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theotherbloodfart · 5 years

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Hey! I love your writing and was wondering if you’d be interested in writing a penny fanfic where the reader finds out by an encounter with penny that they were born with his fourth deadlight. They later find out that several life times ago penny gave one of his dead lights to a human s/o in an attempt to lengthen their lifespan. Fluffy, smutty whatever you’re feeling. Any length you desire. (Heh)

Oml I'm so sorry for your wait!! This was a complex request and wanted to do it well. I'm dividing into 2 parts because it's huuuge lol. This is part 1. My jams I wrote this to were Dead By Daylight by Slumber Party and Dead Souls by NIN

The Fourth Deadlight (pt1)

WARNING

GORE AND ANGST

It hisses. Twists Its form within the sewers of Derry. It feels the rest abating. It is nearly time. The center of It’s emaciated bones burns with hunger. Writhes from it. It’s body jerks and snaps as, in the latent sting of It’s final dreams It cannot decide how to form. To wake. Or perhaps It is dreaming. Running. Flying. Floating in agony. Cracking sounds issue forth from the black hole It has been resting within. Tearing as well. As if It is ripping itself away from It’s cocoon. Or tearing It’s entrails from It’s own desiccated rib cage. Or perhaps…… this is the sound of an eldritch heart as it breaks.

Within It’s dreaming mind twists another time. A different plane. One of delectable fear. The tranquil thrum of wailing screams and gargling death rattles tickles It’s hearing. Sweet music of unutterable gibbering terror. It’s dreaming vision is caressed by the allure of dilated alien eyes. Flaring nostrils. The bounce and sway of bodies fleeing on a different world. Quadrupedal slack jawed fatlings. Spindle legged and trembling with that emotion which was most delicious of them all. It feasted. Mowing thru, enjoying the hot wet rushing taste slopping in It’s gaping fanged maw. Oh but this was ecstasy!

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It feasted. Yes. Gorged with ravenous moans and squishing sounds, slurping at the last vestiges of terror as it cooled, turning shiny eyes glassy and dull. Feasted until It was satisfied. Relaxing to rub It’s bloated belly, as It belched comfortably. Being like this had been so satisfying. Carefree. But the hunger was never long in returning. Never stayed away. So soon It was stalking again. It would drain this world as It had drained so many others. Suckle and slurp until this planet was as empty as It’s own heart. Then move along, leaving the now dry planet like a forgotten lover.

Yessssss. Only a few centuries of fun from this beautiful lover before she was dried up like a wastrel. A shriveled husk. Her craggy face like the mummified face of a corpse. Cackling It danced. It loved to dance. Dance upon the dead. Throwing It’s claws to and fro at a speed so rapid that the dry dead vegetation caught flame. Snarling clicking laughter as the planet burned.

And so this dance became repetitive. Billions of screaming terrified whelplings consumed in a delicious feast. Planets burning and destroyed as It cackle and danced in an ecstasy of hunger. Then flying thru the void of space searching for more of that untameable feeling. Always dancing and hunger. Killing and feeding on beautiful suffering. But it was never enough. It must kill and flee the waste, resting as It’s form floated to another sumptuous buffet.

Oh how It loved these rests just as much as the feast. The icy void. The sparkling of distant stars. The hollow gentle floating of deep space. It’s consciousness bubbling in and out of this dimension. In and out of this cosmos. Empty. No hunger. Nothing. And It was delicious.

It would float and rest for an eon or 2 before plummeting down. Flaming and exploding into the gravitational pull of yet another fearful lover.

That was when It felt that presence. The other. No. Not the turtle. Not of the macroverse. Not as the revolting reptile was. Nor as Itself. This was something else. Something other. Colder. So so much colder than the void of space. And darker. Bending light around itself like a ravenous singularity at the center of every black hole. But this was no mindless singularity. It sought IT. Gave chase to It. And this thing. This darkness. It was the unknown. Nonexistence.

And this nonexistence whispered to It. Not words. Only emotion. This thing hungered even more so than Itself. Was never satisfied. And cared not for the fleshly bags It so loved to bathe in. This Thing only seemed to haunt It. And the Thing whispered. Showed It things that It had never thought of. How It was the last. The only. Showed It the blackness of nonexistence. Whispered of the doomed womb of death which awaited It. Perhaps this Thing was the collective vengeance of the lights It had snuffed out. Perhaps these whispers were merely the screams of the dead.

