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mfingenius · 5 years ago

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The ‘Accio’ miracle

Trigger Warnings: very brief mention of self harm and addiction

Draco keeps secrets.

He’s always prided himself in it, knows there’s no one who’s better at it than him; he kept his father’s secrets, first, thirteen and feeling like he was being let into the world of the elite, where people knew things other witches and wizards didn’t. Then, he kept his mother’s secrets; the quiet contempt no one seemed to see, the anxiousness that ate at her day by day because of things Draco didn’t quite understand, things he wasn’t told, not yet, not even though his father had called him a man.

Third, he kept the Dark Lord’s secrets; he remembers the day they came into his home, the Dark Lord and his cult of followers, each crueler and more heartless than the last, and Draco had been fifteen and terrified, and he didn’t feel like a man, not at all, he’d felt like a child. He’d heard the things they planned, seen the things they did, and he’d kept his mouth shut. He thinks he’d died a little, then; the first time he’d heard someone scream under a Crucio was the first time he realized he knew nothing at all, that the glory and the knowledge he thought were his, what he thought the cause he was fighting for entailed, was all wrong.

He was all wrong.

He still said nothing.

Fourth, he keeps his own secrets; or he tries to, at least. When he’s sixteen and the name Harry James Potter appears across his ribcage in horrible handwriting, he stays locked in his bathroom for three hours, the world crashing down around him; it is the summer before sixth year, and he just – he just needs to make it to September first without anyone noticing, and that’s all. He’s off to Hogwarts, and he can fuck off and never come back. For now, however – for now, well, he’s trapped in a place that used to be his childhood home but is now unrecognizable, filled with people who will not hesitate to kill him – or worse, and Draco knows what they’re capable of, he does, he’s seen them – if they find out who his soulmate is.

In that moment, Draco hates Potter, truly and overwhelmingly hates him, because he’s not going to get out of here, he’s not going to survive this if anyone finds out. The older Death Eaters already hurt him for fun, and he’s done nothing. After this, they’re going to kill him.

So he does what he has to; he draws a Difindo across the name, over and over until it is unrecognizable, and the pain of it is agonizing, but he shoves a towel between his teeth and bears his way through it; it gives him time, an excuse not to come out of his rooms if anyone comes looking for him – they don’t - but when the skin heals, the name is right there, readable over the scars, and Draco has to sit and just breathe, because this can’t be happening.

After that, he does the next best thing; he wears layers upon layers, skin-tight shirts underneath loose robes so no one will notice, keeps the mark hidden, knows he only needs to get through the summer.

And he almost succeeds. The last day of July – Potter's birthday, Draco knows – the Dark Lord tells him he’s taking the Mark; it’s supposed to be an honor, Draco knows, he can see the pride in his father’s eyes, but the only thing he feels is dread.

He doesn’t want the Dark Mark.

“Shirt off,” the Dark Lord hisses, and Draco’s blood runs cold; he knows it is usual for people to take the Dark Mark shirtless; it’s a metaphor, he thinks, something about his mind and body belonging to the Dark Lord, but for him it’ll be his doom.

Slowly, very slowly, he begins unbuttoning his robes.

Seven years later

“Anything yet?” Ron asks, stepping into their office when two bags of Chinese food; there’s a muggle place two blocks away from the ministry that makes the best spring rolls in the world, and they always eat from there when they’re working on a tough case.

“No,” Harry says, gratefully taking the box that Ron offers him. “Fuck, this smells delicious.”

Ron nods. “Got extra spring rolls for you.”

Harry groans a muffled ‘thank you’, already devouring the fried rice; he hasn’t eaten since breakfast, and he’s starving. He welcomes the taste of salty, fried food, and then looks back to the surveillance footage they’re watching. They’ve been investigating the death of a muggle military general, because he had no apparent cause of death to muggles – an Avada Kedavra - and because traces of magic were found at the scene.

“There he is, look at that.” Harry and Ron lean forward at the same time, eyes narrowing at the grainy footage; they'd ‘confiscated’ it from the Muggle Police – better to avoid unwanted questions when they saw it – but they’re used to how well one can see surveillance charms, so this is undoubtably a step down.

“What is he doing?” Harry asks, frowning; Edward Thomas can be seen drinking alone in the hotel bar; he’d be found in his hotel room, but they’ve already scanned the elevator and hall tapes and nothing has come up, so they’re working their way back.

He’s speaking to the man beside him, whose face they can’t see because his back is to the camera. Harry, however, can see Thomas’s face, and he looks – evidently interested. Harry thinks he might be flirting. The other man is evidently not interested, because he turns away, but Thomas reaches out to harshly grab the other man by the arm; the man steps back, and they struggle for a moment before he manages to break himself free, finally turning towards the camera to leave.

“Holy fucking shit,” Ron says, pausing the footage and placing his takeout box on the table, moving closer. “Is that Malfoy?”

Harry nods numbly.

“Holy shit,” he echoes, and continues to stare at the furious, cool face of his soulmate.

“I can stay on the case,” Harry insists. As a policy, the Ministry doesn’t allow an Auror to work any case where their soulmate is involved, but Harry thinks these are special circumstances.

No one’s seen Malfoy in years, for one. He went missing before their sixth year – two years of being a prisoner at the manor, Harry knows – and though he appeared briefly, it was only long enough for the healers at St. Mungo’s to take a look at him. He disappeared again afterwards, as soon as he was discharged, and hasn’t been seen or heard from in five years.

Secondly, they’d finished watching the surveillance footage, and Thomas had left for his room after talking to Malfoy, which means he was most likely the last person to see their murder victim alive.

“You cannot be objective about your soulmate, Potter,” Robards says.

Harry would’ve loved not to tell him about this new development in the case, but he’d walked in while Ron and Harry were discussing it, so they’d had to.

“Sir, Malfoy and I are hardly soulmates,” Harry argues. “We haven’t spoken in five years!”

Robards looks at him calculatingly; Harry is his best Auror, and him and Ron work best together. Taking him off the case is a bad decision and he knows it, but if he doesn’t and something goes wrong because of Harry being stupid about Malfoy, it’ll be on him.

“Fine,” he says, finally. “You can stay on the case. Find me Malfoy, find me our murderer, and you do not stay alone with him at any point. If I hear you’ve messed something up because you’ve gone and done something more reckless than usual, I swear I'll fire you, Potter, even if the Minister himself tells me not to.”

Harry nods.

Malfoy opens the door, takes a look at them, and tries to close it again. Harry slaps his hand against the door to stop him, and Malfoy sighs, rolling his eyes and opening the door again, resigned.

“Potter, Weasley. What are you doing here?”

“Edward Thomas was murdered three nights ago,” Harry says; he thinks one of them should have something more to say; they are soulmates, after all. He expected Malfoy to ask how they had found him, five years after leaving the Wizarding World without a trace. Harry sort of wants to know where Malfoy has been, wonders if he’s been here, in muggle St. Rémy de Provence, the entire time, but he is trying to convince himself that he doesn’t care about Malfoy. It's not working; he’s looking at him and there’s an itch just under his skin that he can’t quite get rid of. “And you were the last person to see him alive.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Malfoy says.

Ron shows him a picture of Thomas, and Malfoy’s eyebrow raises marginally.

“Oh,” Malfoy says. “Him.”

“Yes, him,” Ron says, unimpressed. “You are a witness in our murder investigation, Malfoy, and we’d like you to come into the Ministry for an interview.”

“No, thank you,” Malfoy says politely. “We’re in France, which means you have no jurisdiction. You can’t make me.”

“You’re an English wizard,” Harry says, irritated. Malfoy hasn’t changed one bit. “We could bring you in under-”

“Subsection 1359?” Malfoy finishes for him smugly. “That law only applies to active suspects, Potter, and, as you’ve told it, I’m not one.”

“We could make you one,” Harry says. It’s less than moral, and not something Harry would do, not really, but the arrogant look Malfoy keeps giving him is pissing him off. “We know you left the bar before he did, but you could’ve hired someone to kill him.”

Malfoy cocks an eyebrow. “Oh? With what money?”

“The Malfoy fortunes weren’t seized after the war,” Harry says.

“Right.” Malfoy nods. “Except I’m not a Malfoy anymore.”

Harry opens his mouth to argue, and then shuts it again. “What?”

Malfoy – or, well, not Malfoy – opens his hands in a wide gesture. “Emancipated myself from my parents as soon as my trial was over, Potter, and I haven’t done magic in years. I’m officially a muggle. I have a muggle birth certificate, a passport – I'm Monéguasque, by the way, and yes, I chose it just because I like the way it sounds – and even social security and a job. I’m a muggle.”

“What?” Harry demands, because he can’t quite wrap his head around it; Malfoy as a – as a non Malfoy? Malfoy as a muggle?

“Yes,” Malfoy says. “So you can leave me alone.”

And he closes the door on their face.

“Well,” Ron says, awkwardly. “That was – not good.”

“You don’t seem very surprised,” Harry says, mildly, when he and Ron – mostly Harry – have finished their rant about Malfoy.

“Well,” Hermione says, shifting on the sofa. “I knew all of this.”

“What?” Harry and Ron ask.

Hermione sighs and puts down the box of Greek takeout she’d been eating.

“He asked for my help, when the war ended,” she confesses. “I got him the muggle birth certificate, the passport, the school records, all of it. I had help, obviously. Luna was very helpful, unexpectedly. Turns out her father used to be a barrister, and she-”

“Why would you help him?” Harry asks. Then, “Why would he need help?”

“You’ve made him practically untouchable, I hope you know,” Ron says to his wife, kissing her cheek and reaching for another box of takeout. “It’s made our case a thousand times harder.”

“Thank you,” Hermione says, smugly. “That was the point.” She turns to Harry. “Harry, I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but Draco spent two years as Voldemort’s prisoner because he is your soulmate. He lied for us in the manor. He – understandably, I might add – wanted a break from the wizarding world, he asked for my help, and I said yes. It was decent.”

Harry knows, logically, that she is right; that he shouldn’t be as angry as he is about finding out Malfoy has made a successful life for himself in France, and, if he’s honest, he’s not entirely sure why he’s angry.

Maybe – well, a tiny bit of Harry had been excited about knowing who his soulmate was since he was told about them when he was eleven, and, after getting through the initial shock of having Malfoy’s name on his ribcage, he’d hoped they could be – normal, for once.

He should’ve known better; nothing between them is ever simple.

After Malfoy had lied for him in the manor – and Harry knows Malfoy knows it was him, because they could’ve recognized each other blindfolded and with their hands tied simply by the feeling of it – Harry had been stupid enough to think that, since the war was over, now came the easy part.

The part he deserved.

And then Malfoy had disappeared without another word, and Harry had been left without a soulmate and with the entirety of the Wizarding World expecting him to know why his soulmate had left, where he’d gone to, and when he and Harry would get together.

It had been stressful.

“Why did you never mention it?” he asks, finally, and Hermione gives him a knowing look that Harry doesn’t quite understand.

“You would’ve looked for him.”

“I wouldn’t have!”

“Harry,” Hermione says sensibly. “The first year after the war – you were a mess.”

“Excuse me?”

“Not that it’s wrong! Or that it wasn’t understandable, or anything, it’s just-” she exhales, shaking her head, and continues quietly, sorrowful. “We all were. All of us, we were all – Malfoy was, too. You did not see him - I spent only a week visiting him in St. Mungo’s, and it was like he was still trapped in that house. I cannot imagine what it must’ve taken for him to move forward. If you’d gotten together then, you would’ve broken up.”

Harry clenches his jaw and looks away, but he knows she’s right; he barely remembers the year after the war, drowned in a haze of alcohol and sex and potions and clubs and anything that could make him feel even a little better for a second.

Hermione, though looking better from the outside, had been just as bad; she’d thrown herself into her work in a way that had meant she’d needed potions to keep up, and had had a brief addiction to a wizarding version of Adderall, five times as potent. She had spent almost an entire year struggling to stop after Ron and Harry had found out. There’s too much to fix, she’d said, frustrated. I can’t do it any other way.

Ron had been, surprisingly, the least self-destructive of them; he’d spent the first three months in bed, without moving at all, barely eating, and without speaking to anyone. He’d begun getting better after that – he’d seen a mind healer, and had later dragged Hermione and Harry with him, too – and now, thankfully, they’re all successful, functional people.

None of them forget, though.

Harry was surrounded by people who’d gone through what he did, by people who somewhat understood.

He couldn't imagine Malfoy having to live through it in the muggle world, with no one who could understand why he couldn’t sleep at night, why he got lost in his own head.

“I’m going to talk to him again,” he says stubbornly.

Hermione’s smile is wry. “I know you are.”

“Holy shit,” Malfoy jumps when he walks out of his apartment and finds Harry standing there, leaning against the wall. “Don’t you know how to knock, Potter?”

“Would you have opened the door?” Harry asks with a raised eyebrow.

Malfoy glares at him. “If someone won’t open the door for you, the polite thing to do is leave.”

Harry ignores him. “Are you a doctor?”

Malfoy is wearing lavender scrubs, with a navy blue Henley underneath thick white shoes.

“Nurse,” Malfoy corrects, and then seems surprised at himself for having answered. He crosses his arms across his chest defensively. “I’m a neonatal nurse at the hospital.”

“Is it far?”

Malfoy shakes his head mutely.

“I’ll walk you,” Harry offers. Malfoy looks surprised and more than a little bit suspicious, but he chews on his lower lip and nods. Harry lets Malfoy lead the way, and, together, silently, they walk towards the hospital where Malfoy works.

St. Remy de Provence is unexpectedly beautiful; it’s small, and much quieter than Harry’s used to – magical London is busy and loud on the best of days – but it’s cozy, and Malfoy looks truly peaceful.

“What are you doing here, Potter?” Malfoy asks finally, quietly. “I’m not going to help you with your case.”

“I don’t have a case anymore.” Harry shrugs. “I was transferred.”

He’d gone to Robards after he’d seen Malfoy, and had admitted he couldn’t work the case. Robards had already another team waiting.

Malfoy gives a humorless smile. “Should I be expecting another Auror at my door soon, then?”

Harry shakes his head. “I told them you didn’t know anything.”

Malfoy blinks, stunned for a second, and then mutters a quiet ‘thank you’.

They continue walking in silence, and then Harry decides to simply say it.

“I want you to come back.” Malfoy immediately stiffens, and Harry can see he is going to refuse outright, which is why he continues quickly. “It doesn’t have to be right now. I don’t mean to pressure you, and I know you - I know you’ve been dealing with – well, everything, like the rest of us, but – it's not the same without you.”

He wishes he were lying, but he’s not; he’d been unable to sleep the night before, and had, very slowly, very painfully, realized that he’s actually missed Malfoy, all this time. Sixth year without him was worse than ever, and through being on the run, Harry had, secretly, wondered where he was, all the time. He'd checked every day, nearly every hour, his soulmark with Draco’s name in his handwriting, only to make sure that it was still inked black and not a faded grey, to know he wasn’t dead.

Seeing him at the manor – and that is not a memory Harry will ever forget. Seeing Bellatrix dragging him forward with a chain wrapped around his neck had sent blinding fury through Harry – had been a breath of fresh air and relief where there was none, if only for a few seconds. Losing him again so shortly after, when he’d disappeared after being discharged, had been unbearable, even on top of everything else.

“I can’t,” Malfoy whispers.

“What?”

“I can’t.” Malfoy clears his throat, looks away. “I meant it when I said I was a muggle, Potter. I – we're soulmates, and I’ve missed you for some – some reason-” he lets out a disbelieving laugh and shakes his head. “I can’t do magic.”

Harry cannot speak. Then, “What?”

“I can’t do magic anymore,” Malfoy says, louder. “When I was – there - my wand was taken away, and I spent - I spent two years without being able to even touch a wand, let alone do any magic, and – afterwards, I was so – so terrified of them I couldn’t bring myself to grab one.”

“Have you tried?”

Malfoy gives him a look. “Obviously. My therapist – she's a muggle, so I had to come up with some pretty creative metaphors, and I think she knows I'm lying to her – she suggested I try to get more comfortable to eventually start doing it again. I worked on it, and I’m not – afraid anymore, not really, I can be around wands, but - I can’t do magic. I’ve tried, even with the simplest of spells, and I can’t. She says – it's just trauma, I know that, but I can’t.”

Harry stays quiet; he cannot imagine not being able to do magic. It had been one of the few things that got him through everything after the war, and having it taken away – well, fuck.

“I’m sorry,” he says uselessly.

Malfoy gives a tense shrug. “I’ve gotten used to it. But I can’t go back.”

“I-”

“I have to go in.” Malfoy gestures to the big hospital on their right. “I’ll... see you later?”

Harry nods, and watches as Malfoy walks away.

“This is crossing so many lines,” Hermione had said, when Harry had told her of his plan.

Harry is aware he is crossing many, many lines, but he is now outside of Malfoy’s door, so he cannot back down.

He knocks, and, a few seconds later, the door opens; Malfoy seems to have just woken up – and it’s nearly four in the afternoon, but Harry doesn’t know what kind of shifts he works at the hospital, so he’s not judging him too much – and blinks owlishly at him for a few seconds before sliding his gaze to the person standing next to Harry.

“Potter,” he says, very slowly. “What have you done?”

“This is Healer Bo,” Harry says, placing his hand on Malfoy’s door to stop him from – predictably – slamming the door on their faces. Healer Bo is a little old man with dark, greying hair, shorter than both of them but also probably smarter than them combined. “I know you’ve said your therapist thinks it’s trauma, but what if it’s something different?”

“Potter.” And oh, okay, Malfoy is furious, as is evident by the quickly blooming color on his face. “I am not some victim you can focus your – your hero complex on. I told you those things to explain, not to have you turn me into some pet project!”

“That’s not what I'm doing!” Harry defends. “I’m only trying to help you-”

“I didn’t ask for your help!”

“Well, deal with it, you git, because we are soulmates and I want to help you, and I want you to come back, and I want you to be able to do magic because you deserve it!”

“So you just want me to uproot my entire life for you?” Malfoy demands. “Why don’t you come to the muggle world instead of setting me up with a healer appointment I didn’t ask for? He’s not going to be able to do anything!”

