around the edges of my possible movement and choices, and then a completely still background of all the things no version of me will ever do. It’d be like a glitched video or animated gif - you’ve seen them right? Where the moving elements leave a kind of trail, and the static background elements all hold their position. And I think if I could hold all those universes on top of each other and look at the difference, I could see the shape of myself. All the things I could be in the blur, and all the things I am definitely not in the unfilled spaces. And if I know what I am not, can’t I also know what I am? And in those stacked universes there would be a tunnel made by the shape of all my lives on top of each other, layers sliced through one at a time like a 3D printed sculpture, a hole cut out of every action I’ve ever taken in every world, and that’s a shape that’s mine alone, and that might not be free will, but it’s an imprint on reality only I could leave, the literal shape of my decisions.

#timemachine wuz here #text post

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martinmcg · 3 years

Text

ESKRAGH

We buried Thomas’s da today. We put him in the same patch of ground that we had pretended we were putting Thomas. Eighteen months. I never thought the old man would last so long.

The day was bright, clear and warm but there wasn’t much of a crowd. A couple of the fellas that he’d started drinking with, after Thomas, and his wife. She came up and shook my hand, afterwards, thanking me for coming.

She looked more relieved than sad.

“These are hard times,” she’d said. “But at least the priest didn’t take long about putting him in the ground.”

I stood for a while, after everyone else had gone, and admired the view.

I remember the funeral, the other one, for Thomas. It rained hard, there was no wind and the water fell in heavy sheets across the graveyard. That place is on top of a hill and normally you can see for miles. On a fine day you can see from Lough Neagh in the east to the Sperrins in the west and all the way to Louth in the South. That day, you couldn’t see as far as the grey stone wall that penned-in the dead.

The ground around the grave sucked at our feet and the wooden boards beneath our soles were swollen and soft, like decaying flesh.

Not that there was any of that in the coffin we were putting in the ground.

The priest droned on for an age about the young man we’d all lost and ignored the shuffling and the grumbling in the crowd as we got wetter and colder and the mud crept higher and higher up our legs and threatened to drag us all down with the empty box.

Thomas’s dad turned to me after his heavy clod of earth had bounced hollowly on the coffin. He grabbed my arm, his fingers hard as stone, and he fixed me with sunken grey eyes.

“No man should live longer than his children,” he said. I’d been Thomas’s friend for twelve years and that was maybe the first time he ever spoke directly to me. He only spoke to me once more.

This is how we lost Thomas.

The sky was the fiercest blue with a single skiff of white cloud scraping the edge of space high above us. We were at Eskragh Lough, six of us. We’d dumped our bikes in the long grass that grew right to the edge of the water, tossed our clothes behind us and dived in.

Eskragh’s not a big lough, but it’s deep and the water was still icy.

We roared at the shock of it and made for the big wooden raft that was tethered near the middle of the lough.

And then we lay, for an hour or two or more.

Sometimes we talked. Bullshit about girls or football or the Brits or music.

I remember Dec’s house had been raided by the army about a week before and he kept telling everyone about waking up with a huge British soldier, his face all blacked out with camouflage paint, looming over the end of the bed and staring down the barrel of the soldier’s rifle.

“All I could see were teeth and eyes,” he roared. “I shat myself.”

Sometimes we swam.

Sometimes we just lay and let our fingers and toes trail in the water.

We watched the army helicopters, big ones lumbering like fat bumblebees and sleeker ones that zipped like angry wasps, as they buzzed across the sky. And we watched the swifts and house martins rip the air, twisting and turning and swooping after insects. Sometimes a fish would break the water and we’d cheer and pretend we’d seen it leap.

Then, at some invisible signal like a flock of birds suddenly rising, we were up and off and swimming back towards the shore and our bikes.

But only five bikes were picked up.

We called and shouted. I swam back out to the raft. We swam deep into the lough.

We looked and looked. And then we went for help. And they looked and looked.

They never found Thomas.

Eskragh isn’t big, but it is deep.

I went to Thomas’s wake. I stood in the line that snaked out the door and down the path of the wee garden while we edged closer and closer to the house. I stopped in the doorway and watched the people wander around with their cups of tea balanced on hardly-used saucers whose absences left holes in the display of the little china cabinet in the hall. Tidy little sandwiches, cut in triangles with the crusts removed, rested beside their dainty cups. These people, far more used to mugs and whole rounds of bread, looked uncomfortable and confused in their best clothes. Up they stepped, each one repeating the same mantra: “sorry for your loss… sorry for your loss… sorry for your loss…”, the same grave shake of the head, a firm handshake and pursed lips as they traipsed past. Thomas’s ma and grandda sat on the sofa and nodded each of them through.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cross the threshold.

The line crept on. I let other’s pass me.

I’d turn around, I’d go home.

But I couldn’t leave.

I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back.

Thomas’s ma looked up and saw me. I was trapped. She rushed across and grabbed my hand, patting it gently.

“You’re alright,” she said, softly.

“I’m sorry,” I felt my throat tighten and my eyes sting. And then I was crying, tears hot on my face and gasping for breath, leaning heavily against Thomas’s ma. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright.” She stroked my hair and whispered. She lead me through the kitchen, busy with women, aunts and neighbours, making sandwiches and tea, and lead me out into the quiet evening on the back step. “It wasn’t your fault.”

We sat on the step, the two of us crying for a long time. She held my hand in her lap. She smelled of earth and lemons and she rested her head on top of mine.

After a while someone coughed in the doorway behind us and Thomas’s ma straightened up and smoothed out her skirt.

“I have to go back,” she said, not letting go of my hand. “I want you to have something of his, before you go.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t – ”

She stopped me.

“Go up to his room, it’s just like he left it, I haven’t been able to go in there yet,” she patted my hand again. “Take something. Anything. Something that you can keep, that will remind you of him.”

“There isn’t anything – “

“Kathleen?” The voice came from inside, it was soft, slightly worried.

“I’m grand, I’m coming,” she said, then turned back to me. “I have to go back. You go on now.”

I dreamt of Eskragh. I dreamt of something pale and cold moving in the depths. It was fast and sleek and it shimmered slightly in the moonlight.

I followed in its wake as we moved through the water, down and down we went in the darkness and never reached the bottom.

And then the thing was gone and I was deep in the freezing lough and my lungs were burning and behind my eyes a terrible pressure was building and building as I began to rise, too slow, too slow, surrounded by a halo of silver bubbles.

I looked down.

The pale thing looked at me. For the first time I saw a face and sad, familiar eyes.

I woke with a gasp

The sweat that soaked my bed was icy cold.

I had been in Thomas’s room plenty of times before. We used to sit here listening to the charts on a Sunday afternoon and taking turns to play Deathchase or Manic Miner on his Spectrum.

He had a collection of page three girls cut out and hid between the pages of an old Warlord annual in his cupboard, we used to look at them too. I riffled out the yellowing newspaper pages and jammed them into the pocket of my jacket. It felt important that his ma didn’t find those.

Then I sat on the bed.

Was there anything I wanted here?

We’d long copied each others records, cassettes and computer games and, anyway, those weren’t the kind of things that his ma had meant.

There were books and comics, Thomas was a reader, but I didn’t have much use for them.

There were Thomas’s medals for football and hurley. The harp his uncle had made him when in the Long Kesh. There was the picture of Thomas Clarke signing the Proclaimation of the Irish Republic before the Easter Rising. Thomas’s ma was a Clarke, and Thomas had been named after her ancestor. And there was the picture of the Sacred Heart his parents had put above the bed.

None of this meant anything to me.

I stood up, rubbing my forehead, kneading my temples.

There was nothing here for me.

Then the door opened.

Thomas’s da was standing there.

I jumped and suddenly felt guilty. I was trespassing.

“Missus Toner said I could come up,” I said. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to –”

He just stood there, holding the door open.

I edged forward, ducking out beneath his arm.

