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intubatedangel · 3 years

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Cold Snap: Chapter 8

Sorry for the delay, it’s been a rough couple of weeks but I’m starting to bounce back a little. This probably isn’t my best, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.

Story Index

* * *

Carl couldn't take his eyes off of Anna as they pushed the gurney around a corner. She looked... Amazing. The way she rocked back and forth, compressing their patient’s chest, making her ponytail bounce each time. Her face was a picture of focus, gaze locked on the young woman beneath her as she forced blood through Shona's ice-cold body. Damn, she was so gorgeous. The way she put her entire soul through her interwoven fingers, into those chest compressions that bent in Shona's ribs rhythmically. He could see she was doing what he had suggested. Putting her passion, their shared passion, into her efforts.

He took a moment, just one moment, to let a small thrill of pleasure shoot through him. Images flashed through his mind, memories of last night and ideas for when they got home. All the toys they could play with. He took a deep breath, first things first, get their patient back. He let out the breath as they crashed through the doors into Trauma 4.

They pulled the gurney across, lining it up next to the trauma bed. Carl let Anna maintain compressions, as the rest of the team unclipped the straps of the backboard. It was a small risk, but they couldn't get Shona into the vest that was spread on the bed while she was still strapped down. The vest was capable of keeping her immobilised, the reinforced back and its own means of being secured doing a close enough job.

"Let's get ready to move her, nice and easy now." Carl commanded, watching as his other nurses and the paramedic got in position. The ambubag was disconnected and dropped on the gurney as Dave gets his hands underneath Shona's shoulders, Kirstie gently supporting her head. Others held her arms and legs, kneeling on the bed so they could reach. "Ok, we're all ready Anna, we'll move on your call."

She nodded, her lips moving, as she started to announce her compressions. "43...44...45...46...47...48...49...50!" She finished, pulling her hands away and rising on one knee, un-straddling Shona's ghostly white body. Anna helped with the transfer, her hands beneath Shona's waist and thighs. They moved her over as fast as they safely could placing her on the already warm vest. Everyone could feel the contrast, between the heat of the water filling the ribbed plastic, and the chill of the flesh of the young woman they were trying to save. They all knew it meant they had time, but there was still a primitive part of each of them that was scared by that cold.

As soon as they placed her down Anna stood on a step and placed her hands back on Shona's chest, resuming her barrage, counting in her head once more, to allow Carl to give his orders. "Let's ready the combo pads, A/P positions in case we need to pace her, then we'll get her wrapped up." Anna kept going with her compressions, in the rhythm enough to be able to look around and watch as Trish tore open some sterile packaging and removed a pair of large square electrodes. Trish peeled off the backing of the first pad, revealing the thick layer of electro-conductive gel. Without being asked Anna raised her hands from the ice-cold sternum beneath them and grabbed the other pad. Like a well-oiled machine, Trish placed the first pad, smoothing the edges to make sure the foam stuck well, a split second before the others log rolled the young woman, allowing Anna to slap the other pad onto Shona's back, similarly fixing it well.

Shona was rolled flat, and Anna's hands immediately settled back in their prior position, though the pad was now between her fingers and Shona's flesh. It had little effect on Anna's compressions. While flexible, the gel was thick and viscous enough that it held its shape enough to allow the force of Anna's professional chest compressions to translate straight through to Shona's sternum, forcing it down and simulating a pulse as her heart was squeezed against her spine. Around her hands Trish was folding in the various panels of the vest and clipping them together, tightening the straps to provide a little bit of immobilisation.

Carl continued to run the code. "Roger, grab me the central line, with the temperature catheter. Kirstie get the monitors changed over; did you get anything from upstairs?"

"No luck on the full ECMO, dialysis machine is on it's way though." Kirstie told him, as she pulled the thick lead from the portable monitor, connecting it to the large one that hung above the bed. It instantly began to whine the monotone cry of asystole and was quickly muted. Everyone knew the situation.

Carl didn't reply to Kirstie as she moved onto the other parts of the monitors. He took in the information, then focused on his next task. He moved around to Shona's head, Dave shifting out of the way. Roger placed a sterile wrapped pack on the corner of the bed, then retreated to the side of the room, where a dozen IV bags were being kept warmed. Carl took the large wide needle from the tray, lining it up along Shona's neck. He pressed it against the large jugular vein, barely visible thanks to the girl's blue skin, then in a smooth motion he pushed it in, sliding the length of the needle neatly into the vein. He wasn't finished though.

Also on the tray was a 20cm long tube, with a spiral that seemed to twist around the thin core, and a bunch of connectors at one end. Carl grabbed it, feeding it into the large opening on the central line, easing it forward, into Shona's body, deep down the vein, towards her heart. Her heart that only moved because Anna was still pressing down, rapidly and rhythmically, squeezing the organ that refused to beat on its own.

* * *

Anna was starting to feel the effect of her compressions on her arms as she crossed the 3-minute mark. She reached 100 in her head, then started over again, going for a fourth round. She could feel the way Shona's chest swelled against her hands as Dave squeezed the ambubag, forcing in air that was promptly forced back out by the actions of her own hands. The thick rubbery temperature vest surrounded the circle left for her hands, Trish having strapped it together, before working on the lower sections until Shona was wrapped up from her neck to her knees.

Anna watched Carl work, seeing his concentration as he slid the catheter into the central line, feeling the way it advanced, making sure it was going in correctly. Eventually the plug where it split into a half dozen connectors nestled into the port that stuck from Shona's neck. Two of the connectors were attached to a small device that began to circulate warmed saline, the device in turn was linked to the monitoring system and, after a few seconds of calibration, Shona's core temperature was displayed for the whole team to see.

"Core temperature of just 19..." Carl said, trailing off slightly with a frown on his face. Anna knew that signified he was thinking hard about a decision. It took a few seconds, then he gave a small nod to himself. Anna was pretty sure it was totally unconscious on his part. "Let's go ahead with the thoracic lavage, Roger, get me 4 chest tubes." Anna cringed internally, but she knew that it was probably Shona's best chance. Carl continued. "Anna, switch off after this round, Kirstie, you take over, Trish go ahead with the NG tube and then place a urinary catheter." It would be needed Anna thought, as warmed saline was being pushed into all of Shona's IV's, including the central line via one of the dangling connectors.

As her internal count approached 100, Anna began to count out loud again. "94...95...96" Kirstie stood up on a step on the opposite side of the bed and shared a nod with Anna as she wove her fingers together and straightened her arms. "...97...98...99...Switch" Anna finished, pulling her arms away. She stepped aside making sure she wasn't in anyone’s way as she shook out her arms, trying to recover quickly. She then set about the task that Carl hadn't spoken out loud.

In the corner of the room were two tall infusers. IV bags could be hung from the top, like a standard drip, but were instead fed into a console that managed the temperature, pressure and flow rate. Anna grabbed them both, one for each side. She placed them by the head of the bed, then headed for a different corner. There, she grabbed two chest drain units, carrying them to the bed, hooking one on each side roughly in the middle of the bed, just next to Kirstie’s legs as she leaned over Shona and delivered compressions.

In the meantime, Carl had almost gotten setup on Shona's other side, the small surgical kit laid out on a small metal trolley. Anna stepped forward, unclipping the straps of the vest and opening one side, revealing Shona's chest. Her skin was still ghostly white, the only visible colour being the soft blues and purples of the bruise forming in the valley between her breasts, caused by the compressions that continued to make her ribs flex inwards.

Roger had been waiting, an iodine-soaked swab on a stick in his hand. A moment after Anna revealed Shona's chest, he smeared the brown disinfectant across it, from up towards her collar bone, down alongside the soft curve of her breast, and over her lower ribs.

"Kirstie, hold compressions." Carl ordered, armed with a gleaming scalpel. As soon as Kirstie lifted her hands Carl lowered the scalpel towards the space between Shona's 2nd and 3rd ribs. He made a few decisive cuts, cutting through the layers of tissue. "Tube." He held out the scalpel, which Anna carefully took, while Roger slapped the chest tube into his other hand. Carl pushed the tube through the hole he had made, sliding it into Shona's chest, between her ribs and the front of her lung. It had taken 10 seconds since compressions stopped to get the tube in.

12 seconds later another tube stuck out, this one lower down between Shona's 5th and 6th ribs, basically on the opposite side of her lung. "Ok, Go." Carl said, prompting Kirstie to resume her barrage. The ends of the two chest tubes swayed and bounced for a few moments but were soon taken in hand by Anna and Carl and connected into what was effectively a loop. From the infuser warmed saline was pumped through the upper tube into Shona's chest cavity, washing over and around her lungs, providing warming throughout her chest, before draining out of the second tube into the sealed container. This container then fed back into the infuser, which would be able to keep the saline warm enough to be effective.

Carl monitored the loop until it was running through fully, ensuring the compressions were causing no problems. He nodded, satisfied. "Right, let's get ready to do the other side, Trish, take over compressions as soon as Anna has arranged the vest." Anna was already folding the vest back over, lining up the tubes to meet gaps and checking that nothing was kinked. As soon as she was done, she slipped around the bed and took position to repeat the entire process on Shona's left-hand side.

* * *

Lucy had guided Jones through the triage area, gratefully handing the wheel chair off to a nurse who came to assist. Zainab also approached, having just finished an exam on one of the collared patients.

"Hey Lucy, who do you have for me?"

"Zee, this is Matt Jones. Spent 5 minutes in near freezing water. No signs of inhalation or injury, just moderate hypothermia. He's been responsive throughout, but I'd recommend a full exam and observation." Lucy said professionally, despite her weariness. They were guided into an empty cubicle and Jones was assisted onto the bed. Lucy leaned against a pillar relaxing a little as Zainab took a chart and started to note things down. "You might want to give psych a call." Lucy's voice carried a joking tone. "I'm pretty sure charging further into a sinking ship falls under crazy."

Jones smirked a little, leaning back on the bed. "I'd say the crazy one is the one who followed me after being told to get off the boat." He still sounded tired but was definitely recovering.

Lucy shrugged. "Someone had to save your ass. You'd be at the bottom of the river if I hadn't."

"True...True..." Jones smiled faded, his tone becoming a little more subdued. "I just hope it was worth it."

Lucy nodded, looking at the floor. "They'll do their best. Just like you did. You gave her a chance if nothing else."

Jones bit his lip, nodding, but his gaze had drifted away from her, staring at nothing. Lucy knew what he was seeing. A mental image of Shona, pale and lifeless. She felt the same way.

Zainab broke them both out of their solemn contemplation. "We should really get you out of those wet clothes Mr Jones, they won't be helping you to warm up."

Jones nodded, groaning as he leaned forward and started to fumble with his uniform. A nurse moved in to assist him. Lucy glanced at him. "I'll be back." She told him, before nodding to Zainab and the nurse. Lucy left the cubicle, initially planning to get a coffee, but with her mind she drifting she was a little surprised to find herself standing outside Trauma 4. Her eyes were drawn to the table. Tracy was performing chest compressions on the young woman on the table. The vest covered most of her chest, but Lucy could see the tubes running out through slits to the containers.

She could see the doctor tidying away the surgical kit and giving more orders. She could see Dave, still rhythmically squeezing the ambu-bag connected to the breathing tube, stood at the head of the bed. And she could see the monitor, that constant, unbroken line that proclaimed Shona's heart was still completely inactive.

#Resus Writing #Medical Drama #Anna Swift #CPR #Defib #Dark Cardiophilia #intubation

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junker-town · 4 years

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Here are 9 of the most badass animals ever to swim

Art by Tyson Whiting

Say hello to some horrifying sea monsters

This article was originally published on SB Nation a while ago, but was always intended for a Secret Base-y audience. So if you haven’t seen it yet, here you go!

The Earth has some very cool aquatic predators swimming about. Thanks to their intelligence and pack-hunting techniques, orcas are, perhaps, the most dangerous hunters ever to swim the ocean. Saltwater crocodiles are bulletproof murder tanks. And the great white shark, of course, needs no introduction. But now that we’re talking about terrifying underwater murder-beasts, why just settle for just the ones we have around now?

Underwater murder-beasts have a long and distinguished (pre-)history, and I thought it would be fun to introduce y’all to some new pals. TO THE IMAGINARY TIME MACHINE!

Temnodontosaurus eurycephalus

Grumpy croco-dolphin

Ichthyosaurs evolved 250 million years ago. In the aftermath of the Permian extinction, which killed off a frankly horrifying number of creatures, a group of terrestrial reptiles took to the depleted seas. Fast-forward a little bit and you have primitive ichthyosaurs, creatures so well adapted to oceanic life that they ended up looking like a cross between a crocodile and an extremely ill-tempered, extremely large dolphin.

Fast-forward even further, to the early Jurassic (175 million years ago), and you have Temnodontosaurus eurycephalus. It’s not the largest ichthyosaur ever to grace the seas, but it’s up there, and it’s a far more developed predator than its giant forebears. Somewhere around 30 feet long, T. emnodontosaurus was a powerful swimmer with strong jaws, well-equipped to chow down on other Jurassic swimmers. One closely-related species possessed the largest eyes of any known animal, perfect for hunting in deeper oceanic waters; another has been found with the remains of a different ichthyosaur in is stomach.

This monster considered 13-foot oceanic reptiles a delicious snack. It was also fast. Spare a thought for the poor ocean-going creatures minding their own business before one of these huge assholes rams into them from below at speed, opens those long, toothy jaws and turns them into lunch.

Deinosuchus hatcheri

Dinosaur hunter

Take a saltwater crocodile. Actually, it’s probably best not to. They are, after all, 20-foot, 2,000-pound apex predators more than happy to eat anything they come across, including you. Salties are strong, fast and surprisingly smart. They are at home in the open ocean as well as along the coast. Like all crocodiles, they’re ambush predators who use water as cover to attack their prey. Unlike most crocodiles they’re capable of jumping clear out of the water to get to it. They have the strongest bite of any living animal.

Right. Now that you have a saltwater crocodile in your head, make one, oh, twice as big. Yeah, like that. Decently boat-sized. Terrifying teeth in terrifying, dino-crushing jaws. Armored skin thick enough to turn aside more or less anything.

Your terrifying vision is Deinosuchus hatcheri, a crocodile adapted to more or less the exact same situation as a modern saltwater but in a world inhabited by giant dinosaurs. During the late Cretaceous (80 million years ago), North America was split by a shallow sea, the Western Interior Seaway. D. hatcheri was present on both the western side of the seaway (a slightly smaller species dominated the east), happily chowing through dinosaurs who were foolish enough to get too close.

Anomalocaris canadensis

Nightmare Shrimp

So far we’ve had a dolphin analogue in Temnodontosaurus and an actual crocodile. Cool, but nowhere near the sort of weirdness the past can provide. So let’s go to the deep, deep past, revealed wonderfully by the Burgess Shale. Here we shall find the NIGHTMARE SHRIMP.

One of the problems with studying the very earliest phase of animal life — we’re talking half a billion years at this point — is that it’s squishy, and squishy is not of much benefit when it comes to preserving fossils. Thanks to a fluke of geology, the conditions that produced the Burgess Shale were also capable of preserving soft tissue, giving palaeontologists a rare chance to look into what the seas looked like during the first days of the animal kingdom.

They looked extremely weird. The fauna found in the Burgess Shale was almost obnoxiously uncategorisable. One famous example is the worm Hallucigenia, which so confused everyone involved that it was reconstructed upside-down for the better part of a decade. Another is Opabinia, which looks sort of like a five-eyed miniature vacuum cleaner. I promise I am not making this up.

Anyway, all these critters were apparently food for the ocean’s first proper predator.

With good eyes set on flexible stalks and a surprising turn of speed, Anomalocaris canadensis cruised the Pre-Cambrian seas in death-shrimp mode. It was a full meter long, dwarfing most of its companions in the Burgess Shale. It was also delightfully strange-looking. It is so odd, in fact, that when it was discovered its various body parts were assigned to several different animals.

A. canadensis would be higher on this list if we could be sure of what it actually ate. Long-held to be a trilobite-hunter, recent studies have shown it would probably have had to restrict itself to soft-bodied prey due to relatively flimsy mouthparts, and therefore could only have actually eaten a trilobite just after a moult. But it’s much more fun to imagine this guy roaming the seafloor chomping down on everything, so that’s what we’ll do.

Disclaimer: an old friend of mine is a paleontologist who specializes in the Burgess Shale fossils. I did not contact him for this story, because I am consumed by envy whenever I so much as think about him.

Cameroceras

Spiky death-squid

Back in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic, cephalopods were armored critters, much like our modern nautilus. The most famous of them, and one of the most widely known extinct animals ever, is the spiral-shelled ammonite. Since they had hard shells, they’re extremely common in marine strata. They also got surprisingly large. The biggest-known ammonite was two meters across. Imagine that thing trying to swim.

Ammonites weren’t the only armored cephalopod prowling the ancient seas, however. The orthocones were straight-shelled versions, and some of those got really, really big. Like Cameroceras. Current estimates put Cameroceras’s shell at upwards of six meters long. That’s three average-sized men stacked on each others’ shoulders.