“How do you know that?” Harry pushes. “Your therapist is muggle, Malfoy-”

“Don’t call me that, I’m not-”

“Draco, you can’t have told her everything, so her diagnosis can’t be reliable-”

“Well, too bad! I’m not letting some random healer you’ve brought to my door run tests on me-”

“I’ve already run them,” Healer Bo says calmly. “Your magical core is damaged.”

Silence.

“What?” Draco asks, fragile.

“It could be trauma, as well, but it’s not only that,” Healer Bo explains. “Your magical core is damaged. I need you to come into my office so I can run some more tests.”

Harry spreads his hands in an ‘I told you so’ gesture, and Draco throws balled socks at him.

“What did he say?” Harry asks anxiously, standing up as soon as Malfoy comes out the door, Healer Bo following close behind him. “What did you say? What’s wrong?”

Healer Bo and Draco share a look.

“I told you he frets,” Draco tells him.

“You were right,” Healer Bo agrees solemnly, and before Harry can be properly offended, he continues. “Draco's magical core is damaged because of Crucio.”

“That can happen?” Harry asks, frowning.

“That’s what Crucio does,” Healer Bo says. “It cracks one’s magical core. It’s why it feels like everything is burning. If it’s done enough, the magical core can be damaged irreparably.”

Harry holds his breath. “Is - Draco’s-”

“No,” Healer Bo says; Draco can complain all he likes, but he’s beaming beside Healer Bo. “It’s not irreparably damaged. It will be a long process, however. You’ll both need to be patient.”

They both nod, quickly, and Harry asks, “Do I – should I do something?”

“Support your soulmate,” Healer Bo says simply. Draco’s cheeks turn red, but Harry nods seriously. He’ll do anything he can. “I’ve already given Draco the Potions he’ll need to be taking, and we will have to perform Healing spells once every two days. You can either come in here, or I can send one of my interns-”

“We’ll come in,” Harry says immediately; he assumes Bo’s interns are good – Bo is, after all, one of the highest praised healers in the world – but he wants Bo to do it. He won’t trust anyone else with his soulmate.

“Alright,” Bo says. “I’ll see you in two days.”

“What are you thinking about?” Harry had taken Draco out for a late lunch; they’re at the only restaurant reporters never find Harry, a tiny Indian takeout place. The lady who runs it loves Harry, so she never calls the reporters, and doesn’t allow anyone else to call them, either. He’d figured Draco wouldn’t want to be in a Prophet article on his first day back.

“A lot of things,” Draco admits. “The possibility of getting my magic back. The fact that I didn’t quit the hospital before we left, which means that technically I have a shift in twenty minutes, which I figure I’m not going to make. The fact that I have nowhere to live and no money to get a place to live-”

“Come live with me,” Harry blurts. He’s never had the best brain-to-mouth filter.

“What?”

“Live with me,” he repeats. “I’ve - a flat. I moved out of Grimmauld place, it was too – too many memories, but – we can live together, and – if you want to leave, later, I’ll let you, but – well, I'd like it if you stayed.”

Draco stares at him for a moment, and then looks away, a pink flush spreading across his cheeks. “Alright.”

Harry can’t help but grin. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The recovery of Draco’s magical core is, as the healer had said, slow. Healer Bo tells them that it really helps that they’re together, because being far from one’s soulmate can be greatly stressful, and Harry is glad to be doing what he can. Apart from that, they settle into Harry’s flat quite nicely.

Harry refuses to sleep on the couch – he was about to offer, but then Draco demanded it, so Harry would be damned before he gave up his bed – and Draco refuses to not sleep in the biggest bed available, so they share Harry’s bed, which Harry thinks should feel weird, but it doesn’t.

It feels... right. Like home, sort of.

Time passes much quicker than it used to, without Draco; Harry takes a year leave from the Aurors so he can dedicate, fully, to his soulmate. Draco gets reintegrated to the magical world slowly, and though he cannot do magic, he’s evidently glad to be back.

They even get pets – a fat kneazle that they call Morgana and a huge black crup that they call Godric – and pretty much build their life together. Draco opens a bakery – and really, of all things Harry imagined Draco doing, this was not one of them – and it turns out that Muggle treats are not widely known in the wizarding world, and they are widely liked, once Draco starts selling them. Because he runs the place, he only works during the morning, which means they get to spend their afternoons lounging together in their flat, watching the telly or teasing each other.

“Potter, I swear to Merlin,” Draco growls, glaring tightly at Harry, who’s holding his favorite mug as high as he can reach.

“I’ll give it to you,” Harry tells him. “As soon as you admit that you’re the one who got our reservation wrong.”

“I did not! You said seven!”

“I told you, a thousand times, that our reservation was at six!”

“No, you didn’t!”

Turns out, being soulmates didn’t really stop their fighting, but it’s different now. Harry is rarely truly angry while they argue, unlike before, and Draco is the same way.

“Yes, I did!”

“No you bloody didn’t!” Draco snaps. “Give me my mug back right now, or I’ll - I’ll-”

“You’ll what?” Harry asks smugly. “What will you do to me, Draco?”

Draco glares at him, ears red in his anger, and then grabs Harry’s wand off the counter and yells, ‘Accio’.

The mug flies straight from Harry’s hand into Draco’s. They’re both so surprised it slips from his hands, shattering on the floor.

Neither of them care.

“Did I just-”

“Did you just-”

They look at each other for a moment, before they both break into the biggest grins imaginable. Harry laughs and pulls him in for a tight hug, lifting him and spinning around in their kitchen, miraculously not stepping on any shards of ceramic.

“You just did magic, Draco!” Harry practically yells, not putting him down. “Magic!”

“I did!” Draco’s ecstatic, over the moon, grin wider than Harry’s ever seen. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

And he grabs Harry’s face roughly and pulls him in for a deep kiss.

They both freeze momentarily, and Harry puts him down.

“I’m sorry,” Draco begins immediately. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to - I didn’t - I shouldn’t have-”

Harry pulls him in for another kiss, deeper this time, and pulls him closer, grabbing his hips.

“Don’t apologize,” he pleads. “I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.”

“You have?” Draco sounds surprised.

“Yes,” Harry says, and he kisses him again. Draco wraps his arms around his neck, and Harry lifts him again, sitting him in their kitchen counter, and he can’t get enough, he can’t stop, he can’t.

When they both pull away to breathe – a long, long time later – Harry cannot stop grinning at him.

“I love you,” he says. “Soulmate.”

Draco’s grin is the only thing Harry wants to see for the rest of his life.

“I love you, too,” he says, rubbing their noses together sweetly. “Soulmate.”

And Harry kisses him again, and he thinks that if everything he had to go through was leading to this moment, he’d do it all again, a thousand times, however many times it was necessary, because this? This is everything.

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Soulmate AU commissioned by @chinike

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whatdoesshedotothem · 4 years ago

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Friday 28 June 1839

8 ¾

darkish but fair – breakfast at 10 ¼ - A- had had Miss Lloyd – somehow I did not trouble myself to go to her – said I was dressing – but I had in my dressing gown just pepped out at A- Miss Lloyd went away probably thinking we should not trouble her much more – Skimmed over this mornings’ Herald – (A- went – drove at 11 ¾ - to take her bath at 12) – I wrote all but the 1st 11 lines of yesterday and so far of today till now 12 40/.. – note a little while ago from Lady D. Gordon to say she could not come today – forgot yesterday that she was going this morning to see her sick sister Lady Hereford – wrote as follows to Mr. Adam on ¼ sheet paper ’26 Dover street Friday 28 June 1839 Sir – I am quite assured your information was altogether incorrect, and I am perfectly satisfied on the score of suitableness in every respect – Miss Walker will write under this [?] if she can, if not, you will have her note in time – I will send off my letter to Mr. Parker tomorrow – I am sir, etc. etc. A. Lister’ – then wrote and sent by George at 1 ½ to Lady S. de R- ‘Friday morning 28 June 1839. Dear Lady Stuart Perhaps I have Louisas’ signing in my head which dissatisfied me with everything else, but I do not quite like my political note into Yorkshire as a final measure – Do tell Lord Pollington, if you think proper, I should have great pleasure in renewing our Paris acquaintance, and shall be glad to see him if he has ten minutes to spare any time, except tomorrow, before post time on Monday – my love to Louisa – Believe me very truly yours A. Lister’ – the Lady Stuart de Rothesay 4 Carlton house terrace’ – A- returned languid at 1 10/.. – then till 4 ¾ at my copy of rent to Mr. Parker and at A-‘s ditto of instructions and outgo to Mr. Adam – had just written so far – A- had changed her dress, and we were going out when Lord Stuart de Rothesay – Lord Pollington wished by all means the H-x borough to be kept open – his coming forward had been mentioned to him 2 or 3 years ago! he would be glad to be rid of Pontefract if Lord Mexborough had not compromised him too far – he must ascertain this – Lord M- often very foolish in the same matters – mention of Mr. James Wortley – Lord Wharncliffe a mar-plot – I mentioned that it was well Mr. James W- did not now wish to represent us again – I did not think of anybody thought of him – mentioned the unluckily demur about the £500 Lord W- was to have given towards the election – some of the expense not yet paid – I had no idea of our borough having been named to Lord P- supposed it was by an attorney who often made big promises and who had promised Mr. John Wortley the West Riding when he was sure to lose it – Lord P- made no difficulty about £400 or £500 or more – and I may say that – Lord S. de R- gave me 2 letters for St. Petersburg – one of Lord [Clanicard] and the other for Mr. Bayley a banker there – on Lord S-‘s going away, tore up what I had written to Mr. Adam and wrote another note as follows – ’26 Dover street – Friday 28 June 1839

SH:7/ML/E/23/0071

Sir I am quite assured your information was altogether incorrect, and I am perfectly satisfied on the score of suitableness in every respect – you may safely contradict the reports you heard which might perhaps attaché to one of his brothers, but not at all to himself whose character stands high – Perhaps you are not aware that his coming forward was already been mentioned to him 2 or 3 years ago, and perhaps you will guess that it may be a H-x legal channel thro’ which the mention probably passed – five or six hundreds or even more if requisite will be forthcoming – the only thing necessary to be known, is, how far he is compromised for another place – I will send off my letter to Mr. Parker tomorrow – I am sir etc. etc. A. Lister’ enclosed this note and A-‘s letter in Lord Stuarts’ frank – left it with Gross to be put into the letter box franked to ‘Thomas Adam Esquire solicitor Halifax’ (Lord S- gave me a frank for tomorrow to ‘Robert Parker Esquire solicitor H-x’) and I hurried to put up my things and A- and I drove out (the carriage had waited since 4pm) at 5 ¾ to 11 Vere street for pelerines – came away without buying as also from Mrs. Gross’s recommendation of a shop (a much worse one, and dearer?) Banfields in Holles street Cavendish square – then to Careys’ 18 Strand and left A-‘s loupe (botanical magnifying lenses) to have AW. instead of W.L. engraved – then to Pearces’s’ about the carriage and home at 7 ¼ - dinner at 7 20/.. – Passport returned from Lord Stuarts’ with torn up note within the envelope (sent I suppose by Louis) Monsieur de Kesseleffs compliments to Lord S- and begged to have the names of my servants – enclosed the passport giving the 2 names ‘Christian Gross and Catherine Elizabeth sa femme les deux domestiques de Madame Anne Lister’ written on a ¼ sheet of paper, and sent Gross with the packet – M. de K. not at home – Gross to go again at 10 am tomorrow – then sat a while [?] over our wine – then wrote as follows to ‘Miss Lloyd 56 Brook street’ (and sent George with the note at 9 ¼) ‘Mrs. Lister wishes Miss Lloyd to come to her at 9 tomorrow morning – 29 Albemarle street Friday evening’ – then till 9 55/.. wrote all but the 1st 20 lines of today – sat a little while talking to A- then till 11 wrote 2 ½ pp. to M- A- went to bed at or before 11 – I had my hair done, and then from 11 ½ to 4 in the morning of today sat up

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andersunmenschlich · 5 years ago

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Episode 12: First Aid

Another snatched moment hour. Tonight I get the story of one Lesere Seraki, a nurse at St. Thomas Hospital in London.

The story takes place in 2012, two days before Christmas.

Lesere Seraki is working in the Accident and Emergency department that night, and is pleasantly surprised by the absence of fights and angry drunks, which apparently she was expecting. Sounds like the worst they got was some broken bones. It's 1:30 am when the ambulance arrives. They'd radioed ahead to tell Accident and Emergency to expect a couple burn victims (severe burns), so Lesere was ready for that.

Oddly, the waiting room's totally silent.

All the patients are still sitting there doing normal things—looking at phones, reading books, cradling injuries, comforting one another—but without making any sound.

Huh. Now, this makes me wonder. I've got really good hearing, so I can tell you that just because no one's talking doesn't mean a place is silent! The rustle of pages turning, the rasp of skin on paper, the thud of fingertips hitting screens or armrests or table tops (interspersed with the occasional sharp click of a nail), the constant cacophonous rush of air sweeping into and out of noses and mouths....

What does Lesere Seraki mean when she says "the A & E waiting room was totally silent"? Are we talking a supernatural, sound-deadening silence? Or just a normal, noisy, no one making deliberate mouth-noise silence?

She's surprised by it, so I'm inclined to think the silence was supernatural.

But then she says "not one of them spoke," which makes me think it was natural (and not really all that silent).

Whatever the case, the ambulance pulls up and Lesere runs out to help with the first patient. She notes that the doctor (Kaylee Grice) speaks very quietly: not quite a whisper, but near it. No one else seems to notice this, so Lesere concludes she's just having trouble hearing because she's very tired.

Hmm.

I'm often told that I speak very quietly, but from my perspective everyone else speaks far too loudly. They breathe too loudly, too. If there's some kind of something in this episode that's making people be quieter than usual, I think I just might like it, whatever it is. Even if all it's doing is keeping the chatter down, well, I'll take what I can get!

The hospital employees get the first patient to the only available treatment room, and Lesere Seraki gets started while Dr. Grice and the EMTs go back for the other one.

Lesere is 48, and has been a nurse for most of her life.

She's baffled by these burns. They're second-degree, and apparently they cover the patient's entire body—even under the undamaged clothes. Now, that's interesting. In fact, that's fascinating. I wonder what Ivo Lensik (from episode 8) would've looked like if Father Edwin Burroughs hadn't turned up in time. That heat seemed to come from inside him, remember? Wouldn't it be interesting if it only burned him, and didn't touch his clothes?

According to Lesere Seraki, patient one is a tall, heavy-set, athletically built middle-aged male with no hair (possibly it’s all been burned off), wearing a black suit and a white shirt.

Patient two is smaller and younger than patient one (Lesere guesses mid-thirties), and totally fine from the neck up—no burns at all. There's a clear line where the burns stop. This patient (also male) has long hair dyed black, no beard, a similar suit to patient one, and a very nice long black leather coat which Lesere feels bad about destroying.

Well, that is one of the many downsides to getting that badly injured: your clothes can't come off normally, they've got to be cut off.

Neither patient one nor patient two appears to be in any pain, which is weird. No screaming, crying, moaning... it's like they're sleeping peacefully. Well... I suppose if you've got to be horribly burned, dropping into some kind of healing coma wouldn't be a bad reaction, as reactions to that sort of thing go.

Ooh, and patient two is covered in tattooed eyes!

Now, what would make a person want to have tiny eyes tattooed on every joint in their body—knees, elbows, knuckles—and over their heart?

These clearly aren't normal tattoos, either. According to our statement-giver, every last one of them is untouched by burns. In fact they seem to have protected the areas around them a little bit too, in rings about a centimeter wide. Hmm. I wonder if that protection's more than skin deep? Since the heat in episode eight came from inside, I'd definitely expect some damage to have been done to the joints, unless....

Also, patient two reminds me of Kiritsugu. Or Wizard Dresden.

...Jared Keay?

Let me see, that was episode four. That story took place in the winter of 2012, and this story takes place in the winter of 2011, which means (if I'm right) that when Jared Keay stole Dominic Swain's very hot metal trash can... yes.

Dominic was worried that Jared would burn himself on the thing, and Jared "shrugged and said he'd had worse."

Well, this would certainly be worse!

That would also make our covered-in-eyes burn patient the guy who painted the picture of the eye I was so taken with in the study at Pinhole Books.

Is it just me, or are eyes kind of a recurring theme in this show? First there was Graham Folger in episode three, filling notebook after notebook with "keep watching," then there was that eye painting in episode four ("Grant us the sight that we may not know. Grant us the scent that we may not catch. Grant us the sound that we may not call"), then the bullet hole opening "like an eye" in Wilfred Owen's forehead in episode seven, that camera in episode nine (which I'm including mainly because I still don't understand why Robert Montauk was taking pictures he apparently didn't ever expect to be able to develop), and now there's this guy with eye tattoos all over him.

...Heheheh. "Jared Keay has an eye on his ankle...."

[cough] Anyway.

Dr. Kaylee Grice and the EMTs seem to have recovered their ability to speak loudly, which is a shame, and they're talking about what's up with patients one and two, which is wonderful because I really wanted to know.

Seems they were found in a building site near St. Mary's Churchyard, unconscious, by the fire brigade. Someone reported a fire, see... but when the brigade got there, there wasn't any fire. Some scorch marks on the ground, and a metal bar that had apparently been heat-warped (and two people covered in burns), but no actual fire. So they called an ambulance, because what else were they going to do?

Patient one was apparently an alien. Who carries nothing in their pockets? Even I've always got at least one knife.

Patient two was nearly as bad as patient one. Nearly. But not quite. Our long-haired, wizardy-looking friend was carrying 1) a Zippo lighter with (surprise, surprise) an eye on it, and 2) a old passport that identified him as Jared Keay. And apparently Jared Keay's been around!

Funny that the coat was in such good shape. From Lesere's description, it was practically brand new. Man, that's an unfortunate thing to lose.

Apparently he got another one, though.

The EMTs get another call and head out. The nurse and the doctor finish cleaning and bandaging all those full-body burns, then transfer the two to a ward with bed space and move on with the business of the night.

An hour or so later, Lesere Seraki's going to get more gauze, and passes through that ward.

The older burn victim is talking.