And so a new dance was born. It fled. Feasted and gloated. Forgot for awhile this impending approach. Then the Thing would arrive. And It would flee. It’s floating rest became tinged with nervous awareness. At first this dance was languid and slow. It had time to fill itself and dance. Cackling and roaring and taunting this nameless thing. But then the Thing crept forward in earnest. It no longer had time. This was another newness to It. Time. Or not enough of It rather. It began to have to HURRY. Feasting became desperate gobbling. Dancing became screeches of frustration and angry gesticulating.

But It never fought the Thing. Had no knowledge of an even fight. Had slopped and consumed It’s own brethren as they had rested. Just so that It would never have to share the tasty terrified flesh It so craved. No. This Thing was sentient. Alive. Strong. And the dark promise this Thing whispered of simply would not do. And so It fled.

Soon The Thing was always close. Always trying to wrap it’s cloudlike blackness around It’s form. This Thing did not gloat. Nor exhibit any sort of passion. It was merely hungry. Not to destroy. But to constrict. To hold It forever helpless.

It did not wish to be helpless. An eternity of quiet awareness. Of motionless listening and blindness. And It could no longer feed. Could no longer rest. Must always flee. Faster and faster. No more floating. Only blinding speed.

It began to feel burning hunger. Numbing tiredness. Desperation. So this was the Thing's plan. To wear It out. To tire It. Until it must supplant itself to the will of that blackness. All alone and motionless. That would be……. So lonely. It had never thought of Itself as a lonely thing. Had always had delightful screaming company.

But now this idea took root. Clawed into It’s mind and gnawed on It’s heart like the nearly forgotten youth of It’s own kind. But they were gone. The whispering stardust of a memory. There was nothing out there. No help for It. No supplication. And this being It’s own fault did not occur to It now. This was simply the way things were. Simply what It was. And that……. Loneliness…….. Wanted to end It. And there seemed to be nothing It could do. It slowed. It weakened.

But It had never been a foolish being. And desperation makes a keen mind even keener still. It developed a plan. It was risky. But possible. It smashed and shook It’s head as It fled, slashing at Itself, causing pain. Discomfort. Any thing to block It’s thoughts from the Lonely. And then It expended itself. Using the very last of It’s energy to explode Itself far from the Lonely. Far from the awareness. From the presence. A small planet came into view. Tiny and blue. The third sphere from its star. It felt the burning pull of its atmosphere and lost consciousness. In this state It was no longer visible to the Lonely.

It knew no more for some time. Knew nothing as It’s form crashed into the soil of this world, melting and burning so deep that the plant life around the crater was cauterized. It took a good long rest. Millenia passed. Life forms rose and those same life forms died out. It might have rested forever had not a strange kind of life form emerged. One unlike any other It had ever encountered. Bipedal. And able to reason such as Itself. It was this reason which disturbed It’s long rest. Which ignited It’s eternal hunger.

It burst from It’s deep cavern, withered and starved, joyously swinging It’s gaping toothy maw. It had never tasted anything as sweet as these creatures. It gorged itself till swollen and sated on the easy to conjure fear of them and upon their succulent flesh. Their intelligence was their own undoing. They were so much simpler to scare! And they were so weak! Yes. This planet would do very nicely for what It had in mind.

It knew the Lonely was waiting. Waiting to see It migrating to yet another lush world. But the Lonely would not find It if It stayed small. If It stayed Hidden. Things would have to be different. No more burning of planets. No more wiping out the entire populace of a world. It fed lavishly in a much smaller form. Enjoyed itself for small periods of time, usually 2 or 3 of this planets solar cycles. Then It would snuffle under the weeds to rest and to dream for awhile before rising to continue the circle of feeding and rest.

As It languished here It’s attitude and behavior began to change. It became quieter. Darker. Learned to hide behind darkness or a false form. Learned that stalking It’s prey could possibly stretch out the entertainment. And that toying with the younger of the species made the meat taste DIVINE. It was content like this. It could survive like this. And since It could no longer dance in planetary fire It instead would cause some momentous event to dance in a little instead before slipping off to rest. It found It could do this. To the older of these life forms. To the ones who kept their heads down and obeyed blindly. And this pleased It. It needed nothing else.