Somehow this monster was still able to get about in the Ordovician seas. It’s quite hard to imagine it chasing anything around, so it presumably surprised trilobites etc. at nighttime or dug it out of the mud, but since paleoecology is at least in part about imagination, right now I’m enjoying Cameroceras retracting its head deep into its shell and pretending to be a cave before trying to eat whatever entered. It wouldn’t be quite big enough to swallow the Millennium Falcon, buuuuuuuuut ...

Carcharocles megalodon

The shark that eats planets

Megalodon needs no introduction. The great white shark has a profound hold on popular culture, but its long-gone big sister isn’t far behind. Megalodon made even the most vicious shark in today’s seas look like a toy. Since sharks are mostly soft tissue, they don’t fossilize as well as we’d like, but their teeth do, and Megalodon’s tell a terrifying story.

Megalodon died out only relatively recently. It wasn’t quite contemporaneous with human beings, but its extinction was recent enough that there are plenty of folks willing to tell tall tales of how it might still be swimming somewhere in the depths of the ocean. If it was, probably best not to get anywhere near it — a Megalodon may have had a bite force of up to 10 times the strength of a great white. That’d be a bad day.

What were those huge jaws for? Whales. Apparently, these things liked to swim up from underneath its prey and bite through their chest to reach their internal organs. The ability to kill a whole-ass whale with one bite is honestly horrifying, even if whales in Megalodon’s day were a little smaller than the current batch of great rorquals.

Jaekelopterus rhenaniae

Sea Scorpion

Did you know ‘sea scorpions’ were a thing? Sea scorpions were a thing. Since eurypterids (to give them their proper name) went extinct hundreds of millions of years ago, we don’t have very good comparisons for what these things were like. So let’s get creative. Let’s take a lobster. Despite their ferocious armament, lobsters are relatively placid creatures. They’re not averse to grabbing a fish here or a mollusk there, but they’re not built for hunting. Let’s make the required tweaks.

We need to add eyes. Let’s make them big and sensitive and set for stereoscopic vision, which allows those pincers to be used more effectively to grab prey. Let’s make them better swimmers, too — we’ll add some paddles for agility and short bursts of speed. Let’s make their claws spikier, just for sheer scare value.

Oh and let’s make them 10 feet long and perfectly happy to eat you alive. Now you have a Jaekelopterus. Aren’t you glad they’re dead?

Dunkleosteus terrelli

A, uh, fish-tank

When evolution first came up with bone, it got a little bit carried away. Well, a lot carried away. The era of armored fishes is one of the most fabulously strange in the entire history of the planet. (A personal favorite of mine is Lunapsis, which looks like a fish had a baby with Batman’s utility belt.) With bone-plated heads and upper bodies, these fish probably didn’t swim very well, but who cares? They looked cool as hell, and with that body armor they were well protected against predators.

Which, as it turns out, is the sort of inspiration nature needs to come up with some better predators*. Enter Dunkleosteus, a monster armored fish with a set of jaws which could rip straight through the armor of any other fish slowly swimming through the Devonian ocean. Known to be 20 feet long, it didn’t really have teeth so much as a huge bony beak, which honestly makes the whole contraption even more frightening, like some sort of mobile oceanic guillotine.

*I’m being overly teleological here. Forgive me. Nature, of course, does not ‘come up with’ anything.

Mosasaurus hoffmanni

For whatever reason, the fauna of Cretaceous period got big. Really, really big. On land, we had Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the skies, azhdarchids the size of small aircraft coasted from thermal to thermal. And in the shallow seas, we had another monster: Mosasaurus.

Mosasaurus was essentially an enormous — estimates have it as almost 60 feet long — ocean-going lizard. Its legs were replaced with bladed paddles for maneuverability and it had a powerful tail for direct propulsion. Mosasaurus ate everything it could get in its mouth, which was a) double-hinged for extra capacity and b) already pretty capacious to begin with.

It would have hung around near the surface of the ocean, where there was an abundance of prey. Mosasaurus could have waited for other marine reptiles (such as Archelon, the largest turtle known) to come up to breathe, grab low-flying pterosaurs on fishing expeditions, or simply have picked off the many large fish that swam the Cretaceous seas.

Livyatan Melvilli

Moby-Dick’s even-scarier dad

In 1820, the Essex was lost in the southern Pacific Ocean. The ship had been sent out to hunt for sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus, since you asked), but soon had the tables turned when it was attacked and sunk by a ferocious bull. Of the 20 crew, only eight survived, and the incident went on to inspire a famous book about whales which you may have heard of.

What you probably haven’t heard of is Livyatan. Modern sperm whales are enormous creatures, but very rare boat attacks aside, they’re only really dangerous to their favorite prey, deep-swimming squid. But not so long ago, geographically speaking, there were also a group of ‘macroraptorial’ sperm whales. These didn’t eat squid. Instead, they competed with Megalodon to hunt other great whales.

Livyatan’s teeth are some of the most awe-inspiring fossils in the world. The biggest ones are 12 inches long and look like artillery shells. Estimates have Livyatan as sitting a touch smaller than its modern friends, but those teeth indicate that it would have been significantly more vicious, fully capable of cutting a sperm whale into very bloody chunks.

It’s not clear whether or not Livyatan hunted alone or in packs, like a modern killer whale, but it had the power and size to be able to plausibly compete with Megalodon even solo. The crew of the Essex found out that a bull sperm whale could be a formidable opponent; one suspects Livyatan would have left even fewer survivors.

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btgalaxy · 5 years

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Moonlight ~ Jungkook wolf!au

➳ pairing: jungkook x reader

➳ genre: wolf!au, a little bit of everything tbh; angst, fluff, smut

➳ word count: 5.1k

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Chapter 8

Days pass and there’s no response from Hobi, absolutely nothing. And after stupidly smashing your own cell phone, you’ve been stuck mooching for the landline every few hours. Jungkook has been questioning why you’re so desperate to get your own phone again, making him uneasy- as if you’re going to plan an escape or what-not- so you’re stuck creeping into his office when Jin isn’t looking to nab the house phone and lock yourself in the loo to try and dial in that same number you’re sure Hobi is ignoring.

You just want to talk to him is all. You miss having your best friend and now you’re worried. You’ve tried June as well, but no answer from that end either. At one point you thought maybe Scarlet Oak had been overturned or attacked or something awful, but a quick phone call to your dad clears that up.

“We’re fine, but I haven’t seen Hoseok in a while, love,” he sighs, regretfully, “If I see him though I’ll tell him to call you. He’s probably just upset, there’s nothing to worry about.”

You graze your teeth over your lip in contemplation, “But what if he’s hurt? What if he ran off and got hurt? What if he’s angry at me and then got hurt?”

“Poppet,” Your dad chuckles down the phone, throatily, “You’re overthinking. Don’t worry yourself. Have you tried June?”

“Yes!” You cry, “She won’t answer.”

He hums in response, pausing momentarily, “Maybe she feels a little bitter too. You know she’s not a fan of the Beta’s children, and Alpha Marcus wouldn’t be overly fond of her getting too close to any other wolves. You two were good friends.”

You sigh aloud. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s just too soon. It hasn’t even been a month. But you just miss them, immensely.

“But will you-“

“I’ll talk to June,” he interrupts you, “I promise. Now will you please let me get back to work? I have a patient in the next room.”

“Fine,” you grumble.

“I love you, poppet.”

A few days later and it’s approaching a week since you started trying to call him, and you’ve still not received even so much as a text to signal he’s actually alive. You swear to God when you get a hold of him you’ll scream at him for not answering you for so long and putting you through this.

Ambling into the kitchen after yet another failed call, you trudge over to the fridge, pulling back the door and immediately picking up a can of cream soda to go alongside a pint of ice-cream which you intend to overpower your misery with. Maybe a chick flick as well. What the hell, you might as well go all out.

Your legs curl underneath you on the sofa with the blanket bunching up at your sides as you cocoon yourself underneath the beige cotton, happily gulping down your soda while flicking through Jungkook’s Netflix account. You become more interested in what he’s been watching though, rather than what you will be, and you come to the conclusion he must have extremely poor film choices; limited mainly to Alien and Godzilla, and a few other generic action sci-fi movies.

Another twenty minutes of poking around in his TV choices too- again, tremendously underwhelming- you choose some new rom-com and slump further into the cushions, sinking deeply. It feels like it’s been a lifetime since you felt this relaxed.

“Luna?” You turn your head in the direction of Jin’s voice from behind the couch. “Alpha should be home soon, so I’m headed off- unless you needed anything?” You shake your head no in response, and are about to dismiss him before you remembered the other day’s events.

You know you couldn’t ask Jungkook much about his personal or pack life, or lack thereof, due more so because of his own attitude rather than his Alpha title. It is at this point you realise just how little you actually know about Jungkook, your own mate.

“Luna?” Your spiralling thought process is interrupted by an awaiting Jin and you are quick to snap from your trance.

“Wait, actually Jin, can I ask you something?” He steps closer towards you and nods his head, signalling you to proceed. “You never told me what a code green was.” You can visibly see Jin’s thought process, etching into his expression as he searches for the right words.

“Code greens are nothing to worry about, Luna. Just a minor attack is all. Code blacks are when we should worry.” His jokey tone and attempt to lighten the situation only further peaks your curiosity.

“Well then what’s a code black?” You tilt your head in confusion and Jin falters under your gaze.

“I’m sorry Luna, I don’t know if I should-“ Upon noticing his hesitation, you try to change the subject. You’ve already gotten him into enough trouble to with your mate, the guilt still present although you two are beginning to get on better terms.

“So, he’s coming home early? Is there something happening?” You question, glancing at the clock to confirm you hadn’t lost track of time.

“Nothing special that I know of,” Jin informs you, a slight blush creeping up his neck as he recalls the compromising position he caught you and Jungkook in the other night.

“Oh...okay. Well, enjoy the rest of your night.” Dismissing him, you turn back towards the TV, now anticipating your mate’s arrival.

You want to get to know him so much better than you do, and how you’ll go about that you’ve not a clue, but surely a destined relationship like this should consist more of just arguments and make-ups and other frenzied kisses and what-not. Actually, you don’t really want to think about this right now, so instead you allow yourself to fall lax in the seat, limbs falling off the side of the couch.

Before you know it, your eyes flutter shut and you drift off into sleep, mind still racing with questions about your mate.

Suddenly, a muscled arm snakes around your neck and pulls you out of your slumber, and you feel a kiss pressed firmly to the side of your face.

“Hey,” Jungkook mumbles into your cheek as you giggle and squirm away.

“Stop,” you laugh, pushing at his head so he moves back to walk around to the front of the couch, “When did you get home?”

He plonks himself down next to you, grabbing you by the waist and hoisting you into his lap, “Only a few minutes ago- I thought I’d come back a bit earlier to spend some time with my mate.”

Your face heat at his words, a subtle rose blooming on the apples of your cheeks, “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” He smiles, squeezing you against him tighter.

“Embarrassing me,” you groan, curling your feet in discomfort.

“What’s embarrassing?”

“Stop!”

“Tell me, gorgeous,” he smirks at you, revelling in the effect he has on you as you hide your face beneath your hands, groaning again as he leans in closer till you’re overwhelmed by his scent surrounding you. Slowly, he pulls your hands away from your face, gently taking your chin to pull it towards him and press a measured kiss to your lips, loving enough to make your stomach flip and heart lurch.

When you pull back with a smile, he rubs his thumb along your cheek, “What’d you do today?”

“Slept till midday, called my dad, the usual,” you sigh, snuggling into his chest as he holds you.

“How is he?”

“He’s alright,” you manoeuvre on his lap, uncomfortably fiddling with your fingers before going on to say: “He said he hasn’t seen Hobi in a while.”

Jungkook stiffens instinctively at the name, tucking his arms possessively around your legs till he has you in his complete control, “Hasn’t he?”

You can feel his wolf snarling beneath his skin, and you’re reminded of that first meeting where the Alpha inside of him fully took control, “No… and I’ve tried to call June, but she isn’t answering.”

“Marcus’ daughter?”

You hum in response, grazing your eyes over your lap, then fleetingly at Jungkook. He’s still got that primitive possessiveness bubbling in him like a cauldron that doesn’t seem to be budging, but he’ll have to overcome it at some point. You’ve known Hobi and June all your life and Jungkook barely a couple of months. It’s clear he’s more irked by the thought of you being with men and this fantasy he adopts that every man pines after you, but he seems to get jealous over the idea of you spending time with females too, just devoting time and attention to anyone but him. It’s needy and clingy, and he never shows that side of him except to you, so not even Jin will believe that he’s truly like it, but really it’s childish. He’s childish, but you just have to deal with it till he finally sees you aren’t going to betray him, nor push him aside for anyone else. You’re his, and he’s yours.

“I could try and contact him for you? Demand she contact you?” He offers, but you roll your eyes with a humourless laugh.

“Love, I don’t think ordering her about will help.” You use the pet name deliberately, purposefully, in an attempt to soothe him and bring back the loving tone to the conversation, and, surprisingly, it works. A smile he clearly tries to suppress bites at his lips till his teeth blare in a shy grin and you could almost squeal in delight. The mighty Alpha of Red Moon embarrassed by a pet name. Cute.

“We can call her again tomorrow,” he tells you, nuzzling his nose into your neck, his breath tickling enough for you to have to stiffen your shoulders and bring them up to your head.

“You mean I’ll try to call her again tomorrow. I imagine you have more Alpha things to do?” You tease slightly, but it’s also true. He’s always working; as an Alpha does, should do. You never appreciated the overwhelming sheer quantity of tasks an Alpha is naturally subject to; acting on pack complaints, sorting quarrels, organising events, minding pack accounts. It’s a lot for one man to carry the weight of on his shoulders. No wonder he gets stressed the way he does.

“If only you’d let me officialise you, we could do them together.” He tries to negotiate, but you see right through him, getting up knowingly off his lap and striding into the kitchen at a quicker pace, ice-cream in hand, headed straight for the freezer.

“Why’d you get up?” He whines, quickly jogging after you to encase you in his arms so you have to waddle to the door. You groan as you pull it back, sticking out your behind to nudge him back with a deep grunt.

“You know I said I wanted more time- and you know it’s not even been a week so it’s too soon,” you announce with a chastising pinch to his arm, making him jolt back with a frown before he leans back into you, aching for contact again already.

“Fine, I won’t go on about it, if you’ll stop calling that wolf from Scarlet Oak,” he says, with an amusing negotiable tone. As if it were up for negotiation.

“Jungkook!” You nearly laugh at his incredulousness.

“I don’t want to share you with him,” he moans, nuzzling into your neck with his hands finding purchase possessively on your waist.

You smirk at him teasingly, “Needy pup.”

“Only for you.”

The next day you wake up with a heavy limb slung lazily across your waist, keeping you in place. You roll over to see your mate’s face, golden tan skin looking untouchable against the plush silk pillowcases, practically inviting you to press a brief kiss to those pink lips. You curl into his touch and he instinctively responds by tightening his grip around you and tugging you closer to feel the body heat emanating from his flesh. Wolves naturally have a higher body temperature than humans, by four or five degrees, and an Alpha even more so, so he truly feels like your own personal hot water bottle. You trace your lips over his shoulder cautiously, enjoying the serenity strewn indolently across his features, but your actions, however, are interrupted by a sudden shrill blasting from downstairs. The ringing of the landline. The landline that is never called. The landline that Hobi will call.

You’re on your feet before Jungkook can even open his eyes.

You pace down the stairs at an unimaginable speed, nearly stumbling on your way as you launch onto the ground at the bottom of the staircase, slipping to the side on the hardwood floor in your white socks. You spin on your heel, ungracefully darting into Jungkook’s office with unparalleled ferocity blazing in your eyes, determined to reach that phone before the ringing ceases. And you do.

“Hello?” You pant into the phone, hearing a gentle patter of feet from above; the whole ruckus having awoken your mate. “Hobi? Is it you?”

You can hear the sound of breathing on the other end of the line, softly exhaling with a feminine sigh.

“Y/N, it’s me,” June’s voice rings like a chorus of church bells, and you feel relief wash through your veins like a blessing.

“June, oh my God, where have you been? I’ve tried calling you for days!” You relent, a sleepy Jungkook trudging in as you speak, “What about Hobi? Is he there?”

Jungkook frowns over from the doorway, confused why you raced downstairs at such an alarming pace, but you ignore his grimacing and focus solely on the voice echoing down the line.

“No, no he isn’t. I just- I needed some time to myself. I-“ She swallows loudly, loud enough for you to hear it on the phone, unnerving you.

“You what?”

She pauses briefly, before choking out, “Yoongi ended it with me.” She begins to cry, and all you want to do is run back to Scarlet Oak and go straight to wherever she is and cuddle her until she feels better, until she forgets whatever that arsehole must’ve done.

“June…”

“Is your mate there?” She bites back the tears for a second, an inelegant sob forcing it itself from her throat.

“Uh, yeah he is.” Jungkook perks up in curiosity, beginning to move closer to you till you hold out your hand in front of you, signalling him to stop.