As I passed him he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. He was holding out something. I took it. I tried to say thank you but the old man wouldn’t look at me. He stepped into his son’s room and, without a word, closed the door.

I looked down.

I was holding Thomas’s Saint Christopher’s Medal. He always wore it. The silver medal on a leather band with the neat silver clasp, it was his favourite thing.

I weighed the medal.

Why hadn’t he worn it at Eskragh?

I wandered down the stairs and out of the house, the medal gripped tightly in my hand.

I was walking past Fallon’s, it’s an old man’s pub full of serious drinkers – men whose faces burn red with the tracery of veins spreading from their nose. The sacred heart lamps.

Thomas’s da came stumbling out, hard drunk on a Thursday afternoon. I was walking home from school, still in my uniform, and almost walked into him.

He looked at me. Did he recognise me? I don’t know.

I opened my mouth to say something but found I didn’t have any words.

“Eskragh took my son,” he said. “It won’t give him back.”

He didn’t last another week.

It’s dark. Eskragh is black and slick and smooth and it laps stickily at my feet, spreading a sickly chill up my body.

I take off my shirt and stand naked and shivering before the lough.

I take a breath and then I wade in fast, knowing that I must move quickly before the cold takes away my will. Another breath, almost a gasp as the water grips my chest, and then I dive in.

Down.

Already my lungs are aching.

Down.

I have Thomas’s St Christopher’s Medal gripped in my hand, the leather band wrapped around my wrist.

Down.

Eskragh isn’t a big lake, but it’s deep.

“Eskragh” was first published in Albedo One #39

ESKRAGH was originally published on Welcome To My World

#Ireland #Short story

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cloneradio · 4 years

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THE NAMELESS DECADE

My Meticulous Ranking of the Top 200 Records from 2010-2019

Get Off My Lawn

Like anyone who isn’t a woke Brooklyn or Wicker Park urbanite dilettante, I find myself aghast at the ludicrous end-of-decade lists that the dominant music blogs shat out of their collective identitarian sphincters. Music can be political but it should never be politicized. First comes the music, then comes the message. But contemptible virtue signallers are attempting to flip that script.

This was the decade that outrage culture infected every aspect of the zeitgeist, and in the decades to come, it is my hope that the pendulum swings back towards some semblance of sanity.

If you’d headed over to Pitchfork or COS or Vice, you’d be led to believe that the consensus opinion is that if music isn’t espousing, progressive, pisspants propaganda or isn’t created by some class deemed to be of an aggrieved social or ethnic minority, then it is unworthy of critical consideration. If it ain’t woke, don’t fix it apparently.

Well, I’m not woke. And music doesn’t need to be woke to push the boundaries of human creativity, ingenuity, courage and vulnerability. If I’m coming across as bitter, then I’ve succeeded.

The classic albums of this decade were copious and endlessly inspiring. Yet so much of the best material was neglected wholesale by the abject, self-important, amoral, payola-accepting, click-baity hacks that purvey the bulk of today’s music news and editorial content. Out with the guitars and in with the Antares Harmony Engine. Out with attitude and in with trigger warnings. Out with controversy and in with orthodoxy.

Contrary to popular belief, Charlie XCX, Drake, Cardi B, Lana Del Ray, Post Malone, and Frank Ocean are not in fact the voices of our generation. Here, you won’t find acts who filter their “content” through brigades of writers and marketing teams and focus groups. I promise you will not find a single Beyoncé or Taylor Swift record on this list. This Nameless Decade was when the so-called journalists began fawning over the same vacuous Top-40 shite as the average 13-year-old white girl from the suburbs. The top of the sales charts are now nearly indistinguishable from the anodyne, vanilla critical analyses. I feel compelled to turn their own vernacular against them and dare them to “do better.”

Music is not content; music is music.

...so I’ve created my own alternative, which I hope provides anyone who lands here with a bountiful consolidation of the best music of the now and the recent past. The passage of this Nameless Decade also brought with it the inevitable and merciful death of the genre. The lines have blurred into afterthought and the possibilities grow exponentially with each passing month. With these frontiers now melting (and with the relative ease that the average consumer can now discover once obscure acts and recordings via Spotify and other streaming providers), there truly has never been a time more conducive to the proliferation of creative output. There has never been a time when so many people could access cheap or stolen recording technology and make their own impact. Their influence too will ripple through time in ways that will help us learn innate truths about ourselves, each other, and the greater universe we temporarily occupy. This is the best time in history to be a songwriter, and it will only continue to improve in the decades to come. Few could articulate this more eloquently than Nick Cave, who, in the 2014 documentary 20,000 Days On Earth said this:

"In the end, I am not interested in that which I fully understand. The words I have written over the years are just a veneer. There are truths that lay beneath the surface of the words; truths that rise up without warning like the humps of a sea monster, and then disappear. What performance and song is to me is finding a way to tempt the monster to the surface, to create a space where the creature can break through what is real and what is known to us. This shimmering space, where imagination and reality intersect, this is where all the love and tears and joy exist. This is the place. This is where we live."

The Definitive-ish Ranking

- This list is meant to be enjoyed as a whole. A great deal of thought and dithering and appraisal went into the placement. Not once did I contemplate the greater societal impact of the components of this collection. Nor did I defer to my objectivity bone. This is strictly what I liked most. For example, I appreciate Kendrick Lamar, but his music just isn’t my jam. To Pimp A Butterfly’s impact was immense, but to me it just doesn’t rank.

- Bands generally peak over a span of a few albums or during a single decade. Thus several acts make this list on multiple occasions.

- Despite my disdain for wokeness, I'm a proponent of diversity of opinion. Again, music first. Some of the acts on this (Refused, The Knife, Parquet Courts) are woke AF.

- I included performance videos unless due to death or recent release these videos don’t exist.

- Furthermore, these year-end and decade-end round-ups often neglect brilliant records that land in the final 8-10 weeks of the year. This is done so the blogs can get their content out first, because clicks outweigh integrity in this game. So I’ve included a handful of beautiful records from the waning weeks of The Oughts that deserve further dissemination and amplification. It’s my list and I’ll do what I want.

- (Forgive the lack of apostrophes in the headlines. I assurer you it’s a formatting issue, not continued egregious grammatical errors).

Please follow these links to enjoy the playlists I’ve constructed to go along with this exhaustive aggregation:

The Nameless Decade: Top 200 Records 2010-2019

- This playlist consists of all of the choice cuts of the records on this list

The Nameless Decade: The Leftovers

- Here I hastily threw together a compilation of other singles from the decade. I no doubt forgot about more tracks than I included here, but I did my best to quickly wrangle in the best singles: the popular, the esoteric, and everything on the spectrum between. Hopefully it’s teeming with surprises.

If you want to jump ahead to the Top 50, click here

Otherwise, without further adieu, I present...

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auskultu · 7 years

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The Golden Road: A Report on San Francisco

Paul Williams, Crawdaddy!, June 1967

SITTING IN THE window. Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village, flirting with the girls going by, the Grateful Dead very loud on 4X speakers somewhere in the room behind me; 92 degrees, a week short of summer, a week back from the Coast, San Francisco. Now, three thousand miles away, what do those words mean? Was I ever anywhere but here?

The geography of rock. There are a half-dozen LPs sitting by my New York City phonograph, at least two from San Francisco: Moby Grape and Grateful Dead. Rock Scully, a Dead manager, just walked by; the Grateful Dead are at the Cafe Au Go Go, two blocks from here. The Moby Grape are midtown, playing at the Scene.

We speak of a San Francisco Sound because these groups developed there. They may not come from there (Skip Spence is a Canadian, the Steve Miller Blues Band got together in Chicago); they may not even live there (Moby Grape is technically a Marin County group; Country Joe are #l in Berkeley, but half a dozen local bands get better billing in San Francisco). But San Francisco—the Fillmore, the Avalon, the Trips Festivals, the Diggers, Owsley's acid, Haight Street and Ashbury and Masonic and Golden Gate Park, the Straight Theatre, Herb Caen, the Barb, the communication company—these have been and are and will be the environment and influences that have shaped the music of many of the best bands in America.