Until It saw her. Or rather…. Until she first encountered It. A young female of the species. At first there was no significance about her to It. Merely another capering meat sack to feed off of and enjoy. It had no descriptors for her species other than male or female. Young or old. It only even noticed her because of her……. Sadness. The emotion did not smack the chops like fear did. It was thicker. Like a bitter molasses. And she positively swayed with it. Even this was not significant. It had scented this before. But usually only in the elderly. And yet, It found Itself monitoring her even as It monitored the suckling young. These humans. Entertaining even in their monotony. It had recently fed so, for now, It was content to merely watch all of them.

And there she was. Dancing into It’s vision yet again. She was tilting her head, emitting low pitched rhythmic noises as she walked, swinging a stick. The noises were like singing only her mouth was closed. But there was none of the usual joy these creatures normally exuded when making noises like this. It was tiring of It’s continued attention on her. A quick glance into her mind produced an effective lure. Something called…….. A clown. A freakish aberration of the human form. How ENDEARING! It adored this new form as It’s body morphed it into being.

Luring her was as easy as It had thought It would be. She followed It’s warm voice tho she never really looked at It’s form.

Deciding to have some extra special fun before feeding, It combed her mind to find her biggest fear. And found…… the Lonely. The human jerked in surprise as the once friendly clown before her roared like a fiend. But It was already gone. Hidden shivering and gibbering deep under this town.

How could she have seen the Lonely? How could she even know of this thing? It’s jaw bones cracked as It felt an obscene smile. It did not matter. If she was dead, She could not remind It of the Lonely. Again It sought her out.

This time she was alone. Gathering water. And as It rose before her, clad in some nameless beast as the Lonely had no true form, It was AGAIN brought low. But this time It was because of her gaze. Her eyes were vacant and glazed. She looked thru It. Beyond It.

She reached a hand forward in a giving gesture. She questioned. Motioned with the stick she’d been carrying earlier, making her petticoats swish. It realized…. She could not see. The only vision of fear in her mind was darkness for this reason. Stark curiosity made It comb her mind much more thoroughly.

She had lost her vision very young. The only thing her young mind could remember was the very clown form It had chosen to assimilate. Therefore, by choosing this, It had eliminated any fear she might have felt.

This felt strange. Being here in front of this insignificant thing without even a whisper of fear. Her face was creased with an enormous smile. Her cheeks shone with crystalline tears. She was murmuring of magic. Of angels and gods. Her hands were down near her side, palms facing It. She was completely open to It. It felt…… pride……. Within It’s chest. It knew nothing of human custom or mythos. And this rippling tide of adoration was so very new. It hissed at her in feigned defiance. Testing her. This brought a laugh from her. Not one of mockery, but of quiet gasping joy.

This soft laughter was It’s undoing. It allowed her to approach. Allowed her to touch It’s face. To feel the lines and planes of this form. And from this time onward, this form was It’s very favorite. It came to her often. Watched her from afar constantly. Listened to her stories and whimsy at first while perched before her as she’d sit making chains of daisies. Then later, with It’s head in her lap as her fingers traced the lines of It's brow and carded thru the ginger hair on It’s head. It had never received such treatment.

This being did not feel love as a human might. Only slowly began to register a complete inability to function, to continue, without these things. It still fed. Voraciously so. But in It’s alien mind this feeding was simply not a part of the very most special time It spent with her. And she never knew of It’s eating habits. She was never alone. Never in danger. It always watched. Became obsessed. Did not wish to leave her. Her presence was the blinding light that drove away any last shreds of that dark and dank Lonely. It found that It no longer cared if the Lonely even still existed.

And yet all good things must end. All good things must pass away. And so it was with this as well. It was growing tired. It would need It’s rest. It fought this. Pushed It’s own endurance, staying awake nearly 3 times It’s normal cycle. It had told her It must rest. And that this may very well exceed her. It had waited for her to lash out. Instead she’d held It tightly. Reassured It.

“I would wait forever.”

And so It curled into Itself. Wept into an uneasy rest. Felt the cold chill of the Lonely as It’s consciousness faded. And all was no more.

27 years later

It had been swift. Awakened swift. Broken It’s fast swift. But something had been growing within her all these years. Something nasty and insidious. Dark and so very hungry as it ravaged her from the inside out. Her human mind did not know what this was as this disease was not known during this time in human history. But It knew. It could SMELL it. It could SMELL this waste eating his little human alive from the inside out.