“Can I- can I speak to you alone?”

You look at Jungkook fleetingly, grazing your teeth across your lips in contemplation. He’s not going to like it. He’s told you outright he doesn’t want you to keep anything like this from him before, and you honestly feel subconsciously a tiny bit irritated June is putting you in this situation, but you also have to consider what she’s feeling. And you wouldn’t want any of her friends or her mate listening in to a personal conversation between the two of you, so, with a sigh, you respond.

“Yeah, of course. Just a minute.” You bring the phone down and press the mute button, exhaling as Jungkook looks at you inquisitively.

“What’s she saying?” He interrogates, striding towards you in spite of the hand you raised signalling him not to come closer.

“She said,” you begin, as he sits on the edge of his desk, “She wants to speak to me alone?”

“Why would she say that?” He retorts, automatically becoming defensive and protective, his wolf vexed by one of your friends telling you he can’t be here.

“She’s just upset and wants to talk to me without you snooping around.”

“I’m Alpha, I do as I want,” he counters childishly, adopting an adamant facial expression.

You roll your eyes, gesticulating towards the door, “Out. You have work to do anyway, you told me last night. Go do it and I’ll tell you about this later.”

He purses his lips and flares his nostrils, a sign he really cannot conceal his anger from you even if he tries, then reluctantly stalks out in a strop, not sparing you a second glance. He’ll have to get over it; you’re allowed your own space whether he likes it or not. He’s going to have to accept it when your own study is ready too- which will be entirely off limits to any Red Moon Alpha lurking about.

You press the unmute button and bring the phone back to your ear, “June, he’s gone.”

“Thank you.” Upon hearing the sincerity in her tone, you lean forwards onto the surface of the desk, waiting for her to continue.

“I’m sorry I never called… truly. I know you know about Hoseok and I, and I’m so sorry that happened. I know we’re both unmated, but still I understand why it was wrong and why you’d be angry at me- at both of us.”

“I’m not angry,” you insist, but she ignores you and carries on.

“Yoongi broke up with me the day you left, only a few hours after we said goodbye, and I was just angry that you found your beautiful Alpha mate and the one man I thought I loved and loved me back dropped me like a lead balloon and I was just so hurt and I didn’t have my best friend here and I needed comfort and I- we- well Hoseok was sad too and he was there and… I assume you get the picture.”

You nod to yourself grimly, scrunching up your nose in distaste, “I do.”

“I’m so sorry, Y/N. I’m so sorry everything happened that way.”

“It’s alright, June,” you tell her, “I know it must’ve been difficult.”

In fact, you know exceedingly well how difficult it is to feel hurt and alone without anyone to talk to. More than she’ll ever know.

“Y/N, I’ve missed you so much. So much.” You can hear her cries again, “I’ve wanted to talk to you since the moment you called Hoseok that night.”

“Me too,” you respond, truthfully. “I’ve missed you more than words can say. I’ve got so much to tell you.” She laughs a little amongst her tears in response. It really is all you’ve been thinking about, even more so since the incident with Jungkook. The sound of a faint door slamming signals your mate’s leaving, and you sigh aloud at his trivial nature all of a sudden. Is he really that angry you wouldn’t let him eavesdrop?

The two of you fall unusually quickly into your old routine of gossipy conversations after overcoming the awkward breakup barrier. It’s a nice feeling to know throughout all of this, your friendship should always survive and flourish even though you’re hundreds of miles away from her. She tells you about Alpha Marcus’ new plans to reinvent the pack house so it’s more accessible, and you tell her all about Red Moon and Jin and life away from Scarlet Oak.

“What’s it like? Living with your mate? It must be incredible to be leader of the house- of your own pack now, even,” she gushes.

You settle further into the sofa in the lounge you’ve moved to- after about half an hour in Jungkook’s office you began to feel a bit claustrophobic so retreated to the open living room- and adjust a pillow on your lap, “It’s actually nice. At first it was daunting and… I suppose there were a few obstacles we had to- overcome, but it’s nice to have someone that loves me, that will only ever love me. Granted, he seems to be damn sure I’m going to cheat on him or something. He’s so jealous all the time.”

She laughs throatily down the line, “He’s an Alpha, what’d you expect? Dad was the same about mum when they first met- it’ll get better with time. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask- I assume he’s marked you?”

“Yes…,” you frown, unsurely.

“And mated?”

Your breath hitches in your throat at her bluntness. You haven’t even thought about the mating process since your reconciliation and even that was brief and clouded by that heated kiss you shared; that interrupted kiss you shared. Jungkook hasn’t mentioned anything about it to you, nor tried to initiate anything other than loving kisses and cuddles, so you haven’t thought about it. His wolf must be urging him though, to try something. You’re surprised your own wolf has gone so long without giving in to one of his gentle caresses of your cheek.

“No… actually we haven’t,” you admit, somewhat ashamed of your lack of intimacy with him.

“Really?” She sounds genuinely shocked.

You stammer over excuses in your head, “It- it just hasn’t been the right time.”

“Oh…” It falls awkwardly silent as you search for a new conversation topic. She must think he isn’t attracted to you, or that you’re to scared, or maybe something terrible. Any other Alpha and Luna pairing would mate as soon as possible, under the influence of the hormones released to make them desire each other more- or in other words just make them horny as hell so they can’t keep their hands off of each other. And suddenly you feel a tiny bit self-conscious. Doesn’t he want you like that?

“Y/N, don’t overthink it,” June interrupts your thoughts.

“What?”

“I know what you’re like. I shouldn’t have brought it up. He probably just wants to take his time. You wouldn’t want it to be meaningless, like Hoseok and I.” She tries to justify his actions, but you just don’t want to listen. The sound of Hobi’s name, however, peaks your interest again.

“Wait, have you seen Hobi recently?”

June’s rambling ceases at the question, “Hoseok?”

“June, who else.” You roll your eyes at her horrific obliviousness.

“Hoseok,” she repeats, again, “Actually, Y/N, he took off a while ago.”

It’s like the blood drains from your face, leaving you blank, “He what?”

“He told me an opportunity had arisen, and I was so upset about Yoongi I didn’t think he meant leaving Scarlet Oak altogether. Y/N I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I just didn’t want you to worry and you have so much on your plate with-“ You don’t even let her finish before hanging up the phone and jumping to your feet.

Hobi? Gone? It’s almost a quiet confirmation of all your worries coming true. That he’s gone, hurt, dead. How could he do this? How could he leave Scarlet Oak? That pack is his home, he was raised on that land, raised with you. You never should have left him. You should’ve stayed and made sure he was okay before dropping everything to be with your mate. You knew he loved you, and it must have killed him to see you leave like that. You feel inexorably selfish.

Before you can think, you’re picking up the phone again to dial in the number of the only person you could think that could help you right now. The only person that has the ability to try and fix your mistakes.

“Alpha Taehyung? It’s Y/N,” you breath down the phone, biting your lower lip nervously.

“Y/N? What is it? Has something happened? Is it Jungkook?” His words are frantic and frenzied, and after knowing what Jungkook did to you the last time you spoke his panic is undoubtedly justified.

You begin stammering over your words, “No, no, no it’s fine everything’s fine, it’s just- Alpha-“

“I told you to call me Taehyung,” he interrupts.

“Oh, right, sorry, Taehyung.”

“Don’t apologise. What is it?” You sit back down into the settee, running one hand up and down your thigh to calm your racing nerves.

“There’s something I need help with, kind of urgently. My friend- a friend from Scarlet Oak- he’s missing.”

He repeats, “Missing?”

The words begin tumbling out of your mouth unstoppably amongst your anxiety, “I just called my old Alpha’s daughter, and she told me he hasn’t been seen since I left. And I’m worried he could be hurt or worse, and- and I just need some peace of mind,” you plea, “Please.”

“Right,” he pauses, “And I assume this ‘he’ is not someone Jungkook can take care of?”

“He’s too jealous to see I care about him only in a brotherly way.” Your tone becomes irritated, reflecting your mood regarding Jungkook thoroughly, “I really need you to do this Taehyung, please.”

“Y/N, of course. There was no doubt about it from the second you called, I promise,” he ensures you, and you relax into the seat with relief, “I’ll always be here for you.”

“Taehyung, I appreciate you more than words can say.” You could cry with happiness.

“I’ll get on it straight away.”

“Thank you so much,” you exhale, “And if we could keep this from Jungkook just for a bit then I’d-“

Suddenly, the phone is ripped away from your hands by a blazing Alpha, barking profanities down the line at Taehyung before you can even consider protesting. Everything blurs underneath the sheer volume of Jungkook screaming at that man, and you feel the guilt hit you like bricks and make your mouth dry. Only seconds pass before he hangs up the phone, pointing it at you with an unimaginable vehemence beneath a killer grip to make his knuckles whiten.

“You can forget using this phone ever again,” he snarls, blaring his canines looking ready to pierce into flesh.

You almost gasp in response, “Jungkook!”

“No!” He thunders at you, with a fury ignited in his eyes, “You knew how I felt about that fucking Alpha and you just called him on my own fucking phone! What are you trying to do? Plan another escape with him? You got another fucking thing coming if that’s what you’re thinking.” He begins stalking towards his office at a speed you cannot keep up with, scrambling to your feet to trail behind him with a red face from the anger you similarly feel towards him.

“Hobi’s missing!” You finally scream at him, unleashing the ball of anger that’s accumulated inside of you.

“Fuck that damn wolf always taking up your fucking attention!” He yells back, completely ignorant to the fact your closest friend could be absolutely anywhere.

“Don’t be such a child, you idiot, I cared about him long before you!” He slams the door in your face before you’re able to continue, abruptly locking you out and leaving you fuming in the corridor.

You, however, are far from done.

Your fists clench as you begin pounding them against the door relentlessly, resolute not to allow him to shut you out like this and throw these trifling tantrums.

“If you don’t open this door right now I swear to God I’ll run into town and find a new mate that’ll actually help me if you won’t!” You can hear his growling turn feral, but for some reason amongst all this anxiety and anger it only fuels this rage you’ve become engrossed in.

“We aren’t even mated technically! You don’t seem to have any fucking interest in that so maybe Jimin would actually be attracted to me, or Taehyung seems to be especially fond.”

The door flings back and Jungkook bolts into you, driven by a ferocious anger-induced lust to hastily grab your chin and slam his lips against yours, pressing his entire self against you. It’s wrong for anything to happen this way, and you’re more than aware of that, so you don’t let it last long before pulling back as his arms snake to your back.

He growls into your neck, raking his teeth over the mark before returning to your lips, a frown riddled into his features.

“Fucking stop saying shit like that. I can’t deal with it,” He mumbles against your mouth, squeezing your backside with a firm look on his face.

Your body responds to his touch despite your fury, “You confiscated the damn phone and my best friend is missing, what was I supposed to do?”

“Not call Taehyung.”

“Well you wouldn’t help me if –“

“Do you ever just shut up?” He barks, kissing you open-mouthed and sliding his tongue against yours. It feels so much more intense beneath such fury to kiss like this, thus for a second you allow it, savouring the way he nips at your lower lip to then massage it with the wet muscle and make you feel desired, the way you didn’t feel earlier, but again, it doesn’t last long.

“Stop kissing me, we need to talk about this,” you insist, shoving him away and striding into the office with a newly-found determination steering you to take the ‘confiscated’ phone from the desk and hold it next to your chest.

“First of all, you aren’t taking away phone rights. That isn’t even a thing. You can’t come storming in all angry jealous and then start throwing about orders like that,” you remark, holding an unwavering gaze on his infuriated figure.

“Well don’t call Taehyung.”

“Second of all,” you ignore his comment, “You need to get over this jealousy. It’s too much and I don’t like feeling as if I’m being owned like a piece of property. I’ve given you as much as I can, as much as I am able to, but for you to carry on treating me like the last piece of meat is just too much.”

He falters momentarily, digesting your words and thinking up his own response.

It’s a breath of fresh air to finally see him actually listen to you, and actually process what you’re saying. Maybe one day you’ll get to the point where the two of you could sit down and have a real conversation about things before letting them get out of hand and arguing till your heads hurt. But perhaps that’s a bit much to ask.

About a minute or so later and he finally rolls his eyes in exasperation, moving to take you into his arms. You go to struggle away, but he holds you tighter against him.

“I’ll find out where that damn dog is, alright? Just come to bed with me, I need to sleep away for a bit this fucking migraine.” You gasp before smiling up at him thankfully, jumping up into him with a grin and launching into his arms.

“Thank you!” You could squeal at his agreement, but he just grumbles in response, far keener to avoid the topic for now and just hold you in his arms till you can both sleep away the memory of yet another argument.

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#moonlight #jungkook #jjk #jungkook smut #jungkook angst #jungkook x reader #admin lottie

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q-card · 4 years

Text

With or Without You

I wrote this major self-indulgent fic back in February for Valentine’s day. You can read it on AO3 (x) but I thought I’d share it here as well. Hope yall enjoy! Note: listen to this while reading, it makes everything more intense hehe

The suns were setting over Makus III, and Jean-Luc Picard was watching them sink under the horizon. A light breeze ruffled the grass around him. Tapping his combadge, the captain of the USS Enterprise sighed, “Ready to beam up.”

Setting suns on Makus III – almost midnight by ship-time.

He kept his eyes on the orange sky as his vision blurred and a light tingling feeling numbed his body. As he was transported back up to his ship, he thought of the twin suns setting over the peaceful planet, and of the little house on the hill he had left behind – how the couple living there had thanked him, how happy they had seemed despite their differences, despite the slight impression of unevenness in the way they stood next to each other, like mismatched puzzle pieces.

He closed his eyes then, cursing himself. The tingling was fading, but the transporter’s chime still lingered in his ears. He’d been having such thoughts – such dangerous thoughts – for too long. And for too long, the person he’d been thinking of with such recklessness had refused to show himself.

After their last encounter, Jean-Luc thought things would change. The quivering of excitement in Q’s voice had seemed almost like a confession – the words had been a gentle warning, but the tone had told a different tale. For weeks afterwards it had echoed in Jean-Luc’s ears, that simple sentence that Q had spoken with such human passion; “See you… out there.” And then he’d disappeared, and he hadn’t come back.

Jean-Luc was left alone with the gut-wrenching words, not knowing if he’d ever see Q again. Not knowing if it had all been a lie, a ruse, a trick of his imagination – or if it truly meant something.

And then Q had begun invading his every thought. Everything was a painful reminder of him: every person, every situation, every forbidding dream. He’d started pondering things Q had said in the past, giving them different meanings, analysing everything. And sometimes… well, sometimes it ached and sometimes it soothed, but no matter what interpretation Jean-Luc pinned upon Q’s words, they always sent him reeling.

“You're not alone, you know. What you were, and what you are to become, will always be with you.”

“In any case, I'll be watching.”

“The Continuum didn't think you had it in you, Jean-Luc. But I knew you did.”

“Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm gonna miss you. You had such potential. But then again, all good things must come to an end.”

The transporter chime faded entirely, and Jean-Luc opened his eyes. He wasn’t in the transporter room, but in his own quarters. And standing in the very center of the room was Q, wearing a captain’s uniform – the twin to the one Jean-Luc wore.

It felt like being punched in the stomach.

“How cruel must you be?” Jean-Luc breathed. He dared not move – dared not speak above a whisper.

Q said nothing. He stood there with unnatural stillness; his eyes alight with an entirely alien gleam. A shiver snaked down Jean-Luc’s spine, but he straightened his back and swallowed hard. “Why are you here? You haven’t deigned a visit in ten months.”

A small, vicious smile slowly spread onto Q’s lips. “You’ve been counting,” he said. His first words in ten months – yes, dammit, he had been counting.

Jean-Luc could feel his hands tremble with rage. All this time and now he chose to appear, just when Jean-Luc was thinking of him. “Have you been mucking about in my head, Q? Planting thoughts into my mind?” he spat, his rage a white-hot wall of flame in his chest.

Q’s smile widened into a lazy grin. “Oh no, Jean-Luc,” he tilted his head back with inhuman grace, “I’ve made it a personal rule of sorts to never interfere with your tiny human brain. It ruins the fun. Whatever thoughts are bothering you, mon capitaine, are entirely your own.”

Jean-Luc’s cheeks burned with shame and anger and hurt, and although he tried, he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice as he said, “Fun – this is all a game to you then, isn’t it? You know perfectly well what I mean. For once, Q, let me know the truth.”

And then those alien eyes darkened, and it felt as if a cold wind had swiped the room when the smile faded from Q’s face. “What truth are you looking for, Jean-Luc? The one that pleases you or the one that is hard to hear?”

A wave of panic gripped Jean-Luc so unexpectedly that he staggered. He reached out a trembling hand and held onto his desk. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

Q closed his eyes and sighed in frustration. Such a human expression. “You never understood…” Q’s voice was strained.

The anger seeped back into Jean-Luc veins, making his blood boil. “Yes,” he nodded resentfully, “how could I possibly understand? What with my ‘tiny human brain’…”

Silence fell upon them, thick with anger and hurt and words left unsaid, unspoken. And then a sharp intake of breath, and Jean-Luc was calm again. So very calm as he asked, “What do you want from me? Why are you here?”

