the end of the world began on the day adrien agreste turned thirteen years old.

(first chapter is up! happy october)

A Mistake: Chapter 7

A man and a woman, each strapped to a surgical table and naked, screaming for help. Their cries shifted from, "God, please help. Please!" to, "It's your fault, you bitch! You wanted to come to this god-forsaken town. You did this! Why am I here? I didn't want to come here. I did nothing wrong, I swear. It was all her. She kept wanting more money. She kept stealing from everyone, even our daughter."

With a bracelet authorization approval, a door slid open with a beep, revealing two staff members in yellow biohazard suits fitted with oxygen tanks and masks. One wheeled in a metal cart covered by a sterile blue drape. The cart was positioned and locked in place near the medical tables, the blue drape lifted.

The man and woman looked at the sheer size of the needles and the vails of bright purple liquid laid out neatly across the cart. Any day, they would've stolen, cheated, and lied to have the sweet relief of a drug but not like this. The irony was unwelcome.

Their wide eyes stared unblinking, their pleading lips forming incoherent words. The nightmare refused to let them go, no matter how hard they bit their tongues, tasting metal. Reality sunk in harder than the restraints digging into their raw bruised flesh. Soon the woman became delirious before fainting while the man sported a growing wetness between his legs, dripping onto the floor of the unadorned white room. The only colors in the room were the yellow of the suits, the dark brown urine, and the Umbrella logo in the center of the floor.

One of the staff members turned to the camera in the corner of the room before speaking, "Experiment number 9932-Code X, subjects are a 43-year-old female and a 51-year-old male. Treatment with Serum X41 injected intramuscularly at the deltoid site. "

The contents of the syringes were injected into the upper arm of the two test subjects. They didn't so much as blink an eye as the male begged for his life and questioning their humanity.

"Mama... please, I'll be a good boy. Please let me out. Mama..." the 51-year-old man wailed, digging his nails into the leather restraints. They retreated as fast they entered, sealing the door behind them.

"Experiment in progress, do not enter experimentation chamber number 451 due to a biohazard element in containment." The voice of a female AI sounded through the speakers, a warning to all employees on the level.

William's eyes glowed as he watched through the reinforced glass, his thumb repeatedly pressing the ballpoint pen in his hand. He leaned forward, licking his lips as the serum began taking effect. The subjects began convulsing against the restraints, their limbs spasming as their entire genome was remodeled.

With a scream, the bones of the female cracked. Her teeth tumbled out of her bleeding gums, muscles and tendons ruptured. She burst out of the restraints and threw herself against walls, pounding with bloody fists as she screeched. The serum made work of replacing her organs and connective tissue, reforming her into something stronger, faster, and more deadly—an elegant hunter of pure carnage.

William hardly paid attention to the male whose body exploded, spraying the entire room with innards. Nothing remained to identify him as having once been human. Smelling the fresh blood, the female lapped the bloodied walls with an impressively long tongue slithering out of a mouth layered with sharpened teeth. With skinless appendages, she explored the room, climbing the walls and walking on the ceiling. It wasn't long before instinct led her to devour what remained of her husband.

"Excellent! We are making progress. This is the first subject to survive injection with Serum X41 without becoming a pile of liquefied tissue. Increasing the concertation of the base chemical allowed the body to become more receptive to the serum. I can't wait to Annette and Albert know. I'm thinking of calling this project black widow." He babbled to himself, feeling like he deserves a pat on the back. All those nights spent bent over his desk were finally paying off.

Sparing one last glance at the remains of the male, William frowned. "Looks like your mama didn't quite hear you but thank you for offering yourself to science. Your contribution is greatly appreciated." William said as he began recording the experiment's findings into a clipboard adorned with the Umbrella logo. William loved making progress in his research. It flooded his brain with dopamine better than a night of good sex or winning the lottery.

------------------------- It had been three days since the last time she had seen Wesker, but she heard his voice plenty enough, calling her for hourly updates while she was alone with Sherry in his house. He didn't personally pick her up after school. Instead, He sent a very kind elderly driver under the assumption that he was employed by her' parents' to drop her off 'home.' Both were so extremely far from reality. Thankfully, the man seemed busy playing cops and robbers. She was left alone with Sherry, and while she was in a more relaxed mood, she didn't dare go exploring the property belonging to the devil. The less she knew about him and his dealings, the looser the noose around her neck.

Her actual parents were nowhere to be found. Still, she wasn't worried. Aside from the whole situation with Wesker, these were the most peaceful days she'd seen in a long time, in fact… ever. The bruises could finally heal without the addition of new ones. Her parents most likely realized the extent of their financial situation and made a break for it. The loan sharks were not going to wait forever and will soon take more forceful actions. As much as it hurt Cara, she believed they left her behind to distract the collectors. They had done something similar years back in a town not too different from Raccoon, but at least they took her with them. It worked once, and they likely believed it will again. She decided to worry about that later, placing her problems on hold. A break was much needed.

Putting on her nicer pair of sneakers and her least washed-out pair of jeans, Cara regarded herself in the mirror and opted to leave her hair down. Wondering whether she should take the cellphone, Cara spent ten minutes arguing with herself. With a heavy sigh, she stuffed it into her back pocket, hoping to 'accidentally' smash the damn thing while sitting down extra hard. What would Wesker say? You have a big butt? Don't sit down?

Today Cara was hanging out with Rick, a mutual friend. They never hung outside school before, especially on their own, and she was a little nervous about things getting awkward. Due to Cara's 'full-time job' after school, they decided to skip a few classes and go out for a hike in the Arkley mountains. This would be her most needed change of scenery, and she may walk away with a good friend.

For Cara, the past few days have been a routine, wake up, go to school, go to Wesker's home to watch Sherry, and then come home to sleep only to do it all over again the next day. Things have been calm, and so Claire's suspicion turned off its headlights, but she often complained they couldn't hang out as much.

Cara tried inviting Claire to head out with them, but she turned the offer down, smiling from ear to ear. She hinted to Cara that Rick might have caught some feelings for her and that the courage to make a move required they be alone under the right circumstances. Guys and girls alike often confessed in the Arkley mountains. It became an omen of good luck for couples to stay together longer. Of course, that was total bullshit as many of those same couples break up soon after. However, it's nice to have hope in a relationship, something Cara never experienced. She decided that if Rick did indeed liked her that she would at least give things a try.

She was shy about Rick picking her up from the bad side of town and instead promised to meet him by the start of the Arkley trails. By the time she arrived, he was already there, standing by a pickup truck in the trail parking lot. Cara smiled, catching him in the midst of fixing his brown hair and testing the smell of his breath in a cupped hand. Why hadn't she ever noticed him? He seemed like such a pleasant guy.

When he finally noticed her standing behind him in the reflection, he spun around, almost stumbling over his feet. "T-there was something stuck in my hair, I swear," He stuttered, scratching his neck while his ears roasted tomato red.

"Whatever you say, pretty boy," Cara laughed, feeling her heart grow lighter with every minute. She had a good feeling today will be very meaningful.

The two walked along a path marked with bright orange ribbons tied to the trees. They passed dozens of signs warning hikers against straying off the path, many of which were covered with graffiti. All around them, birds chirped, and strangely, a few crows cawed as they hovered over the trees.

Walking around a growth of poison Ivy, they talked about random silly things and the distant future. Cara was glad to find herself closer to another person. Real genuine friends were a shortage in her life. She always had to be to one extending a hand, reaching out first. It was nice for a change that someone else extended their hand.

"You know, Cara, despite all the things I kept hearing about you from everyone, I knew they were wrong. They judged you without knowing shit about you."

"What…kind of stuff. And who is talking about me?" Cara's voice held a hard edge, her feet taking a pause. With furrowed brows, her eyes followed Rick as he walked ahead before noticing she stopped. This was the first time Cara heard of any rumors concerning her. She never made any enemies, keeping herself relatively unnoticed at school. Cara felt betrayed, wondering if Claire heard the rumors too, and if so, why hasn't she said anything? Why does she have to hear it from Rick?

"Oh, don't worry about it. It's nothing important. What matters is that I'm on your side." He spoke quickly, scratching the back of his neck.

"Rick, what are they saying about me," Cara walked closer to him, her eyes piercing through him.

"You'll be upset," His eyes kept avoiding Cara, settling on a hole in his shoe.

"I can take it. I just want to know what was said. Please Rick."

"Ah shit…um… they've said that someone saw you walking on Chandler street where all the…dealers and escorts hang. They said you offered to give blow jobs for five bucks to some older men behind a dumpster. That the bruising on your arm because you inject heroin, that your parents pimp you out to-"

Cara expelled a breath, her eyes misting rapidly. "No! that not true. I didn't do that. Why would anyone say something like that? I'm a fucking babysitter, ok? I'm not this, I'm not…my mom." She turned on her heel, wanting to get out of there. "I'm not like her." She repeated, clenching her fists. They didn't have the right to spin stories about her, turning her into a lunchtime gossip storyline. It wasn't fair. She was wrong. She couldn't handle it. She was always pathetic, always crying.

Rick caught up to Cara, grabbing her shoulder to spin her around to face him. "I'm so sorry Cara, I knew it was going to upset you, and I still told you about it. God, I'm so stupid." He said, wrapping his arms around Cara. She was caught by surprise and tried to push him away. Eventually, she found herself leaning against him, letting out a sigh as he stroked her hair.

"It's ok Rick, I'm glad you told me. They're just stupid rumors. I don't know why I'm over- " He kissed her open mouth midsentence, softly at first but quickly added more pressure. His hands fisted into her shirt, forcing her closer. She felt the bile rise quickly.

Cara's eyes were wide open as she tried pulling back, but he held her tightly. She tried forcefully turning her head, but his hand reached up to hold her chin in a painful vice grip, his tongue demanding entrance against her lips. She whimpered, clenching her teeth shut. Her lack of participation agitated him, and he grabbed her arm with a bruising tightness. Cara cried out in pain, and he took the opportunity to force his tongue into her mouth.

Cara wanted to shout for help, her eyes darting around the forest, encircling them. Still, they were completely alone, save for a couple of crows weeping among the trees. They seemed closer than before, sensing a meal in the making.

Allowing his tongue full entrance, Cara bit down as hard as she could on it, gagging against the metallic taste. Rick shoved her away, groaning in pain as blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Cara spat the blood in her mouth before shouting. Her eyes burned into him as she backed away.

"I believed in you despite everyone else. I told you I was on your side, and you hurt me. Do you know how many times I defended you? How many times I got picked on for simply standing beside you? You led me to think that you felt something, and then you hurt me." He growled, nursing his tongue in his hand.

Cara let out a pained breath, closing her eyes before turning her head away. She replayed what happened in her mind, wondering where things went wrong. She said she will give him a chance but, this was wrong, so very wrong.

"Rick, stop this. I appreciate what you did for me, but you made me uncomfortable. I did not enjoy that, I did not consent to that, but you touched me anyway."

"How much would it take you to fucking notice me? I've tried being Mr. Fucking nice for two years, Two fucking years. But you never look at me differently." Rick snarled, clenching his fists. He unleashed his rage against the nearest tree punching it repeatedly. He did not stop the assault even as his knuckles split, and the blood flowed freely, staining the bark.

"Rick, please stop before you do something you'll regret," Cara whispered softly, reaching for his bloody hand.

"I will make you want me!"

Cara barely had a second to process things before a rock made a disorienting contact with her head. She saw an assortment of colors and shapes on her way to the muddy earth.

Rolling on her stomach, she tried to push herself up, but everything was spinning, or maybe she was spinning. She rested her cheek against the mud, willing the world to stop shifting. Blood trickled down her face, and she had to blink it out of her eyes, unable to wipe it away. Her limbs felt as if weights were tied to them, giving gravity a greater pull.

Cara fought to stay awake, drifting in and out of the dark, faintly aware of being dragged by her foot through rough earth. It scratched her exposed skin, forcing the back of her shirt to ride up.

Rebel Yell- 6

Summary: Let’s get something straight: he does not love you. He knows that for sure, because he doesn’t want to scream at you and he doesn’t want to get married, and that’s the only things he knows for sure about people who are in love. And he was doomed to kiss with his fists and scream and be angry and blame everyone but himself for the rest of his life. So, no. Billy did not love you. Billy Hargrove x Hopper!Reader

Word Count: 2504

Warning: sexual situations

AN: Hey everyone, I won’t bother you with a super long update/apology. If you want to shoot me a message about how I’ve been gone forever, feel free. I miss you all, here’s some Billy.

Masterlist

The sunlight streaming in the windows is what wakes you. Slanted shadows fall over your face from the blinds, and you nearly panic until you remember it’s a weekend. The sound of something moving in the kitchen is muffled by the door, but it doesn’t stop the smell of bacon wafting through the cracks. Tossing the blanket back, you reach for a sweater as you patter barefoot into the hall.

Jim stands at the stove, his back to you, flipping the strips over in the pan. He’s head to toe in tan, the unbuttoned shirt catching flecks of grease. “What are you doing?”

He turns, just enough to catch sight of you, and points at the table with his spatula. You ease into a chair, cupping your chin in a palm. “Making breakfast,” he says, turning his back to you. “Heard you come in after eleven last night.”

“We got caught up at Benny’s,” you inform him, reaching for a strip of bacon as he slides the plate on the table. He gives you a pointed look, turning back to crack eggs into the pan. “It won’t happen again.”

“It sure won’t,” he says. Quiet lapses as you chew the strip of bacon, watching out the windows as a flock of birds settles onto the deck railing. “Your boyfriend’s quite the rebel.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Dad. We hardly know each other.”

“Well enough to hang halfway out the car window,” he pulls another plate out of the cabinet, shutting the door a bit too hard. “Glad you made it home alright. I was worried about you, runnin’ around with some kid-“

“Billy, Dad. His name’s Billy.”

“I know.” He turns around, yanking the other chair out from the table as the plate landed heavily on its wooden surface. “He tell you Callahan got called out there on a domestic a few weeks ago? House wasn’t even unpacked yet-”

“What the hell, Dad!” You shoot up, knocking the chair back as your palms slammed on the table. “Are you serious right now? You ran his name?!”

“I asked around the office.” His face hardens, silently daring you to keep yelling or to storm off. “I just wanted to know who my daughter was running around with-”

“And I told you all you needed to know-”

“-because I pulled over this death-trap and she’s in the passenger seat-”

“-and you should have trusted me-”

“I did trust you,” He snapped, a fist pounding on the table. Your mouth snapped shut, teeth grinding at the back of your jaw. “I trusted you to come home on time. And you didn’t even do that. Did you want me to wait until you maybe didn’t come home at all?”

The sound of the birds outside is all that fills the space between you. You’re staring at the table space between your hands, trying to ignore the way his eyes burn as he waits for a response. 

The phone started to ring, making you jump. Jim drops his fork down on the table with a clang, taking two long strides to the wall and yanking the receiver off the hook. “What?”

He listens for a second, keeping his voice low, but you’re already heading back down the hall towards your room, yanking open the dresser to find clean clothes.

“I gotta take this call.” Jim lingers in your doorway, fingers doing up the buttons on his shirt. You ignore him, shoving piles of denim and cotton around the drawer. “Listen, I know you’re angry-”

“He’s not a demogorgon, you know.”

Jim’s tongue is dry, mouth still open, and his arms fall to his sides as you finally look at him, hands gripping a pair of worn jeans. “I know that. I know that, and maybe I shouldn’t have jumped the gun-”

“Got that right.”

“Will you quit running your mouth for two minutes?” Jim runs his hand over his face, exasperated, and you fall silent, giving him an eerily familiar look he might have seen in the mirror a time or two. “Let’s make a deal, alright? You make it home by curfew from now on, and you let me know where you and your- where you and Billy or whoever are gonna be, and I’ll… Keep my nose out of your business.”

Your lips press into a fine line. “That would be easier to do if you were around.”

“Don’t. Test me, Y/N.” His teeth grit, and you can’t look at him, because you know there’s no way of winning this fight. “I’m not negotiating here. Two rules. Follow them.”

Without another word, the door to your bedroom slams shut behind him. You don’t move, still staring at the pile of clothes shoved to one side of your dresser as you listen to the sounds of the police car’s engine roaring to life outside.

Billy is pussy-whipped. That’s the only way to put it, and it’s infuriating. No amount of cigarettes can get rid of the taste of milkshakes and cherry chapstick caught on his tongue, and the inside of his car smells like stale rainwater and cum. And yeah, it’s always smelled a bit like sex, but now it smells like your sex and it’s different.

Billy doesn’t love you. He knows that for sure, because he doesn’t want to scream at you and he doesn’t want to get married, and that’s the only things he knows for sure about people who are in love. Although he knows it’s not supposed to be like that, he’s aware that despite the nickname you’d given to him, he was no Prince Charming. He was Neil Hargrove’s son, and the only displays of being in love he knew came from Neil and his mother. Neil, who’s fists sounded like thunder to young Billy, even when he hid behind the couch or under the table; his mother, who called him when he was ten years old to tell him that she wasn’t coming home. When he asked her when she would come back, she said not ever. That, he knew- that wasn’t love, but it was what Billy knew. And he was doomed to kiss with his fists and scream and be angry and blame everyone but himself for the rest of his life.

So, no. Billy did not love you. But he wanted you, and the only thing he could come up with between indifference and love was the same term he used to describe Tommy when it came to Carol: pussy-whipped. And he hated it.

He came to this conclusion halfway through Monday morning, as he was leaning against the brick corner outside those double doors, reading graffiti that had been etched into the dumpster, probably with a paperclip or a cheap swiss knife. It was initials inside a heart- isn’t it always- and a crooked ‘72 that seemed like a last minute addition. He wondered vaguely if those people still loved each other and if they did, were they like Neil and his mom?

He’s already halfway through his first cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as he can with every drag. The door swings open and Billy can’t stop the anticipation of seeing you step out to meet him. 

“Hey,” you said. 

Billy smirks. “Hey.”

Your face is tinted pink, and Billy can’t tell if you’re cold or blushing. Maybe both. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

His heart sinks just the slightest. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Your lips press into a thin line and Billy already knows the answer. Because you already fucked me. What more could you want?

Truth was he didn’t come here for cigarettes. It would be easier to sit in his car, cranking up the heat and the stereo and blowing smoke out the thin crack in his window, than to stand in the bitter cold and wait for the beautiful girl that he absolutely would never love. 

“So I was thinking—“

“Friday night was—“

You both stop, grinning stupidly. Billy’s cigarette is smoldering, dripping to the ground, and you haven’t even zipped up your jacket yet. 

There it is again. That “shut the fuck up and enjoy each other” silence that Billy had never even heard of before you. 

“My, uh, my dad,” you start, shoving your hands in your pockets and rocking back on your heels. “He works late on Fridays. Every week.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  You bite your lip, and Billy briefly imagines taking it between his own teeth instead. You don’t offer up the question, but Billy answers it anyway. 

“You inviting me over?”

“If you want.” You shrug. “We could pop some Jiffy-Pop. Rent a video. Ignore both of those things in favor of catering irresponsibly to teenage hormones.”

He knows it, now, how whipped for you he’s starting to become because he nods, that wolffish smile on his lips, and he leans forward to kiss you like it’s the most normal thing in the world. But it isn’t, because Billy Hargrove doesn’t go back for seconds and he doesn’t love you and he definitely, honestly, really doesn’t ever want to. 

The faint sound of Jiffy-Pop snapping over the stove is almost enough to distract you from looking out the window. You’d been glancing out every few minutes, hoping to catch the flash of the Camaro’s headlights coming down the dirt road. It’s twenty after six, and Billy had agreed to be there by six-thirty, but there’s still a feeling of unease in your gut as the minutes tick by.

It wasn’t as though you actually expected Billy to show up. At first, you had been excited at the prospect of seeing him again- outside of the space you and Billy had claimed at the school. You’d caught sight of him a few times in the halls, now hyper-aware of him in ways you had not been before. You knew where his locker was, that he was on the basketball team with Steve; you knew where he liked to park the Camaro and who he spent his time with in between classes.

He’d become aware of you, too. He lingered at his locker just a bit longer after third period, when you would walk by on your way to chemistry. He knew which books you took home and which stayed in your locker; he knew that you liked to go to the library instead of lunch and that you stayed after on Wednesdays to tutor algebra.

But as the week went on, you’d become weary that maybe you had been imagining the magnetic pull between the two of you. That maybe Billy thought the sex was good, and maybe by Friday he would decide it wasn’t that great after all. That maybe he would just not show up and that come next Monday, he’d be a distant memory. 

Three sharp raps on the door brings a grin to your lips, and it takes an embarrassingly short time for you to get to the door and wrench it open. Billy turns his head from where he’d been eyeing the kitchen window, smile widening over his face. “Hi,” he says.

“You’re here.”

Billy’s brow raises, his eyes trailing over you. “I am here.”

The breeze carries through the house. Billy looks expectant, and you shake your head, blinking, and move out of the doorway. “Shit, sorry- come in.”

Billy follows after you, moving slower as he takes in his surroundings. There’s a table by the door, the surface covered by three beer cans, two coffee mugs, two ashtrays and a plate. Nearby is the box television, facing a red armchair that has jackets thrown over the back and a couch that looks like it’s been slept on by a bear. More beer cans dot the coffee table, and Billy vaguely wonders if they’re yours or the Chief’s. 

The smell of slightly burnt popcorn guides him into the kitchen. He hovers in the doorway, his eyes linger briefly on a child’s drawing pinned to the fridge before they drop to the dining table (the only one so far without any cans) where a stack of three VHS tapes bring him further into the room. 

You glance over your shoulder, turning the stove off and putting the popcorn on the table as Billy picks up the tapes. “How’d I know you’d pick at least one sappy chick-flick,” he teases, holding up the copy of Grease. 

“What can I say- I’m a sucker for a happy ending.”

Billy’s tongue runs over his lip as he puts the tape back down, moving deliberately toward you. It startles you, how he’s able to take such predatory steps and, although you want to let him come up close and put his hands in your hair and kiss you madly, he’s able to force you to take steps backward until your back hits the kitchen counter.

