#we talked at length about tread prints after that

[look-at-the-stars-tonight]

Yesterday at a store my friend picked up a pair of shoes and mentioned how difficult it would be to get away with murder wearing them because of the pattern on the bottom. The lady who owns the store was nearby and she chimed in about how she’s terrified that someone is going to murder someone while wearing shoes from her store because all of them have the store name on the bottom and I love strangers sm

#we talked at length about tread prints after that #next store was less pleasant because the lady decided to be racist to me and then covered it up by #INSISTING that she HAD to have met me before somewhere #like she spent five min talking about how we must know each other to the point where I was getting creeped out #to the point where my friends ended up gently pulling me out of the store because they were also getting a bit creeped out #and then that lady followed us out and told me specifically #not the others #just Me #to make sure I got home safe #and it felt like such a threat #these are two separate stories but I have to write 100 tags every time #it’s a compulsion #anyways Clark’s lady ur an icon #other store whose name I don’t remember lady #plz stay away from me please and thanks #I’ve never had someone look me in the eye and tell me to be safe and felt That emotion before #shrimp emotions but in a bad way #we also promised the First lady that we wouldn’t commit any murders #at least not wearing her shoes #it was such a delightful interaction I love talking to strangers sometimes

[codylabs]

The Bottomless Pit

New scifi-horror story! Well, not exactly new, I’ve had it finished for a year or so now, but never shared it on Tumblr. It’s an entirely original story, so don’t expect any familiar characters or places. But it does introduce one or two pieces of worldbuilding for my original universe, which will be important for some of my other upcoming stories, so I figured now would be a good time to share it.

Enjoy.

Part 1

Once upon a time, far from here, at the bottom of the deepest shaft of the deepest mine, two boys stood regarding a pit that led yet deeper.

“You sure about this?”

“Yeah! C’mon, it’s not like there’s anything dangerous down there!”

Louis nervously leaned out over the fissure as far as he dared. It was true, there didn’t rightly seem to be anything at all down there; just blackness. The walls of the fissure passed beyond the range of their headlamps after the first twenty meters, and after that, floors and walls became nothing but indistinct void. It must be fifty meters deep, at least.

“You just let me down,” Peter pointed to the towing winch built into the belt of Louis’s suit. “Until I touch the bottom. And then when you see me standing down there walking around, you’ll be brave enough to come down too.”

“…What if there is no bottom?”

"...What do you mean 'if there's no bottom'? What else would there be?"

"I...? Uh... You know? I dunno."

"Every hole on every single one of the hundred million brazillion planets and moons in the universe has a bottom. Because if it didn’t, it would go straight through the place, and there’d be magma everywhere right? Which would make it not dark. But it is dark. Which means it doesn’t go forever.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Louis’s helmet was rattling around on his head as he shifted his weight this way and that, trying to find a comfortable position where he wasn’t sweaty. Even through a thick pressure suit, the body language was apparent. “I mean, like… Like… Okay, never mind.”

“C’mon dude. This is basic simple science stuff. And since basic simple science proves that there is a bottom, we can therefore find that bottom!”

“Yeah…”

“We know space pirates once used this moon as a hideaway. Maybe they hid treasure down there!”

“That’s stupid.”

“It’s not, it’s true. And it makes sense for them to hide their treasure down in the deepest, darkest hole they could find. And what’s deeper and darker than here? Nothing, that’s what! Look, my GPS says we’re… What, a kilometer below the surface already? No mines go that deep! This must’ve been dug by the first colony! You know. Before they disappeared.”

“Yeah, well…” Louis glancing at the floor behind them. “...Well, I guess the footprints were pretty weird.”

With no wind and no water on this moon, dust and dirt and stone remain exactly as they are until something disturbs them, meaning that footprints last forever, with newer ones layering on top of old ones. In a long-abandoned mine like this, one would have expected the most recent, top layer of prints to have been left by the mining tractor; the one that dug the tunnel. In most of the other tunnels, that’s just how it was. After all, there was never any reason the miners themselves to bodily enter the tunnel.

Except here, the tread marks weren’t the last tracks.

Louis and Peter had followed a set of three tracks, tracks from adult human boots, all the way down here… Two sets had been leading up to this very hole… But only one set could be seen returning…

“It must be pirates.” Peter nodded, as he gazed down into the crevice. “It’s the only explanation… That or aliens.”

“Aliens don’t exist.”

“Yeah, and that just leaves pirates, which makes more sense anyway.” Peter explained. “See, the Captain must have needed help from his second-in command to carry the treasure chest, but when they threw it in the hole, the Captian shot his buddy and threw him in too! Because the Captain knew that all pirates are nothing but dirty thieving buccaneers, so to keep his greatest fortune safe, he made sure that nobody else knew…! I bet we’ll find an evaporated mummy with a busted faceplate down there… And riches… Riches worth killing over… Gold and crystals and ancient forms of currency that have all been forgotten for centuries…”

Louis’s body language said he was almost convinced. (Not convinced enough to believe it, but almost convinced enough to try exploring it.) “But…” He offered one last objection. “Maybe they were just explorers or something. You know, like us. Maybe his buddy just got hurt down there, so he just carried him out… I mean, it doesn’t necessarily mean one of them died down there…”

“But there’s no piton left behind.” Peter gestured to the tunnel floor around them. “And no place where one was driven in… And they weren’t using jetpacks either, because there’s no disturbance in the dust from the downdraft… Which means they had no way back out.”

That tipped Louis over the edge, and he reluctantly began to unpack his climbing gear. “Oh-kaaaay…” He sighed, as he aimed the power-driver at the tunnel floor. There was a burst of compressed air from the driver, and a piton appeared in front of the barrel, embedded securely in the rock. He unspooled a length of cable from the winch and passed it through the piton’s pulley, then handed the end to Peter. “But… Uh… If you find anything scary down there, could you bring it back up so I can see it please?”

“You’re a baby.” Peter locked the cable into his harness, and stepped up to the edge of the crevice. “How are you a boy scout if you’re such a baby?”

“I’m a boy scout because I know everything.” Louis frowned, as he braced his feet against the side of the tunnel to balance out the winch. “I know how to maintenance all the types of engines that we use. I know how to build an airtight shelter out of nothing but rocks and resin. I know how to recycle urine without ever taking off my suit. I can signal for help in 23 languages. If we were crashlanded, then I would be the hero, and you would be the bumbling sidekick.”

“You also know how to be a baby.”

“I also know there was never any pirates on this moon.” Louis added. “Those are just rumors that sprung up around the old military depot in the Eastern hemisphere.”

“Which was destroyed by pirates!” Peter reminded him as he leaned into the cable. He bounced slightly, just to convince his mind that the thin material could actually hold his weight.

“Destroyed by themselves via routine self-destruction. That was standard scorched-earth policy back during the war.”

Louis leaned out over the blackness, at an angle where the cable was supporting the majority of his weight. And he prepared to step out into darkness. “Being a baby must be standard policy too, huh?”

"In certain circumstances yes, maybe being a baby is standard policy.”

“Your mom is standard policy.”

“Negative.”

“Line down.”

Naturally, Louis’s winch made no sound in the airless environment. All Peter could hear were his own boots scuffling and sliding down the first section of the crevice sides, and the faint rhythm of the winch vibrating down through the taught cable. And, of course, there were all the familiar background sounds: the hissing of the life support in his pack, the whirring of the water pump warming his extremities. And above all, his helmet echoed his own breathing back toward him, muffled and close and incredibly loud. That omnipresent, overbearing sound of breathing used to scare him when he’d first worn a space suit; made him feel either profoundly claustrophobic and alone, or feel like Darth Vader was standing behind him.

But now he was a boy scout. And boy scouts are many things. They aren’t babies, first of all. Second of all, they’re responsible, and dutiful, and they know their equipment. Third, they can survive outdoors. So in this day and age, when most doors opened into hard vacuum, you can know for darn sure that a good boy scout isn’t afraid to be out on his own in it, locking his life behind nothing but a little fabric and glass.

This fabric and glass was rugged, and tough, and meticulously well-maintained. It was his armor. And inside it, he was as safe. Safe as he was in his own home.

Peter found that the crevice was widening as he descended. The tunnel wall dropped sideways from beneath his feet, and he soon found himself hovering on his back, suspended from his harness like a sack of freight as the walls continued to recede above him. “Louis be advised.” Peter said. “Tunnel is widening significantly. I have lost physical contact with the wall. Over.”

“How is visual contact? Over.” Louis’s voice came through Peter’s radio, as it always had.

Peter looked left, and right. The ‘hole’ they’d descended seemed to actually be some sort of chasm or fissure, running through the moon’s crust like a cut or a tectonic crack. It stretched off into blackness to either end, far further than his beam could search, must be more than a hundred meters. As for the walls to either side of him, they were widening, dropping off into the distance steadily, like the incredibly steep, jagged walls of an upside-down canyon. He could still see them, but his light could only reach so far; if they became dim enough, he wouldn’t be able to focus on them past the slight glare reflecting off the scratches in his helmet.

And no, he could not yet see the bottom.

“Mediocre, and getting worse. Over.” Peter answered.

“Do you wish to abort? Over.” Louis asked.

“No!” Peter let himself hang flat on his back again, so he was looking straight up the cable at the opening above him. The glow from Louis’s light was brightly illuminating the inside of the mineshaft, forming a jagged splotch of bright brown surrounding the cable’s end. “No…” He repeated, talking to the light. “Just a bigger hole than I thought, that’s all. Don’t blame the Captain for throwing his treasure down here; it’s a good hiding spot. Over.”

Louis ignored that.

The winch continued to spin, the cable continued to unwind, the light continued to shrink above, the walls continued to recede.

“Peter be advised…” Louis’s voice was slow and careful, not quite nervous. “Tension in cable seems slightly uneven. Over.”

“Uneven?” Peter frowned up at his friend. “Louis, please elaborate. Over.”

“It’s decreasing… Like you’re getting lighter… Are you dropping rocks out of your pockets or anything? Over.”

“No… Is your winch speeding up?”

“No…”

There was a brief moment of silence while they both pondered all this.

“Maybe your legs are going numb.” Peter suggested. “Uh, over.”

“Maybe… Yeah, I dunno, I don’t think so… Seriously, if you’re messing with me-”

“I’m not messing with you…” That gave Peter an idea: mess with him. He began to flail his arms and legs to make the line bounce. “I… I think I feel it too!”

“You feel the tension decreasing?”

“No, it’s just kind of… Bumpy… Like somebody’s shaking it…! Are you moving around up there?”

“N-no, I’m not moving an inch!” Louis said. “Uh… Oh, wow, actually yeah, I can feel it bouncing too now!”

“I think something’s on the cable!” Peter cried out. “I think something grabbed it! Oh no, I can see it! OH MY GEEZ! It’s coming toward me!”

“WHATISWHATIS WHAT’S COMING TOWARD YOU?!?” Louis was getting hysterical.

The bumping in the line stopped. All was silent on the radio. Peter held his breath in gleeful anticipation.

“Oh.” Louis said after a few seconds. “Ha ha. Very funny. Over.”

“PFFWA HA HA!” Peter burst out in a spasm of laughter. “You should have heard you! Over.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, you’ve had your laugh, now no more thrashing around, alright? Like seriously, you’ll freak me out… And if you were just planning on making a fool of me, you shouldn’t have invited me on the mission… Over.”

“It’s not a ‘mission’, and I didn’t ‘invite’ you. I said I was gonna go look for pirate treasure, and then you begged to come along. Over.”

“I didn’t beg.”

“Did too.”

“You’re stupid. Over.”

“You’re a baby. Now keep lining down; I never said stop. Over.”

Louis sighed and flipped the switch again.

The winch started spinning again.

Peter continued to drop.

Five minutes later, Louis finally spoke. “Peter come in; please tell me you’re getting near the bottom…! Over!”

Peter looked over his shoulder. “No, still can’t see a thing down there, over.”

Five minutes further, Louis’s voice had a sharpness to it. “WHEN should we abort, over?”

“Would you quit it with the abort talk?” Peter snapped, and shook his fist up at the fading light. “Just keep spooling down until I tell you to stop, okay? You’ve got, like, a barjillion meters of line in your winch, and it’s rated for, what, two tons?”

“Four.”

“Four! Four tons! That’s about 100 of me! In Earth gravity! This is, like, less than half Earth gravity, so that thing should be able to hold 200 of me, easy! I’m literally in no danger at all! Over.”

“But…!”

“Just keep spooling down until I tell you to stop. Okay? Over.”

“…Okay. Over.”

“Great. Over.”

“Yeah… Yeah, great. I will. Over.”

“Over.”

“Over yourself.”

“Over times two.”

“Over infinity. Over.”

The walls were getting wider and wider still, and Peter’s light was getting no brighter. Soon, the passing rock began to fade. Nothing mysterious about it, the walls just receded further and further until they merged with the black background, leaving nothing but blurs and shadows. And as Peter waited, it seemed that even those blurs were inching their way upward, to disappear into the ever-growing darkness he’d already passed.

Only the speck of light from the distant mineshaft remained clearly visible directly above; that and whatever length of cable was near enough to be seen. A pinpoint of light piercing down at him, and the cable pointing toward it like a finger, as if to remind him that he was not some lonely spider suspended on a web, but that there was light, and company, and good solid ground awaiting him above, whenever he should choose to return.

The last glimpses of rocks passed out of sight. There may as well be no more walls. He looked over his shoulder again, hoping, if not expecting, the floor to be coming up to meet him soon. Surely the bottom must be approaching soon, right…? But it was not.

His light had become utterly useless now, with nothing else around to illuminate. And when that realization struck him, it sowed the seed of doubt. Maybe Louis’s right. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. I should abort, let him reel me back topside, come back later with the scout leader and a big crane and some huge ol’ searchlights… Yeah… Yeah, this hole, this CHASM, was bigger than I ever would have imagined, and one kid with a headlamp isn’t enough to conquer it…

No…

No, keep going, Peter.

It’s got to end sometime.

He looked up at Louis’s dot of light above him. It’s got to end sometime. It’s not bottomless.

Unease built.

It festered in the back of his mind, surged forward every once in a while to try to bring him to panic, to get him to give up, but each time he forced it back. More and more he found himself staring upwards at the spot of light. Strangely enough, it seemed to be getting reddish. As if blood were throbbing forward into his eyesockets, or as if he was gradually being engulfed in some fog, or filter. Perhaps this pit was flooded with trace amounts of some heavy, reddish gas, and as he descended the depths of it clouded over.

However it was happening, he had become utterly fixated on that spot of light, measuring how it faded and shrunk and reddened, trying to estimate when that final singular anchor would fade away.

Five more minutes passed.

You know, it was bizarre. He hadn’t noticed it quite as fast as Louis had, since he’d been hanging comfortably by his harness instead of bracing against the walls with the winch, but Louis was right: the tension in the line was decreasing.

How was it decreasing? How did that make any sense? No, he wasn’t dropping rocks from his pockets, no, the winch couldn’t be gradually accelerating, as the motor only went one speed… It didn’t make any sense.

Ten minutes.

The light… Was the light getting fainter up above? It seems that now, Peter could barely make out the pinprick of red light that was the opening of the mineshaft. There was only the cable, and himself, hanging in the black.

Nineteen minutes.

Nineteen and a half minutes.

Peter found himself staring at the timer in his helmet, waiting for the seconds to finally add up to the big two-oh, and he’d finally have a good round number to affix to his boredom, and his boredom was the excuse he would affix to his request that they finally abort this pointless plunge.

“H-hey!” He radioed up to Louis. “Y-you know dude, th-th-this is a drag. It’s been twenty minutes. Let’s just reverse it now, eh? This is getting silly! Bring me back up! Over.” It felt really good to finally say it actually; to admit that his friend was right; to give up. It felt good, in a way, to never have to discover what lay at the bottom of this hole.

But horror beyond all horrors, there was no answer!

“Louis? LOUIS! Louis, come in! Louis, do you read?!? Over!”

He was still going down!

“LOUIS COME IN!”

His friend didn’t respond, but the line kept descending, and the tension kept lowering, and the light was very, very red and kept fading, and Peter found himself in tears, crying and trembling.

He looked back over his shoulder again, but he still couldn’t see the bottom!

What’s going on?!? Why can’t Louis hear me?!? How far down does it go?!?

In a sudden flash of inspiration, he remembered; he remembered what he should have done in the first place, before ever starting into the pit. How could I forget? In all the movies, whenever anybody descends into the dark, they always throw a flare or a flashlight or a torch first! They always drop a light so they can get a gauge of how far it goes! It’s only smart! Heck, forget movies, I’m a boy scout! I should have instantly known to do that, how could I forget?!?

I still can!

With shaking hands he fumbled the emergency flare gun out of his belt, and loaded a brightly-colored canister into the barrel. Then he twisted around in the harness, pointed the gun straight downwards into the exact center of that gaping black void, and pulled the trigger.

The flare burst from the gun, and flew straight down. Gravity continuously accelerated it, and without air resistance, it kept going faster and faster, a brilliant yellow missile glowing with incredible brightness, speeding ever faster.

And continued.

And continued.

And continued.

It slowly faded from yellow to white to blue, growing steadily more distant and small and faint with the distance. Finally, after craning his neck to watch it for what felt like minutes, he found he could no longer even see it.

Good grief! Up on the surface, those flares are normally visible from kilometers out! Kilometers!

Louis was right all along! It’s bottomless! IT’S A BOTTOMLESS PIT!!

He looked back upwards. His panic, which was already skyrocketing, was suddenly compounded when he realized that he couldn’t see the light of the mineshaft anymore. He hurriedly turned off the light in his own helmet, in hopes that he could see better without the slight glare. Yes, that was it; if he killed all his own lights, he could just barely make out the mineshaft, shining like a red star high above. “Louis!” He screamed into his radio. “Louis, bring me up! It’s bottomless! You were right, it goes on forever! You gotta bring me up! Abort! LINE UP!!”

No answer.

He fumbled a second flare out of his pocket, and reloaded. Taking careful aim, the very most meticulous and steady aim, he pointed the missile directly at the patch of light. Perhaps if he could be a totally bona-fide sniper with this little flare pistol, perhaps if the flare traveled dead-center, then perhaps it would get near enough to the shaft for Louis to glimpse its glow, and realize that their radios had been somehow compromised, and reverse the line.

He fired.

The second yellow missile streaked from the gun, this time in exactly the opposite direction of the first.

It went straight up, growing redder and redder as it did.

A minute later, it returned to its yellow color as it came straight back down. It passed by Peter again not 10 meters to his left.

And it disappeared into the dark below with the other flare, once again fading to white and then blue. Now that Peter had his lights off, he thought he could still see the first flare glowing in the incredible distance. It hadn’t hit the floor yet.

Bottomless, bottomless…

He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to look at anything anymore. Wanting to exchange the hungry, malicious blackness around him for the close, comfy blackness of the backside of his eyelids. Anything to pretend he wasn’t where he was. But the silence was heavy on his ears. Louis wasn’t there any more, only the hissing of his suit’s life support, the whirring of its heater, and his own breathing. And of course he couldn’t ignore the tension in his harness; The tension is still dropping! Now it’s about half what it should be; like for some physically impossible reason the cable is just stretching and I’m falling faster and faster forever and ever and I can’t feel it! Except I can feel it! I feel like I weigh half of what I ought, like I’m halfway to the moon’s center. But that’s impossible! How could he lower me so deep? And if I’m so deep, where’s the magma?!? Oh God, how can it not have a bottom?!?

God…

That’s right, God!

Without any hesitation, Peter curled into a ball, folded the gloves of his spacesuit against his helmet, and began to pray.

“Dear God…! Dear God, come in God! God come in, I’m scared! Please help! Please help it not be bottomless!” He wondered if there was some kind of enormous monster instead of a bottom, or if the moon was hollow and infested with Aliens, or if this pit led straight to hell. “Please make Louis reverse the line!” He pleaded. “Please make it be alright again…! And…! Andandand if you don’t do any of those other things God, then please, please, please make me brave…!”

He continued down.

“Please make me brave.”

He never stopped.

“A-a-amen… Over.” He stuttered. And as his prayer finished, he knew that even through a kilometer of stone, even across the vast reaches of space, even from out of the depths of this unbelievable void, God had heard him. That’s right… God is in control… God knows where this pit leads, heck, he probably created this pit! That means he knows when I’ll reach the bottom. He knows if I’m gonna get back out or if I’m gonna die… In fact, he knew all this before I ever got up this morning. He knows what I’ll find down here, and he still loves me… God loves me. He’s still looking out for me.

Even down here.

And God answered Peter’s prayer; God made him brave.

Peter opened his eyes.

And then he turned his lights back on, and found that the empty pit wasn’t quite so empty anymore. Way off in the distance to his left and right, his lights seemed to be illuminating something… Not a bottom, but something along the walls; yes, the walls seemed to be narrowing again, at least partially… That was a good sign.

The walls got nearer.

And now that they were back in range of his light, he could see something really quite strange: they were no longer made of rock. He could scarcely believe his eyes at first, but the walls were made of metal now, shinier and more uniform. On his left side, he was currently moving past some kind of enormous, curved surface, like the flank of an incredible water tank. A line of rivets bordering a seam confirmed its artificial nature.

On his other side, there was what appeared to be some kind of weight-bearing truss, like you’d see holding up the archways of an old bridge. There was another tank beside the truss too, and what looked like a ganglion of pipes, just on the edge of the range of his light.

As he continued downward, there were other structures. There were round, rivetted tanks similar to the first one, most of them smaller and miscellaneous, but a few quite a bit larger. In between the tanks and the trusses, great cuboid somethings were bolted to trusses, and the housings and shafts of unfamiliar machinery poked out and interconnected here and there. All through the labyrinthian industrial complex, pipes of every imaginable shape and size stretched and curled.