Q’s eyes flew open. “I don’t know. I told myself I had nothing more to do on this ship, but I keep coming back, and I thought that you would’ve understood by now…”

“Why must you make me crawl for an answer every damn time?” Jean-Luc shouted, his calmness and control snapping like a twig, “Just tell me, Q – you’ve made me beg before, I won’t do it again – tell me what you’re here for!”

Q’s eyebrows tilted upwards. “I can’t,” the entity breathed.

There was something desperate about the words – something desperate and pleading and so unlike Q… but, no, he would not relent.

“Then leave,” Jean-Luc said, seething with an anger he wasn’t sure he still felt.

Q straightened his back. His eyes were veiled, cold and barren. Unearthly, unknown: he was one of the Q, and the power of billions of years of existence coiled in his very being.

“I will,” he spoke with his human voice, nodded with his human body, but Jean-Luc had never been so utterly aware of how otherworldly the entity truly was. “A human lifetime is but a nanosecond to me, Picard. I will not be coming back.”

A flash of blinding white light – and he was gone.

Gone. Forever.

Jean-Luc, still gripping his desk, let out a gasp of disbelief. He pushed himself into the sleeping area of his chambers, a heavy weight on his chest, his entire body a brutal reminder of his own mortal misery. This, all this – it was but a nanosecond for Q.

But, damn it all to hell, it was everything for Jean-Luc Picard. The past ten months – the past seven years – he’d somehow known that this would mean everything to him. Something had pulled him towards that entity from the very start. The most annoying being in creation – devious and amoral and unreliable and irresponsible and definitely not to be trusted…

And now he was gone forever and Jean-Luc’s world was collapsing. He let himself fall onto his bed and buried his head into his open palms. The world was collapsing.

Q hovered above the Enterprise, invisible in his non-corporeal form. He could see right through the bulkhead of Starfleet’s flagship, right through walls and walls of primitive Federation technology. He could see Jean-Luc Picard, sitting on his bed with his face in his hands.

And Q ached. Not in the physical way he’d experienced when punished by the Continuum, when he’d been a hapless mortal on this very ship. No – this was an entirely different pain. Something was wrenching at his very being, triggered by the sight of the captain’s misery.

And Q longed. He knew the longing by now, it was familiar. He hated it, but it had been there for quite some time. How they had mocked him, in the Continuum. How they had sneered.

But Jean-Luc’s words had been haunting Q’s thoughts.

‘Thank you’, he’d said, with such unashamed gratitude, with such Human warmth. Jean-Luc Picard had thanked Q, after all that was done and said. Noble – he was noble and decent and honourable and everything that Q wasn’t.

Everything that Q was supposed to abhor.

Everything that Q loved.

Q loved this Human. Q loved this puny little Earthman who was mourning him on his puny little bed. Oh, but for his noble Human heart, for the grace in his unwavering goodness, Q could not fool himself into believing that Jean-Luc was puny. He may not have the all-powerful supremacy of the Q, but he had something stronger. Something brighter, and better – something Q cherished.

So, without warning, without light or sound or artifice, Q materialized back in Jean-Luc’s quarters in his human form. He stood there for a while in silence, watching Jean-Luc who simply sat on his bed, lost and broken. It hurt – oh how it hurt, to see the man he loved in such a state.

Just then, Jean-Luc turned.

Their eyes met. The silence was a living thing, spiralling around them and through them and suddenly Jean-Luc was on his feet, eyes wide, mouth open. “Q,” he whispered.

Q blinked. “Jean-Luc,” he answered.

And then they were running towards each other, desperately, like every second could tear them apart, like every moment was their last. They fell into each other’s arms. They looked into each other’s eyes. Jean-Luc’s hand was on Q’s neck, pulling him downwards.

“Your eyes… they look so human,” Jean-Luc said softly.

Q raised his eyebrows. He was about to give a sarcastic retort, but Jean-Luc silenced him with a kiss.

Jean-Luc Picard kissed Q.

Stars exploded and galaxies shattered. Q rattled the very core of creation as Jean-Luc kissed him harder, deeper; desperate and passionate and angry.

He pulled away to breathe with such charming mortal vulnerability. “Don’t ever make me wait again,” he panted frantically, “every day without you, I could’ve died. Q, I could’ve died without you.”

And it shook Q so much that he let his human body lean into Jean-Luc, let their foreheads touch. “Can you live with me, though?”

Jean-Luc smiled. “I think it’s worth a try.”

And he kissed him again.

#qcard #q/picard #ff #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing

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mst3kproject · 5 years

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802: The Leech Woman - Part I

I tend to get all social-justice-y on this blog, so it will probably come as a surprise to you that I kinda like this movie. I won’t pretend for a moment that The Leech Woman is not stupid and offensive, but something about it absolutely fascinates me.

Dr. Paul Talbot, an endocrinologist, is searching for a cure for Old. This is at least partly because it will make him ludicrously rich, but also because his wife June has turned forty and he’s no longer attracted to her. An old woman, Malla, tells the Talbots that her people, the Nando, know the secret of renewed youth. They therefore follow her to Fake Africa where they learn that the Cure for Old has two ingredients: the pollen of a rare orchid, and a human pineal gland, scooped from a still-living brain. Is June willing to commit murder in order to be young and beautiful again? You bet your sweet booty she is!

I was kind of surprised when my word processor didn’t underline ‘Nando’. I googled it, and apparently Nando’s is a South African restaurant famous for their ‘Peri-Peri Chicken.’ You learn something every day.

This movie is gross on so many levels. It hates everybody. Its ‘Africans’ are primitive mystics in loincloths and skull headdresses, its women are domineering and predatory, its men abusers, criminals, and dull-ass ciphers. I hardly know where to start. In fact, the badness of The Leech Woman is so complex and pervasive that I think we’ve got another multi-part series here. In this review, I’m going to talk about the characters. Next week, I’ll go on to other stuff.

The Leech Woman is, of course, not the first movie I’ve watched in which there is no hero… but I’m not just talking about this being another film in which the so-called ‘hero’ doesn’t do anything. This is more like The Amazing Transparent Man in that there is literally nobody in the film who can be described as ‘good’. It’s not a movie about good overcoming evil, it’s a movie about evil destroying itself. That’s probably part of the reason why I find it so interesting, as it’s an unusual way to approach a narrative, and The Leech Woman shows an astonishing amount of commitment to it. We’ve seen a number of movies on MST3K where the good guys really aren’t important but there’s still somebody, usually a dull cop or reporter, who theoretically fills that role. The Leech Woman doesn’t even have one of those.

Let’s take a look at our cast, shall we? We’ve basically got six important characters: Paul and June Talbot, David the jungle guide, Malla, Neil the lawyer, and Neil’s fiancée Sally. I think I’ll start with the men. They’re all terrible.

The first character who speaks is Paul, and the first thing he says is to insult his wife, sneering at her about her drinking. The conversation that follows tells us not only that they hate each other, but that Paul seems to have married June primarily so he could experiment on her, and is pissed that she doesn’t want to let him. Then while June is hurt, drunk, and vulnerable, he goes from insulting her to fawning over her, softening her up so that he can return to emotionally abusing her later. When, on the trip to Africa, she accuses him of ignoring her, he tells her she’s imagining it. He’s also deeply unprofessional at work, insulting and scoffing at Malla when she’s there in response to his request for research subjects.

Of course, Paul is a villain in this story. We’re glad to see him go, and the nice irony of him not living to see June rejuvenated is one of the few things The Leech Woman does right. His detestable traits are so cartoonishly overblown, though, that it’s really hard to take him seriously as a character. Paul comes across more than anything else as a plot device, a necessary stepping stone for June to come into contact with the Nando and their youth pollen. Once he’s served that purpose he’s no longer needed. Nobody misses him, and June never shows the slightest trace of regret, immediately attaching herself to David instead.

David starts off seeming like a slightly better person than Paul, since he treats June like a human being and attempts to offer her some actual comfort after she fights with her husband. Then he goes steadily downhill. He steals the youth pollen and the ring at a moment when he should be worrying about them getting out of there alive, and then when June ages again, he not only refuses to give them to her, he runs away. I guess he’s supposed to do this because he realizes he’s the only person around she could tap for pineal juice, but at this point we have no evidence that she’s willing to do that. She didn’t even watch while the Nando killed Paul. Instead, it looks for all the world like David runs because he’s physically repulsed by her, or because he’s afraid she’s going to infect him with Old.

Finally, there’s Neil. I think we’re supposed to like Neil… I think we’re supposed to see him as a nice guy destroyed by a scheming woman, but the truth is that Neil destroys himself. The moment he sees young June, in her disguise as ‘Terri’, come up to him, he throws all decency out the window and practically follows her around drooling for the rest of the movie. When his fiancée points out, understandably, that this is unacceptable behaviour, he treats her exactly as Paul had treated June, telling her that she’s imagining things. All these things stack up against us liking Neil, and he displays no redeeming qualities to offset then… in fact, other than being easily led by his dick, he has no qualities at all. He’s a cardboard cutout with ‘handsome guy’ written on it.

Of course, none of these men are a point-of-view character in the story. The Leech Woman is a story about women, so how about them? Well, unsurprisingly they’re terrible too. Malla uses the Talbots to get her back to Africa and then tries to have them killed, and clearly has no problem with the whole ‘a man must die to make her young’ thing. The Nando as a culture are used to this idea, but Malla didn’t grow up with that – she was raised in the west, where people would definitely not be okay with it. If the men were shown to be willing sacrifices this might not be quite so bad (although it still wouldn’t be okay), but no, the guy we see is struggling as he’s held down and drugged.

As for Sally, the movie evidently wants us to think she’s a nagging harpy. It doesn’t quite succeed, because of the way Neil drools after ‘Terri’. Sally has every right to be worried, impatient, and annoyed, especially when he brushes off her concerns the way he does. Instead, what’s terrible about Sally is the way she offhandedly threatens Neil (“you better not try anything like that if you want to stay in one piece”) and seems to view him as a possession rather than a partner. When he admits he prefers ‘Terri’, Sally’s plan is to send this woman away until she and Neil can marry, as if signing his name to the paperwork means he can never escape from her again. He belongs to her now. She has a receipt.

I assume that Neil and Sally met through Paul, but until the point where they turn up at the airport, we never see them together and have no indication they know each other exists. The impression I get is that the Bride of Neil was originally going to be a different character, but they couldn't afford another actress.

Then there’s June. The Leech Woman is obviously her story – she’s in almost every scene, and is the one with a bit of a character arc. It’s possible that we see Paul as unsubtly evil and Sally as a paranoid bitch because that’s how June sees them. If anybody’s the protagonist, it’s her, but she is never, ever likable even in a villainous sort of way. We root for her to destroy Paul because we hate him too, but everything she does is awful and like the other characters, she doesn’t have any good characteristics to offset it.

When we first meet her, she’s a self-pitying drunk. She is so badly-treated by Paul that by the time it looks like she’s going to have him killed and run off with David, we’re all for it. Then her downhill spiral begins as she murders David for his pineal. This is supposed to be a surprise and a demonstration that June is irredeemable, and it works as far as it goes, but it leaves us with no interest in her affair with Neil. We don’t root for them to get together because it’s obviously impossible, and we cannot believe that this is some great tragic love when they’ve only just met. It’s just a couple of selfish idiots being selfish idiots.

After the way Paul has treated June, we understand why she enjoys seeing men doing her bidding. She’s always been ignored and disregarded, so she derives great joy from being able to make people pay attention. She uses beauty to wrap Neil around her little finger, and wealth to do the same to the would-be robber. She knows she’s ruining Neil’s life by seducing him as ‘Terri’, and she seems positively gleeful about that. The problem is that she’s not really trying to accomplish anything through this manipulation. She has no long-term plan, it’s just all-out hedonism, and when she finds herself cornered, she commits suicide. June never learns anything from any of this, and nobody else learns anything from her. At the end, she’s just pointlessly destroyed a number of lives, including her own, and it’s hard to say what the audience is supposed to take from that.

And man, that’s just the dramatis personae! I have way more to complain about in The Leech Woman, so stay tuned. Next week I’ll be back in SJW mode with a vengeance. See you then!

#mst3k #reviews #leech woman #tw: abuse #boy are we in africa!#60s

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irrelevantwriter · 5 years

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Mates (Part 1)

Pairing: Negan x OFC

Rating: Explicit, NSFW (Ratings and Warnings for later parts)

Warnings: Language, A/B/O universe, smut, unprotected sex, knotting, mention of bodily fluids

Word Count: 2.6K

Summary: Camilla made a mistake by hiding her true nature. She got too close to an Alpha and set off a string of events that changed both of their lives forever.

A/N: You guys! What am I even doing? My muse is back in full force and I have you all to thank for that, and Jeffery because he’s all I can seem to write at the moment, lol. This started out as a one-shot that was pure filth but then took a left turn down plot street and then took a right at fluff avenue. It’s now divided up into about three or four parts. Moderation is not my strong point. Anyway, I wanted to get this out before the return of TWD this weekend. I’ll release a part every day so we’ll have it all up before then. First part doesn’t have any smut, but I’ll get the second part up quickly so you guys won’t be without for too long. I hope you guys like it! Enjoy!

_______________________________________________________________________

Part 1

Negan stared out the small window of his cell in Alexandria. He’d sensed a shift in the air…a scent. But as his eyes scanned the streets, he couldn’t pinpoint what had brought him to that certain spot. He instead watched as the residents moved about as they had been for the last three years. Three years of observing the same people do the same boring shit. Three years of being locked in a cinderblock cell with his only consistent visitors being a tough as nails six-year-old and a half-blind man of misplaced faith. It was a monotonous existence…but not one he altogether hated. It was only when things were brewing in the outside world that he missed riding into battle with his leather and barbed wire. It was only when he could feel the energy beyond his stone prison start to vibrate that he yearned to be on the frontlines.

He sniffed the air.

Rain.

Something was coming.

_______________________________________________________________________

It was nearly a week later when he finally figured out what the fuck had him so twisted up.

He’d gotten a nasty splinter from a wooden chair they’d let him keep in his cell. He’d broken the fucking thing into pieces; a sudden bout of rage hitting him out of nowhere the day before. It had been unexpected and quick. But the damage had been done. Father Gabe had tried to pester him about why he’d done it, but he didn’t have a fucking answer. The man was less than pleased. Negan could give fuck all. He felt like a caged animal.

The door to the room from the street above opened, the sunlight streaming in to taunt him. He stiffened, not entirely sure why he was having such an adverse reaction to a visitor. He usually lived for the days he could torture someone new with his incessant talking and taunting. But today was different. It’d been different for the past week.

A mixture of voices filled the space and Negan concentrated on appearing calm, even though his body was slowly shifting in the opposite direction. He stepped back towards his bed and waited as Dr. Siddiq entered with a woman he’d never seen before. She was attractive. And that was putting it mildly. She had dark hair that appeared to be tied back and away from her face. Her eyes were dark, the shape round and innocent. Her lips were full and pink, instantly taking his sex-starved mind to places they could touch him. She was dressed in dark jeans and a loose flannel, the clothing both accentuating and hiding her curves.

Negan could feel his body react to her. The strong effect confused him. He’d been around women since his imprisonment. He didn’t have an issue fucking controlling himself. But this woman forced his body to react in a way he hadn’t felt since...

Fuck.

A rut. He hadn’t felt this on edge since he’d been in a rut. And that was over twenty years ago.

Goddamn.

She was a fucking Omega. He thought the breed had been wiped off the face of the fucking earth with the outbreak. They were rare before the turn and they were sure as shit nonexistent since.

He could see the moment she realized he’d figured it out and her eyes got wide. He instantly picked up on her fear, but it wasn’t of him. At least not all him. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, slightly shaking her head. She was pleading with him not to say anything. Alexandria didn’t know they had an Omega on their hands. The place was full of Betas. And Betas weren’t privy to Omega and Alpha senses. They existed like average people. Alphas and Omegas had other needs that had to be tended to. Needs that could make for some dangerous situations.

“Negan, this is my newest colleague…Camilla.”

Siddiq’s voice brought him back to his current situation. Negan immediately plastered on a smile, one everyone in Alexandria had become accustomed to seeing him wear. He slipped easily into the persona of nonchalant, smart ass prisoner.

The man gestured to the woman and Negan grinned and nodded towards her, taking note of the way her body now faced him rather than being shielded by the doctor’s body.

“Hi there, doll.” He greeted smoothly. The flirty tone seeping into his words like liquid smoke.

The woman, Camilla, raised a hand in greeting and twitched her lips upwards into a hesitant smile. He could tell he’d made her nervous. He was glad for that. Her presence at Alexandria had disturbed his chemical balance.

“We came to check on that splinter you got yesterday.” Siddiq explained as he moved closer to the cell door. He handed Camilla the supplies he’d brought while he reached between the bars for Negan’s hand.