He bares his teeth with that smile that takes up his whole face, his eyes sparkling darkly as he looks down, towering over you. His body presses you against the counter, the wood digging into the small of your back, and his hands come up to grasp your waist.

“What a coincidence,” he mumbles, grip just a bit tighter as his lips graze your earlobe. “So am I.”

You yelp when he lifts you up, more surprised than hurt, and he sits you down on the counter and sneaks between your knees. Only then does he finally kiss you, the same way he had in the rain that first night. It’s hot and messy and entirely too much teeth, but the sheer ferocity leaves you needy. Here’s the wolf you had been so worried about, the one growling in your ear and digging his claws into your flesh. 

Your clothes have barely hit the floor when he slides into you, forcing a moan up your throat. Your legs squeeze his waist, pulling him closer with each hard thrust. The edge of the counter nips at the underside of your thighs. Billy’s hands slide under them, pulling your legs just a bit higher, hitting you just a bit deeper with each unforgiving slam of the hips. It’s enough to uncoil the spring in your belly, enough to burst the lights in your vision, enough to make you think that maybe the connection you’d felt was real. 

Billy’s forehead hits your shoulder, eyes squeezed shut as your hands pull at his hair, and when he comes, he almost hurts. Not the kind of pain he’d felt before, where his groin is too tight or his muscles flex just the wrong way, but the kind where he doesn’t remember how to breathe until your legs loosen around his waist, your hands let go of their vice grip and turn into soothing strokes, and Billy thinks he could stay like this forever.

He’s just got his breath back when he looks up at you, that boyish charm back on his lips and he kisses you one more time. “So, Grease, then?”

@william-hargroves​​​​​ @killer-queen-xo​​​​​ @sallyp-53​​​​​ @cloverrover​​​​​ @scud994​​​​​ @nighttwingg​​​​​ @yaidothat​​​​​ @abiwebb12​​​​​ @camillewester​​​​ @vespertxne​​​​ @potatoheadthewise​​​ @tearsforhan​​​ @leedelee14​​​ @crowned-gemini​​​ @ericuhlorain​​​ @frozenhuntress67​​​ @chloe-skywalker​​​ @thatpunkmaximoff​​ @elishaletterman​​ @winchestersister55​​ @captainstilinskis​

“Are you ready?”

I opened my backpack for one last check. 

“Flashlights, EMF reader, laser grid, night vision camera, backup batteries...Yeah I think I’m set!” I pulled my flashlight out and closed up my bag.

“Okay, let’s go.”

We stepped out of the car and looked around. Other than the solitary dome light from the car, the abandoned yard surrounding us was a void being carried on a breeze. The branches of low-hanging trees swayed and beckoned as they danced into the shallow pool of light around us, raising the hair on the back of my neck in an instant. Despite the full moon, the tall reaches of the pines blocked off almost all of the night sky. I glanced over at Adam. He pulled his own flashlight out and clicked it on before closing the door behind him. The beacon he produced got lost up the front walkway before landing squarely on a crooked, heavily-graffitied door. I turned my light on - the equivalent of an additional match in a coal mine.

“You should start filming before we even get in.” Adam suggested. He sent his flashlight across the yard to illuminate various odds and ends. “I don’t want anyone saying we faked anything.”

“You got it.” I stuffed my flashlight away, pulled my phone out of my pocket and attached my tripod and light. No more holding a flashlight and phone at the same time for us, no sir. We were professionals now. I opened the livestream and pointed my rig at Adam. “Five seconds,” I said. He hurriedly ran a hand through his hair as he turned. After a breath, he set his regular “I’m amped to be ghost hunting” grin to his face.

“What’s up, ghoulfriends?” He asked, his focus entirely on the camera. A few of our streamers began to respond immediately. The chat box along the bottom of the screen was awash in ghost emojis and greetings. One of my many jobs was to keep an eye on the chat for any hints or tips. There was nothing there for me yet.

“I’m Adam, the creature behind the camera is Carlie, and we are here at the Angel House for our Halloween spooktacular livestream event!”

I panned away from Adam and focused on the walkway leading up to the abandoned structure. With a jerk of my head, I directed Adam to get walking. The Angel House wasn’t close enough to be in focus yet. He fell into step next to me, out of view of the camera. 

“The Angel House, so named after its late owner, Maurice Angelo, has been recommended to us multiple times. We’ve read the reports you’ve tagged us in and decided that Halloween was the best option for our investigation.” I said, filling my role as historian. “For those not in the know, Maurice Angelo died under mysterious circumstances in the early 1880s. He had no known children, and evidently left his home and grounds to the town. Now, nearly 150 years later, the Angel House sits way in the back of a conservation land. It has been unoccupied this entire time.”

As I spoke, the house began to fill the frame of my phone. What had once been a handsome Victorian manor home was now a sagging, warped building. I paused to let the viewers get the full effect of its broken windows, peeling siding, and crooked front steps. A section of wall to the far left side of the house was broken open. The front porch had a collapsed roof and broken floorboards. It was like the house itself was discouraging entry.

The chat box continued to fill as more viewers signed in to the stream. I watched for a couple seconds and smiled when one viewer posted a gif of a small girl with black pigtails.  The gif was then repeated by others, all agreeing on what the house looked like.

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky..” I sang softly into the phone. More emojis lit up my screen. Our viewers were thrilled.

“They’re all together ooky, the Addams family!” Adam picked up the tune as we marched up the steps to the front door. He leaned forward and pushed it open on shrieking hinges. Our lights filled a cavernous foyer. Adam stepped ahead of me and I held back, careful to keep both him and the room in frame. A double staircase faced us, leading into the two opposite wings of the house. A broken, dusty chandelier hung above us. We paused again in the middle of the room, scanning the area for both the benefit of our viewers and ourselves.

“Do do do doo,” 

Adam clapped.

“Do do do doo!”

He clapped again.

“Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do,”

Someone clapped directly behind my head. I yelped and whipped around. The camera was pointed directly where I heard the sound. Adam, wisely, stayed put. This was our first piece of evidence - we didn’t want viewers thinking we were messing with them.

“What did you hear, Carlie?”

“Someone beat you to the last clap for the song, Adam.” I said. There was nothing behind us. I was staring out the open front door. My camera light bled out onto the porch, illuminating only a few feet out. Two busts sat on either side of the door on the inside along the wall. There were no additional doorways on the front wall of the house.

“Okay ghoulfriends,” Adam said. I panned slowly back around to where Adam stood. “This right here is why we wanted to do our first ever livestream at the Angel House! It seems we have a kindred spirit in here with us.” He grinned at his own pun. I provided the obligatory groan, glad to hear my voice had evened out. It’s hard to take ghost hunters seriously as is, let alone one who shrieks at the first piece of evidence. 

“The Angel House has exactly two reported deaths. The first being Mr. Angelo himself. The official report stated that he died of an undisclosed illness in his bed. The second reported death took place in 2001, on Halloween night. Exactly 19 years ago today.” 

“October 31, 2001 had the happy happenstance of having a full moon on Halloween. In fact, today is the first Halloween full moon since that night.” I added. Adam gestured to the rooms on the first floor beyond the staircases. The investigation had begun.

“On that date, local urban explorer and photographer Shawn Johnson decided to do a walkthrough of the Angel House. Now, Johnson was not a paranormal investigator. He was just a guy who loved exploring. While researching the house, we discovered his blog. The link will be posted on our page after the livestream.” Adam’s voice grew softer as we passed the staircase and walked towards an open doorway to the next room. It was a common theme for him - he started each investigation big and boisterous. When it came time for the actual investigating, he softened his tone. Something about big, empty, derelict buildings gave the same feeling as being in  a church. As though simply by talking, we were being  disruptive.

“Johnson believed that it was the unknown that made people nervous, not spirits or ghouls. So he opted for a nighttime exploration of the Angel House to prove, without question, that there was no such thing as ghosts. He wrote a preliminary blog post about it and outlined his plan for the night.” I explained. My tone matched Adam’s. 

“Unfortunately, Shawn Johnson never posted his follow up entry. He never made it out of the Angel House. His roommate woke up and checked his bedroom the next morning and found it empty. The police found Johnson in a guest bedroom on the second floor of the house, where he had died from blunt force trauma to the head. To this day, no one has found his camera.”

The chat box on the livestream was nonstop. Our fans were suggesting their own theories, expressing hope that we would find Johnson’s camera, and recommending what rooms to look in. I glanced through the thread. Nothing of relevance to the moment. 

We tiptoed over the threshold and found ourselves in a large kitchen. A cast iron stove lined one wall. The kitchen table, which at one point must have been beautiful with its intricate carvings and detail, was missing a leg and slanted to one side. Dust covered everything around us. Each step filled the air with an additional cloud. We poked through closets, looked out the windows, and opened every cabinet door. Nothing stirred. After a few more minutes of exploring. Adam signaled me to focus on him.

“So the main reason Carlie and I decided to start livestreaming was for better accountability. Believe it or not, we do read every single one of your comments and it breaks my little ghost-loving heart that you guys think we fake evidence.” Adam laid both hands over his heart and looked off into the distance, an exaggerated look of betrayal on his face. The chat box pinged with assurances in response. I grinned. 

“Whenever we investigate, we really do come alone. We don’t scope out places ahead of time, we don’t set anything up ahead of time. We do as little editing as possible, we just trim down on time to fit our investigations into a reasonable length. And to prove to you that it really just is us here, I want to direct your attention to the floor.”

I aimed the tripod down to our feet. Both of us wore heavy combat boots laced up tight. It had taken exactly one step on a rusty nail wearing Converse back in our early days to encourage safe footwear. 

“As you all can see, the floors of the Angel House have a pretty thick layer of dust. No one else is here. Every touch, every footstep, is 100% us.” Adam continued. I recorded our last few footsteps. The heavy treads of two pairs of boots, one smaller than the other, marked our way across the dilapidated kitchen.

“No activity has been found here, so it’s time for us to move on!” Adam walked back into frame. I recorded his feet for good measure, so that the viewers could see the footprints he left on the 140-year-old floors, when he stopped.

“Carlie, what the hell.”

“What?” I asked. I panned up to his face. He was looking at the floor ahead of us. I walked forward, keeping him in frame until I scanned farther up to the entryway to the kitchen. 

A third set of footsteps was clearly imprinted in the dust. It looked as though a third person had peered into the kitchen before walking away.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. 

“Come on!” Adam walked briskly toward the doorway. The third set of prints had come up from the perimeter of the foyer beyond the room. They were large, clearly men’s, but the tread did not match Adam’s in the slightest. I aimed the camera up to Adam’s face.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think we should follow them back to their source. If there’s someone else here, that could be unsafe for us. I want to see where they came in, because we would’ve heard someone come in the front door.”

“Right.” I agreed. We left the kitchen and walked along the third set of tracks. The chat box continued to roll. A few people thought we were messing with them, because why else make a big deal of our footprints if not to set up a mysterious third set? One commenter suggested we were intentionally misdirecting them. 

“It looks like whoever this was came down from the second floor.” Adam pointed at the tracks on the side of one of the grand staircases. I aimed my camera light around the area behind us. Only our tracks followed the third. 

“I guess we should just follow it up.” I suggested. Adam nodded and took a breath. Me and our viewers watched him steel himself as he led me forward to the staircase. 

“Oh, hey, battery and service check.” I reminded him. “If it ends up being just some creepy rando I want to be able to call for help.” He pulled out his phone and checked. 

“87%, full service.” He showed his phone screen to the camera and held it as the lens adjusted to his screen’s brightness. Once the camera registered his home screen, he pulled it down and tucked his phone into his pocket. Immediately, the chat box exploded. I held up a hand to keep Adam where he was. The thread was filled with exclamations and questions.

“Adam, the viewers saw something behind you.”

“What?” He looked behind him and shouted. I rushed forward and looked where he was pointing. The third set of steps had circled back behind him and gone up the stairs. I scanned up the staircase. In my first shot of the footsteps, they had been leading down on the left side. Now there was another set of the same footprints going up the right.

“EMF, now!”

I turned away from Adam so that he could access my bag. I kept the camera level as he dug through the pockets, searching for the tiny, handheld device that read electromagnetic frequencies. In a previous video, we proved that it was not set off by either of our phones or equipment, so Adam bypassed the explanation and held it  up. The little range of lights flashed immediately from green to red.

Something was in there with us. 

“Okay ghoulfriends!” Adam said, his voice an excited whisper. “The mysterious third set of tracks starts down the staircase and it looks like they loop around the back of the foyer. Whoever is here with us must have peeked in on us in the kitchen before going around the far end and then up the stairs behind us.”

“It can’t be some random person!” I said. “Our prints are the only ones from the front door and these steps originate somewhere upstairs! Unless some homeless person floated up there we can rule that out entirely.”

“Okay, let’s go!” Adam led the way up the stairs. We walked up the middle, keeping the mysterious footprints clearly on either side of us. At the top of the stairs we looked around. The EMF reader remained staunchly red.

“If we follow the prints to our left, we’ll see where they came from. If we follow them to the right, we’ll see where they lead. What do you think, everyone? Which way should we go?”

The chats were evenly divided. The viewers erupted into an argument about what made the most sense for capturing evidence of a ghost. Some argued that seeing the source would debunk the possibility of a third person in the house with us. Many argued that if we followed to where they lead, we’d see if it was a person. Some pointed out that either way, we’d be able to figure something out through a real-life sighting or process of elimination.

“It seems like our ghouls can’t decide!” I said.

“Well, then it’s a good thing we live in the future! Extra tripod please!” Adam reached for my bag again and took out a smaller handheld tripod and light. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, set it up, and held it up. 

“If you go back to our main page, you will see that we now have two streams! Stick around with Carlie if you want to see the source, and bounce on over to me if you want to see where they’re going!” 

I watched as half of our viewers left the current chat. 

“Okay Team Carlie, are we ready?” I asked. The chat lit up. 

“And Team Adam, are we set?” Adam asked his own chat. He shot me a thumbs up.

“Then Let’s Ghoul!” we both chanted. With a little wave at each other, we both turned to our respective quests.

The left hallway was as dark and dusty as the foyer below. A few doors to my right hung open, and a few more seemed to not have doors at all. They were simply yawning expanses of darkness until my camera light passed over them. The loss of Adam’s massive presence heralded the return of the creeping feeling on the back of my neck. I felt my entire body stand at attention, took a breath, and walked into the darkness. I directed my camera down to the floor. The mysterious third set was still to my left.

“As you guys can see, the footprints are a pretty decent size.” I stomped my foot next to one of the steps. Even with my big boots on, the extra set was larger. “I’m not sure what shoes looked like in 1880, but I’m fairly certain they didn’t have running sneakers. I wonder if we’re looking at the footsteps of the late Shawn Johnson?”

Talking to the chat made me feel less alone. I read their responses and theories as I walked to the far end of the hallway. The trail led me to the last door on the left. 

It was closed.

“Now that’s weird. Look at this! The steps clearly walk out through the doorway, but the door isn’t open. Do you think whoever did this doesn’t have to worry about doors?”

I took a breath.

“I guess there’s no use delaying this, huh? Okay, ghoulfriends. Let’s do it.” 

I kept the camera focused on the doorknob as I reached forward, grasped the cold, tarnished brass, and turned. The door opened inward, dragging along the dusty floor and mussing up the footsteps. I quickly panned up and did a sweep of the room. Nothing stirred.

“It looks like we’re in a bedroom.” I whispered to the chat. “It doesn’t look grand enough to be old Mr Angelo’s bedroom. This must be a guest bedroom.” 

A section of the wall was broken open. A massive branch had long since crashed down into the bedroom, leaving its rotted corpse behind. The furniture, having been exposed to the elements for who knows how long, bowed out at odd angles after absorbing moisture from outside. An ancient broken mirror stood facing the gaping hole in the wall. The shards of glass had been scattered along the floor. 

With my scan of my surroundings complete, I panned back down to the footsteps on the floor. Debris from the broken mirror and furniture pieces obscured what had once been a clear path. I followed them around the derelict bed towards the broken section of wall, placing my steps carefully.

“I’m not sure how secure this section of the house is.” I said to the chat. A few well-wishers told me to be careful. “If I feel like there’s any chance that this floor is unstable, I’m going to go find Adam. I’m looking for ghosts, not construction projects.”

I picked my way over to the mysterious source of the footsteps. The soft, rotted branch covered it up. I placed my foot on the floor next to it and pressed.

“I’m slowly applying pressure to the floor here. I’m not hearing any creaks or groans or anything, so I think I should be good.” Confident that the floor would support me, I stepped over completely and pushed the branch with my foot. It barely moved. The footsteps were clearly coming from beneath it. I looked around and spied a dresser not far behind me. 

“Okay guys, I’m going to put you right here and see if I can move the log. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful!” 

The camera light was aimed directly where I needed to be. I carefully squatted down, placed my hands underneath the damp, rotted trunk, and heaved. The tree creaked against the remaining wall. 

“One more time, I think!” I called back to my camera. I pushed again, and with a crack, the branch broke over, exposing the floor below. 

The footsteps came from the broken wall.

“What the hell?” I looked at the section of wall. There, nestled between the interior and exterior walls, was a battered camera. 

“Oh my GOD you guys, I think I found Shawn Johnson’s missing camera! Hold on, this is insane!” I stuck my arm into the wall. The moment my fingertips met plastic, I heard a rush of footsteps behind me. 

“What the--” Something sharp hit the back of my head, and I went down.

***

The floor was cold and hard beneath me. The back of my head throbbed. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. Terror flooded my lungs as I blinked. I waved my hand in front of my face. In the darkness, I saw the stirrings of movement. My vision was fine; it was the room that had gone dark. I groaned and pushed myself up. Nausea stabbed through me. I leaned back against the wall and waited for the feeling to pass. 

“Okay,” I whispered. “Someone else was here. They hit me. They took my phone and tripod rig.” I sat on the floor and stared around the room, willing my eyes to adjust to the blackness. Shapes gradually appeared around the room. There was the bed, the dresser that had held my camera, the broken mirror across the room. Once I was sure my eyes were as focused as they could be, I pushed myself up against the wall and eased myself up. 

Whoever hit me had done an excellent job. Standing made me aware of how out of proportion I felt - my arms and legs felt too long for my body. Could I have brain damage? Was this just leftover dizziness? I shook my hands in an attempt to change the way they felt. No luck.

“Shit.” I whispered again. I shook my head and made myself focus. I had to find Adam. We would call the police, wait in the car, and everything would be okay. A shaky plan, but a plan nonetheless. I left the room feeling asymmetrical. 

The darkness enveloped me in the hallway. I paused to listen but heard nothing. Adam’s voice was so distinct, so easy to pick out, that he couldn’t be up on the second floor anymore. I would’ve heard him even if he were doing his excited livestream whisper. I walked down the hallway, keeping my hand on the wall for support. The camera light had spoiled me; I had never known such intense darkness. If Angel House had been creepy with poor lighting, it was menacing in the dark. I kept my focus on one thing: finding Adam. Whoever blitzed me thought I was already down, so I had to assume they were otherwise preoccupied. I stared around me, hoping for a break in the darkness, when my hand left the wall and found the railing to the grand staircase.

Quickly and quietly, I stole down the staircase and looped back to the kitchen. Just before the doorway I paused and listened, hard. Not a single noise. I peered around the frame and looked in. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was an expanse of darkness. I could make out the shapes of the lopsided table and stove, but not much else.  

“Adam?” 

No answer. I kept heading forward. We had only explored a small portion of Angel House, so the rest of the building was an unknown. I had no idea what else was on the first floor. My hand trailed along the wall next to me. The far corner of the room approached, a faded picture staring back at me. As I walked nearer, the face in the picture grew larger.  I stopped and stared. The face in the picture was hard to make out in the darkness. I took another step. The face in the picture grew larger still. Panic had finally started to settle in my ribcage. I strode forward, determined. The expression in the picture matched mine. 

He had a long face, a broad nose, and dark eyes. I turned my head to get a better look. He turned with me. I shook my head. He did the same. 

It was a mirror.

“What the hell. What the hell. What the hell??” I shouted. 

My voice, his voice, echoed across the empty foyer. It didn’t matter that there was someone else in the house. It didn’t matter that someone had tried to attack me. What mattered was that, somehow, I was staring out of someone else’s eyes into someone else’s face in a mirror. He was tall and thin, though somehow familiar. I leaned against the wall, bracing my considerably larger frame on a man’s hands and stared into the mirror. I took in the bold eyebrows and stubby facial hair. 

“Shawn Johnson,” I realized. Adam and I had studied his blog. There had been exactly one picture of the photographer. While he was exploring some old church somewhere he ran into another urban explorer. They had stood, arm in arm, grinning into their camera before exploring the church together. 

The camera!

Pieces began to fall into place. Shawn Johnson had died in a second floor guest bedroom. The report we read named blunt force trauma. That would explain the head pain. Had he been murdered? Did I have to relive his last few moments because I found his camera?  Or was the ghost of Shawn Johnson trying to get me to understand something else? I dropped my hands from the wall around the mirror. Of course. The tree. The trees surrounding Angel House had swayed so easily in the breeze when Adam and I had pulled up. The branch I moved had been huge. It must have fallen into the tree, hit Shawn in the head, and knocked him out. 

So why was he here? And why was I with him? I paced in front of the mirror. Shawn hadn’t been a paranormal investigator. He was an urban explorer and photographer. He had come here to disprove the paranormal. I snorted. Before I could even begin to think of the irony of that theory, a car door slammed in the distance. 

“Adam!” I called out. Had he gone out to the car to look for me? I ran along the side wall of the foyer and stopped in front of the window. There, down the front walkway, stood Adam. He was facing someone and gesticulating at the house. A bright light shone in my direction. Adam must have gone for the police. He obviously couldn’t expect to find out that I had been possessed by the ghost of the guy we were hoping to find. He had gone for help. I smiled. This was going to be an interesting conversation. But on the bright side, I’d be able to take Adam and the cops to Shawn Johnson’s camera. 