He sure was glad that God had made him brave. With that bravery, he hazarded another communication. “Louis, be advised.” He said, just in case his friend was still able to hear him. “The tunnel walls now appear populated with mechanical structures. Looks like it could be a factory or a refining installation of some kind. Maybe something else. Not seeing any movement or people, so I think it’s abandoned. And there are no lights, so I’m assuming it’s powerless. I’m also not seeing any words or language on any of the pipes, so your guess is good as mine as to who made it… Yeah. Anyway, it’s weird. Over.”

Louis evidently didn’t hear him.

“Louis, be advised.” He continued a few minutes later. “Looks like the machinery is ending. The last of it is passing out of sight, and I’m in blackness again. It was all just on the walls, and the pit itself is still bottomless… Over.”

The tension in the line was as low as it ever had been, perhaps a quarter of his own weight. He thought back for a moment to his science classes: Newton said that if he wasn’t changing speed at all, then that means the total amount of force on him balanced out to zero. Meaning the tension in the line must be equal to his weight, which meant that he must be getting lighter. But he wasn’t losing any mass, so that means the gravity must be decreasing. Somehow.

He imagined that if it continued, he would eventually be weightless entirely. It didn’t make any sense to him how that was happening, but he understood how the affect was progressing, and it was consistent and logical in its own queer way.

It was logical. It didn’t necessarily make sense, but it made a sense.

The logic and predictability of it made him feel a little better, and he allowed himself to relax. In fact, as he rested on the end of the tether under ever-decreasing stress, the inside of his suit began to seem very comfy. Indeed, he even began to feel sleepy…

Well… I can’t keep going down forever. Louis doesn’t have infinite cable in his winch, and his winch doesn’t have infinite batteries. He’s smart enough to know when enough is enough, and he’ll bring me back up eventually.

…

Thank you, God, for making me brave.

He turned off his light to save battery power in the suit, and settled back to wait.

#scifi #horror #original story #The Bottomless Pit #natives of the void

[thatboomerkid]

PORTALS

We open weird portals to the Underworld and pull the Damned out for cash [part 1]

Hellcrashers Fiction by Nonbinary Bones

I broke open the factory door with a crowbar and entered a decrepit manufacturing plant. The soot-covered facility went bankrupt years ago and still leaked chemical waste into the “Mighty Missisip’” several decades later.

For a brief moment, the only noises were the icy wind racing over the waterfront and the soft ticking sound of the van’s engine behind me. The side panel of the van slid open.

“Sweet baby Jesus, it’s colder than a witches’ tit in a brass bra out here!” Felix exclaimed.

I nodded my agreement as a mechanized lift lowered my co-worker’s wheelchair to the ground.

Jackie hopped from the passenger seat, her military boots crunching on the wooden timbers of the boardwalk.

Sections of the greasy promenade had rotted away, revealing the polluted harbor below. The rancid waters stank of dead fish and petroleum. A huge rickety crane loomed overhead, its base squatting in the water, rusting its way towards oblivion.

Jackie opened the back of the van, rooted around, then pulled a bulletproof vest on over her tank top. She held another vest out in her grimy hand. I took it with a grateful nod.

Vasquez put The Club on the steering wheel, a sunshield on the dash, and began inspecting his gear. He may have been an OCD prick, but he knew how to plan a job.

New Kid hovered nearby, hands in his pockets.

“Hey Bitchnugget, try doing something useful for a change!” Felix jibed.

We grabbed our camping gear and entered the factory. Light filtered in through broken windows from sodium streetlamps outside. The center of the room was illuminated, but darkness clung to the corners. Conveyor belts and walkways filled the cavernous space like a real-life version of Chutes and Ladders. The air reeked of grease and metal. Rusted machinery spoke of long years of disuse.

Felix accidentally rolled right through a pile of animal droppings and cried out in disgust at getting shit in the tire treads. His shouts echoed in the gloom.

I dropped a duffel to the floor and opened it up, revealing a cache of weapons. We divvied up the contents so each of us had gas masks and guns.

“Alright everyone, huddle up.” I said. Everyone gathered in a semi-circle. “Vasquez, give us the rundown.”

“Today is a standard snatch-and-grab. Our target is named Aurora Laura.” He held up a centerfold spread ripped from an adult magazine. The lewd pose didn’t leave much to the imagination. “Real name Laura Brown. Originally from Omaha.” He squinted at the glossy pages. “Measures 34B, Waist 25, Hips 26. Likes puppies and men who aren’t afraid to show their vulnerable side.”

The New Kid blushed, Jackie snorted, and Felix grinned.

“We have reliable intel that the client’s Dearly Departed is being held in a Domain known as Hotel California. Basically, it’s worse than the worst ‘No-Tell Motel’ you’ve ever imagined; word on the street says each Dweller gets their own room, so we’re searching door to door.” He sighed.

The rest of us groaned out loud. “The floor-plan tends to change on its own, so watch out for that. This isn’t Scooby-Doo: we do not split up under any circumstances.”

“If you see something valuable on the way out, grab it. And I’m talking something portable. Smaller than a breadbox. We don’t want another incident like last time.”

Vasquez looked pointedly at Felix before continuing.

“Garrett, you’ll pop the Cherry for us.”

I nodded in response.

“We go in, acquire the target, and get the fuck out of Dodge. Any questions?” Vasquez looked at each of us with an upraised eyebrow.

New Kid raised his hand like a schoolboy.

“Why am I not surprised?” Felix asked the ceiling.

“What’s a Cherry?”

“It’s a door, Kid. A gateway Down Below Where The Bad Men Go.”

“Oh, right.” he said, blushing.

“Okay then, let’s get to it.” I said.

Past wasp’s nests and sticky linoleum floors I found a door with an “Employees Only” sign on it. The door-frame sagged, dislocated from rotted walls heavy with mildew. The door had warped over time so even though it was unlocked I almost couldn’t get it to budge. The factory door bore battle scars and boot prints from a hard fight with someone who lacked a crowbar. Someone like me. Busting open the door revealed a tiny office containing a desk, chairs, and an empty safe. Nothing worthwhile. I closed the door again.

From my backpack I took a jar of a milky yellow fluid and a barbecue basting brush. When I unscrewed the lid, a nasty rotting smell wafted out. My nose wrinkled in distaste as I began painting the door hinges in slime.

“What the Hell is that?” inquired the New Kid over my shoulder.

“Kid, Crashers never say the H-Word. Never. Not even Topside if we can avoid it. I told you this before we started.” I said.

“Aw, come on! That’s some superstitious bullshit!”

“I mean it.” I glared at him. “Watch your fucking mouth or you’ll jinx the whole Crash. Do not say the H-Word.”

“Sorry. What the heck is that?”

“Ever hear of ‘bukkake’?” I replied.

“No?”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, but why are you doing that?”

“This particular Cherry won’t pop until the hinges have been lubed with actual body secretions. And before you ask: no, spit won’t cut it. Just be grateful the gateway doesn’t need it fresh.”

“Are they all like that?”

“No, some of them only open at midnight or you have to make a cat cry in pain. It depends on the Cherry.”

“Can I ask you a question?” the Kid asked, shuffling his feet uncertainly.

“Another one? Sure, Kid. Ask away.” I replied patiently.

“What makes a Cherry open where it does? I mean, if they can open anywhere how come a gateway doesn’t open up in the middle of Times Square? Or in a daycare?”

I paused for a long moment, considering.

“Rust and despair. Plants need water and sunshine. Mushrooms need shade and shit. Cherries need rust and despair. Simple as that.”

When I finished painting the hinges the door creaked open on its own, this time revealing a rickety wooden staircase down into darkness. Felix cracked a couple chemical glow sticks and shook them. They began glowing with a golden-green light and he tossed them through the doorway.

I grabbed the handles behind Felix’s wheelchair and edged it closer to the Cherry.

“Hey careful with the merchandise, peasant!”

“I ain’t afraid to kick a cripple downstairs.”

Felix stood up on the other side of the portal.

“What the fuck? You’re just faking?” Kid asked in an angry, disbelieving tone with eyes wide as dinner plates.

“No, Cuntpuddle.” Felix said, rolling his eyes. “My legs don’t work Topside, but they work just fine in the Nether.”

“Topside?”

“That’s just a slang term for the world we live in. Topside is the place that the Damned covet beyond all else and the rest of us take pretty much entirely for granted. Don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone, as they say. It’s the world you see out your window, where we get born, fuck around, and die. It is what it is and for the most part it’s a pretty okay place to be. For the most part.”

“But how can he walk on the other side of the gate?”

“I don’t know Kid, but as soon as you figure it out let me know.” I said.

We turned on our lights and the five of us moved slowly downwards, footsteps echoing in the gloom.

The staircase was built out of salvaged boards, no two of which were the same; different lengths, different colors. There were fourteen steps exactly, but the topmost step was smaller than all the others and bright red. A last minute addition to avoid Unlucky 13 perhaps.

My nerves were on edge as we descended. Every little creaking step telegraphed our movements to anything lurking nearby.

At the bottom of the stairs we found a diseased and barren wasteland. The ground was black and filthy like the Athabasca oil sands of Canada. My throat and lungs ached. Noxious smoke filled the air and made breathing a chore.

I saw a hundred burning fires lighting up the distant mountains. That made me real tense. I’d watched “The Hills Have Eyes” once and the things down here would have put cannibal mutant rapists to shame.

Glancing backwards, I saw the staircase slowly disappearing like it’d never existed.

----------

In front of us, our destination was uncomfortably close. Squatting less than two hundred yards away was a dilapidated motel modeled after every circa-1940s cheaper-than-shit roadside inn on “the wrong side of the tracks” but worse. The walls had been marred by fire. A flickering red neon sign stuttered “VACANCY” into the night. On the porch was a screen door creaking back and forth on its hinges as if begging for relief. Acid rain tinkled weakly against the corrugated tin roof.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Hotel California.” I said.

Inside, we found rusted pipes leaking raw sewage and rotting the stucco. Fungal blooms spread over paper-thin plywood with the texture of rotten leaves splintering at the softest touch. Nearly every window was boarded up over the remnants of razor-sharp glass.

We searched room to room, seeing some of the sickest things you’ve never imagined. Things that can’t be unseen. It took us almost three days to find our target. I think the New Kid must have puked twenty times during that stretch.

Sleep was damn-near impossible for a variety of reasons. The moth-eaten sheets were stained yellow, constantly and consistently damp with every body fluid imaginable.

Thanks to the AC units mounted in the walls, most of the rooms were freezing cold and when I say freezing cold I mean actual people covered in actual ice. Never thought I’d see someone with their own urine frozen in an icicle hanging from their crotch.

Some of the rooms were blazing hot, literally cooking the inhabitants alive.

“Mmm! Smells like down-home cooking!” Felix quipped as he caught a whiff of scorched human flesh.

The ice machine down the hall never actually worked until you were attempting to sleep at which point it spontaneously turned on. It wouldn’t do a damn thing when you wanted it to but it would happily and loudly make the sound of a thousand blenders grinding away at a fistful of pebbles as soon as you laid down.

The first night we were camping in one of the motel rooms when the old TV in the corner suddenly turned itself on, self-tuned those old rabbit ear antennas covered in foil, and scared the ever-loving crap out of us by blasting some repugnant program at maximum volume.

The New Kid unplugged the television from the wall, but it stayed on anyway, causing him to start pounding on it angrily.

“Kid, quit making such a damn racket.” Vasquez said.

“Okay, fine.” the New Kid huffed, throwing himself down on the bed. “So here’s a question.”

“Jerkstain, your entire life is one big fucking question.” Felix quipped.

“Where do those shows come from? Is it something the Hotel made to screw with us?”

“Actually, that is a good question.” I said, busily stripping, cleaning, and reassembling my rifle. “I’m fairly certain those shows are piped in from CRT.”

“CRT?”

“It’s another Domain in the Big Bad. Except instead of a motel imagine a sewer filled with television sets and bad wiring. All the TV channels are fucked-up versions of the worst shows ever made.”

“Yeah Dickcheese, if you survive this job maybe someday you’ll get to go there!” Felix said, holding out a flask.

The Kid ignored the jibe but accepted the flask and took a swig of whiskey.

“For example?”

“Okay, you’ve seen the show ‘Survivor?’ Now imagine it’s more like the Hunger Games except the contestants hunt and eat each other to survive.”

“Jesus…”

“Trust me Kid; you really don’t want to watch anything on that boob tube. Here’s a question for you, Kid. How’d you get into this line of work?”

“Well… I dropped out of high school and started getting into trouble, hanging out with a bad crowd. One night my gang broke into a moving van and the cops spotted us. So I ran and made it into the basement of an abandoned meat packing plant. Found a door leading to a hallway made of baby teeth. The cops following me got eaten by a monster made out of tumors and barbed wire. Bought me time to get back Topside. After that, it was only a matter of time before I found more Crashers. What about you guys?”

“Back in the day I was a long-haul trucker until I went into the wrong goddamn gas station. My partner never really came out again. I found that I’d lost the use of my legs when I dragged myself out of the Pit. I figure if I keep Crashing I’ll find a way to make them work permanently.”

“How about you?”

“Me? I’m in it for the money. Cold, hard cash. This ain’t no charity; I got bills to pay. When I do a job, I expect to get paid.” I said.

“Amen to that, brother.” Jackie said, tilting a bottle in my direction with a nod. “The bigger the paycheck the better.”

“How about you Vasquez? How’d you get into this line of work?”

“I’ve been doing this my whole life, man.” Vasquez replied.

“Say what now?”

“When I was a kid, I was a refugee. My dad brought me to the U.S. from Cuba on a raft made out of old plastic barrels he lashed together. I think I was about nine, maybe ten years old at the time.”

“You’re a Cuban?”

“Cuban-American to you, gringo. I’m a Hialeah boy, born and raised. Before ‘95, if a Cubano set foot on American soil they got the chance to apply for residency status a year later. Lucky for us, we made it ashore before we got picked up on Miami Beach. Dry-Feet, they called us.”

“Dad got a job working graveyard shift at a gas station and I started going to school. I always walked down there by myself to bring Dad a soda and we’d sit and chat for a while. One night I’m going down there right before bedtime and there’s all these police out front with that yellow crime scene tape strung up across the door. The cops say that the robbers put lit matches all over him before they killed him.” He takes a long swig from the bottle.

“So Mom couldn’t afford the rent without Dad, and after that we were sleeping rough. Couch-surfing, church pews, shelters, and sidewalks.”

“My God…” Kid said.

“God? God can’t help us, man. See, Satan led his army to storm the Gates of Heaven and drove God and the angels out. The demons smashed his palace of blue-moon marble into dust and Satan sits on the Throne of Heaven. That’s why our world is so fucked up.”

“So Dad’s spirit came to me. He was bloody and there were these tiny flames burning all over his body. He told me that demons found doors to our world. That’s why the gates keep opening, man.”

“Dad told me that he was joining God’s secret army of angels to take back Heaven. He told me that I needed to learn to fight. To stay strong and smart, so I could count on myself, no one else. To fight back against evil. So I went looking for the gates. You look hard enough and long enough, eventually you find something. And I did.”

“Man… is it worth it?” the Kid asked.

“That’s not the right question.” I said.

“Huh?”

“The real question is do you censor yourself or not?”

“What do you mean?”

“Option A: you say the things you ought to, and shut your mouth on what you actually think. You wear the clothes you’re told to wear, go where they say to go when you’re told to go there, do the things they tell you to do. In return, you get the job, the girl, the two-point-five kids, a white picket fence, and a dog. You get to eat three square meals a day, get laid occasionally, and probably enough money to get you everything you need, some of what you want, and a bed to sleep in with a roof over your head. You’re a slave but you’re comfortable.”

“Option B: you get nothing. You get fuck-all and you’ll like it because you’re free. Go where you want when you want and do what you want to do when you want to do it. Comfort means fuck-all because you’ll probably get arrested, get your head kicked in, or both.”

“So my point is do whatever you want to do because I really don’t give a shit, Kid.”

We sat there silently for the rest of the night. There was really nothing more to say.

It was the second night when the New Kid decided that he actually did want to watch something on TV. Scrambled Porn Sally was pole dancing and the fuzzy static bar was right where you didn’t want it to be.

We found the Kid staring and slack-jawed, his nose touching the flickering television screen. His eyes were watering and blood trickled from one nostril.

I shook him out of it and he mumbled a quiet “thank you.” Every so often I’d catch him stealing glances at the television when he thought I wasn’t looking.

If you were still so exhausted that none of that kept you awake, the phone rang and room service cheerfully provided a complimentary wake-up call just as you were nodding off.

Then there were the cock-roaches. Behind one door we found one of the Lost covered in chittering insects. Carnivorous, angry little bastards about three inches long and sporting chitinous dicks.

The moment it was dark the cock-roaches came scuttling out to bite a hole in your skin, pump their nasty bug-dongs in the bleeding orifice, and lay eggs in your flesh. After a few minutes, the cock-roaches deposited a load of eggs and goop into the poor bastard which then burst open and made a new swarm.

Hiding in every nook and cranny, they skittered into hiding beneath the bed and in the closet when illuminated by a flashlight mounted on the barrel of an AR-15.

The New Kid squashed a couple roaches beneath his boot and the rubber sole began to sizzle. “Damn it! That burns like battery acid!” he shouted.

“Then don’t do that.” I calmly said.

On Day Three we found a Damned that swore up and down he’d seen our target. We’d bribed him with a little baggie of black tar heroin that offered a brief respite from his torment, so we felt confident the intel was solid.

We were moving through the darkened hotel hallways, guns at the ready. The Kid was on point with Vasquez watching his back. Felix and Jackie were in the middle while I was behind the squad.

“This scary-ass motel reminds me of that movie ‘Identity’ with John Cusack. You ever see that shit?”

“Is that the one where Cusack delivers a bag to a creepy motel out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Nah, man. That’s ‘The Bagman’ but it did have a creepy motel.” he said.

“Okay, so is Identity the one where Cusack has to stay in a haunted hotel room?” Jackie asked.

“No goddammit, that’s ‘1408.’ Identity is the one where there’s like a dozen people stranded at this motel in the middle of nowhere and they start getting killed one by one.”

“Okay, first of all: why does John Cusack stay in so many scary motels?”

“Typecasting?”

“And secondly, why are we talking about this while we’re standing in the scariest motel ever?”

“Third question.” I interrupted. “Do you two ever shut up?”

We entered Room 303 and finding it completely thrashed, lingered in the doorway. Mattress slashed, threadbare blankets ripped, and every stick of furniture broken. The stench in the room was overpowering. The source was easy to spot; a cadaver lay rotting amid scattered toys on the floor.

“Rock and roll.” Felix said glibly.

We slowly searched the room.

“Dude check this out!” Felix excitedly waved his latest find: a teddy bear stitched together with human skin, complete with male genitals and real eyeballs too. Just looking at it gave me the creeps.

Giggling, Felix waved the bear inches from the Kid’s face. “Come here and let me give you a big old kiss!”

“Ugh, it’s blinking at me.” Jackie said.

“You’re coming home with me little buddy!” He stuffed the doll into his backpack.

We heard a scraping sound inside a large armoire in the corner with the doors shut. Everyone went silent immediately. Vasquez pointed his gun at it.

“Come on out of there slowly, and you won’t get shot.”

There was no noise or movement of any kind in response. Felix sighed before moving very slowly towards the armoire. He pulled the door open quickly, surprising the woman crouched inside. She was covered head-to-toe with bleeding holes from the cock-roaches.

“Climb out of there slowly, with your hands up.” Vasquez said. The woman seemed to comply with Vasquez’s order, her palms open and weaponless.

The Kid hesitated for just an instant when she sprang at him. The woman grabbed his hand, pointing the gun away from herself and he fired out of reflex, the blast ringing in our ears. He tripped over the corpse on the floor, falling backwards. His head hit the floorboards, dazing him momentarily.

She straddled him, clawing his face and howling like a banshee until Jackie stepped forward and bashed the other woman upside the head with the butt of her rifle. The woman collapsed to the floor, clutching her bleeding skull.

“Oh God, don’t kill me, don’t kill me!” she sobbed as she cowered and covered her head with both arms.

“Quiet!”

The woman shut her mouth instantly, but her body visibly trembled and her eyes welled up. Occasionally, tears ran down her face, leaving twin trails on her filthy cheeks.

“Damn guys, isn’t that a little harsh? I mean, look at her. She’s scared and she’s hurt!” said the New Kid.

“Look Kid, I explained this before but let me make it perfectly clear. She isn’t a person deserving of respect and dignity. She’s a very bad person who did very bad things and ended up in a very bad place.” I said.

“Yeah, but-“

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the Down Below deserves to be here. No one wakes up down here for being an atheist, or being gay, or for smoking weed when you were sixteen.” I continued.

“Every single person in the Bad Place committed at least one genuine act of pure, unmitigated evil.” I counted off a list on each finger. “Rape, murder, torture. Shoot, I’ve even been on a job to collect a Wall Street banker who stole people’s retirement accounts then blew it on hookers and cocaine.”

“The point is that they did something that caused pain and suffering to others and whatever they did was enough to earn a ticket Way Down to Hadestown.” I pointed to the woman crouched and shaking on the floor. “That includes Little Miss Sunshine here.”

“You try anything like that again, and I’ll shoot your hands off. You run, I shoot your feet. Am I making myself clear?” Jackie said to our target.

“Yes.”

“Is your name Laura?”

“Yes… how…?”

Felix gripped the woman roughly by her chin and held her face up. Vasquez pulled out the centerfold and looked back and forth from one to the other.

“That’s a positive ID on the primary target.” Vasquez said.

“Great, can we get the Hell out of here now?” said the New Kid.

“Goddammit Fucktard, we told you not to say the H-Word!” Felix yelled angrily. He grabbed the Kid by the straps of his flak jacket and shoved him back against the wall.