Or... chanting, more like. But really, really quietly, and not entirely in English. She says the first word sounded like "a sock" or "a sog," the next word like "veepalatch," and finally, in English, "the lightless flame." I think she might be skipping some words between "veepalatch" and the English, which makes sense—can't expect her to remember the whole thing. Though these statement-givers are usually really good at remembering details! Not to mention writing them well; but that's sort of essential, given that this is a podcast and if they were awful I wouldn't be listening.

"A sog," though... that makes me think of Sumerian mythology. Yeah, I didn't study that too much (I focused more on Greek, Roman, and Norse stuff), but it's ringing a faint bell. Lugal-e? I think there was a villain named Asag.

Yeah, they were some kind of rock troll or something? But with more supernatural powers than we think of stone people as having these days. Lessee, they used the sky for a club, howled like a storm, dried up the water of the mountains, tore trees out of the earth, set fire to the reed-beds, bathed the sky in blood—that kind of thing.

They also had kids, which were all made of different types of stone. Hematite kids, lapis lazuli kids, alabaster kids... all that. Even coal kids. In the end, Ninurta basically annihilates Asag and turns them into a heap of rocks, which gets used to build the underworld and also make some dams, I think, and then he assigns different fates to all the kids based on what they did or didn't do during his fight with Asag. Conveniently, this also lines up with the properties of the rocks. I remember it being a kind of just-so story, explaining why there's stone under the earth and why we use different types of rock for different things.

Don't know why anybody would be chanting about a rock troll, though, so....

Oh, and this chanting starts to make Lesere Seraki feel like Ivo Lensik in episode eight. "I started to feel warm, like there was a fever quickly creeping out towards my skin," she says.

...Whoa, hold up.

She says this isn't the first time she's had this reaction.

Tell me about the other times, Lesere!

And how the heck does taking a moment to center yourself make a supernatural burn-you-up-from-the-inside-out thing stop? There's something going on with this nurse.

She doesn't know what to do about the chanting, though, so she just checks patient one's bandages (they're fine) and carries on with her shift. But when she returns to the main Accident and Emergency reception, there's no one there.

She was just there less than five minutes ago.

Where could everyone possibly have gone? And why? She says there were more than thirty people there, then she steps out to get some gauze and they vanish?

There's no one at the reception desk, even! That can't possibly be right.

So she starts checking rooms, and the only people left are the ones who're too sick to move or hooked up to IVs, and they're all asleep. Which, at three in the morning, is probably what every daytimer wants to be—but they don't wake up when she makes some plausibly deniable attempts to wake them up (loud noises outside their rooms), which makes me think their sleep isn't entirely natural.

Then she hears a sort of growl, and notices that the floor is shaking. She can't figure out where it's coming from, and is getting more and more freaked out by the second.

I don't suppose finding the source calms her down any, because it's one of two vending machines—all the drinks inside it are boiling so violently they're exploding. In half a minute they're all completely wrecked, and the growling sound stops.

She decides to leave.

I think that's a sane decision, under the circumstances. I mean, apparently everyone else has!

But when she gets to the door, she notices that the plastic at each end of the metal handles is a bit... melty. She tests the temperature with the back of her hand (a good thing for checking temperature with), and sure enough—that door is just radiating intense heat.

Well, she's obviously not getting out that way.

On her way to another exit, though, she hears patient one still chanting.

She's so keyed up at this point that she heads in with the incoherent goal of making him stop. No clear idea of how she's going to do it, mind you. She has the vague thought that she'll stick her hand over his mouth.

That... doesn't seem like a great plan to me. I mean, we know things around here have a tendency to be unexpectedly hot right now, don't we?

At least she should check his face like she did the door.

Before she can burn all the skin off her palm, however, somebody grabs her wrist. Somebody with a body temperature notably higher than average. Jared Keay shakes his head at Lesere Seraki, and she screams at him.

Boy, she is all keyed up.

He drops her wrist straightaway and says sorry, it's just touching patient one would have been a bad idea.

He's obviously in horrible pain, but doing his best to hide it, pretend nothing's wrong, and keep functioning. I empathize with that extremely. I think I might like Jared Keay, and not just because he shares my taste in coats.

In any case, the two of them stare at each other awkwardly for a while.

Jared, it seems, is waiting for Lesere to ask him what's going on. I'd quite like her to ask what's going on.

Lesere, however, says "something told me that if there was a coherent explanation for everything that had happened since the ambulance arrived, then I would be no better off for knowing it."

Oh, for Pete's sake!

Who doesn't want information? Simply knowing is useful! Just having the information makes you better off! Sure, you may not want others to know you know, but knowing itself is never a bad thing. As a certain statue says, "Knowledge is the greatest gift." Even if there's nothing you can do about a thing, at least you know!

[sigh]

Well, anyway. There's silence for a while, then Jared asks about his stuff. Apparently he had more than just a lighter and a passport!

He's most interested in a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant he'd been wearing. Ooh, would that pendant be what protected him from the neck up? And somebody took it. Somebody who didn't finish the burn job after the theft. That's... huh. Well, it's a bit of a weird way to go about a robbery.

Oh.

Lesere Seraki is exceedingly creeped out by Jared Keay.

Apparently she thinks that somebody with second-degree burns over eighty percent of his body shouldn't be standing up and walking around, especially given how much painkiller he's got in him (yeah, he should be awfully woozy).

So there's silence again while Jared processes the fact that his book and his necklace have been stolen and Lesere carries on being spooked.

Then Jared nods at her and limps away.

She follows him, wanting to know what he's doing. What he's doing, apparently, is putting in the code for the supply closet, which frankly he shouldn't know. Oh, and he's stealing a scalpel. ...Oh, and he's going to murder patient one. Well, that's... unexpected.

As a nurse, Lesere Seraki figures she'd better stop him. But stuff around him starts to boil, and so (given this new information), she comes to a different conclusion, and steps aside.

...To which Jared Keay says something that makes no sense.

"Yes. For you... better beholding than the lightless flame."

Ooookey-dokey. Well. Lessee. Patient one was ranting about "the lightless flame," and Jared Keay is clearly obsessed with eyes, so that seems to line up. Hmm. Maybe he's trying to pick a thing to do to Lesere, and he's decided to go with the eye one instead of the burning one. Ugh, but if he can control the burny thing, why's he burned? And using a scalpel instead of whatever's making things around him boil?

Well, whatever.

Jared Keay unwraps the scalpel, mutters a few words, and stabs patient one (who's still chanting) in the neck.

...Ohhh. And this initiates a full-on, flameless, apparently heatless cremation. Okey-dokey. Yup. I take it back—clearly Jared's got a handle on this thing. Even the scalpel gets ashed, which is really handy in terms of disposal of a murder weapon.

He sweeps the ashes into the bedpan and asks Lesere to dispose of them.

As a nurse, she knows where the medical waste bins are. Handy. And as she's walking the corridor, she spots Dr. Grice at the other end. She runs to go check, and sure enough—everybody's back, being just as noisy as she'd expect them to be. She actually cries, she's so relieved.

Jared stays in the hospital for another four days, then his mom comes and gets him, which is a good trick given her death in 2008, but hey, we know what Mary Keay's like.

Oh, and apparently Lesere changed her mind about wanting to know.

Yeah, try talking to him about what happened now, Lesere Seraki, now that everything's back to normal and there are people everywhere. It's too late! You had your chance and you blew it! Argh!

...And now she's just trying not to think about it.

Whee.

All right, I'll admit there are things I try not to think about—but they're things I know, and even though I don't like thinking about them, particularly, I wouldn't unknow them if I could. It's good to know things! You don't have to think about them all the time, but it's good to be able to if you need to! People like this... yeah, I don't understand people like this at all.

Oh, and she says she gets the feeling of being watched when she's alone on the wards. Not threatened, not protected, not judged either positively or negatively: just watched.

So I was right! Jared Keay was deciding which thing to hit her with. Well, well.

Jonathan Sims says Sasha was able to get access to the hospital records for that time, and they back up Lesere Seraki's story. He also says "Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption," which sounds to me like he's got Asag mixed up with the Asakku, which is quite easy to do since they share the same name, but Asag was one being and the Asakku were many, so....

And then he says something about Asag being "able to boil fish alive in their rivers," which I don't remember from the Lugal-e at all.

The closest thing to that would be, I think, when the hurricane that went before the hero Ninurta "flooded out the fish there in the subterranean waters" and "reduced the animals of the open country to firewood, roasting them like locusts." But that was the hero's doing, not Asag's. Hmm. Ninurta also "caused bilious poison to run over the rebel lands," making sick the people who had turned from him to acknowledge Asag as their ruler.

But, again, that's the hero making people sick, not Asag, so....

I really don't know where Mr. Sims is getting his information here. Though it does make way more sense that patient one would’ve been talking about the Asakku, not Asag! (Yeah, it’s the same name in Sumerian, but different in Akkadian... whatever, it’s language, what’re you gonna do.)

Anyway, he goes on to say that Martin thinks "veepalatch" might be a mishearing of a Polish word which I'm going to use Google to look up: "wypalać."

This seems more reliable than the stuff Jonathan was coming up with earlier. Honestly, my opinion of this Martin is higher than my opinion of our narrator: Martin hasn't shown any signs of being anything but competent and reliable, while Jonathan Sims is, well... he's skeptical and trusting in strange places, let's put it that way.

Mr. Sims says he can't find anything conclusive on "the lightless flame."

He says it crops up in a lot of different contexts throughout various esoteric literatures.

Okay, I call shenanigans. We've been listening to him record this whole time, there've been no clicks, it's not like he took a break to do research and then came back! And we know it's other people who do the pre-reading research, not him.

Come to that, when did he look up "wypalać"?

Well, all right—that one he could look into easily enough on a smartphone. And maybe the podcast editors cut out the pause for Googling because it'd be annoying for listeners. But there's just no way he went through "various esoteric literatures" on his phone! That's just... no. Nope, my suspension of disbelief doesn't go that far.

Ugh. Well, I suppose it might. But I'd prefer to think that all this knowing-stuff-it-shouldn't-be-possible-for-him-to-know nonsense isn't just the result of the podcasting format.

...Which, now that I've put it that way, reminds me of Jared Keay and his knowing the code to the supply closet.

Huh.

Anyway, according to John Tyndall in Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion, if you mix hydrogen with pure oxygen you get pure aqueous vapor. Ignite that, and you get a lightless flame, much hotter than an ordinary flame. Laboratory: A Weekly Record of Scientific Research, Volume 1 says much the same thing: "Though it is clear that the luminosity of certain flames increases with their temperature, we must not forget that hydrogen burns in oxygen with an intensely hot, but almost lightless flame. The hydrogen flame in air has a temperature of 3376° Fahrenheit, but in oxygen it rises to 7364°."

Then, of course, there's The Complete Old English Poems, where there's a Biblical poem about the fallen angels: "They warmed to power and fell into fire / A candling darkness, a lightless flame / A terrible truth dawned on them too late / They traded God's glory for hell's grim fate."

But mostly I'm turning up stuff like this patent thingy—

"The Petitioners are the proprietors of Welsbach's patent, taken out in 1885 for incandescent gas-lighting. Welsbach; instead of using the flame of gas in the ordinary way so that the particles of carbon in the gas produced the light, mixed the gas with air as in a Bunsen burner, and so got a lightless flame with considerable heat; he hung over that a mantle, which became white hot and incandescent, and produced a greater light with the same quantity of gas than could be produced in the old way of incandescent carbon in the gas."

—and other sciency stuff, which I suppose tells you something about my Google search habits.

Never mind that. What I'm saying is: I don't think a smartphone would let Jonathan Sims do the kind of research he's claiming to have done here. It'd take hours in a special library or something.

Mr. Sims says it hasn't escaped his notice that this is the second time Jared Keay has turned up in his tape recordings. He'd like to get a statement from him (and so would I!) but apparently Jared died "late last year," whenever that is. Brain tumor. He holds out hope that Jared might've already given a statement, and it's just hidden in the mess somewhere. I certainly hope so. That ought to be good, assuming it wasn't given before he figured things out.

Lesere Seraki's still alive.

...And she still gets the watched feeling every once in a while, but otherwise everything's normal with her.

Ooh, but Sasha didn't just get access to the hospital admissions and discharge records! She also got access to their CCTV footage! Dang, these "assistants" are awesome. How are they so good at their jobs? These people are amazing.

At 3:11:22, everybody in the Accident and Emergency waiting room (28 people, by Mr. Sims's count) just got up and left. Like it was a fire drill or something (except it wasn't). Then Lesere goes in and out a few times, once stares at something under the camera (which Mr. Sims figures is the vending machine—shame, it would've been cool to have that on camera, assuming the camera was good enough to pick up more than pixelly blurs), and then at 3:27:12 everybody just files back in.

It's video without sound, so verifying that's out.

Oh, well now.

Sasha noticed that at 3:22:52, the feed cuts out and—for less than a second—there's a close-up on a human eye. Yeah, okay, "recurring theme" indeed, you're just rubbing it in our faces now.

This is really cool! I definitely feel like things are starting to come together.

So there's some kind of magical power called beholding, and another one called the lightless flame, and you can use the lightless flame spell to burn people without messing up their clothes (or beds) and boil things and turn doors too hot to touch, and the beholding spell to... make people feel watched? Learn the codes to hospital supply closets?

...Research stuff you obviously couldn't have researched normally?

Hmm.

#The Magnus Archives #episode 12 #commentary #late to the party

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wolfpawn · 6 years ago

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Life is a Game of Risks, Chapter 43

Chapter Summary - As Tom broached the idea of a holiday with Alexianna, they discuss other matters.

TRIGGERS - Past domestic abuse, Past emotional abuse, Past sexual abuse.

Previous Chapter

Tags: @damalseer @hiddlesbitch1 @winterisakiller @theoneanna

Request if you wish to be tagged

WARNING - this chapter will mildly reference past martial sexual abuse.

Tom was uncertain as to how to approach the topic of Lily's schooling with Alexianna, so he said nothing until he could think of the best possible time and way to bring up the subject. That said, it did not prevent him from getting the curriculum and the admission's form from the school, in case she would be willing to listen.

Alexianna had flown through her exams and was currently in the chair opposite him, as the relaxed after a busy day, choosing her modules for the following and final year of her course on her laptop. 'Lexi?'

'Hmm?' she did not look away from the screen as she answered him.

'I was thinking.'

'Seldom does that statement get uttered and what follows is not something to worry about.'

'What date is Lily finished for the summer?'

'The twentieth of next month.' she replied. When there was no sound out of Tom for a few moments, she forced her gaze away from her laptop to look at him, only to see him focusing ardently on his phone. 'Dare I inquire as to why you asked that particular question?'

'I am checking dates.'

'What for?'

'A holiday.'

'Tom....'

'No, please listen. Nothing mad, I swear. Just the Isle of Wight, for a week.'

'Tom, the Isle of Wight costs a small fortune, some sun holidays are cheaper than that place. I cannot afford it.'

'I would not expect you to.'

'Tom...' There was a stern warning in her tone. 'We spoke about this.'

'Look, Lexi, I want to treat you and Lily to a nice little breakaway. You won't take well to a foreign holiday, so I am not even going to entertain the idea of such.'

'We couldn't anyway, neither of us has a passport.' She interjected.

'You are getting that fixed in the near future.' Tom insisted. 'But, after everything and all your hard work, you deserve a few days of restaurant eating, sea air and relaxing. Think about it, think about how Lily would love it.'

In truth, Alexianna wanted to argue it. It would be expensive. The Isle of Wight was always a costly destination, add to that the fact it was summer, where accommodation tripled in price, she could not condone such money. But she also thought of Lily, who would love to go on an actual holiday, it was incredibly tempting. I'm not so sure, the ferry and accommodation alone will be bonkers.'

'Ben has a house there, he is giving it to us for nothing.'

'What?'

'My friend Ben, Ben Cumberbatch, he is letting us use his place there. He needs it checked on and Sophie is busy with a production and he has other stuff to juggle, so he asked if we were interested in a few days away in return for checking on it.'

'So this is not costing us for accommodation?'

'Correct.'

'Just the ferry, food and petrol?'

'Correct.'

'Okay, yeah.'

'I...You changed your tune.'

'Tom, my only concern was the cost. If it is not going to be overly expensive, then yes.'

Relieved that he was able to convince her to say yes, Tom did not press the issue further, for fear she would back out. 'Right, tell work that you are taking from the twentieth until the thirtieth of July off. We will celebrate Lily's birthday with my mum and sisters here and then we will pack off the next morning at silly o'clock and make an early crossing over.'

'You want me to take ten days off work?'

'You were saying last week you have all your holiday days still to use, you can take ten surely? Besides, you don't work weekends so that's only eight days and one of them is a recovery day after you return from the holiday, there's nothing worse than returning and being exhausted heading into work.'

'I can, but that's literally almost half of my yearly holiday allowance in one go.'

'Argue with me honestly, what else do you plan on doing with those days? If you have something genuine you are going to do, fine, but be honest, what is it you have them saved for?'

Alexianna looked at him for a moment but he held her gaze and she sighed, clicking into a new tab and emailing the HR department about it. 'I mean, they can hardly say no, I have not taken a day off sick or asked for time off since I started.'

Tom smiled proudly. It was true. The ridiculous stereotype of the "single mother being flakey" was in no way applicable to Alexianna, though she argued that with the manner in which he was involved as a father to Lily, she was not really a single mother. Him taking Lily for her prevented her from having to leave work early meaning she was able to give herself over more to whatever work she was doing. 'You deserve a few days off. If anything, this will help you with work, you will come back more refreshed and more able to focus on it. With everything with college too, no one deserves it more.'

'I cannot believe that I have another year down.'

'And to achieve a 2:1 with a daughter and a job as well. You are incredible, Lexi.'

'Up from a 2:2 last year. If this continues, I am at the risk of getting a 1:1.'

'The ball is in your court.' Tom smiled lovingly. 'It's all possible for you. I am here if you need me but it's you that has to do the donkey work really.' He groaned for a moment. 'When I think back on my degree, how the hell did I manage to pass it at all, much less with a 1:1, I was drunk half of the time and acting around the other half.'

'I dare say that that is something of an over-exaggeration.' Alexianna dismissed.

'Do you wish you had gotten your course finished?'

'I wish a lot of things about that time Tom, but the fact remains, everything then led to Lily, and everything then also led me to you.' Tom frowned. 'If I had not gone through all of that, I would not have been in that cafe last sure for you to come over and say hello to.'