More specifically, the several aspects and influences of the San Francisco area have created a community; out of this community has come a feeling, an attitude; and it is this attitude that has imparted a unity to the music coming out of the Bay Area. It is this attitude that is most commonly reflected in the San Francisco Sound.

There is a geography of rock; San Francisco is different from New York musically, different because the music made by the Grateful Dead would be different if they had developed in New York, playing the Night Owl or Action City, trying to get a master sold, living on East 7th Street and maybe dealing meth for rent money, padlocking their front door and freezing in the winter and worrying about the air and not having children till they can afford the suburbs, reading the New York Times and having maybe two dozen friends that they see once every two months or so, never considering that they might find a manager who wasn't just an adversary, never thinking that there was much more to it than making the charts, never wondering about the empty girls with too much make-up and an unshakable confidence in this best of all possible nothings... probably hating each other after a while and wondering why people shat on them for doing just what everyone else does.

New York is New York, and it's very good for some things. The energy it generates is second to none; nowhere in the world is there as much activity to dive into every time you turn around. Some people thrive on that. I do, much of the time, and that's why I stay here; but I don't think it's a place to make music. San Francisco is.

The trolleys run along Haight Street pretty often; the tourists snarl up the traffic a bit, but still you can get from theOracle office to Fillmore Street, change, and arrive at the Fillmore or Winterland in less than twenty minutes. At fifteen cents for the entire journey, that's not bad at all. The Avalon is a little further away, but just as accessible, and nowadays often more worthwhile.

But the ballrooms have lost their importance. They were vital once; without Bill Graham, and the hard work and business knowhow he threw into the Fillmore when the scene was starting, there might never have been an SF Sound to talk about. Give him credit, and give Ralph Gleason credit, without whose enthusiastic columns in the SF Chroniclethe city would have no doubt shut down those psychedelic superstructures before you could say "building inspector." And Ken Kesey, the man whose Trips Festivals irrevocably tied together rock and roll and light shows and the head community. The Family Dog, illuminator Bill Ham, the Charlatans, the Matrix, and Jefferson Airplane, all those originators who now cling to their place in history with alarming awareness that after two years the past is buried in the dust of centuries.

The ballrooms have given way to environments even more closely knit into the community. The great outdoors, for one; the Panhandle is only two blocks down from Haight Street, and on an average weekend you'll hear everything from Big Brother & the Holding Company down to the local teen group playing top 40 hits off-key. And it's all free, free not just from admission charges but from walls and stuffy air and hassles about coming and going; free so that the music is as much a part of your life as a tree in blossom. You can stop and embrace it, or pass on by.

The Panhandle is the San Francisco Sound today: the music of the street, the music of the people who live there. The ballrooms, obsolete in terms of the community, have been turned into induction centers—the teenyboppers, the college students, the curious adults come down to the Fillmore to see what's going on, and they do see, and pretty soon they're part of it. They may not go directly to Haight Street with flowers in their hair (though many of them do), but they change, they shift their points of view, their minds drop out of Roger Williams and into the Grateful Dead.

Back on the Street something is happening that may be even more important than the music in the park. The Straight Theatre, long a cherished vision, has burst into reality. The Straight is an ancient movie house, an imposing structure capable of taking some 1700 people out of the center of Haight Street and into whatever it feels like presenting. The property includes a theater, which will be used for concerts, gatherings, poetry readings, etc., a dance workshop, another smaller theater for experimental drama, a photographic studio and darkroom, various storefronts, a backyard mall, and more, all of which is being lovingly shaped by devoted hippie artisans into what should be the model for future art centers all over the country.

And in the air, another major change: KMPX-FM, not just radio for heads but rock radio for rock heads, a station that totally ignores the top 20 (because you can hear that stuff any time you want on seven other frequencies) and just plays what it feels like playing. KMPX is run something like a college radio station; the people in charge know much more about rock and roll than they do about radio programming, how to talk jock, how to sell an audience, or any of that other crap. They make mistakes—records go on the turntable at the wrong speed, careless comments go out over the air—and everyone loves them. There are no mistakes, because they can do no wrong. They're human, and they love the music—and that's what's been missing in radio till now.

If you examine San Francisco closely, you'll find major changes taking place in almost every aspect of city life. New attitudes towards jobs, towards education, towards entertainment and the arts. Basic shifts in the relationships between man and his environment, shifts that have affected every facet of that environment, changes that best can be communicated not in words but in music: Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Steve Miller Blues Band, Country Joe & the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Grateful Dead.

Consider the albums. The Airplane was first—and second, too, for that matter. The San Francisco Sound on records begins with those first two notes of 'Blues from an Airplane', and a more noble beginning would not have been possible. Regardless of how many better albums have been recorded since Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, that album still glows with the beauty of the first trip, the birth cry of a new era in music. Between the Buttons was the definitive last statement of an earlier age; JA Takes Off is the first of a new generation of rock albums, of which Sergeant Pepper is only the latest and best.

Tim Jurgens, Ralph Gleason and Marty Balin all used the word "love" in their attempts to pin down what made that first Airplane album different. It is much easier now to understand what they were getting at. Jefferson Airplane Loves You with what has been disdainfully referred to as "potato love"—the indiscriminate love for all people simply because they are people. This attitude enriches their music. Compare Revolver with Sergeant Pepper, do you really think the Beatles loved you when they recorded the earlier album?

Surrealistic Pillow, the Airplane's second, is a definite bringdown; certainly the worst LP to come out of the current Bay Area scene (not considering such piffle as the Sopwith Camel, who ceased to be an SF group when they met Erik Jacobsen). The problem with Pillow is mostly that it's not an album; it's a collection of tracks that neither feel good nor sound comfortable together. The Airplane, of course, were the first SF group to record a second album, and it is likely that at least one other good Bay Area group will flounder on their second try. And Pillow, despite its disunity, has half a dozen fine tracks which prove that the group is better, even if their LP is worse. Sometimes progress is not reflected in quality—and this is often the fault of fate and the A&R man more than the group.

At any rate, the Airplane's first LP is easily as good, in context, as that of any other Bay Area group so far; and how well other groups do on their second albums remains to be seen. It's always kind of lonely to be first in line.

The Grateful Dead's first try is pure energy flow. West Coast kineticism has developed into a fine art; the first side of this album rolls with a motion so natural that one suspects the musicians have never listened to the Who or the Kinks or even the Four Tops—they have developed their own kinetic techniques without reference to the masters in the field. With one exception: this album has so much in common with The Rolling Stones, Now! as to be almost a sequel.

Of course, I'm not complaining. Now! will always stand as one of the great rock albums, and by giving us the New World, sun-rising-over-the-Pacific-Ocean version of that album the Dead have unquestionably added to the quantity of joy around. And the Dead's LP is much more first-hand: where the Stones glorified the mythical American South rock joint in 'Down the Road Apiece', the Dead give you the feeling that that kind of wonderfull abandon is a part of their daily scene ('Golden Road'). The Stones assume the persona of Chuck Berry driving down the New Jersey Turnpike (which they've probably never been on!) to convey their personal energies in 'You Can't Catch Me'; the Dead do a song with almost identical impact ('Good Morning Little Schoolgirl') but they don't need to think of themselves as Sonny Boy Williamson—the song goes out direct to every teenybopper in the audience, and by the time they start into the fourth minute or so, every member of the band really feels every word that Pigpen says. Musically, the Stones' performance is as good (in fact, better) than the Dead's; but where the Stones confront a mythical highway cop, the Dead confront the actual members of their audience. Hence the Grateful Dead LP, though not quite as good as Now!, is at times even more effective.