The New Kid stammered out an apology, but we all knew the damage had already been done. By all rights, we could have abandoned him right then and there. We could have left him to die, but for the time being, we still needed another pair of hands to finish the job.

“We need to get out. Now. We have definitely overstayed our welcome. Bag her up.” I said.

Felix and Jackie grabbed the target by the arms, holding them together and Vasquez locked handcuffs to her wrists. The Kid shoved a black bag over the target’s head despite her protests.

Prize in hand, we made our way out of the motel room just as fast as we could.

----------

At long last we made it to a stretch of blacktop. Abandoned vehicles filled the road and we cautiously threaded our way around them. Each vehicle was rusted or gutted, and most of them had corpses for passengers. The Damned turned their rotting heads to watch us pass, reaching weakly out to grab us.

Dead weeds stuck up wherever they could find purchase in the cracks. We found that the road had been melted, cooled, and reformed. Several Damned had been submerged in the asphalt, arms outstretched as if surfacing from beneath a pool of black oil. Their cries were muffled but still audible. There were impressions left behind in the asphalt after it had released its prizes to the scavengers who came later.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Jackie asked.

“Hear what?” said the New Kid.

“Sounds like something scraping on metal. Listen. It’s coming from over there.”

Obscured by the tinted windows of a camper shell, something moved in the back of a rusted pickup sitting up on cinder blocks. The New Kid crept slowly up to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate.

A sleek, obsidian hound with a human head launched itself out of the back of the truck. Its fur was black and glistening, with a body built for speed like a greyhound but with the face of a man. It opened its disjointed jaw and roared like a mountain lion, revealing rows of serrated shark teeth.

Like a heat-seeking missile, it hurtled itself at the Kid with every intention of clamping its jaws around his throat. He brought his arm up to block the hound’s attack and the beast locked its fang-filled maw around his limb.

The creature snarled, shaking the Kid like a rag doll, intent on tearing his arm off in a gout of blood. Claws tore his clothing, and the Kid screamed in pain as triangular teeth began to puncture holes in the flesh of his arm.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a short length of wood. He scrambled for it in the dust with his left hand while the dog savaged his right arm. The New Kid finally managed to wrap his hand around the sturdy board and brought it down on the canine’s square-shaped head in a sweeping arc. There was a loud crack as the board connected, but he could’ve been smacking it with a flyswatter for all the good it did. He struck the sharkdog in its human-shaped face with the board over and over again. The New Kid tried shoving the end into the monster’s mouth to pry it open, but the beast refused to release his bleeding arm.

The moment I saw an opening I shoved my old Ka-Bar knife right into the side of its head. The beast shuddered and died, collapsing in a heap on top of the Kid. He wiped blood and gore off his face and looked up with bleary eyes.

“Told you not to use the H-Word.” I said.

We stopped beside a rusting Quonset hut for a quick break. Jackie dug around in her backpack for a pack of smokes and her lighter. Felix went to take a leak on the other side of the building.

I took a swig from my canteen. The water in the canteen had a sharp taste of iodine from the purification pills I’d dropped in: not unexpected from reclaimed water, but always tough to stomach.

Vasquez sat the package down beside the Quonset and removed her hood long enough for me to give Laura a drink of water. She gulped it down gratefully before we replaced the hood on her head.

I mentally inventoried the remaining water. We all had plastic bottles in our packs plus had the canteen on my hip. I’d read somewhere that the best place to store water was inside ourselves. While I understood that intellectually, I couldn’t help but be daunted at the prospect of making our way across the desert without any water tucked away for later.

Rations were running low too.

We were still many miles away from an exit Topside, and the Bad Place was always full of surprises.

“Hey Garrett. Got a minute?” Vasquez beckoned me over to the side of the building. “You know what I just realized?” he asked.

“That simultaneous revelations aren’t a thing?”

Vasquez leaned in to whisper in my ear. “We are now standing in the Tollway.”

“Route 666?” I asked.

He nodded. “I didn’t recognize it before because there’s no tollbooth and no signs. But one of us is going to pay the toll. You know who I mean.”

I looked over at the New Kid. He was nursing a knot on the back of his head and his face was still all scratched up from Laura’s fingernails. The New Kid removed the sopping bandage wrapped around his arm. The wound where the sharkdog had bit him was black with infected tissue.

Together, we coldly calculated his chances of survival and came up short.

The New Kid was taking a leak on the side of a rusted Quonset hut while Vasquez and I decided his fate.

Rumbling engine noises heralded the arrival of a flat-black sedan on the horizon. A vehicle of generic make and model, the police cruiser had clearly driven through “You-Know-Where” and come out on the other side.

Jackie and Felix grabbed our target and the five of us hustled behind the Quonset, hiding as quick as we could and praying we weren’t seen. The New Kid wasn’t so lucky. The dumb fuck stood there with his dick in his hands and didn’t notice the police cruiser until it was too late.

The battle-scarred vehicle came to a stop, engine idling. The dented drivers’ side door opened and a bipedal male wearing a khaki uniform emerged from the dark interior of the cab. At first glance he may even have passed for human except that every inch of skin was horribly burnt and mutilated. Steel-toed boots crunched on the gravel as he approached.

The Trooper peered at the Kid through his mirrored aviator sunglasses. One hand rested on the nightstick tucked into his belt.

Unsure what to expect, I kept my hand near my pistol just in case.

“You live around here, boy?”

“No sir. Just passing through and found the place like this.”

“I find out you’re lying to me, we’re going to have a problem, boy.”

“Understood.” Every now and then, I caught a glimpse of scarred flesh beneath his shirt.

“Alright then. Just so long as we have an understanding between us.” The Trooper looked around at the horizon almost as if he’d forgotten he was in the middle of a conversation. His gaze settled back on the Kid. “What’s your name, son?”

“My name?”

“Don’t play dumb now.”

Without warning the Trooper pulled a baton from his belt and smashed the Kid with a merciless blow. He doubled over in pain, clutching his belly.

The Trooper loomed over the Kid, lightly smacking the baton in the palm of his palm.

“Looks like you in a heap of trouble here, boy.” the Trooper said with a pronounced Southern accent. He pronounced “here” like “he-ah.”

“You look healthy, don’t have the shakes. No sir, I can tell just from lookin’ at you. You a young man, your back is strong, and you got all your parts in working order, yes sir. You got your whole life in front of you. Seems to me you’ll make a fine slave.”

“You’re gonna dig for us with your bare hands, until your skin is gone, and you dig until your finger bones are worn down to lil’ nubbins. Yessuh, and I’m gonna beat you so bad you’re gonna thank me for the privilege of diggin’.”

The Trooper raised the baton to smash the Kid over the head.

Shots rang out as I unloaded my Glock 9mm into the Trooper’s head, blasting him over and over again. Bullets shattered his aviator shades and tore holes in his khaki uniform before the Trooper fell to the ground. We ran up and Jackie fired her shotgun point-blank into the Trooper’s face before checking on the Kid.

“That seems like overkill, Jackie.” I said with a smirk.

“Overkill is nothing but a word.”

“That stick looks like lacquered hickory but felt like rebar covered in nettles.” The Kid hissed.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here. If one Trooper found us, more are on the way.” I said.

The crew hurried into the Cruiser while the target went into the trunk like a piece of luggage.

“Buckle up.”

“I don’t want to.” the New Kid pouted.

That nasally whine was the last straw. Ice water flowed through my veins. It must have showed on my face because when he saw my expression he recoiled.

“I don’t give a fuck what you want. I ain’t your brother, I ain’t your dad. Lately I ain’t even a nice person. If you don’t do what I say when I say I will knock you the fuck out and make it happen. Now buckle the fuck up.”

He buckled up.

I shifted the police cruiser into drive and stomped on the gas. Nothing happened. “No.” I stomped on it again, shouting louder each time. “No, no, no! I do not believe this horseshit!”

“Is it a Ford?” Felix joked.

Aggravated, my forehead hit the steering wheel. The Troopers were bearing down on us fast. I stomped down on the gas out of frustration and the Cruiser lurched forward. Surprised, I looked up and the vehicle died again, whiplashing our necks. “What the-?”

I closed my eyes, gripped the wheel, and stepped on the gas. The Cruiser moved forward slowly.

“Guys, you’re not going to like this.”

An hour later and my heart was still hammering in my chest and I was white-knuckling the wheel. Vasquez sat right beside me, giving me directions as I drove pedal-to-the-metal with my eyes shut tight.

Bullets pinged off our vehicle and I ducked out of reflex. I could barely hear the gunshots over the roaring engines and police sirens.

“Can’t this piece of shit go any faster?!” Jackie screamed inches from my ear. Jackie turned in her seat, firing a few potshots at the other cruiser.

Felix rooted around in the Army surplus duffel bag and pulled a homemade pipe bomb from the bottom. He lit the fuse with a cheap gas station lighter, let it cook for a moment, then lobbed it out the window at our pursuers.

His throw fell short, and the pipe bomb landed in the middle of the road.

Whether it was Luck or Fate or God deciding to finally give us a break, the second cop car drove over top of the pipe bomb, straddling it with all four tires before it went off.

The police cruiser lifted off the ground, bursting into flame and sending two Troopers screaming into oblivion.

“Keep driving, let’s get as many miles away from here as we can before this thing runs out of gas.” Vasquez instructed.

The sun was setting, and already a cold wind was sweeping down from the hills. Within an hour the temperature would drop by fifty degrees. Sleeping in the exposed cab of the police cruiser would prove to be a very uncomfortable option that night.

And the next night.

And the next.

Four of us left the New Kid hogtied and blubbering in the middle of the road. None of us said a word about it, but we all knew our offering was accepted because we found an exit Topside within an hour.

To this day, I don’t know what dragged him screaming into the desert. But the toll had to be paid.

----------

We delivered the package to a seedy film studio on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada. On the soundstage was a set built out of plywood and made to look like a teen girl’s bedroom: painted pink and full of stuffed dolls. Stage lights hung from metal bars where the room’s ceiling should be, and several cameras were aimed at the bed from different angles.

We were escorted by a couple of hired goons. Low-rent thugs with chrome-played Glocks tucked in the waistband of their jeans.

Vasquez led the way past the stage lights and cameras. Jackie and I flanked the package, while Felix rolled behind with a sawed-off shotgun cradled in his lap.

“You know what the worst job here would be?” Felix asked.

“What?” I sighed.

“Janitor. Can you imagine cleaning this place every night? ‘Excuse me sir, can you lift your feet? I’m trying to mop here’.”

“Jesus, Felix.” I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“Every night you have to clean it! You can’t imagine the smell!”

“Sure I can.” Jackie retorted. “Like a warm turtle tank probably.”

Felix chortled loudly.

Our customer was a loathsome weasel named Bob Gunkel. He was fat, slowly sliding his way to four hundred pounds. He came out of his office wearing a Hawaiian shirt with huge sweat stains under his pits. He wiped cheese puff dust off his hands, leaving long orange fingerprints on his khakis. The very sight of him made my skin crawl.

“Well? Did you bring her back to me?”

Vasquez pulled the black bag off the package’s head.

“You did it! I have to admit, I had my doubts when I heard you could bring her back but you actually did it!” Gunkel caressed her with his meaty fingers and the expression on his face looked like he was already creaming his pants. She flinched away, but we’d kept the ankle chains and handcuffs on for a reason.

“Laura, sweet Laura, I know I got carried away the last time we were together, but I promise you this time is going to be different!”

Vasquez gripped my arm before I even realized my fist was clenched.

“Sir, not to interrupt, but if you’ll just pay us our fee we’ll be on our way and leave you two alone together.”

“Of course!” He snapped his fingers and one of the goons retrieved a couple of greasy fast food sacks, handing them to Vasquez.

Vasquez checked the paper bags and the wads of cash inside. Jackie and I watched the goon squad to see if their hands moved towards their pistols.

“Are we good?” Gunkel asked.

Everyone held their breath for a moment.

“Yeah, we’re good.” Vasquez said. “Let’s move out, team.”

“You lovebirds have a real nice time now, y’hear!” Felix called on the way out.

Later that night we were sitting in a strip club called Sin Bragas working our way through our second bottle of Don Julio Blanco.

On the asphalt, neon-drenched streets of Topside, we're nothings and nobodies. Between the fast food and taxes, the bad gas station coffee and the past-due child support payments, we’re just pieces of soiled human garbage. In a world of drugs, traffic, radio, politics, smoke and mirrors, we’re little more than dirty, disposable pawns.

Yet amongst the freak show outlaws and leather-clad outcasts, the occult cabals and deranged sickos, the demon summoners, the adrenaline junkies, and conspiracy nuts who make up the heart of the Hades-diving fringe, we’re death-defying, bigger-than-life rock stars.

Every form of fame has its own form of groupies. There are women who sent marriage proposals to Ted Bundy when he was on Death Row, for God’s sake.

Most of us had a scantily-clad woman hanging on an arm or crawling in our lap. Jackie was busy showing off her new tattoo, flexing biceps as big as my head. Her upper arm shined with fresh ink depicting a sexy Devil Girl straddling a black spade with the number “13” in racecar red.

“Well, I gotta go drop the kids off at the pool. Felix said.

Vasquez rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb towards the hallway behind him. Felix rolled his wheelchair to the men’s room. I followed.

When I stepped into the men’s room Felix was pounding on the handicap stall door. “As if my life wasn’t hard enough!” Felix shouted.

I was standing at the urinal when one of the local yokels came in. I recognized him as the hillbilly at the bar telling racist jokes to the stone-faced bartender.

Now, every man knows that there are unspoken rules of men’s room etiquette. When you’re first and there are multiple urinals on the wall, you’re supposed to take the spot furthest from the door. When you come in second, you take the spot furthest from the first guy. What you don’t do, what you never, ever, ever do is stand at the urinal directly adjacent to the first man. That’s a surefire path to an ass-kicking in my book. Of course, this mullet-wearing motherfucker decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me.

“You guys are Hellcrashers, aren’t you?” he asked.

I didn’t respond.

“Dude, you guys just go down to Hell, kick Satan in the balls, and rescue the souls of big-tittied single moms. Man, that’s fucking awesome. “What’s it like being a Hellcrasher, bro?”

“Ever hear the one about the guy who wouldn’t shut the fuck up with his dick in his hand?” I curtly replied without looking at him.

“Um, no?”

I reached up and grabbed the hair on the back of his head then slammed him face-first into the tile. His nose broke and he crumpled like a wet paper sack, hitting his chin on the urinal on the way down to the floor. I hosed him down with the contents of my bladder for good measure.

“That’s what it’s like.”

I was washing my hands when I heard Felix shouting.

“Hey! Can somebody toss me some toilet paper? I’m all out of shit tickets over here!”

I left the club without a word.

#hellcrashers #fiction #Not pathfinder

[outside-the-mailstrom]

GENERAL BACKGROUND

I've always been a fan of Marvel comics (or, Marvel Comics' properties, at least) I've fragmentary early memories of Batman The Animated Series, and some associated Batman and Superman comics (aimed at younger readers, in a 'Timmverse' style of the TV shows then airing - gorgeous, simple, iconic Art Deco inspired designs), but for the most part my early conception of superheroes came from what was called "Marvel Hour", a Saturday morning television timeslot ft. back-to-back episodes of cartoons from between the 60s and 90s, starring basically the big names you'd expect. I was quite wee, and don't rightly remember who did and didn't have their own show; obviously the big titles are easy enough for you to guess but I also feel (nebulously) that Iron Man, Hulk, Daredevil, and even the Silver Surfer had their own programs; the line-up jostled, there wasn't an Avengers or Defenders team-up show as there would be these days. There was always Spiderman, of course, and there were generally The X-Men.

X-Men The Animated Series, which was written and produced around the same era as Batman The Animated Series, does not (it has been noted) hold up near so well as its famed compatriot; it has its charms, and is a fascinating window into history, but it's not... strong on revisits. It's a little hard to say how much all this galvanized my interest in the subject matter, and how much it merely looks like it as an artefact of looking back through years of other things layering up (notably the early 00's onward movies, the X-Men Evolution tie-in cartoon [of which I was still, as a viewer, at quite a formative young age], a steadily developing interest in the concept of transition and transformation in all things, and ways that my own self-reinforcing creative projects drew from my standing experience of X-Men as a source material in ways that deepened my interest in, and sympathy for, it as a set of signifiers). Substantial engagement with actual X-Comics, however, comes later; primarily as a fan of the podcast Jay & Miles X-Plane The X-Men (which is pretty much as it sounds; a two-hander deep-dive through X-History & continuity, which settles early in its own run into a charisma and humour driven analytical recap of the major story arcs of the history of the franchise, starting at the Bronze Age [70s onward] and working forward practically issue by issue), aboard which bandwagon I found myself early in its days as a snowballing project (less than a dozen episodes as I recall? Certainly some time before it began to resemble a leading voice in intersectional leftist queer focal fandom, although it was always stridently those things, as well as advocating for a pro-soap opera, pro-minor characters, pro-Cyclops revision to popular understanding of what makes X-Men great).

Of course, if you sit two X-Fans down to talk comics for an hour a week for any length of time, really, under no x-ternal supervision or hard guideline parameters for what subjects are, and are not, on topic (amongst many other things more broad ranging and personal) they're going to get to discussing contemporary releases as well as ancient history. So, at the same time as learning, by glitzy guided tour, the history of The Hellfire Club, how the Phoenix Force actually works, why Scott Summers is autistic and Kitty Pryde is queer, I also got the nod-here-reference-there back ally tour of the contemporary X-Line, as it was shaping up; the early days of the Brian Michael Bendis run, the stuff that came out of Schism and Battle Of The Atom.

Consequently this particular period has always seemed, to me, beguiling.

I spent a period intrigued by it (not least because it’s intriguing, and this is a creative, perhaps even visionary author with strong, distinctive, and original ideas for stories that could be done with this premise and set of characters, and [by the accounts that I was receiving] was executing said ideas, if not flawlessly, at least with panaché). The podcast soon became somewhat of a bonding point between myself and my sister, who (being close in age to me) has always been very immediate in my life, but in such a way as can mean a lot of treading on one another's toes (less risk of that now). Like me she was a long time X-Fan, like me mostly from growing up on related media and finding them abstractly cool (we both had tween crushes on Evolution Nightcrawler - I remember printing out pictures of him from the school library, she now has a tattoo). My sister's completionist tendencies led her to track alongside the podcast, reading originally trade paperbacks and eventually Marvel Unlimited (with a cursory reading of revisionist takes on the Silver Age [60s] - X-Men Season One by Dennis Hopeless and Jamie Mckelvie, then hard-in with the real Bronze Age [70s onward], starting at All New Giant Size X-Men #1, and just working forward). I don't know quite where she's up to now.

I gave this a go, I certainly appreciated things about it, but in general it didn't grab me as my starting point - and while there are many other jumping on points between 1975 and 2013 (already three years in the rear-view by the time I decided to get around to this) the more-or-less present day just seemed the more-or-less obvious point to jump on, so I jumped.

Actually I read the first volume of G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel, up to the 2015/2016 Secret Wars event, then I backed up and read Bendis' entire runs on Uncanny and All New X-Men (which notably, themselves, conclude at the start of Secret Wars), I also read, to my knowledge, all accompanying X-Titles coming out concurrently with the Bendis run, comprising what I'll generally refer to as the wider Bendis Era; Storm by Greg Pak, Cyclops by Greg Rucka, Magneto by Cullen Bunn, X-Force by Si Spurrier (all of which were really quite good, to my mind), and All New X-Factor by Peter David (which wasn't really for me - by which I seem to imply that it's probably for someone... in practice I think perhaps it is simply not really that good). I then read all of the X-Related crossover material that tied in to the aforementioned Secret Wars event (as well as a few non-X-related Secret Wars titles on general recommendation from Jay & Miles' Patreon stretch-goal video reviews of contemporary [primarily X] comic publications). My general process was to read an issue or two at a time then cross-reference with video reviews, as a lot of my engagement with media involves parsing it through the lens of critical voices who represent known quantities relative to my tastes (although it would be erroneous to suggest that by this point I'm not in some way attached to somewhat of a cult of personality around the public personas of the hosts, albeit what seems quite a calm and good natured one).

After finishing the Secret Wars titles I faced a relaunch of the line, and, eager as I was to find out what this experience (and the itemized content within) was like, I'd been a diehard Bendis fan through the process so far and wanted to let my recent reading mellow somewhat; to ruminate, and take a beat to work on other projects - breathe, mourn, let my first formative era of fandom settle before steam-rolling on with a new age.

It’s been… a few years, and while I really do have plenty else I ought be on with I've decided to throw myself back in and read some damn X-Men.

As follows are broadly my thoughts on what I will, somewhat snarkily be calling the 'Ordinary Era' (that is, post Secret Wars, through to the end of Jeff Lemire's Extraordinary X-Men, concluding with the Inhumans vs X-Men event), and beyond.

#X-Men #2016 X-Men #2016 comics #2016 #Comics #Extraordinary X-Men #Extraordinary Era #All New Era #Ordinary Era #Jeff Lemire #Post Secret Wars #Secret Wars #Reviews #Comics Reviews #Jay & Miles X-Plain The X-Men #Jay & Miles Review The X-Men #Jay & Miles #Marvel #Marvel Comics #Marvel Hour #X-Men The Animated Series #X-Men Evolution #Brian Michael Bendis #Bendis Run #General Background #My writing

[meetmeinthematinee]

A/N: This is a new fic I’m working on. I had a wacky idea for how John & Helen met and I wanted to explore it. At this point I’m not sure how many chapters this will be but certainly there is another in the works.

No warnings as of yet but it’s me so there will be smut, eventually.