I watched Adam fall into step with his companion. They walked up the walkway together, and I heard their voices lilting back and forth. There was no hurry in their stride. Their conversation sounded formal, informative. I pressed my - Shawn’s - face against the glass. 

Adam was walking up the walkway with a young woman, carrying a tripod. He was walking up the walkway with me. 

I watched us trek across the front porch and heard my own voice begin to sing.

We were walking up the front walkway the way we had earlier in the evening. I was watching myself film Adam as he clapped in tune to the theme song. The front door shrieked open, just as it had when I had been the one operating the camera, Adam and the other Carlie walked into the foyer. I approached us, stunned. We were staring around the foyer, panning across for shots. I came to a stop directly behind what should have been me.

“Do do do doo,” 

Adam clapped.

“Do do do doo!”

He clapped again.

“Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do,”

I clapped.

Not What We Seem

@DamagedBrother and @OfFeatherNFang

Mal:

Caldwell was like any other city as I wasted the day away. Resting for a few hours in the morning, rolling around on a bed that probably needed a fresh set of sheets, I took the afternoon to recharge, finding a clear rooftop and sprawling out to bake. It’d been a while since I’d just lounged in the sun, so maybe I should be thinking of this as some sort of vacation, rather than an obligation to my mahmen.

As day turned to twilight, then to evening, I wandered the city streets, killing time for once instead of monsters. Cafe’s were open, and I had a coffee, something sweet, and then went ‘fuck it’, and ordered some frappa-whappa-whatever, which would’ve been sweet enough to give me diabetes if that was possible for an angel slash vampire. And it was all courtesy of Bert Aframian, the credit card serving as money I’d never touched, and never would.

With every hour that passed I grew more impatient for my audience with the King, my footsteps taking me further from the polite cafes and diners to the gritty alleys and side streets, the pulsing nightclubs with their barely restrained bouncers all too eager to break something. Or someone. 

Lines stretched around the corner for several, and I stopped shy of entering one that looked borderline promising: The Iron Mask. It took a minute for my mental voice to be heard over the pounding music that pushed out the doorway, but when it was it reminded me that showing up to an audience with the King of vampires, reeking of sweat, sex and alcohol, was probably a bad idea. No doubt classed somewhere in the zone of ‘disrespectful AF’. I could even feel my mahmen’s frown from here.

Grumbling about propriety, I stalked on, stuffing my hands in my coat pocket and holding out for a better distraction. Ironically, it only took another three blocks for it to appear.

As I rounded a corner into yet another run down, lamp shattered street, the wind pushed into me, and with it the foulest scent I’d encountered for years; not counting the wendigo snack bar I’d had to burn down after killing the thing. Something like rotting meat and baby powder wafted toward me on the breeze, and as my gag reflex got a work out, my eyes zeroed in on the culprit. He was on the corner, leaning against a graffiti laden brick wall. His face was lit by the phone he held, and his hair looked faded, like a blonde with a bad dye job that was finally washing out.

Every story my mahmen had ever told me, about rancid demons of ichor that hunted vampires coalesced, and the vision before me was… anticlimactic. This thing was what had hunted my mother’s kind for centuries? This… thing… with its pale hair and eyes and lazy gait, no doubt peddling drugs to humans… was the threat I hadn’t been allowed to face?

I scoffed, shaking my head in disbelief. The noise caught his attention, the phone forgotten as he looked up. I wasn’t sure if he could scent me or not - was that something a Lesser could do? - but I saw the flare of recognition in his eyes as easily as he saw it in mine. Well, give or take a little of my breeding…

The phone was forgotten as he reached into his coat, the piece he pulled out a sleek, dark nin mil. I didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, dropping into a roll as my heart rate kicked into high gear. The first shot went over my head, a thunderclap in the street as I came up and launched myself skyward. The second shot hit the pavement, the third grazed my boot. And then I was invisible as I summoned my wings and threw them wide, using the launch and my feathers to close the twenty meter distance between us in two seconds. 

His wild, sweeping arc of the gun as he tried to spot me again was for nothing as I crashed out of the sky to land on him, resuming a visible state as I batted the gun aside and bared my fangs in a snarl, black wings spread wide over him. He stared up, agape, whatever fury he’d been ready to unleash forgotten at the sight of me. 

“Get a good look?” I spat, drawing a blade from my boot and bringing it up, then down, right for the heart. 

He twisted at the last second, my blade glancing off the bone in his arm, his shoulder, as he tried to reach for the gun. Black blood spurted, and I ducked another shot, my ear ringing as I grabbed the wrist holding the gun and twisted with everything I had. He screamed as the bones shattered, the hand connected to his body only by flesh as it hung at a gut churning angle. 

Slamming a palm to his throat, I cut off the scream with a squeeze as I pulled back the blade and drove down again. This time I found the mark.

I wasn’t expecting the light show. Mahmen certainly never warned me about ‘that’. The burst seemed to fry my retinas as I reeled back, the body now just a scorch mark as I tried to blink away the blaze. 

“What… the fuck…” I muttered, rubbing at one eye with the hand that didn’t clutch the blade, ready for whatever came next. 

Which, as it turned out, was not another Lesser. My phone pinged, an alarm to remind me my meeting was five minutes away. Cursing, I looked around. I’d planned to be there already, to linger outside in the cool air and only enter at the sound of that alarm, but now here I was, in some dead street at the edge of a city and reeking of the black blood that spattered my leather jacket sleeve.

Fucking hell.

Wings still out, I leapt up into the air, landing on a nearby roof that clearly had only seen pigeon activity for a long time. Shucking off the coat, I set it and the single blade I’d bothered to bring against the edge, then looked down at myself. There was nothing else to be done, time not on my side now as I launched into the air, winging myself across town to the Audience House.

Making the door with a minute to spare, I sheathed my wings and raked a hand through my windswept hair, taking a deep breath and wincing at the lingering stench of sweet, rotting meat. 

“Fuck it,” I muttered, stepping into the receiving room and offering courteous smile to the male behind the desk, who seemed relieved to see me. He waved me forward, and only then did I notice the huge, hulking male at the next doorway. The one between me and the King.

I was grateful for my years of training, because it was the only thing that kept my face impassive as I stared up into golden yellow eyes, a lip twisted by a scar that stretched right up to his forehead. The scar didn’t bother me though; it was the set of those shoulders, the look on his face that told me one wrong move, and he’d gladly break my neck to protect whoever was behind that door.

Dude was definitely committed to this King.

Stepping forward, I bowed as mahmen had shown me, then stood and extended my arms. The male grunted as he stepped forward, a shiver rolling down my spine as he stood behind me. A spark leapt between us, and I couldn’t help but gasp at the shock, shooting him a sharp glance like it was his fault. Then he was patting me down, thorough with hands that had no doubt killed a thousand Lessers just like the one I’d dealt with on the street. When he was done, his hand closed around my shoulder, all but shoving me through the door, into a room with… King Fucking Kong, apparently. 

The male was huge. With a capital H-oly Fuck. Seated on a throne, and with two additional warriors in the room, he still dwarfed them not just with his size, but his presence. He commanded attention, and as the black wraparounds looked in my direction he took a deep breath and leant forward.

“Speak your name.”

The two males at his back stiffened at the sight of me. One had eyes like diamonds, and a tattoo that curled around one eye as he narrowed them at me. The other had hair of impossible colors, a glorious mane that look touchable. My fingers even twitched. But they still paled to the male in the throne.

Before I answered I bowed low, as was proper for a nobody civilian. 

“I am Malys, son of the Chosen Elieanora,” I said evenly, rising from the bow. “And I have come to seek a pardon from your majesty for her fleeing the Sanctuary a hundred years past.”

Zsadist:

[Tonight I was on King duty. Instead of heading out into the field, I found myself playing bodyguard to Wrath. Which wasn’t as thrilling as going out and killing lessers, but it was still an important job. We must serve and protect not only the race but our King as well. Guarding Wrath with me was Vishous and my twin. While Cop, Rhage, and Tohr were out in the field. I was hoping that tonight would go smoothly and there wouldn’t be any problems on our hands. It was always nerve wracking having Wrath out though. He was not only the King of our race, but a brother, and a lot of people wanted him dead. 

Cracking my neck as I try to remember how many meetings we had tonight. We should be wrapping it up soon. I could feel daylight growing near and we would need to get Wrath home. Digging into my pocket to grab my phone. I glanced at the time written across the screen before I check to see if I had any messages. Without Vishous’s knowledge I gave the shifter my actual number. Then again, maybe V already knew that. Snorting at the thought then pushes the device back into my pocket. He hadn’t texted me so I assumed that we were still on for training later in the week. You could do it Z, just had one more to get through and then you could be at home with a book. 

My ears prick as I hear a muffled conversation at the end of the hall. Straightening up as I watch a male turn the corner and head down the hallway towards me. Tilting my head as I take in the site of him. Interesting. I’ve never seen this male around before. Not that I really knew all vampires in this area, but there was something about him that screamed he was not from here. An outsider. What business did he have with the King? 

I let out a low grunt as the stranger bows to me then holds out his arms so I could pat him down. Moving to his backside, I blink as I feel some sort of jolt. Was this some kind of power he had? Was he trying to pull a fast one on me? On the King? Biting back a growl as my hands move roughly over the male. Not caring as I grabbed and pushed my hands all over his body in search for weapons. I didn’t trust him one bit. I practically shove him into the room and get a hint of a scent that clouds my senses. Baby powder. The enemy. 

My golden eyes go wide as I watch him stumble forward towards the King. Who the fuck did I just let enter this room? Fuck. Quickly I move in and stand close to the male. Vishous eyes me as he tries to read what’s doing. I see his eyes narrow, his nostrils flaring slightly as he picks up what I discovered. We keep it cool though. Listening to what this fucker had to say but also being ready at a moment’s notice if we had to strike. Slowly I bring my hand to my chest. Keeping it close in case I had to pull a dagger on this fucker. I would not let my King get hurt. Not on my watch. Nope. 

I watched as he bowed again, a more pronounced one then the bow I received moments before. When he rises the King orders him to speak. My brows draw in as he speaks the name of a Chosen. A chosen I’ve never heard before. Phury blinks then shifts in his spot. He was the primale after all so all matters involving chosen he dealt with. Well it was a good thing he was present then. She was not just any chosen, but one who left. It made me wonder if Tohr knew about her. Maybe it was a chosen he came across with Darius. Though it sounded like she fled and went into hiding without a trace. I was intrigued by what the mystery man had to say, but still kept my guard up. The stench of the enemy still all around me. As my eyes roamed his body I noticed that he looked a little disheveled. Similar to what I looked like after fighting. The only problem was which side was he fighting on? And even if he was taking down a lesser who the fuck was he to do so?]

Mal:

The King grunted his acknowledgment of my words. I was beginning to suspect that standing on ceremony was not what happened with this guy. He had all the pomp and pageantry of a steel blade, and twice as sharp. 

At my back I could feel the tension of the golden eyed warrior, and it took every lick of self control I had, and every lesson my mahmen had ever taught me about manners or propriety, to not turn around and eyeball him like I was ready to throw down right here, right now.

Cause I was. And I would. If it wasn’t for the woman who raised me needing this boon.

“So your mother was a Chosen that fled the sanctuary,” the King intoned, leaning back in that massive chair and tilting his head toward the male with the luscious locks, like he wanted him paying attention. “Why did she leave?”

Clearing my throat, I took a second to check my tone. It was, after all, a reasonable question, even if /I/ didn’t want anyone questioning her. 

“Pardon me, my Lord, but it would be rude of me to attempt an explanation of my mother’s motivations at the time, not being her, or sharing that… experience. From what she has deigned to tell her son, it was to do with the desire for freedom and not wanting to… perform.”

Y’know… as in… be the Ehros she’d been trained to be. Sweet fuck please don’t make me say it out loud. Damn it, I could feel the faintest trace of a blush on my cheeks, but c’mon, who wouldn’t get embarrassed talking about whether or not their mother wanted to be a professional sex doll. Motherfuckers…

Instead of letting them get a word in, I continued, hoping the damn blush faded faster than the stupid Lesser stench I kept catching a whiff of.

“I understand that under your reign, things have changed, both for your civilian people, and for the Chosen. It is my hope that, with that in mind, my mother would be free to return to her people without facing persecution.”

Wrath inhaled again, and I had to wonder if he was catching all that stinking baby powder smell. I hid a wince, waiting for the shoe to drop.

“You got balls kid, I’ll give you that,” he said finally. “What if I wasn’t as benevolent as they say, hmm? What if I demanded retribution from your mahmen and her location? What then?”

“Then you have her son as a prisoner to serve whatever sentence you deem necessary,” I say coolly, eyes narrowing, “and I will have to suffice, for I will not ever reveal my mahmen’s location. I’d rather die.”

Every word rang with truth even as I stared him down - for all the good that probably did. They had to call him ‘Blind King’ for a reason. Not to worry though, cause the three other males around us were all kinds of ‘watch your fuckin’ mouth kid’ after I spoke.

“Phury,” Wrath said finally. “What do you want to do about this?”

Zsadist:

[This kid has way too much sass talking to the King like that. Who the fuck does he think he is? He came here on behalf of his mother, a chosen, to pardon her from fleeing. Now I know shit has changed and the King will most likely have no problem with this, but he still should have some respect. And then on top of it he’s gonna come in here reeking like lessers? Nope. 

My attention is drawn to my twin when Wrath calls him out. Ah yes, the primale. What would he think of all this? He had to be curious about this Chosen. And I’m sure the other chosens would be excited to meet another, have another sister. I watched as Phury shifts beside the King. He eyes the stranger up before speaking. 

“I don’t wish for any punishment to be brought to your Mother. I understand her reasons for fleeing.” He scrubbed a hand through his long locks of hair. “Things are different now and I have a sanctuary of my own for the chosens.” He gave a small private smile as he thought of them all. “If she would like to return, I would be happy to bring her in and introduce her to the others. I know they would be just thrilled to meet another sister.” 

What he said was true. Phury cared deeply about the chosens. It’s funny cause when we first learned that he was going to be the primale we were unsure of what that would entail. But he found love, with Cormia. And I was glad that my brother was finally happy. Now only if he could stop trying to introduce me to different chosens every time I fed. Like I would do the same and get mated or some shit. Yeah right. 

I snort at the thought then turned my attention to the stinky fucker in the room. I knew Wrath wasn’t dumb. He could smell what we smelled and probably even more so with his heightened senses. Even though I was on guard and ready to strike at a moment’s notice I kept my cool. Wrath might not want to make a scene in the audience house but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t elsewhere. My hand stayed close to my blade regardless. Just cause we didn’t want bloodshed didn’t mean this fucker doesn’t. Chosen mother or not, I’ve learned in my lifetime that you could trust no one. Anyone could turn on you or have other motives.]

Mal:

While the King looked like he could make a meal out of me and still use my rib as a toothpick, the male with the rainbow hair adjusted his stance and looked me over. He still looked like he wanted to put something sharp somewhere I wouldn’t like it, but when he spoke of the Chosen, of my mother having the freedom to return and see them, there was no malice, no aggression. His compassion and care for them was plain in the look on his face, the tone of his voice.

Relief ran through me as I thought of my mahmen, of being able to tell her she could come back to this past she’d fled so long ago.

Aware of each male in the room /wanting/ a reason to hurt me, I very slowly bowed my head, then lowered myself into a bow, my knee on the floor. I couldn’t speak the Old Language - I didn’t know a word of it - but I tried to make sure the sincerity of my gratitude rang through as I spoke.

“My Lords, your kindness knows no bounds.” Okay, it probably knew plenty of bounds, but go with me on this. “I am incredibly grateful for the mercy and compassion you’ve shown my mother. I apologize if I, at any stage, seemed ungrateful. My concern was only for the woman who raised me alone in the human world, and that she might find some solace in returning to the people she knew and loved.”

Lifting my head but not rising from my crouched bow, I looked first at the Primale, and then to the King.  

“I thank you for taking the time to see me. For gracing me with an audience.”

And yeah. I guess I meant it. There was truth in everything I said. But now I was done. I could go home, go back to the hunt, and forget about Caldwell unless it housed a poltergeist. 

Rising to stand - again, so much more slowly to avoid getting shivved - I made to turn on the spot when the King’s voice rang out.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been doing tonight, son.” My eyes flicked to those black wraparounds, then to the male’s either side of him. Otherwise, I didn’t move. “If you’re not from here, what have you been doing in town?” the Blind King continued softly.

Swallowing, I kept my voice even. My heart rate barely twitched. I’d faced down the worst kinds of monsters, seen horrors I wouldn’t wish on my enemies as nightmares; I could face this King… and his warriors. After all, I’d faced the Lessers they’d spent centuries fighting, and I’d barely broken a sweat to do it.

“I’m sure the activities of a wayward civilian would be of no interest to his Majesty,” I begin, tone courteous. “You honor me just in the asking. If it please the King to know, I have stayed in a simple motel, partaken of the city and its cafe’s, and walked through the Nightclub district.”

Wrath took a deep breath again, then gave a slow, cool smile.

“Well… I hope you enjoyed your stay in the city then. Be sure to pass on my blessings to your mahmen, when you get home.”

That was it? I blinked then bowed my head again.

“Of course, m’Lord. You’ve been most gracious.”

Zsadist:

[Narrowing my golden eyes as I hear the male give some kind of excuse. So that’s how it was going to be huh? I listened to the King as he dismissed him. Wrath didn’t want to cause problems in here, but that didn’t mean he was off the hook. Not by a long shot. He was withholding information from the King. Chosen mother or not that was something you didn’t do. My eyes flicker to the stranger who reeked of the enemy, I hold back a growl as I stare him down. Watching as he exited the room. Quickly I draw my attention to my brothers]

What do you want to do my Lord? [Vishous finally let out a growl as Phury just looked like he was deep in thought. My twin was probably wondering who this mysterious chosen was. I have to admit that I was curious as well. Wrath chuckled and shook his head slowly. A vicious smirk formed on his face before he spoke. 

“Get him. Bring him back to the mansion, but keep him in the tunnels. Put him in one of the PT suites and have someone guard it until I can deal with him.” Nodding before I turn to head out. Pausing in my tracks as I hear Wrath again. “And Z..?” Turning to look back]

My Lord? [His jaw clenches. “Knock him out if you have to but don’t kill him. Not until I get to the bottom of this.” Vishous chimes in. “Contact Butch and have him bring the SUV when you get him.” Nodding at my brother before I exit the room. I take a deep inhale, smelling the trail the stranger left. My fangs elongate and I quickly move through the building. Once outside I take another whiff before bolting off in run.]

My Favourite Creepy and Abandoned Places From Around the World

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been obsessed with researching and reading about creepy and abandoned towns or places around the world, whether it was notorious (supposedly) haunted buildings, abandoned hotels and neighbourhoods, or forgotten cities and towns that now lie in decay. I think the appeal lay in the possibility of these places being more than what they seemed or what was readily apparent, a skewing of everyday realities into something atypically fascinating. I will share some of my favourite creepy and abandoned places from around the world below.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

The inspiration for the video game and movie, ‘Silent Hill,’ Centralia today is a near-ghost town occupied by only 10 people (according to the 2017 census) due to a fire that has been burning beneath the borough since 1962. That year, there was a trash fire in a strip mine beneath the town which ignited a blaze that rages with the same fury today as it did 57 years ago. On a Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, the townsfolk had decided that the best method of taking care of the landfill trash heap before the festivities began was to set fire to it - a very common practice back then. The problem was that Centralia had been a major coal mining area in the past, and the landfill was located on top of an old coal mine.

They set the fire on May 25th. The fire latched onto an old coal seam from the mine and slowly spread throughout the mines under the city.Even though the visible flames were doused throughout the day on the 25th, more fires were spotted on May 29th. This pattern of putting out fires and finding them sprouting up again days later would continue for weeks. And when there weren’t visible fires, residents complained about the constant smell of smouldering trash and coal. Authorities tried for years to extinguish the fire. They pumped a slurry of ash, water, and rocks into the mine, but nothing worked. Eventually, they had no choice but to give up, and the city was condemned.

The Centralia mine fire led to the city being all but abandoned. Families were relocated to neighbouring towns. Today, the surface of the streets is no longer hot like it was previously, since the fire has moved down deeper into the earth. But smoke can still be found creeping out of the ground in places. The ground has been so weakened by half a century of fire that a sinkhole can open anywhere at any moment. Portions of Route 61 just outside the city had to be closed and redirected since it’s not safe to drive there. Furthermore, since the coal from the underground mines produces deadly carbon monoxide, the air isn’t safe to breathe in certain areas. Centralia today looks like it has been hit by the apocalypse. Some have gone so far as to describe the eerie place as hell on earth. There are cracking tar roads with smoke billowing out of them, graffiti on abandoned, derelict buildings and signs to warn people that the ground could swallow you at any minute.  There are more graves at the cemetery than there are people in the town. Centralia now mostly attracts tourists who visit the  abandoned highway, where many profanities and obscene pictures are spray painted. 

Pripyat, Ukraine

Pripyat is a ghost town in the northern part of the Ukraine, near the Ukraine-Belarus border, famous for being the town closest to the No. 4 reactor involved in the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear power plant disaster of all time. On the 26th of April, 1986, during a test to see how much power was needed to keep the No. 4 reactor operating in the event of a blackout, the No. 4 reactor exploded, causing a fire which released an extremely dangerous amount of radioactive chemicals in the air.

Pripyat, which was founded in 1970 and had a population of around 49,000 at the time of the explosion, was located only about three kilometres from the explosion. As a result, the entire city was forced to evacuate on April 27th, 1986, in just three hours. Over three decades later, this ghost town is a freeze-frame of the Soviet Union in 1986. Communist propaganda still hangs on walls, and personal belongings from the residents who lived there long ago still litter the streets and the abandoned buildings. The hammer and sickle emblems of communism still decorate lamp-posts, awaiting May Day celebrations that never took place, and toys are strewn about a school house where they were last dropped by children who are now fully grown. All clocks in the area are frozen at 11:55, the moment the electricity was cut.