Tom had to concede it was true. 'Thank goodness for Hamlet.' His smile fell. 'You would have still been in that little flat.'

'Perhaps, that is going under the assumption that I would have been with Jonathan even without the car crash and honestly, I don't think I would have been.' She pointed out. 'Everything happens for a reason. Because of how things were with us, Dan did not rush back on weekend leave from the rig and that is how he came to meet Anna.'

'Perhaps so.' Tom smiled. 'I just wish that you and Lily had not been forced to suffer everything you did.'

'We can't dwell on such things.'

'How are your sessions going, are they still helping you?'

Alexianna sighed, her counsellor, Mr Barrows had gone into areas of her life she was more than happy not to face, but he pointed out that there was little point in dealing with the smaller more inconsequential issues only to let the deeper, more painful ones go without being discussed. It would be somewhat optimistic to only unload the small stuff and expect big changes with all of that still there. The only issued was, she had been forced to acknowledge some painful truths and realities. One of which was that on more than one occasion in her marriage, she had declined Jonathan's sexual advances, only for him to force himself on her after she said no, ignoring her pleas for him not to. She had herself convinced that it was her "wifely duties" but in reality, she was being raped by her husband. She wept and was emotionally exhausted by that revelation. Tom was unsure of how he could assist her with that particular part of her therapy, he merely listened and ensured he was there for her. 'Yes, there are. I just...I am not always overly happy with what he digs up.'

'I can only imagine. You would not be there if it was going to be overly pleasant.'

'He wants to move onto Oliver in more detail soon.'

Tom frowned. Alexianna had no relationship with her father since she was a small child, not that you could say she had much of one with him before that either. 'What do you think of that?'

'I don't really think anything about it. I haven't since I was a child. '

'But didn't you say the issue with Lily and I was that you had a revelation that stemmed from that?'

'It does, but as I said, to the best of my knowledge, I think nothing of Oliver. I have no idea if he is even still alive. He could have remarried and have had seven other kids for all I know. All I do know was he sent the cheques for our schools, that and whatever we needed, that's it.'

'Perhaps then, it's a good thing to talk about him.' Tom suggested with a smile. 'But remember to tell Mr Barrows that you're away on those dates too.'

'Sure thing, Boss.' Alexianna smiled. I'm really looking forward to this now. I have not been on a holiday in years.'

'Did you go on a honeymoon?'

'Yes, Vegas.' Tom looked at her knowingly, Vegas was nothing like what Alexianna would call a holiday. She loved history and culture, not drinking and gambling. 'Not my idea. I was so "boring" on that trip, I was not brought anywhere fun after that, though thankfully, with where he chose as "fun" I didn't want to go anyway. When he left for the week, it was a holiday in itself for me.'

'He would leave you.....' she nodded. Thomas pulled her to him and kissed her head. 'I could never do such a thing. You know when I go that it is for work.'

'I know that and I would never begrudge you going if you went anywhere, Tom. You deserve a break too.'

'I cannot believe he did that to you. Did...When you were pregnant?'

'He went on a few then, his "Blow-out" before fatherhood apparently. What he didn't realise is I had seen him book a holiday for when "George" was going to be twelve weeks old. When I confronted him, he said that because he was working and there would be a lot of noise with the baby, he would need a few nights away to recoup.'

'That selfish....' Tom felt his anger rising. 'You deserved so much better.'

'That's why the piece of paper he wanted me to sign bothered me so much. My integrity was all I had.'

'I see now why you wanted it. I am so sorry I dismissed it.' Alexianna smiled at him. 'Can I ask, if Oliver never bothered with you both, why did he fork out for Headington?'

'I honestly don't know, but I am grateful he did.' She shrugged. 'I only wish I had done more with his investment and put it to better use.'

'Do you wish Lily was able to get that sort of education?'

'Yes, wouldn't any parent? But back then, the price was well over half it is today, seventeen thousand for a day student? No one can afford those prices any more.'

'If you had money, would you put Lily into a school like that?'

'If I had it, I would, yes. Sure there's an independent school just a stop before ours on the bus, part of me wishes she was going there, getting a good education, but where she is, we were so lucky to get her in.'

Tom took note of her words but said nothing about his inquiries to that exact school for that moment, knowing that that would be too much for Alexianna to deal with at once, but he felt hopeful that he could convince her if he broached it carefully. Part of him thought to contact Daniel, but he was unsure. Instead, he got back onto Ben regarding the house, though he did add a little comment at the end regarding it.

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston fic #Life is a Game of Risks #chapter 43

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str4tum-blog · 6 years ago

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Mercado de Trabalho em Portugal

When traveling, enhance your security as well as your satisfaction by putting on a funds belt. This product is one vital that you are not able to go without having when touring, and it is hardly noticeable to use. Keep your wallet as well as your passport protected inside your cash belt to ensure that whatever transpires, they don't get dropped.

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See where to locate vacation in Mercado de Trabalho em Portugal

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brendanfrankofuntours · 2 years ago

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Tips to Enjoy a Stress-Free Virgin Islands Airport Transportation

Traveling can be a fun and exciting experience with the right transportation service. For example, if you are booking a U.S. Virgin Islands airport transportation,your experience depends on the transition company's services.

Some other things like traffic, long lines, and security checkpoints also matter for your hassle-free experience. After all, we will share a few tips in this article to make your airport transportation stress-free. Read below to learn more.

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You can find airport shuttle services, car rentals, and taxi companies offering pick-up and drop-off. Choose a reliable service from all available options and confirm the booking.

Arrive early

You should always reach the airport early to catch a flight without issues. You should reach early, especially when traveling in busy times like holidays and weekends. Arriving early will give you enough time to perform airport formalities. After all, you don't need to panic if you reach pretty late. Seek required help from airport staff. They will help you with all your issues.

Know your airport layout.

All airports are not the same in terms of layout. Knowledge of the airport helps you navigate things easily and access others. You can learn about the airport a few days before your flight.

Pack light

Another thing you can do to avoid airport hassles is to pack light. If you pack less, you will be able to go through security checkpoints quickly. Remember to pack things like passports, boarding passes, and sunglasses in a special carry bag. To ensure you don't miss essentials, prepare a list of airport essentials and pack everything on time.

Read airport signage

After you reach the airport with your U.S. Virgin Islands airport transportation, airport signage will significantly help you. Read the signage carefully to reach the right destinations. If you don't understand the signage, ask about it from airport staff.

Pack snacks and drinks.

Buying things at the airport can be an expensive deal for you. So, it is recommended to pack some snacks and drinks in your bag. But remember that an airport authority may stop you from carrying your snacks. So, be sure about it before taking any food items.

Carry your charger

When packing essentials for your destination, like St. Thomas tours and excursions,remember to pack the chargers of your gadgets.

Keep yourself calm and relaxed

Avoid unnecessary stress when reaching the airport. Try to stay calm and relaxed by thinking about positive things.

That's all. These are the tips to ensure hassle-free U.S. Virgin Islands airport transportation. Finally, book your airport transfer from a trustworthy company to avoid the hassles involved during the journey. An expert driver should be mandatory for transportation. Contact Brenda and Franko Fun Tours to book your ideal airport transfer. Source URL: https://postmygp.com/tips-to-enjoy-a-stress-free-virgin-islands-airport-transportation/

#st. thomas tour companies #u.s. virgin islands tours

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empirerideinc · 2 years ago

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You'll Love What We Have To Share About Travel

Traveling to new destinations is one of the most enjoyable experiences of life. You get to experience different customs, cultures, areas. Traveling connects you to people empireride and events that you would not have experienced otherwise. However, before anyone travels, there are a few things they must remember. The advice in this article will tell you everything you should know before exploring the world.

Take a minimum of valuable items with you when you travel. Having valuable items with you on a trip is just asking to have them lost or stolen.

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Many out of the way destinations are often overlooked for vacations. For example, while St. Thomas in the Caribbean is incredibly popular, with very little extra effort one can make a trip to Vieques off of Puerto Rico instead. It has many of the same amenities, is much less crowded, and will make your vacation seem much more special!

Before leaving on a trip, it is vital to make sure that all of your documentation is up to date. This includes identification such as your driver's license and passport, any necessary immunization or medical records, and credit or bank cards. This way you will not run into any problems when making purchases or during your travels regarding non-matching ID.

Be flexible. If your travel dates can be tweaked by a day or two, try using the "flexible dates" feature of most online travel search engines. This allows you to search departure and return dates within a given range. By just changing your dates by a day or two, you may be able to score huge savings on airfare.

If you don't want to be around children when you are on vacation new options are becoming available for you! Cruise lines are increasingly offering "adults-only" cruises, which offer weary parents and childless couples the ability to vacation without the little ones. These trips are becoming popular for cruise lines and are expected to be seen more often in other venues as well.

Remember to report lost tickets immediately. Lost tickets can be refunded, but this can take as long as six months. It might also involve a substantial replacement fee. Reporting your lost ticket as soon as possible will not make things go any faster, but you will get your money back sooner.

Traveling to a foreign country can be fun, but not knowing what the locals are saying is not. Carry a small book of common phrases and translations to help you on your trip. This can really help when you need to ask for directions or book a hotel room for the night.

Before undergoing any major traveling, make sure you get plenty of rest the night before you leave. A lack of sleep can cause you to make poor decisions and causes white plain limo forgetfulness. The consequences of bad choices when traveling are far more severe, than normal, so make sure you're well rested.

When making travel hotel accommodations make sure you call ahead and actually speak to someone at the hotel. Ask about their pet policy to find out if they allow pets and if they charge extra fees for pets. This enables you to choose a hotel that fits well for you whether you are traveling with pets or allergic to pets.

If you're going to be going on a road trip, make sure you pack a tire repair kit! You never know where you might be when you get a flat tire and it's better safe than sorry. If you don't have one and have to call of tow truck you may be looking at expensive charges and a ruined trip.

As stated before, traveling is a wonderful way to see the locals of many different nations around the world and experience life through their eyes. If you follow the advice found in this article before you begin to travel, you can make the most of your experience and have memories that will last a lifetime.

#Airport limo service #limo service #car service

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fandomyrandomy-blog · 6 years ago

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Empregos em Portugal Para Brasileiros

When traveling, enhance your safety and also your peace of mind by donning a money belt. This item is one particular essential which you are not able to go without when traveling, and is barely noticeable to put on. Maintain your wallet and your passport safe within your income belt to ensure no matter what occurs, they do not get missing.

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In case you realize that you will use a extended layover in a town, examine what there is to perform beforehand. A 3 hour layover in Washington D.C. can easily switch right into a fast tour from the Washington Shopping mall or even a long sit in Minneapolis could become a quick purchasing journey towards the Shopping mall of The us!

Make certain your house will not seem vacant while you might be absent. Coming residence to find that you have been robbed will be a nightmare. In the event you intend to be gone to get a appreciable length of time, think about redirecting or possessing a pal pick up your mail in your case.

Deciding on an aisle seat will often keep your possibilities open. Besides offering a look at, the window seat has couple of advantages where being an aisle seat will permit you unrestricted access to your overhead baggage, the restrooms, airplane employees and may also give you 1 aspect that's not bulging with yet another particular person or their belongings.

In the event you are traveling to a region that includes a higher level of criminal offense, consider purchasing your very own padlock for that hotel place door. These locks tend to be more hard to decide compared to ones the resort may have previously and no one in the lodge can have a spare to allow in "visitors".

See the place to seek out journey in Mercado de Trabalho em Portugal

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 7 years ago

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First Aid

Case: 0121102

Name: Lesere Saraki Subject: Nightshift at St. Thomas Hospital, London Date: February 11th, 2012 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

I’m a nurse at St Thomas hospital, down in Lambeth near Waterloo Station. Technically these days I work at Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, but Guys Hospital is at a completely different site the other side of London, so for the sake of clarity, I work at St Thomas. Christmas is one of the worst periods to be working at a hospital, and in the Accident and Emergency department it’s even more unpleasant. Pensioners who can’t afford to properly heat their homes, drunken party-goers who overindulge and hurt themselves, even just people who didn’t look where they were going and slipped on a patch of ice. Christmas brings out the side of people that always seems to lead them to the hospital, so I was relieved last year when I got my shift pattern and learned my last A&E shift of the season was going to be on the 23rd, two full days before Christmas itself. That was the good news. The bad news was the 23rd was also the Friday immediately before the big day, and that meant people finishing work for the holidays and going out for some celebration. When you work in Accident and Emergency, there are few words that fill your heart with such dread as the word “celebration”.

That night wasn’t as bad as some I’d seen, a few broken bones and a couple of drug-fuelled injuries, but no fights or angry drunks, which was a blessing. It must have been about half-past one in the morning that the ambulance arrives. They had radioed ahead and we knew that we had a pair of severe burn victims being brought in, so we were as ready as we could have been. I was heading out to meet the ambulance, when I noticed that the A&E waiting room was totally silent. I looked around and there were all the people there that I expected to see, some cradling obvious injuries, but none of them made a sound. They continued to stare at their phone, read books, comfort one another, but not one of them spoke. I didn’t have much time to really consider what I was seeing as, at that moment, I heard the ambulance pull up outside and ran off to see to the patient.

By the time I arrived, they were already wheeling him out and the doctor was assessing his burns. The doctor’s name was Kayleigh Grice and she was a junior doctor at St Thomas. She started giving some instructions to myself and the EMTs, but I was struck by how quietly she was speaking to me. She didn’t whisper but every word was quiet, as though it was a real effort to get them out. Nobody else seemed to notice, so at the time I assumed the effect was due to my own lack of sleep. I’ve always had difficulty adjusting to the late nights and this time had been particularly bad. We finished transferring him to a treatment room, the only available one we had that night, and the doctor and EMTs returned to get the other patient while I began dealing with the burns on the first one.

I’m 48 years old, and I have been a nurse for most of them, so I’ve seen a good number of burns in my time. I was prepared for some deeply unpleasant scenes when the call came in, as bad burns can be some of the nastiest injuries you see working in a hospital. These ones surprised me. They were second-degree, which is severe, but not usually such as to require hospitalisation, except that they appeared to cover his entire body. Every inch of exposed skin showed signs of this burning and, cutting away his clothes, it became apparent that the damage had spread there as well. Anything hot enough to cause this sort of effect should have damaged his clothing or even melted them onto the skin in places but they were utterly unharmed, as though he had been dressed after he’d been burned or the heat had passed right through his clothes without touching them.

He was a tall man, heavy-set with the sort of build I associated with an athletic middle age. Any hair he might have had was gone, apparently burned off, and his clothes were a nondescript black suit and white shirt. He didn’t scream or cry or moan in pain, and in fact the doctor had had to check his pulse when he’d come in to confirm he was still alive. He was, but as far as I could tell he appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

I had just started treatment when the second patient was wheeled in. He was in almost identical shape to the first, except for the fact that the burns seemed to stop at his neck, along a clear line. It was as though he’d been wearing a choker that the damage couldn’t get above but his neck was bare. He was smaller than the first man, and younger, I’d guess in his mid-thirties. He was clean-shaven, but had long hair dyed completely black. He wore a similar suit to the older man, except that over the top he wore a long black leather coat, just as undamaged as the rest. It looked new, and I felt quite bad having to cut it off him, but we had to confirm how extensive his injuries were. Like the first, he was completely covered in almost uniform second-degree burns, except for what at first I thought were small black scorch marks. Looking closer, I saw that they were eyes. Small, tattooed eyes on every one of his joints: his knees, his elbows and even his knuckles, as well as just over his heart. I would have expected the burns to have almost destroyed tattoos that small but instead they were unblemished and the skin about a centimetre around each one also didn’t seem to have been affected.

To say I was unsettled by this would have been something of an understatement. I barely noticed when the Dr. Grice and the EMTs returned. They seemed to be talking normally now, and discussing who these two people were. Apparently the fire brigade had responded to reports of a blaze in a building site near St Mary’s churchyard, and had turned up to find the two men lying unconscious. There had been no fire, although the ground they lay on showed several burn marks and a metal bar that had been lying nearby appeared to have bent slightly as if from great heat. The fire service had called out an ambulance, and they had brought the men here. Apparently the older one hadn’t had anything on him at all, no ID, no phone, no keys, nothing, while the younger man had only a Zippo lighter with an eye design on it similar to the one tattooed all over him and a old passport that identified him as Gerard Keay. I never got a look at the passport, but from the way the EMTs were talking about it I gathered the man was well travelled.

It was at this point that the EMTs had to head out on another call, and Dr Grice and I got down to treating the two men, the weirdness temporarily forgotten. Medically speaking, there was nothing abnormal about the burns, and it didn’t take as long as I had feared to get them properly cleaned and bandaged. Throughout it all, the two of them didn’t stir, and I wondered if they were comatose, but that sort of diagnosis would require a lot more testing, which probably wasn’t going to happen that night. So having finished giving them what treatment we could, the men were moved to one of the few wards with bed space and I returned to working A&E. And, for an hour or so, I forgot about the odd strangers that lay unconscious just a few doors away.

I only noticed them again when I had to pass through that ward heading towards the nearby stockroom for some more gauze. As I walked through, I became aware of a sound coming from the bed of the older burn victim. I never did find out his name. I walked towards him slowly, straining my ears to hear what he was saying. It was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, but was definitely words, the same words over and over; the more I heard, the more it sounded like most of them weren’t in English. The first sounded like “Asak” or “Asag”, then “Veepalach” and finally in English “The lightless flame”. The last part was very clear, and I assumed he was talking about whatever burned him, but he said it with such intensity that the words made me feel quite uncomfortable. His eyes were still closed and his lips were barely moving. I started to feel warm, like there was a fever quickly creeping out towards my skin. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a reaction like this, though, so I took a moment to centre myself and the feeling receded.

The burned man was still whispering; I might even have called it chanting, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do, so I checked his bandages to make sure they didn’t need changing and left to go and continue my shift. If I saw Doctor Grice, which was more than likely, then I could tell her that our mystery burn victim had started talking. Mostly I just wanted to get out of that room for as long as possible.