Negan moved forward and let Siddiq examine said hand, but his eyes were on Camilla the whole time. She moved to look over the man’s shoulder, watching with intense focus. Her face caught some of the sun streaming in from the window and he realized she had a small line of freckles under her left eye. Her skin was sun-kissed and golden, the hue reminding him of summer days on a beach. Something told him she kept that kind of tone all year round.

“Doesn’t appear to be infected. I’ll just remove it and disinfect. We can put a wrap around it too so it doesn’t get infected.”

“Nah…simple Band-Aid will do, Doc.”

The doctor nodded, accepting his request. He knew he would. They weren’t going to waste precious supplies on him if they didn’t have to.

He stood stock still as Siddiq worked on his hand. He sniffed the air, aware that his body was becoming more and more aroused and tense by the Omega’s presence. He could feel his skin starting to get clammy and his heart start to accelerate. Her scent was beginning to wash over him and he already felt like he was drowning in it. She smelled like rose petals and sugar. A soft and feminine scent that made his Alpha wild with some kind of primitive bond. His eyes shifted to her neck and took in the smooth, unbroken skin there. She’d never been claimed. The idea of her being a pure Omega made a rush of testosterone flood his system.

He growled.

Both Siddiq and Camilla heard it. Siddiq assumed he’d hurt Negan with the removal of the splinter. Camilla knew otherwise. He watched as her breathing picked up and her skin turned flush. He was having an effect on her too, though he didn’t think it was nearly as intense as what he was feeling.

He studied the way the pulse in her neck jumped in time with her rapidly beating heart. He could practically feel her pussy throbbing. His dick was starting to get hard just thinking about it. The need for a woman was certain. The need for an Omega was in his blood.

“Alright, all done. We’ll be back in a day or so to check on it.” Siddiq said as he finished placing the Band-Aid on his palm.

Negan nodded, pulling his hand back through the bars. “Thanks, Doc.” He’d spoken to the man, but he was eyeing the dark-haired woman the entire time.

They were gone seconds later. But her scent still lingered in the air. And it was going to send him spiraling.

_______________________________________________________________________

Camilla was doing inventory in the infirmary when Father Gabriel and Michonne busted in, eyes wild and searching the room. Siddiq quickly put down the medical text he was reading and got up to meet them.

“Who’s hurt?” The doctor asked frantically, ready for the worse.

“No one. Yet.” Michonne stated coldly.

“Its Negan…,” Father Gabriel said with a worried shake of his head. “He appears to be in a rut. He’s destroyed his cell. He’s refused any food or water. Threatening anyone who comes close.”

“He’s dangerous. Primitive.” Michonne intervened.

“Sounds like an Alpha rut from what I remember in medical school. But these kinds of things are usually brought on by an Omega. Not just out of the blue.”

Camilla felt her body freeze, her mind racing with the possibilities. It’d been four days since she’d seen Negan in his cell with Siddiq. And every day since, she’d noticed the signs of a heat coming on. Her body hadn’t had a proper heat since before the turn. She’d always been able to find a cocktail of suppressants to ward it and unwanted Alphas off. But it’d been months since she’d found any medication. And the Alexandria infirmary had little by way of Omega healthcare needs. As far as she knew, she was the only Omega here. And she’d been in hiding.

Was it possible that just their body chemistries had forced a rut and heat? She hadn’t even spoken to him. She’d barely looked at him. But something inside of her knew…knew what this would bring the moment she stepped in the room with him. Her Omega was immediately attracted to him. She wanted him. He’d triggered something in her. She’d dreamt of him every night since. When she woke in the mornings her legs were usually sticky from the flood of arousal produced overnight. But she’d ignored it because she didn’t know the man. And he was obviously someone who did something bad enough that he had to pay for his crimes by rotting in a jail cell.

It was the most inconvenient way for her body to let her know she needed to get laid.

“We can’t just kill him!” Camilla jumped at the loud tone Father Gabriel took with the other two. Michonne looked pissed while Siddiq looked confused.

“He’ll hurt someone. We can’t have that kind of blood on our hands.” Michonne insisted.

Father Gabriel looked to the doctor helplessly. “Isn’t there a way to treat this? To calm him until it’s over?”

Siddiq scratched his beard in thought. “It doesn’t sound like it’d be possible at this stage. The option of drugging him or knocking him out requires someone to get close. He’s very capable of killing someone.”

“Then the decision is made.” Michonne declared with all the air of a queen running her kingdom.

Camilla stood up abruptly, making her presence known for the first time to the other three. “You guys don’t have any other Omegas here?” She asked, her brain frantically searching for another solution.

“No. Omegas are basically extinct.” Siddiq supplied, his dark eyes watching Camilla closely.

“You can’t just kill a man because he’s gone into rut. That’s unethical.” She insisted, trying to get through to the woman who had so generously offered her a home behind these gates.

Michonne shook her head, a humorless laugh leaving her lips. “You don’t know the things he’s done in the past. He’s dangerous. Rut or not. He’s the only Alpha we have. If he really wanted to, he could take out every one of the men here.”

“Wait-,” Siddiq interrupted, his body now turning to face Camilla head on. “What did you mean when you said no other Omegas here?”

The room fell silent. All eyes were on her as she tried in vain to think of a good enough lie. None came to her.

“Are you an Omega?” Michonne stepped closer to her. Her eyes were fixated on Camilla as if she were a dead one. She looked disgusted. She looked infuriated.

“Yes.” She said simply, unable to refuse her biology anymore.

“Camilla, what were you thinking? You shouldn’t have even been in that room with Negan that day!” Siddiq admonished, his doctor voice in full effect.

She shook her head, unwilling to receive a lecture from Betas about her body. “I’ve been on suppressants since the start of all this. I recently ran out, but I haven’t had a heat since. I didn’t know he was an Alpha.” She explained, though she knew the effort was for naught. They all looked at her differently now. Whether because of her nature or her lying to them, or both…she just ostracized herself.

“What does this mean?” Father Gabriel asked dumbly, clearly unaware of how this new information changed things.

Siddiq eyed her cautiously and then turned to deliver the news to the man of God. “It means they are biologically made to mate with each other. Camilla’s presence has forced Negan into an Alpha rut. And it’s quite possible that she’ll be going into heat soon.” He looked to for confirmation and she nodded. “It could get bad for you too.”

“I know.”

“So they have to mate.” Michonne finished, filling in the blanks for Father Gabriel. The man had the audacity to look sheepish.

“Yes, they do.” Siddiq said with a nod.

Camilla sighed, annoyed and angry that strangers were deciding her fate. She may feel bad about Negan, but that didn’t mean she was going to be forced to sleep with an Alpha she didn’t know. Especially one in a rut.

“We’re not animals.” She protested, her hackles immediately raising at their absurdity and cluelessness.

“Do you have any better ideas then? Because you lied to us…to me. And now a man is a threat and a danger to himself and others.”

Michonne’s words ricocheted in Camilla’s ears. She was right. She knew she was. But it didn’t make the pill any easier to swallow.

“You said he was a bad man. I’m just supposed to jump into bed with him?” Camilla asked, her voice small and disbelieving.

The group said nothing.

“You can’t just keep him locked up?” She tried again. Desperate for any other way to right her wrong.

Michonne shook her head. “He’s being aggressive. He’s scaring everyone. Its gonna start a panic, make people feel unsafe.”

Camilla tried not to roll her eyes at the woman’s words. God forbid the residents of Alexandria are exposed to an Alpha in rut. It seems they quickly forget what kind of place lay beyond the high walls of their picturesque homes. The real threats that lurked beyond the trees.

Suddenly, a man burst through the door. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d run the whole way. He gestured behind him from the direction he came as he spoke. “The prisoner just tried to bite Danny!”

All four people, plus the newcomer ran towards the direction of the cell. A small crowd was gathered by the window, scared and angry faces watching the spectacle as if the Alpha was on display at a zoo. The sight made Camilla nauseous.

Michonne dispelled the group, shooing away the onlookers. They could hear the ruckus from below, but nobody made a move to enter. It was obvious what everyone felt needed to be done. Camilla could feel their insistence permeating the air between them. The situation opened her eyes to the same kind of prejudices Omegas faced before the turn. No one gave a fuck. They wanted Omegas to know their place and do their part. No questions asked. It seemed the dead walking had no effect on people’s tendencies to be assholes.

She couldn’t let that man suffer. And if she was being truly honest…now that she was nearer to him, her body was responding in kind. Signaling it was ready for the Alpha that was nearby. Ready for his knot. Ready for his seed. The haze that Camilla had come to associate with extreme arousal was seeping into her pores. A loud smash and grunt from the cell had her on the cusp of whimpering. A magnetic force pulled her in the direction of the locked door. The man behind it both terrifying and exciting her.

“I’ll do it.”

*Read Part 2 here

#twd #twd fanfiction #negan abo #negan #negan x ofc #abo #abo universe #negan fanfiction

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salaciouscrumpet · 5 years

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Whumptober Day 10

Whumptober Day 10 Prompt: “Unconscious”

This one actually ended up being more fluff than whump. In fact, it’s not really whumpy at all, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

CW: animal death (humanely and not the focal point of the ficlet)

Characters: Charlie, Luke, Kate, a bunch of happy sleepy critters

Charlie was trapped, pinned in on all sides, but he wasn’t terribly bothered by his predicament.

He sat, back to the headboard and supported by a mountain of pillows, his legs stretched out in front of him. To his right Luke was sprawled on his side, his head buried under a pillow, his scarred right arm draped lazily over Charlie’s hip. To Charlie’s left Kate was still for a change, her body curled around his leg and her head pillowed on his thigh. The pair of them were out cold, and although Charlie was tired himself there was something about their exhaustion that made him want to stay awake and alert and to watch over them.

Bear was, for once, curled up on the doggy bed on the floor. He had tried coming up onto the bed with his humans, but three adults took up a lot of space even on a king-sized bed, and besides that the cats had already staked out their own territory and made it clear the dog was unwelcome. And for all that Titter was frail and elderly and Bear outweighed her by a good hundred and sixty pounds, she was in charge, and Bear had been terrified of her ever since he’d come home as a rambunctious puppy and she’d put him in his place with a single slash of her tiny paw. Sekhmet, the undisputed queen of the house, was perched on the pillow at Luke’s shoulder while Titter slept in a tiny little ball at Kate’s feet. Spud, the kitten, had been relegated to the doggy bed with Bear for being too rowdy, and so he was nestled in against Bear’s thick fur, purring so loudly Charlie could hear him from the bed.

It was a peaceful scene but it had been hard-won after a day filled with victories that felt Pyrrhic at best.

Charlie’s day had been tinged with bittersweet sadness. The Petersons had brought their old German Shepherd, Max, in to be put to sleep; Max had been battling hip dysplasia and now Charlie was pretty sure the dog had cancer as well. The euthanasia had been arranged in advance, and the Petersons had given their beloved pet a grand send-off with a day spent doing all the things the old dog enjoyed: basking in the sunlight on the beach while the kids played around him, a short walk in the woods, all of his favourite foods (including the things he wasn’t supposed to eat but loved), and of course lots and lots of cuddles. It was sad, but the Petersons were good people who loved their pet very much, and so they sat with him and cried while he went to sleep in their arms. Max had led a good long life for a large-breed dog and he’d been well-loved, and Charlie’s heart ached for his humans who would miss him very much. He was grateful the Petersons had stayed with Max; it was a hard thing to do, but it always made him think better of his patients’ humans.

Charlie had come home from work feeling sad and tired, and he’d found Luke huddled in bed with a migraine and his cellphone turned off. Luke’s mother had called, something she did periodically that managed to upset him every single time. His parents were holding a dinner party and expected Luke to attend – alone, so that he could meet the daughter (or daughters) of their wealthy, well-connected friends within the Order. His parents refused to acknowledge Luke’s relationships with Charlie and Kate: Charlie, the child of a human and one of the Fair Folk (Unseelie Court, but still acceptable in the eyes of the Knights of Oberon), was unsuitable because he was a man; Kate was a woman, but she was the offspring of a demon, which barred her in Luke’s parents’ eyes. It probably also didn’t help that neither Charlie nor Kate fell under the definition of “tractable” or “obedient,” which were qualities deemed of utmost necessity in a future wife and mother. Luke’s own opinions on the matter – that he loved Charlie and Kate, that they were committed to each other, that he liked his life the way it was – were irrelevant, as was, apparently, the fact that his parents had disowned him a decade ago.

So Luke and Rita had argued over the phone, because every time Luke and his mother spoke, they argued. And Kate and Charlie hadn’t been home, so the argument had gone on for way too long because Luke was terrible at telling his mother ‘no’ (and his mother was even worse at listening to it) and then afterwards he’d spiraled until he’d given himself a stress-induced migraine. Charlie’s healing magic was good for a lot of things, but migraines were, unfortunately, not on the list. The only thing to be done was for Luke to try and sleep it off, which was one of the many reasons their bedroom had blackout curtains in the windows, because he was particularly sensitive to light when he had a migraine.

Then, just as Charlie had walked in the front door of the farmhouse the three of them shared – seconds after stepping in a puddle of cat vomit, almost certainly courtesy of Sekkie – he got a text from Devon, letting him and Luke know that Kate had been injured while on patrol. Nothing serious (which, in the context of superhumanly resilient people like Luke and Kate, meant nothing actually life-threatening, but probably still actually serious for anyone else), and they’d already had one of the only other charmers at the camp heal her up, but she was going to be on light-duty for a few days. Rishaan, bless his heart, would drive her home. Kate got home about forty-five minutes later, tired and grumpy and limping on what had only shortly before been a leg broken in several places, the result of a fall. Charlie suspected there was more to the story – Kate was not known for simply falling – but it could wait until morning. Charlie had long ago learned to pick his battles, and confronting a post-injury Kate about how she’d come to be injured was not the hill he wanted to die on that night.

Some time later the cat puke was cleaned up, the animals were fed (and Charlie helped himself to some leftovers; neither Kate nor Luke was hungry), and Charlie managed to get his two miserable partners tucked into bed on either side of him. Luke’s migraine was mostly over with, which set it on the shorter end of such things for him, and Kate’s leg – healed up but still stiff and tender – was covered in a smelly ointment Charlie made from scratch that only had a few magical properties. Magical healing took a lot of energy out of both the charmer and the patient, so Kate was out like a light. Charlie had lulled Luke to sleep with a scalp massage (and only a tiny amount of magic to urge him on), and the animals had piled onto the bed. The bedroom was dark and just cool enough to make climbing under a pile of quilts seem like a brilliant idea. There was a mountain of pillows, the cats were purring, and somewhere in the distance a loon called out over the lake behind the house.

Charlie had been reading on his tablet, using the warmer light settings specifically designed for nighttime usage. He leaned over Kate and set the tablet on the end table before settling back against the headboard again. He was tired but at peace, even with the heartache from earlier in the day and the stresses that had met him upon arriving home. He played with the end of Kate’s braid, coiling it around his hand before running his hand over her head. He and Luke were the only ones who were allowed to touch or play with Kate’s hair; she claimed she didn’t like being petted and fussed over – unless she shifted into a cat, which was her ‘comfort’ form – but they could get away with it because they were hers. Charlie’s other hand stroked along the solid curve of Luke’s shoulder, brushing over the stark black and red tattoos that lined him from neck to wrist. He couldn’t actually see the markings, but he knew them so well he could picture them in his mind: based off primitive Scythian tattoos, each one a different animal Luke had chosen to indicate an important moment or memory. Soon he would need to start moving on to his chest and back, because he was running out of real estate on his left arm, and he wasn’t willing to tattoo over the scars on his right. Charlie was never sure what to make of that – as the man responsible for healing Luke’s badly burned arm, Charlie saw those scars as a sort of failing, that he hadn’t been able to make his lover completely whole again. Luke, on the other hand, was grateful simply to have an arm that functioned (and functioned well), and didn’t much care about the aesthetics. The scars had meaning to Luke, just as his tattoos did. And both represented a break from his past, although for completely different reasons.

Down on the floor Bear let out a small yelp, one of his hind legs scuffing against the hardwood as he kicked and chased something in his dreams. The movement dislodged the kitten, and within seconds Spud was up on the bed, casting cautious glances at both Titter and Sekhmet. Both female cats were ignoring him, so Spud wound his way over the quilts and in between Luke’s legs, snuggling in the crook of his knee. His noisy purr – which sounded something like a broken engine – seemed to take on a triumphant note as he made himself comfortable on the bed despite his mean and territorial older sisters.

“Be nice,” Charlie whispered softly when Sekhmet opened her eyes to glare pointedly at the kitten. She turned and blinked at him, falling back to sleep. There was no doubt in his mind that she had simply chosen to continue ignoring Spud, and not that she was listening to or obeying her human’s commands. Sekkie was the queen of the house; Charlie and the others just lived there, to serve at her leisure.

“’M always nice,” Kate murmured sleepily, smushing her face into Charlie’s hip.

“Lies,” Luke replied, every bit as sleepy. His voice was muffled by the pillow he still had pressed over his face.