The IAEA estimates that approximately 30 people were initially killed by the explosion and related radiation exposure, with several thousand additional deaths due to higher cancer incidence possible over the long term. As with any site where a number of people have lost their lives, Pripyat is rife with ghost stories. In 1997, Andrei Kharsukov, a visiting nuclear physicist, told one such story, stating that he went to the power station at 7:30 a.m., and went to the No. 4 reactor sarcophagus, which is where the explosion occurred. He could not go inside due to radiation, but as he took radiation readings, he heard someone screaming for rescue from a fire inside. The reactor door required a password and a hand-print, but as he claimed, someone, or something, was inside. Another pretty unsettling theory was that the radioactive detonation caused a select few not to die. In fact, quite the opposite. It gave them enhanced strength and speed, with the downside being that it made them zombies. 

These days, the site has become a tourist destination, with the government giving interested individuals a pass to tour the areas of Pripyat, including schools, hospitals, houses, apartment buildings, and even the amusement park and shipyard. It is also possible to visit the actual site where the explosion happened, but visitors must stay at least 200 meters away in the case of any radiation that escapes the Number 4 Nuclear Reactor Sarcophagus, built to keep in any more radiation.

Flinders Highway, Queensland, Australia

Known as ‘Queensland’s own Wolf Creek,’ which refers to an Australian horror movie franchise of the same name, it is speculated that this lonely 754-kilometre stretch of road is the hunting ground for Australia’s longest-running serial killer, spanning 40+ years. The Flinders Highway that turns into the Barkly Highway is an isolated, remote stretch of bitumen between Townsville and Mt. Isa , and is known as “The Highway of Death”. The blood-red ranges, open plains and dry river beds surrounding its rugged terrain have stood as silent witness to at least 12 unsolved cold cases and chilling killings, including the 37-year-old murder mystery of hitch-hiker Tony Jones; Catherine Graham, who was found dead at Anthill Creek, west of Townsville, in 1975 (her head had been bashed in with a rock); the Mackay sisters, Judith and Susan, whose bodies were found stabbed, raped and strangled (they were only 5 and 7 years old), Gordon Twaddle, along with Timothy Thompson and Karen Edwards, who were all found shot in the head near Mt. Isa in 1978, Robin Hoinville-Bartram, whose skeletal remains were found west of Charters Towers (she’d been shot in the head, execution style), and Anita Cunningham, who disappeared in 1972 whilst hitchhiking with Robin, to name a few. Most recently, 22-year-old Jayden Penno-Tompsett went missing from the highway on New Year’s Eve in 2017, on his way to Cairns. 

As stated by the brother of one of the missing people, “It is it’s own world out there. Strange things do happen in those wild, empty spaces.” The long-running list of missing and murdered individuals seem to point to this stretch of road being a place that is best to avoid. Nevertheless, hitch-hiking is still common practice along the Flinders Highway, with countless unsuspecting people putting their lives at risk every day.

‘The Crystal Highway’ (Rockhampton to Mackay), Queensland, Australia

On a related note, just south of Flinders Highway, the drive from Rockhampton to Mackay is almost just as terrifying and taxing. Known as the “Central Queensland Badlands,” due to the fact that it is a worthless stretch of scrubby floodplain that separates the cattle country of Rockhampton from the canefields of Mackay. It is a very spooky landscape, perhaps due to the isolation one feels when driving through it. Alternatively, it is also known as the “Horror Stretch,” due to a combination of the eerie but boredom-inducing, unpicturesque nothingness of the drive, the number of fatal crashes that have happened along this highway, and the list of disappearances and murders that have occurred along it. 

The most infamous murder was Noel Weckert, a skydiver driving with his wife to a jumpers' carnival in Rockhampton, who was found slumped, still seat-belted, in the front seat of his Toyota Celica. He had been shot dead through the head with a .22 calibre rifle, probably while sleeping. Meanwhile, the bloated, sun-broiled body of his wife, also shot through the head, was found two weeks later in a creek, where she had apparently fled her attackers. Eventually two men were charged with what became known as the Connors River murders, and were sentenced to life imprisonment, but not before more ghosts and more stories from the Horror Stretch, some real, some imagined, had emerged, including a couple of English holidaymakers similarly shot at by a sniper; a 14-year-old girl that went missing; a 26-year-old Aboriginal woman that was sexually assaulted, murdered and dumped in the Fitzroy River, and more travellers, two from Sydney, shot as they slept in sleeping bags by the roadside. 

These stories are even more terrifying to me since I have in fact travelled this highway myself whilst on holiday, and can thus attest to its uneasy atmosphere. We decided not to have lunch in Rockhampton, figuring we’d be able to find a diner on the way up to Airlie Beach, only to discover that there weren’t any places to eat for at least 250 kilometres, and my husband ended up being so tired that we didn’t reach our destination, a camping site near Airlie Beach, until the next day. We decided to sleep by the road-side that night, but I didn’t get much shut-eye at all. I didn’t read about this highway’s reputation until months after I visited it, but once I read it, it made perfect sense, and I feel as if I survived something quite eerie indeed. 

Lier Psychiatric Hospital, Norway

A list like this wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of an abandoned psychiatric hospital, and I wanted to avoid being typical by including one from Norway, instead of the usual lists that include ones from America. Reading about this place made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in all the right ways, and was the inspiration for one of my short stories. Located in the middle of nowhere, just outside Oslo (the capital of Norway), this hospital has a long history as an institution. The sickest people in society were stowed away here and went from being people to being test subjects in the pharmaceutical industry’s search for new and better drugs. The massive buildings house the memory of a grim chapter in Norwegian psychiatric history the authorities would rather forget. Here, the staff tested new medicines, lobotomy, electroshock “therapy,” and drugs like LSD on the patients in hope it could make them better. Those that were tested on frequently failed to ever leave and died on hospital grounds, as is apparent by the old suitcases still stuffed full of clothes located in some of the rooms even today. Today, the only visitors are teenagers going there at nights looking for ghosts and soaking up the spooky atmosphere.

Island of the Dolls, New Mexico, Mexico

Even though this island is now totally abandoned, over 50 years ago, a man named Don Julian Santana left his wife and kids and moved there to live the rest of his life alone. When he was living there, the body of a dead little girl came floating up in one of the canals. Don Julian thought he had become haunted by her spirit. He began to collect dolls and decorate the island with them. He would trade vegetables and fruits in exchange for any dolls. The dolls were believed to be used by Don Julian as a shrine for the spirit that haunted him. He continuously collected dolls and decorated them all over the island, until he died.

These days, hundreds of these terrifying dolls, their severed limbs, decapitated heads, and blank eyes adorn trees in varying states of decay. Since Don Julian’s death in 2001, the place has become a popular tourist attraction, where visitors bring more dolls to put on display.

Lincoln Way, Clairton, Pennsylvania, USA

If you’ve ever wondered what the world would be like if you fast-forwarded into the future only to find yourself standing in the midst of a post-apocalyptic world, one main road in Clairton, Pennsylvania would definitely fire up your imagination. Once a lively cul-de-sac residential street with 16 homes, all that’s left are abandoned, crumbling homes, overgrown trees and bushes and the crumbling asphalt roadway and sidewalks. What exactly happened on Lincoln Way that made everybody abandon their homes, leaving behind all of their belongings? What kind of stories sit buried in the remnants left behind by each family previously inhabiting these houses? When the local authorities or locals themselves are asked, you never get a straight answer, with most of them avoiding answering the question altogether. One urban paranormal legend states that a beast the size of a horse with red eyes resides and lingers in the woods that surrounds the “once was” community of Lincoln Way, which is why they all left in such a hurry. Another, less scary, proposal is that the houses had to be abandoned due to an exceeding amount of foreclosure, or over environmental concerns, such as toxic fumes being emitted from the coke piles at the U.S. Steel Clairton Plant situated directly across from the neighbourhood on North State Street. Some former residents stated frequent sickness, unbearable bad odours and unexplained occurrences. Others say the properties were bought up and the neighbourhood was to be demolished for a highway expansion that never happened.

Tax assessment records also show that the homes have had the same owners since the 1970s , but payment of taxes have been spotty or non-existent for all but three of the homes, regardless of being occupied or not. Over the years, some of the homes have burned down or fallen down, but around ten of them remain with leaking roofs, crumbling walls, rotting floors and broken windows, the copper and other metals having been stripped by salvagers. There are also several sinkholes scattered around the land surrounding Lincoln Way. According to Clairton city manager Howard Bednar, the city hopes to demolish the remaining homes, but with tight budgets, abandoned homes that sit among occupied areas of the city are more of a priority. Once demolished, the Redevelopment Authority of Clairton will take possession of the properties that are delinquent on their taxes. Until then, Lincoln Way will continue to serve as a glimpse into a post-apocalyptic future.

Oradour-Sur-Glane, France

Amongst all the tragedies that occurred in World War Two, one French village and the events that transpired there, stand out. The town of Oradour-sur-Glane was witness to a brutal massacre that killed almost every man, woman, and child in the village on the afternoon of the 10th of June, 1944. In order to avenge the kidnapping of a German soldier by the French Resistance, Nazi SS troops herded more than 400 women and children into the village church, soaked it in petrol and blocked all the exits before setting it all alight. The men were moved by Nazi forces into the village’s barns, shot so they couldn’t move and doused in petrol before being set ablaze. The final death toll stood at 642 people, including 254 women, 207 children, and 181 men.

Since the massacre, Oradour-sur-Glane has remained untouched, serving as a reminder of the atrocities of war and the evil of the Nazis, as well as a shrine to the unfortunate people who died.

50 Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom

This list wouldn’t be complete without a genuine haunted house example. 50 Berkeley Square has a long-held reputation as being the "Most Haunted House in London." The four-storey brick town house, built in the late 18th century, has a rather chequered history, with a number of deaths having taken place within its walls. However, it is not the number of deaths that is important, but rather the manner in which they occurred. Quite a few people are said to have perished due to the terror instilled within them by a nameless horror that claims the building as its home.

The earliest ghost sightings come in the form of a young woman, seen to be hanging from the windowsill on the uppermost floor. She can be seen screaming, before letting go and disappearing as she falls. Legend has it that a young girl named Adeline threw herself out of this window in order to get away from her abusive uncle. The type of abuse varies, but in all respects, it was quite cruel. Her ghost was reported as early as 1789, and old newspapers report that "since then more than 50 respectable people have reported seeing Adeline clinging to the windowsill, about to drop to her doom."

In 1872, aristocrat and politician Lord George Lyttelton stayed a night in the house for a bet. He set up a bed in the attic where he was to sleep the night, to test his resolve against the horror said to reside there. He did not really believe in the nonsense stories, but still took a shotgun for good measure. During the night, an apparition in the form of a brown tendrilled misty mass appeared, and Lyttelton fired his gun at it. In the morning light, he looked for what he had fired at, but there were no remains or proof that he had hit anything at all. Lyttelton would later say that the upper rooms were "supernaturally fatal to body and mind."

In 1879, a new family had moved into the house, and one of the daughters was due to have her fiancée visit. The maid was sent upstairs to set up the attic room as a guest room. Soon she was heard screaming, and when the family ran up to see what the commotion was about, they found her on the floor, backed into the corner, repeating over and over again "Do not let it touch me". She died the following day in an asylum.

Upon hearing this, a 'nobleman' stayed in the attic to get to the bottom of what had happened. He was a rather sceptical chap, but still the family told him to ring a bell they placed for him, if there was any trouble. His is the first death officially reported in the house. The cause of death was 'from fright'. In the middle of the night the bell was heard to ring, frantically followed by a gunshot. He was found dead on the floor, his face a mask of terror.

By 1887 the house was once again empty, and due its reputation, no-one was keen to move in. Luckily for the house, two more victims arrived, this time in the form of sailors – Edward Blunden and Robert Martin. On Christmas Eve the sailors had arrived in London, but had no money for lodgings, so they wandered the streets until they could find an empty building to make camp for the night. They eventually found their way to Berkeley Square, and seeing that number 50 was obviously vacant, decided to spend the night there. They settled for a second-floor bedroom, and soon Martin was asleep, but Blunden was restless and frightened. He could hear footsteps in the corridor, and soon the door opened. As Blunden watched, a dark and shapeless form entered the room. Blunden reached for a makeshift weapon, a fire poker from the fireplace. The noise had awoken Martin, who saw the massive tendril strangling Blunden. Fearing for his own safety, Martin took the opportunity to run out the bedroom door, down the stairs, and out of the building, where he soon ran into a police constable. Martin relayed the story and the two men went back to number fifty. What they found was Blunden, dead on the pavement. He had either jumped or been thrown out of the second-floor window, his body crushed by the fall.

The stories continued from those brave or foolhardy enough to venture into number 50 after dark, but soon eventually the building was occupied again, this time by the Maggs Bros – Antiquarian Book Dealers. They have occupied the building since 1937, and have never reported any major disturbances. The staff have, however, heard strange noises from the upstairs rooms, but none have dared to venture there, not out of fear, but rather because they are not allowed to, as the police have placed a sign, a warning saying that the upper most rooms are not to be used for anything, not even storage.

If you take a look for information on this location, you will find many more stories about the nameless horror that resides in number 50 Berkeley Square. You will also find different versions of the stories discussed here, as they change as they are retold, like most ghost stories that stretch back for any long period of time. The versions posted here are my favourites.

Mt Everest, Nepal

And now, on to a place where most of us will never visit, but which is no less spooky. Mount Everest serves not only as a testament to the majesty of nature's beauty, but as an alluring siren song calling to the heart of every adventurer. Despite the risks, thousands swarm to Nepal every year in an effort to conquer the tallest point on Earth. Many of them never leave. Over 250 bodies remain on Everest, giving it claim to the title of the world's largest open-air graveyard. While most Mount Everest deaths occur due to avalanches, falls, and exposure to the harsh climate, the area known as the “Death Zone” holds a terribly high body count and comes with its own unique set of problems.

As one climber put it: "Everest is littered with dead bodies. For the most part everyone stays very positive, you don’t talk about this stuff, but you can’t help but notice the bodies because their clothes are still bright. You might see some bare flesh, but you won't see a skull as the skin is almost embalmed as if it's been frozen in time, almost like a waxwork. The clothes are flapping in the wind and ultra violet light, each person with their own story."

The Death Zone is commonly known as the area above 26,000 feet. When the human body enters this altitude, it slowly starts to die. Then it becomes a race against the clock for climbers to make it from this mark to the peak and back again before their body fails them. Since oxygen at this level is only a third of what it is at sea level, climbers may find themselves sluggish, disoriented, and fatigued. The pressure makes weight feel ten times heavier and causes extreme distress on organs. Because of these severe effects, climbers usually only have a window of 48 hours inside the Death Zone and are strongly urged to use supplemental oxygen at all times.

If someone dies on Everest, it's almost impossible to retrieve their body, especially in the Death Zone. Due to unbearable weather conditions, severe lack of oxygen, pressure on dead weight, and the fact that many bodies on Mount Everest are completely frozen onto the mountain face, most corpses are left exactly as they fall. Overall, standard protocol is to simply let these figures, frozen in the final moments of death, become a permanent addition to the rocky terrain. It would make sense that the mountain's nickname is EVER REST.

And that concludes my list on this topic for now. I may do another similar list sometime down the track. Farewell.

the GazettE ~ Uruha about World Tour’13 ~

translation from Garish Room #20

What were you thinking about during the Gazette World Tour'13?

Uruha: We haven’t been abroad for a long time, I have already managed to forget all past impressions, and there was no benefit from the old experience. "Oh? And it seems ok to me...?" (laughs). I just noticed that 6 years ago I went to Europe with only one guitar and one set of pedals. This time I had almost the same set of equipment, as in national tours. Compared with the last time we managed to play concerts in a great ambience, and my motivation has increased noticeably.

What a good effect. Before going on tour, you took part in two festivals: russian KUBANA FESTIVAL and japanese SUMMER SONIC.

Uruha: KUBANA FESTIVAL was very good. Since it is a fairly large open-air festival, there gathered about twenty thousand spectators. The beginning of our performance was after 23 pm, but in Russia the sun sets for a long time, so at about this time it went down. In a way, it was the best time to speak (laughs). In addition, the mood of the audience was "burning", and mojo didn't stop out for a minute. And at SUMMER SONIC my favorite Western performers often play, I always get a sincere pleasure. To all other things, this time we were satisfied with our performance, and the reaction of fans was good. Getting out of your comfort zone and accepting a challenge from outside is a precious chance. Thinking about such things, I think that I want to continue to perform at festivals.

We are looking forward to your performances with impatience. Let's talk about the world tour. The first part of your tour brought you first to Mexico, and then to South America.

Uruha: As for South America, I had a feeling, that we were baptized at the moment we arrived in Mexico. At the airport, a lot of people gathered, it was something awesome. When we first started talking about the tour in South America, we were in such moods: "I heard that musicians in Brazil are greeted very warmly, but are the foreigners really aware of the Gazette?", "Do they listen to us there?". But when we arrived and received such a stormy first reception, we didn’t know what to think: "How could we get such popularity here?". Perhaps, the reception was too passionate, even scared a little (laughs). I don't know is Mexico supportive of Japan, but the fans of the Gazette were filled with passion (laughs).

It seems that they are quite heard about you. However, travelers are often cautioned about Mexican water and food.

Uruha:  Yes, we were strongly advised not to drink tap water in the hotel. But I'm such a person who is annoyed to take precautions all to one. In the room, mineral water was left in advance, but I used tap water when brushing my teeth, for example. 

Come on! But this is somehow disgusting...

Uruha: Nothing like this. Similarly, I quietly took a shower in the hotel. I didn't feel the slightest indisposition, because on my day off I went to the ruins of the Teotihuacan pyramids. I think, Teotihuacan is an energetically powerful place. In these pyramids at once there is an alien quality of production (laughs).

Well, you say, quality ... (laughs). Concerts were just as awesome?

Uruha: It's not the word. Unable to feel the mood, the audience tried their best, and it looked so innocent. Everyone listened to their feelings and enjoyed it in their own way. In this sense, I felt the difference of cultures and mentality. I often recalled the situation in the Japanese hall, while I was abroad. But still, bringing the thought to the end, although all countries have fun in different ways, in each of them there is an incredible enthusiasm.

How interesting.  After Mexico, you went to Chile and Argentina, went deep into the continent.

Uruha: I knew in advance something about public safety in Chile. In fact, throughout the city walls of the houses are painted graffiti, and the smell of danger is directly in the air.  But despite this, we got a lot of pleasure from the concert.  The concert venue in Chile was built during the Japanese Taisho era; it looks like it was meant for boxing matches and it looked like a mini version of the Budokan. It looked majestic, the lighting and other details were quite old, but nevertheless the play platform was extremely convenient. So I can say that in Chile the mood of our tour was able to catch the right wave.

I think you have gained invaluable experience thanks to concerts and even weekends spent in these unexplored countries.

Uruha:  However, Argentina, following Chile, was even frightening. They say that there are blocks where even children carry weapons. In Argentina we had shooting, but the director who chose the location for the shooting said: "We will take photos on the outskirts of the city on the border with the slums." I was shooting on the bank of a river, and it seemed that it was only necessary to go over it, and you would immediately get into trouble. "Why here?" (laughs). We shot in a hurry, but at the height of the shooting the local coordinator said suddenly: "It won’t end well”,  and began to repeat: "Beware of the local". And at this time, while the coordinator was waving his hands: "Everything is good! Finish! ",  the operator continued to shoot (laughs). Now I can remember it with a laugh, but at that moment it was really scary.  

It's good that everything turned out okay. The last battle of the first half of the tour was Brazil, known for its hot temperament.

Uruha:  In Brazil it was very cool. And when we arrived at the airport, and when we arrived at the concert hall, there was such a crowd of fans that even the barriers were bent. It seemed to me that we really became stars (laughs). And since the ardor of the fans differed even from Chile and Argentina, it kind of got in the way (laughs). The concert turned out to be terrific. The Brazilians themselves are such, however, there was an impression that they did not know what to do when the concert began. But they were having fun... it seems (laughs).

It seems that they perceive rock music completely unsophisticated. It seems you really enjoyed the tour of South America.

Uruha:  Yes, very much. At first it didn't make a special impression, but it's worthwhile to stay there for a long time, and you become attached to it. By the way, Mexican food was disgusting. It's freaking spicy. Seeing some green paste, I decided that this is an avocado, but it was unrealistically burning (laughs). I would not say that I have moved to a new level of perception of spiciness, but it can't be conveyed in words (laughs). But you know, I want to try it again. Because such a spiciness will be well with beer. When the tour of Central and South America ended, I realized that time had flown by like an instant. I still desire to come there again.

Probably, the matter is that this place perfectly approaches to Uruha-san. Returning home from Brazil and not having time to rest, you went to the second part of the tour -  the European round of the battle began.

Uruha: On the day of the return and the day following it, we were free, but we flew to France very soon. It was hard. However, I was able to continue the journey due to the fact that I came home and relaxed a bit. In addition, the tour of Europe was different from the South American part, and I went there prepared. After arriving at the place, we took the bus, then went to the hotel, then to the concert stage, played a live... This repeating cycle looked like a normal Japanese tour and was pretty dull. Unlike in South America, where a shock shake from each event lined up in a whole chain, and memories of which were deeply imprinted in the memory, in Europe we quietly peacefully swept through the cities (laughs). Just Europeans are sufficiently courteous, so they did not gather in crowds, and there were almost no cases for fans to come to the hotel. And at the entrance to the club, I felt some kind of invigorating feeling. It's not that European fans strictly follow the rules, it's all a mentality. In the beginning, at the airport in France there were several welcoming people, but they all stood at a distance and waved to us. Something like Japan and very different from Central and South America (laughs).