It was as I returned to the main Accident and Emergency reception that things started to get really strange. And by really strange, I mean that the reception was completely empty. I don’t care how late it gets, and at this point it was nearly three in the morning, the waiting room for A&E is always full, especially on a night like this. I mean, I’d been in there not five minutes before and there were upwards of thirty people but now it was utterly deserted. Even the staff at the admissions desk were gone. I was freaked out, quite frankly, and started checking through all the examination rooms, the wards next door and the individual patient rooms. All empty, except for those patients physically too sick to move or hooked up to IVs. They lay there sleeping, and part of me wanted to wake them, just to hear the sound of another human being, to not be alone, but like I say it was three in the morning and, weird as this all was, I couldn’t justify waking up patients just to put my own mind at ease. I went as far as to make as much noise as possible directly outside their rooms, but they just slept on.

It was as I returned to the waiting room for the third time in as many minutes that I heard it. It sounded like the growl of an animal, a rolling, angry sound, and I realised that the floor was shaking, ever so slightly. I looked around for the source of the noise, I was getting more and more frantic by the second, and then I saw it. Lined up against the wall of the waiting room were two vending machines. I rarely paid them any attention, as there were better options in the staffroom and one or both of them were usually out of order. But I now saw that the one on the left, a clear-fronted machine that stocked bottled soft drinks was shaking violently. As I got nearer I saw why: in every bottle, in every row of the machine, the drinks appeared to be violently boiling. Cokes and lemonades and fruit juices shook and bubbled, before one by one the bottles exploded, coating the inside of the clear plastic front with liquid that still kept steaming and hissing. It couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds for all of them to pop, and then the waiting room was silent once again.

At this point I was just about ready to abandon my shift and leave the hospital. Whatever was going on there, I wanted no part of it. I ran towards the door leading from the A&E to the chill of the December night, not something I would ever have thought I’d look forward to. As I approached, though, I noticed that the plastic at each end of the metal handles was ever so slightly warped. I tentatively touched the back of my hand to them and withdrew it almost immediately – I didn’t even have to touch it to feel the intense heat radiating from the door. I almost wept. If I was getting out of there, it wasn’t going to be through that door.

I started to make my way back through the wards, heading towards another exit, but as I passed through I could hear the burned man still mumbling to himself, louder now, so that his weird chant was audible even outside of his room. It was starting to get to me. I went in; I don’t know what I was planning to do, I just needed to make him shut up somehow. His eyes were open now, bloodshot behind the bandages and staring blankly towards the ceiling. At that moment, I decided that I was going to shut him up, even if I had to physically hold his mouth closed. I approached him slowly and reached towards his face. The second before I could touch him, a hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. I turned to see the other burn victim, whose passport had identified him as Gerard Keay, on his feet and shaking his head. His grip on my wrist was far stronger than I would ever have expected from someone that injured, and I could feel a heat through his bandaged hand, like his skin was still burning somehow.

I screamed. Why not? I’d already established no-one was around to hear me. He immediately released my hand and apologised, said he’d only been trying to protect me. I asked him from what and he gestured to the burned man, still lying motionless in his bed, chanting his nonsense phrases. Sparing a glance at his own wrapped form, he said that touching the man would have been a “bad idea”. He seemed to be in tremendous pain as he spoke, but did his best to hide it.

I didn’t say anything then. I wanted to ask what was happening and it seemed like he was waiting for me to do just that, but something stopped me. Something told me that if there was a coherent explanation for everything that had happened since the ambulance arrived, then I would be no better off for knowing it. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Gerard spoke. He asked me if the paramedics had brought any items in with them. Specifically, he was after a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant he had been wearing. He didn’t say what design had been on the pendant but I guessed it had been an eye. I told him that neither of those things had been brought in with him, and he was quiet for a long time.

After the last ten minutes spent desperately wishing for another human being to talk to, I should have been relieved with Gerard’s company. But watching him, standing and walking despite the burns covering eighty percent of his body, despite the sheer quantity of painkillers we had given him, he just made me very afraid. Finally he nodded, as though dismissing me, and limped past into the corridor, towards the supply cupboard. I followed him, asked what he was doing. I got no answer, but he seemed to know the code to the door immediately and strode right in, scanning the shelves for something. He saw what he was after and picked up a small object wrapped in paper and plastic. I recognised it immediately as a sterile scalpel. He was going to kill the chanting man; I could feel it in the way he stared past me as I stood in the doorway.

He started walking towards me. The storage room was not big and it took him barely a second before he was in front of me, but it was the longest second I have ever experienced as I tried to decide whether to risk my own life for that of the burned stranger blankly chanting his unsettling prayer. Behind Gerard I saw bottles of saline solution start to bubble and boil. I stepped aside. He nodded in appreciation and said something that I remember very clearly, even though it still makes no sense. He said, “Yes. For you, better beholding than the lightless flame”.

I didn’t try to stop him as he walked back into the ward. I just stood there and watched as he took out the scalpel, muttered some words I couldn’t make out, and plunged the blade into the centre of the chanting man’s throat. At that moment there was the sound of sizzling and a smell like rotten meat on a grill. I watched as the flesh around that wound began to blacken and crack, the bandages curled and disintegrated, and the scorched skin spread over his body like water. There was no fire and I felt no heat, but over the course of twenty seconds I watched this man’s body cremate itself to ash. Even the scalpel was gone.

Gerard Keay walked over to the bed and, picking up the empty bedpan beneath it, gently swept the ashes into the metal basin and handed it to me, asking me to dispose of it. I took it and numbly walked out, heading towards a medical waste bin. As I walked the corridor, I noticed a figure at the other end. It was Doctor Grice. I’m not ashamed to admit that I wept in relief as I ran to the waiting room and saw it once again full of people complaining and moaning to themselves. By the time I was finished and got back to the room, Gerard was lying in his own bed, apparently sleeping. I considered asking him now what had happened, but at that moment another ambulance arrived with three members of a Christmas party that had gotten dangerously out of hand, and just like that, the rest of my shift was gone.

Gerard Keay was treated for a further four days in the hospital before being discharged into the care of his mother. I tried to talk to him about what happened, but he was on a lot of painkillers and never seemed to really register I was there. It may have been feigned, I suppose, but in the end the result was the same. Since then I’ve just tried not to think about it. I’ve managed to get almost thirty years of nursing under my belt before something like this happened, so with any luck I’ll be long retired by the time anything like it happens again.

I worry sometimes, though. Over the last few months, when I’m alone on the wards, I get the feeling I’m being watched. Not threatened or judged, just watched. I avoid that storeroom, particularly.

Archivist Notes:

There’s obviously a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with what is provable. Sasha managed to get access to the hospital records for this period and they do list the admission of Gerard Keay and an unknown male for burn injuries similar to what Ms. Saraki described. Furthermore, there are only discharge papers for Gerard Keay and a short police report on the disappearance of the second burn victim. No evidence of foul play was found and no official missing persons case was ever opened.

As far as the mystery man’s chanting goes, if it was indeed “Asag” that he was saying, then that’s quite interesting. Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers. Admittedly in Sumerian myth this was because he was monstrously ugly but a curious coincidence nonetheless. “Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out. I can’t find anything conclusive on the phrase “the lightless flame” however; it crops up in a lot of different contexts throughout various esoteric literatures.

It has not escaped my notice that this is the second time Gerard Keay has turned up in this Archive. I’d be very keen to get his statement, but unfortunately it looks like he passed away from a brain tumour late last year. We’re doing further research into him, though, and if we’re lucky maybe we already have a statement from him tucked away somewhere in these damn files.

We contacted Ms. Saraki to see if she wanted to make a follow-up statement but she declined. Apparently she still gets the watched feeling occasionally, but aside from that there haven’t been any other abnormal occurrences in her professional or personal life.

One final note, Sasha has finally been able to access the hospital’s CCTV footage for the night of 23rd December 2011, and it shows something quite startling. I had assumed that there was a significant hallucinatory element to Ms. Saraki’s story, and indeed the ward where Gerard Keay was admitted didn’t have a camera, but the Accident and Emergency waiting room did. At 03:11:22 it shows everybody in that room, which I personally counted at 28 people, standing up and calmly filing out of the doors. After this, Ms. Saraki can be seen entering and leaving three times, once taking a minute to stare at something beneath the camera, which I assume to be the vending machine. The rest of the staff and patients do not return until 03:27:12, over 15 minutes after they left, when they walk back in through the same doors. The footage does not contain any sound, and no alarm of any sort was recorded, so I cannot offer any guess as to why they left or what they were doing in the intervening time.

There is one other thing that Sasha highlighted, however. At 03:22:52, the feed cuts out for less than a second and is replaced for a single frame by a close-up of a human eye, staring back through the video feed.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 12 First Aid)

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG12 #MAG 12 #FirstAid #First Aid #Statement #The Beholding #The Eye #The Lightless Flame #The Desolation

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whatdoesshedotothem · 4 years ago

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Tuesday 22 July 1834

8 40

3 40

She came for an hour and half to me this morning quietly talking. Fine morning F70 ½° at 8 ¾ am - breakfast at 11 ½ - had been repacking. Off from Bonneville at 12 20 – fine valley as far as B- from there the mountains wear out into rounded, beautiful, green wooded hills and extensive valley – very good road – stopt 3 or 4 minutes at 1 43 to water the horses. At 2 50 stopt at [Amenas] to shew passport – the Douaniers very civil – would not take money – explained the trick the postilion Chaumantois from Geneva had played me in demanding money for them on the 3rd inst. and they were vexed and promised to do what they could do with him - thunder and forked lightning and rain in passing thro’ the nice little town of ...... at 3 20. At 3 50 stopt at Hentsch’s bank – sent up to them and they brought me down the money for tow £25 circulars - alighted at the hotel de Bergues at 4 – full – only a double bedded room and 2nde and a little apartment 3me – took the latter (salon and 1 double bedded room) at 16/. a day – the 2 servants above at 2/. a day for both – siding - A- and I out at 5 to 6 – at Baute’s – bought a brooch for M- or Mrs. Sutherland? Dinner at 6 20 to 8 ½ - got at the bank letter from my aunt dated 27th June 3 pages and ends – she has a better day and a worse – Mr. Sunderland very attentive – on the whole good account – she writes on the 27th to A- and on the 28th page 3 and ends and 2 lines under the seal to me - ‘I may now I am quite well, except this never-ceasing pain’ - all going on well - my father well and has ordered a little carriage to go about in – very sorry for M- - got at the post restante letter from my aunt Shibden dated 9th inst. 3 pages and ends all to me - My father ‘tolerable but very feeble, he does not appear to gain strength at all – he walks out a little every day, generally to the top of the bank, and in the course of the day 2 or 3 times a little in the garden – as to myself sometimes I have a very poorly day and then better - Mr. Sunderland is very attentive, and upon the whole, I think I am much the same as when you went’ - very anxious about me – begs me not to hasten our return on her account – hopes there will be no occasions for me to be at home before the end of August as Marian will not go to Market Weighton until she can leave my father with more satisfaction – she had a letter that day (9th inst.) from Mariana to make inquires after me – said it was 5 weeks since she heard from me – had been very ill – did not know of my being abroad – my aunt begs me to write to M- immediately –

SH:7/ML/E/17/0062

‘William Milne died rather suddenly during his mother’s absence in London’ – has received a parcel for me Bibliotheca Hiberiana [Heberiana] - George Robinson had been at Shibden and paid £50 promising the rest the following week - Mr. Parker will deliver the notice to quit himself - has sent the one to John Pearson - the Staups purchase papers will not be ready before the end of August - trades unions over - ministers very cautious and likely to keep in sometime longer - all going on well at home - Mr. Freeman wishes to see me on my return - Thomas Greenwood knows of a gentleman who wishes to ‘purchase Northgate house and a little of land’ - Letter at the poste restante 1 ½ p. from Lady Gordon dated Saltzburgh [Salzburg] 10 July - Henry Devereux (her nephew) ‘seems rather épris with you’ (I must have met him at Miss Berry’s) writes her that I am gone touring to Geneva for a month - she fancies this means Chamonix ‘perhaps Mt. Blanc etc etc’ - wants me to join her at Munich where she will remain 7 or 8 weeks - country beautiful - walks long and fine views - they have seen the Hallein salt mines - will be in England in October - fidgetty to be very long and far from her mother - ‘what a sensation Charlotte Stuart seems to have produced in the world!’ - to write to Lady G- Poste Restante à Munich - they go to the Cerf d’or - I ought to go to M- if only to see the Egina marbles - Letter (at Hentsch’s bank) from M- Leamington 3 pages and ends dated ‘Leamington June’ - ‘For the 1st time in my life, my dearest Fred, 3 weeks have passed without my hearing from you, and for the 1st time in my life you are in England and Mary knows not where to find you; what can all this mean’....... 3 weeks the day she wrote since she got my letter saying I was going for a few days to London – asks if I got her letter directed to Dover street (yes! But she did not get mine sent to Warrens) – her journey to London put off from illness- the gaieties of the Oxford business more than she could bear – very reluctant to give up London. ‘As there were many inducements to prosecute my 1st intention; I might have seen you’ etc etc. Mrs Milne and Hamlyn there . Mr. Crewe and his boys spending their weeks in England in Hill street etc........ ‘I have been diligently trying to get well and in due time hope to succeed, my complaint seems to be a low fever, which has pretty fast [melted] away all my fat; I am little more than skin and bone, and can neither coax appetite, nor rest, I have lived for the last fortnight on port wine and jellies, and have a bed to myself..... On Monday I began with the shower bath, and hope in a few weeks to be allowed to ride, I can’t walk much, my chief exercise therefore is in a pony carriage’ – their going to Harrogate given up – they go to Worthing in August - ‘Your happiness and comfort is very dear to me, and I am not the last of your friends to rejoice that you are satisfied of having secured both - may it be so! But for all our sakes perhaps it is best that at present I should tell you this on paper. An unsophisticated mind I think is more likely to secure your permanent happiness, than any such worldly one as that which falls to the lot of those who of late years have been the associates - One may live in the world, and have no traffic in hearts, but the quiet country fireside would be cruelly insipid had it none of this ingredient to flavour it, and God forbid that in yours it should be wanting – you have lived long enough on hope, dearest, now the desire has come I trust it brings with it all you have so often longed for – your friend will always be a source of interest to me, and I will never rob her of her due; but you can tell me about her, and I will believe all you say which at least will be much for her advantage, because I am by no means sure that I could be an impartial judge’ - Mrs. Milne tells her as they have not seen me in town, Mrs. Norcliffe cannot believe I have been there - A- found letter (good - all well and right) from her sister at the poste restante office. She wrote to her sister while I wrote 2 ½ pages very small and close to my aunt and A- wrote the rest of page 3 and the ends to my aunt while I wrote 3 pages to M-. We both sat up writing till 2 tonight – answered the business part of my aunt’s letter - Glad George Robinson prospects better - said he had a lease of the mill - sure Mr. Parker would do all right - begged him not to forget the Hipperholm fields in the notice - should not trouble myself about Northgate - not inclined to sell the house with a little of the land - glad of the so fair account of herself and hoped my father would be better – mentioned our tour of Mt. Blanc and A- and I being well – left her to tell her the little particulars – said the weather had changed and driven us here from Chamouni [Chamonix] – depended upon the weather whether we should go for a few days more to the mountains or not – will add a line or 2 tomorrow - wrote very kindly to M- said we had been mutually disappointed - I had expected hearing from her in Paris - sorry she had not got my long letter left for her at Warrens – should have written from Paris but had no time – impossible to write form the mountains – assured her my thoughts could not play truant long – grieved at the bad account of herself – should be ill at east till I heard she was better – beg her to write to Rue St V- n°27 and let me find a letter in Dover street- very fine day F70° at 2 tonight.

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sandjsbeachbumbonanza · 4 years ago

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Days 31 and 32

Day 31 – we can’t leave

We tried to leave the property today. We were told it wasn’t possible by the front desk, so we escalated to a manager, Marsha. We were supposed to be ‘bubble travellers’, which allows us to come and go without quarantining. Marsha spent a few minutes arguing with us as she wasn’t aware of the bubble traveller exception. Once we showed her the government of St Lucia website and convinced her the exception did exist, she purportedly called the government to see if we could leave. It seemed like everything was in order, until we found out Barbados did not stamp our passports. It’s not clear why. Despite having proof of two COVID tests in Barbados, a hotel invoice and Coral Reef Club willing to confirm that we stayed there, apparently no one believes we were in Barbados. We are now trapped at Sandals. J saw a road from our room, but there’s a fence around the property, so we cannot escape Sandals. Please send help.

S’ daughter, C, finally arrived and we were super happy to see her. We are still very sad that S’ other daughter, A, cannot come. After C’s bags arrived in her room, we headed straight to the beach and pool. We returned to the yellow floating disc and were joined by a group of tiny tropical fish, white with black stripes.

Dinner was at Barefoot. C had the rillette and grilled swordfish, S had the lobster bisque and seared tuna and J had the lobster bisque and surf and turf (the surf was a shrimp kebab). An extra lobster bisque appeared, which C and S shared. This lobster bisque was decent, but did not meet the Bequia Beach standard. We also tried the house drink, a watermelon margarita. Oddly it had ginger in it and a salt rim. We thought a sugar rim might be more appropriate. It was still a decent drink. On his way out, S decided to walk into a picnic table and injured his leg. He’s still getting around OK.

J bowed out and left C and S to play some darts. C won the more difficult game and S won the easy one. After darts, C and S went back to the pub and there was an American football game playing, Buffalo Bills v New England Patriots. C and S found two Buffalo Bills fans who were enthralled by the Bills beating the Patriots. One of the guys was a really big guy, and S started telling everyone he was a rich man and the big guy was his bodyguard. His real name was Andrew, but S decided to nickname him Olaf. Like many people here, they are in the construction game.

Day 32 – loyalty dinner, take 2

There is a clear shortage of shaded sunloungers at Sandals and almost all of them are pre-reserved for butler rooms. J has found a new lease in life and has decided she is waking up early so she can nab sunloungers. In other words, J has become a German. She thought 8am was early enough. She was wrong. All the beach sunloungers had already been taken, but she managed to find some sunloungers at the pool. If Sandals is determined to keep us here, J is determined to beat them at their sunlounger game. She had some breakfast but wasn’t that impressed by it. J then toddled off to the spa at 10:30am for some treatments.