(The Stones do, of course, confront their audience in 'Everybody Needs Somebody to Love', but it's not emotional confrontation. It's great showmanship, posturing—similar to the Dead's terrific posturing when they "do" the whole Kingston Trio era and its approach, in 'Cold Rain and Snow'. I'm comparing the Dead to the Stones not to show a preference for either, but to point out the fascinating similarities in the impact of their music and in the music itself—play 'Schoolgirl' after listening to 'You Can't Catch Me' to appreciate the extent to which the Dead resemble the Stones in their concept of what music is and how a rock band should perform.)

The first side of the Dead album is one song, unrolling its varied but equivalent delights at top speed. 'Beat It On Down the Line' ("That's where I'm going to make my happy home") moves into the certainty of 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' with the ease and impact of Jean-Luc Godard. Garcia smiles, Pigpen squints, and you're on your way. And you can't turn back. "See that girl?... Well, she's coming down the stair—and I don't worry, I'm sitting on top of the world." (Appropriate J. Garcia guitar run here.) Breathless.

The flip is something else: introspective, more like a journey than a joyride. 'Morning Dew' conjures loneliness, pain, uncertainty, courage; pleads, asks, questions, denies; and finally, "I guess it doesn't matter anyway." Apocalyptic. Or just resigned. "I thought I heard... " ? And whatever it was, you'll find it in the song. Beautiful, with a kind of intense detachment. San Francisco isn't known for its vocalists, but this song could change all that.

'New, New Minglewood Blues' serves as a sort of bridge in the context of the album, which is not at all the nature of the song in live performance... and no doubt this is one of the many things about this LP that disappoints fans of the live Dead. The more you've grown to love Grateful Dead live performances over the years the more difficult it must be to accept an album which is—though very beautiful—something completely different. Only 'Viola Lee Blues' has any of the fantastic "this is happening now!" quality of, a good Dead performance; only 'Viola Lee Blues' takes you away as far as the longtime Dead fan has grown accustomed to being taken. It's an escape song—a prisoner for life dreams his way to the dim edges of space and time—and if you don't think you're a prisoner, surrender to 'Viola Lee' and see what happens.

When the Country Joe album arrived at the Crawdaddy! office, it was immediately inscribed "This record is to be played on special occasions only," and certain factions suggested that it would be in poor taste to even review such a sacred work. Sacred or not, this album does seem distantly removed from anything that has been previously associated with rock and roll. Indeed, the staunchest hard rock supporter on our staff can find no redeeming musical value in it at all. He's wrong, of course; or, to be more accurate, he's somewhere else. For many people, this album is so exactly where we are, it's frightening. To be played on special occasions only.

Words should be applied to this album with extreme caution. Like a kaleidoscope, it's easy not to appreciate—all you have to do is stare at the toy instead of into it—but if you do dig it, you may suddenly find it very hard to decide which of the sliding multicolorous worlds all around you is your own. It's perfectly fair of me to especially dig 'Flying High' because I'm a long-time hitchhiker; but when I decide that 'Section 43' is without question a midsummer thundershower, and then realize that the storm is outside the window and not in my head, perhaps I'm too involved in the music.

Background music is an old concept; this album, at last, is in the foreground. It is Joe MacDonald's world, and you are invited in. Does it seem strange that the introduction to 'Flying High' has nothing to do with the song, or that Lorraine's first name is really Martha? Not at all—remember, we are guests here. This is Berkeley 1967, Fish Street, residence of Country Joe—we are invited to see, hear, feel, smell, but not participate. 'Grace'—that's not a singalong. This is music at its most sensuous and least analyzable—sounds, unidentifiable, flash at you, words evoke pictures but no meaning, you never hear the same thing twice. But you always feel the state of grace.

'Death Sound' ("I see the minutes chasin' the hours"), that homicidal tambourine, schizophrenic lead guitars. It's all in the impact; if it doesn't scare you, I can't talk you into fright. 'Section 43'—simply the most satisfying, evocative piece of music I know; I could wander its paths forever. It's a concert performance—no individual virtuosity can be found and praised; each person did his job precisely and flawlessly, up to (and especially) the feedback and few tinkling notes at the end. The brilliance is in the composition; and in a subtle way we should consider this whole LP a composed rather than a performed work, because every note seems to have been firmly in place in every song long before the actual recording of the album. On 'Love', a mistake is met with "Aw, come on," as if nothing could be more ridiculous at this point than doing something wrong. Indeed, a perfect Fish album: it had to be this way.

'Masked Marauder' is utterly delightful; instant movie soundtrack for whatever is going on around you. (Theme music, not background stuff.) 'Superbird' would be instant #l if radio stations weren't so sensitive. It's the only rock and roll song on the album, and of course it's perfect. "Drop your guns, baby..." Wow! Everything on the album is one-of-a-kind, as a matter of fact; like Sergeant Pepper, the only thing linking these songs is that they like to be heard together.

'Sad & Lonely Times' is a ballad, very simple, very warm—pretty. 'Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine' is a totally different type of ballad: Berkeley Gothick, cynical, respectful, overpowering. Even affectionate; few people who've heard this album could really describe this song, but every one of them could describe Lorraine. And though every description would be different, each would be thoroughly respectful, thoroughly correct. David Cohen (organist) is magnificent.

And 'Bass Strings' is the invocation of the Muse. "Hey, partner, won't you pass that reefer 'round?... I think I'll go to the desert... Just one more trip now, and I know I'll stay high all the time." If you want to understand the Bay Area, 'Bass Strings' will give you a fair start.

Well, it took me a long time, but I finally figured out who Moby Grape remind me of: the Everly Brothers. Also Buddy Holly, Buffalo Springfield, middle-Beatles, Byrds, New Lost City Ramblers, the Weavers, Youngbloods, Daily Flash and everybody else. Above all, the Grape give off this very pleasant sense of déjà vu. Rock has become so eclectic you can't even pick out influences—you just sense their presence. I don't really know why the Grape remind me of the Everly Brothers. But it's a nice feeling.

Moby Grape is one of those beautifully inextricable groups with four guitarists (including bass), five vocalists, five songwriters, and about twelve distinct personalities (Skip Spence alone accounts for five of them). The Grape is unusual for an SF group in that it does not have an overall, easily-identifiable personality. It is without question schizophrenic—which is nothing bad, because the group is extremely tight and they simply shift personality from song to song. Their music is always unified; it's their album as a whole that's schizoid. In fact, much as I like it, I enjoy the songs even more one at a time (for your convenience, Columbia has issued almost the entire album on singles—which is particularly nice because the mono mix is far better than the stereo, which must have been done too fast).

Skip Spence's two songs make it clear that he's the most talented—though not the most prolific—songwriter in the group. 'Omaha', to my tastes the toughest cut on the album, is one of the finest recorded examples of the wall-of-sound approach in rock. It surges and roars like a tidal wave restrained by a sea-wall. Moby Grape is a particularly violent group—not in the sense that they want to do harm to anyone (it is a huge misunderstanding to think violence is inherently evil, or that it necessarily causes harm—there is violent joy, and this album is proof of that), but in the sense that almost every song is attacked with great force and abandon. Moby Grape assault their audience, bathing them in almost unavoidable joy. Jamming it down their throats, in fact.

The other Skip Spence song on the LP, 'Indifference', is another screamer, a well-constructed, brilliantly-executed shuffle number, to be sung on the street, loud, early in the morning, or listened to in the afternoon with your fist pounding the table.

Peter Lewis is second in the hierarchy of Grape writers, and probably the most sensitive. He shares with the other Grape members the ability to create extremely appealing melody phrases, chorus lines, and rhythm riffs; this ability, combined with the resultant concentration on structure, tightness and brevity, is what makes all the Moby Grape songs sound like good singles. Lewis, in 'Fall on You', puts together a number of catchy little themes into a very nice, very fluid song, vaguely reminiscent of 'One More Try'. In 'Sitting by the Window', he waxes almost eloquent, with just enough restraint to make the song both illuminating and unpresuming. The guitar-work is really excellent; the three Grape guitarists work together with exceptional taste throughout the lp.