He propelled himself through the water. No large splashes, just the steady waves he left in his wake. He always made time to get in some lengths at the continental pool---when he could. Luckily it wasn't too often that he came back from a job with open wounds that would preclude him from diving in. The weightlessness, repetitive movements and rhythmic breathing grounded him in a way that other physical activities didn't. Unlike the gym, he usually had the place to himself. An added bonus since he wasn’t much for idle shop talk. He did the jobs---he didn’t much feel like talking about them. Get in, get out, get paid. The worst were the people who enjoyed it. The ones whose eyes gleamed when they’d talk about their past exploits, about how quickly or cleverly, slowly or painfully they extinguished someone. Instead of making the turn underwater John reached his hand up and gripped the wall, treading water with his legs as he swiped his wet hair out of his face. He stared at the wall blankly while he caught his breath. He’d lost track of time---and from the sounds that came from behind him---he was no longer alone. 

“I’m just getting things ready for the class.” She said as she hauled the lane ropes out of the water. “There’s still some time before it starts if you want to keep swimming. Nice form by the way.” 

“Thanks.” He said. “Class?”

“Aquafit. Every Tuesday & Thursday at 8.”

“I didn’t know we had that many old ladies staying here.” He teased, trying not to stare at her.

She shook her head and moved to pull another lane rope out of the pool. She stopped and tucked a strand of her long dark hair that had escaped her bun behind her ear before she tugged the rope toward her.  

“Ha. Can’t say I’ve heard that one before. If you’re too shy I do private classes too.” 

John let go of the side of the wall and ducked under the water, swimming his way to the ladder. 

“You know, your left shoulder is pretty stiff. Aquafit could help that.” She called out to him. 

“I thought you said I have perfect form.” 

“I said you had nice form. Not perfect.” She said with a laugh. Unable to keep herself from staring as he emerged from the water. He was tall, well built but not overly muscled. A solid and broad back covered in tattoos. Her eyes drifted down and she took in the massive, dark purple bruise along his left side.

“Guess I was stiffer than I thought.” He said as he carefully rolled his left shoulder and reached for his towel to roughly dry off his face and hair.  

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have---”

He smiled and shook his head, his hair sticking up at all angles. “It’s fine. I started it.”

“True.” She said as her grimace was slowly replaced with a big grin.

“I can’t stay---work thing.” He wrapped the towel around his waist.

“Every”

“Tuesday and Thursday at 8, I got it.” 

“Helen.”

“Helen.” He said with a polite nod. 

“John.”

“Nice to meet you, John. See you Thursday?”

“We’ll see. Have a good class.” He said before heading toward the change room. 

He striped off his wet bathing suit and wrapped his towel around his waist before he headed into the steam room. He situated himself on the bench and laid down. Letting the heat work its magic on his sore muscles. He rolled his shoulders and hissed as he gently touched his bruised ribs. “What her hands would feel like on his body. Would her hair cascade around their faces as she sank down onto him.” He wondered. He shifted on the tile bench and let out a heavy sigh. The door to the steam room opened, momentarily letting in a blast of cool air. "John." His eyes opened at the familiar voice. He swung his legs over the side of the bench and sat up. "Marcus." 

"Are you here for the class?" He asked as he sat on the bench across from John.

"No, I was just swimming laps." 

"You should give it a shot sometime. It's more of a workout than you'd think." He leaned forward. "The teacher is the one I told you about." They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before John replied. 

"She's nice."

"Who?"

"Helen."

"Oh. You met her?" 

"Yeah. Today."

"So you're coming, then?" Marcus said as he stood up. 

"No." 

"Suit yourself, John." He said as he got up and moved to the door. 

"I do."

"Yeah, that's always been the problem with you." Marcus said over his shoulder as he left to join the class. 

John sifted his fingers through his wet hair. “What the fuck did he know.” He thought. “Well, except for everything.” Marcus knew him and knew him well enough to know that John needed someone or something to hold onto---that something inside him had shifted and needed attending to. It wouldn’t be tonight though. No. Not tonight. 

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

His left shoulder still didn’t feel right. As hard as it was to admit, he wasn’t young anymore. He was slower to heal and sore for much longer. He woke up feeling like he’d been working the night before---even though he hadn’t been. He took a breath and blearily looked up at the ceiling, he exhaled slowly and attempted to untangle himself from the sheets. He didn’t feel like he’d had any dreams but from the way the bed was ransacked it must have been a restless night. “Was I back at the Tarkovsky Theatre? Practicing and falling? Over and over again?” He wondered. It wasn’t often that he could remember his dreams which was a relief. He saw enough during his waking hours---he didn’t want to see more of the same in his sleep. Finally untangled he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He picked up the phone. 

“Hi, this is Wick. I’d like to order breakfast. Coffee. Eggs---poached soft, bacon, fruit and whole wheat toast. Thanks.” 

The soft knock at the door finally got him off the bed. He grabbed a coin and opened the door so they could push the cart into his room. He slipped the coin to the room service person. 

“Thank you.” 

“My pleasure Mr. Wick.”

He nodded and shut the door. He settled into one of the chairs by the window and poured himself a coffee, ate and read the paper. He tugged out the crossword, folded it neatly and set it aside for later. With a pencil. “Fuck, everyone loves that story.” He shook his head. The truth was as mundane as it was spectacular---and horrifying. “You mind your own business working on a crossword at the bar, get attacked and the next thing you know you’re a fucking legend.” He thought. “This is it. My life. In its entirety. I have everything and nothing at all.” He existed in that liminal space between monster and man. He thrived there, once, but now he just felt strangled.  He got up, coffee in hand and picked up his watch from the nightstand. 8AM. Thursday. “Helen.”

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

She’d always been a morning person. Waking up chipper and ready to go the moment her feet hit the floor. This morning was no different. She stretched lazily, put on her silk floral print robe, slipped her cellphone into the pocket and went to the kitchen to make her morning americano. Her home---the one she’d kept in the divorce---was airy and minimal. A far cry from the cluttered, darker space it had been when her husband was there. She’d remodelled everything after he left. More accurately, after she kicked him out for fucking someone---or, as it turned out a string of someone elses. “What a goddamn disaster that had been.” She looked around at the kitchen and felt a wave of contentment wash over her. Everything about the place was definitely hers and she’d worked hard to make it so. “Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something?” She thought to herself as she sipped her drink at the counter, looking out into the backyard that was still heavy with the morning mist. She opened her phone and went through her calendar. Double checking to see if there was something she’d overlooked. “Photography class? No. That was done until the next section started up in a few months. Private client appointments? No, those were all next week. Aquafit at the Continental tonight. Right.” Suddenly it became clearer. She wasn’t forgetting anything. She was looking forward to something. “That guy from the pool.” She thought as she settled onto the couch to scroll through the news on her phone. “I wonder if he’ll turn up today. What the hell was his name again? Josh. No. James? Hmm. John! Yeah. That seems right.”

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

She was hauling out the last of the equipment when he walked in. She smiled to herself---knowing her face was obscured by her hair as she placed the foam weights along the edge of the pool. 

“Hey, John. Didn’t realise you were an old lady at heart. Joining the class today?” 

“Thought I’d give it a try.”

“I expect you to do better than try.”

He heard the low murmurs of the people already in the pool. “She’s got balls. Talking to Wick like that.” She heard them too and she knew exactly who she was talking to. She just didn’t care. He smirked at her. Colour rising to his cheeks. “I better get ready then.” He said.

She handed a foam belt to him when he came out of the change room. 

“I’m good.” He said.

“You’re used to being strapped up aren’t you? Just put it on. If you don’t you’ll have to stay in the shallow end for most of the class and you’re far too tall to get any benefit from the workout that way.” She said as she thrust the belt towards him. 

“I didn’t think of that.” He said as he tried to take it from her, but she didn’t let go of the belt. 

“How about you do less thinking and more listening and following instructions.” She said with a smirk before she let go, leaving John to put it on as she took her place at the side of the pool and welcomed everyone to the class. 

John followed her instructions. Her voice, strong, and clear over the music as she demonstrated the movements on deck. She called out encouragement and corrections in equal measure. Always with a kindness that was impossible to overlook. He wanted to do his best. For himself but also because of his overwhelming desire to impress her. Which was---unusual---to say the least. Now he knew what the fuck Marcus was talking about. How Marcus knew what he was talking about was an even bigger mystery to John.

“That’s it for today, great work everyone! Take your time getting out and don’t forget to hydrate.”

A chorus of “Thanks, Helen. Great class Helen. See you next week.” reverberated around the tiled pool room.

John watched out of the corner of his eye as people chatted with her as she started putting away the equipment. He did a few slow laps until everyone had cleared out except for her. 

“Your stroke is looking better, John. How’s the shoulder feel?”

“A lot better. Thanks for asking. And for the class.” He added hurriedly. 

“Judging by the colour on your face it’s not just for old ladies, huh?”

He laughed and made his way to the ladder. Enjoying the lazy glide of the water over his body.

“No, not just for old ladies.”

“So, see you next class?” She asked as he dripped water onto the pool deck.

“I think so.”

“Good.” She went back to putting the last of the equipment away but the gentle smile on her face as she worked didn’t escape John’s notice. 

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

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#John x Helen Wick #john wick fanfic #John wick fan fiction #Helen Wick

[rrrawrf-writes]

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

early eli & kawai!

Except for his skin color, and the hair dyed an obnoxious shade of bright neon green, the new guy fit right in with the rest of Kit’s family.

He was big and burly, like nearly everyone else, but Kit was quietly pleased that she still had an inch or two of height on him. At least three of her cousins were openly drooling over him, and he flirted with all of them; Uncle Kwame, who hadn’t ever cracked a smile in all the years Kit had known him, was found grinning and laughing with the new guy, and called him funny - for a palagi.

Kit didn’t trust him.

She didn’t trust his jokes, or his easy smile, or the warmth in his voice. She didn’t trust his how are yous or his quick perception or how he always seemed to be right there when someone brought them news of a successful heist, or a report on a target, or needed comforting after they’d been thwarted by so-called superheroes or law enforcement.

But most of all, Kit didn’t trust how he had already been taken into her father’s confidence.

“We’re moving sooner than planned,” her father said, picking up an empty pistol Kit had set aside to work on later. She frowned down at her current project. “Friday.”

“I’m,” not ready, was what she wanted to say, but instead, Kit discarded that phrase and started again. “I thought we were going to wait.” Her leg was still recovering; Kit wouldn’t be able to keep up on the job.

From the way his eyes flicked to the crutch in the corner, Kit’s father knew that, and he knew that she wanted to postpone it. Her face heated a little, and she looked back down at the mess of wires and bits of metal that would soon - hopefully - be a brand-new weapon.

“Seo is coming with me,” her father said. Kit’s head shot up, and she couldn’t conceal the anger in her voice even if she wanted to.

“What?” she demanded. “Seo? Why?”

His dark eyes were inscrutable as he said, “I think that’s obvious.”

“This is Sparkwave’s job,” Kawai snapped back, color rising in her cheeks. She knew she sounded like a child, but she couldn’t believe this. It wasn’t her fault she’d broken her leg - and it wasn’t like the museum was switching displays any time soon! They had time to wait for her to heal!

“Exactly. So I’ll need the gloves.” Her father pushed himself up off the table and moved towards one of the cabinets in the back of the workroom. “Did you repair them?”

She didn’t immediately answer. ‘Seo is coming with me.’ Me. Kit wasn’t going along at all, then, even as backup. Jealousy mixed in with her anger and frustration. She was being sidelined by him!

“Kit.” Her father’s voice was low and dangerous, so Kit swiveled her office chair around and gave him a sharp nod. He already had the gloves in hand, elbow-length devices with an electrical discharger in the palm.

“Yes,” she said, and then, unable to contain herself, burst out with, “You can’t take him.”

“Why not?” Her father pointedly arched an eyebrow at her leg. “I would much rather take you than him, Kit, but you’ve proved that you’re not ready to be Sparkwave.”

“So you’re taking some idiot you barely know?” Kit’s voice cracked, and she bit her lip in embarrassment. “You can’t seriously trust him with a job this big, he’ll - he’ll ruin it.”

“You already ruined it.” Her father’s voice was calm, but the words made her flinch. She looked away and blinked, hard, while tiny sparks of electricity flicked across her fingers.

“I told you I couldn’t make that jump,” she said quietly.

“Sparkwave could have,” her father replied, his voice just as low. Scowling, Kit hunched over her project, even though her thoughts were as far from it as possible. “Sparkwave should have.”

“You didn’t,” she said sullenly. Snorting, her father leaned his hip against her worktable.

“No,” he pointed out, his tone condescending and exasperated, “because I had to climb down and save you, Kit. You’re lucky we made it out without anyone seeing us.”

She curled her fist around a bit of metal, until the sharp edges of it dug into her skin.

“How many times have I told you, Kit?” her father asked. He paused, and she repeated the next words in sync with him, her voice dull and flat. “Sparkwave never needs saving.”

“I know,” Kit added in a resentful mutter. She toyed with the bit of metal plating, and heard her father heave a sigh. He put a hand on the armrest of her chair and twisted it around so that they were facing each other. She stubbornly looked away.

“Kit.” Her father leaned in, gently putting a finger against her cheek and forcing her to look up at him. He smiled, but as gentle as it was, Kit noticed that his eyes stayed dark. “I want you to take over as Sparkwave. I truly do. You’ve shown the most promise -”

She was the only one with electricity powers.

“- but I can’t afford a liability on this job. It’s too important.”

Her eyes burned. Kit scooted her chair back so she could get away from his touch, then turned back to the table. “Don’t let him touch the gloves,” was all she said, and she didn’t look away from her project for several long minutes. She didn’t hear her father leave, but when she did look up, her eyes finally clear again, he was gone.

She grabbed the nearest thing to hand - a screwdriver - and threw it at the closed door.

---

Judging by the fact that she could actually hear the footsteps cross the room, it had to be either Uncle Kwame or Seo, and since Uncle Kwame never set foot in the workshops, Kit decided it had to be Seo.

“Get out.” She didn’t look up as she bit out the words. She did look up when his heavy tread kept coming closer, and ended when he set something down on the edge of her worktable. Kit bit down on her tongue, then finally looked up.

For a moment, all she saw was a faceful of - of flowers.

“What the hell is this?” Kit snapped, shoving her chair backwards as if the vase of flowers were biting at her nose.

“Peonies,” Seo said. Kit looked up at him, and two sparks jumped from her hand to the table.

“What.”

“Flowers,” Seo clarified. He frowned slightly. “Do you not like them?”

Kit had never looked twice at a flower in her life. “Why.”

Seo shrugged and gestured towards her. “Your leg. I was gonna take ‘em to the hospital, but then your cousin said you never use one.”

“Uncle Kwame is a doctor,” Kit said, her voice flat. “Why are you giving me flowers.”

“I just said -”

“Get out,” Kit snapped again. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Seo let out a patient sigh, but didn’t move. Kit began to seriously consider shocking him. “Listen, I just wanted to apologize -”

“Will you just shut up!”

His words stumbled to a halt. Kit pushed her hair angrily out of her face. “I know what you’re doing,” she snapped at him. “It doesn’t work on me.”

Seo’s eyebrows twitched upwards. He propped his hands on his hips and asked, “What doesn’t work on you?”

Kit’s lip curled, and she gestured towards the flowers. “This. Apologizing. All your - your sucking up to people. It’s disgusting and I hate it.”

Seo leaned back against another worktable not far from Kit’s, and he visibly fought to keep a look of amusement off his face. “You mean, being nice?”

“This isn’t being nice!” Kit wanted to grab the flowers and throw them at him, but she stopped herself at the last second. “You want something. I don’t know what it is, but I know you’re not just being nice!”

“Aw, Kit, come on -”

“Stop talking,” Kit snarled. Seo was always talking. She hated it. Glaring at Seo, Kit waited until he had shut his mouth, and then, with a sneer, went on. “I don’t trust you. You’re too - convenient.”

Seo opened his mouth - and then, with visible restraint, closed it again. For some reason, that made Kit angrier than if he’d tried to interrupt her. “You showed up right after Abeiku got caught. You made everyone like you. And now - and now you’re going on a job with my father!”

Her words ended in a venomous hiss, and Seo finally looked uncomfortable. He glanced off the side, arms crossed over his chest, and then back at her. “Can I talk now?”

“No.” Kit slumped in her chair. “You can’t talk ever again.”

“Oh, all right. Well, anyway -”

This time, Kit did throw something at him. Seo flinched to the side and rubbed his shoulder, where she’d hit him with half of a 3D-printed pistol grip. Kit cast around for something harder, sharper, deadlier, and finally grabbed the heavy vase of flowers.

“Whoooooa whoa whoa now, okay.” Seo lunged over and trapped Kit’s wrists before she could launch the flowers at him. She stiffened at the touch, and pulled her uninjured foot closer to her chair, ready to kick Seo away - but his grip didn’t hurt, and besides pulling her hands back to the table and away from the vase, he did nothing else.

He kept her hands trapped there for a moment longer. “Kit,” Seo said, meeting her gaze. “I’m not here to take your place. I’m not your enemy.”

“Let go,” Kit snapped. And he did. Seo stepped back, his hands raised slightly. Kit eyed him narrowly, and then kicked him anyway, just to prove that she could.

She turned back to the worktable while Seo cursed and sank to the floor. For a moment, she thought about dropping the vase on his head, for good measure, but instead, once his complaints subsided, Kit said flatly, “Prove it, then.”

“Prove what?” Seo whined from the floor. Kit shot him a glare and wished her ammunition storage wasn’t all the way across the room.

“Tell my father you can’t do the job,” Kit said. She clenched her hands in her lap, nails digging into her palm and sparks jumping from her to the table. Seo pushed himself into a sitting position and edged warily away from her and the metal table.

He let out a sigh. “I can’t do that, Kit.” When she scowled and reached for another tool on the table, Seo hastily put up his hands and added, “But I can stall it for another week. Maybe - Maybe you’ll be feeling up to it by then, and he’ll change his mind.”

They both looked over at her crutch. Kit curled her hand around the screwdriver. Her father wouldn’t change his mind, even if Kit’s leg miraculously healed itself tomorrow. She’d screwed it up the first time, and he wouldn’t give her another chance.

Seo grunted as he got back to his feet, wincing. “Um, maybe -”

“Get out,” Kit said again, dully, not looking at him.

“…Okay.” Seo pushed his hands against each other. “Feel better, Kit, yeah?”

She didn’t answer, and finally, he left. Dropping the screwdriver onto the floor, Kit slumped in her chair and put her hands over her face.

Her father wouldn’t take her on the job again. Fine.

She would just do it herself. And she’d do it better.

#iwrite #asks #answers #ask games #tumblr games #kawai #eli #superpowerverse #mi #mercury independent #gingerly-writing

[vmfx]

FULL MOON SPECIAL.

(Summer.)

This year Spring came and went a little easier than usual. Aside from a stomach-churning break-up that neither my now ex-girlfriend or I wanted to take part of, the Spring revival brought a brand new charge that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Feelings of meeting someone rare and opening up to them for the first time. An opportunity with an art-school-type Korean girl who nicely put me down but ended in an amicable consolation. Taking snapshots with the who’s-who of the Press at the trendiest post-production parties. Extended drives out west with my friend Jewish Mary discussing thoughts, feelings, summer plans, and laughing out loud over getting to know each other as friends.

The mania continued when we all discovered two social-networking sites that year: Myspace and Facebook. Both had opened a wide portal for anyone who used it. Not only did they offer an opportunity for friends and classmates to keep in direct contact with each other, but it also doubled as a dating or hook-up site. When it first opened people would randomly contact each other through a very curious yet open world with plentiful results. This was before the term ‘stalking’ was taken seriously, and when people were more welcome and less discriminating.

One day I was curious and did a search for people who liked Deftones. The first thing that came up was this black-and-white photo of a girl eating a King of Diamonds playing  by CouponDropDown" target="_blank">card with both hands and a happy chipper smile. I liked cute girls and I liked playing cards…and then I liked cute girls who liked eating playing cards, so who was I to pass this up? I jokingly messaged her to stop eating the King and cease being disrespectful. A day later, she replies.

Her name was Catherine. We messaged each other sparsely for two months being silly and then it stopped. I don’t know why. I assumed it just ran its course and that was that. I thought nothing of it, moved on and forgot about her.

**********

(Autumn.)

One afternoon in the campus news office I open my account to find a message waiting for me, feeling interested as always. Then I see who sent me that message: it was Catherine. Out of nowhere she decided to pop up and say hello…fifteen months later. What the circumstances were of why there was a fifteen-month silence between us I’ll never know. It did not matter anymore.

At first I could not remember who she was until it hit me, but it felt real good hearing from her again and I was amazed that she remembered me after a long silence. Very rarely in this nature would people do such a gesture these days. She told me she liked talking to me when we did which was why she contacted me again. There was no reason to not seize the opportunity to continue so we picked up where we left off. The rate of communication accelerated and quantified. Our next constant starts by getting to know each other.

What I first learned about Catherine had me very concerned. At the time, she found herself at home feeling lonely with a bottle of vodka nearby accompanied by a supply of painkillers and a pack of blades, extreme for someone I just started talking to. She was slipping and I pushed and persisted for answers because I am a savior to my friends. As she reached out to me, I had to reach out to her. I wanted to put the pieces together because I genuinely felt sorry for her. I was not as successful as first since she heavily guarded herself so I decided to tread very carefully.

Alternately, Catherine and I discussed philosophies and logic; life struggles, situations at hand and other miscellany. I discover that we had a good number of things in common. She listened to the very same music I was into when I was in high-school a decade before. (I preceded her by eight years and her birthday was only ten days after mine. I am a Virgo, she is a Libra.) She was into Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, and her number one Elliot Smith, certifying her as an alternative-rock sentry in my eyes. She wrote, did graphic design, and even attended the same university as I. She had creative qualities and I saw lots of potential in her, thus the race to rescue Catherine from her own personal black hole had become more essential, more so when I had week-long periods of not hearing from her.