C and S had agreed that today was a lie-in day and they would meet a bit later. C came by to wake up her dad, but no one answered the door. She scoured the pool, to no avail. Only then did she realise she’d been knocking on the wrong door. Problem solved, she found her dad sitting in his room waiting for her. Off to the pool. C and S ended up going to the swim-up pool bar for a quick drink. Quick turned out to be 4 hours long as they met a bunch of new people, including Graham, who is a plumbing supply guy from the Midlands. Graham had his own group of friends, whom S hadn’t met. C and S learned that you have to be careful about eating pizza at the swim-up pool bar, as one group dumped an entire pizza in the pool. Apparently, the EU is opposed to chlorinated chicken. They also don’t like chlorinated pizza.

J then showed up in the afternoon. As C and S still hadn’t eaten and refused to leave the swim-up pool bar as they were chatting with Kelly, Thomas and Krista, J also went to get some pizzas. None of these were dumped in the water. It appears Kelly’s partner, Lisa, has turned this into a working holiday – all work, no holiday, so we are looking after Kelly. C had her first Peter special and said it was delicious.

Off to the awards dinner. This one was held in the ballroom as a lot more guests had arrived at Sandals. Unlike last time, where everyone was at their own tables, they sat people together at round tables. We got Catherine in despite the fact that she’d been at Sandals for less than 48 hours. We spotted Marsha on our way in. She ominously told us that we still can’t leave and suggested we couldn’t leave even after the 14-day quarantine. Wary of S’ reaction, she said we should touch base tomorrow and made a quick getaway. For those of you who have ever tried to tell two lawyers they can’t do something that’s legal, you know this is not going to end well.

We were seated with one other couple, Puerto Rican Americans who now live in Massachusetts, Gustavo and Yesenia. It turns out he is in the chemical engineering business and he and C geeked out over process animation. C got his card and she may have a job opportunity as a result. The dinner menu was exactly the same as the last one, including the surf and turf and the dinner gift (a bottle of rum). Solange at the Loyalty desk took good care of us. She is one of the bright stars at Sandals.

Once again, J bowed out, vowing to get up even earlier the next morning. C and S met Thomas and Krista at the pub. Thomas is a plain-clothes detective and carries a gun. Krista teaches special needs children. Fortunately, Thomas did not have his gun on him and Krista got to hone her skills dealing with special needs children on S. The four of them took turns playing darts with different partners. C managed to win every single game with each person she was paired with. S suspects foul play, except for the game he and C won.

We also learned today that unfortunately C’s long-time boyfriend R probably will not be able to join us due to the UK lockdown. We are waiting until the last minute to cancel his flight in the hope that somebody in the UK decides to accept reality. We are not holding our breath.

#stlucia #sandals #rum #beachlife #beachbums

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pupil-of-law · 3 years ago

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deathtaught·:

Jack’s eyebrows raised when Sebastian said he didn’t decimate her and he simply pointed at the limp form on the ground. Had he left any bone unbroken when he’d thrown the poor girl around the room like a ragdoll. What in the world was his definition of decimation, then?

He stood a little taller when the conversation turned back to him and instinctively licked his lips, catching a lone droplet of blood on the corner of his lips. “I try not to teach love poetry if I can help it,” he responded, but kept quiet from there on, opting instead to watch Sebastian’s reactions.

“How long has it been?” he eventually asked, his voice calm with an almost soothing quality to it. “How long has it been since you were turned, Sebastian?” His gaze dropped once more to the girl on the ground. “I promise I’m not trying to make you feel as if you’re failing at this or that I’m some sort of authority on how one should properly act when one’s entire diet consists of blood, but I am trying to help.”

“I know I can’t change back. As insane as it sounds, I did choose this. I’m lucky enough to have not felt lost or helpless or like a monstrosity when I first became what I am now. I had family to support me up through the point where I could go out in public without wanting to rip out every throat I saw.” Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I am very well aware of how not human I am, but I like to put up a good front. Acting human means stability. Not going on murderous rampages means I can safely live in the same house with my spouse for twenty years without fear of being found out.”

“Sebastian, I don’t refuse to kill now because I think myself to be some virtuous bastard.” His eyes fell yet again to the woman on the floor between them. “I don’t kill now because I did far, far worse than that while I was human. You have no idea.”

“I may not truly be her tutor, but I can be yours. You shouldn’t feel as though you’re alone in this, you know.”

‘Four months and twelve days,’ Sebastian replied, realising only now that this was the first time he’d stated that fact aloud. ‘I only just made it back into the country before my passport was voided. Ended up in St. Thomas’s hospital.’ He swallowed, finding that his voice had become slightly hoarse from shouting at Jack. The man’s placative tone was making him feel as if he shouldn’t have done it. Jack was right, there was no one else in the world who was - or would be - willing to help him; and it really was unspeakably stupid to have tried to refuse his help.

He looked at the man with a slight frown. He had never really taken seriously those allusions to a violent past Jack had hinted at at moments when he seemed to want to be taken seriously. Jack just looked so harmless, so like the fresh-faced undergraduates he taught. ‘What could you have done that’s more grotesque than what you do now?’ Additionally he wondered, and why didn’t you do it to me?

He leant back against the wall and closed his eyes. Already the urge to hunt again was entering his system, as if spores of blood were still floating in the air. The amount in his veins felt superheated. He tried not to let it show. He tried to do it Jack’s way. Maybe what he needed was a Buddhist temple. ‘I have no interest in being tutored to be like you,’ he said. ‘You have something to live for, I only have this.’ Suddenly Sebastian opened his eyes, finding a moment amid the self-pity to concentrate on what Jack had actually said. ‘Found out? By who?’

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years ago

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The Singles Jukebox Celebrates 30 Years of Rhythm Nation 1814 (a Janet Jackson retrospective)

Janet Jackson’s had one hell of a career. It’d be glittering even if you were to cut the album she released 30 years ago this week out of history. And historic is what Rhythm Nation 1814 is, not like a war, but like a discovery; it was groundbreaking and influential and so much pop released in its wake owes it a debt of gratitude. The album contained seven top 10 singles in the U.S., each with indelible melodies, state-of-the-art beats and vivid music videos. Janet was always on the radio, always on TV, and welcome everywhere she went. She endured the failure of two albums and the weight of family baggage before reinventing herself, seizing artistic control and having one of the longest and brightest imperial phases of any pop star. Sex positive, romantic, assertive and wise, she’s an icon whose brilliance comes as much from how her songs make us feel about ourselves as they do about her.

Her familial connections might help explain her, but they didn’t define or limit her. She’s a sympathetic performer, an innovator in the development of music video as an art form (someone in her camp needs to fix up her spotty presence on video streaming sites, people need to see these videos in HD) and a smart, underrated songwriter in her own right. There’s a lot of Jackson in Beyonce, in Rihanna, in Britney, and in any woman who makes us smile and makes us dance. Because she did all those things over and over again.

Here’s a bunch of songs by Miss Jackson that moved us, or just made us move:

Katherine St Asaph on “Nasty” [8.14]

Date the quote: “[His] dance cuts have a format-friendly, artificial sheen … but she seems more concerned with identity than playlists.” This is not from 2019, about a post-Spotify pop star (I cheated a bit, leaving out a reference to “Arthur Baker dance breaks”) but from the ’80s. Specifically, it’s from the Rolling Stone review of Janet Jackson’s’s Control, the first half of which is a review of a comparatively nothing Jermaine Jackson album. This was typical: if press didn’t dismiss her as an biographical afterthought who happened to still sing, they wrote about her alongside her family, and specifically her brother. (This continues to this day: Note the sustained attention given to her response to Leaving Neverland, which ultimately was to join her family in condemning it.) The line everyone quotes is “Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty,” but more pointed is one of the lines that precedes it: “my last name is Control.”

The lyric to “Nasty” is full of that sort of role-reversal, like a swordfight where one guy yoinks the other guy’s sword — the sword being the “nasty groove.” But said groove possibly illustrates the lyric even better. Made by producers/former The Time members/future creative partners Jam & Lewis out of big ’80s percussion, plus clanks and repurposed orchestral stabs from an Ensoniq Mirage, one of the earliest sampling keyboards, it doesn’t sound martial exactly, like some of Jackson’s later work, but certainly sounds stark. It sounds like a challenge, one Janet takes up: her past soubrette voice drops to a throatier register, then is stoked into roars. The beat’s not quite its own thing; “Nasty” resembles experiments like Herbie Hancock’s “Metal Beat,” and in turn much of New Jack Swing resembles it. But how Jam & Lewis described it was a rapper’s beat — now standard for pop or R&B singers, from Destiny’s Child to Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish, when they want a tougher image. Meanwhile, Britney took Janet’s soft spoken-word interlude “I could learn to like this” and extrapolated an entire career from it — and covered it, unusually early in her career — but simplified it, mostly collapsing the context of family ties and dignity and creative control onto one axis: sex. But what they’re all doing is asserting this kind of Control.

Part of appreciating songs from the ’80s and ’90s is prying them out of the clutches of the era’s pop-culture jokification– I do like MST3K, but their sort of snappy “Nasty” joke is kind of what I mean. More than one article/restaurant review/listicle attempts to identify, meme-ily, Janet’s idea of “nasty food” (Janet’s answer, dubiously, was whole squid). A certain comment by a certain head of state gave the song a late-breaking sales boost But put on some ’80s radio (or a contemporary playlist of people copying ’80s radio) and wait for “Nasty” to come on. The rest of the radio will flinch.

Kat Stevens on “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” [8.67]

“What Have You Done For Me Lately?” is a sparse, angry snap of a song, the overspill of weeks and months of gradually-building resentment. It’s taken a nudge from bezzie mate Paula Abdul for Janet to fully admit her relationship has gone sour: her once fun-loving, adoring beau has become complacent, content to put his feet up on the sofa and take Janet for granted. Should she leave? She loves him! Or does she? Should love really feel like a heavy weight, pressing down on you? Like your stomach won’t stop churning? Like letting the phone ring out unanswered rather than deal with his temper? Like maybe it’s your fault that he’s like this? “Who’s right? Who’s wrong?” Janet is determined to make a decision with a clear head, but the anxiety and hormones are bubbling underneath (“I never ask for more than I deserve…“). Thankfully Jam & Lewis are on hand with a clinical, whipcrack beat — snap out of it, Janet! The tension manifests itself in her zigzagging shoulders, hunched and strained and contorted, primed to lash out – just as he walks through the door! Janet is wary, but her dude is on his best behaviour, puppy-dog eyes, I’ll do better from now on, I swear. They dance perfectly in time together, remembering the good times: all is forgiven. Surely Janet hasn’t fallen for the same old lines, doomed to repeat the cycle? Paula is rolling her eyes: ugh, not this bullshit again… Then, as the happy couple laugh together over dinner, Janet glances back at us, and the smile falls from her face. The decision has been made. As soon as Mr ‘Not All Men’ leaves for work in the morning, she’s putting her passport in a safety deposit box and setting up a secret savings account to fund her getaway. The plan is in motion. You’ve got one life to life.

Thomas Inskeep on “Diamonds” (Herb Alpert ft. Janet Jackson) [6.80]

After “The Pleasure Principle,” this might actually be my favorite Janet Jackson single (even though she’s technically the featured artist on it). “Diamonds,” written and produced by Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis for Herb Alpert’s 1987 album Keep Your Eye on Me, is, in all but name, a Jam/Lewis/Janet record — with a few Alpert trumpet flourishes. The beats rock hard, and Janet delivers what may be (and certainly was at the time) her most IDGAF vocal: you’re gonna get Miss Jackson (because you’re clearly nasty) some diamonds, aren’t you?

Alfred Soto on “The Pleasure Principle” [8.43]

For all the banter over the years about the cold and steel of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ beats for Control, the coldest and steeliest they had no hand in creating. Songwriter Monte Moir, like Jam and Lewis also a The Time alum, stumbled on the title first: “I had to figure out what it was I was trying to say, I just stumbled into the title and realized it fit.” Sung by Jackson in her airiest, most insouciant coo, “The Pleasure Principle” starts with bass synth and cowbell before settling down into a matter-of-fact tale of a night of sin. To visualize the concept, choreographer Barry Lather put together one of Jackson’s most iconic videos, a masterpiece of athleticism involving chairs. Too cold and steely for the audience, or perhaps the hype cycle for a sixth single had exhausted itself: “The Pleasure Principle” missed the top ten in the summer of 1987, stopping at #14. So ignore the single mix and revel in Shep Pettibone’s Long Vocal Remix.

Kat Stevens on “Let’s Wait Awhile” [6.60]

Can you have an erection-section classic that’s primarily about abstinence? “Let’s Wait Awhile” has all the features of a late-night Magic FM request slot regular: soft electric piano, finger clicks instead of drums, lyrics about promises and feelings and stars shining bright. But this message is about trust, not lust. It takes courage to admit that you’re not ready, and it requires faith in the other person that they’re not going to be a dick about it. I remember the advice columns in Just 17 repeating over and over that as Informed Young Women we shouldn’t be pressured into sex, which was all well and good until it actually came to the act of Doing It, whereupon the fug of hormones and internalised misogyny meant that all rationality went out of the window. It’s the sign of how strong and confident Janet is in her relationship, that she can be ‘real honest’ and discuss her concerns freely with her partner, without worrying that he’s going to a) dump her b) tell his mates that she’s frigid or c) ‘persuade’ her round to his point of view (*shudder*). If he’s not willing to wait, maybe he’s not such an ideal person to be doing this sort of stuff with in the first place? I can hear the dude whining to his mate now: “I took her out for dinner and all I got was a perfectly vocalised key change!” Just 17 would be proud of you, Janet.

Jessica Doyle on “Miss You Much” [7.83]

A little context: in March 1989 Natalie Cole released “Miss You Like Crazy,” a ballad built for Cole to sing wide about longing. In June Paula Abdul released the third single off Forever Your Girl, “Cold Hearted,” whose video made a point of its group choreography. And then in late August came “Miss You Much,” the first single from Rhythm Nation 1814. Did Janet Jackson have beef with her ex-choreographer? Was that the kind of thing people talked about, in the pre-poptimist, pre-TMZ era? Because in retrospect “Miss You Much” looks like a dismissal of “Cold Hearted,” cool and upright where the latter was David-Fincher-directed sleazy. (By contrast, the director of “Miss You Much,” Dominic Sena, had already treated Jackson with respect in the video for “The Pleasure Principle.”) But also “Miss You Much” plays as a broader statement, a refusal of expectations. There’s nothing sad or ballad-like about it. There’s that opening high of “sho-o-ot,” and then Jackson’s on a roll: it’s all about her, the deliciousness of her feeling; she can barely bother to describe the “you” being missed so much besides the blanditries of smiling face and warm embrace. The power in “I’ll tell your mama/I’ll tell your friends/I’ll tell anyone whose heart can comprehend” isn’t in the longing; it’s in how much she relishes being the one who gets to do the telling. By 1989 she was in control enough to not have to utter the word once. “Miss You Much” isn’t a deep song, didn’t set out to accomplish as much as the title track or later songs like “That’s the Way Love Goes” or “Together Again” would. But thirty years later it still looks and sounds like (what we now call) a power move.

Katie Gill on “Rhythm Nation” [8.57]

How does one try to condense the reach and influence of “Rhythm Nation” in a single blurb? Entire articles have been written about this song and video (because really, you can’t talk about the song without talking about the video). It’s influenced singers, dancers, directors, choreographers. It won a Grammy as well as two MTV Music Video Awards when those awards actually mattered. The choreography is perfect. Jackson and her dancers move with military-like precision, flawlessly executing maneuvers and creating a dance that would almost instantly become part of the popular consciousness. The sound is amazing. That bass groove is so tight, adding a layer of funk which the guitar takes to further levels. The tune is an absolute earworm, the chorus is iconic, and Jackson’s vocals are at the best of their game. But I think the most important part of “Rhythm Nation” is that this absolute banger of a song, this masterclass in choreography, has remarkably idealistic lyrics. Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” yearns towards a racially and socially conscious utopia as it attempts to unite people to join together and create this utopia. In a lesser artist, these lyrics would be out and out corny. But when wrapped up in the final package, the lyrics go from corny to believable. Suddenly, the idea of the whole world helping each other or rising up in protest doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

Alfred Soto on “Escapade” [7.67]

With solo credits as common as hair metal solos in Janet Jackson music, I often listen to tracks like “Escapade” and wonder: what did Janet Jackson contribute? Lyrics? Sure. But she has to write them around a Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis melody, no? Or, as is no doubt the case, she comes up with her own vocal melody to accompany their chord progressions. According to Jam, the trio had “Nowhere to Run” in mind: first as a cover song, then as inspiration. “Escapade” hopscotches away from the sense of danger animating the Martha and the Vandellas chestnut; in 1989, into the eclipse of a grim decade for black lives, looking forward to Friday and drinks and friends would have to do. Over Jam and Lewis’ unrelenting thwack, Jackson sing-songs a valentine to a shy boy whom she hopes will join her in — what? The sheer euphoria of the bridge — a melody as bright as a returned smile — suggests worlds of possibilities when the check’s cashed and the night’s young. After all, MINNEAPOLIS!

Leah Isobel on “Alright” [7.14]

Rhythm Nation might have more banging singles, and it might have songs that more directly diagnose the ills of late capitalism, but no song on the record better encapsulates its utopian aims than “Alright.” Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis famously left the high end of Janet’s songs empty to provide space for her delicate soprano; here, they fill the low end with vocal samples, percussion, submerged synth blats, and tense bass licks. Instead of singing high for the whole track, however, Janet buries lyrical references to magic spells and the end of the world in her lower register, where they blend into the rest of the song. It’s only on the chorus, and particularly on her swooping vocal runs as she riffs on the phrase “you’re alright with me,” that she surfaces from the swirl. On a record where she spends so much time and thought discussing what’s wrong around her, here she takes the time to see and acknowledge what’s right. I don’t know that I’ve heard a better sonic analogue for finding relief from chaos: one voice against a wall of voices and sounds, getting lost and being found over and over to the comforting rhythm of a pop song.