Due to the fact that you immediately went from one part of the world to another, you even more felt the contrast. In the foreign tour, you have to move between cities. How did you spend your time on the trip?

Uruha: I listened to music, played games. In addition, we filmed every concert, and during the bus crossings I watched these videos. The bus was luxurious this time. It was just huge,  there were beds, both on the first and second floor there was a place on the likeness of the lobby, quite wide, with a sofa, table and TV. We connected a video camera to it and watched concert records together. It was a real house on wheels, very comfortable.

This, probably, is experienced only abroad. When you went to Europe 6 years ago, there was a fashion for Japanese anime and visual-kei. What is the situation there now?

Uruha:  Last time we had an event in the anime store. So closely they associated anime and visual-kei. But this time we didn’t notice anything like this. And there were no fans in the cosplay outfit.

In other words, this time it was the other way around, and it can be said that all the spectators who came were exclusively fans of the Gazette?

Uruha: Yes. The difference was visible clearly. Everywhere before the beginning of the concert, the voices were unanimously called the Gazette, and during the live people were having great fun. The so-called "cultural boom" calmed down a bit, but we felt the love to the GazettE by our skin. However, it didn’t seem that in Europe all the “forces” had flocked to the concerts, so we thought that we probably wouldn't gather more people. It must be cause we came for the second time. In Central and South America we were greeted very warmly,  but there are still a lot of incomprehensible things, and, probably, if we come again, then such a raving delight will not happen. In this sense, it is important every time we step on the rake.

What a deep thought. The Gazette World Tour'13 helped you to realize a lot.

Uruha: Right. Since the last time, we ourselves have grown up, and our view of things has changed. This time we treated each country not only as a place where we give a concert, but as a country itself. For example, when we traveled around Central and South America, we clearly felt the difference in cultures and customs and paid attention to public safety. When we arrived in Mexico, we found a crowd of demonstrators and saw, as in an instant, people with shields lined up in a row. Thus, in countries with such a different situation, the fans of the Gazette still came to our concerts. If to look at this from the side of price policy, the tickets were very expensive, and the fans had to work for several months to come to the concert. And they did it all the same ... Awareness of this prevailed in us. That's why, even if the fans behave like mad, we should accept this. I'm glad that we went on this tour already in the sense that I began to think about things that I haven't been able to notice before.

Returning from the tour, did you feel anything special about Japan?

Uruha: It is not surprising, after all, that the homeland evokes a sense of peace. Arriving at Narita Airport, I first went to the vending machines (laughs). Abroad there are almost no ones, so I felt calm just after looking at them (laughs).  I still have this impression that the spirit of the homeland is felt even in such familiar things.

translated from japanese to russian by haruurara-kazan on tumblr

translated from russian to english by me

as always thx for reading and sorry for mistakes ^^

Innerview: M.C. / California Univ. of Pennsylvania​

April 2007

Photo: Family Farm via Google

Note: ​Interview for a design student’s art history paper​.​

0​1) Where did you grow up? My birth was almost recorded at home in an early 1979 blizzard. The gravel road was so full of snow that my mother was transported by a tractor to the paved road leading to the nearest hospital in the town of Chillicothe, MO. I spent the first half of the ’80s on this farm. My brother and I had the best “Star Wars” collection, the old cow got stuck in the mud, I trapped granddaddy long legs in mayonnaise jars, I cried to the raccoon wallpaper, we had chickens in the basement, I loved to romp around the farm and enjoyed everything from dead animals, to The Beatles to tractor pulls. There was a strange beast known as Leopard Man who roamed the local woods, lept fences in a single bound and liked to sneak into houses in search of peanut butter. One of the most memorable moments in my life, a significant spark that led me to my current path of thinking, came in the middle of a somewhat existential crisis in kindergarten where I blacked-out on top of a large metal slide and cracked my head on the ground. My Father’s dream farm was dry for many seasons until the bank kicked us out for lack of bill paying. Thus, forcing us to move into the house/farm that my Father grew up on. This new tilled earth was on a black-top tar road in the rural farming lands of North Central Missouri (really, not too far from the first farm and closer to my grandparents). The town I went to school in has 360 occupants. The graduating class of 1997 had 24. Many additions and renovations later, my parents are still in that same house today. We have a bridge over a creek and many memories of tree houses, dams, forts, sandbox creations, walking on ice and animals are still imprinted there. There are four of us farm children. We loved the opportunity of being able to pee outside, swim in the creek and cattle tank and getting hosed off at the back door…though, none of us will carry on the legacy of the farm that has had many generations of Gibson children laughing and crying in it’s dirt. Even though a majority of time was spent out-of-doors, going to county fairs, playing with animals, hunting and getting dirty, a large portion of time was spent locked in our bedrooms making things and drawing. As children of the 1980s we consumed every possible pop-culture outlet to the real world. My favorite things of the period are still sitting in my studio. Still to this day I can not understand how people shed the things from their youth. I still have everything my grandmother made me. Though, I do not have my dead animal backpack. It got thrown-out. My biggest influences from the time are my Grandparents, Garbage Pail Kids, Pee-Wee Herman, Dr. Demento, war, animals, comic books, tractor pulls, ball cards, films and anything by Jim Henson. My best friend lived in a funeral home. I spent many nights there. We saw many townsfolk lay there. One time we went to the Kansas City, MO airport to pick-up a dead body in the hearse and then went to eat at Showbiz Pizza for my friend’s birthday. When there was a dry spell we played ping-pong and watched movies in the funeral parlor. This was my new after school sanctuary. Even though I could watch most anything at home, I saw many new titles with my buddy. These include Shaft, The Godfather, Alien, Terminator, Evil Dead and loads of other awesome things of that nature. In high school I still stayed in my room as everyone else was out dating. I didn’t understand it all. I was still trying to understand myself. I also enjoyed shooting baskets by myself on my homemade basketball court in the middle of the sheep lot. I spent all of my spare time drawing and making things and playing with my big sheep dog named Bear. I loved skyscrapers, baseball stadiums and graffiti. I wanted to be a sports stadium architect until I realized I was never going to get the hang of math. I went to a Fine Arts Academy in Missouri in the summer of 1996 and realized that maybe I could be a person who makes things of some sort. It was the only thing I was ok at. 0​2) Where do you live now and how do these setting​s​ influence your work? I am well into my 6th year of living in Kansas City, MO. If I get moody for a break from city life or a desperate want to see the stars at night, a two hour retreat can easily be made back to the farm. I enjoy going back and someday I’d like to live in a more rural setting, but closer to the city. I really don’t know how much longer I’ll live here. I’m itching to experience life in other regions. I don’t wish to live an die in the same state. The first four years of my design odyssey I worked as a janitor and grounds keeper. I love these kinds of jobs because I am my own boss, I am left alone and I feel like I am actually doing something with my time…cleaning and drawing and thinking and reading and writing and eating. Now I am employed within a seven minute walk out my back door. My parents think this new job is more prestigious because i sit in a sterile office cubicle and type things into a computer all day. They think it’s a real job. It is not a real place to me. I kinda envy the bum that drinks a cold one every morning at eleven in the back alley and then goes about his business of freedom. The good thing is that I still draw and think while I’m there and I am fortunate to do a lot of networking on the internet. The only honest reasons for me to be there are walking to work, free bbq and soda and health insurance. It is an ok place, but I know it is not my place. Anymore I tire easily of the idea of working another man’s dream. But, it keeps the basement lights on. I do miss bringing home strange and wonderful items from my janitorial positions and all the extra time I had to read books and comics and being alone. However, with my new job I start later so I can squeeze a few rounds of my real work before. Mornings are my best work time. I love to be alone in my basement, maybe a cat or two…I am developing the bad back/posture of my grandfather’s lineage from crouching in my design clubhouse at a table made out of an old door and windows from the farm chicken house. If I am not making things I love to watch movies. I love to hang-out with my wife and four cats too. ​0​3) Where did you receive your education? All that required me to get into Southwest Missouri State University (now, Missouri State University) was top 50% of my graduating class and a minimum score on the ACT. I was the number 12 student out of 24 in my class and I can’t remember my ACT score, but it was right on the nose. I was familiar with the school and town from the setting of the Missouri Fine Arts Academy, so I was good to go. I​t​ doesn’t take much in high school to take top honors as one of the best art talents. However, in college I kind of had to start over as I found there was an abundance to build and grow from and I had a lot to learn and do. On top of that I was extremely naive to what I was getting in to with the graphic arts. I made an outlandish claim to some classmates my first year that I was going to take the route of graphic design that didn’t involve computers. I had no idea the impact of computers on design. Rather, I just wanted to make things with my hands. Turns out things were definitely in my favor as I realized how much of a privilege it was/is to study design there. ​0​4) Describe the curriculum and how effectively do you feel it prepared you for your career? The design professors I studied under are from Eastern Europe and Russia. This was a very unique experience not only in the subject of design but also culture. For a bushy-tailed farm boy this was an immense impact especially. The ways of teaching was more in a tradition sense. Certainly, we learned computers, but more importantly the idea of thinking and drawing. It’s a crucial element to be able to draw. Not only with a pen or pencil but an exacto knife. I don’t believe someone when they say they can’t draw. And it really bothers me when it is a designer. And I don’t understand it when designers fit design/art into a time frame. That’s never been an issue for me. If the switch is off then I must be dead. I know of people who work full-time design jobs that they hate. They come home and don’t do anything but complain about their day. Why not put that frustration towards making something? I know that jobs can drain you physically and emotionally, but why even put yourself through the design motions if you don’t love it…or even be at a place that doesn’t honestly love you back? If I ever had a “real” design job, it better cater to me. It better give me parental rights. Anyway…I am rambling. The importance of design history and culture was also taught in school. Even on my own now I am still cultivating knowledge. Not only from professional design past and present, but from the language of everyday people and things in the world. I don’t consider what I’m doing just for designers or art types. It’s for everyone. This is something that I grabbed from school too. You’ve got to learn how to speak in different languages visually and somehow make it universal. Design is a powerful tool. One of the most powerful things on the planet. 0​5) How did you get your start? Every semester the last couple years of school we would get the itch for the “real” world of design and take tours of professional firms. I always came out of these experiences rather disappointed and depressed. Nothing was heartfelt to me. It was all soulless and everything seemed glossed over and departmentalized. Cookie cutter conveyor belt meat markets. Not every place is like that, but everything that I saw was just dead to me. As a person who is very private and protective of their creative freedom and parental rights and on the path to doing things a bit different, nothing seemed right for me. This isn’t the case for every one. I think we all fit somewhere and you have to find your voice. The big shot studios just weren’t for me. And at that time there weren’t as many smaller firms like there are today. And even then the smaller ones weren’t impressing me much. Anyway….I was doing a lot of work for bands/musicians on the side in school at this time. This was something I loved. It clicked and felt right. I had creative freedom and owned my own work…and I loved music. So, I just befriended many music people and it’s been word of mouth ever since 2000. And if you do something enough it just becomes a part of you. I feel I hit the whole rock poster revival scene just right and started getting recognition and response right away. And here I am…still here, I guess. Though, I’m definitely looking to branch out a bit more. I’m currently interested in making some books and working with clients that can help me quit my day job. I’ll always flirt with the band stuff. Even though there is no money in independent music design and people can sometimes be pretty flakey and unreliable. But, I knew what I was getting into when Art Chantry told me, “Expect to starve. Several times over.” ​0​6) Did you have an internship? Never. Never really wanted one. Never really needed one because I was doing so much freelance my last two years of college. And when I dropped out of school and moved to Kansas City I didn’t want an internship because I was already starting my own little company. I had friends that worked internships. Some with hardships…some eventually helped sail the ships. It just wasn’t my direction. Everybody has a different voice in their design tool belt. What’s funny now is that I have many students contact me every Spring in hopes to intern with this big design firm called DJG Design. It’s funny and sad when I tell them it’s just me and I don’t even make enough money for me to be a full-time employee. Someday I just might take them up on it though. I can pay in hot dogs or something. They can sleep on my floor. I feel bad for most kids that get into an intern relationship. It’s generally a great experience and can lead to possible employment, but I feel that if you are working your rear off and a lot of the time doing the dirt work for people, there should be a reward. Some don’t pay at all, which means you either have to be independently wealthy or work a second job. I wouldn’t want my intern working a second job because that is less time and thought spent on what they really need to be doing. That is ridiculous to me. Oh well, I guess I’m not in a position to authentically voice that from either side. ​0​7) What was your first design job? Was it a positive experience? The only “real” design job I’ve come close to having was making fliers for the department of Campus Recreation at Southwest Missouri State University. It was ridiculous from the top as the ones running the show didn’t trust designers to design for them. The design was off balance from the get go. And of course I was hired for my skills, though they thought they could play art director. Even the guy who was hired to be my art director had no design skills or background, but he was cool. He and I became really close friends and most of the time just cranked out all of our work rather rapidly because we knew what the head honchos would like. The rest of the time we laid on the floor and listened to music. I think we made a lot of people nervous because they didn’t know how to handle us. I gave-up at any real glimpses of trying to use the skills I learned that helped pay the salaries there…and my earning was dirt. It was really ridiculous. Though, on the side of that job I gained some access to valuable resources by way of computers and copy machines and was able to receive a few other design tasks on the side. At the time they were great learning experiences and helped me start to build a name for myself. A name that couldn’t be made working under anybody else. Still, I had people of higher position/status that knew nothing about design try to give me their rusty cents. They tried to tell me how to do things and I took the liberty to put my own personal stamp on things. I made a few things for different student activity groups and brochures and giant poster calendars that every student received. I was the last person to make the giant posters because of how nervous I made the people higher up. It was so great to hold that kind of power at my fingertips. ​0​8) How do you feel about advertising/marketing? I am able to get away with a lot and I pretty much do what I want with my brand of show poster promotion. But, there is a responsibility that comes with that. I’m not only representing myself, but the band, promoter, venue, city…place it’s hanging up. I guess it’s not really advertising, but it is in it’s own abstract way. In terms of conventional advertising/marketing, I can’t really take anything seriously. Maybe because I know how easy it can be for a designer to slap something together to get attention or emotions all wound-up. And it’s normally all about money. Design has really poisoned me but it’s also helped me to see. I dislike most all advertising and marketing. I could never work for them unless it’s on my terms. I realize it’s all a blanket of fabrication to push a product or service, but there are very few things that feel pure and honest to me anymore. And it’s getting worse in the world. Yeah, something can be clever or interesting or well-rendered or smart or completely over-the-top-awesome and get me to laugh, think or kick the air. But, that doesn’t mean it’s gonna change my life. I don’t know any more than the next guy. I can barely read a restaurant menu. And I’m so tired of bandwagon designs and other people telling me what’s hot. I don’t care what’s hot. It’s all so uninspiring and unimportant to me. I see this going on in the majority of the music industry too with every flavor-of-the-month recycled band lacking true heart and spirit. ​0​9) How did you become interested in graphic design? Early on it was anything from the “Star Wars” logo, to logos on seed corn sacks, to sports team logos, to the Apple Records logo, to the “Batman” emblem to the power of historical symbols like the swastika, indian arrowheads and cave paintings. Growing up I didn’t really know what graphic design was in a professional sense. But I knew about it in the manner of how things should be put together in my head and own little world. I just enjoyed drawing logos and comics and all sorts of things, cutting things from magazines and designing type. I was horrible at math but I could draw geometric configurations like mad. The kids that sparkled at math couldn’t draw a straight line. It was so weird to me that they could compute, but not see things like me. In the fifth grade I won a county-wide logo competition. I knew I would win. I was chosen out of several hundred students from many age divisions to represent a skating rink. I received 10 free passes for winning and was supposed to be honored in the grand opening but my school principal forgot to tell me about the celebration. What a joke. Which, I didn’t really care about (Heck, I still don’t like to go to my own art openings). But, I was more upset when my family drove by the logo on the building and it was completely butchered. It wasn’t even mine anymore. I was so sad about that. Maybe that’s why I do things my way now. 10) Are there any designers that you are influenced by? A life-changing design day was when a Lester Beall book fell at my feet in the library while I was shuffling for a book down the shelf. I immediately diverted my search for whatever it was I was looking up and fell in love with Lester Beall. He is one of the great pioneers of modern design. And he seemed like a human being first and a designer second. I could really relate to him. I felt a connection to him when I saw him hugging a lamb. He had a design studio in his sheep barn. It was the coolest and I wanted to get to know him. I checked that book out for the next four months straight. I have many influences. Not only do designers/artists inspire me, but just everyday people and things in the world. I collect worn gloves, handwriting, lists, notes, children’s drawings and many things from the city streets. Ordinary trash becomes my treasure. I am always walking with my head down in hopes of spotting an animal or item in something. And i love thrift stores and pawn shops. My favorite artists are one of the folk art nature. Un-skilled people who one day just start making things. I really love Bill Traylor, Henry Darger, Gregory Blackstock, and Robert E. Smith. There is just so much heart and soul in folk art. I’m not into a lot of painters. I do like some Picasso and most all Robert Rauschenberg, Jean Michel-Basquiat and Peter Blake. Some of my favorite illustrators and designers include Saul Steinberg, Ray Johnson, Stanley Donwood, Henryk Tomaszewski, Alan Fletcher, Edward Gorey, Daniel Johnston, Art Chantry, Chris Ware, Stefan Sagmeister, Seymour Chwast (Push Pin!), Peter Saville, Vaughn Oliver and V23, Aubrey Beardsley, Graphus, James Victore, Saul Bass, Raymond Pettibon, Paul Klee, Ivan Chermayeff, Ralph Steadman, Paul Rand, Tibor Kalman, Cy Twombly…anyway, most anybody that has something to say and in their own way authentically. 11) It seems that your work references a DADA/Futurism/Constructivism style, would you agree with this? What draws you to this style? Rarely do I think about “style” until people bring it up in interviews or in person. Honestly, I don’t strive to attain one. Each day is different for me and my mind and design. I’ve always appreciated what Stefan Sagmeister says, “Style = Fart”. I guess when you approach it as a body of work the design I spill fits in a certain place. But, it’s more about idea and emotion to me. That is what and how it should be. I agree partly with your take on what the look of my body of work references. Maybe a lot of that is due to my particular like of the older school of design thought. Maybe the more collage nature. Though, I don’t really like to say it is that. I feel all design is collage to some extent. Perhaps the more controlled chaos style (I guess that would be a good tag) comes from my association and love with the school of Eastern European design that was channeled through my design instructors in college. I’ve never really been a fan of labels. It is certainly something to ponder though. However, the minute people start saying I am this or that…well, that is when I start to worry and try too hard to wrestle myself to do something else or go in another direction. It can be dangerous. I am my only competition. It’s really all quite silly in the grand salute to life. But, maybe I can learn a thing or two along the way? 12) How would you describe you style? I don’t know. Other than fumbled-mild-mannered-intuition and a bit of whatever is on my mind/heart. It’s Dee Jay Gee all the way and every second of the day. 13) Describe your design process. Boy, these questions are getting harder to answer for me. I love a good happy accident or angelic stumble. But, they can’t be relied upon. I love not thinking, rather just doing. I love intuition. Though, sometimes you do have to think a bit. But, I don’t like to over-kill. Sometimes the idea will become instantly and i will render exactly how it’s in my head. Sometimes I sketch a bit. I love to draw and do oodles and oodles of doodles. Process is a very important thing to me. It’s more important then the final product at times because it’s such a part of me. I have to stick with something once I start it or it’s lost touch with me. It’s hard to come back to something because I’ve already moved on and over it. Well, unless it’s something like a logo or CD design. These happen in several obsessive stages. Sometimes a break is needed to achieve perfection on things with a longer life-span in the world. But, with poster design and illustration it’s typically all on the spot and taken only serious to the point of it being non-serious. I have to have fun. I have to tell a story. And I love humor. Lots of it. I love to tickle myself. I love when others are tickled too. 14) Typically when working on a project, what percentage of time is spent on conceptualization? I brushed this a bit with the last question. It depends on the project I guess. Sometimes I get ideas rather rapidly and quite frequently. For some things it might take a bit to sift through the cliche or whatever mix of feelings or ideas I have that day. Each day is different. Sometimes I sit and wonder what a project I did this morning would look like had I done it in the evening or yesterday or tomorrow. I know it would be different. But, I can’t just sit on my hands. 15) How much time do you typically spend on a project? Some things really come quite rapidly. I’ve made posters in the span of minutes before. It’s more about time management for me. I sometimes have any where from a constant flow of five to ten to fifteen projects going on all at once. And on top of that interviews and book publishers and emails and inquiries and such…and of course the day job. So, I’m constantly thinking all day about the coming and going of things. I love the human mind how it’s always in and out. I love how I can think of something from my childhood and then the next file i pull/cull from my brain juice is about a poster and then i merge the two and B I N G O. Some of my best projects come at the last minute and have been in front of me the entire time. Some of it comes right when I’m told about the project. Sometimes I’m in strange places and put things together in my head or write on scraps of paper. I wish I was a good enough designer to draw you a map. But, I’m still trying to decipher where my hand meets my see. 16) Where do your ideas come from? I hinted at this in previous questions. A person can do something enough that it just becomes a part of them. Like another limb. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I just do it. I have to do it. It’s a part of me. It haunts me and busts the phantoms all at once. Design is a funny thing. It’s a scary thing. Ideas come and go. All the time. Influences are all around and in everything. I don’t put things in a time frame. I think all the time. A lot of the time I don’t think. I just do. I just be. I don’t aim to sound new-agey. Design is about life. In the past couple of years I’ve come to the realization that everything I’ve experienced has brought me to this point in this interview. It’s all composed some way and some how. I do a bit of the writing. Some of it is by a bigger hand. Some by just the push and pull of the earth. I’ve also learned to pull and cull from the past. My best and most vivid memories are from my youth. I feel a closer connection to my former self than i do my current. True, formal rules and training come to play with all of this. But, I didn’t really start to click with design until I started to click it with myself. And hopefully there will be more clicking to come…gotta stay busy and hungry. 17) Describe your favorite project that you’ve worked on and what made it special. I always answer a question like this the same. One of the best things I’ll ever make in my life is a handmade CD package for The Elevator Division back in the summer of 2002. The idea came at the the night I started printing. Well, actually it was spray paint. I had an image made for a month or more and then changed it at the last minute. It married the themes for the album “Whatever Makes You Happy” perfectly. With reflections of war and relationships in the songs, I made an image of a hand shooting off it’s index finger like a missile. An idea of shooting off one’s options and making decisions. It was not only fitting for the band/music but also to the the national/world agenda and climate. I went to war that night with many cans of spray paint and the idiot mind to do two-hundred and fifty all in one massive sweep. Each one was hand-cut from cardboard and handmade stencil sprayed and rubber stamped. Inserts were cut and folded and glued. I made the great choice of spray painting in my basement…something I will never do again as it could have killed me. At the last mist of red spray a crack thunder shook the massive turn-of-the-century home and I bolted from the basement and out the front door to a down poor fit for Noah himself. I lept off the front porch and slid head first down the embankment and into the street-turned-river current. I was born again. The drug dealing squatters across the street were on their front steps, looking at the fire in my eyes and the red paint streaming from them and nose and mouth. I was on something higher than chemical substance. 18) How much influence does music have on your design? What kind of music do you listen to? What are your favorite bands? Music has always aided in carrying the background. It’s silly sometimes when we say things like, “This is my soundtrack”. But, it’s true. I’ve always gotten so much out of music. I gave up trying to play music years ago. That’s not my calling. However, it’s constantly played a role in my life significantly. I loved to spin my Mom’s records when I was four or five. It still boggles me how all of that sound is compressed in a circle of vinyl. I grew up on family Beatles sing-a-longs in the car and rockin’ out on my smurf guitar to “Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney and Wings. That was my favorite song at age five. It has so much energy and I loved the James Bond movie of the same name. At one point when I was going through my awkward phase (when am I not?), I decided not to like The Beatles as much because my parents liked them. It was sad when I think about it now. I was also into all of the more novelty and fun stuff from the ’70s and ’80s when I was young. Things like hit television themes and film/broadway soundtracks and scores. And all of the fun cheese-pop stuff. I loved the storybooks with the narrator on record who told me when to turn the page. My brother and I loved to tape the Dr. Demento show every week. It was a late night DJ show that played a load of the weirdest songs about “Pencil Neck Geeks” and “Fish Heads”. It was the brand of humor we could find relation to. We also taped-off Saturday morning cartoon theme songs. Yes, we were the biggest dorks. Oh, Weird Al is amazing too! No wonder we were called fairies every day at that hick school until graduation. In the late eighties to early-to-mid nineties I went through all of the pop stuff. Whatever the radio got to the rural setting, that’s what we loved…though, by the time the radio waves got that far into the country, there was something new and better developing. I guess this is embarrassing stuff, but my first CD’s were Ace of Base and a best of by Bryan Adams. I redeemed myself with the third purchase of the soundtrack to “Ren & Stimpy”, which I still spin. In my last years of high school I got into Nirvana, Helmet and Tool. A lot more aggressive work, but stuff that had some interesting lyrics and great imagery/art. And Nirvana was basically more angsty Beatles anyway. College brought on more underground stuff and lots of the typical college radio stuff mixed with a bit of the mainstream. Then, the day after Christmas 1997 I bought Radiohead’s “OK Computer” on a whim. It had such a great impact on me and some close friends and led us to discover other music by artists like The Velvet Underground, Elliott Smith, Pavement and Jeff Buckley and then back to The Beatles again. Once my ears had opened completely, I began cultivating a lot of stuff that I missed out on from the shoe gaze movement to noise rock to indie and music spanning the past forty years or so. Of course I’m still at a constant catch-up. In the past five or six years I’ve really absorbed a lot of the singer-songwriters like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Brian Wilson, Neko Case, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Nick Drake, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, M. Ward, Andrew Bird and Sufjan Stevens. Of late I’m into looking for more and more of the underground folkies like Bert Jansch and some others. I’m also in love with the sound of recordings from the ’50s and especially the ’60s. I love the psychedelic rock stuff from the time too. Records I’m fond of so far this year include: “Death Proof” Soundtrack, Bright Eyes, The National, The Shins, Of Montreal, Deerhunter and Arcade Fire. I’ve never been more anxious to watch the new crop of artists make music. It’s a really exciting time right now as it seems that there is a new-old spirit and heart again with music. The four that I’m really interested to follow are M. Ward, Neko Case, Arcade Fire and Conor Oberst. Of course with all the great stuff comes a TON of sonic dysentery on the opposite spectrum. 19) How much direction do you get from a client as to what they want or are you pretty much given free range? For the most part it’s free range. However, I love it when a client has an idea to pitch or something to build from. It’s always fun…but, it depends on the person too. However, I dislike being an assembler. One time a band had another illustrator and they just wanted me to lay it out and pay me crap for it. They were pretty particular about it. I didn’t take the job. I’d rather get paid crap for my complete involvement. I am easy to get along with, but I don’t want to put somebody else’s work together. If somebody comes to me they normally know ahead of time what I can do. Even still they can tend to get too specific or wish to mimic another design already made. At this point they should go else-where or simply hire the designer they are trying to rip-off. Musicians can be hard to work with sometimes because they think they know a lot about design…because they want their album to look like an old Peter Saville cover for Joy Division. It might fit, and look cool, but why not try to push things a bit more and make it your own…help re-invent or start something new? True, everything has been done and aped before and again. But, it’s so discouraging to see album art that lacks proper thought, soul and heart. Or, even more stuff that looks cool but is a total copy cat. Some people don’t know how to think of me though. Maybe because they don’t really know what they are going to get? Maybe I make them nervous? Some people can crank out the same template of stuff over and over. I’m not wired that way. But, I try to give them what i feel is an honest depiction of the solution and something that best represents them. Something that can grab attention across the room or internet browser. I don’t mind borrowing elements from the past, but I think it’s important to put your own blood into it. Otherwise you’re just picking noses. And after those boogers dry they’re awful hard to scrape from the bottom of the wagon. 20) Who would be your ideal client? This is a good question as I’m looking into doing some other things among the mix of the usual band poster or CD. I’m looking at contacting some book publishers. I’d love to finally get out some of the children book ideas I have in my head and on paper. I’d love to just write in general. I have a love of film, so I plan to look into that avenue. For sure DVD packaging with The Criterion Collection. I’d also like to make more illustrations for magazines and papers. These pay pretty good and I can crank the stuff out rather quickly. For the moment there is not enough hours in the day… Some types of music I’d like to put to package design before I pass away include: Gangster Rap, New Country and Polka. I don’t really like any of that music, but I think it would be fun to come up with something different for them. 21) How do you think you have influenced graphic design? I never really think about this much until people start talking and asking. I don’t think I’m anything too special and I feel that if I am, I’m still too young to be causing a rift in the waters. First thing is that I am a human being. I just happen to be a human that makes things. I won’t be oblivious to the fact that I know that I’ve got something I’m sitting on here. I’m not denying that.. I’m confident in that. But, I don’t feel it’s all quite said yet. I plan to always be doing my best work. If I get to the point where I don’t like my work, then why do it? My only concern is someday ending up in a nursing home, worthless and without use of my hands. Please shoot me before that comes. But, I guess I could just play art director at arts and crafts time. Back to the subject…I have people all the time tell me things and simply do things with my work and it is all really startling. Things like art history professors showing my work in lecture halls and publishers from Turkey, Germany, Spain and other parts of the world placing me next to some of my influences in books and publications. Design show curators are finding me and becoming involved with my work. I get messages on the phone and emails from art directors of every major design magazine. Students and industry peers contact me all the time. It’s all really strange to me. Since my first days here in Kansas City people have told me they look forward to seeing my work out in public and add it to their collection at home. This blows my mind more than anything. Just the fact that it moved them in a way to keep it. I know how it goes as I used to do this with concert posters. One of the most touching things I’ve seen was on the bottom of somebody’s band flier here. It said “DJG Design Just Kidding.com”. I have no idea who did it. But, it is really funny and I feel truly honored by it. And this Friday, as in a couple of days from right now, I am giving a big lecture in front of my former design instructors at Missouri State University. I am excited and scared to death all at once. It is all pretty wild. And I still work a crummy day job. 22) How do you feel about seeing other designers copying your style? Have you seen or experienced this for yourself (just curious)? People tell me all the time that they’ve noticed a change in Kansas City poster design since I came here over five years ago. I don’t see it much because I don’t get out much. I have seen a few people becoming more inventive by printing on paper stocks other than bright pink, yellow and green. I see a lot of graph paper printing and just over-all more inventiveness and creativeness for something so short-lived as a show poster…not only from here but all over. I don’t know if they got this from me or what. I highly doubt I’ve inspired that many people. Right now with technology and with screen printing and letterpress becoming more practical and trendy you can throw a wadded-up poster and hit a poster designer. What’s great is that anybody with initiative, a work ethic and love can do it and get their stuff up and out quickly. Especially in a small town like this. But, at the same time I feel it’s easy for people to just depend upon the content of what others are doing as opposed to really finding their own voice and the right reasons. Some just do it because it earns cool points. I’d love to say I’ve inspired someone…but, only in the sense of a similar inspiration like the one I had when I was twelve and younger to just simply make things with a naive mind and with a heart to shut myself in and find myself through whatever it was I was doing. Not to be an artist but to just enjoy the act of making things and putting your fingerprints on the world…if there is reaction then that’s great. It’s a blessing and most touching to impact somebody’s day with the silly things that I make in solitary in a dark and damp basement. Especially in today’s information age and with people so busy and non-stop. It means a lot when I can affect somebody’s daily life with something that was on my mind. Postscript That is all. I am a bit drained and need to shower. I feel most of this is written quite hastily, but it’s a very honest and immediate sort of haste. I trust it is what you are looking for. Please enjoy. Ask questions if you need to. I am always here. Thank You. -djg