Catherine should not have to drown herself every weekend in alcohol and loneliness nor let alone consume vicodin and oxycontin, so I felt. She also did not have to punish herself by cutting, either. All this as a result of social neglect and mostly being un-accepted in her high-school years, with her using and drinking as a means of coping now ignited due to meeting some guy at a party who introduced her to a sip of beer. I now gave her an opportunity to come out and be at a safer place, to bring her out and have dinner with me to discuss her situation.

During this time, I was going through a very heavy period of discovering music. Tower Records was going under and were closing its doors for good by the end of the year. One night after work I paid my final visit there and I picked up Public Image Limited, The Buzzcocks, Stereolab, and Jesu. Roy Ayers, Ladytron, Leonard Cohen, Boards Of Canada, and much more. Artists I either meant to try or even discovered out of nowhere. And back at the Press office, someone somehow uploaded a lot of music into one of our office computers ripe for the taking. Direct Control, Regulations, Stereo Total, NON, and MF Doom were playing endlessly while I furiously typed away articles for the next issues of the semester; after which I occasionally took a break for spicy fried rice at the campus’ Asian food quarter. A scent of lime was present, in tandem reminding me of the cold air and starry night skies complimenting that Autumn.

The turn of the New Year arrived when I was at the campus radio station doing a countdown set with several on-air staff. I contacted Catherine when the show was over. We decided the time was right to finally meet up after her Thursday secret meeting. We weighed our options including any given Greek diner for midnight breakfast, but we opt for American instead.

**********

(Full Moon, January.)

Daily errands were done. In the afternoon I went clothes shopping and bought a watch, a black t-shirt with a cassette printed on the front and a grey pocket t-shirt with some gold lettering. The scent of lime now replaced by a strong hue of blue and white static powder. Later that night, I spearheaded a radio station meeting as program director with several other talents about what extra equipment, wires, boards, and knobs to buy for our studios. After two hours of sitting through the meeting taking suggestions and going over schematics I finally conclude the meeting. All I had eaten so far was a Snickers bar but I wasn’t feeling hunger pangs. I was still standing.

I walk out of the building and it was extremely cold. A bright full moon and stars were out with absolutely no clouds or snow in sight. I called Catherine on my white cell-phone to let her know my meeting was over. Her secret meeting concluded as well. Both of us were on the way. We would trade several more phone calls to make sure we would stick to our guns.

I arrive at the American restaurant. It was a crowded Thursday night, the day of the week most students from campus migrate here to unwind and eat. Noisy as usual, lots of people talking, cups and glasses clinking, excitement and loud music fill the air. I sit at the lobby waiting to finally meet Catherine for the first time, wondering what she could really be. I had no idea what to expect or what she really looked like in person.

I was about to find out, and here she is.

I see Catherine walk into the restaurant. When I looked up at her for a moment to verify if it was her or not; everything registered to line up with themselves and I call her out. “Catherine!” I get her attention and she turns to me. We were thrilled to see each other and trade smiles and pleasantries. She was this young thin self, her neck-length Trixie hair, slim purple long-sleeve sweater and black jeans torn at the knees. She sits to my left in the lobby and our conversation starts off with three topics in a matter of five minutes: her secret meeting in Port Jefferson which she refused to divulge, how she drove out to and missed the record store in Ronkonkoma, and what was possibly wrong with her cable box. Five minutes later our maitre d’ escorts us to a window-side booth seated adjacent from eight loud and noisy frat boys who thankfully did not start in with us. After a year and a half, here was the first time we would get to talk to each other, face-to-face.

I order chicken stir-fry. Catherine orders only a diet Coke. “Are you sure?” I ask her, and politely she said she wasn’t hungry. I upped the ante and told her that dinner was on me and she could have anything she wanted, no worries. But she stopped at a diet Coke and said it was OK. I gave in and nicely obliged.

We went forward and re-iterated every conversation we had over the last three months. Catherine was very soft-spoken. So soft spoken that I had to lean toward her to focus on every word she said, and on one occasion I kindly told her to speak just a little louder. My undivided attention was on her when she said every word since she had the loveliest eyes I had ever seen. Big eyes. Lovely eyes. Obvious eyes. Memorable eyes. Cat eyes. Eyes that made her very cute. Eyes that ‘made’ Catherine.

We went more in-depth about the parallels we had. I was still very flattered Catherine was into the very music I was years prior. Had she went to high-school with me she would have been accepted to my circle of friends with no problem. She also mentioned that once she was a Cinema/Cultural Studies major on our campus. However, we had no classes together and the two years that she attended our university we did not once cross paths, but very well could have.

We talked and listened to each other more and more, progressing without one single hitch. No missteps, no awkward looks, no slip-ups, no back-pedaling. It was only Catherine and I sitting across from each other with all the time in the world having a complex yet honest, concerning, intelligent conversation; a type of conversation extremely rare in our disposable, attention-deficit, lowest-common-denominator world. She was that someone different than the rest who was exactly on my level. I was that someone who would give her the concern, understanding, and the attention she was looking for.

Our night, however, was drawing to a close and I wanted to end it on a high note. I asked Catherine if she had gotten a hold of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, one which she was missing. She was in the midst of explaining herself when I take the CD out of my jacket pocket placed next to me and tossed it on the table right in front of her, a late Christmas present for a friend to bring herself and her spirits up. She was in total amazement. So much it spilt all over the table. She could not believe I would do such a thing for her.

Catherine then offered me anything I wanted. She even waved her money in my face for the CD which I absolutely dead-refused to take. What I wanted in return was to see her again, and soon.

**********

To this day, no one I have ever met in my life gave me a surreal thrill just by being with someone for three hours. I felt amazed that I even met her.

Catherine was without a doubt one of the most original and unique people I’ve met, ever. Hands down. No contest. She had a lot of things about her that no one could copy, because everything about her was hers. From the music she listened to, her philosophy, her good parts, her bad parts, even her looks…it was all hers, as if there was an art to her.

She was real interesting and because of her conversations I tried to reach out and look out for her. She made me want to look forward to meeting her again and in the process got my mind off a lot of things because she was really that special. I bought her that gift just to prove to her that I can help her out and bring her up in any way.

It was that feeling of meeting someone who was more to my liking, whose complexion was young, her personality, looks, and features unique and rarely seen, the feeling of assurance because you finally had the answers to those swirling questions. In front of me was someone I believed was truly special despite her severe misgivings and flaws. Despite her errors, I only thought about the good things, colors, and feelings about her.

Every now and then I go back and listen to everything from that era. All those sounds are a watermark of that time when I first met Catherine and conjure up everything else that occurred at the time. That clear cold weather and the memory of lime, infinity, and powdery static. That white cell-phone, the spicy rice. Nights of heavy snow on campus and long night drives home. The series of Wednesday night radio shows and our resident DJ’s coming over to visit at the turn of midnight. Those loud nights of campus techno events and meeting different shades of Jewish women with different colors of hair, skin quality, fashion sense, glasses, make-up, and sweat. Those feelings, thoughts, shades, hues, and patterns of purple, blue, grey, black, and white. But none of anything could come close to that one defining moment of meeting Catherine, where from that point on it would watermark and define an era in a time where everything added up to equal an apex.

**********

We met again in Spring a couple of times thereafter. We sat down over ice cream and even traded more music to each other. I still truly believed that Catherine was someone special and stood out from everyone I have ever met, and I seriously wanted to remain in touch with her. She happily obliged as she gave me a sympathetic goodbye hug in the end.

Later on that season I had an art report to do and she had an affinity for museums. I offered Catherine an afternoon in New York City and we went to the MOMA as I prepared my critique about Joan Miro’s Women, Birds And A Star. At the end of that mostly sunny day we said goodbye to the city and took the train ride home together; our discussion of each others’ individual lives, future plans, and possible outcomes comprised the final hour of the last time we would ever see each other…for a long, long time.

Permission granted by the very same subject presented here.

#VMFX #writers on Tumblr #short stories #personal #dating #winter #friends #Long Island

[laurelkrugerr]

Readability Algorithms Should Be Tools, Not Targets

About The Author

Frederick O’Brien is a freelance journalist who conforms to most British stereotypes. His interests include American literature, graphic design, sustainable … More about Frederick …

Readability programs may seem like a godsend, but the worst thing writers can do is write to please them above all others. Finding your voice is hard enough without also trying to sound like everyone else.

The web is awash with words. They’re everywhere. On websites, in emails, advertisements, tweets, pop-ups, you name it. More people are publishing more copy than at any point in history. That means a lot of information, and a lot of competition.

In recent years a slew of ‘readability’ programs have appeared to help us tidy up the things we write. (Grammarly, Readable, and Yoast are just a handful that come to mind.) Used everywhere from newsrooms to browser plugins, these systems offer automated feedback on how writing can be clearer, neater, and less contrived. Sounds good right? Well, up to a point.

As with most things, there’s an xkcd comic for this. (Large preview)

The concept of ‘readability’ is nothing new. For decades researchers have analyzed factors like sentence length, syllable count, and word complexity in order to ‘measure’ language. Indeed, many of today’s programs incorporate decades-old formulas into their scoring systems.

The Flesch-Kincaid system, for example, is a widely used measure. Created by Rudolf Flesch in 1975, it assigns writing a US grade level. The Gunning fog index serves a similar purpose, and there are plenty more where they came from. We sure do love converting things into metrics.

It’s no mystery why formulas like this are (quite rightly) popular. They help keep language simple. They catch silly mistakes, correct poor grammar, and do a serviceable job of ‘proofreading’ in a pinch. Using them isn’t a problem; unquestioning devotion to their scores, however, is.

No A-Coding For Bad Taste

I want to tread carefully here because I have a lot of time for readability algorithms and the qualities they tend to support — clarity, accessibility, and open communication. I use them myself. They should be used, just not unquestioningly. A good algorithm is a useful tool in the writer’s proverbial toolbox, but it’s not a magic wand. Relying on one too heavily can lead to clunkier writing, short-sightedness, and, worst of all, a total uniformity of online voices.

One of the beauties of the internet is how it melts national borders, creating a fluid space for different cultures and voices to interact in. Readability historically targets academic and professional writing. The Flesch-Kincaid test was originally developed for US Navy technical manuals, for example. Most developers can appreciate the value of clear documentation, but it’s worth remembering that in the world of writing not everything should sound like US Navy technical manuals. There are nuances to different topics, languages, and cultures that monosyllabic American English can’t always capture.

Deference to these algorithms can take writers to absurd lengths. Plain English is one thing, but unquestioning obedience is another. I’ve seen a good few sentences butchered into strings of words that tick readability boxes like ‘write in short sentences’ and ‘use monosyllabic words wherever possible’, but border on nonsensical to the human eye. It’s a near-impossible thing to quantify, but it has been a recurring phenomenon in my own work, and having spoken with other copywriters and journalists I know it’s not just my rampant paranoia at work.

Let’s look at the limitations of these tools. When faced with some of the greatest writers of all time — authors, journalists, copywriters, speech writers — what’s the verdict? How do the masters manage?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The opening chapter receives a grade of E from Readable.

George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, which bemoans how unclear language hides truth rather than expresses it. He gets a grade of D. Talk about having egg on your face!

The beginning of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway does tolerably well in the Hemingway Editor, though you’d have to edit a lot of it down to appease it completely.

A personal favorite that came up here was Ernie Pyle, one of the great war correspondents. His daily columns from the front lines during World War II were published in hundreds of newspapers nationwide. One column, ‘The Death of Captain Waskow’, is widely regarded as a high watermark of war reporting. It receives a grade of B from Readable, which notes the writing is a tad ‘impersonal.’ Have a read and decide for yourself.

Impersonal war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Credit: Indiana University. (Large preview)

Not all copywriting is literary of course, but enjoyable writing doesn’t always have to please readability algorithms. Shoehorning full stops into the middle of perfectly good sentences doesn’t make you Ernest Hemingway. I’m an expert in not being as good as Ernest Hemingway, so you can trust me on that.

Putting Readability Into Context

None of this is supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ for readability algorithms. They provide a quick, easy way to identify long or complex sentences. Sometimes those sentences need editing down and sometimes they’re just fine the way they are. That’s at the author’s discretion, but algorithms speed up the process.

Alternatively, if you’re trying to cut down on fluffy adverbs like ‘very’ you can do a lot worse than turning to the cold, hard feedback of a computer. Readability programs catch plenty of things we might miss, and there are plenty of examples of great writing that would receive suitably great scores when put through the systems listed above. They are useful tools; they’re just not infallible.

Algorithms can only understand topics within the confines of their system. They know what the rules are and how to follow them. Intuition, personal experience, and a healthy desire to break the rules remain human specialties. You can’t program those, not yet anyway. Things aren’t the done thing until they are, after all.

It’s a fine line between thinking your writing has to be clear, and thinking your readers are stupid. You stop seeing the woods for the trees. Every time I hear that the ‘ideal’ article length is X words regardless of the topic or audience, or that certain words should always be used because they improve CTR by 0.06%, I want to gauge my eyes out. Readability algorithms can make sloppy writing competent, but they can’t make good writing great.

Remember, when all is said and done, copy is written for people. From an SEO Company perspective, Google itself has made it clear in the past that readability should match your target audience. If you’re targeting a mass audience that needs information in layman’s terms, great, do that. If you produce specialized content for experts in a certain field then being more specialized is perfectly appropriate.

As Readable has itself explored, readability can be a kind of public good. Easy to read newspapers spread information better than obtuse ones do. Textbooks written for specific age groups teach better than highly technical ones do. In other words, understand the context you are writing in. Just remember:

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

— Goodhart’s Law

Find Your Voice

I have no beef with readability algorithms. My problem is with the laziness they can enable, the thoughtlessness. Rushing out a draft and running it through a readability tool is not going to improve your writing. As with any skill worth developing you have to be willing to put the hours in. That means going a step or two beyond blindly appeasing algorithms.

Not everyone has a lUXury of a great editor, but when you work with one, make full use of the opportunity. Pay attention to their suggestions, ask yourself why they made them. Ask questions, identify recurring problems in your writing and work to address them.

Analyse how the algorithms themselves work. If you’re going to use readability systems they should be supplemental to a genuine search for your own voice. Know how the things calculate scores, what formulas they’re drawing from. Learn the rules yourself. By doing so you earn the knowledge required to break them.

In his aforementioned essay George Orwell offers up his own approach to rules:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These are founded on solid principles applicable to the web. Where did those principles come from? Not computers, that’s for sure.

Real editors and honest self-reflection do a lot more for your writing ability long term than obeying algorithms does. It all feeds back into your communication, which is an essential skill whether you’re a copywriter, a developer, or a manager. Empathy for other people’s work improves your own.

There is another essential thing good writers do: they read. No algorithm can paper over the cracks of an unengaged mind. Whatever your interests are I guarantee there are people out there writing about it beautifully. Find them and read their work, and find the bad writing too. That can be just as educational.

If you’re so inclined, you may even decide to get all meta about it and read about writing. If you’re not sure where to start, here are a handful of suggestions to get the ball rolling:

Also keep in mind that readability is not just a question of words. Design is also essential. Layout, visuals, and typography can have just as much impact on readability as the text itself. Think about how copy relates to the content around it or the device it’s being read on. Study advertising and newspapers and branding. On the other side of that sprawling jungle is your voice, and that’s the most valuable thing of all.

To reiterate one last time, readability algorithms are handy tools and I wholeheartedly support using them. However, if you’re serious about making your copy ‘compelling’, ‘informative’, or even (shudder) ‘convert’, then you’re going to have to do a lot more besides. The best writers are those algorithms are trying to imitate, not the other way around.

Whoever you are and whatever your discipline, your writing deserves attention. Whether it’s website copy, technical guides, or marketing agency material, developing your voice is the best way to communicate the things most important to you. By all means, use the tools at your disposal, but just don’t phone it in.

(ra, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/readability-algorithms-should-be-tools-not-targets/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/readability-algorithms-should-be-tools.html

[riichardwilson]

Readability Algorithms Should Be Tools, Not Targets

About The Author

Frederick O’Brien is a freelance journalist who conforms to most British stereotypes. His interests include American literature, graphic design, sustainable … More about Frederick …

Readability programs may seem like a godsend, but the worst thing writers can do is write to please them above all others. Finding your voice is hard enough without also trying to sound like everyone else.

The web is awash with words. They’re everywhere. On websites, in emails, advertisements, tweets, pop-ups, you name it. More people are publishing more copy than at any point in history. That means a lot of information, and a lot of competition.

In recent years a slew of ‘readability’ programs have appeared to help us tidy up the things we write. (Grammarly, Readable, and Yoast are just a handful that come to mind.) Used everywhere from newsrooms to browser plugins, these systems offer automated feedback on how writing can be clearer, neater, and less contrived. Sounds good right? Well, up to a point.

As with most things, there’s an xkcd comic for this. (Large preview)

The concept of ‘readability’ is nothing new. For decades researchers have analyzed factors like sentence length, syllable count, and word complexity in order to ‘measure’ language. Indeed, many of today’s programs incorporate decades-old formulas into their scoring systems.

The Flesch-Kincaid system, for example, is a widely used measure. Created by Rudolf Flesch in 1975, it assigns writing a US grade level. The Gunning fog index serves a similar purpose, and there are plenty more where they came from. We sure do love converting things into metrics.

It’s no mystery why formulas like this are (quite rightly) popular. They help keep language simple. They catch silly mistakes, correct poor grammar, and do a serviceable job of ‘proofreading’ in a pinch. Using them isn’t a problem; unquestioning devotion to their scores, however, is.

No A-Coding For Bad Taste

I want to tread carefully here because I have a lot of time for readability algorithms and the qualities they tend to support — clarity, accessibility, and open communication. I use them myself. They should be used, just not unquestioningly. A good algorithm is a useful tool in the writer’s proverbial toolbox, but it’s not a magic wand. Relying on one too heavily can lead to clunkier writing, short-sightedness, and, worst of all, a total uniformity of online voices.

One of the beauties of the internet is how it melts national borders, creating a fluid space for different cultures and voices to interact in. Readability historically targets academic and professional writing. The Flesch-Kincaid test was originally developed for US Navy technical manuals, for example. Most developers can appreciate the value of clear documentation, but it’s worth remembering that in the world of writing not everything should sound like US Navy technical manuals. There are nuances to different topics, languages, and cultures that monosyllabic American English can’t always capture.

Deference to these algorithms can take writers to absurd lengths. Plain English is one thing, but unquestioning obedience is another. I’ve seen a good few sentences butchered into strings of words that tick readability boxes like ‘write in short sentences’ and ‘use monosyllabic words wherever possible’, but border on nonsensical to the human eye. It’s a near-impossible thing to quantify, but it has been a recurring phenomenon in my own work, and having spoken with other copywriters and journalists I know it’s not just my rampant paranoia at work.

Let’s look at the limitations of these tools. When faced with some of the greatest writers of all time — authors, journalists, copywriters, speech writers — what’s the verdict? How do the masters manage?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The opening chapter receives a grade of E from Readable.

George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, which bemoans how unclear language hides truth rather than expresses it. He gets a grade of D. Talk about having egg on your face!

The beginning of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway does tolerably well in the Hemingway Editor, though you’d have to edit a lot of it down to appease it completely.

A personal favorite that came up here was Ernie Pyle, one of the great war correspondents. His daily columns from the front lines during World War II were published in hundreds of newspapers nationwide. One column, ‘The Death of Captain Waskow’, is widely regarded as a high watermark of war reporting. It receives a grade of B from Readable, which notes the writing is a tad ‘impersonal.’ Have a read and decide for yourself.

Impersonal war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Credit: Indiana University. (Large preview)

Not all copywriting is literary of course, but enjoyable writing doesn’t always have to please readability algorithms. Shoehorning full stops into the middle of perfectly good sentences doesn’t make you Ernest Hemingway. I’m an expert in not being as good as Ernest Hemingway, so you can trust me on that.

Putting Readability Into Context

None of this is supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ for readability algorithms. They provide a quick, easy way to identify long or complex sentences. Sometimes those sentences need editing down and sometimes they’re just fine the way they are. That’s at the author’s discretion, but algorithms speed up the process.

Alternatively, if you’re trying to cut down on fluffy adverbs like ‘very’ you can do a lot worse than turning to the cold, hard feedback of a computer. Readability programs catch plenty of things we might miss, and there are plenty of examples of great writing that would receive suitably great scores when put through the systems listed above. They are useful tools; they’re just not infallible.

Algorithms can only understand topics within the confines of their system. They know what the rules are and how to follow them. Intuition, personal experience, and a healthy desire to break the rules remain human specialties. You can’t program those, not yet anyway. Things aren’t the done thing until they are, after all.

It’s a fine line between thinking your writing has to be clear, and thinking your readers are stupid. You stop seeing the woods for the trees. Every time I hear that the ‘ideal’ article length is X words regardless of the topic or audience, or that certain words should always be used because they improve CTR by 0.06%, I want to gauge my eyes out. Readability algorithms can make sloppy writing competent, but they can’t make good writing great.

Remember, when all is said and done, copy is written for people. From an SEO Company perspective, Google itself has made it clear in the past that readability should match your target audience. If you’re targeting a mass audience that needs information in layman’s terms, great, do that. If you produce specialized content for experts in a certain field then being more specialized is perfectly appropriate.

As Readable has itself explored, readability can be a kind of public good. Easy to read newspapers spread information better than obtuse ones do. Textbooks written for specific age groups teach better than highly technical ones do. In other words, understand the context you are writing in. Just remember:

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

— Goodhart’s Law

Find Your Voice

I have no beef with readability algorithms. My problem is with the laziness they can enable, the thoughtlessness. Rushing out a draft and running it through a readability tool is not going to improve your writing. As with any skill worth developing you have to be willing to put the hours in. That means going a step or two beyond blindly appeasing algorithms.