At first It did not understand. Could not understand. Could not fathom anything of endings or the ceasing of existence for anything pertaining to It’s own pleasure. But as she weakened and withered this knowledge became far too real. That she would be gone. No more listening to her childish stories. No more feeling her touch. No more watching her sleep or hum. It had been so pleased to discover that her propensity to create wordless musical noise had been called “humming.” And It did not wish for this to cease.

During the day It watched from the drains, enjoying the ease of travel these “sewer pipes” afforded It. At night It slithered out to her and listened to her. As she became weaker and more tired, It would hold her head as she’d held It’s own head, and speak to her of things It had seen.

One day she was so weak that she ceased eating. This was a concept that It simply could not grasp. She soon no longer spoke, merely gasping occasionally and shivering. It could sense her faltering heart. That night It wrapped a spindly soft form around her and generated heat. She felt so cold. This night It whispered to her of It’s past. Of It’s true nature. It whispered of the Lonely. It asked her to stay. Her vision was the Lonely to It. And It did not wish for her to be embraced in that hollow void. She didn’t answer. It hissed in helpless anger and tightened It’s hold, becoming warmer still. This simply would NOT do.

It did not cease. So why should she? The impulsive question had an equally impulsive answer.

Using It’s claws very gently, It lowered her jaw. Then It lowered Its face to hers. It had never kissed anything. Had no knowledge of this. Nor was It trying to do so now. It’s fanged jaws stretched open wide, wider, and wider still. Drool puddled out onto her gauntly aged face and chest. Her face glowed from 4 tiny light sources inside It’s throat. But this glow grew brighter. Without warning It wrapped It’s massive jaws around her head. It’s teeth did not press tho the longest points did split her skin in some areas. With a strong exhale, the macroverse screamed as It gave her a part of Itself. One flash of destructive light made her blank eyes glitter for a moment as It breathed into her a portion of It’s own existence. It’s own eternity. It’s body bowed and snapped around her as if It were in labor and struggling to drop young. The macroverse poured forth it’s screams and roars of despair and loss.

But It had failed. Even as It’s precious deadlight had burrowed into the flesh of her heart so had her last breath exited her body. It unwrapped from her and collapsed onto the floor next to her bed, gargling sounds of quiet agony pouring from It’s closing maw. There was fleshy tearing pain and a hollowness where It’s little light had been. But worse still…….. It had felt that little light die with her. It had tasted death in a far different way than It had ever tasted death before. And the taste left It’s tongue dry and bitter like ashes and poison. It sneezed from the effect, each jerking contortion of It’s now shifting form feeling the shorn amputation of this piece of Itself.

It paid no heed to her body as a human might. This was just an empty slop of entrails and cooling meat now. An old useless empty vessel. A tomb.

It was no longer hungry. No longer upset or uncomfortable. Simply very tired. Hollow. Empty. It crawled down into It’s cavern and into the most dreamless rest It had ever had.

It was listless ever after. Cold. Hateful. Always preferring the form of that clown. Incomplete.

And always waiting. Always.

#pennywise #pennywise the dancing clown #deadlights #blind S/O #gore #angst #pennywise fanfiction #request #asks

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thatgirlonstage · 5 years

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but don't let that stop you from writing your own and by 'dont let that stop you' i do mean 'please please please write your own i will die of happiness'

@fluffyblue-multifandommess oh good, good, see, the thing is, the thing is I’ve really really been wanting to write, but I was having trouble focusing on my WIPs and I wasn’t finding inspiration for anything short, but then last night I had an idea for an opening line for this fic, and thought oh what the hell I’ll just write that down for later, except then I knew what the next sentence was too, and then at some point I looked at the clock again and it was 3AM, and I wrote this last night instead of sleeping, is what I’m saying

(I may end up posting this to Ao3 but I want to at least finish reading the novel before I take a final run at editing it lol)

———

He’s lying quiet, now.

It was a sight Lan WangJi never thought he’d see, Wei WuXian quiet and still, and now he’s rapidly taking back every moment he wished for it. There’s something terrifying about his slack, empty face, the shallow breaths shivering through barely parted lips, the absence of even so much as a flicker of an eyelid. That face isn’t meant to be so still. It’s a face made for laughter, for sly smiles and teasing winks, for that infuriating smug expression he gets whenever he makes Lan WangJi lose his composure. That face was never meant to look so blank. Lan WangJi fixes his gaze on the barely perceptible rise and fall of Wei WuXian’s chest as he rests a finger against his feverish temple.