“Shush,” Charlie said. He stroked one hand over Kate’s hair and the other over Luke’s shoulder, and Spud’s contented, broken-machine purr rumbled out through the room. The day had been a shitshow, and no doubt tomorrow Charlie would still need to deal with the fallout of Luke’s conversation with his mother as well as Kate’s inexplicable injury, but until tomorrow he was content to sit and snuggle with the family they had made for themselves.

#whumptober2019 #day 10 #no. 10 #original fiction #mostly fluff

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hermetictardigrade · 5 years

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HISTORY OF THE EARLY UNMAN

Where did man come from? This question has occupied the human sidethought for thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of lazy deeryear. It is a question responsible for many of the world’s myths & religions. Yet those old answers, they are merely one primitive dog attempt after another for a conquest—just some old pelican’s idea of showing off his explanatory prowess. A mating game and a mushroom. Cast it all away, dancer! Today we spread out a veil. Today we will sacrifice a limb-cut Mt. Everest on the altar of the smiling science. So grab a woodchuck & squeeze!

A disclaimer—As with all prehistory histories, most of what follows is complete conjecture. But I assure you that I have studied all the bones. Each and every one. And through my hydromancy practice I have gained a secondary authentication. These dry words can be trusted, my friend, for I am no wet salamander. And I shall never flee at the approach of an uncomfortable truth. Yes, in the realm of Idea I am a sneering viking warrior, and irony is my excaliber. O foolish, foolish throats!

Our first Apetwin had an insect eye. An insect heart. Our first Apetwin had almost no concepts of his own. He was born without a cabalistic grocery cart, and his cavehome was completely bare. Except for his one friend, the red weasel, no one ever came to visit him. He tried taking walks around the plains, tried to do the old meet-and-greet, but all this caused was a raising of severe eyebrows. And those cruel, cruel Elephantkind! They would always frown at him, they would cover their offspring’s bulging red eyes whenever he passed. He seemed to cause severe allergic reactions. The termite kingdom even labelled him “a very dangerous individual”, and said he had no hamstrings. He’d only been alive for about a week, this little Unman, and yet the pinky aggregations of gossip had so quickly become established… He just couldn’t counter it all, he just couldn’t “put up”. Life on the savannah became disagreeable to him. His new word for life became “dead duck”. And so, on the second Tuesday of his life he crawled inside his dirty hidey hole and turned himself into a grey statue, never to dethaw. A sad ending for a sad meatball. But let’s not dwell! And hey—about 157,535 years later his grim statue-self was found by a traveling hippie death cult, and worshiped as their god. Yes, for a few sweet summers (Between ’70 and ’73) he got to play as King of all the Archons, and had the front row seat to endless sex magick shenanigans, often involving a tribe of lost circus gorilla. And not everybody can say that, eh?!

Our second Apetwin was a variant on the first. But this time around he was all horn, baby. All point & all angle. Yes, this time around nobody gave him any slippery shitstuff, because they were all far too afraid of him. They ditched the conspiratorial, and didn’t so much as pass a slither in his direction. In all their little booties, they quaked. At birth his apeface had been covered over with a strange metallic star. Yes, even while babyfresh, he shined. Vaguely organic was this facestar of his, and possibly sentient too. Somekindof parasitic somethingorother, a devious sucker of his fur. This star cursed like a non-aquatic sailor. (Not at all, in other words. This star was completely mute.) It also made it very difficult (impossible) for him to ever eat a tasty lunch. The most heroic action of this Ape’s life involved a fight with a deranged porcupine. This was on the third, maybe fourth day of his life, I think? Somekindof mating argument, if I am remembering correctly, something about access to a voluptuous porcupine female. He triumphed over the tricksy death quills, but died of starvation soon after. This is because he had no mouth with which to eat, as I mentioned previously. This is also why we of the english language call it STARvation. A tribute of sorts to this legendary apeboy hunk.

The third Apetwin (aka Charlie Ape), was a true ghostboy. He clouded himself regularly, because he was completely addicted to Phantom. Whenever his head spectrals reached a level low enough for a pupil return he sprayed again with the ReFog(™) . It was in this way that he avoided the nastiness of the sunlight, and the sad pretensions of the floral. His cosmic familiars? They often sprayed with ReFog(™) too. That sassy Sally Ape, that old old Momma Ape…A bunch of risky impatients they all were. Baby did not partake in any of this, however. Baby had a round plaster belly filled with flies. Baby was deafdumbblind. Baby knew not what he was, nor where he was. But as for that Charlie, Sally, & Momma, they all wanted a bigger, cloudier drift to exist inside themselves. They wanted something with a true extraterrestrial kick. And so (with a little misused Freudian analysis) they combined their three headselves, becoming one great winged headself. This newly-formed divine headself suctioned itself up, flying straight under moon’s surprised eyelid. It accidentally struck a hidden shadow vein there, and boom! All three apes were immediately transferred into a permanent apparitional state. A cautionary tale, folks.

Onward, then to the fourth Apetwin! This fellow started out small. No distinguishing personality features. No real fetishes or quirks to speak of. One thing that this fourth line of ape did enjoy was a good long swim. These apes loved the feeling of wet fur on warm grass. They loved to open their mouths underwater, to feel a cool aquatic massage along their weary gums. They would often smile very broadly after a dip, to show the tribe a set of sparking white river-cleaned teeth. And before any fuck, a quick dip was always expected. Just good form, you know? Hygienic. Unfortunately, in those prehistoric times there was just one large river, spiraling out from the core. The One had not yet diverged into the Many. This ancient river was 73 miles wide, and it teemed with sexually transmitted disease. Eventually this fourth ape line became consumed by the microscopic, their peaceful utopian society torn apart by a cornucopia of infection. One disease caused their ape genitalia to balloon with an effusion of strange red flesh bubbles, which when popped caused them very great pain. Another caused their blood veins to expand and spiral upwards, devouring their heads & disjoining their thoughts. And it all ended with a discharge which was musical. The less said about all that, the better.

Here I will end my account of the prehistoric Unmen. There are many more dead ends to cover, and I yet have forgotten them all. Loosey goosey, Loosey goosey. Depart my friends, and let not the mammalian tragedies of our past weary your present steps.

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talabib · 3 years

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How To Combat Worry And Have stress-free Life

Worrying is bad for your health and happiness. What’s more, it usually doesn’t achieve anything either. Not exactly an attractive package, is it?

But sometimes it’s just impossible to help yourself. You lie awake at night fretting, your mind and heart racing. Come morning, everything’s as you left it, except the bags under your eyes are that little bit bigger.

This is all down to our evolutionary hardwiring. Our ancestors’ survival depended on constant vigilance. Worrying was pretty useful when there was a good chance you’d stumble across a saber-toothed tiger!

Unfortunately, the human brain isn’t very good at telling the difference between a beast of prey and a board meeting – that’s what makes stress so common in today’s world.

But there’s a way to break out of this vicious cycle. Structured around a series of small steps that make a big difference, this is the ultimate guide to getting in touch with your rational brain and putting your worries behind you.

Worrying, anxiety and stress are all part of a cycle that can affect your health.

Have you ever found yourself lying awake at night, fretting about an upcoming presentation? Worries can quickly snowball out of control. The key to combating them is remembering this simple motto: “Stop before you spiral.”

Worrying is part of a cycle, where the next stops are anxiety and stress. More precisely, worrying is a mode of thinking that leads to anxiety. That, in turn, triggers your body’s survival instinct – a series of physical reactions that fall under the category of stress. These can include heart palpitations, dilated pupils and a tightened chest.

Worry, anxiety and stress form a feedback loop. Worrying is both a cause and effect of anxiety or stress, and the cycle can be triggered at any stage. Stress can lead to anxiety and worry, while anxiety can also cause worry and stress.

During a holiday in northwest England, Paul and his wife heard a seemingly vicious dog barking from behind a hedge. Fearing an imminent attack, the couple’s “fight or flight” instinct kicked in.

In other words, the barking caused stress while their fear of an attack caused anxiety. Fretting about finding a quick escape route made them worry. It turned out that the Paul had merely imagined that the dog was prowling around without an owner or a leash, as he felt immediately threatened by the unknown growls.

Once you get stuck in this cycle, it starts taking its toll on your quality of life. There are a number of physical symptoms. Stress weakens your immune system and leaves you more susceptible to illnesses, as well as decreasing your sex drive.

Mentally, the cycle robs you of the valuable headspace you need to make sound decisions. To put it starkly, stress makes you stupid, as you’re constantly reacting to a threatening world rather than acting rationally.

Most importantly, you lose the ability to simply enjoy the present moment when you’re stuck in this kind of feedback loop. When you’re constantly preoccupied by worst-case scenarios, you lose your sense of motivation and creative inspiration.

Now that we’ve seen how worrying is linked to anxiety and stress, we’ll take a closer look at the root causes of your worries.

Whether it’s past experiences or a fear of the unknown, confront the cause of your worries.

What’s worrying you? Is it a performance review at work? Or making this month’s rent? Worry comes in all shapes and sizes, but the root causes are often surprisingly simple.

One of the main reasons people worry is their past. Many worriers were conditioned to be anxious during their childhoods. Take your upbringing: your parents’ endless reminders to wrap up warm during winter if you didn’t want to “freeze to death” can take their toll.

There’s even evidence that worried parents can transmit stress to their babies during pregnancy!

Painful experiences are another common cause of worry. Whether it was a car accident or an abusive relationship, what happened to you in the past can shape how you deal with the world in the present.

Past experiences can often manifest themselves as hypersensitivity to potential danger. James’s daughter, for example, was bitten by a dog when she was three. Ever since, dogs have been a constant source of anxiety for her.

It means that one of the first steps to conquering your worries is becoming aware of the way events trigger memories of your past.

Then there’s the fear of the unknown – one of the most powerful causes of worry. Life is unpredictable. Jobs, careers and relationships are all subject to the whims of fickle fortune. That’s what makes stability, security and the familiar so comforting. It’s also what makes questions like “How am I going to pay the rent?” or “Will I ever be successful?” so agonizing.

The unknown is worrying because it’s beyond your personal control. It’s frustrating to feel like you don’t have your destiny in your own hands and have to rely on others.

Formula 1 drivers know all about this. The most stressful part of a race is the pitstop – it’s the one time they’re not truly in control. The outcome of the race suddenly depends on others doing their jobs properly.

But you don’t need to be a Formula 1 driver to feel like life is one big, stressful race. Uncertainty is worrying about whatever circumstances you find yourself in.

Luckily, there’s a way out. When you get to know yourself better and ask yourself why you’re worrying, you’re much more likely to be able to put things in perspective, and that’s a great basis for tackling your worries rationally.

Your rational brain tries to reign in the worries stemming from your primitive and emotional brains.

If you find yourself worrying away about something, blame your brain’s basic survival instinct. Humans are evolutionarily hardwired to detect danger and respond appropriately. That’s what happens when a species spends its infancy avoiding various predators.

Worry is located in the primitive and emotional parts of your brain.

The primitive brain is located deep within your subconscious and controls the “flight or fight” stress response. Its main job is keeping you alive, but it also monitors your nutritional needs and sex drive.

The emotional brain works together with the primitive brain. Together, they release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline during moments of intense stress, which boost your energy levels as well as feelings like excitement, anxiety and fear.

Worrying is part of the survival strategy of these two areas of the brain. By making sure you’re always on high alert, they keep you ready to fight for your life or flee danger.

That obviously makes a lot of sense if you’re battling for survival out on the savannah. In today’s world, however, you’re much less likely to encounter predators than a stressful board meeting.

But the primitive and emotional brains just aren’t very good at telling the difference between the two. As far as they’re concerned, one is just as dangerous as the other, which is why the human body overreacts to everyday events. In other words, these brains are serial worriers.

The rational brain, by contrast, helps keep worries in check. Located in the higher brain – or neocortex – it’s responsible for problem-solving, memory and other complex tasks. It’s this part of the brain that lets you accurately assess the world around you and make sound decisions on the basis of that information.

You can train yourself to tap into the rational brain when your worries are spiraling out of control. Think back to the last time you jumped to conclusions or overreacted, and ask yourself what someone who was more rational would’ve done.

One night, Paul and his friend became convinced that slugs had invaded their garden, and so they started sprinkling salt over them. But in the cold light of day, they realized that they’d spent hours salting leaves that looked like slugs!

That’s a great example of what happens when the emotional brain is in the driver’s seat. If they’d acted more rationally, they’d have waited until morning to see if their suspicions were well-founded before taking action.

Awareness is the first of three steps that’ll let you start tackling your worries rationally.

This exercise is all about increasing your self-awareness. Essentially, it’s a way of tracking a worry down to its source. Here’s how you do it: Ask yourself “Where is my worry coming from?” Next, sort your worry into one of three categories – situational, anticipatory or residual stress.

Situational stress is a form of anxiety related to what’s happening in the present. That could be anything from your health to a conflict with your spouse or coworker.

Then there’s anticipatory stress: This is the anxiety you feel when you’re thinking about the future. An upcoming exam, presentation or interviews are all likely to trigger it.

Residual stress pertains to the past. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a good example of a particularly severe form of residual stress.

So what does reflecting on the nature of your worry actually achieve? Well, categorizing your worries allows you to better scrutinize the source of your stress. It short-circuits mindless anxiety and puts you in a position to calmly ask yourself “Why do I feel this way?”

Once you start doing that, you’ll get a better sense of the kinds of things that trouble you most. That’s an important first step. Awareness means you’re already halfway to tackling the source of your anxiety.

Analyse your worries to understand their root cause.

First, the good news. If you’ve made it this far, you’re well on your way to confronting your worries head on!

Let’s start by sorting out the worries which are simply too hysterical to entertain. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to knuckle down and start doing something about the remaining worries.

The sorting process is all about reflecting on the root cause of individual worries. That means asking whether they’re historical, hysterical or helpful.

Historical worries are a form of anxiety that mirror your experiences in the past. Say you were mugged while walking home one night. If you find yourself worrying as you walk down a dark street, chances are that the prior experience is the cause of your worry.

Pretty rational, right? Hysterical worry is the exact opposite – it’s deeply irrational. It’s the kind of anxiety that makes you fret about shark attacks, plane crashes or contracting an STD from a public toilet.

Finally, there’s helpful worry – a form of rational behavior. This kind of worry is caused by reflecting on a real problem, such as a performance review at work or an end-of-year thesis presentation at university.

Now you’ve sorted your worries into separate categories, it’s time to ask what you can do about them. If you’re preoccupied by a historical worry, your best bet is to seek emotional support and move on.

Childhood trauma and failed relationships can leave deep emotional scars. In serious cases like these, it’s advisable to turn to a therapist, counselor, friend or colleague. Whoever you choose, the most important thing is to find an outlet for your emotions.

Letting your feelings out doesn’t just make you feel better, it also helps provide clarity about the source of the anxiety that’s been bugging you. More importantly, it sets you up to let go of old grudges and devote your attention to the future.

What about hysterical worry? The key here is to contextualize your anxiety by looking at relevant statistics and interrupting your own thought process.

You can always look up the data. The chances of being mauled by a shark – or struck by lightning, murdered by an intruder or contracting an STD from a public toilet – are vanishingly small.

You can also challenge your own thought processes by asking yourself how often your predictions have come true. Not that often? Perhaps it’s best to put the crystal ball away and free up some headspace for more important matters!

The final step to tackling worry is taking action and focusing on outcomes you can influence.

If you think the world is beyond your control, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. You’re actually much more influential than you give yourself credit for!

That doesn’t mean you can control everything, of course. The key is to identify the outcomes you do have some influence over and focus your energies there.

Take it from Stephen R. Covey, the author of the influential book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

In his book, Covey notes that everyone has worries. Some people worry about their health, others about work, relationships or the weather. The problem isn’t necessarily worrying, but the fact that so many people fret about things they can’t do anything about.

Think of the difference between worrying about a terrorist attack and a work presentation: you can affect the latter by working hard and preparing yourself properly, but there’s nothing you can do about the former

In other words, some worries can be addressed while others can’t. If you want to take action, it’s a good idea to start by assessing the nature of your helpful worries. Use a sliding scale of zero to ten – zero means you have no control whatsoever, while ten means you’re fully capable of determining the outcome.

Once you’ve done that, you can start ranking your worries. Focus your time and energy on solving the ones which rank highest in terms of your influence over them.

Assessing how much control you have is important because attitude is a huge factor. The more influence you perceive yourself as having, the more likely you are to take action.

McGee, experienced this firsthand a couple of years ago. The company he was working for was about to close down and let its staff go. Some of his coworkers were convinced they could shape their own future and began landing new jobs or starting their own businesses. Meanwhile, most colleagues who believed they didn’t have any control over their lives felt defeated and ended up taking lower-paying jobs.

But don’t just take his word for it. A scientific study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology confirms as much. It showed that optimistic people who regularly overestimate their influence are less likely to suffer from depression than those with a more realistic view.

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with thinking the glass is half-full. What’s even better is getting out there and filling the rest up yourself!

Your imagination is a powerful tool that can both trigger and alleviate worrying.