Two-Week Break pt.1

It’s been a second.. I was on my two-week break and I didn’t have access to a laptop. One of my friends had his but unfortunately, he only joined us for the first leg of the trip. SO get ready for quite the overload of information, I have a lot to catch you up on. 

It was 10 days, 5 cities, and 1 backpack. I won’t lie, I definitely re-wore some of my clothes, but luckily a few of our airbnb’s had washing machines. 

GENEVA- All I knew about Switzerland before our trip was that they were known for their chocolate and Swiss cheese (?). The views there were insane; the mountains were constantly in the background, snow-capped and all—it didn’t feel real. 

View of Lac Léman.

English was very prevalent there, not that I’ve had any glaring issues with a language barrier thus far, but more people that we interacted with spoke English in Geneva than in Paris. As they’re known for their chocolate, we went into one of their many stores, and got some spiced chocolate. They had all kinds of flavors—cinnamon, thyme, basil, jasmine tea, etc.—and as someone who often eats chocolate chips straight from the bag, I wasn’t really sure that I’d like this fancy variety, but I was pleasantly surprised. And you could definitely taste the spices. I enjoyed most things about Geneva, except their prices.. my friend got 4 chicken nuggets and a water at McDonald’s for $15. 

The view as we boarded our flight to Rome.

ROME- The weather was too nice, it was at least 60 degrees both days—we were spoiled. I didn’t know what to expect from Rome, all I really knew prior to our arrival was that the Colosseum was there. We arrived at night and our airbnb was a little outside of the city, so we decided to stay in our area for dinner. Gelato was a must post-meal, and on our way, we just happened to pass Saint Peter’s Basilica, I don’t think any of us realized how close we were to Vatican City. It was stunning. 

Saint Peter’s Basilica at night.

There is so much to see in Rome. I am definitely the type of person who prefers exploring new places and finding things spontaneously, but as we were only spending a few days in each place, creating a list of things to see was pretty essential. We went to the Colosseum, but decided against purchasing tickets to go inside due to the extremely long line (if you do decide to buy tickets, you need to buy them ahead of time online). We got pizza for lunch, and maybe it was where we were sitting or just the fact that it was in Rome, but I swear it’s one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had. 

Pizza with a view, no complaints.

This photo definitely doesn’t do the surroundings justice, but all the buildings were so vibrant, flowers in people’s window baskets, colorful shutters—needless to say, it was a stellar lunch. I was taking a photo of a particularly colorful door with cool graffiti, when a man came up to unlock it. It turns out it was his art studio, he invited me inside and it was crazy. 

It can only be described as an explosion of color. 

We checked off the rest of the classics—the Pantheon, Spanish Steps (my calves were burning), Trevi Fountain, etc. 

Trevi Fountain

Each place must’ve been more crowded than the last, there were people EVERYWHERE. Rome was beautiful, I loved all the colors and everyone was so friendly, but it’s definitely a tourist destination, so if that’s not what you’re looking for, maybe not worth the stop. 

VENICE- My sister did NOT love Venice when she visited, mainly because of a traumatic incident with a water taxi pre-flight, so to be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect to like it all that much. But I kinda loved it. It’s just so cool. All the water, the lack of cars (I don’t know whether or not I actually knew that they didn’t have any cars, but I was stunned, nonetheless), the set-up is just so unlike any other city that I’ve ever been to. Our airbnb host led us to our apartment when we arrived, and it was the biggest maze. It felt like we took countless turns and crossed numerous bridges, the fact that it was night did not help. And after our first dinner, the 5 minute walk home, took at least 30 minutes because we could not find our apartment. I had marked our location, but due to poor signal, but my flag was showing up in the water. Our first stop was one of Venice’s islands, Burano. It’s known for its colorful houses/buildings and it felt like I was in a cartoon.

One of Burano’s “streets” (is it still a street if it’s water...?)

I love sunrise and sunset, who doesn’t? But on almost all the vacations I take I get up to see sunrise on at least one of the days. Unfortunately, the idea of waking up at 6:30 AM wasn’t as well-received as I would’ve hoped by my friends, so I went by myself. Sunrise honestly wasn’t anything super special, but I really appreciated getting to see Venice before the city had actually woken up. Another tourist destination like Rome, there were constantly crowds of people when we were walking around, but it wasn’t quite the same at 7 AM. 

Venice in the morning. 

Also, they go door to door to pick up your trash and recycling, which is such an interesting concept, but I guess their streets are too narrow for trash cans. ALSO heads up, you have to pay for water at restaurants in Italy and there’s typically an additional service fee as well. 

This post has gotten quite long.. guess I have a lot to say. I’ll let you know about Prague and Berlin in my next one!

-Caroline

Computer Engineering

IPE- French American Exchange Program at ENSEA in Cergy-Pontoise, France

This was last minute but I'm a grad student so I was mostly drafting from life anyway. You can tell I was losing steam by the end though. All the library details are from my uni library, although I have never seen any dead Union soldiers, or any other ghosts for that matter. The creepy grad cages are my favorite part of giving tours.

 tuesjade prompt: school

The third floor of the library is so quiet every keystroke echoes. Last time you heard someone walking through, it was the security guard on their hourly late night round. You picked this spot for its isolation.

The door leading out into the central stacks creaks open, and you listen for the student's footsteps passing by. Instead, the curtain between your carrel and the stacks twitches back, and you squint out to see Jade waving at you from the other side of the grating. "I like your shower curtain."

"You would. School mascots are just anthro with a veneer of plausible deniability.”

You don't mention that the curtain is on your side of the door, which means she's pulled it backward (and tied it up with businesslike lashwork) with Space powers instead of with her hands. There's no one else in here, and the security cameras can't pick up that level of fine detail.

"Don't science students have their own library?" you ask. Wait shit, it sounds like you're trying to get rid of her. Which you're not, exactly, although if you wanted company you'd be doing research in your apartment. Still, when it comes to people it's safe to be rude to, even after all these years Jade Harley doesn't make your list.

If she takes offense, she doesn't say so. "They do, but a few of my theoretical readings have mentioned Foucault, and I think I've gone as long as I can pretending I know who that is."

"Yeah, you'll get random Foucault encounters in unexpected disciplines. If it's not him it's Derrida popping out of the tall grass of the lit review. Philosophers were never meant to escape."

"You would know." She glances at the shelves nearby. This section is materials so old they're still in Dewey instead of Library of Congress - another reason you preferred the spot. No one needs this stuff. "How many libraries do all your programs fit into?"

"A couple, but this is the best one." You've got a pretty good setup here, if you say so yourself. Books stacked up on the makeshift shelving unit, your own modem wired into the wall to make up for the library's spotty wifi, and a mini microwave tucked under your feet. Home away from home. "None of the others let you rent carrels."

"Is that what they're called? They look more like spooky library jail cells."

"Some undergrads passed through a few hours ago while I was typing and I heard one whisper, ‘I think there's a graduate student in there.’ They screamed and ran when I sneezed."

She giggles. "They thought you were a ghoooost."

"If anywhere on campus were haunted, this would be it." The third floor stacks are perpetually poorly lit. Thanks to later additions to a library building only Escher could love, the arched windows on the far wall open to nothing but brick. In Roxy's words, "it’s where you go to get some serious ass studying done or to share a hip flask with a Civil War ghost.”

"Actually, I asked Aradia, and she said it's clean. The chancellor's house, on the other hand, definitely registers as harboring some kind of otherworldly presence. We haven't determined whether it's the chancellor yet."

"Take a look at some of the desks and tell me this place isn't possessed by demonic energies." Graffiti springs up faster than the staff can afford to replace furniture, and when the wooden desks are too choked with pen doodles and carved Greek letters, people move to the walls. If they're not sharing their phone numbers, they're swapping insults with rival frats. You take anthropological interest in this detritus, although one time you'd tried to decipher a Sharpie scribble, made out "We fucked here ;)", and speedily left the seat.

"Rose says the building appeals to your Gothic sensibilities."

"If she compares me to Lord Byron, tell her those are fighting words."

Jade peers in, and you make a halfhearted effort to push the clutter of Monster cans and energy bar wrappers out of her line of sight. "How long have you been in there?"

You stretch your legs as far as they can go, which isn’t far. "I can still feel my feet, and if I have circulation that means it's been under ten hours."

She purses her lips. "Dirk..."

You gesture toward your open PDF files. Several are still waiting for you to review their footnotes. "This dissertation isn't going to write itself."

"It won't write itself if you're dead either."

"Overwork is neither Heroic nor Just."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm confident on a philosophical basis."

She shakes her head. "I know I'm up a little late too. I had a night class on campus, and then I had a bunch of grading to do… You know how I lose track of time when I'm working sometimes." When you'd all lived together, both of you would get lost in projects and miss meals, only noticing the time when someone showed up to drag you out of your room. Jade had started setting timers for herself. She recommended the habit, but you hated having a buzzer interrupt your thoughts. Things take the time they take.

"I've heard rumors about your grading." You may not have a vibrant social network, but you keep your ear to the ground on social media. There's a waiting list for section 4 of Physics 1000. If you weren't long past gen ed credit requirements, you'd take it yourself. "Everyone thinks you'll be a soft touch."

You couldn’t teach. It still takes effort for you to spit out “Good job” to a friend. Your brain, conditioned by years of self-criticism, jumps over congratulations to what’s next and what they could do better. If a three-year-old presented you with their fingerpainting, your first reaction would probably be to tell them to wash their hands. No one deserves to be subjected to that. Isn’t Dave living proof?

“They have to learn,” Jade says. She doesn’t love it when people can’t keep up either, but she, unlike you, has historically been able to slow down and let them catch up without beating the lesson into them. "I let anyone who wants come into office hours. We'll walk through the concepts together and then they can resubmit. It's not my fault if they don't want to try. But anyway, I don't make a habit of all-nighters.” There she goes, picking the thread of the conversation back up again. She’s always been good at that, no matter how much people try to dodge. “They're not good for you. So how about once I finish looking up whoever this very important French guy is, I take you home?"

"Isn't that out of your way?"

She snaps her fingers. "The teleportation express runs 24/7 and omnidirectionally."

"Shit, I should have asked you for a ride here. On the shuttle I got stuck between some guy dumping his date over the phone and an octogenarian professor who might've died while we were in traffic."

"Ask me any time. I'm glad I ran into you tonight though, and not just to rescue you from dying in the depths of Web of Science. Jane wanted me to pass on that your resolution for the graduate assembly got voted down."

"Another one for the garbage, huh?" You click out of the open PDFs and drag them into your 'To process' folder. As much as you’ll never admit it, your blood pressure drops along with the number of tabs open. "I've given them the opportunity to be relevant on this campus, but if they want to keep kissing the administration's ass, that's their business."

"It's hard to challenge the people giving you funding. I'm writing grant applications for the lab this semester, believe me, I know."

Money. That’s an aspect of civilization you hadn’t missed growing up in its waterlogged ruins. For an institution allegedly devoted to higher knowledge, this place is obsessed with it.

"Speaking of which,” Jade continues, “Jane also said if you try anything else the board might pass a new resolution to stop letting you submit resolutions."

You snap your laptop shut. "This is homophobia."

She snorts. "I won't be long, I just need to track down a selected works book. Then I'll come back and we can get out of here."

" I can't be held responsible for any losses to scholarship." You stand up and stretch. Something in your back pops, and your head swims. Ok, maybe you've been sitting here too long.

"I'll take the blame from the academy. Just get tidied up while you're waiting." She looks critically at your collection of Monster cans. "You can recycle those, you know."

By the time Jade gets back with a thick-spined book on philosophy, you’re out of your carrel and have brushed most of the crumbs off yourself. The recyclables have been scooped up and dumped into your backpack’s outer pocket. It’ll be a sticky mess later. “Are you ready to go?” she asks

“Sure.” It’s not even one, which makes this the earliest you’ve gotten home all week. You’re struck by an impulse to yawn and almost crack your jaw resisting it. For fuck’s sake, it’s only November. You’re not allowed to get tired until March at the earliest.

Everything flashes green, and before you have time to rub your eyes, you’re standing outside your front door. Part of you expects to walk through together, but you don’t all live under the same roof anymore. Growing older changes things, even for gods.