Not everyone has a lUXury of a great editor, but when you work with one, make full use of the opportunity. Pay attention to their suggestions, ask yourself why they made them. Ask questions, identify recurring problems in your writing and work to address them.

Analyse how the algorithms themselves work. If you’re going to use readability systems they should be supplemental to a genuine search for your own voice. Know how the things calculate scores, what formulas they’re drawing from. Learn the rules yourself. By doing so you earn the knowledge required to break them.

In his aforementioned essay George Orwell offers up his own approach to rules:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These are founded on solid principles applicable to the web. Where did those principles come from? Not computers, that’s for sure.

Real editors and honest self-reflection do a lot more for your writing ability long term than obeying algorithms does. It all feeds back into your communication, which is an essential skill whether you’re a copywriter, a developer, or a manager. Empathy for other people’s work improves your own.

There is another essential thing good writers do: they read. No algorithm can paper over the cracks of an unengaged mind. Whatever your interests are I guarantee there are people out there writing about it beautifully. Find them and read their work, and find the bad writing too. That can be just as educational.

If you’re so inclined, you may even decide to get all meta about it and read about writing. If you’re not sure where to start, here are a handful of suggestions to get the ball rolling:

Also keep in mind that readability is not just a question of words. Design is also essential. Layout, visuals, and typography can have just as much impact on readability as the text itself. Think about how copy relates to the content around it or the device it’s being read on. Study advertising and newspapers and branding. On the other side of that sprawling jungle is your voice, and that’s the most valuable thing of all.

To reiterate one last time, readability algorithms are handy tools and I wholeheartedly support using them. However, if you’re serious about making your copy ‘compelling’, ‘informative’, or even (shudder) ‘convert’, then you’re going to have to do a lot more besides. The best writers are those algorithms are trying to imitate, not the other way around.

Whoever you are and whatever your discipline, your writing deserves attention. Whether it’s website copy, technical guides, or marketing agency material, developing your voice is the best way to communicate the things most important to you. By all means, use the tools at your disposal, but just don’t phone it in.

(ra, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/readability-algorithms-should-be-tools-not-targets/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/616932296630632448

[scpie]

Readability Algorithms Should Be Tools, Not Targets

About The Author

Frederick O’Brien is a freelance journalist who conforms to most British stereotypes. His interests include American literature, graphic design, sustainable … More about Frederick …

Readability programs may seem like a godsend, but the worst thing writers can do is write to please them above all others. Finding your voice is hard enough without also trying to sound like everyone else.

The web is awash with words. They’re everywhere. On websites, in emails, advertisements, tweets, pop-ups, you name it. More people are publishing more copy than at any point in history. That means a lot of information, and a lot of competition.

In recent years a slew of ‘readability’ programs have appeared to help us tidy up the things we write. (Grammarly, Readable, and Yoast are just a handful that come to mind.) Used everywhere from newsrooms to browser plugins, these systems offer automated feedback on how writing can be clearer, neater, and less contrived. Sounds good right? Well, up to a point.

As with most things, there’s an xkcd comic for this. (Large preview)

The concept of ‘readability’ is nothing new. For decades researchers have analyzed factors like sentence length, syllable count, and word complexity in order to ‘measure’ language. Indeed, many of today’s programs incorporate decades-old formulas into their scoring systems.

The Flesch-Kincaid system, for example, is a widely used measure. Created by Rudolf Flesch in 1975, it assigns writing a US grade level. The Gunning fog index serves a similar purpose, and there are plenty more where they came from. We sure do love converting things into metrics.

It’s no mystery why formulas like this are (quite rightly) popular. They help keep language simple. They catch silly mistakes, correct poor grammar, and do a serviceable job of ‘proofreading’ in a pinch. Using them isn’t a problem; unquestioning devotion to their scores, however, is.

No A-Coding For Bad Taste

I want to tread carefully here because I have a lot of time for readability algorithms and the qualities they tend to support — clarity, accessibility, and open communication. I use them myself. They should be used, just not unquestioningly. A good algorithm is a useful tool in the writer’s proverbial toolbox, but it’s not a magic wand. Relying on one too heavily can lead to clunkier writing, short-sightedness, and, worst of all, a total uniformity of online voices.

One of the beauties of the internet is how it melts national borders, creating a fluid space for different cultures and voices to interact in. Readability historically targets academic and professional writing. The Flesch-Kincaid test was originally developed for US Navy technical manuals, for example. Most developers can appreciate the value of clear documentation, but it’s worth remembering that in the world of writing not everything should sound like US Navy technical manuals. There are nuances to different topics, languages, and cultures that monosyllabic American English can’t always capture.

Deference to these algorithms can take writers to absurd lengths. Plain English is one thing, but unquestioning obedience is another. I’ve seen a good few sentences butchered into strings of words that tick readability boxes like ‘write in short sentences’ and ‘use monosyllabic words wherever possible’, but border on nonsensical to the human eye. It’s a near-impossible thing to quantify, but it has been a recurring phenomenon in my own work, and having spoken with other copywriters and journalists I know it’s not just my rampant paranoia at work.

Let’s look at the limitations of these tools. When faced with some of the greatest writers of all time — authors, journalists, copywriters, speech writers — what’s the verdict? How do the masters manage?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The opening chapter receives a grade of E from Readable.

George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, which bemoans how unclear language hides truth rather than expresses it. He gets a grade of D. Talk about having egg on your face!

The beginning of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway does tolerably well in the Hemingway Editor, though you’d have to edit a lot of it down to appease it completely.

A personal favorite that came up here was Ernie Pyle, one of the great war correspondents. His daily columns from the front lines during World War II were published in hundreds of newspapers nationwide. One column, ‘The Death of Captain Waskow’, is widely regarded as a high watermark of war reporting. It receives a grade of B from Readable, which notes the writing is a tad ‘impersonal.’ Have a read and decide for yourself.

Impersonal war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Credit: Indiana University. (Large preview)

Not all copywriting is literary of course, but enjoyable writing doesn’t always have to please readability algorithms. Shoehorning full stops into the middle of perfectly good sentences doesn’t make you Ernest Hemingway. I’m an expert in not being as good as Ernest Hemingway, so you can trust me on that.

Putting Readability Into Context

None of this is supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ for readability algorithms. They provide a quick, easy way to identify long or complex sentences. Sometimes those sentences need editing down and sometimes they’re just fine the way they are. That’s at the author’s discretion, but algorithms speed up the process.

Alternatively, if you’re trying to cut down on fluffy adverbs like ‘very’ you can do a lot worse than turning to the cold, hard feedback of a computer. Readability programs catch plenty of things we might miss, and there are plenty of examples of great writing that would receive suitably great scores when put through the systems listed above. They are useful tools; they’re just not infallible.

Algorithms can only understand topics within the confines of their system. They know what the rules are and how to follow them. Intuition, personal experience, and a healthy desire to break the rules remain human specialties. You can’t program those, not yet anyway. Things aren’t the done thing until they are, after all.

It’s a fine line between thinking your writing has to be clear, and thinking your readers are stupid. You stop seeing the woods for the trees. Every time I hear that the ‘ideal’ article length is X words regardless of the topic or audience, or that certain words should always be used because they improve CTR by 0.06%, I want to gauge my eyes out. Readability algorithms can make sloppy writing competent, but they can’t make good writing great.

Remember, when all is said and done, copy is written for people. From an SEO Company perspective, Google itself has made it clear in the past that readability should match your target audience. If you’re targeting a mass audience that needs information in layman’s terms, great, do that. If you produce specialized content for experts in a certain field then being more specialized is perfectly appropriate.

As Readable has itself explored, readability can be a kind of public good. Easy to read newspapers spread information better than obtuse ones do. Textbooks written for specific age groups teach better than highly technical ones do. In other words, understand the context you are writing in. Just remember:

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

— Goodhart’s Law

Find Your Voice

I have no beef with readability algorithms. My problem is with the laziness they can enable, the thoughtlessness. Rushing out a draft and running it through a readability tool is not going to improve your writing. As with any skill worth developing you have to be willing to put the hours in. That means going a step or two beyond blindly appeasing algorithms.

Not everyone has a lUXury of a great editor, but when you work with one, make full use of the opportunity. Pay attention to their suggestions, ask yourself why they made them. Ask questions, identify recurring problems in your writing and work to address them.

Analyse how the algorithms themselves work. If you’re going to use readability systems they should be supplemental to a genuine search for your own voice. Know how the things calculate scores, what formulas they’re drawing from. Learn the rules yourself. By doing so you earn the knowledge required to break them.

In his aforementioned essay George Orwell offers up his own approach to rules:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These are founded on solid principles applicable to the web. Where did those principles come from? Not computers, that’s for sure.

Real editors and honest self-reflection do a lot more for your writing ability long term than obeying algorithms does. It all feeds back into your communication, which is an essential skill whether you’re a copywriter, a developer, or a manager. Empathy for other people’s work improves your own.

There is another essential thing good writers do: they read. No algorithm can paper over the cracks of an unengaged mind. Whatever your interests are I guarantee there are people out there writing about it beautifully. Find them and read their work, and find the bad writing too. That can be just as educational.

If you’re so inclined, you may even decide to get all meta about it and read about writing. If you’re not sure where to start, here are a handful of suggestions to get the ball rolling:

Also keep in mind that readability is not just a question of words. Design is also essential. Layout, visuals, and typography can have just as much impact on readability as the text itself. Think about how copy relates to the content around it or the device it’s being read on. Study advertising and newspapers and branding. On the other side of that sprawling jungle is your voice, and that’s the most valuable thing of all.

To reiterate one last time, readability algorithms are handy tools and I wholeheartedly support using them. However, if you’re serious about making your copy ‘compelling’, ‘informative’, or even (shudder) ‘convert’, then you’re going to have to do a lot more besides. The best writers are those algorithms are trying to imitate, not the other way around.

Whoever you are and whatever your discipline, your writing deserves attention. Whether it’s website copy, technical guides, or marketing agency material, developing your voice is the best way to communicate the things most important to you. By all means, use the tools at your disposal, but just don’t phone it in.

(ra, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/readability-algorithms-should-be-tools-not-targets/

[ecotone99]

[RO] Levi’s Dream

Levi woke up to problems. He’d had a dream so vivid, it felt more real than some of his recent memories. In the dream, he’d watched his father die. He could barely resituate himself in his bedroom as he blinked awake, facing his wall of lacrosse gear, his keyboard, the letter he kept starting and restarting for his girlfriend Stella’s birthday. His room felt foreign all of a sudden, even though this was his second school year in the same off campus apartment.

He’d heard the accident described to him in such explicit detail over the last few months that, at times, he’d felt as though he could see it. But that paled in comparison to now having visually experienced the sudden splattering of blood and audibly processing the distinct searing of flesh. It didn’t help that his dad had looked just like him. Levi’s same towering 6’3, he came off smaller because of his wiry frame, the opposite of Levi’s soft bulk. He had the same warm chestnut eyes and tousled wavy hair past his shoulders. Levi thought he had completed the grieving process. He knew it hadn’t been particularly intense, but he chalked it up to he and his father not being particularly close. As he awoke that morning, though, he felt emptier and more sorrowful than he had as they’d lowered the casket at the funeral.

His phone buzzed with a text from Stella. He ignored it. Unusual for him. He wasn’t up to putting on a brave face for anyone right now. He’d be with her for their lunch date in a few hours, anyways. Something else about the dream was nagging at him, distracting him, but he didn’t allow himself to linger on it long enough to put the pieces together. He disliked few things more than feeling out of control, and the sharp emotions were poised to snatch his autonomy away at any moment if he didn’t pull himself together. One of his greatest shortcomings, which he still childishly viewed as a strength, was his tendency to repress difficult feelings. What he saw as “getting over it” was actually “failing to deal with it.” But he had a full day ahead of him, so in the heat of the moment, this felt like the only suitable choice.

As he lay in bed, he couldn’t help but picture the jolt of fear his father probably experienced as he’d seen the tornado approaching. The helplessness he’d felt when the ATV wouldn’t start. Levi felt his pulse begin hammering, so stumbled out of bed and forced himself to pick out clothes and brush his teeth and step out the door into the brisk early-morning breeze of the seaside. The Montana boy would never get used to the scent of New England, no matter how long it took him to get his degree. Usually, if he woke up early, he’d take the extra time to walk down to the beach and feed seagulls or buy a cheap breakfast from one of the vendors on the pier. Today though, just walking the two blocks up to campus felt like treading quicksand.

Even with the creepiest nightmares, Levi would usually shake them off by the time he’d walked to class. But today, it was as though his body was back on earth, but his insides were left in his sleep. Two more texts buzzed from Stella. He took a quick glance, to be sure she was alright, but they were benign. He caught “How’d you sleep?” Out of the corner of his eye and laughed at how serious that question had since become. Something about the dream stuck in his head, eating away at him. He knew Stella was a wonderful support in the past, but that had been for little things like failed papers, or good things like winning awards. He wasn’t sure their relationship was ready for the strain of a serious personal crisis. Besides, it was unfair of him to ask that of Stella. He’d been raised to believe that girlfriends have problem and boyfriends solve them, never the other way around. Men solve their own problems.

Meanwhile, Stella was getting irritated. An easy going spirit by nature, Stella was only fragile around those who made her feel deeply in the course of normal life. Levi’s soul spoke to hers in a native language no other had before. She knew Levi knew how badly she preferred “Can’t talk now, text me tomorrow” or even just a simple “busy” rather than unexplained silence.

She hated this macho front he tried to put on at times when communication was especially paramount, and had a distinct feeling that’s what was delaying him this morning. But he had more than enough redeeming qualities for her to look past this tendency, for now, in thanks more to infatuation than pragmatism. She put the annoyance out of her head by selecting what outfit she might wear to her lunch with him. She tossed her shoulder-length blonde hair back as she caught her own pearly blue eyes in the mirror. Her curves were accented by artfully placed freckles, and her ghostly pale skin complimented any color combination she experimented with, which had to be upwards of a dozen by this point. Their schedules didn’t often allow for formal “date” dates, so today was a big deal for her. It had been for Levi, too, until this morning.

Levi tried to think of what to do or who to call as he paced around, unable to move on from the dream. His phone buzzed again. He needed to get Stella off his back. “Something came up. Might not make it today.” He pounded out hurriedly. Across campus, in the sixth sundress she was trying on for a second time, Stella read the message. “Something’s off with him.” She thought, as she reconciled that her catwalk was a futile effort and she’d need to get on with her morning.

Levi thumbed through his contacts, looking for a listening ear, as he tried to shake the echoes from his head. His little brother getting to the door before he could. The ranger with a stone-cold face, unflinching as he was battered by the storm. “Is your mother home, boys?” Levi had been so confused. His mom had never even gotten a speeding ticket. What did the rangers want with her? She’d appeared before he could call her over. “Who is it Kyle, I don’t want you answering the door without me or Levi—oh, hello. Helen. Can I help you?” She’d cut herself off as she saw the ranger, and her demeanor changed entirely as she took in his expression. “You’d better come in.” She added, holding the door with her broad, inviting frame. She and Levi shared the same round face, given to similarly kind expressions. “Kyle, Levi, go upstairs.” She’d instructed. But even as little Kyle obediently toddled off, Levi would not consider leaving his mother alone with some man. When his stepfather wasn’t home, she was his to protect. Hell, she was his to protect no matter who else was home.

“You know what, let me just call my husband.” Helen had started as she showed the ranger to a chair. “When’s the last time you spoke with your husband, Ma’m?” The ranger had asked, declining to sit. “About ten minutes ago? He just went out with my middle son to do some yard work; he’ll only be a minute.” The ranger tried to hide his puzzled expression as he pulled out a sheet of paper. Levi saw the words “coroner’s report” printed at the top. He knew what it meant, but he also knew it had nothing to do with his family, his life, his world. “Is Calvin Roy Hudson of kin to you, Ma’m?” The ranger asked, a touch of uncertainty to his voice as he sized up Levi, likely trying to guess his age. Levi had never shaken his pre-pubescent demeanor, even now at nearly 20 years old. Levi’s mother’s tone shifted once more, from alarmed to melancholy. She knew whatever this was, things were never good when it came to Roy and the law. “He’s my first husband,” Helen said, squeezing Levi’s hand. “And my son’s father.” The ranger had steeled himself up, Levi could tell the ranger must not have given a notification of this sort before. “I regret to inform you that we’ve discovered the body of Calvin Roy Hudson on an unincorporated property at the outskirts of Croak.”

Levi paged back to his task as he saw Brandon Whitecliff’s name pop up in his phone contacts. He and Brandon went way back. Brandon might be more brawn than brains, but he was as jocular as he was jockish, and would at least act as though he understood. Maybe he could even help Levi figure out what it was about the dream that he couldn’t move past. Levi shot him a message and luckily Brandon was free and able to come right over. A text buzzed in from Stella. “So should I make other plans or what?” He just wanted her to go away. The more he’d come to care about Stella, the more stressful it was to interact with her in the middle of dealing with other things. The more he valued her perception of him, the harder it was to maintain. Stella was the best girlfriend he’d ever had, and he loved having her around for the big moments in his life. At such a low point, though, she would only be an additional element to manage. He’d have to pick and choose his words so as not to disrupt the image he’d so carefully constructed of himself in her eyes. He was tired just thinking about it.

Brandon hadn’t been far and met Levi at a café next to his place. “What’s going on man?” Levi tried to explain the dream without going into explicit detail. He had never discussed the specifics of the accident with anyone but Stella. “There’s something about it that feels, I don’t know. Off. Like I’m missing something. Something important. There’s unfinished business, you know? I never got to say goodbye or anything but… This feels separate from that.” Levi concluded after recounting everything. His friend nodded. “That’s tough man. I have to be upfront with you, I’ve never dealt with anything like that. But I feel for you.” Brandon said, taking an obnoxiously loud sip of his syrupy blue energy drink. “You know, something similar happened to me once. My dog died. It’s not like we didn’t have some warning, we knew he was sick, but still when it happened it really fucked me up for a while, so—” Levi stopped listening. They’d come here to talk about his problem, and now somehow the greatest tragedy of his young adult life had been parlayed into a sounding board for Brandon’s dead dog story? Levi had lost dogs too, he could confirm, it paled in comparison to the unexpected death of a parent. Even if the relationship had been complicated.

Meanwhile, Brandon continued rambling on, projecting over the classic rock the café blasted way too loud for mostly a residential area. “What we did was put his collar up on the mantel. It was nice, you know. Kind of grounding for all of us. Anytime I thought I heard him coming down the hall or thought I saw him I could look at the collar hanging there and remember that, hey, it was a great time having him around, but now he’s dead and we’ve got to move on.” Brandon tried to land his energy drink bottle in the trashcan and missed by a mile. Levi considered asking him if he planned to go pick it up, but he couldn’t muster the will. “You know what else helped me get over it was we got a new dog.” Brandon continued. “Your mom remarried, so your stepdad, Matt, he’s kind of like your new dog, you know. Pick up where you left off with your old dog, dad rather, with Matt.” Levi could not audibly express how deeply offensive and shatteringly hurtful what Brandon had just suggested was. But he knew, deep down beneath the layers of anger and disgust he was feeling towards his friend, that Brandon had the best of intentions.

Back at her apartment, Stella could not shake the sense that something was wrong. Usually very wrapped up in herself, Levi was one of the only people Stella always thought of first, before her own needs. It wasn’t like Levi to leave her hanging for hours at a time when she was waiting on him. The last time he’d done it was before he’d confided his fear of the dark to her, and had been too nervous to walk over past sunset, but unsure of how to explain. It was because she realized something was going on that she stopped texting him. She innately understood that either he didn’t think she could help, or he wasn’t in a position to respond right then, because otherwise he’d reach out. She tried to think about what might be the matter. She knew Levi was getting back a few important essays this week, but he wasn’t just a straight A student, he was breaking university records. No way he performed so poorly he was ducking social contact. What else could it be, though? She knew the anniversary of his father’s death was coming up, but he seemed to have really put that all behind him this semester. Even right around the time it happened he had been upfront with people about what left him sidelined. She kept checking her phone every few minutes as she pondered the possibilities. He’d always been her rock. While she didn’t want anything to be the matter, she did look forward to an opportunity to return the favor.

Levi had gotten rid of Brandon as quickly as he could without letting on how unhelpful he’d been and went back up to the apartment. The images of the dream flashed through his head, he couldn’t replace or override them no matter how hard he tried. After a couple minutes more of scrolling through his contact, he threw in the towel and decided to call his mom. He dialed her and, thankfully, she picked up on the third ring. “Levi, honey! How’s school?” Helen’s cheerful voice chirped into her receiver.

Just the sound of her voice brought him back to that day. “Levi, honey, maybe you should go upstairs and check on your brother.” She’d said, trying to disguise the crack in her voice as a throat clear. He’d replied with his eyes that he wasn’t moving a muscle. The ranger looked at Helen for permission to continue in his presence and she nodded in acquiescence. “He was out in his ATV when the tornado approached. Evidently, he was unable to restart the vehicle to return to his home, and as the twister came within close proximity, he grabbed onto the nearest grounded object to keep from being swept up into the funnel. Well, Ma’m, the nearest grounded object was a high voltage power line. In the commotion, he may have mistaken it for a telephone pole, or he may have decided it was worth taking his chances. We can’t know for sure.”

Levi could no longer tell whether his mother was holding his hand to support him, or so he could support her. She was shaking. “How… Why… Why was he down that far? There’s nothing behind the trailers but forest and those damned power lines.” “We believe he was hunting. He was found in an orange visibility vest with a rifle nearby.” The ranger had explained, embarrassedly consulting the report for the full details. Levi had had to resist asking “Is this your first time doing this?” Both because he knew he’d have been overcome by his anger if he tried to speak, and that the ranger had just handed his mother an evidence bag that had made her heave a deep sob. Roy had died wearing his wedding ring. Levi could see it gleaming on his corpse as his body was thrown back in the dream.