But describing each song is not really the way to write about Moby Grape. They are elusive; you detect a thousand moods and changes, but you never quite hear the words, never know who's singing, never are certain who's playing lead. You can't pin them down, can't get too close; you learn to forget, learn to absorb their music, learn to stop trying, submit to it—and sooner or later it all comes clear. Country Joe, the Dead, are very clean; this group never lacks for tightness, but they get fuzzy 'round the edges. They aren't involving, but you dig the changes; they aren't involving, but you listen for the words; they aren't involving, but there's something going on here—and slowly but surely the depth in this music (which at first attacked you but seemed so uninvolving) swallows you up, and you feel the complexities it invokes.

Moby Grape is an almost ideal example of a "rock and roll" group, and their emergence now, as the historical concept of rock and roll seems on the verge of disappearing into a music too complexly-based to fit a general description, is both surprising and quite pleasing. The Grape play short, melodic songs, complex but straightforward, tightly structured with careful drumming and rhythm, experimental (but not "far out") bass, exciting, well-thought-out lead guitar (no fooling around) and early Beatles- or Everlys- style group vocals. A given song ('Mr. Blues') might draw on C&W and blues traditions, Otis Redding phrasing, Keith Richard restrained lead guitar, 'Captain Soul' rhythm progressions, etc. And every note is proper, polite. It's enough to make you nostalgic; nothing is more refreshing than the unexpectedly familiar.

These are the major rock albums to come out of the Bay Area thus far. However, there is a very important, very good album recorded by a San Francisco group in the new vein prior to the Airplane's first LP. I haven't mentioned it because the group is not generally thought of as a rock group. They are classified under jazz, which is fine; but I think at this time we can also add John Handy's Live at Monterey album to the list of great SF rock LPs. Listen to it, study its structure and its changes, and I think you'll understand why.

Rock is not a term that can be or that wants to be defined. San Francisco rock is an even more elusive concept, particularly when one removes the obvious geographical limitation and includes the Who's Happy Jack and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. One specifically San Francisco, or New World, trait is the inclusion of open acts of kindness toward the listener within the body of the album. Throughout Sergeant Pepper you feel that the Beatles are with you and understand where you're at ("we'd love to take you home with us"). The Who in their comic operetta 'A Quick One' bathe the listener in the repeated assurance that "you're forgiven." For everything. And the gentle applause at the end of each side of the John Handy album is a subtler application of the same effect.

Geographically, the San Francisco groups have the common heritage of the Bay Area '65-'67, and all the influences present there; most specifically, they have all been reared by the same audience, the Fillmore/Avalon crowd, the first good rock audience in America. This audience is responsible for, in addition to the Airplane, Handy, the Grape, Country Joe, and the Dead, at least three other fine groups as-yet-unrecorded: Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Steve Miller Blues Band.

Big Brother is in many ways the most exciting group in the Bay Area; and though they are all white, Sandy Pearlman has correctly called them "the best spade band in the country." Their arrangements, their control of what they're doing, their material all indicate that under the right conditions they could produce the best SF rock album yet. Steve Miller is the most creative of American white blues bands at present, which says a lot for the San Francisco influence. Quicksilver is a fine example of a group that would have gone nowhere were it not for the SF audience egging them on; they're still in the growing stage, and not yet ready to record, but there's good reason to believe that the moments of brilliance they now enjoy will soon become hours of brilliance. Outside of San Francisco they wouldn't have bothered getting better because they wouldn't have needed to.

Above all, the San Francisco Sound is the musical expression of what's going down, a new attitude toward the world which is commonly attributed to "hippies," but which could more accurately be laid at the feet of a non-subculture called People, earth people, all persons who have managed to transcend the superstructures they live in. People who have responded to the reality of the industrial revolution by requiring that they run the system and benefit from it rather than be made part of it. In very small print between the lines of 'Naked If I Want To', 'Grace', and 'Cream Puff War' is written the following message: There is a man, me, and there are Men. These two forces will and must interact as smoothly as possible. Everything else—concepts, objects, systems, machines—must only be tools for me and mankind to employ. If I or Man respect a system or a pattern more than ourselves, we are in the wrong and must be set free. "Nothing to say but it's okay..."

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jjohnsonwriter · 4 years

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“Extraterestrial Homesick Blues”

MONDAY

The drive to work was all bumper to bumper traffic, and the AC from my 2013 Ford Taurus was just a colder form of CO2 poisoning. I miss the Lincoln, but Liz got that in the divorce too.

I walked into the common room where all the residents were sitting around, watching TV, playing checkers coated in that special chemical that tastes like earwax. It doesn’t always keep the residents from swallowing the plastic pieces, but it helps.

“Hello, Dr. K!” Nurse Hatchet said. You could tell she had huge tits under all that uniform, even though she must have been like 50-something and she dressed like a nun.

“Hello nurse Hatchet, how are you this fine morning?”

“Quite well, Doctor Kierkegaard. And yourself?”

“Well I’m feeling exceptionally… Refreshed, I guess would be the word!”

Rhonda, one of the orderlies, looked over at us smiled.

I waved out each finger from my hand individually at her. “Hi, Rhonda!”

“Hello, Dr. K. Good to see you today.” She took a resident’s temperature.

Hospital regulations are that we sign in when we come and go so that if anyone tries to use our key cards it’s kept in a log, that way we know if anyone’s stolen our card, which wouldn’t be good. So I followed procedure, writing my name and the time on the sheet and started to walk to my office to get checked in, but before I got past the desk I noticed something was going on in the common room where Rhonda was standing over Artie Tremond’s wheelchair.

“Will you just hold still so I can do this?” Rhonda said, fumbling with his head as he lolled back and forth, trying to escape her grasp.

Artie was sitting in the corner with Rhonda standing over him, going on about how he had just about had it with Wellington. “Sacré blue! Zat goddamn sepoy général! E’ asé made a mockery ove’ mah impériale guard!” Tremolds said, then spat on the floor.

“Now Artie, you know we’re not supposed to be spitting on the floor! Behave yourself so I can finish.” Rhonda chided him.

“Artie...” Nurse Hatchet reminded warned him without looking up from her papers. Sometimes Nurse Hatchet acted like she was the patient’s mother, which I found disturbing in it’s own way.

“That’s OK, he just needs his medication early today.” Rhonda walked back into a plexiglass enclosure and locked the door behind her. She opened the closet and began allotting the medication in paper cups with the wax paper cups of water on plastic trays.

Then I noticed a new patient sitting off to the side of the room, slumped way down low in the chair. His eyes were glazed over as he stared into the middle distance, not moving, and barely even breathing. His hair was all combed up in a greased pompadour like some kind of James Dean knockoff.

I leaned over Nurse Hatchet’s desk and smiled. “Do you have the new patient’s chart?”

“Yes, but I’d better warn you. Watch yourself around that one, I don’t like the look of him.”

“Oh yeah? Did you get your heart broken by one of those guys back in the day?”

She narrowed her eyes and looked up at me from papers she was pretending to read. “First of all, I’m not nearly that old. And secondly…” She caught my eyes wandering down onto her massive bosom. How does it all stay in there?

“And secondly, My eyes are up here, Doctor Kierkegaard!”

“Right! Sorry Nurse Hatchet, I was just trying to read this patient’s file.” I lied, and pointed to some obscure piece of information in one of the files on her desk.

“That’s a requisition form for bedpans!” She chided me.

“I know. I just uh… wanted to make sure it gets done right… intra department oversight is a key feature of institutional safeguards against-”

She shot me with another steely look. Unable to meet her gaze, I darted my eyes around the room.