Edward Okulicz on “Black Cat” [6.57]

“Black Cat” was never the huge stylistic U-turn it was perceived as. Janet’s brother had dabbled in rock guitars, and this is in that vein too, while still being of a piece with the other songs on the album. Where it succeeds is because it doesn’t just lean into rock, it’s as credible a rock song as it is a dance-pop song — the riff, which Jackson wrote herself, kicks ass, the drums shake a room as much as the cavernous thuds of her contemporaneous singles, and the song’s melody and the fierce vocal performance straddle both worlds. And if you don’t like the mix there’s like 900 different versions with 2000 different guitarists — only a slight exaggeration. Its overall success is testament to Janet’s persona, sure, because nothing she released could have failed at this point, but you can’t go to Number One with single number six off an album without your usual co-writers and producers unless you’ve written something that connects with listeners and performed it with power. The way she slams down on “don’t understand… why you… insist…” is a moment of perplexed, angry humanity in the middle of a song that tries to understand something tragic — the corrosion of drugs and gangs on young people’s lives — and while the soloing is a little hammy, the song escapes being embarrassingly corny. Because in fact the whole song kicks ass.

Pedro Joao Santos on “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” [8.71]

One of the greatest pleasures in getting into Janet is how deliriously bold all of her work is. A story, if you will: how Jimmy & Terry stepped in to support her emancipation and helped her invent new jack swing all within Control, before taking the formula apart in Rhythm Nation 1814, aiming for pop that was both a manifesto against bigotry and, between a balm and a corrective, a rush of love. It was designed for high impact, meaning it would’ve always been a pop juggernaut — the material was there, even if the marketing was oblique, which it was. Instead of a glamour shot in Technicolor and a flirtatious title, the 12 million copies sold feature a stark black and white portrait backed by a call-to-arms; the pop froth is smattered around the backbone of topical anthems.

From single to single, A&M skittered between the two sides and amassed consecutive top 10 singles, but it was the last calling card that proved career-defining. At first, “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”’s hard-edged beats scan identical to “Rhythm Nation”’s sonic matrix: belligerent and completed by Janet’s frontal vox, only in this instance driven through a more feminine marketing (the music video is a blueprint). That’s the first trick: she unexpectedly launches into the first verse in a tentative, lightly hostile lower register (“like a guy would,” said Jimmy Jam, as it was to be a duet) and keeps it until the chorus wraps up. It’s pop as friction. By the second verse, Janet goes up an octave and matches the now-bubbling passion at the forefront. The tiny synth countdown drives it into a perpetual unfolding, each time emerging to add more (vocal) layers to the cacophony and threaten to wrap it up, before coming back in force.

Janet’s head voice soars up to the grand finale, a pop cataclysm of an ending, one of the best in recorded history — which applies to the entirety of “Love Will Never Do,” a simultaneous pitch for chaotic head-over-heels energy and blockbuster status. It’s a bizarre ride and a joyous knockout: the honeymoon phase juiced into one relentless beast of a banger, one that changed pop for good.

Jackie Powell on “State of the World” [6.67]

“State of the World” deserved a music video. At its heart, this is a dance cut with a little bit less of the hard rock that roars in “Rhythm Nation.” In content and in sound, this track is a sequel and that’s not a criticism. It’s an expansion which encourages a foot tap by the listener and includes an absolutely integral bassline that drives this track through and through. While the song clocks in at under five minutes and could have been a bit shorter, its chorus, which crescendos in clarity and volume, makes up for it. In addition to Jackson’s delivery on the verses, which is rather understated, the sound effects which illustrate “State of the World” aren’t too kitschy. The cries and crashes aren’t as apparent as in brother Michael’s “Earth Song” for instance, and that’s appropriate. The politics had to run as smooth as the bass on this track, and they did. They didn’t serve as a distraction, but rather as an asset. Janet was the master of New Jack Swing, and while folks look to her brother’s album Dangerous as the most successful of this genre, Janet experimented with it first. The percussive repetition, serves a purpose for Jackson on the record. It maintains the same intensity throughout as it reflects exactly what she has to say. Lyrically, I wish that Jackson explained how her “Nation” would “weather the storm.” To this day, homelessness and poverty are issues that affect people continuously. Jackson states the cornerstone rather than the specifics, and maybe that’s okay. It’s something that in 2019 we need more than ever. While unity appears so far out of our reach, Janet attested as early as 1991 that we can’t stop and shan’t stop.

Thomas Inskeep on “The Best Things in Life Are Free” (with Luther Vandross, BBD and Ralph Tresvant) [7.60]

To soundtrack his 1992 film Mo’ Money, Damon Wayans (who wrote and starred in the critically-derided box office hit) called upon superproducers Jam & Lewis, and they did work, producing or co-producing 13 of the album’s 14 tracks and writing or co-writing 12 of them. The soundtrack’s lead single was very pointedly a “look at all the cool stars we got together” move, featuring superstars Vandross and Jackson duetting, along with a brief rap bridge from Bell Biv DeVoe (credited here as BBD) and their New Edition compadre Ralph Tresvant. Released as a single in May 1992, it’s a perfect summertime smash, simultaneously airy-light and slammin’, with Vandross and Jackson weaving in and out of each other’s vocals effortlessly. BBD and Tresvant pop in with a nothingburger of a rap (Tresvant gets a label credit for literally uttering one line, the song’s title) that at least serves to provide a modicum of grit to the proceedings, but no matter: Jackson especially sounds breezier than maybe ever, while Vandross seems to float above the record. The two are magical on a track perfectly suited for them (credit Jam & Lewis, of course), and the result is a minor classic.

Jonathan Bogart on “That’s the Way Love Goes” [7.86]

A little over a year ago I rather overshared in this space when discussing Madonna’s “Erotica,” released a year before this single. A year makes a lot of difference: by the time I was listening to Shadoe Stevens count this down on American Top 40, the summer it became the longest-running #1 hit any Jackson family member ever had, radio pop was no longer a dirty, soul-damning secret, just a daily companion, a window into a more colorful, adult, and interesting world than the ones I knew from books. I would probably have had a healthier relationship to romance and sexuality, in fact, if this had been my introduction to overtly sexual pop rather than “Erotica” — both songs share the technique of a sultry spoken-word refrain, but Janet’s is actually grown-up, with the confidence of a woman who knows what she wants and how to achieve it, with none of Madonna’s juvenile need to épater les bourgeois. As it happened I didn’t particularly connect to “That’s the Way Love Goes,” having reached the stage in my adolescence when getting a charge out of raspy-voiced men singing about political instability felt like the more gender-appropriate inevitability. It wouldn’t be until years later when I returned to re-examine the radio pop of my youth with maturer ears that the amazing miracle of this song fully dawned on me: those pillowy guitar samples plucked from songs where raspy-voiced men sang about political instability, but pressed into service of a loping, candlelit coo: equal parts seduction and vulnerability, Janet singing with the authority of someone who had already conquered the world about the grown-woman concerns that really matter: love, and sex, and the impossible beauty that results when they intertwine.

David Moore on “If” [8.33]

Janet Jackson sang explicitly about “nasty boys,” but I was, to use a term my son’s preschool teacher used to describe him, a timid boy, and I soaked up the privileges of maleness with a corresponding fear of performative masculinity. My love of women through childhood was paired with a deep-seated self-loathing that snuffed out friendships, made me uncomfortable in my body, and sparked intense, violent fantasies directed toward unnamed aggressors in my mind, all those “bad guys.” I wouldn’t be able to reflect on any of this until adulthood. But there was a point in preadolescence when the contours of the trap started to become discernible, and Janet Jackson’s “If” was both a cherished song — one I would listen to rapt in front of MTV or on the radio, legs haphazardly splayed behind me — and was also the uncanny soundtrack to my discomfort: a muscular, menacing, alien object that completely unnerved me, made me a supplicant to its rhythm, got into my head and into my guts, made me move, if only for a minute, in a world that glanced contemptuously toward — but stood defiantly outside of — that toxic timidity. I was the woman telling the man what I wanted, and I was also the man obeying; I was the dancer and I was the floor, too. On “If,” Janet Jackson and Jam & Lewis tamed the New Jack Squall that her brother unleashed on Dangerous with Teddy Riley, insisted upon its lockstep subservience to her mission and her groove, and pointed to an R&B futurism that was barely a twinkle in pop music’s eye in 1993. The result is simultaneously mechanistic and wild, rolling waves of noise that you quickly learn to surf or risk drowning in them. That same year, I also found inspiration in angry men, many of them likely nasty ones, the same men I would have assiduously avoided in person and fought off in my dreams. But Janet Jackson kept me honest, reminded me that my anger was a tell for my underlying cowardice and shame. There is never a hint in “If” that her hypothetical proposition — too strident for any coyness or the suggestion of flirting — could ever be satisfactorily answered. Not by you anyway. No boy, nasty or timid, could meet Janet Jackson’s challenge; she’s mocking the guy who would even try. By the time you hit that cacophony of a middle 8 break, defibrillation on an already racing heartbeat, you’re defeated, more thoroughly than any bad guy you might have dreamt up. You’re not ready for this world — you’re not, so you can’t, and you won’t. But what if…?

Jonathan Bradley on “Again” [5.67]

It sounds like a fairy tale: billowing keys, Janet’s tinkling voice, and no drums to earth the fantasy. “Again” was from John Singleton’s Poetic Justice, not a Disney picture, but it shimmers with its own magic anyway. The melody is gorgeous: listen to Janet measuring out the descending syllables in “suddenly the memories came back to me” like they’re sinking in as she sings the words. (She repeats the motif on “making love to you/oh it felt so good and so right” — this is a romance where the sex is as fondly remembered as the emotions.) Janet Jackson is such a versatile performer, and for all the bold strokes and blunt rhythmic force of her best known moments, “Again” is a treasure all of its own for being none of these: it is tiny and tender and sparkles with a real joy that is all the more wondrous for sounding like it could not exist outside of a storybook.

Scott Mildenhall on “Whoops Now” [4.83]

Even outside America, there’s a widespread tendency for people, in search of a lifetime’s grand narrative, to define everything that happened before The Day The World Changed – a coincidental proxy for their childhood, youth or adolescence – as a simpler time. It’s a convenient illusion for anyone in the world lucky enough to be able to believe it, whose formative years were insulated from war or suffering and can be instead defined by the most carefree scraps of pop culture. In that respect “Whoops Now” holds great temptation, it being the breeziest brush-off of burdens, with an all-over Teflon disposition. It’s therefore an almost fantastical ideal of ’90s radio (and still one of Janet’s most played in the UK); a warm and fuzzy-round-the-edges memory of which on closer inspection, the details are inscrutable. Janet, aloft in a proletarian reverie, relates a confusing tale of overnight shift work, a hindrance of a boss and the consequent curtailing of her plans for some fun in the sun this weekend with her friends (who, judging by her extended roll call, seem to mostly be record execs, producers and performers, as well as dogs). Narratively, it’s difficult to tease apart, but all you need to know is that hurrah – she somehow ends up on holiday anyway. A story that sounds more like something from an expletive-laden segment of Airline thus becomes the most casual celebration of the apparent inevitability of positive resolutions when you’re a globe-straddling megastar, or perhaps just a kid in the back of your parents’ car with the radio on. With that certainty of happiness and universal balance, and the belief that it ever was or could be, it’s fantasy upon fantasy upon fantasy. But no bother: Anguilla here we come.

Nortey Dowuona on “Throb” [6.86]

I started listening to Janet Jackson as a happy accident. Her songs were on Atlantic Radio, but nowhere else. I barely heard her music growing up and only knew of her massive career, and not the music that made it so huge.

So when I first pressed play on “Throb,” I was kinda scandalized.

Because it was so directly, overtly sexual, and confident about it. Janet was ready to get down and dirty, without all the mind games, patronization and bullpuddy packed all over it. The lyrics are pretty straightforward, and there are only ten lines of lyrics. Its pretty clear what Janet wants, and she’s gonna get it.

Plus, the bass was slamming, it slunk around my neck and just rested there while the air horn synths washed over my eyes, blinding me. The drums then stepped over me and plucked me up, with cooing and cascading moans and grunts swirled around my body, shredding me to pieces —

Then the song ended. And it was over.

I honestly, can’t really say why this is my favorite Janet song, but I can say that you should probably play it while having sex, and while thinking about having sex, and play this late night in the night if deciding to have sex. I know this’ll be the first thing I’ll play if I have sex with anyone.

Thomas Inskeep on “Throb”

In the summer of 1993, I’d just finished my second freshman year of college, in my hometown. (I’d gone to college straight out of high school in 1988, and dropped out without much to show for it, 16 months later.) One of my best girlfriends had herself just graduated from college and was back at her parents’ house, job-hunting. We were both past 21 and looking for a place to go dancing, and we found it in the nearest big city, Fort Wayne, Indiana, about 45 minutes away. It was a short-lived gay bar — so short-lived I don’t even recall its name, sadly — with a dance floor roughly the size of a postage stamp. I don’t remember meeting anyone there, ever. (I didn’t drive at the time, so Julie always had to, so it’s not like I could’ve gone home with someone anyway.) I don’t remember anything about the bar — except its dancefloor, and the fact that they had a decent DJ on the weekends, who mostly played house music, which I loved. And there were three songs that got played, in my memory at least, every single week. (And Julie and I really did go just about every weekend that summer.)

The first was Bizarre Inc.’s “I’m Gonna Get You,” an ebullient diva-house track which topped Billboard’s Dance Club/Play chart in January but was just peaking at pop radio in June. The second was, really, the gay club record of the year, RuPaul’s “Supermodel.” It peaked at #2 on the Dance Club/Play chart in March, but never left gay clubs at all through 1993. When that got played at the club, I would, week-in, week-out, “work the runway,” lip-syncing my ass off. (It’s just that kind of song.) And the third was an album track from a newly-released album (that would, in fact, eventually be promoted to dance clubs at peak at #2 on the Club/Play chart), Janet Jackson’s “Throb.” This song went where Jackson never had before, both musically (it’s a straight-up house jam) and lyrically (it’s a straight-up sex jam). Its lyrics are minimal but to the point: “I can feel your body/Pressed against my body/When you start to poundin’/Love to feel you throbbin’.” No subtleties there! Accordingly, Julie and I would spend the song grinding up against each other on a tiny riser at the back of the dance floor, because why not? And because it’s fun.

26 years later, ‘Throb” still kills. And throbs.

Maxwell Cavaseno on “Runaway” [6.50]

My childhood managed to dodge the oceanic nature of pop thanks to being struck between two extremes. My father usually kept the car full of rap, via cassettes of assorted rising stars of the moment (Big Pun, Nas, Various Wu-Tang Soloists) or whatever was playing via Hot 97. Meanwhile my mother typically wallowed in a realm of AOR pop a la Amy Grant or the likes who you could never remember anything about. If there was anything majorly important in the history of pop music from 89-98, lemme tell you, that shit didn’t happen anywhere near me. However, one of the few memories that did manage to linger on was “Runaway.” It was a record that managed to ethereally sneak up to me like some kind of weird creep that I just couldn’t understand with its weird foreign instrumentation simulating orientalist visions and Janet’s background vocals harmonizing like a bunch of Buddhist Cats sneering a la Randy Savage’s “nyeeeah.” Whenever I trailed along in supermarkets or tried to keep busy in waiting rooms, I could comprehend what happened on other songs I liked in the outer world like “Take a Bow” or “Kiss From A Rose.” But this? How did you rationalize all of these gliding vocals crooning and this swarm of glittery noises when you have barely any understanding of the world around you, let alone music? No matter how much further away and away I’d get from whenever it was meant to be a single, it could still disruptively appear in the wild and send the whole day into a state of disarray. It’s so alarming to know now as a grown adult that I can personally summon this ifrit of a single, rather than think of it as some sort of rare sighting of trickster energy (all the more bolstered by Janet’s ad libbed teasing of supposed imperfection and other-human excess) that isn’t meant to be heard more than once in a blue moon. To be honest, I may just forget altogether after the fact, the same way I never remembered the name of the song even when considering it for review. Just that “nyeeeah” hung around in my memory.

Danilo Bortoli on “Got ’til It’s Gone” [6.17]

In Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, a cut from her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon, she sang of impeding progress as a form of destruction (“They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot”). Often seen as as environmental anthem, actually, she was looking back at the sixties, and then seeing, right ahead, a decade that showcased no promising future, only aching skepticism. This resulted in one the purest, simplest lines she has ever written: “Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. Almost thirty years later, Janet Jackson conjured those same thoughts, conveying, instead, a different meaning. The Velvet Rope was her very own game of smoke and mirrors, and intimate and often misleading look at her private life. Lying at the center of that album, there is a delicate tribute. “Got ‘til It’s Gone” features a well-placed sample from that line culled from “Big Yellow Taxi.” The context is entirely different however. Here, the same words are uttered between confessions of love. It helps, then, that “Got ‘til It’s Gone” is, in reality, a talk. It’s the way Janet asks “What’s the next song?”. It’s the way Q-Tip responds “Like Joni says.” It’s also the way he asserts finally: “Joni Mitchell never lies.” The brilliance of a sample travelling three decades is that it is deliciously meta. The concept of truth, in Janet Jackson’s universe, is interchangeable. That way, she, too, can never lie.

Josh Love on “Together Again” [6.86]

Together Again was originally conceived as a ballad, and no wonder – it’s a deeply sentimental (borderline treacly, if I’m being uncharitable) song about death and angels and reuniting in the afterlife in heaven. Deciding to record it as a surging house jam instead was an absolute masterstroke, and the result is one of the most purely joyous, transcendent moments of Janet’s career. The idea of carrying a lost loved one in your heart and feeling their spirit in the goodness you encounter in the world, and even the thought of one day joining together with them again in the great beyond – “Together Again” makes you feel that joy rather than merely verbalizing it. So many of us say that when we die we want those we leave behind to celebrate our lives rather than mourn our passing, but Janet is one of the few artists to really bring that radical acceptance of impermanence to life.

Thomas Inskeep on “I Get Lonely” (TNT Remix) [7.43]

Allow me to be cynical for a moment: Janet Jackson, in 1998, is still a superstar. But in the past five years, she’s only had one R&B #1, ‘94’s sex-jam “Any Time, Any Place” (assisted greatly by its R. Kelly remix). So if you’re thinking “What do we do to get Janet back to the summit,” what do you do? Well, it’s 1998. How about calling in Teddy Riley? Better yet, how about he gets a helping hand from Timbaland? And the best: how about Teddy brings his merry men of BLACKstreet with him for a vocal assist? Ergo, “I Get Lonely (TNT Remix),” now label-credited to “Janet [she was just going by “Janet” at the time] featuring BLACKstreet.”