“You’re coming to the group dinner next weekend, right?” she asks.

You dig in your pocket for your key. There must be some sort of interdimensional portal in there, it’s fucking ridiculous. Roxy probably knows about eldritch creatures that eat housekeys, that’s got to be within the Void’s purview. “It’s at Jane’s place this time, right?”

“It was the last time I checked.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Then I’ll see you later. Have a good night!” She waves and vanishes before you have time to reply. So instead you turn around, stick the key in the lock, and step inside.

 (Dirk would be one of those zombified PhD candidates who you can find obsessively scrolling through 50-year-old dissertations on microfilm at 3 am. He IS the library ghost. He doesn't attend any committee meetings because he's overscheduled but he does send proxies with detailed questions/comments/concerns for every agenda item. If they knew what he looked like, the other committee members would probably kill him on sight.)

Equestria isn’t what it seems. Ask anything. And you will get the entire truth. No questions asked!!

To read a bit more of my backstory, keep reading. 

Hoofington is a seemingly pleasant little town. Located on a pristine beach, just a little ways north from the shining star of Los Pegasus. On the outside, a sweet and simple villa for scholars and aspiring writers, and escapees from the hecticness of the outside world. However, its isolation did not spare it from the influences of the Equestrian aristocracy, albeit that seemed harmless enough, if not more secure. Of course, the reality was much, much darker.

Equestria was a rickety house of cards that managed to rebuild itself pretty quickly when knocked over, but it was a house of flimsy cards, no less. A world of chaos almost completely governed by four goddesses and their families, not to mention the various other atrocities that controlled the world beyond, in addition to the very elusive racial divide between the the four equestrian races and the two other sovereign species, gryphons and dragons. What a mess. But who was to acknowledge it? Meet Crimson Cardinal. A skinny, tall red pegasus with a long and flowing purple mane and tail, a journalist of ill-temperament and an extreme lover of conspiracy, cider, and revolution. A proletariat of cynicism and pride with an extreme hatred for dark magic, corruption and aristocracy. And finally, not much a flyer, but a strong adherent of pegasus pride and a shameless destroyer of alicorn supremacy. Though seemingly sour, Crimson greatly enjoyed his little town and the ponies who inhabit it. His full-time job (journalism being more of a freelance job and anti-fascism being more of a hobby) was a bartender at everyone’s favorite salon downtown, “The Bubbly Mare,” owned by an equally gleeful little stallion, Bubbling Cider. Crimson―a lover of conspiracy and writing is also a great, great lover of alcohol, almost more than pen and paper. In truth, his best rhetoric was born from the bottle. But the townsfolk flocked to his side drunk or sober. The political views of Hoofington were slightly varied, but there was one thing in common―The town was mostly Earth ponies and Pegasi. Farms on the borders of town were hard workin’ folk who prided themselves in tending the soil with their own hooves, criticizing the unicorns for laziness. The pegasi, whose job was to beat clouds into submission and maintain the weather likewise berated the unicorns for using their powers to whip up a storm or chaos anytime they pleased. On the flip side―those small-town earth ponies and pegasi were shunned by the elitist unicorns of the big city, and it was remarkably difficult for a non unicorn to have a profession other than a farmer or cloud-kicker. And it wasn’t just Hoofington that held this belief. This distrust of magic wasn’t seen by those who visited the shining capitals and paragons of Equestria. Canterlot, Ponyville, the Crystal Empire and other big cities that portrayed the unity and magic that the country prided itself on and preached had shiny, posterless walls. But elsewhere, every alleyway in almost every small town, hidden from dignitaries and diplomats, was marked with cynical graffiti alongside the tyrannical Celestia’s infamous “Obey” posters. Now, Crimson himself wasn’t a hater of unicorns per se, or at least that’s what he contended. His roommate and ‘special friend,’ Regal Pen, was one and a rather magically inclined one at that. But did he appeal to the collective distrust of magic in the town? Oh yes he did. …

The day was searing hot, the sun was beating down on the coast and the streets were fairly empty. The dark alleyways, however, were flooding with quietly chattering ponies, but they weren’t there for the shade. They crowded around a soapbox, placed in front of a fresh, untouched, massive propaganda poster, Celestia’s image glaring down at the crowd in ominous shades of dark blue, tan and red, below the stark blue OBEY. There was a hanging uneasiness and tension within the crowd, starting at the poster which they had been specifically instructed not to brutally desecrate by no other than Crimson himself. However, they also knew that the crafty pegasus would not leave it untouched for long. The dark red pony in question stepped over to the soapbox, sitting on his haunches with his chest puffed out. His eyes were dark and sunken as ever, but there was a glimmer of pride and deviance within them too. He opened a prepared sheet of paper and cleared his throat, grasping the ecstatic attention of his listeners. “I would like to start off by thanking everypony for attending this meeting, especially under such short notice, but I declare this a matter of emergency. As you may have noticed, military presence has increased within our borders in the past few months, which is obviously a reason for concern―But it wouldn’t be so problematic if it wasn’t for the plague that they bring with them―Nationalism!!” Crimson gave a quick gesture to the poster behind him, riling murmurs and cries of affirmation from the crowd. “What you see here is the tyranny of the equestrian aristocracy! To many, it is no more than a frail piece of paper. But we, as the enlightened and intelligent ponies we are, know that it is so much more. My moral is that the pen is mightier than the sword, and this extends to a picture that speaks a thousand words. Be it a thousand and one words of celestial corruption and militant authority!” Crimson violently stomped his hoof against the podium, initiating more whinnies and shouts. He waited patiently for the crowd to cease, preparing for an obligatory remark. “Now, my animosity towards Celestia does not necessarily extend to the other princesses, her devout subjects, nor the blindly following, and I obviously harbor no contempt towards those who are simply unaware. However, I can say that the first three are the willing pawns of Celestia’s every bidding! However, I would be remiss if I did not clarify that I revere Princess Luna, and I do not believe she is a pawn nor an ecstatic aide to her sister’s reign. She only does not resist because she is trapped in the guilt that her sister has has bestowed upon her. I also don’t deny Twilight Sparkle as a heroine, a luminary and the paragon of unity and friendship. And Cadence…well, I don’t believe I need to state my opinion on that airheaded sparkling celebrity…On the other hoof, the honorary ‘Princesses’ Twilight and Cadence, and their extended aristocratic families combined represent all that is reprehensible with Celestia’s reign, including her sloth, her gluttony and her incompetence! They are the perfect plastic pawns in Celestia’s games. They are shining public icons, used to preach the alleged solidarity and morality of Equestria! What’s worse, the great and powerful Celestia sends them to solve her problems! What deity would allow the gods of chaos, the dreaded changelings, and abominations from Tartarus itself to wreak havoc on our country, and send her neurotic, monumentally less powerful slave to fix her own faults? And what if these were manifestations of her own magic, as a means of oppression?” The crowd was riled up, shouting and waving their hooves aggressively. And there was still one last note. Crimson took a breath. “In conclusion, I have a little treat for all of you. I’ve instructed you not to desecrate this lovely, lovely poster, but I’m sure you all knew that I would never leave such a thing standing proudly on the walls of our town for very long.” Crimson turned around and tore the poster clean off the wall and held it up. The crowd was practically snapping at it, as if Crimson was holding a slab of meat over a pit of manticores. He hushed the crowd and puffed his chest out. “DISOBEY.” He threw it into the mud. Every pony in the crowd went at it like a feral animal, grabbing each corner and ripping it at the seams, stomping on Celestia’s ominous muzzle into the disgusting brown mud, saturating it and making the frail poster just that much easier to tear apart. Crimson’s usually cold maw curled into a smirk. He shouted with an undertone of malcontented laughter―DISOBEY!! CRUSH IT!! DESTROY IT!! The desecration persisted for several minutes. Crimson caught his breath and stepped off the stand, looking back at the very happy crowd with a sense of pride. The horde eventually dispersed with adrenaline to fuel a day of proletariat’s labor. The poster laid in the mud in literal shreds, but left just barely recognizable to proudly display the desecration of Celestia’s image. Crimson’s younger sister, Emerald Paint was waiting at the end of the alleyway. A bouncy green pegasus who didn’t quite understand Crimson’s near-obsessive immersion in political discord. She was a painter instead of a writer―A painter who secretly wished to paint the revolution with strokes of blood instead of the written word. “Shit, when did you become so inspirational?” “Shut the hell up. It took me two fucking hours to write.” Crimson opened his satchel and grabbed a flask, taking a quick swill of the sweet nectar that fueled his anger and creativity. “Does it look like I give a shit? Anyways, it’s insane how you made destroying that poster seem so important. I mean, it looked like fun…” “Symbolism. One of the greatest literary strategies. It’s kind of like burning an effigy or some books, although it doesn’t quite have the same effect as tearing the thing itself to shreds and leaving it to rot in the mud.” “The fuck you talking about? Why wouldn’t you just destroy the real thing?” Crimson shot a sarcastic glance at his internally violent sister. “I don’t think that’s a very…realistic…solution, Emerald. Besides, I’d much rather have Celestia rot in Tartarus for eternity next to the monsters she created.” “Do you really think this is gonna end peacefully?” Emerald cocked her head. Crimson sighed and averted his eyes. “Well, not exactly…Regardless of how it ends, Celestia and her pawns can’t condemn us for rebelling when she has been slaughtering, imprisoning, and banishing for centuries, if not millennia?” Emerald shrugged. “I don’t know, I don’t feel like it’s worth it. Talking doesn’t get anything done, plus you can’t just beat Celestia!” Crimson huffed and narrowed his eyes, taking another aggressive swill of vodka. “How could you say that?! Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘The pen is mightier than the sword?” “I don’t fucking know. I’m going home, going to work to make MONEY, unlike you.” Emerald said snarkily, flipping her hair and trotted away. “Journalism is a noble and well-paying profession!! And bartending is just to pay the bills!” Crimson growled and flipped his sister off with his wing. He was glad that the rest of the town didn’t share the same ironically bourgeois sentiment. He would show her. … Crimson sat as his desk, continuing on his endeavour to create the perfect combinations of letters that would convince the most stubborn sheep to awaken from their comatose states under the shades of fascism. “That is a great fucking sentence.” Crimson mumbled. Thank Celes- Thank god sheep were too stupid to read and too weak to be of any use to the revolution (He thought with gratuitous disregard of his own hypocrisy). Stamping the last word with his typewriter, Crimson fell back in his seat. The town was on his side, and with the beautiful ink on paper, many others would trot alongside him. But where to go next? Los Pegasus was close, but going into a such a big city with Hoofington’s small population was, well, a really bad idea. Revolutions don’t start overnight. It must be slow, methodical, covert… But it would happen. That was for certain.

In Which the Scholar Embarks on a Voyage, pt. 1

(Artwork: Juxtaposition of Black and White no. 97, or A Piece of Bread. Ink on Paper. © The Scholar, May 2017)

Some might call me cold for the infrequency with which I correspond with my poor, dear mother. Cold, and perhaps even unloving. However, as I have in the past iterated, the other relations I would have to suffer in order to be near her are generally too much to bear. I send her regular epistles to keep her apprised of my fortune and social station, but she never replies. She claims to dislike writing letters by hand and has in the past attempted to respond via that enemy of the literate, the email. I have an email address, as I was forced against my will to take one upon joining the faculty of my former institution of academia, but I refuse to soil my brain with its “emoticons” and perilously informal nature. As such I have not yet read any of my mother’s electronic missives.

Hence it was no doubt shocking to me when I received a handwrought letter from my mother in the post. I opened the envelope with such fervor that I nearly creased it in my excitement. There on the paper was my mother’s scrawled hand, classically trained in script but sloppy from years of disuse. On it she laid out her dealings of late in rather mundane detail, along with an expression of hope that I might actually call her on the telephone.

I sensed something awry. Why would my poor, dear mother write me only now, especially with so little to say? I puzzled over the letter again and again, wondering if my mother had encoded a secret message therein. It was so naturally worded, and yet no other explanation was sufficient to justify the communiqué. My best cryptographic efforts deciphered naught but nonsense, which troubled me further: was my mother perhaps losing her mind, encoding messages devoid of meaning in an attempt to signal distress to the only family that truly loves her? It was the only possibility that made sense.

I refrained from dialing my mother herself, for fear that my father might answer, at which point I would be forced to humor his imbecility for upwards of five minutes. Furthermore, it stands to reason that if my mother’s distress was encoded, it would be similarly indecipherable in spoken form. Against my own better judgment, I dialed my functionally brain-dead sister Doris on the telephone, attempting to divine from her any information that might shed light on my mother’s infirmity. The conversation was too laborious to share, but it proves something I should certainly have guessed: Doris has as much insight into the emotional state of our shared ancestor as I have into methods of toilet plunging (that is to say: none at all).

I had but one choice, and it a drastic one. My mother required my attention in person, face to face. I could only hope that my shame of a paternal relation would be out on a house call, tearing apart a bathroom sink or otherwise engaged in peasant’s work, when I arrived. I had no such guarantee, but I had to think of my dear mother, even if it meant enduring the sense-dulling presence of that clod.

A new dilemma presently arose. I had, in my continuing pursuit of knowledge in all fields, just begun a fascinating biological study into the growth rates of bread molds at various controlled temperatures. My study required half-hourly observation, photography, and documentation. Given the illuminating results I was already discovering even at that early point in the experiment, I could not terminate it prematurely and lose precious days of work. It was thus necessary to leave someone to make the half-hourly documentation in my stead. This would be, of natural course, my manservant Chip, but this left me wanting for transportation.

Were it not for a white-knuckled near-death experience I endured once on a practice driving course, in which I nearly collided with a traffic cone, I might have braved the drive myself. Given the horrors of the road I had in reality experienced, however, I have not attempted to pilot a vehicle since that instance. Given that, plus my pecuniary restrictions amply laid out in prior installments of this journal, it would be necessary for me to throw my body at the mercy of public transportation. The very thought sent chills down my sensible spine.

As I documented half-hour number 106 in my research, I sent Chip to peruse the World Wide Web in search of information on how I might arrive at my mother’s home, located no less than a hundred miles south along the California coast. How he navigates the endless sea of misinformation and non-information that makes up the internet, I will never understand, but I cannot but be grateful that he does have such capacity, for if it were not so, my words would never reach your eyes and your hearts. I suppose you, too, should be similarly grateful.

Chip returned with the verdict: It was to be a three-hour ride, two if traffic willed. I vocally shuddered at the thought. Three hours locked away, stuffed into a tin can like so many sardines, the stench of which my fellow passengers would certainly carry with them as they emerged from their hovels to make three hours of my life a waking nightmare. The stench of sardines, the sweat of the lower classes, the endless noise of hipped-hop and rocking roll; the mere prospect of this inundation of vulgarity nearly overwhelmed my senses where I stood. Only for the grace of the gods did I not collapse face-first into one of my fungal cultures.

I steeled myself both mentally and materially against the coming onslaught versus my being: I packed along with me a jacket, a blanket, a comforter, a clipboard with fountain pen and stationery, earplugs, earmuffs, a lavender-scented surgical mask, a sleep mask, hand moisturizer, hand sanitizer, latex gloves, aspirin, ibuprofen, antacids, a cassette player, my collection of Beethoven cassette tape recordings (the composer may be criminally over-esteemed, but his Pastoral-Sinfonie has a soporific effect that cannot be denied), and an ample pouch full of my favorite breakfast cereal. No one can fault me for this gluttonous last inclusion, in sight of the horrors that I would shortly face.

Thus laden I took one last recording of the molds. The room temperature specimens had just developed a shade of the most mesmerizing turquoise in the midst of its pale cyan splotches; I was loathe to leave the experiment in the questionable hands of Chip. Nevertheless, Mother needed me, and no force on earth, neither that of scientific inquiry nor that of proletariat repulsion, would halt me in my quest. I did bring along with me one redundancy from the room-temperature group, so as to enrich the experiment with additional data on environmental conditions.

Chip drove me to the bus station, so slowly that I was sure he would be late for the next half-hourly documentation. I berated and berated his sluggishness on the road, and would have boxed his ears in the name of science were it not for the likely fiery death that such an act would bring upon both of our heads. We eventually arrived, and as I disembarked I ordered him to pay no heed to traffic lights on his return so as to not miss a vital photograph of the molds.

Leaving as I did all further domestic considerations in Chip’s hands, I had to push all related worries out of my mind and focus on my present task. The bus station was a rotten place, not rotten like the friendly cultures of mold atop my stale bread husks, but rotten with the decay of homo sapiens. The platform stood ignorant of modern standards of cleanliness, defying the entire world with its litter-strewn floors, its graffiti-strewn walls, and its homeless-strewn corners. I immediately rustled through my tote for the surgical mask, as much in fear of what smells I might encounter as in response to the present airborne mixture of diesel exhaust and second-hand carcinogenic stimulants. Placing the mask on my face and latex gloves on my hands, I proceeded into the breach. If I were Catholic I would have crossed myself.

There was not a human in sight who appeared to be employed by the transportation authority, let alone someone capable of selling me a bus ticket. My only choice was to use an automated kiosk touchscreen device that was determined to misinterpret my every poke. I lost my temper so completely that I almost dropped my moldy bread. Eventually I did succeed in purchasing tickets to Oceanside, though only after erroneously purchasing tickets to Ontario and Orange County. I would be pursuing remuneration for those charges as soon as I resolved my present concerns.

My saga of this harrowing voyage has only just begun, and already I have chills recounting it. I’m afraid I must take a break (an Epsom bath should do the trick), and as I return with my next installment you will see just how good a son I am to my dear, helpless mother.

Exactly how to Choose a Pressure Washer?

A pressure washer is a flexible device to have in your collection for numerous factors. For starters, it can be made use of to effectively, quickly and rapidly tidy a variety of home and also commercial rooms, as well as several other areas such as pathways, patio areas, and household home insides.

Lots of realtors very advised pressure washing a respective residential or commercial property before placing it up for sale to enhance its appeal and listing cost. Investing in the most effective pressure washer can also make traditional cleaning tasks a delight such as cleaning lorries, which generally needs a lot of time, power and also effort.

And also, a pressure washing device can be used by nearly any individual, even those suffering from back ailments, given that it lets you keep a strong, upright pose. Adding to this, establishing a pressure washing tool is a no-brainer, where you merely attach a water pipe to the tool to the washing machine, either add fuel or plug it in, and also begin blowing up the dust as well as grime away.

you may also like hiring a power washing company

Buying Overview

When picking the best pressure washer for cars and trucks and various other jobs, you will find 2 usual kinds - gas and also electric powered washing machines, and also right here's what sets both apart.

Types of Pressure Washing Machines

Gas-powered pressure washers just as the name would certainly recommend are fitted with engines, and either attribute a hand-operated pull begin or push-button electric starter. They normally produce the highest water pressure, somewhere in the range of 2 thousand to 3 thousand PSI (pounds per square inch) water pressure.

An additional excellent benefit of using gas-powered washing devices is that there are no pesky cables to the plugin, making it easy to deal with larger cleansing work. Electric pressure washing machines contrarily are much less effective and do not offer the same mobility as their gas counterparts, but on a brighter note evaluate much less, cost less and are excellent for light-duty jobs.

Things to Take into consideration

Considered that pressure washers can be had in a variety of various types and pressure degrees, it is important to very first establish the tasks you will certainly use it to obtain the right one for your demands. The pressure output also described as the power of a washing machine is determined in PSI (extra pounds per square inch) or GPM (gallons per minute).

And equally, as you may think, a lot more systems equal to more cleansing power, making it simple to get rid of also persistent discolorations and in much less time. On the disadvantage, nonetheless, pressure washing devices with a greater PSI as well as GPM commonly set you back greater than lower-rated models, however, they are normally worth the added couple of bucks owing to their premium performance.

To reduce your acquiring decision, if you're going to be dealing with tiny jobs around your home, then a light-duty device with 1300 to 1900 PSI at 2 GPM is an ideal choice. Several of the tasks you can take on with this range of lightweight and small tools include cleaning, grills, outdoor patio furniture, vehicles, little decks, and patios.

If you're looking for a washing machine for both home and also shop usage, then you're going to have to tip it up a couple of notches with a medium-duty gas-powered pressure washing machine. Medium-duty pressure types of equipment generate between 2000 and 2800 PSI at 2 to 3 GPM and also are geared up with cost elements that collectively give increased power to clean things such as fencings, exterior home siding, driveways, and sidewalks.

For a pressure washing device for day-to-day industrial usage, you must think about a version that supplies 2800 PSI as well as greater at 3 to 4 GPM. These appropriate for intimidating cleansing tasks such as paint removing, graffiti removal, washing a two-story home and big scale cleaning work.

If you aren't over the fencing concerning what tasks you will certainly be making use of the pressure washing machine for whether light or tool after that has a look at versions that enable you to readjust the pressure and also water circulation as and when required. Other kinds of washing machine devices worth pointing out are cold water pressure washing machines (excellent for cleaning automobiles, removing loose paint, dust buildup, and so on) and also warm water pressure washers (wonderful for commercial and also ranch use.

Things to Take into consideration

Whether you pick the most effective gas or the best electric pressure washer, the underlying functionality stays the same. When water gets in the device at reduced pressure, the integrated electric motor or gas engine pumps the water out through a hose and afterward a linked spray nozzle.

Speaking of which, the most effective small pressure washers as well as also big designs include either a set of compatible nozzles or an all-in-one variable spray stick. While the last allows you to change the water pressure with a twist or more, nozzle sizes differ as well as include 0 levels (most effective), 15 levels (for durable cleaning), 25 degrees (general cleaning jobs) and also 65 levels (low-pressure nozzle).

The majority of, if not every one of the best pressure washing machines come with an assortment of accessories, so you can utilize the machine for your details needs right out of the box as opposed to getting each accessory individually. Pressure washing machine devices include power weapon and lance, hose pipe and also hose reel, nozzles, and also some also featured cleaning agents.