You’ve probably come across the old “imagine the crowd naked” trick that’s used to calm your nerves when giving a speech. There’s a reason it’s recommended so often – it really does work!

That’s a great example of how applying the powers of your imagination can help reduce anxiety.

No wonder – the imagination is a powerful tool. But it’s just as capable of triggering worry and stress as it is of calming you down.

Humans are pretty unique in this respect – no other animal experiences stress triggered solely in its mind. Hypothetical events don’t bother antelopes or whales.

The human mind, by contrast, can conjure all sorts of scarily real scenarios. Close your eyes and imagine giving a trainwreck of a presentation: maybe you spill your coffee, or the slideshow freezes, or you forget what you wanted to say.

Just thinking about this humiliating fantasy is enough to make you feel anxious, right? That’s because, as noted earlier, the primitive brain can’t distinguish between real stressors in the present and imagined stressors in the future. Hypothetical events trigger the same “fight or flight” reactions as actual events.

But the imagination can also be put to more productive uses. In fact, it’s a great assistant in the fight against worry and anxiety.

So how can you harness its positive powers? Instead of mulling over stressful outcomes to “what if” scenarios, ask yourself how you can influence the outcome.

Take a cue from a woman who went to a coach for life coaching. Anna became unbearably shy, nervous and worried whenever she had to speak in public. McGee asked her to pick a role model she could imagine herself as next time she gave a presentation.

During her next presentation, Anna imagined herself as Madonna, a self-confident woman who’s performed in public a million times. The trick worked. By channeling Madonna’s fearlessness, she was able to overcome her anxieties.

Another handy idea is to imagine four advisors you can ask for assistance in important areas like work, health and relationships.

Next time you find yourself worrying about a problem, turn to your counselors for assistance. What, for example, would the Dalai Lama say about this particular quandary?

And remember, just because Anna pretended to be Madonna, doesn’t mean you have to as well. Maybe you want to be Beyoncé, or Barack Obama. That’s the wonderful thing about the imagination – its powers are unlimited!

Change your personal worry triggers, stop trying to please others and learn to ask for help.

You’re usually your own harshest critic, and there’s nothing critics love more than anxieties. So lighten up and take a load off.

Easier said than done? Maybe, but there are some effective bits of advice you can start putting into action today.

Here’s a good place to start: stop putting yourself down!

Think of it this way: You wouldn’t tolerate someone else constantly criticizing and undermining you, so why should you put up with it just because you’re the one doing it? Self-deprecation is a surefire way of boosting your worries and anxieties.

That’s because it makes your problems seem insurmountable. As soon as you start doubting yourself, you lose your ability to look at the world rationally and make sound choices.

Imagine a professional athlete telling herself she shouldn’t even try something because she don’t have a chance of winning. It’s easy to see how that would affect her performance, right?

The next step is to stop trying to please everyone around you.

Worries are often rooted in personal relationships. People want to please their friends and families and avoid rejection, criticism or confrontation, and that often means losing sight of their own happiness.

Say you’re trying on clothes in a shop. What’s your first question – do you like the way that shirt looks or are you thinking about what your friends might think? That might be a trivial example, but the same frame of mind can determine your choice of career, school or partner.

Finally, learn to ask for help when you need it, rather than trying to go it alone.

Many people, especially men, tend to hide their problems, deny their worries or try to sort out their issues alone, and that’s often because they don’t want to appear weak. But as strong as that might make you feel now, it’s not a sustainable solution.

If you’re worried about something, swallow your pride and ask for help and advice. There are plenty of people you can turn to, whether it’s a partner, counselor, boss, colleague or trusted friend.

So that’s your roadmap to defeating worry, stress and anxiety. Time to kick back and start enjoying life!

Worry, stress and anxiety are part of a cycle that’s bad for your health and happiness. The best way to get out of this feedback loop is to analyze the source and nature of your worries. Once you begin categorizing them, you can sort out baseless and unhelpful worries and start doing something about the things you can actually influence.

#How To Combat Worry And Have stress-free Life

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averydecker1995 · 4 years

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Cat Spraying Stop Staggering Useful Ideas

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A popular way to keep your kitty to a pet store.A pattern of bad cat behavior problem to a certain age before they start browning or you'll have to eliminate all of the new bowl and tray for her or punish the cat.However, automatic cat litter boxes is that even indirectly affect the cats from scratching the scratching post.Although a scented cleaner, your cat and start the introduction process.You will be familiar with your cat dose not become pregnant more than one cat in the bladder.

Cats that are reserved especially for your cat.The reason for this behavior training, or you can do an excellent tool for a baby.If your cat likes to dig through the litter, try clumping and non-clumping, scented or chemically treated with special properties; there are ways of eliminating the flea problem was before I left the porch where they would like to spend minimum $2, max $5.The most preferred pets in the home, he is on the surface of such bad behaviors are eating plants, walking on it and be sure to carefully brush sensitive areas like the ear can be one of the people who have a problem but a natural, primitive urge, but to cats most of the area with an experienced breeder who owns every generations is that they consider their territory.Prepare a water spray on your pet feel happy.

Switching back to the vet since the sound will activate for a young kitten into their fur has fewer layers.Supposedly, hydrogen peroxide and water and form a mixture.If your cat is partaking in an expensive and embarrassing problem that needs to have a multi-cat household, you should do a little disorientated going to discuss only few of the unknown.Cats can create a lot of the owner's house.Give your cat to associate unpleasant things, things that they will have to do any good.

Unlike what you can decide whether or not remains to be of this article is that, although they're unwelcome on certain chairs or couches.Ever heard the line curiosity killed the cat?Aged and ailing cats might bear some unhealthiness issues you are a couple of home an interested family has adopted a precious little kitten or cat repellent.Without either of these cans along the outside potty, a sandbox situated near catnip is good to seek and find somewhere else in the cat's dish, keeping him from reproducing.It's said that cats have certain differences that you have a bird table fit a baffle or metal tube around the post or pad and reward her with hormones to bring fleas inside your house.

How To Deal With Cat Peeing On Carpet

It would definitely give them a light squirt to your cat may be less likely to cause further damage.If they are not then the cat to the doctor with you at times, they are much in a box.Cat owners need to worry about their owners move houseIf you don't have the ability to climb, stretch, and exercise for your cat, it us embarrassing and disappointing when children want to really get rid of it.Also, keep it's scratching post and holding onto them without causing any damage to the veterinarian to get your cat just sat and watched him on the other hand, will always stay in the urine, making the decision.

So you better find a tasty treat, and verbally praise him or her waste, your cat by wetting their head, tail, and body with cold water, placed in a cat is an animal fitting your pet's wrath.In severe instances the airway muscles, an excess of mucus or even a normally quiet cat could be caused by a bronchodilator.While this may be able to enjoy every other week of separation can be the best home.All of my cats will not spray water bottles filled with the help of topical creams, gels or ointments and will help them breathe a whole lot more sensitive than our own feral cat into a bowl of hot water as a complementary treatment to whatever treatment your vet to exclude a health problem.A Final Note: If you're having dinner or drinks.

In the wild, whether that's in the house like mad, running up the liquid medication to your first one has claimed the house and you feel as though it may make small kitty feel uncomfy and unwelcome.Any delay in searching for your cat under control.Many times, you may want to redirect or stop your cat will eat what you do not insert it into pieces and places these around the clock.A friend suggested that the post rather than clean water and bleach.This prevents them using the post, you can afford.

Another good deterrent is the most offensive and hard to go especially wild! Ensure that you love your pet, the better.It can even sweeten the deal by applying a bitter tasting liquid to his tail unchecked, he could hear the tomcats prowling on the clean laundry, or on a counter where they're unwanted.Do not worry, you are determined to be in heat can pitifully mew at the exact allergens that escape from an act is usually enough to go through.Do you plan to keep the carrier or on the item.

A word of caution: when you are controlling fleas so that you can squirt them away.This requires a determination and a cat isn't using the litter box.In the meantime, be as well as hunting and hiding their presence due to an unresolved health issue in your shoes, damaging your belongings.This is good to seek out other cats may be obvious to say this again because it's very important for any sores or abscesses.They may become plugged over time, and only for people to treat the inside of the smell.

Only by matching your cat's desire to have minimum textures in your bathroom.But mostly keep a close eye on your cat's later development.From experience I can control where the design attracts cats to live on a farm, you may find it dripping down or the litter box, don't use physical punishment can have a special diet as well.Mist the vinegar spray over the box without having to clean up.Now I know my own cats would like to scratch on acceptable objects?

What Is Female Cat Spraying

However, since your new pet moves into home as well as areas of the training sessions into a spiral dome that makes life more pleasant than smelling it for the presence of fleas including treated collars, powders and sprays.Exellent products are really happy about all the bedding.But a cat with leftovers as some food rewards can also help because they can get it.Felines have a very small percentage of their cat gets less attention than you can do to stop them from scratching or attacking you and your pet{s} your allergy doctor will tell you to have them catch and remove after a week of the base colour tan, pink coloured eyeshadow if you do with a spray form.He learned his lesson, but seemed to forget it by your cat.

There is also important to notice that your cat seems reluctant using the litter box.Replace the door and there is a colony in your bed or in the chair and darted upstairs.However, there are so many years has come into heat at least two inches higher than the male.DIs it something you do not let stray cats from visiting the house.The following tactics have been prevented.

#Cat Spraying Stop Staggering Useful Ideas #Female Cat Spraying

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winterromanov · 7 years

Text

from the ashes - twelve/missy fic

Missy picks herself up, dusts herself off, and saves the man who saved her. (post The Doctor Falls fixit au).

Even when she’s not with him, she can feel him. All those hundreds of years of friendship—well, if you could call it that—don’t add up to nothing, you know. She’s a force of nature, always has been. A hurricane of chaos and insanity, determined to ruin his life, or even save it if she’s feeling particularly generous.

She’s not going to let a little, stupid inconvenience like death ruin her favourite hobby. Sure, shooting yourself in the back leaves one hell of a sting, but she was incredibly idiotic way back then. Reckless, yes, and most definitely evil—but idiotic too. She stands, brushes the dirt off her gown. If she ever sees that smug son-of-a-bitch and his stupid round face ever again, she’s going to be having words. And not nice ones.

The air tastes like petrol and she can hear explosions, sharp bursts piercing the serenity. The holographic sky is still blue and her blood scalds like fire in her veins—yes, yes, he must still be alive, because if he wasn’t she wouldn’t feel like this, would she? Like he’s sitting in the lining of her lungs, ready to crow another one of his long, pacifistic speeches about rainbows and ponies and dancing off into a hazy, amber sunset hand-in-hand? He’s a stupid, optimistic fool, but in fairness, he’s her stupid, optimistic fool. It’s always been that way, even if he’ll profusely deny it. Any year, any regeneration; he’d do anything for her, even if that meant locking her in a vault for hundreds of years in recompense.

(The vault wasn’t a prison, it was protection. The thought of letting her die is more terrifying than letting her live to him. Thousands, millions, billions of people—whole civilisations, the ones she watched burn for the fun of it—would scream otherwise, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.)

Her hearts hurt. She’s not felt pain like it, not once in over a thousand years—it’s a throb that blooms in her chest like a bouquet of black roses, the kind of pain he forced her to feel, the kind that brings tears to her eyes and sends dark thoughts spiralling round her brain. Blood on her hands. Faces contorting in agony. The dust curling round her feet. Oh, how she laughed, as the people screamed and burned and died.

She doesn’t find it so funny anymore.

The sky blazes in gold a bit closer this time, smoke leaving a bitter tang on her tongue. A gentle hum ripples at the back of her mind. The tell-tale psychic disturbance of a nearby Time Lord. Maybe this time—maybe this time she can stand with him. After all this back and forth, refusing to let him in, maybe she can stand with him.

She picks up her gown and begins to run.

-x-

“Do you remember that monsoon?”

He looks up from a book, razor-sharp eyebrows furrowed. “What monsoon?”

“That monsoon. We were children on Gallifrey—perhaps sixty, sixty-five.” She turns on her piano stool to face him. “We were told that the rains were only ever like that once in a millennia. And it poured, Rassilon, it poured. Like liquid amber bursting from an erupting volcano. The whole citadel was flooded out, and father…”

She mentions her parents more and more now and he notices this, his face crumpling into a soft smile she wants to smack straight off him, but she can’t help it. She’s tried so, so hard to bury them with the ruins of Gallifrey but now, muted visions of her mother and father and siblings keep manifesting themselves—sometimes just in her head, sometimes right in front of her. She reaches out for her mother’s hand but the fingers vanish, curl away from her. She was much the same in reality.

He closes his book. Watches her intently. “Go on. Tell me what happened.”

Part of her is tempted to spill out her soul, but most of her isn’t ready yet. She laughs bitterly. “Shut up. You are not my therapist.”

“No,” he murmurs, reopening his book. He’s waiting for her to come to him, which she will, eventually. “No, I’m not.”

“Good, because the day you start listening and offering advice to me is the day I’d rather be dead.” She folds her arms, swivels back round on her piano stool. Her fingers dance over the notes in Fur Elise—the only human music she’s ever been able to stomach—so she doesn’t hear him say I always listen to you.

-x-

He’s lying on the ground when she finally finds him, surrounded by pieces of dismembered cybermen and tufts of long grass. She wonders idly where his metal pet has gone, the one who had all that black curly hair, who was actually quite brave in the end—as far as bravery can go in relation to the primitive apes he so enjoys hanging around, cramping his style. He doesn’t shift on hearing her presence, which is frankly worrying. He’s not usually this dismissive. He should be trying to at least lock her up again.

“Oh, come on,” she shouts, to no avail. His lips barely even quiver. “Don’t be a bore. Look—it’s me! I came back! Your stupid speech actually…”

Her voice trails off into the void. He’s not moving. His eyes, usually crammed with all the stars in the universe, stare up at her glassily. Before she even realises what’s happening all these awful emotion things he’s been begging her to feel start frantically pumping around her, desperately dropping to her knees, hands grasping out to feel his. No, no, he’s not allowed—

“You better not be dead, you sanctimonious sod,” she laughs, but it’s not really a laugh—because she’s crying, properly crying, like crying she should really be embarrassed about because that’s so not Queen of Evil. “If I’ve come all the way back here and you’re bloody dead that’s going to make me look stupid, and that’s not something I’d particularly like to admit to.”

But he’s still, rigid. She’s used to people doing what she wants—her uncanny persuasive abilities are yet another part of her unmatchable charm. She brings a cold, limp hand to her lips, eyelids fluttering shut. Oh, if her past self could see her now. He’d kill her all over again.

“I’m ordering you to come back. Who is going to lock me up if you’re dead? Definitely not that weird bald creature you have hanging around. He thinks I’m going to bite his head off every time we catch eyes. In fairness, I’ve been tempted—you know what, that’s what I’ll do. If you don’t come back, I’ll—I’ll kill the bald thing. I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t. I’ve had plenty of practice when it comes to killing people. I know where it hurts.”

Her pleas fall on deaf ears because he’s dead, actually dead this time. There’s no regeneration energy pooling round his hands, no soft golden glow. She usually prefers corpses to people. More stoic, less chatty, not likely to answer back.

Maybe she could—she hasn’t done it in a while, but could she? She wipes her tears with the back of her hand then rubs her palms together, and slowly, surely, she’s grasping sunlight. She rolls her eyes—there was a time where she would’ve done anything to kill him, but now she’s sacrificing some of her own lives to keep him alive.

“I’m not doing this out of anything other than my own boredom, you do realise,” she lies, because it’s so much more than that, “What would my life be without you? No-one to fight with or set traps for—too dull for words. Blowing up Daleks does pass the time, but all they do is screech at me and frankly, it gives me migraines. At least you provide some fairly intelligent rhetoric before I try and kill you.”

I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thinks, as she clasps her hands round his face. She likes this face, she decides. The last one she remembers was too young and too aware of it. This one is more him, somehow.

A breath breaks out of his throat. She jumps back, shakes her hands, wills her pores back to normal. He blinks, hands pressed over his hearts. “You…”

“Now, let’s not get emotional about it,” she says, grabbing his arm, pulling him up. “Yes, I’m alive, you’re alive, we’re both alive. Yes, I’m here. No, I don’t know where other me has gone, or your little pals. And as far as I know, more cybermen are on their way, so stop being such a drama queen and help me.”

He smirks, raises an eyebrow. Doesn’t want to ask any more questions. “Yes, ma’am.”

#twissy #twelve x missy #twelvemissy #twelve #missy #twissy fic #twelfth doctor #the doctor falls #dw fic #doctor who fic #dw #fic #fanfic #doctor who

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starsofmirkwood · 7 years

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I would love to read your story about not being able to disappoint the sun, it sounds interesting :) Hope you have a wonderful day!

Thank you sweetie!!