“Levi, you there?” His mom called into the phone. He could hear her knocking the handset against the kitchen counter like they sometimes did when the landline faltered. He realized how painful it was for his mother to revisit the fateful day. How hard she’d had to work to hold down her job and her second marriage as she coped through the loss. How much she was sacrificing to put Levi in the college he was calling her from. “Nothing Mama. Can you put Matt on?” Levi asked, thinking his stepfather wasn’t quiet the warm refuge his mother was, but could be the next best thing. As he considered it, however, he remembered a conversation he had overheard after the first time he’d woken his mother up in the middle of the night upset about the loss of his father.

“I’m just saying, it grates on me.” Matt had growled to Helen from the not so secret confines of their bedroom walls. “It grates on you that Levi misses his dad?” She’d replied in disbelief. “No, that! That that you just did there. Roy wasn’t Levi’s dad. I am. I fed him and clothed him and I’m putting him through school. But forget that, any man can do those things. I sat up helping him with his calculus homework even though I couldn’t pass the eighth grade. I taught him to throw a ball and talk to girls and act right around adults. I took off work when he was sick. I stayed awake with him for three full days before he had to get his tonsils out. I disciplined him even when he hated me for it and I loved him even when he didn’t love me back. Where was Roy throughout all this? He was drunk by himself in a trailer while his boy was growing up carrying the weight of abandonment just five miles down the road. Now I have to listen to Levi mourn the death of his father while I’m still right here living and breathing? Don’t tell me it’s natural Helen. None of this is.” Levi had never gone to Matt with his feelings of grief again. In fact, he hadn’t much talked about the loss at all after that.

“Matt’s working but I can go and fetch him. Is everything ok?” Levi hesitated, staring into the phone. “Yah Mom, just checking in on everyone.” He bluffed as he pulled the phone away from his ear so she wouldn’t hear him sniffle. He underestimated how well a mother knows her son. “Levi? What’s going on?” Helen asked sincerely as she stepped into the hall where it was quieter. “Nothing, but I’ve got to go now, ok?” Helen searched for the right words to get him to open up. If she could change one thing about her son’s upbringing, she would’ve done anything she could think of to coax some of this stoicism out of him. But he was practically a grown man now, and she knew it was too late. “Ok, but Levi, whatever it is, you’ll get through it. Ok? You can get through anything. You’ll be ok, whatever it is.” “Thanks Mama.” Levi replied as he disconnected the call. He could feel his chest tightening. He was beginning to realize what stood out to him about the dream, and he didn’t want to anymore. He wasn’t ready. He forced it down as he whipped out his student ID and found the number for counseling services etched in with the other standard emergency contacts on the back.

Before he knew it he was in a moss green office with dreary mass produced art on every wall. A grad student, trying way too hard to be upbeat, offered him a vigorous handshake. “Hiiiiii Levi, I’m Delilah, your peer counselor for today’s session. Could you tell me a little bit about what’s brought you in today?” All of a sudden the part of Levi that had been begging to unload his confusion, and share the dream with someone who could help him parse through it and find some answers, was struck dumb. He pivoted at the last second. “I’ve had a really off day today.” Levi said, choosing the easy path out. “Everyone has those days. Is there anything in particular on your mind?” Levi couldn’t hold the dam back from bursting much longer. “Well, there’s just been some stuff going on with memories of my dad.” “Are you close with your dad?” Delilah asked, feigning interest and leaning in far too close.

“No.” Levi said almost as quickly as he felt badly about it. “I mean… It’s complicated. I was always closer to my stepdad, you know. So, yah. Complicated.” “Why do you think you’re closer to your stepdad?” Delilah replied, ignoring his obvious hesitance. Levi couldn’t tell if she came back with a new question so fast because she was just moving through some sort of counseling formula, or if she genuinely cared. “A lot of reasons, I guess. My stepdad lives with us. He was more of a father to me.” “Does your biological dad not live close?” “No, he lived close, he lived like ten minutes away by car.” Levi replied, oblivious to how contradictory this was. “Did ya’ll not have a car, or…?” Levi thought for a minute, doing some internal risk-reward calculations as to the benefit of bearing his soul to this stranger. “He was a drunk. Things were alright for a while, early on. After my mom got with Matt, my stepdad, my biological dad Roy kind of withdrew. Lost his job. Lost his house. He was a rough guy. A hands-on kind of guy. But it’s complicated, because he meant well.” Levi said, forgetting what the question had been.

“So, he’s rough, but he means well. Could you give me an example?” Delilah asked, taking out a pad and pen. “I guess a for instance is one of the first times I visited him after he lost his house. He was in a really bad place, he moved into a trailer, he was really ashamed of how he was turning out. He took it out on the people around him. But he still tried, you know? He still tried to make visits fun and hide all that from me. So this was maybe the second or third time I was visiting and he’d gotten so wasted the night before that he was still knocked out that morning. So I went out to explore around the trailer park. I went behind the trailers and found these tall poles and I was playing around them.”

Levi wrung his hands and looked down into the shallow beige carpet. It figures this would be the story on his mind considering the dream, but it gave him pause to even talk about the power lines even on his good days. “Turns out they were high voltage power lines. The place was unincorporated, so the city had never gotten around to fencing them off. My dad woke up, saw I was missing, and when he found me over there near those things he showed up at my side quicker than I could blink. He kneeled down to my level, looked me straight in the eye, and slapped me in the face so hard I felt it reverberate across my whole tiny jaw. And at that point, I still had no clue what I’d done to get into trouble. So that’s the hands-on part, you know. But he said, ‘Did that hurt boy?’ and I nodded yes, because it did, but also ‘cause you’d have to be pretty thick to say your punishment didn’t hurt. And he said ‘No it didn’t. Not compared to what you would’ve felt if you touched those poles you was playing near.’ And I asked him ‘It would really hurt that bad?’ ‘Cause I’d touched a lot of poles in my life, hell I’d grabbed a few electric cattle fences on dares, and none of that had hurt as bad as my cheek did right then. He said ‘It would’ve sent more volts through your system than prisoners get in the electric chair. And that’s if it didn’t kill you first. You promise me you’re never coming back here. I don’t even go around here if I can help it. Anywhere near those poles is too dangerous. Got it?’ So I’d promised him I’d never go near it again.” Levi explained, nervously picking the cuticles off his nails, wondering whether or not Delilah was listening as closely as she attempted to signal she was.

“Is it moments like those where he used violence to get his point across that’s got you feeling blue today?” She asked, resting her head on her chin. “No. I’ve just been thinking a lot about his death and—” “He died?!” Delilah balked. It was then that Levi gave up on counseling. He’d been hesitant to visitin the first place. People back home don’t visit head shrinkers unless a court orders them too. Realizing he’d have to solve this on his own, he kept turning the story over in his mind, desperate for someone who could empathize after the disappointment of getting nothing in response to his vulnerability. He felt this childhood memory must carry more relevance to the dream than just the locale of the power lines. That’s when it hit him.

He felt his chest tighten and the blood drain from his head as he wobbled to a standing position. “Levi? We’ve still got plenty of time left in our session—” Delilah said as he made his way for the door. “I’m sorry Ma’m, I just…” Levi trailed off as the weight of what he was coming to realize hit him. “It’s ok Levi. If you decide you want to talk some more just dial counseling services any time. And remember, you will get through this.”

Levi sprinted to his apartment, though every step felt like the slowest he’d ever taken. He threw the door open and slammed it shut behind him, not even bothering to kick his shoes off as he threw himself face first on the bed and screamed as loud as he could. He beat his fists against the mattress, frustration only growing with the unsatisfying rebound of the soft padding. He tried to rip his pillow in half, to no avail. He could feel his pulse skyrocketing again. He was hot and frantic and what was that sound? That sound was irritating the very last cool and collected fibers of his being. He realized it was his phone vibrating. Stella was calling him. He wanted to throw his phone against the wall as hard as he could, but in that moment, he had never felt as alone. He had nowhere left to turn, and as his world came crashing in around him, he wanted nothing more than the sweet, safe, forgiving embrace of the voice waiting on the other end of the phone. He no longer cared what she thought of him, or what his role as the man of the relationship might be, or how she would handle it, or whether she’d ever trust him to keep her safe again after such an unchecked display of raw emotion. He answered the call. “It… It was suicide.” Levi cried, collapsing into a shrieking, sobbing, sheet-tangled heap.

He let the phone fall somewhere near his face as he fought for breath amidst the untamable torrent of tears. He didn’t even hear Stella say “I’m walking over” or notice her let herself in with the spare key. He just felt the indentation as she sat on the side of the bed and reached over to sweep some strands of his sweat drenched hair out of his eyes. He choked and sputtered as his anguish was too much for his own respiratory system to manage. Stella rubbed his back as he forced out the words, “It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t an accident.” Over and over. “What makes you think that?” Stella asked, rubbing his back, trying to help him steady his breathing. “I realized… when I was little… I walked down to those power lines. It took me five minutes. It took him even less. I’ll never forget, because I wasn’t supposed to be down there, and it wasn’t even three minutes from when I first saw him to when we were eye to eye. If the ATV didn’t start, he could’ve run home. He could’ve run inside. He knew those lines were dangerous. He warned me they’d kill me. He hit me so I’d never touch them. He said he didn’t ever go down there so I shouldn’t either.”

Stella considered what her place was here. She decided blindly agreeing with him would not be the thing that helped him to heal. They had to address every component of this to keep it from following them into the future, no matter how hard it was in the moment. He couldn’t be left with any ‘what if’s’. “Maybe the tornado was so close he knew he wouldn’t be able to make it back?” She offered, carefully. “The ranger told us he’d gone down there to hunt. He’d never hunted near the trailers in his life. It wasn’t deer season, and that’s about the only thing he ever hunted. Besides, there was a tornado warning. Who puts on orange and goes hunting outdoors in the middle of a tornado warning? He was an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. He wanted it to look like an accident.”

“Are you sure?” Was all Stella could manage to say as she took in the shock of this news and despaired at what it must be doing to her prince charming. “He must have brought that rifle in case the electric shock didn’t kill him. He wanted to make it look like an accident if he could. But one way or another, he was going to die. He probably wore orange to keep up the hunting story, but primarily so they’d find his body in that back field no one ever went past. So there wouldn’t be a missing persons search. So we wouldn’t have to wonder as long, suffering with our hopes up.” Stella had to admit that from what she’d heard about Roy, if he were going to kill himself, this is the sort of way he’d try and do it.

Levi turned to face her. “He was wearing his wedding ring Stella. I’d never seen him wear it once since my mom kicked his ass to the curb. Not one time. He must have known she was the only one around to make the identification and wanted to be sure she had it. So she wouldn’t forget…” He broke down again. “Stella, why did he do that? Why didn’t I see any signs? He could still be here.” Levi let himself be wrapped around Stella. With her reassuring hands and quiet voice, he remembered all the reasons he loved having her in the good times and wondered why he didn’t think those traits would carry over to the bad times as well. Then he remembered. He tried to bite back his tears and fix himself up. “Thanks for coming. I’m cool now.” He said, so abruptly and unconvincingly that Stella had to stifle a laugh.

“What just changed?” Stella asked, almost in a whisper. “What do you mean?” Levi asked, summoning every remaining ounce of strength to not break back into sobs as he spoke, to not beg her to stay. “You just made a conscious choice to shut me out.” Stella said, non-judgmentally, matter of factly. “This isn’t your responsibility.” Levi said, in a pleading, defeated voice. “I’m supposed to be strong for you.” He said, with palpable shame. “Levi!” Stella gasped in disbelief. “You don’t have to be strong for me. How would I ever be totally honest with you if I knew it would never be reciprocated? Besides, there is nothing stronger than confronting the things that hurt.” Levi resigned himself to weeping silently, as he had no retort for that. Stella sunk to his side and planted a light kiss on the same cheek his father had tried to smack some sense into over a decade ago – unknowingly giving away his eventual plot – as Levi would never again forget the short distance from the power lines to the trailer again.

From there, Stella did what she could to help Levi weather this psychological storm. She asked questions rather than proffering answers. She did twice as much listening as speaking. If she could have funneled every last drop of Levi’s pain into her own soul instead, she would have. She listened to his answers to “How does this change what you felt about his death?” and “What do you think would be helpful for people who love you to do while you process this?” Until long after dark, when she could sense his agony had been temporarily numbed by exhaustion. She got a cold washcloth to soothe his puffy eyes and laid next to him, hand in hand. They drifted in the silence for a few minutes, their minds anything but quiet. Stella stared up at the ceiling when she was moved to say one last thing before Levi slipped back into his dreams. “I know you’re not ok. But I promise, eventually, we will find a way to live with this.”

Levi didn’t respond, because he was too overcome with relief to think of what to say. For the first time since he awoke, he did not feel alone. He had been unaware of how asphyxiating it was in the wake of his larger concerns. In a response born out of months of observing Levi’s subtle facial cues, body language, and use of subtext, Stella understood. “I’m not going anywhere, Levi. No matter how bad things get.” She whispered as she snuggled up closer to him.

It was in that moment that, thrown into the cavernous swirl of revelations Levi was taking on, he came to know what it meant to have a partner for the very first time. He didn’t notice it then, but that night marked the start of a lifetime of his striving to be as reliable and present a partner as he had found in Stella. Neither would ever be alone again. Even as he lived a nightmare, Stella was a dream come true.

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News U.S. economy shakes free of recession fears in striking turnaround since August - The Washington Post

News

The U.S. economic system is heading into 2020 at a tempo of regular, sustained converse after a series of hobby rate cuts and the frightful resolution of two alternate-related threats largely eliminated the threat of a recession.

This marks a dramatic turnaround in momentum since August, when some forecasters predicted a 50 percent likelihood of a downturn starting up by the cease of next twelve months.

Many economists credit score the Federal Reserve’s present hobby rate reductions and the marginally improved alternate describe for propelling the stock market to new chronicle highs and causing forecasters to bump up their predictions for how long the economic system can preserve rising and in conjunction with jobs without stumbling.

President Trump secured Democrats’ signal-off closing week on a alternate deal with Mexico and Canada that will preserve most items traded between the three nations tariff-free. He additionally reached a restricted alternate agreement with China that scrapped hefty tariffs score 22 situation to buy invent over the weekend in alternate for China agreeing to catch about $200 billion more in U.S. items over the following two years.

The alternate gives, while now not almost as ambitious as Trump promised, like lessened one of many finest drags on the U.S. economic system: uncertainty. While some industries peaceful face significant tariffs and closing tiny print remain in flux, industry leaders relate now not now not as a lot as they know what the utter is seemingly to be in 2020, offering more clarity than they've had since Trump’s alternate warfare commenced almost two years ago.

“Tariffs shall be far more exact for moderately a while,” Larry Kudlow, Trump’s high economic adviser, knowledgeable The Washington Submit. “Some of the barriers to converse, in conjunction with the Fed and alternate uncertainties, are being eliminated, and that will like a ambitious definite impact on the economic system."

U.S. Trade Consultant Robert E. Lighthizer mentioned Sunday that a pair of of the upper-scale structural adjustments the White Dwelling desires China to carry out might possibly possibly maybe maybe buy “years” to invent, reinforcing the realization that the White Dwelling might possibly possibly maybe maybe scale relieve a pair of of its adversarial methods next twelve months as Trump nears his reelection relate.

“The threat of a alternate-warfare-introduced about recession — which we never belief used to be high — has been materially lowered,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, mentioned Sunday, in a confide in shoppers.

Kudlow predicts 3 percent economic converse next twelve months, a tempo that Trump promised voters nevertheless that has now not been reached since 2005 and nearly no forecasters start air the White Dwelling relate is seemingly.

While Trump is nearly definite to tumble searching his utter, the noteworthy majority of economists now relate the economic system will develop spherical 2 percent next twelve months, a rate exact ample to be sure unemployment stays discontinuance to a half-century low of 3.5 percent. This might possibly possibly maybe maybe earnings Trump on the campaign path, as no president since World Warfare II has misplaced reelection when unemployment used to be below 7.4 percent.

The main fears in August had been that companies would proceed pulling relieve their spending, Trump would proceed imposing tariffs, and companies would rapidly turn spherical and ax workers. But that worst-case utter didn’t materialize. Job gains exceeded expectations in October and November.

Many economists relate Trump desires to be thanking the Fed for coming to the rescue after he escalated the alternate warfare this summer time.

The Fed lowered the benchmark U.S. hobby rate three times this twelve months — in July, September and October — taking it from almost 2.5 percent the entire formulation down to correct below 1.75 percent. Trump has repeatedly bashed the Fed, calling the central monetary institution’s management “boneheads,” nevertheless it used to be the central monetary institution that stimulated the economic system in present months.

“The cause issues are taking a gaze more definite now might possibly possibly maybe maybe be attributable to the Fed,” mentioned Constance Hunter, chief economist at KPMG. “We're seeing a turnaround in housing attributable to mortgage rates are low.”

White Dwelling officers relate the alternate gives on my own might possibly possibly maybe maybe push converse up half a share level next twelve months, up from about 2.2 percent this twelve months. U.S. shoppers had been the powerhouse of the U.S. — and world — economies this twelve months, and that is seemingly to proceed next twelve months. On high of that, Kudlow argues, industry funding is seemingly to carry out a comeback next twelve months now that the Fed has made it more inexpensive to borrow money and Trump has hit the pause button on most additional tariffs.

Industry funding lowered in dimension from April through September despite assurances from White Dwelling officers that the 2017 tax cuts would consequence in a surge in smooth investments. That pullback helped make a travel on economic converse.

The economic system next twelve months is additionally anticipated to earnings from high ranges of executive spending, to boot to an uptick in Chinese language purchases of U.S. products. The manager is projected to employ $1 trillion more than it brings in through earnings next twelve months, an surprisingly nice gap accurate through a length of economic converse.

No topic the low hobby rates and progress in alternate talks, a vary of self ample economists peaceful relate the economic system received’t like up great momentum. Many uncover it treading water next twelve months, with a modest uptick in industry funding offset by weaker consumer spending. They substandard this on present clues, equivalent to stalling wage converse and sluggish retail gross sales for November, on the final a powerhouse month.

“We're now not headed in opposition to a recession, nevertheless the records hold now not converse any develop of sudden re-acceleration going into 2020,” mentioned Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

Import tariffs remain on almost $370 billion rate of issues from China, with the bulk of those geared in opposition to parts frail in manufacturing autos and other objects. This has created an ongoing travel that introduced about a contraction in U.S. manufacturing this twelve months. While the most fresh records on manufacturing converse the sphere might possibly possibly maybe maybe need stabilized, it’s unclear whether or now not issues are enhancing.

Trump did agree to diminish tariffs on about $120 billion rate of Chinese language imports — largely shoes and apparel — from 15 percent to 7.5 percent, nevertheless Daco ran the numbers and stumbled on the impact of that used to be “negligible” on the economic system.

Venerable converse in a single other nation has additionally dampened industry optimism in the United States this twelve months, as roughly 90 percent of the enviornment economic system skilled a slowdown. Subsequent twelve months desires to be quite better, in accordance to the World Monetary Fund and other forecasters, nevertheless Paul Christopher of Wells Fargo Investment Institute mentioned this is also a “slack and shallow” world recovery that is way wimpier than what came about coming out of 2012 and 2015.

“China is re-orienting its converse to home sources, especially know-how production,” Christopher mentioned. “It is now not but definite what's going to force a world manufacturing recovery.”

The one share of the economic system that has shown noticeable pickup in present months is housing, a sector influenced far more by the Fed’s movement than by Trump’s alternate negotiators. Purchases and refinancing like picked up since the summer time, even supposing the inventory of homes for sale has remained low and affordability has been a serious pain in many cities.

But even in housing, the outlook for next twelve months is unsafe. Mortgage rates are inclined to preserve in the same divulge for months to come relieve after Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell indicated closing week that there is a high bar for the central monetary institution to diminish — or elevate — hobby rates in 2020 since the economic system is in a correct divulge and doesn't need extra stimulus. None of the Fed leaders penciled in a rate decrease next twelve months of their December forecasts.

Dwelling Depot, the home-improvement chain that is seen as a bellwether for the housing sector, scaled relieve its gross sales forecast for next twelve months after Chief Monetary Officer Richard McPhail mentioned the U.S. housing market in 2020 would “now not [be] at the diploma that we’ve seen in prior years."

But Ken Simonson, chief economist at Associated Same outdated Contractors of The US, predicts a “burst of home constructing” next twelve months and mentioned the most fresh surveys gift contractors are “very busy and upbeat” in regards to the long urge.

Mighty of this can also just rely on the spending habits of shoppers next twelve months, which economists, industry executives and political leaders are watching very closel

[comicsbeat]

Continuing with our wide-ranging survey of creators from every end of the business on what happened and what’s coming. You can check out the other parts of the survey here.

Katie Schenkel, writer

2019 Projects: 100 Light Years of Solitude, some unannounced projects

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? The phoenix-like transformation of Nancy as a voice for our time

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? DC Ink/Zoom totally making bank

  Andrew Farago, Cartoon Art Museum Curator, writer

2019 Projects: Voltron: The Ultimate Visual History from Insight Editions; Batman and Popeye projects; a full slate of exhibitions at the Cartoon Art Museum

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? More women, LGBTQ, and creators of color published major works and won major comic industry awards this year than we’d seen in some entire decades prior to the 2010s. The comics landscape is changing before our eyes, and that’s a great thing.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Gina Gagliano’s lineup at Random House Graphic will bring even more young readers into comics. That and Raina Telgemeier’s how-to book Share Your Smile are going to lay the foundation for the biggest story in comics in 2024.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? It’s not an election year, so if I can go a week without any major political news or upheavals, that would be great.