“I guess I’d better-” I gestured to the new patient: Elvis Presley or James Dean, or some piece of 50’s obscura shat back out by the annals of the 20th century.

Nurse Hatchet leaned forward “Well I guess you’d better…” she said, shooing me off.

I walked over to the new patient and read his chart. Danny Califia: depression, claims he’s… an alien! Oh great. Why do I always get the crazy ones first thing in the morning?

I stood in front of him and very self consciously pulled my lips into the best smile I could muster, knowing my bedside manner was about on the level of Josef Mengele.

“Hello Danny, I’m Dr. Eric Kierkegaard, but most people just call me Dr. K.” He stuck out his arm limply, and took my hand with a firm grip shook hard. Even through the impenetrable lenses of his dark wayfarers I knew he was looking me right in the eye.

“You probly think I’m crazy doc, don’tcha?” Danny pulled a black comb from his ankle boots and sculpted his black pompadour.

“Well the thing about calling somebody ‘crazy’ is that it’s dismissive. It doesn’t get at the underlying problem a person is experiencing.” I started towards intake room four. “I want to talk to you, just to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay…” he said. Poor bastard. He looks like he’s just about my age, stuck in a place like this in that getup. Hey I’m not judging, but still.

The first thing you learn in this job is ‘take everything they say with a grain of salt’. If you can’t do that, then you’ve already lost it. I was sitting in room four with this new patient: Danny Califia. Danny was a self-admit, although I had no idea why he was there. He seemed perfectly normal, except for the 50’s greaser shtick. The room where we met was like any other in the L.A. County psychiatric hospital: modern, sleek, off white with the faint smell of piss-stained bed sheets and slobbered tongue guards coming through the gap of air flowing between the door’s sill and the floor. Intake room number four had the same problem as every other room in the hospital: the fluorescent lighting was way too bright. You had to close your eyes and blink a few times every couple minutes just to make sure they didn’t dry up and fall out of their sockets.

I flipped through his intake file: personal history of depression, family history of schizophrenia, no known schizoid episodes. “So Danny, what brings you here today?”

Danny pursed his lips in a rattlesnake kiss. “Yeah doc, I got the blues. Got the blues so bad I could just die.”

It’s never somebody normal, it’s never a schizophrenic who just shits himself. No, always the crazy, off the walls, ‘couldn’t make this stuff up’ weirdos. “Well Danny, that sounds pretty serious.”

“ ‘Course it’s serious doc! I got the blues so bad I could just up an’ die!” He shouted, the sunglasses sliding down to the tip of his nose, and I could see his eyes were red with tears. He glanced up and caught me looking, then pushed the glasses back up to hide his tears.

I looked him up and down. It’s like he saw Rebel Without a Cause or The Wild One and just got lost in it. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. “So Danny, tell me why you’re here.”

“Well Doc, I’m…” He started to cry.

This isn’t just an act: maybe this guy’s just stuck in a timewarp.

“I’m jus’ so goddamn homesick.” Danny pushed the sunglasses up the bridge of his nose again and shrank down into the chair, but that didn’t stop the tears running out under his shades.

I flipped through his intake file and loosened my tie. “Danny, where’s home? It seems you didn’t list an address when you were admitted.”

“Well the thing is Doc: I didn’t want to lie, but I knew they wouldn’t believe me.”

“Believe you about what, Danny?”

“Well the thing is Doc: I’m an Alien.”

I don’t know why I balk anymore. Half the fucking people in here seem to think they’re either Charlemagne or Jesus Christ. But an alien? That’s a new one.

“Uh… What’s the name of your home planet, Danny?”

He slid down into the chair and put one arm around the backrest. “Aww geez doc, I can’t say. It’d take me a real long time to say the whole thing out loud, like we’re talking days, doc.”

“Well is there a shorthand? Like a ‘slang’ for your home planet?” Sometimes it’s hard to stomach this stuff: to act like you believe them, but trying to understand the full scope of their delusions is part of the process, and I needed Danny to trust me.

He shook his head. “You ain’t gonna believe this doc but uhh, they’re real strict about slang on my home planet. You either say the whole thing, find a way around saying it, or die the thousand deaths of the Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa.” He leaned forward to peer over the top of my clipboard. “Oh, if you’re writn’ that down doc, it’s a proper noun, so you gotta capitalize the first letter of each word.”

I found myself making the corrections to ‘Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa’. Wait, what the fuck am I doing!?

I decided I couldn’t let him deerail me. I had to keep the conversation on my terms, and follow my line of logic. “But Danny, how will they know you’re not saying the whole thing? How will they know you’re abbreviating the name if they’re on a different planet?” I know he’s going to have something stupid loaded up for this, and I’m just walking face first into a trap.

“They got satellites in my teeth, doc!” This guy’s fucking nuts!

“How exactly does an alien know what a proper noun is?”

“Uh… do you think we’re stupid, doc? Course’ we’re hip to your Earth ways, ya dig?” He reached into his boot and scratched his ankle. “Hey daddy o’, you got any smokes ‘round here!?”

“Sorry Danny, this whole hospital’s a tobacco free campus.” God I need a cigarette. “So on…” I looked down at the paper and read whatever nonsense I’d just written down, “So on ‘Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa’, they punished you for slang?”

“No doc, Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa is just the cat that they executed for using the slang name of -!” Danny’s eyebrows shot up over the top of his sunglasses, and he scooped the air back into his mouth with both hands, forcing the words back down his throat.

Danny slammed his fists down on the table and shouted at me: “JEEZ DOC, WHADDAYA TRYNA DO? GET ME KILLED?”

“Danny, I just want to-”

“-Doc, whatareya writn’ a book!? You think we didn’t do our homework, is that it?” I wrote down the words on notepad: book-homework. He scratched the back of his head, then the little prick pulled a cigarette out of nowhere and lit up. He was just about my age, maybe a year or two younger, or older even, but he acted like an 18 year old kid.

“Danny, you can’t smoke that in here.”

He exhaled a long drag right in my face. “Listen, daddy-o-”

My eyes stung from the hot smoke. “-It’s Doctor Kierkegaard, or ‘Doctor K’.” I warned him.

The room filled with secondhand and I looked up at the smoke detectors blinking red light, but for some reason it wouldn’t go off. Then my eyes darted up at the clock. 9:03: three minutes late for my next meeting. Thank God! “Well Danny, I’m afraid since I’ve got other meetings that’s all the time we have for today.”

He leaned the chair back on two legs. “Well doc, I’d say it’s been a pleasure but…”

What a prick.

TUESDAY

I drove to work that morning and pulled into my spot, even later than usual from traffic. I was on the phone with my lawyer all the way to work, trying to get this alimony resettled with Liz, but of course she’s trying to go to school for acupuncture or astrology or some other horseshit. Apparently if I get a raise under state law she can do that, which would explain the guy skulking outside my apartment last night with the fake moustache hanging from his upper lip by a four inch strand of spirit gum. God, I’m going to do myself a favor and just shoot my next ex wife in the head right after the honeymoon. I’d way rather be Scott Peterson than the asshole who gets taken for a ride.

When I walked in Danny was talking to Artie Tremonds and smoking a cigarette under the smoke alarm. “You know, I used to hang with the real Napoleon. Class act. Nuthin’ like yours truly.” Danny looked up at the ceiling and exhaled a blue ring of directly into the smoke detector.

“Sacré Bleu!” Tremonds darted his head around the room. “Nurseh! Nurseh! Thisa man haz leet a cigarette in ze nonsmoking area!”

“Some Napoleon! The real one used to smoke like a chimney!”

Rhonda saw Danny standing next to Tremonds, and it made her nervous. “Hey!” She said, hustling over to them. “You get away from him, right now!”

He tried to wave her off, but she stood there ignoring him, and apparently nobody noticed me enter the room. “And gimme that cigarette!” Rhonda demanded. Danny gave her the smoldering Kool and retreated to the back corner of the room to pout.