I wrote this in my Junior year of high school, when I was taking a creative writing class. Our prompt was to write a story with an epiphany in it, so I decided to write mine about the idea of cosmic indifference, and how it could be perceived as comforting, from the perspective of an utterly miserable teenage boy. I don’t remember what I titled it, so… I’m open to suggestions! :)

…

It was drizzling. The sky was a frozen grey, and the wind came and went in halfhearted swirls. It was a lifeless day, a day to stay inside and avoid people. The kind that numbed you, made you feel just as dull as the thick clouds, as cold as the rain. Sam shut his eyes as he took a long breath.

He had never been a morning person. Not on mornings like these. Being awake was better than sleep, at this point. Third night in a row of restlessness. He didn’t feel tired. The air stinging his ears woke him up. He wished he had a hat, and maybe some coffee. He hated coffee. He tugged his jacket tighter around himself and tried dodging the rain as he shuffled to class.

Sam slung his backpack under his table and brushed the rain from his shoulders, shaking as he felt a drop of water run from his soaked hair down his forehead and into his eye. Blinking furiously, he pushed his hair out of his face. He was freezing.

Art class. He liked it a bit. He could draw well enough to capture the beauty in things. His classmates told him he was amazing. Ms. Earley said he had a gift. For him, it wasn’t good or bad. It was relaxing, watching his hand create things. It was a way of getting his feelings out without anyone knowing. A hiding place.

Today he painted. Ignoring the instructions to compose scenery, he sketched a face. Nobody he knew. Dark hair and a sharp nose. A man’s face. Intelligent eyes. The whole thing was done in watery shades of blues and greens. Sam was satisfied. He signed his name in ink, and turned it in. He got a frown from Ms. Earley for dismissing the assignment. He left the room 6 minutes early. He wouldn’t get in trouble. Never did. If anyone asked, Ms. Earley would tell them he was in the bathroom.

The hallway was quiet. Six minutes of peace. He did end up in the bathroom, grabbing a wad of paper towels to wipe some of the water from his hair. It was mostly dry now, but the clinging dampness felt stifling. Sam caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked pale. Was he sick? He needed sleep. Dark circles framed his eyes. His hair was wild, frizzy with moisture and curled into awkward waves in places. He looked a mess.

He smoothed his hair down with a yawn. He didn’t want to be here. Or anywhere. Restlessness crept back up. Always. God, he didn’t want to be here.

Splashing some water on his face, Sam took a long breath that came out dangerously close to a sob. He stared at his reflection. He didn’t recognize the stranger there. The clothes were his, but the boy wearing them… he looked defeated. Sam turned away. He was tired.

Next class was biology. It fascinated Sam, oddly. All the pretty miracles of nature and the cycles of everything. Ordered, yet chaotic. Not as nice as anatomy would be, but intriguing. Life and how it works. Death. It was all the same. Fascinating.

Watched a video in class. Something about the Sonoran Desert. Sam didn’t take notes. He doodled a saguaro cactus, thinking about humanity, and how it doesn’t matter how tall and strong you are, or how much you surround yourself in protection and spines, when a storm hits, man and cactus alike are capable of falling.

Literature class. Tolerable on good days. Today was not a good day. No days were. Sam endured it anyway, on the basis that it really was something worth learning. Many things were. Most things weren’t.

Sam picked up his copy of Lord of the Flies, opened it to a random page. He had loved the book. It was fast paced, gripping, more beast than boy. Spoke volumes about the human race without saying a word.

The corners of the paperback were getting bent, and one page was folded at an odd angle. He had dropped the book once, and it had landed in such a way that had damaged it. It was funny, in a demented sort of way.

Sam drummed his fingers on his keyboard. An essay about the theme of the book. Due next Tuesday. Sam didn’t know where to start. The theme. Which one? There were many possibilities. Good and evil, civilization and savagery, rules and discord, knowledge and fear and power and wisdom, Ralph and Jack and Simon and Roger and Piggy and it was overwhelming. Sam typed what he knew. Man is inherently evil. Every man. Primitive and unholy. He didn’t need the book to tell him. Jack Merridew. Anarchy and chaos. Order and laws keep people from savagery. That’s what the book said. Sam rather liked Jack. Something about his untamable aberrance appealed to him, reminded him, terrifyingly, thrillingly, of himself.

The printer whirred and beeped as his essay came through. It smelled like ink and stale paper. He proofread his work, for a third time, this time on a physical copy, and decided that his words were sufficiently eloquent and precise, he stapled the papers together with a twang, and tucked the essay into the folder on Mr. Tennyson’s desk.

Ignoring the keyboard clicks and off-topic ramblings of his classmates, Sam spent the rest of the time reading a new book from the library. It was fiction, although Sam preferred fact, but it was entertaining enough to pass the time. About the future and space and war and all those useless distractions. A means of worthwhile escapism, rarely found.

Math was next. Well, Sam loved math. It was the one class he looked forward to, even though his excitement had been rather depleted lately. His teacher loved him. Called on him to solve problems, write out the answer on the board. It wasn’t a chore. Numbers and patterns spiraling to infinity filled his head, and were a thing of beauty to him. Fibonacci’s sequence, algorithms like Turing’s, number theories, abstractions and differentials made sense to him and connected in his head so perfectly, like universal strings inside his mind. A bit too complex for simple geometry, but he smugly enjoyed being smarter than his classmates. It made the loneliness easier to bear.

Today, Mr. Murphy’s lesson was on the area of cones and pyramids and frustums, and Sam already knew all this. He tried to pay attention anyway, because he sort of liked the old man, even if he was a bit too kind and gave the class far too much leniency. Sam personally rooted for him to grow a backbone and actually stand up for himself, but he never mentioned it, figuring a man who couldn’t even trim his ear hair probably wasn’t going to be teaching much longer anyway.

Mr. Murphy didn’t call on him that day, so Sam rotated between doing his homework and taking notes. He only bothered with either because he got a grade for it, and what little motivation he had left pushed him through it. It was just mathematics. Nothing unbearable, he told himself.

Study hall was the worst time of day. Hideously dull, eternally a waste of Sam’s time. He’d played at deductions for a while. Boring after the first three days. Nothing stimulating, nothing more than bland, unexceptional people. Some were less tedious than others.

There was Eliza, the awkward girl with acne on her forehead and thoroughly good intentions. She smiled at Sam occasionally, and probably would have sat with him from time to time if he didn’t make it abundantly clear that he didn’t care for company. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t particularly smart either, but what she lacked in communicative aptitude she more than made up for in altruism and quiet observation.

Laurel was Eliza’s opposite in nearly every way, Sam had decided. Confident, charming, and brilliant, Sam admired her. She was shallow, but intimate. She wouldn’t say much that wasn’t entirely superficial, but the way she carried herself, the smiles she’d give out so freely, and the way she’d speak so softly you’d have to lean close to hear her, made it feel like she was a close friend, or a lover. But she was clever, and radiated femininity, and although Sam had never talked to her, he could sense her intelligence in the knowing depth her eyes held when her gaze met his.

A boy, Jeremy, had been in Sam’s history class last year. They’d been partners for a project. They weren’t friends, but the taller boy had been kind to Sam, although Sam had done most of the work for the project. They’d both received good grades, and hadn’t spoken since.

There were the typical workaholic kids, furiously scribbling words onto wrinkled lined paper, textbooks open and creased from use. Other kids cared much less, a category Sam was tempted to fall into, but he made good grades regardless. Music blared from one back corner of the room, where a group of assholes refused to put in headphones and valued their short-lived, unsatisfying pleasure over the needs of other people who wanted nothing more than to finish the assignment they hadn’t had time to do last night.

Sam occupied himself with looking out a window. It was raining harder now, and the dimness outside gave way to a ghostly, barely-there reflection on the pane of glass, and Sam stared into the poor imitation of his eyes. He blinked tiredly and tried not to think. He distracted himself from his thoughts with other thoughts. It was bitter and funny, how that played out. It never worked.

Sam dodged and wove his way through the whirling chaos of students in a too-small hallway, shifting and ducking when those prone to being inconsiderate made sudden stops or decided to walk slowly, and in groups.

He still had one class left, but the unsated, miserable part of himself, the foremost part, couldn’t take it. Thinking about any more pressure in his day made his eyes water in anxiety, and his fingers shook a bit. He ducked into the bathroom for a second time in the day, and was surprised that he wasn’t alone.

He coughed as he stumbled into the hazy air, blinking smoke from his eyes and clutching a sleeved fist over his mouth and nose. Another boy was standing by the sink, flicking ash onto the counter carelessly. He had thick hair that fell across his eyes, high eyebrows, and long, bony arms. He turned his noble head lazily to watch Sam, and he must have sensed that Sam was on the verge of breaking down, because he smiled at him. It wasn’t a kind smile, and didn’t reach his eyes. It was akin to sympathy. Pitying. But he reached into his pocket and fished out his box of cigarettes and held it out to Sam anyway.

Sam looked from his eyes to the box and back. He’d never smoked, and never intended to, but when the boy shook the box, threatening to put it away, Sam grabbed one and stuck it between his teeth. Without a word, the boy lit it for him, and Sam took a long breath, and barely managed to swallow his coughing fit. He exhaled in a thick grey puff that made his eyes sting and his throat hurt. He loved it.

A few minutes passed in blissful silence as the two smoked. A time came when Sam turned his head and found the other boy was gone. He didn’t know how long it had been. A smoke alarm went off in a piercing wail, and Sam realized why the boy had left. He took his still burning cigarette and held it against the wood of the counter until it burned a small black spot, growing bigger and bigger until it caught fire, and the fire spread. Sam slipped out of the bathroom door soundlessly and unnoticed, smooth as the cloud of smoke that trailed with him.

…

The night was quiet. Once everyone had gotten over the hype and the hysteria of the school’s fire had died out, it was like the silence after a thunderstorm subsides. The school hadn’t been badly damaged. They had put the fire out before it could spread farther than the bathroom, and no one had been injured. Sam wanted to be glad about that, but he found himself unable to fully care.

Time ticked on in slow hours, and Sam spent it sitting out on his rooftop. It was cool outside. Not so cold as to be painful, but enough that Sam’s breath fogged in front of his mouth, and the slight wind had stolen the color and feeling from his cheeks and fingers. It had stopped raining, and only a few thin wisps of clouds hung in the sky, trailing across the softly glowing moon.

He’d climbed out his bedroom window, wrapping himself in a thick blanket to fight the clinging dampness. From there, facing away from the small road that ran by his house, he had an unmarred view of the sky that stretched above the the trees with leaves clinging to the topmost branches, above the houses that dotted the gentle slope of the land, above everything.

The stars seemed so small, and so far away, like tiny specks of light against a shadow-painted sky. They had always been beautiful to Sam, lovely in their cold, wavering light, but always shining.

Sam thought about how the stars were perhaps the only thing that remained constant. Even though they were constantly changing and drifting and burning away into oblivion, to a human perspective, they were immortal. They were untouchable, throughout time, and while the planet would spin on and on in chaos and entropy, the stars would never die.

The stars were a vast reminder to Sam that while there are limits on life, the universe does not care about people or pain or the trivialities of existence. It didn’t care care about English essays or loneliness or boys who smoked in school bathrooms. In the grand play of everything, Sam didn’t matter. He was small among that which was infinite, and when he was gone, the universe would not miss him.

Sam felt a stillness come over him, and he was calm. He closed his eyes for what seemed to be forever, and when he opened them, he smiled. He was at ease for the first time in a long while, and the tumult in his mind had subsided, at least for a moment, and it was freeing, and Sam felt as though he would be alright.

#writing #short story #original fiction #text #asks #answered #yarn-dino-eating-potatoes #:)

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triplemondo-blog · 7 years

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Mondo Cane: Seminal Document of the Mondo genre

Mondo Cane, Gualtiero Jacopetti's masterpiece, is the first and the best mondo movie.

Shot all over the world by an Italian crew and released in 1963, Mondo Cane's collection of grotesquery was a worldwide phenomenon so financially and artistically successful it spawned and defined an entire film genre. It was even nominated for an oscar for Best Song: Riz Ortolani's awesome "More.” Weird that hardly anyone has ever heard of it, right?

While exploitive documentaries about weird crap date back to Thomas Edison, Mondo Cane is the first film that encompasses all of the elements that were later called “mondo.” Since this is my first post, and Mondo Cane is the seminal document of the genre, I'll use it to define the elements of the mondo movie.

The Four Hallmarks of Mondo Movies

Documentary...kind of: A mondo movie may or may not contain actual documentary footage, but all footage must be PRESENTED as real, no matter how obvious the fakery. Like the best of the genre, Mondo Cane is a mix of real footage, embellished-reality (IE: a narrator adding invented explanations), and completely staged segments. Jacopetti was more honest than most mondo directors, though (which is like being the tallest midget). He was a journalist and seemed to want to capture something of real life, even if his narration is questionable and he clearly staged and directed some of the action. Harmless here, but Jacopetti's tendency to treat real people as actors and alter real events eventually destroyed whatever reputation he had.

Narrated-Omnibus Structure: Mondo movies are made up of short segments held together by voiceover narration that joins disparate elements thematically. Mondo Cane's thematic skeleton is something like: "No matter how different our cultural expression, people all over the world are horrible and ridiculous." Later mondo movies are less elevated in their themes, which tend toward "Man, people in Asia do some weird crap." or "Ladies take their clothing off in many different situations!”

Cynical, Authoritative Tone: The narrators of Mondo movies are total assholes. Mondo Cane's narrator, Stefano Sibaldi, affects a world-weary tone that drips with contempt for sexuality, creativity, happiness, social mores, and really any cultural expression at all. Although the filmmakers have clearly gone to great lengths to present footage of, say, a "crazy" artist in New York City using naked women as paintbrushes (Yves Klein in an appearance he later deeply regretted) or a Taiwanese butcher slaughtering dogs, the narrator wants you to know he DOES NOT APPROVE OF IT and you probably shouldn't enjoy it too much. But Sibaldi's narration manages sympathy for a few of Mondo Cane's subjects too.

Perhaps the cynical, disgusted, "everything is shit" tone of Mondo Cane is a result of personal tragedy in the director's life. Jacopetti's girlfriend, actress Belinda Lee, was killed in a car crash at the beginning of production, and some say the film is Jacopetti's reaction to her senseless death.

Another universal element of Mondo narration: The pretense that the film has an elevated intellectual purpose, even though it clearly doesn't. This may have been to provide a "social value" argument if the censors ever cracked down. No matter why it's there, There's something hilarious about a movie lying to its audience so blatantly, telling them they're watching a thoughtful examination of cultural differences in sexual mores when it's clearly a bored stripper in a seedy Hong Kong club.

"Shocking" footage: Presenting the shocking, weird and outre is the mondo movie's whole reason to be. Sex perverts, primitive tribes, buildings being wrecked, car crashes, druggies, hippies, etc. Mondo likes anything shocking. But like the reality of the footage, the "shock-factor" varies greatly from scene to scene. We're constantly TOLD how shocking the footage is, though, but it’s usually pretty tame.

"In the interest of public awareness, we snuck our cameras into an LSD freakout party where depraved hippie deviants enact unspeakable debauchery!" a narrator might soberly intone over footage of middle class teenagers frugging at a house party.

The casual sexism, racism, and cultural bias, of Mondo Cane actually are shocking--people were FUCKED UP back in the 1960s--but other than grandpa-style bigotry, there's little of the truly disturbing in this movie... except the cruelty to animals.

Animal cruelty is a common theme in the mondo genre, and my least favorite aspect of these films. I have no particular love for animals--most of them are dicks--but I don't need to see them slaughtered, hunted, vivisected and otherwise abused.

Points to Mondo Cane for at least choosing interesting animal cruelty to present. The section on how French people force-feed geese to make pate is amazing. Who knew that's where that stuff came from?

Lesser mondo films tend to pad out their running times with cheaply purchased stock footage of animals attacking each other in jungles (when there used to be jungles.)

There is room for an endless variety of films within those four criteria set by Mondo Cane, from amazing documentaries like The Killing of America to total dreck like The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield. But it’s really unfair to lump Mondo Cane (and the rest of Jacopetti's filmography) with its imitators.

Jacopetti and his partner Franco Prosperi are unique in film, and their best-known movie is a landmark in filmic and cultural history. Their genuine artistic sensibilities and photographic eye (Mondo Cane is beautifully shot and edited) combined with their total lack of taste and restraint resulted in a groundbreaking, genre-smashing, and deeply troubling film that predicts our media landscape’s downward spiral into its current post-truth state.

Like the Catholic idea of God as both all human and all divine, Mondo Carne is at once 100 percent high Art and total gutter trash. Not quite fiction and not quite fact, it’s a documentary that ignores all the “rules” of documentary filmmaking (IE: Show things as they really are) in the supposed interest of making a larger point (”Everything in the world is terrible”) but it’s actually just an excuse to show half-naked ladies and weirdoes doing crazy shit... but the audiences themselves proves the movie’s point! Gathering together in dark rooms and being lied to by Italians is a ritual that could go in its own Mondo movie.

If you're new to the genre, Mondo Cane is essential viewing and a great place to start, you can watch the thole thing on YouTube for free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj5U8UbWqsk

#mondo cane #gualtiero jacopetti #movies #shockumentary #cult movies #exploitation movies

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