Pressure washing machines, for the most part, are heavy devices, hence it might be testing to raise and bring places. This makes it crucial to acquire the very best rated pressure washer that is fitted with a durable vehicle for a very easy ability to move.

Security

The reality is that greater than 6000 people wind up in the emergency room every year with injuries related to pressure water usage. The high pressure from pressure washing machines can tear through your skin, sometimes leaving you with irreversible damages.

Despite what equipment or device you make use of, the initial essential point to learn is to utilize it the right way and without causing any type of injury to on your own as well as others around you. Besides reading pressure washing machine safety and security suggestions, it is very recommended that you review the producer's user guide on exactly how to correctly operate the machine.

Pressure Washing machine faqs.

Question 1 - Waterflow or pressure? Which is more crucial?

Both are similarly important, and operate in sync with each other! If you're looking to clean persistent dirt as well as stains, you will certainly require both a high surge in pressure and high water flow to promptly wash the dirt away.

Question 2 - Should I buy a pressure washing machine?

Even if your next-door neighbor has a pressure washing machine, it doesn't mean that it will supply the same functionality for your needs. Nonetheless, if you're mosting likely to be cleansing your Motor Home, auto, campers or washing your patio, then you shouldn't think twice about buying the most effective pressure washer for house usage.

Question 3 - What detergent to make use of?

This relies on what your cleansing, as some jobs will call for strong cleaning agents while lighter jobs can be performed with standard home detergents. On that note, it is worth pointing out that a lot of the very best industrial pressure water manufacturers do offer advice in the consisted of individual guides on what cleaning agent functions best with their appliances.

Fortnite Like Games Android Very best 10 Powerful Explanations why You will need Just click here To Login

How Fortnite Captured Teenagers’ Hearts and Minds

The trend for the 3rd-human being shooter game has factors of Beatlemania, the opioid disaster, and taking in Tide Pods.

Fortnite V Bucks

It had been obtaining late in Tomato City. The storm was closing in, and meteors pelted the ground. Gizzard Lizard experienced created his way there after plundering the sparsely populated barns and domiciles of Anarchy Acres, then by preventing the Wailing Woods and holding the storm just off to his still left. He spied an enemy combatant on high ground, who appeared to possess a sniper’s rifle. Within a hollow under the sniper’s perch was an deserted pizzeria, with a giant rotating check in The form of a tomato. Gizzard Lizard, who experienced immediately built himself a redoubt of salvaged beams, mentioned, “I do think I’m likely to attack. That’s one among my main concerns: I need http://raissv.com/ to get started on being more intense.” He ran out into the open, pausing before a thick shrub. “This is in fact a really superior bush. I could bush-camp. But naw, that’s what noobs do.”

Two Guys enter, a single man leaves: the fighters closed in on one another. During the movie video game Fortnite Struggle Royale, the late-sport phase is often probably the most frenetic and thrilling. Out of the blue, the sniper launched himself into a nearby area and began attacking. Gizzard Lizard hastily threw up One more port-a-fort, amid a hail of enemy fireplace. The purpose is always to get, or make, the large floor.

A minute later on, Gizzard Lizard was dead—killed by a grenade. Afterward, he replayed the ending, from numerous vantages, to investigate what experienced gone Incorrect. For being so near winning and however arrive up limited—it absolutely was irritating and tantalizing. One wants to go again. The urge is robust. But it absolutely was time for my son to carry out his research.

I invested additional time as a kid than I treatment to recollect observing other Young ones Participate in video games. House Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Male, Donkey Kong. Generally, my close friends, around my objections, preferred this to taking part in ball—or to other popular, if less edifying, neighborhood pursuits, like tearing hood ornaments off parked cars. Every so normally, I performed, way too, but I used to be a spaz. Insert quarter, recreation more than. Once gaming moved into dorms and apartments—Nintendo, Sega—I uncovered that I could just go away. But often I didn’t. I admired the feat of divided notice, the knack that some men (and it absolutely was normally men) looked as if it would have for remaining alive, both in the sport and during the fight of wits to the sofa, as if they were both of those actively playing a Activity and undertaking “SportsCenter” concurrently.

I considered this another working day when a buddy described looking at a gaggle of eighth-quality girls and boys (among them his son) hanging all around his condominium playing, but generally seeing Other individuals Perform, Fortnite. 1 boy was enjoying on a big Tv set screen, with a PlayStation 4 console. Another boys ended up on their own telephones, either taking part in or viewing knowledgeable gamer’s Dwell stream. And the women were being enjoying or seeing on their own telephones, or wanting about the shoulders of your boys. One of several ladies informed my Good friend, “It’s pleasurable to begin to see the boys get mad every time they get rid of.” No person mentioned A lot. What patter there was—l’esprit du divan—came from the kids’ tiny screens, in the form of the professional gamer’s mordant narration as he vanquished his opponents.

Fortnite, for anyone not a teen-ager or a parent or educator of teens, will be the 3rd-particular person shooter recreation that has taken about the hearts and minds—and the time, both equally discretionary and otherwise—of adolescent and collegiate The usa. Unveiled very last September, it can be right this moment by numerous steps the preferred video activity on the globe. Occasionally, there are much more than a few million individuals actively playing it simultaneously. It has been downloaded an estimated sixty million occasions. (The game, readily available on Laptop, Mac, Xbox, PS4, and cellular gadgets, is—crucially—free, but quite a few players shell out for additional, beauty options, which includes costumes often known as “skins.”) With regards to fervor, compulsive habits, and parental noncomprehension, the Fortnite trend has features of Beatlemania, the opioid disaster, as well as ingestion of Tide Pods. Mothers and fathers talk of it as an addiction and swap tales of plunging grades and brazen display screen-time abuse: beneath the desk at college, in a memorial service, in the toilet at 4 A.M. They beg each other for remedies. An acquaintance despatched me a video he’d taken a person afternoon while wanting to stop his son from participating in; there was a time when continuously calling just one’s father a fucking asshole would have brought about large trouble in Tomato Town. Within our family, the large risk is gamer rehab in South Korea.

Sport fads occur and go: Rubik’s Dice, Dungeons & Dragons, Offended Birds, Minecraft, Clash of Clans, Pokémon Go. What men and women manage to concur on, whether they’re seasoned gamers or dorky dads, is that there’s some thing new rising around Fortnite, a type of mass social collecting, open to some Substantially wider array of men and women in comparison to the games that arrived before. Its relative lack of wickedness—it seems to be typically free of the misogyny and racism that afflict all kinds of other video games and gaming communities—causes it to be extra palatable to your broader audience, and this appeal both equally ameliorates and augments its addictive electrical power. (The game, in its fundamental manner, randomly assigns gamers’ skins, that may be of any gender or race.) Prevalent anecdotal evidence implies that ladies are taking part in in wide quantities, both with and without the need of boys. There are, and probably at any time shall be, some gamer geeks who gripe at such newcomers, just as they gripe when there won't be any newcomers in any respect.

A pal whose 13-year-outdated son is deep down the rabbit gap likened the Fortnite phenomenon on the Pump Home Gang, the crew of ne’er-do-well teenager surfers in La Jolla whom Tom Wolfe transpired upon inside the early nineteen-sixties. In lieu of a clubhouse within the beach, there’s a Digital world juvenile hall, exactly where kids Collect, invent an argot, adopt change egos, and shoot each other down. Wolfe’s Pump Dwelling Children went on beer-soaked outings they named “destructos,” wherein they'd, at regional farmers’ behest, demolish abandoned barns. Now it’s Juul-sneaking very little homebodies demolishing virtual partitions and residences with imaginary pickaxes. Teenagers almost everywhere are swinging away at their world, tearing it down to outlive—Artistic destruction, of A form.

Shall I explain the game? I need to, I’m scared, even though describing movie games is a bit like recounting goals. 100 players are dropped on to an island—from a flying college bus—and battle each other for the death. The winner is the last one particular standing. (You are able to pair up or kind a squad, way too.) This really is what is supposed by Fight Royale. (The first version of Fortnite, launched last July, for forty bucks, wasn’t fight on the death; it is the new iteration which has caught hearth.) A storm encroaches, gradually forcing combatants into an at any time-shrinking place, in which they have to destroy or be killed. Together how, you search for out caches of weapons, armor, and healables, when also amassing building elements by breaking down current constructions. Hasty fabrication (of ramps, forts, and towers) is An important aspect of the sport, which is why it is usually described as a cross in between Minecraft and the Hunger Games—and why aggrieved mothers and fathers can easily explain to on their own that it's constructive.

Right before a sport begins, you wander around within a kind of purgatorial bus depot-cum-airfield ready until the following hundred have assembled for an airdrop. This is a Weird area. Players shoot inconsequentially at each other and pull dance moves, like actors going for walks aimlessly around backstage working towards their traces. Then occur the airlift as well as drifting descent, by way of glider, for the battleground, with a gentle whooshing seem that's into the Fortnite addict just what the flick of the Bic would be to a smoker. It is possible to land in a single of twenty-1 locations over the island, Every single which has a cutesy alliterative title, some suggestive of mid-century gay bars: Shifty Shafts, Moisty Mire, Lonely Lodge, Greasy Grove. In patois and in mood, the sport manages to be each dystopian and comedian, dim and light-weight. It can be alarming, in case you’re not accustomed to this kind of matters or are attuned for the news, to listen to your darlings shouting so merrily about head pictures and snipes. But there’s no blood or gore. The violence is cartoonish, a minimum of relative to, say, Halo or Grand Theft Automobile. Such will be the consolations.

The island alone has an air of desertion although not of extreme despair. This apocalypse is rated PG. The abandonment, precipitated by the storm, that has possibly killed or scattered a lot of the entire world’s population, appears to are latest and relatively speedy. The grass is lush, the canopy complete. The hydrangeas are abloom in Snobby Shores. Buildings are unencumbered by kudzu or graffiti and have tidy, sparsely furnished rooms, as though the inhabitants had only just fled (or been vaporized). Seemingly, All people over the island, in Individuals prosperous pre-storm occasions, shopped in exactly the same aisle at Target. Every time I observe a participant enter a bedroom, whether it is in Junk Junction or Loot Lake, I Notice the multicolored blanket folded over the mattress. People cobalt-blue table lamps: are they available for sale? Perhaps sooner or later they will be.

Missed Classic: A Mind Forever Voyaging – Hell on Earth

Written by Joe Pranevich

In Wishbringer, we learned that a little magic and a lost cat could turn the world into a dark place. In A Mind Forever Voyaging, we learn that people can do that even without the magic and that cats are not essential to the equation. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, but last week we had finally been given the “real” mission in the game: explore the simulation and collect data that would prove that Senator Ryder’s plan is flawed. I had already looked at a fairly happy 2041 and a less happy 2051. Now, we are challenged to plunge even further in the future to find data that supports or undercuts the success of the Plan. I apologize but in my previous post, I got the dates wrong a couple of times: the real world of the game takes place in 2031, not 2021. It doesn’t matter quite enough to go back and fix it now, but I hope I did not confuse things too much. Just keep in mind that the two variations we saw were current year plus ten and plus twenty.

I am going to have a lot to say about this game as we get closer to the final rating. If it does one thing well, it encourages you to think about its message and the way in which it presents that message. Does that make it a good “game”? I’m not sure yet. Please join me as we travel to the far off and exotic year 2061 in the dreamscape that once was the United States of North America.

Burned out apartment building. (Photo by Pryshutova Viktoria, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Exploring 2061

Entering the simulation once again, I start in the southeastern corner of the city outside of “Heiman World”. This was the counterpart to the “Heiman Village” that existed in 2031, a mixed commercial and residential area not unlike a mall-with-condos. I had seen it first as a construction site, then as a completed mall-experience, but now it’s just a burned out husk. A lack of safety regulations meant that it was built on the cheap. It burned down, killing hundreds. The whole message is a bit on the nose, especially as they make it the entry point in the 2061 simulation, but it works well enough. Let’s see if the rest of the city fared any better.

I check my drivers license to make sure I haven’t moved in the last decade then head to my apartment. It’s sad that I haven’t been able to find a nicer, or larger, place in the last thirty years. Obviously, writers and painters are not making the big bucks in this future. When I arrive home, I find out that something heart-wrenching happened: Mitchell, my 21-year old son, has just abandoned his family. He’s fallen in with the Church of God’s Word and has left us to join them, considering us heathens. He wouldn’t even talk to Jill as she followed him all the way to the airport, but now he’s gone. She’s obviously upset over the whole ordeal. I suppose I am too, except we’ve hardly gotten to know him. Just a quick flash of an infant, followed by a quick flash when he was 11-years old, doesn’t make for a deep relationship. As before, I do not know whether Perry is supposed to have lived these ten years in the simulation. Does he have memories of his kid growing up? Does it matter? Either way, he’s gone now, brainwashed by a cult. To add insult to injury, the Border Security Agents pick now to ransack the house once again to look for whatever they are looking for. I had thought they were hunting immigrants, but a commenter last week said they were looking for pocket-nukes. Either way, they are far less polite than before. Jill hardly seems to react, both because of the recent loss of Mitchell and because these raids appear to have become old hat for us now. I run off to the airport myself to try to see if he is still there, but of course he’s long gone. The airport is even more “secure” than ever since all international travelers are strip-searched.

Just like with last week’s entry, I don’t fully know how to document a game where you discover the slow erosion of civilization by exploring the same locations over and over again. On one hand, I’d rather not do bullet lists, but they also express the disconnectedness of some of the events rather well. I wander the city almost at random to revisit the key things that I had seen before, and to find new things to record.

The Border Security Force has expanded its presence considerably. In addition to the strip searching at the airport, there are random BSF agents doing “stop-and-frisk” searches on the pedestrians in the street. The military base in the north of the city has become a BSF base; a graduation event for the largest class of new agents is taking place at Huang Hall. The latter is telling because in all previous times, Huang Hall was home to industry and technology trade shows. The times are changing! 

Everything old is new again.

It’s not just that the Church of God’s Word is growing, but religious intolerance is on the rise everywhere. St. Michael’s church is closed now and covered with anti-Catholic graffiti. The Methodist church is still around, but empty. The pamphlets in the CoGW’s headquarters actively discriminates against non-believers. Even racial discrimination is on the rise, at least judging by the top movie at the cinema, the “comedy” film Let’s Kill Some Slants. 

Other than the BSF, the actual government is nearly shut down. While we do see police around, City Hall is deserted. The nearby courthouse is still active and the trial of the day is of an Asian-American boy being tried for violating the “Uniform Morality Code”. The punishment is life in prison; I cannot help but think that his ethnicity may be playing a role here. City parks are being closed to make way for new condos. While the new construction is a positive step, taking away the public green space will make the city even less friendly. 

Meretzky is doing very well in shading each new time period carefully. Things are getting worse, but he’s clearly thinking about it in consistent terms and to make it a plausible progression. There are little details, the cinema now also plays pornography for example, which show the decline of morality even as the trappings of morality (the Church, for one) are apparently growing. Newspapers do not appear to exist in this future, so I have no idea who the President is and whether Ryder managed to find a way to become President-for-Life yet, if he’s still alive. Perry probably knows, but I sure don’t. Even the grocery stores are being hit now as shiny colored labels have made way for generic ones on half-empty shelves.

I don’t even finish exploring before I find another big change: a 9 PM curfew. After nine, the subways close and the streets empty out. I wander around to keep exploring, but the police arrest me and I am taken to a jail cell to rest for the night. “Rest” might be a strong word since the cell contains only a dirty blanket and no bed, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. Unlike in Wishbringer, there is no escape. The police throw me out into the street in the morning, promising to do worse next time. I may try that some time, but right now my recording buffer is full so I head back to the real world. I do the usual to get Dr. Perelman to view the recordings and he tells that that they are intriguing, but that I need more data from other years to show a pattern. There is good news: 2071 simulation is open for business!

“Urban Decay” (image by Kevin Jones)

Exploring 2071

Forgive me for saying this, but exploring these new time periods is getting boring. I already know that 2071 will be worse than 2061, and time periods later will be worse still. It’s not a surprise. There are some interesting places to explore, but it isn’t a pleasant experience. It’s not “fun”. This game is trying, and largely succeeding, in saying something profound in a way that you feel in your gut. But the longer it goes on, the less fun I am having and the more the game is becoming something I need to finish because I’m writing a review rather an a game I need to finish because I want to keep playing. I’m sorry about that.

2071 is going to hell as expected. Public transition is gone and the tube lines are closed. My credit card has been replaced by a ration card. I cannot even walk home to see what’s going on in my apartment without being mugged.The building where we live has been defaced and is no longer maintained. There is graffiti everywhere. In our apartment, Jill is too depressed to speak. Her paintings have become pencil sketches, but even those seem to have stopped recently. I’m not there long before the Church of God Police (!!) raid the building. One of the “officers” is Mitchell, our long lost son. He accuses Jill of poisoning his mind as a child, trying to keep him away from the Church. They take Jill away kicking and screaming. I move to help her, but they pummel me and leave me alone in the room in pain. As usual, the Border Security Force comes by a few minutes later to ransack the place, ripping the curtains and spilling everything on the floor. It’s a terrible day.

This is a raw emotional moment. I’m not done yet, but I would not be surprised if this is the emotional moment of the game. We only see Jill and Mitchell in brief snippets every ten years, but you have to feel for the suffering of a mother who lost her child only to have him come back in the worst possible way. As a parent, this scene left me a bit of a mess. I know that was Meretzky’s intention and I’m impressed that he managed to coax this reaction out of me with his prose, but it adds to the malaise of not really wanting to finish this game. This whole sequence is undercut somewhat because it mirrors a scene in the manual where Jill is arrested by the National Guard after she misplaced her residency permit. That scene in the manual is likely why I was thinking that the BSF was hunting for immigrants rather than bombs, but it may have been a poor decision to have this moment be so similar to the manual.

Sorry. I need a moment of levity because this game has none.

With my head hanging low, but with data to capture, I continue exploring the city as before. Needless to say, it’s all a mess. Intolerance is the rule of law and the Church of God’s Word controls the government. Slavery has been legalized, but it’s based on religion and not race. Non-believers, referred to in the Church pamphlet as “beasts”, can be owned as slaves. A good churchman is permitted to own up to fifty of them. City Hall now is truly abandoned with no one having been there in years. As I wander around, I also catch Church Police killing people in the street seemingly indiscriminately. The new condos that they were building a decade ago have become oases for the super rich; I try to enter one and get tossed out onto the street by security.

The supermarkets are closed with ration distribution centers in their place. They take rationing seriously: twenty emaciated people are being tried in the courthouse for cheating on their food allowances. When they are inevitably found guilty, they will be forced to fight in “Execution Matches” for the entertainment of others. Bread and circuses anyone? I make a note to visit the stadium. Traveling north, I stop by the High School which is now (like everything else) owned by the Church. Unfortunately, I am attacked by some schoolchildren for being a nonbeliever and am stoned to death. The simulation ends with grisly end and I “awaken” in the real world in 2021.

Even without everything I planned to see, I give the recordings to Dr. Perelman and wait. He tells me that he finds 2071 very troubling, but that I don’t have enough data yet from 2061 and that it’s still possible that everything could turn back around by 2081. I am still blocked for entering the 2081 simulation so I cannot verify that yet. I head back to 2061 to gather more data as requested.

Still true, at least in this game.

Back to 2061

Have I mentioned that I still need to do the copy protection every time I go back into the simulation? That is getting increasingly annoying. Once that is done, I head back into the 2061 simulation to find more interesting things to record. Fortunately, 2071 gave me some clues on things that I should check out:

In 2061, the High School is already the Church of God’s Word’s school, but the schoolboys only taunt me, no kill me. That is an improvement! In another part of the city, I find a group of Church kids harassing someone for being Jewish. We can see the future Church leaders already! 

Much to my surprise, the stadium is already being used for public executions; I thought that would only come once we had descended into theocracy. They still have traditional sports there, but public executions are increasingly a draw. 

The Zoo, while still open, isn’t being monitored or policed at all. A group of kids are there torturing a monkey. That’s depressing. Why is this game so depressing? 

I take those recordings back to Perelman and he is finally satisfied. We have enough data about every year up through 2071, but the Plan could still work out. What if it all turns around in 2081? Even though he wants me to go there, the simulation isn’t ready. Do I just need to “wait” for a long time? Or do I need to spend more time in the simulation to improve it? I’m not sure, but I head back to 2081 anyway since I didn’t see much of it last time through.

“Police State” (image by katesheets)

Back to 2071

I’d love to tell you that I learned a great deal back in 2071, but it more or less is exactly the Hell on Earth that you expect.

I make my way up to the stadium carefully, avoiding pesky schoolboys. They no longer have any regular sports there, but the “Execution Matches” appear to be robot vs. criminal death matches. Everyone that isn’t being killed appears to enjoy the spectacle. It’s like Battle Bots, but one of the “bots” is unarmed and very squishy. 

The increased use of execution sports also means that the prison is empty. Only a handful of high-profile enemies of the church are housed there. 

I stay out after curfew, but there’s no jail time only a swift death by the police. I’m not even sure whether those are “real” police or “Church” police or whether the distinction is important anymore. 

There are so many mini-events in 2071 that I resort to just keeping the recording on all the time. Every few turns, there is a soliciting prostitute, an aircar crash, or some other terrible thing happening. I suppose I should narrate a lot more, but I end up filling the buffer and returning three times with all sorts of mindless violence and societal collapse. After the third trip through (and my tenth or eleventh time doing the copy protection), the 2081 simulation is finally open! With that, I’ll end for the week. Looking at the clock, this took more time for me to write about than to play. We should wrap up the rest of the game next week.

2081 is going to be sunshine and roses, I just know it. This middle section, especially the waiting and random replaying of 2071 just to wait for the later simulation to open, has been trying at times. The subject matter is exhausting. I’m looking forward to seeing how (and if) Meretzky nails the landing. We can’t be too far now, right?

Time played: 1 hr 30 min Total time: 9 hr 30 min Inventory: <nothing>

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-a-mind-forever-voyaging-hell-on-earth/