I checked in and called to him from interview room four. “All right Danny, we’re going to continue your intake evaluation.”

“ ‘S fine. This place is a drag anyway, man.” He said to nobody in particular, and Rhonda rolled her eyes as we filed into the dull green intake room. I opened the door, holding it for Danny as I coughed, choking on the stench of stale piss. God, was this place always such a shithole?

“So Danny, when we last left off we were talking about…” I had to look at my notepad to read whatever delusion this guy had come up with as a backstory. “Krzcha Auoot Kn’onraa, and how you’re from another planet. Would you care to elaborate on that?” I thought I heard Danny go ‘chk’, like he was sucking his teeth or something, but I should have known better.

“Yeah well, one day the warden was having a party, see? I was up in county, then the prison band starts playin’, n’ it was ca-ray-zee! I’m talkin’ everybody in the whole cell block, spider murphy playin’ on the saxophone, little Joey blowin’ on the slide trombone. You shoulda heard those knocked out jailbirds sing!”

I realized what he was doing, then I looked up at him, and if I wasn’t already furious then by that point I was down right livid. “Danny!” I snapped, taking the cigarette out of his mouth that he’d lit while I wasn’t looking, “That’s the plot of fucking ‘Jailhouse Rock’; the fucking ELVIS SONG!” The little bastard just looked at me with a shit-eating grin smeared all over his stupid fucking face!

“HAHAHAHA, sorry daddy-o, you just get so cranked up over nothin’!”

“Oh, you think you’re really fucking funny, don’t you!?”

I stood up, and backed over to the intercom and pressed the button. “Nurse, bring the patient to solitary, he needs to be heavily sedated.”

“You folks know hot to have a real good time round here!” He shouted at me, then the huge orderlies dragged him off, kicking and screaming. He snarled, raising his lip on one side, looked like he was winking at me or something, stomping one foot in rhythm as they hauled him off. He shouted at me “You ain't nothin but a hound-!” then they jammed the needle into his neck, and shot him full of promethazine hydrochloride. Danny went out like a light, and the two huge nurses hauled him off to his room, his heels dragging on the linoleum, and the right leg shaking every couple seconds in some kind of uncontrolled spasm.

I stood there in my padded cell, looking up at that blue moon, all alone. I opened my mouth with a dream in my heart and a private love all my own. As I tilted my head back and opened wide, my molars popped open like the hood of your grandaddy’s old Studebaker. Little satellite dishes shot up from of my teeth, and I could hear the mothership calling down to me. It said: “Little Rocketman, are you homesick? Do you miss your wife? It’s going to be a long, long time until touchdown brings you round again. We’ll bring you home, and we know you’ll prove us right: we know you’ll prove you’re the man we think you are.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m all burned up. Earth ain’t the kinda place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell.”

“Should we destroy it?”

I paused, and thought about it for a minute. “Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s give them a shot, see how they do.”

WEDNESDAY:

‘Hump day’. That’s what they call it. Yeah, ‘hump day’ my ass! I know I shouldn’t be so pessimistic. At least I’m almost halfway through. Now if I could just get rid of this patient.

Thank god the hippocratic oath is just for physicians. Apparently it’s not enough that work is a shit-show. Last night at my apartment, I could have sworn I caught that P.I. digging through the dumpsters! Lucky for him the vietnamese couple taking care of their great grandmother had just taken out their trash, which was full of the old woman’s shit-caked diapers. I’ve been in this business long enough to know the acrid stench of human waste. Although you don’t need to be Columbo to figure out there’s just about jack shit on me in my fucking trash. But hey, let the bastard have at it! ‘As you wish’, asshole!

I pulled into the parking lot and found who else but Nurse Hatchet into my spot. Furious, I walked into the office and dressed her down.

“Nurse Hatchet.”

“Mmmmmyello?” she said as I pinched my brow and shook my head.

“You do realize you’re parked in my spot, right?”

She hadn’t looked up from whatever paperwork she was fumbling over and I dropped my keys down onto the counter. She still didn’t look up.

“HEY!” I snapped, and instantly realized my mistake.

Nurse Hatchet stood up and leaned over the desk, pressing her face right up to me, and I couldn’t help but look down at her enormous rack. “Doctor Kierkegaard, there’s no need to get testy with me, I’m just trying to do my job, the same as you, the same as anybody, alright!?” She said, and Rhonda added: “You tell em’!” pushing a wheelchair to the storage closet.

I realized something was wrong. People like Rhonda and nurse Hatchet aren’t always the most cognizant of their surroundings or their mental state, but somebody like myself… well, ‘knows better’ isn’t exactly the right word, but still…

Something was changing in her, in Rhonda, in me… well, all of us really. It wasn’t just that people were rude, that’s to be expected after a certain trudging through the daily slog of working life, but it’s that something had fundamentally changed in the hospital. I could tell something was wrong, and it wasn’t just my god-damned parking spot! It was the whole hospital: staff, residents, everything!

That day I was doing rounds, which meant dealing with one of the hospital’s two hundred patients for twenty minutes, spending another hour writing a report, then going to the next one. I call this the ‘chicken nugget’ approach to psychiatric healthcare, because it’s cookie cutter, and woefully insufficient to actually addressing the problems of a very sick and desperate human being struggling in the grasp of the state. Today I was going to see Artie Tremonds, a man who came to the L.A. county Psychiatric Hospital in 1998, and since slipping into a delusional state in which he believed from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep (and strangely enough, even when he was asleep) that he literally was Napoleon Bonaparte, some time after he’d been exiled on the island of Saint Helena after having been defeated by the British and abdicating the throne. For the last 20 years Tremonds had made literally no progress whatsoever.

But today when I asked him some basic questions he started getting evasive in the weirdest ways.

“Do you still think that you’re Napoleon Boneparte?”

“You sinkeh you are-ah the only one wiz ze cleepboard, eh? You sinkeh zat just because you and ze British ‘ave trapped me ‘ere zat I will die of zis sickness!?”

Exhausted from an already long week, I tried to reason with Artie, a man fundamentally impervious to reason. I held up a mirror in front of him. “But can’t you see when you look in the mirror that you’re not Napoleon?”

Artie had white hair, a small, squat head, and he was tall, lanky old Irishman. In his youth he’d been one of the best defenders in college basketball, but now in his 80s he was just a liverspotted old wreck: someone who’d spent years researching french history and slipped into a world of delusion, where the only facts that mattered were his own.

He only looked at his reflection for an instant, before waving me off with one of his long, freckled arms covered in white hair. “Zis is just a trick of the British! Ze real foe is right zere!” He said, pointing to directly at me. “If you want ze real culprit you must turn your ze mirror of deception on yourself, and you will zee yourzelf for awhat you really are: a fake!”

We had almost been making real progress before this, but now Artie was ready to throw it all away, but I had no idea why.

“But it’s obvious you’re not Napoleon. He died almost 200 years ago! Don’t you remember the life you led before you came to this place? Don’t you remember your family, or your-”

He slammed his long arm on the table, and suddenly I was terrified. “You! You are ze liar! I am trying to do somesing great here, and you do no-sing but stymie me at every turn! Damn you! Damn you, you liar!”

“Artie,” I said, “What’s wrong? Everything was going so well just last week, but now you’re fighting the staff, you won’t take your medication, and you’re trying to bite people, refusing to cooperate-”

He shouted over me, “AHA! ZAT IZ ZE WORD, NO? La Coopération!” Artie spat on the ground, reinforcing his Napoleonic mannerism. “You, ze enemy of liberty, and ze arbiter wiz your thumb on ze scale! You; the man who would rape and defile ze sweet ladies of Liberty and Justice in a ménage à trois impie!”