And you know what? It’s genius. The idea, brilliant. The execution, top-notch. Riley on the remix, with instrumental help from Timbo, with guest vocals from BLACKstreet: it’s more exciting than the original (which was already quite good), has a little more junk in its trunk (those should-be-patented instrumental tics that Timbaland is such a wizard with, ohmygod, much like Janet’s big brother’s vocal tics), and the duet vocals are superb (especially as it was so rare to hear Janet singing with others at the time, and every member of BLACKstreet save Riley was a great-to-marvelous singer). Presto! Two weeks atop the R&B chart in May 1998, along with a #3 Hot 100 peak. Mission accomplished — and fortunately, it works even better artistically than it did commercially. Everybody wins!

Pedro Joao Santos on “Go Deep” [7.14]

That The Velvet Rope’s party song is so heavy on gravitas and spine-tingling urgency speaks volumes. In an album so hellbent on carnal and psychological openness, the party of “Go Deep” goes deeper, and makes sense. It’s not just the top-20 banger it factually was, and it’s not just hedonism for the sake of it. That is, if you don’t divorce it from the wounds of longing, manipulation, abuse and distress being sliced fresh. Tension lies within this absolute romp, placed midway through the red-hot catharsis of Rope. It might be that the party acts as a salve for the trauma. Though it isn’t put into words, you can hear it subliminally: Janet’s hesitant vocal; the evocative, near-melancholy synth fluctuating about. You can even imagine the words as portals: making friends come together as support; the sexual come-ons not just because, but maybe as physical relief for the pain.

A bare-bones lyric sheet would give you nothing — but music as context goes a long way. And the music itself from “Go Deep” gets me in raptures after all these years, from that ridiculous boing (perhaps best known from “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis) to the bass driving it, all chunky and rubbery, and the dramatic string arpeggios in the middle-8. If there’s got to be a template for urgent, carnivorous Friday night anthems, let this be the one — and keep it in context.

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa on “You” [7.00]

The Velvet Rope carries a strong and fascinating legacy; It is rightly praised as a predecessor to both mainstream R&B’s exploration of the intimate (the body) and the spiritual (the soul) in the continuing decades, and to the experimental scope and atmospherics later adopted by today’s so-called “Alt-R&B,” and this extraordinary mixture of elements is never more efficient than in the album’s third track “You.” The song is, first and foremost, a triumph of production genius. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis’s use of space, and the dynamic at play between the then-cutting-edge electronica ingredients and neo-soul’s earnestness and sensual themes, should itself be a case study for aspiring producers, but it’s the way Janet’s vocals are performed and filtered through the track that take the song to unsuspected levels of greatness. There is something in the breathy, low-pitched verses that exudes unadulterated eroticism, and when the post-chorus harmonies kick in where things really become ecstatic. In several interviews, Janet herself defined this album as “baby-making music”, and I can safely bet that “You” is the song she was thinking about. And its echoes still reverberate today, not only in the sound of R&B to come, but in the fact that thousands of people were conceived to this very beat.

Edward Okulicz on “Free Xone” [6.83]

I remember it only vaguely; it was 1995, and for drama class we had to do a performance based on a social theme using a combination of media and methods. I was in a group with a big Janet fan, who decided to use her music as the basis of a combination spoken-word, mime and dance performance on racism. I only understanding the themes in the abstract because I was young, sheltered, and white. I knew racism was a thing I didn’t like, but it wasn’t an existential threat to me. Two years later, on “Free Xone,” Janet would speak directly to me and tell me of a bleak present with the promise of a better future. Janet told it like it was, and still is for many: if you are gay, despite the fact that love is love, a lot of people are going to hate you or at least be uncomfortable around you. Homophobia isn’t just violence or hostility, it can be any kind of social rejection, and it can happen anywhere, as it does in the anecdote in the first part of the song, where a pleasant conversation with a person sitting next to you on an airplane sours because of it.

Janet Jackson is a dancer, but she didn’t dance around anything if she didn’t have to. She leaned into her status as a gay icon out of love, not necessity. But she made her social justice songs out of both love and necessity. Hating people is so not mellow. Love and sex are never wrong. Janet Jackson has never resiled from that belief, and never shied away from putting it in song. I’d grown up listening to Janet Jackson, but I’d never thought of her as an ally for myself, and it was intensely comforting to hear that she was on my side when nobody else seemed to be (Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Leviticus Faggot” the previous year had more or less convinced me I’d die in the closet).

In 2019, her funk here sounds a little dinky, the transitions between the soft groove and the raucous party bounce are kind of awkward, and the weird song structure sounds like it was cut and pasted together, but it’s a collage of compelling pieces. It got quite a lot of play on the alternative youth station here, the one whose listeners were at the time generally terrified of a) pop superstars, b) Black artists, and c) dancing. Someone thought the kids needed to hear this, and they were right. “Free Xone” helped my nascent consciousness come to grips with earlier songs that I’d just considered a good time before. Its story is less common in the Western world, now, but it’s still true as history for some, and as present for others.

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa on “Tonight’s the Night” [4.50]

I’m a sucker for good covers; we usually tend to give songwriting, the cult of the inspired author, and the concept of originality a certain mystique that grossly overshadows the importance of skilful creative interpretation and re-invention. But many of our most important singers are essentially covers artists — Joe Cocker, Tom Jones, Bettye Lavette, a huge number of blues and jazz singers, most of the 50s-60s Greenwich Village folk scene — because of course we need these musicians to give these tunes another dimension, whether stylistic, generational, or purely emotional. Also, a song’s perspective can change dramatically because of who is singing. “Tonight’s The Night” works with Rod’s gravelly, rugged voice, and, although it can sound a bit creepy by today’s standards, the arrangements carry it beautifully, but in Janet’s sexually adventurous, musically exuberant The Velvet Rope, it acquires a new dimension, a far more interesting one, might I add. From Janet’s view, and the brilliant decision of not changing genders in the lyrics, her version alludes to bisexuality in a way that makes complete sense within’ the album’s core subject matters, and works wonders within’ its production philosophy. Stewart later presented his live renditions of the song by saying “This is an original by Janet Jackson”. No one will refute that. It’s her song now.

Alex Clifton on “All For You” [6.86]

“All For You” is the first Friday night you go out with your new college friends and that utter sense of freedom where you realize the night is yours without a curfew. It’s sparkling fairy lights in the background, a disco ball overhead, at a roller rink or at a club with a fancy light-up dancefloor, maybe a stolen swig of rum on your tongue. It’s the moment you see someone new and your heart falls into your stomach with no prior warning, and you suddenly know you’ll do anything to talk to them. You simply have to; it’s an animal urge, chemicals and hormones whizzing through you and making it hard to walk because you’re giddy. Maybe you’re braver than I am and you go talk to the person who’s snagged your attention, but maybe you hang back with your friends and pretend you’re not watching out for your crush while also dancing stupidly with your new friends. There’s a pure exhilaration in this song that many have tried to emulate but few match the ease with which Janet performs. She’s flirty and sexy like no other, but “All For You” also makes you, the listener, feel flirty and sexy too — something about it worms its way into you and becomes the shot of confidence you need. Lots of people can write songs about dancing at the club, but Janet turns it into a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Jibril Yassin on “Someone to Call My Lover” [7.00]

Does falling in love always feel the same every time? It’s one thing to keep pushing on in life but what’s striking about “Someone to Call My Lover” is how infectious Janet’s optimism is. Built on an Erik Satie riff by way of the band America, Janet recast herself as a woman excited to love again. Let it be on the record – long-term relationships are fucking terrifying. Moving on from the dissolution of a marriage is disorienting and the songs that use Janet’s divorce as inspiration on All For You share a tentative yet firm belief in renewal.

She uses “maybe” on “Someone to Call My Lover” the way one throws out a “lol” after shooting their shot – you don’t even have time to catch it amid her grocery store list of wishes for her future love. “Someone to Call My Lover” hits all the right places thanks to the careful and immaculate production but it’s Janet’s sincerity that marks it as her best twee performance.

Will Adams on “Son Of A Gun” [5.20]

Given All For You’s post-divorce setting, it was only appropriate that after the aural sunbeam of the title track and giddy optimism of “Someone to Call My Lover,” Janet would do a 180 and proceed to rip him a new one. The opening taunts — “Ha-ha, hoo-hoo, thought you’d get the money too” — against the throbbing kick bass set the scene, but the true genius of “Son of a Gun” comes from its sampling and modernization of ultimate kiss-off song “You’re So Vain.” The classic bass riff, once soft in Carly Simon’s original, is now razor-sharp. The cavernous drum beats sound like you’re trapped in an underground dungeon. All the while, Janet mutters burn after burn right into your ear (“I’d rather keep the trash and throw you out”) before Simon launches into the “I betcha think this song is about you” refrain, sounding like a Greek chorus confirming Jackson’s digs. The album version carries on until the six-minute mark, with Carly Simon waxing poetic about clouds in her coffee and apricot scarves in an extended outro. The video version wisely excises this in favor of guest verses from Missy Elliott, whose reliably grinning performance shoves the knife in deeper. In both versions, however, Janet’s menace is preserved. Forming a trinity with All For You’s preceding two singles, “Son of a Gun” showed just how versatile Jackson is, and how adept she is at encapsulating the messy, complex emotions of an ended relationship.

Will Adams on “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” [6.17]

I had been looking away from the television when it happened. By the time I’d heard the gasps from my parents and I glanced up at the screen, the cameras had cut to an aerial shot of the Reliant Stadium in Houston, where the 2004 Super Bowl was taking place. My 11 year old brain couldn’t process exactly what happened from my parents’ concerned murmurs, and having completely missed the incident (there was no YouTube back then, see), it would take years for me to understand the impact that the “wardrobe malfunction” had on culture and Jackson’s career. The greater impact was to be expected — the six-figure FCC fine on CBS (later dismissed by the Supreme Court) and conservative handwringing about the moral decline of the country — but Jackson in particular suffered unduly. There was the blacklist, ordered by Les Moonves, which kept her off CBS, MTV and Infinity Broadcasting. Jackson’s appearance at that year’s Grammy Awards was canceled. Late-night talk show hosts turned it into monologue fodder, usually grossly and usually at her expense. The controversy hampered her album cycles well into the Discipline era. Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake remained entirely unaffected. His career would skyrocket two years later with the release of FutureSex/LoveSounds; he became a Saturday Night Live darling; he performed solo at the Super Bowl’s halftime show in 2018. This alone puts Damita Jo and “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” in a more sympathetic light, but even then, pop radio missed out on a truly brilliant song here. Janet acts as the Dance Commander, taking the opening guitar lick from Herbie Hancock’s “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” and turning it into a lasso with which she throws you onto the dancefloor. The percussion percolates, each sound placed perfectly to create an undeniable groove. Because of the blacklist, it didn’t even break the Hot 100, and the video was also subject to its own asinine controversy — the few video channels that managed to avoid the blacklist edited out the sexual content, including a scene were two female dancers kiss. Even fifteen years later, it feels like we’re still reckoning with how Jackson was treated in the aftermath. But there’s an inspiring resilience in “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” reflected in the smile she bears on the Damita Jo cover; its unabashed sexuality in the face of all the backlash makes it an even better listen today.

Kat Stevens on “Strawberry Bounce” [7.17]

I like Janet best when she takes risks, whether that be controversial subject matter, a new image or a change of musical direction. Old faithfuls Jam & Lewis are still a solid presence on Damita Jo, but on “Strawberry Bounce” we see Janet plumping for a left field choice in the then-unknown Kanye West. The result is an intriguing Ryvita, all brittle handclaps and feathery faux-ingenue whispering, on the verge of crumbling into nothing. It’s so light that there’s no bassline, just a queasy glockenspiel tinkle and Janet’s butter-wouldn’t-melt sing-song. I keep wondering to myself: why have Janet and Kanye chosen to present a song about working a shift at a strip club in the style of an Aptimil Follow-On Milk advert? Is it a subtle reminder that sexy times may eventually lead to night feeds and dirty nappies? It doesn’t help that instead of a proper beat, we have Jay-Z muttering ‘BOUNCE!’ as if he’s grumpily shooing a dog off his lawn. It’s confusing and uncomfortable, yet compelling and convincing, and I’m still listening. The risk has paid off.

Will Adams on “Rock With U” [5.83]

“Just Dance” is often thought of as ground zero for the rise of dancepop and eventually EDM in the US, but it had been brewing for over a year before the Lady Gaga song topped the Hot 100 in early 2009. From 2007 onward, the increased interest in incorporating elements of disco via four-on-the-floor beats and faster tempos created some indelible hybrids, particularly in the R&B world: “Don’t Stop the Music”; “Forever”; “Closer”; “Spotlight”; and “Rock With U.” While most of those songs stuck to traditional verse-chorus pop structure, “Rock With U” proves that sometimes simplicity is best: A house arrangement of arpeggios and basic rhythms. A single verse, repeated three times and interspersed with wordless vocalizing with nearly no variation, save for Janet’s whispers. All this, combined with the glorious one-shot video, creates a hypnotic effect, like the song will go on forever. On a recent Song Exploder episode about “Honey,” Robyn said of dance music: “It’s about putting you in a place where you’re in your body dancing without thinking about when it’s gonna end. It’s more about the moment and how it makes you feel.” This is the heart of “Rock With U”: an invitation to get lost in the music, forget about the outside world, and just rock.

Maxwell Cavaseno on “So Much Betta” [5.67]

The beginning of the 2010s was way too challenging in retrospect and I regret every minute of it. “So Much Betta” was a song I first heard in a mix by Robin Carolan, now best known for founding and guiding Tri-Angle Records, but for a brief period operated a side-blog called “SO BONES” where he’d pontificate about random gems of pop, R&B and rap but in a way that made records feel gross and sinister. Suddenly Cassie’s “My House” was a ghost story, Vanessa Hudgens’s “Don’t Talk” would be compared to Takashi Miike’s Audition, and so on. In retrospect I think of the Capital P Pop songs of the decade that I’ve responded to enthusiastically like “TT,” “Cheyenne,” “Strangers,” “Somebody Else,” “Backseat,” “Lac Troi” or the dozens of others there is at least usually a despair or gloom I can at minimum project onto the record even where it might not be obvious. And that comes from hearing Janet Jackson whisper over a record that sounded like some toxic goo from out of the dregs of the Rinse.FM swamps I’d often thought to be “the coolest” sounds, before cutting through over glistening synths that felt like a phantom of not Janet per se but her brother’s past. It was a song that felt v. strange in 2010 well after MJ had died with the listless echo of the Pop Monarch feeling less like a dream-like invocation and more like a degraded copy of a copy in its grotesquery. Enough can be said about how cool and timeless and bright and powerful Janet at her best can feel. But it deserves an acknowledgement that she could also make a song that was so evocative in all the most unpleasant of ways.

William John on “Unbreakable” [6.67]

“Unbreakable” as an adjective is applicable to those rare, unending, strong relationships between people, whether they be romantic, platonic, familial, or, as has been intimated in relation to her song of the same name, between performer and audience. But it’s also a word that can be used to describe oneself, and one’s ability to traverse adversity with stoicism. The first song on Jackson’s most recent album doesn’t sound defiant – more “stroll to the supermarket on a warm summer’s evening” than an escapade to Rhythm Nation. But courage manifests in different ways. Jackson’s breezy delivery, which takes on an ecstatic form in the song’s chorus, is indicative of her self-assurance at her status; she’s embracing the languor allowed to her as a legend. She may have been removed of her clothes in front of the whole world a decade prior; she may have spent her whole life in the shadow of her infamous relative – but she hasn’t faltered. She’s still here. As she greets her listeners in her inviting whisper at the song’s conclusion, she notes that it’s “been a while” since her last missive, and that there is “lots to talk about”. But her listeners aren’t impatient; there’s always time for Janet. Her story has always been one of control, of poise, of excellence. Long may it continue.

Pedro Joao Santos on “Dream Maker/Euphoria” [5.17]

When I get to delve deep into a legend, as with Janet, I tend to hit the ground running and have them release a new, great album a few months later. Not having heard 20 Y.O. and Discipline, I was shielded from the Janet-isms from the ’00s and viewed Unbreakable as a proper continuation to her legacy, instead of the grand comeback it actually was — hackneyed artwork, halted tour and all. Janet got the upper hand, finding her reunited with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, in a steadfast gaze in a steadfast gaze over airtight, pensive and giddy R&B. An exemplary return to form, incidentally devoid of all the raunch, bathroom breaks and Kioko.

One older Janet-ism survived in a marginal capacity: the penchant for interludes, continued here in only two moments (aside from endearing sneezes and spoken-word outros): one was the bizarre preview for a Target-exclusive full track; the other was “Dream Maker/Euphoria”. A precise inflection point scribed upon the passage from “side 1” to “2” — even if things threaten to get a bit pedestrian and humdrum in the last half. The track itself is a dual mood, yet a continual trek through the glow of a renaissance. A seemingly old groove recalling the Jackson 5 gets dusted from the vaults for the first part. That’s ear candy for ages in itself, a web of vox so intensely feverish and melodically preternatural. It gets looped tantalisingly, then it transcends onto the next level. Full-on rapid eye movement: keyboards and ambience make up the sound of eyelids opening to meet a purple, unreal sky — suspended between worlds, a dream dimension of utopia and the reality where those ideas must coalesce. “I guess the dreamer must be awake,” Janet concludes after envisioning a “perfect place” exempt from “jealousy, abuse or hate,” “war, hunger or hate.”

Janet’s four peak-era albums alone prove she’s been excelling at world-building where and when the world was far from ready. In “Dream Maker/Euphoria,” it isn’t so much the stark condemnations of Rhythm Nation 1814, but its more hopeful fantasies, articulated through the confident tone of Control, set to the type of innovative musical reverie The Velvet Rope predated, softened through janet.’s sensuous filter. But more than the touchpoints of yesteryear, the essence of “Dream Maker/Euphoria” lives in its manifestation of the future: how tangible and expansive it might just become, if given a chance.

#Janet Jackson #writing #music

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