Who inspired you in 2018? Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Spider-Man’s co-creators couldn’t have taken more divergent paths if they’d tried, but each seemed to be more than content with his lot in life. There are lessons to be learned from both.

Alison Wilgus, Cartoonist

2019 Projects: I just turned in the second and final volume of my graphic novel series, Chronin, which I’ve been working on since 2007. BOTH volumes will debut from Tor in 2019, which is absolutely wild — Volume 1 in February and Volume 2 in September. I’ll also be continuing to put out the Graphic Novel TK podcast with my friend and co-producer, Gina Gagliano!

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Gina Gagliano starting her new graphic novel imprint at PRH. And I’m not just saying this because Gina’s a friend — Random House Graphic was announced in the Spring, and it’s already transforming the landscape of kids’ graphic novel publishing from where I sit. If you’re a cartoonist who wants the resources and reach of a major print publisher, you can count your options on one hand. We hardly ever get major new players like this, and I can’t wait to see how everything shakes out over the next couple of years.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? God who knows.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? I feel no guilt for my pleasures anymore, we all gotta cling to what joy we can on this bitch of an earth. Who inspired you in 2018? My editor, Diana Pho. As I’ve taken on more editorial work of my own this past year, as well as interviewing a ton of industry professionals for GNTK, I have a much better understanding of JUST HOW INSANELY GOOD AT HER JOB SHE IS, as well as being an exceptionally generous and kind member of the larger community.

Rob Clough, Critic

2019 Projects: Continuing to write for The Comics Journal, Comics MNT, Publisher’s Weekly, Your Chicken Enemy, WowCool.com, and whoever else will have me. My own High-Low blog just hit its tenth anniversary, and I plan to keep at that as well as write for my patrons at my Patreon. This is the year I also hope to work on my first couple of books. I will also continue my position as co- programmer of SPX.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? The continuing, massive culture shift in terms of who is making comics and for whom. There are more women, more people of color, and more queer folk than ever in comics, and that number is growing exponentially. Trans creators in particular made a huge impact in 2018. The blowback from the usual quarters was as predictable as it was irrelevant.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? The continued struggle to solve the distribution problem for small-press cartoonists is the big one. There is an explosion of new cartoonists thanks to greater access to comics education, but creating a sustainable market for them all is going to be a real challenge. The festival circuit should be seen as a supplement and marketing tool, not a solution.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Going to an NXT show in Durham.

Who inspired you in 2018? All of the other members of #defendthe11, but especially Whit Taylor.

Vita Ayala, writer

2019 Projects: Age Of X-Man: Prisoner X and more Livewire! Also some unannounced things, so stay tuned…

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Too many amazing stories I am looking forward to reading to choose!

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Danny Lore, Matt Rosenberg, Che Grayson, Regine Sawyer.

Madeleine Holly-Rosing,  Writer

2019 Projects: The new Boston Metaphysical Society one-shot, The Spirit of Rebellion (below) and more novels!

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Marvel original line of digital comics

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? The growth of independent titles.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Reading more.

Ted Rall, Cartoonist and writer

2019 Projects: THE STRINGER, a graphic novel where “Wag the Dog” meets “Breaking Bad”, drawn by Pablo Callejo and written by Ted Rall. WHAT’S LEFT: THE FIGHT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY by Ted Rall, about the clash between progressives and corporate liberals. A paperback reissue of THE YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY, drawn by Pablo Callejo and written by Ted Rall. And an as yet untitled novel.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Watching American democracy continue to implode. Who inspired you in 2018? Social media, negatively. The stupidity level finally rose to the level where it became impossible to care what trolls might think. This forced me to think for myself and rely on my own instincts.

Raina Telgemeier, Cartoonist

2019 Projects: Share Your Smile, a how-to comics guide for young creators, comes out April 30th. And my next full-length graphic novel, Guts, will be out on September 17th! It’s a prequel to Smile and Sisters. I’m pretty excited about it.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? When Stan Lee passed away, the rest of the world, all the regular people I know, were talking about it. His influence went so far beyond the industry.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? I can tell you something I’m looking forward to! Jen Wang’s new graphic novel, STARGAZING. I got to read an advance copy, and I’m so glad it’ll be out in the world next year.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? I have four events lined up in Texas next year, so I’m looking forward to tacos. All of the tacos.

Who inspired you in 2018? Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Hey, Kiddo is one of the bravest graphic memoirs ever written. It allows kids who suffer from family addiction in silence to feel seen. I’m so proud of and inspired by Jarrett!

David Macho, Jack of all trades

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? The batwedding

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Publishers drop Diamond, change distribution, avoid impending death! 😛

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? War of the Realms

Todd Allen, Talking Head

2019 Projects:

A little more supernatural detective work:

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Taken as a whole, the various launch and relaunch attempts… and there were plenty.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? How the 2018 launches/relaunches play out and the next wave. It sure feels like it’s taking more and more effort to tread water and this will have a trickle down effect one way or the other. I just hope a Barnes & Noble contraction doesn’t factor into that.

Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Producer, Writer, Cartoonist

2019 Projects: www.jewishcartoon.com/passover

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018? Pretty much every Mark Waid and Chris Samnee collaboration. Their batting average is off the charts.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? Please God, not Bruce Wayne’s penis.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Catching up on all the Marvel movies while house-sitting for a friend with a huge TV.

Atom! Freeman, Sales and Marketing Maven

2019 Projects: Building Prana: Direct Market Solutions. Creating more resources for retailers and publishers. Building ComicHub into a resource for all in comics.

What was the biggest story in comics in 2018 There were SO MANY! Seriously, do you remember a weirder year in the comics industry or was it just me? Valiant, Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, IDW… everyone has been affected by this weirdo year.

What will be the biggest story in comics in 2019? TKO, maybe? ComicHub? Prana? I’m optimistic that 2019 becomes the year of decentralizing power that grows the industry for everyone.

What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2019? Watching TKO and the publishers who follow suit break the distribution model and build the entire industry in the process.

Who inspired you in 2018? Dinesh Shamdasani. Forced out of the company he’s devoted his life to and even though he has more money than I will ever see, he is seeing the movies he set out to make through to the end and gathering speed to go after the next thing.

      The Beat's Annual Creator Survey Part 2: What will 2019 hold for comics? Creators give thei guesses. Continuing with our wide-ranging survey of creators from every end of the business on what happened and what's coming.

#2018 creator survey #2019 plans #alison wilgus #andrew farago #Atom! Freeman #Christian Beranek #david macho #jordan b gorfinkel #Katie Schenkel #Kelci Crawford #madeleine holly-rosing #Priya Huq #Raina Telgemeier #Rob Clough #Ted Rall #Todd Allen #vita ayala

[cryptocleveland-blog1]

I used to have a blog here.    

I spent hundreds of hours pouring my heart into long posts that hardly anyone read.  Some were just text, like this one.   Some were elaborate, multi-installment series laced with photos and detailed graphics.  The effort that went into these posts, and the lack of response, was both highly therapeutic and soul crushing at the same time.   It was a way for me to feel creatively stimulated, and to participate in a community at a time when I was unemployed and socially isolated, but not yet cynical about my future prospects.  

I had just finished grad school, studying urban planning, and I had also just fulfilled one of my long-term ambitions, to appear in a feature film.  As a way of promoting the movie, the director of that film had begun a blog where he talked at length about film theory, art, and contemporary culture.  One of the other actors in the film started a blog about her life as an aspiring actress so I followed suit, choosing to concentrate on that subject which I knew best, and was, at that time, most passionate about: Real Estate Development in the City of Cleveland; with the occasional post devoted to my main hobbies, acting and photography.  

I was really proud of some of those early posts,  they were written with the confidence of someone who thought that the years of hard work were behind him and that life could only get better from here on out.  But months went by, and years went by.    It became obvious that my big break was never going to happen,  the movie was never going to find distribution, it was never going to be the stepping stone to my next project.    

Eventually people stopped commenting on my posts, and I ran out of things to talk about.   My blog became less regular and more introspective.    The director and actress followed suit, refocusing their blogs onto current affairs and personal interests.   I started getting into disagreements.    I argued with the director over his political positions,  I alienated the young actress by teasing her a little too frequently about her favorite band.  

It became clear that I was beating a dead horse.   My illusions were starting to fracture.  My acting career was stagnant, the only film work available where I live was in cheesy local commercials and I was too poor and too indebted to move elsewhere, nor was I brave enough to move away from my family and support network.   In my professional career things were no better, the rejection letters were starting to add up, and the longer I’d been out of school the fewer interviews I got.  

I started using this blog to vent my frustration.   After a couple internships that led nowhere. I accepted a job I hated, that I wasn’t any good at, and that I got fired from within six months.   That didn’t help my resume.    I started working part time minimum wage jobs just to have an income.  One night on the news I saw that a local school district was paying $180 a day for temporary substitutes during a teachers strike.    I’d worked as a sub before and enjoyed it so it seemed like good opportunity to make some money.    

I had planned on being there for two weeks, but the strike lasted eight.  It was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, but I was fired from that job too.  I had been taking night classes at a community college, and the lack of sleep caught up with me. I was sad when it was over because there was one student in particular who I became emotionally attached to and I’d never gotten a chance to say good bye.  

I wish I had, because then I might not have gone to visit her place of work a few months later,  I might not have tried to stay in touch with her, I might not have deluded myself into thinking we were friends or that she cared about me half as much as I cared about her.  I could have just tied a nice happy bow around the relationship for being what it was and moved on to the next thing.   But its hard to move on when you have nothing to move on to.  

When you wake up feeling like a failure every morning its easy to get obsessed, your thoughts naturally drift to the last thing you can remember making you feel happy and important.  I shared these sentiments in posts I made on this blog, and other darker thoughts. After the fact I felt ashamed and decided to remove them, in an attempt to clean up my online fingerprints.

Its all gone now, good and bad; I’ve long since lost access to the email address I originally signed up for a tumblr account with and so my original account was deactivated, along with all its content, when tumblr updated its TOS a few years ago.    I miss it dearly.  

I don’t miss the toxic anxiety dump it became, I miss the escapism, the potential it once had to remove me from a hopeless situation and allow me to pontificate about how things ought to be.  I miss the ability to express myself anonymously, warts and all, and not fear being held accountable or publicly shamed for feeling angry and resentful, for admitting that I wanted more than I was entitled to.

When I stopped blogging I tried to find new communities to immerse myself in. I stopped auditioning for the local agency and started training with a local stunt coordinator because the stunt guys seemed to be the only locals getting any work whatsoever.   I switched from Tumblr to Youtube and started down a rabbit hole about Historical European Martial Arts.  I grew my hair and beard out, attempting to assimilate into that subculture.   I stopped applying for jobs and started my own consulting business doing drafting and 3d printing.

I’d like to say that my efforts have improved my situation, economically or otherwise, but alas its more of the same. More auditioning for parts that were already cast long before you ever saw a breakdown.   More skeptical looks and rejection letters whenever I convince myself that I’m broke and have no choice but to find a real job. I’m still treading water, and badly.  

A couple of years ago I started having panic attacks.  I’d gone to visit the highschool girl (now in college) one too many times; panicked because I suddenly felt that I was crossing a line, and abruptly broke off contact .   Then I felt bad about it and started following her on social media, which eventually confirmed my belief that I had hurt her.   I felt guilty about that too, and had another panic attack, so I tried to contact her again and offer an apology, which obviously backfired.   Then every few months I’d have another panic attack and make another ill conceived attempt to fix the situation.

Things came to a head about a year ago.   Each time I tried to reconnect and failed to repair the relationship, my anxiety got progressively worse.  In a last act of desperation, I reached out to a mutual acquaintance who immediately outed me as a crazy person and posted the conversation online.   Nothing had happened, but being forced to confront my own inappropriate behavior and to acknowledge that Google was no longer my friend was embarrassing enough that my anxiety jumped an order of magnitude overnight.   I went from merely not being able to sleep, to not being able to breath or speak.   I wasn’t just depressed, I was  physically ill.  

This convinced me to seek treatment.  About six months ago I started taking medicine for insomnia, anxiety and depression, and also ADHD which I think is the root problem.   The jury is still out as to whether any of its working or whether I actually have any of those issues.  I did switch medicines a while back because the cocktail was making me feel like a listless zombie.  And I have seemed more productive in the past month, but that could be attributed to my impending birthday.

As I’ve reflected over the past few months, I’ve determined that I’d never really given myself a chance as an actor, I’ve always treated it as an embarrassing secret that I don’t like to talk about, and that was one of the things causing me anxiety and potentially caused me to self sabotage any hope of finding full time career with my degree.  

I thought I had long ago made peace with the fact that I was never going to find success as an actor because only those who were born rich, in LA, and with the right connections ever got the opportunity to make movies for a living. But then the young actress I was in a movie with once proved me wrong. She’s not the only one,  I now have a number of acquaintances who work regularly, but in the time since I originally started this blog she has made the leap from depressed, socially awkward, nobody living in their parents house in Cleveland, to something more than that; while I’m still spinning my wheels.   Its a humbling thought and rather than be jealous of her success I’d like to try and emulate it.  

I wanted to make a good faith effort to put myself out there before I turned 35, so I spent the last month filming a demo reel to submit to managers.   If I get no response, that means I suck and I should move on.   And that knowledge is infinitely better than continuing to surround myself with people who tell me what I want to hear but have no power to help me achieve my goals.

Yesterday was my birthday.   I decided it was finally time to watch the movie.    I’d put it off because I didn’t want to burst my bubble.  Originally I was holding out for the premiere,   I wanted to watch it for the first time on the big screen.   Eventually it just became a crutch,  I didn’t want to see it because its my only credit and I’m barely in it.   The reality is the film is good, but the acting isn’t going to win awards.   I can be proud of it as a good first film, an excellent learning experience, and a stepping stone to greater things; which is all it was ever meant to be.   The rest is up to me.

I’ve decided to rededicate this blog to my documenting my career as a struggling actor from Cleveland Ohio.  

[readingontheedge]

BOOK INFORMATION:

OUTRAGEOUS, the next Quantum series novel Marie Force is now live!

Read OUTRAGEOUS now!

Kindle US: http://geni.us/q7amz iBooks: http://geni.us/q7ibooks Nook: http://geni.us/q7bandn Kobo: http://geni.us/q7kobo Google: http://geni.us/q7google Kindle CA: http://geni.us/q7amzca Kindle UK: http://geni.us/q7amzuk Kindle AU: http://geni.us/q7amzau

Print Signed copy from Marie’s Store: http://geni.us/q7mfstore Amazon US: http://geni.us/q7amzprt

Amazon UK: http://geni.us/q7amzprtuk 

BLURB:

She drives him crazy… In more ways than one.

Every time Leah Holt encounters Quantum Production’s chief counsel, Emmett Burke, the only thing she can think of is how much she wants to lick him. Everywhere. She’s never had that kind of reaction to a man, and the fact that he’s a much-older colleague makes her out-of-control attraction to him far more complicated than it should be. Every day, she brings a new legal question to Emmett, hoping to catch his attention and make him see her as a grown woman who wants him desperately. She walks a fine line in trying to remain professional as the assistant to superstar Marlowe Sloane while lusting after Marlowe’s sexy attorney.

To Emmett, Leah is a fly buzzing around his head who can’t be swatted away. She’s always there, looking at him, asking him legal questions that have nothing to do with his specialty in entertainment law and generally driving him mad with her overt sexiness and sassy mouth. He wants to toss her over his desk and run the sass right out of her, which is hardly the way a professional who loves his job should behave in the office—especially with a young, fresh, sexy colleague. As the author of the company’s policy on inter-office dating, he’s painfully aware of all the reasons he should stay far, far away from her and the tantalizing temptation she represents.

Then Leah gets her chance to step up for Emmett, to help him through an unfortunate “accident” and to show him she’s much more than just a smart mouth and a sexy body. When she realizes she has genuine feelings for him—and that those feelings are returned—she wonders if he will take a chance on her or continue to hold her at arm’s length. Slowly but surely, she chips away at his resistance, and he begins to crave more of her. But Emmett knows if he’s going to let her in, he has to let her all the way in. What will she think when he introduces her to his BDSM lifestyle? Will she still want him the way she does now or will she run away in horror? And what will he do if she runs away?

When Leah confronts a dangerous threat from her past, Emmett is forced to acknowledge that his “annoying little fly” has worked her way firmly into his heart—and his bed.

Also, join the entire Quantum team at the company’s vineyard in Napa for Hayden and Addie’s wedding!

Contains the full TAME edition in the back for those who want all the romance with a less scorching heat level!

AUTHOR BIO:

Marie Force is the New York Times bestselling author of contemporary romance, including the indie-published Gansett Island Series and the Fatal Series from Harlequin Books. In addition, she is the author of the Butler, Vermont Series, the Green Mountain Series and the erotic romance Quantum Series. In 2019, her new historical Gilded series from Kensington Books will debut with Duchess By Deception.

All together, her books have sold 6.5 million copies worldwide, have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list many times. She is also a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller, a Speigel bestseller in Germany, a frequent speaker and publishing workshop presenter as well as a publisher through her Jack’s House Publishing romance imprint. She is a two-time nominee for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® award for romance fiction.

Her goals in life are simple—to finish raising two happy, healthy, productive young adults, to keep writing books for as long as she possibly can and to never be on a flight that makes the news.

Join Marie's mailing list for news about new books and upcoming appearances in your area. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter @marieforce and on Instagram. Join one of Marie's many reader groups. Contact Marie at [email protected].

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website:  http://marieforce.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarieForceAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieForce

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marieforceauthor/

Newsletter: http://marieforce.com/subscribe/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1508588.Marie_Force

Reader Groups: https://marieforce.com/contact/ 

Leah

 I want to lick him. I want to strip him naked and lick every hill and valley of his muscular body. I want to know if all his muscles are as big as the ones on his arms. I want to ride him like a cowgirl. And then I want to ride him like a reverse cowgirl.

 My obsession with Emmett Burke began on my first day at Quantum Productions, where I work as assistant to megastar Marlowe Sloane, a Quantum partner and overall amazing, badass woman. On day one, Emmett was charged with reviewing the company’s nondisclosure agreement with me. Even with Flynn Godfrey’s assistant, Addie, sitting with us, I didn’t hear a word Emmett said about the NDA because I was so fixated on his obscenely sexy mouth. Right there in the Quantum office, I had visions of all the places I’d like to feel that mouth.

 Then he mentioned how I could be sued for discussing Quantum business or the partners outside of work, and that got my attention off his mouth, for a second or two, long enough to sign the NDA. I would never blow the amazing opportunity my friend Natalie secured for me after she fell in love with Flynn the superstar and ran away to Hollywood to marry him. But I sure would love the opportunity to blow Flynn’s attorney.

 At her wedding, Natalie hooked me up with Marlowe, who hired me on the spot and bought out my contract with the charter school I’d worked for in New York—unhappily, I might add. Teaching wasn’t for me. Being the assistant to one of the top movie stars in the world? Hell to the yes, that’s for me. Marlowe paid for my move to LA, and now that I’m here, doing a job I truly love, I’m the envy of everyone I know.

 Telling tales out of school—no pun intended—is not going to happen. I’d never do anything to screw up this sweet deal and the amazing opportunity I’ve been given to have a career I couldn’t have dreamed up for myself.

 But me and Emmett Burke? That is so going to happen. If I can just figure out a way to break through his uptight, always-professional demeanor to find the hot-blooded man under the three-thousand-dollar suits that have to be handmade for him because no off-the-rack suit would fit those biceps.

 In the meantime, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about licking him and trying to come up with reasons to talk to him. I wish I had the balls to come right out and tell him I want to suck his dick until he explodes down my throat, but something tells me that wouldn’t be the best career move I could make.

 While Emmett isn’t one of the Quantum principals—and let me tell you, the word principal in this business is a whole lot different than it was in the school business—he is best friends and chief legal counsel to Flynn, Hayden, Marlowe, Jasper and Kristian, otherwise known as the bosses. That means I need to tread lightly and keep my drooling and licking to a minimum.

 But God help that man if I ever get him alone in a bedroom—or any room that isn’t an office in the building where we both work. I have to laugh at how ridiculous this obsession has become, because it’s truly out of character for me. Before now, before Emmett, my interest in men has been more along the lines of wham-bam-thank-you-sir. I’ve never actually given a shit about any of them. But this one… This one is different, and I knew it right away. Every time I’ve been with him since that first day, and I’m “with him” just about every day, between work and play—these people love to party—I only want him more than I did the day before. It’s insanity. I willingly admit that, but I have no desire to make it stop. No, my desire is entirely focused on making it start.

 Sometimes, when I’m home alone at night with my trusty rabbit, I allow my wildest fantasies to take flight. I picture myself with Emmett in every conceivable position, as well as a few that haven’t been invented yet. I’ve begun to anticipate rabbit time a little too eagerly, which is worrisome. I’ve never been the kind of girl to run from a challenge, but I suspect Emmett thinks I’m too young and immature for him.

 There’s really no one I can talk to about my “dilemma,” since my closest friends here also work for Quantum or are married or engaged to the partners. Of course, they’re the ones whose opinions I most want because they know him better than I ever will at this frustrating rate.

 I’m going to have three whole days with him when we head up to Napa at the end of this coming week for Hayden and Addie’s wedding. I’ve been counting the days with plans to implement Operation Nail Emmett Burke while we’re there. I figure I only need to get Marlowe and Sebastian out of the way, because other than Emmett and me, they’re the only ones who aren’t in relationships. With lovebirds circling all around us, I expect the four of us to end up on our own quite a bit and will fully exploit any opportunities that present themselves without humiliating myself in front of Marlowe.

 Fine line that’ll be…

 I’ve made up my mind that the weekend in Napa is go time. Enough fantasizing about what I’d do if I had a night with him. It’s time to make those fantasies a reality.

#romantic comedy #amazon #marie force #kindle #love