He lunged at me, and just as I jumped back I ran to the door, the old man leapt from his wheelchair like a cat, skulking towards me, shoulders raised: some great irish lion and me, trapped in what was now his den. I reached behind me with my keycard and swiped at the scanner I couldn’t see. “BEEP!” I heard the electronic lock open and stepped through the door, slamming it shut after me, Artie’s face pressed up against the glass: his burst capillaries and maligned blackheads were crystal clear in the hallway’s glaring light, and the leering eyes of a madman following me as I turned to run away.

THURSDAY:

I should have listened to my old man. But sometimes you’re too stupid to know good advice when you hear it, and I’m not getting any younger. I really wish I could have kept making the payments on that Lincoln, but it was too much with my rent and the fucking alimony. I really loved that car. Hopefully the cunt gets cancer or something like that. Cunt-cancer… That’d serve her right!

After I reported the incident with Artie yesterday I decided to take the rest of the day off. He’s been heavily sedated and locked up since then, or so I’m told. I used to be more compassionate, but at this point I say fuck it: lock ‘em all up and throw away the key.

I walked in and Danny was just sitting there smoking like a goddamn chimney.

“Nurse Hatchet! What the fuck is Danny doing smoking, in the fucking common room!?” I turned to nurse Hatchet, who was showing so much clevage her titts were practically hanging out, not to mention she was smoking too.

“Yeah well, what’s it matter to you anyway!?” She said, jabbing at me with her lit cigarette.

“If you keep talking to me like that you’re going to find yourself out of a job pretty soon!” I straightened my tie and said to her: “And what are YOU doing smoking in here!? This is a goddamn hospital, not a…” I struggled to think of a place where smoking wasn’t banned in California, and came up short.

“A what?” She took another drag.

“Just put it out!”

She leered at me. “Or you’ll what, huh?”

Danny came over to us and ripped a drag. “Hey there dolly-” he said, lowering his glasses to show nurse Hatchet he was looking right at her tits. They were huge, and they weren’t the worse for wear either, considering her age.

I shook myself out of it and scolded her again: “I will call the inspector general if this doesn’t get sorted out quickly, nurse Hatchet!” Danny was standing there in his leather jacket, smoking a cigarette. I spun around and scolded her again. “And put out that goddamn cigarette! You too Danny!”

She smiled, and I caught her and Danny making eyes with each other. “Don’t look at HIM, nurse Hatchet! He’s the goddamn patient! Or have you forgotten that!?”

She chuckled, and he made a little spinning motion in the air with his finger to say ‘whoopty fuckin’ doo’. Shocked, my jaw dropped as I saw nurse Hatchet turn around and bend all the way over and stick her ass out. Danny started feeling his visible erection through the front of his jeans in an obscene and lurid display while he looked me in the eye and licked his lips. “Jesus Christ!?” I shouted, horrified, and called out for the orderlies: “Somebody get over here, RIGHT NOW!” and two huge guys showed up, Saul and Greg. Nice enough, but I’m pretty sure they barely had enough combined IQ to turn a doorknob, let alone screw in a lightbulb. “Saul, thank god you’re here!” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead. “Can you take Danny back to his room, please?” I wiped the sweaty forearm off on my shirt. “Oh, and take away his cigarettes! I think he keeps them in his boot or something!”

They looked at each other as if there were anything to confer about, then turned to me, and in perfect unison said: “Yeah, sure thing Doc.” Danny didn’t resist. I think he knew if he struggled, they’d probably pull one of his arms out of the socket, seeing as how each of them was about twice his size and then some. He was just puffing that fucking cigarette up all the way off to his cell.

FRIDAY:

There was a pile-up on the I-10, so traffic was backed up from Palm Springs all the way to Coachella, which was a fucking nightmare. The rattling AC in my Ford Taurus finally shit the bed halfway up the freeway, and my balls were in nut-soup by the time I hit the traffic jam. I was just about knocked out from the stench wafting up from my crotch, and I stank like a Skid Row bum.

“Nurse Hatchet?” I said, walking into the hospital. There were bloody footprints leading in every direction out of the supply closet around the corner.

The closet had been raided. Empty needles with their plungers depressed all the way, dozens of childproof caps rolled off in myriad geometries, and a minefield of broken pill bottles scowled up at me from the floor, their casualties’ blood pools and subsequent spoors leading out from the closet like some crimson fractal or otherwise sanguinary stampede.

Following the bloody footprints down a long hallway where they all congregated, I saw that Danny was sitting off to the side while Artie Tremonds was sitting behind a desk stacked up on a pile of mattresses, holding court.

“You ‘ave been found guilty, monsieur Hutchner, of committing treason and acts of sedition against ze state!” Tremonds barked from my office chair, which overlooked the whole room up on its platform of piss-stained mattresses stacked up underneath him on the cafeteria floor.

Lance Hutchner, one of the only patients I felt was making any progress was on his knees before the kangaroo court. He dropped down on all fours and began to beg. “Please! Please, please let me go! I didn’t do anything!”

Artie kept a stiff upper lip and motioned to his bailiffs dressed in their unbound straightjackets. They flanked Hutchner, lifted him to his feet, and dragged him over to a restraint chair, strapping him down at the wrists, elbows, shoulders, waists, and just about every other joint. Then they put a large box over his head and duct-taped it around his neck.

One of the patients walked over to Hutchner and held up a pair of scissors, ready to stab air holes right into the face of his cardboard box.

“Wait, stop!” I shouted, and all eyes turned to me.

Danny walked out of a darkened corner in the back of the room and stood next to an oxygen tank with a smoldering Kool in his mouth.

“Well, well, well, if it ain’t our old pal, Doc K.” He took a drag, pulled the cigarette out, and let it hang in his limp arm, inches away from the oxygen hose of the pressurized air tank.

My heart started racing at, and all the lunatics gazed on me with slavering intent. “Danny! Stop all this! Make these people go back to their rooms, and let’s talk about how we can get you back to…” I struggled to comb my memory for whatever dumbassed name he’d made up for his home planet- “K’nooch oon-raa!”

Danny narrowed his eyes, took another drag, then smiled. “You hear that guys? He wants to talk!” The murder of mad men stood cackling, hooting and howling as can only the wretched and the damned. I figured if I didn’t resolve the situation in about forty-five seconds I’d probably be tied up in a chair of my own, or worse. But then I felt a stinging pain in my neck, and the room went black.

When I woke up in the dark room I could smell Danny’s cigarette.

“Doc? You up, Doc?”

“Yes.”

“You see why I did it, don’t you doc?”

“No, please Danny, enlighten me.”

“Well, they wanted to blow you up. You and your whole planet. But I decided I had to stop them, or at least try.”

“Then why do all this!? Why go to all this trouble and not just blow the fucking thing up!?”

“Well doc, we got a saying. It doesn’t really translate too well, but loosely it means: ‘If they’re worth killing, they’re worth saving’. You know that Earth expression: the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

“Yes.”

“Well basically, if your enemy is a threat, you’d better make sure you know all his tricks before you kill him. If he dies, so do all his weapons and tactics, so we had to make sure we figured out all your Earth ways before we shot you down.”

“And so now you’re experimenting with lies!? How could a society so advanced it can put a person lightyears away into a different species’ body and blend them into their society!? Danny, you’re not an alien, you’re just fucking crazy!”

He sighed. “I was afraid you might say that, doc. But the pencil necks back home figured you’d have to cop to it before we could nix this big blue rock.”

“Cop to what?” I asked.

“We figured we’d have to get you to say something you knew wasn’t true, only you’d have to believe it. You’d have to lie, but without being dishonest, you dig?”

I could see the cherry red tip of his cigarette as he walked over to me from behind, and he stood at the end of whatever table I was strapped to.

“No Danny! No! What do you mean!? What are you talking about!?”

He heaved another sigh and seemed genuinely sad about whatever he was about to do. “Well I’m sorry Doc. I’m real sorry it’s gotta be this way, but…”

#literary fiction #read #long reads #free reads #bookish #iggers

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