Just keep breathing, he thinks. He sends a trickle of spiritual energy through his finger, whatever scraps he can spare. It’s barely more than drops in a bucket at this point; he’s not sure Wei WuXian would notice it even if he were awake for it. Just keep breathing. It’s the only thing left for either of them to do. Lan WangJi tilts his head back slightly, resting it against the wall, fighting off a perverse urge to sleep. His internal clock is the only thing keeping track of the days. If he lets himself drift off, they’ll lose all ability to tell time, and he needs to keep counting the days, he needs to know how long it’s been, how much longer they might have to wait. His injured leg aches.

Even after he’d pulled him, curled up and shaking, out of Xuanwu’s mouth, even as the fever set in, Wei WuXian had still been talking. He’s always, always talking. Even while he slept at first he went in and out of muttering, and tossing and turning even after Lan WangJi relented and pulled him into his lap to let him sleep more comfortably. His forehead may have been painted with a sheen of sweat and he may have been delirious and unable to even sit upright, but that boundless, unruly energy remained, jittery and forceful. He had babbled like a madman when he woke up, bouncing between topics, the fever making his chatter even less intelligible than usual, even as Lan WangJi watched him fight for the energy to stay awake. Only acquiescing to his request to sing had gotten him to settle down and stop trying to talk, finally. His babbling had faded with his repeated, half-lucid queries about the song’s name as he lost the battle for focus and consciousness, slurring into sleep-speech. For a while, Lan WangJi hummed softly to the background of Wei WuXian’s occasional mutters and choked whimpers of pain when his shifting about rubbed his stiff and filthy robe against the infected brand on his chest, but he could practically see the last vestiges of his energy leaking out of him. Lan WangJi’s humming trailed off as he watched Wei WuXian’s tossing and turning rock to stillness and his whimpers go silent. And now, he’s quiet.

Just keep breathing.

Please don’t stop breathing.

Lan WangJi’s finger is still resting against Wei WuXian’s temple.

It’s pathetic, how much he can’t stand the notion of watching this boy die. He can tell himself there are plain, logical explanations for his behavior. That he saved his life, because it was ethical. He cooperated in plans to escape the cave, because it was a mutual interest. He shared medicine, because to do otherwise was to be selfish. But they’ve done everything they can do now, tried every avenue to mutually ensure their survival, and the only thing left is to wait for help. There’s no obligation, no failure, no shame he faces if he can’t save Wei WuXian. His fingers bleed with the evidence of his efforts. So the tight coil of hot, unnamed emotion in his chest, the terror that threatens to choke him every time Wei WuXian’s chest takes too long to rise with its next inhale, the almost hysterical fear that he might start crying again, that’s all just him. Him and his useless feelings for this aggravating, provoking, dangerous boy.

He lifts his head off the wall. It is not nine. He will not sleep. He has to keep track of the days, so that he knows when help will arrive. Help will arrive.

For now, though, he reaches out and, as gently as he possibly can, pulls Wei WuXian back into his lap. Wei WuXian flinches, letting out a small, mumbled sound at the change in position, but as soon as Lan WangJi has him settled, head and shoulders carefully pillowed on his thighs, he returns to his frightening stillness. Lan WangJi reaches down and strand by strand moves away the hair stuck to Wei WuXian’s forehead by lake water and sweat. He brushes it back so lightly his own fingers barely feel it.

“You’re a terrible person, Wei WuXian,” he says quietly. He gets no reaction. He lets his hand rest on Wei WuXian’s forehead.

His grief for the Cloud Recesses’ destruction, for his father, for the wanton tyranny of the Wens and the blows they have dealt to his clan and his sect throb in the back of his head, aching in harmony with his leg. It’s no longer as sharp and overwhelming as the first night, when he had felt himself splitting into pieces in front of Wei WuXian. He can’t remember when he had last cried. He’s not certain if he can remember ever crying at all. It felt childish and primal and almost surreal. And yet — he keeps his eyes fixed carefully on Wei WuXian’s chest, on the tiny but consistent expand and fall — and yet, he thinks that if Wei WuXian were to cease breathing, he would wail his grief until his voice gave out.

He leans forward carefully, his hair — beginning to knot and mat from days of neglect — falling on either side of Wei WuXian’s face. “You are a very stupid person, Wei WuXian,” he whispers. His eyes roam over Wei WuXian’s features. He still does not respond with so much as a twitch. “You are an impossible person, Wei WuXian,” he adds.

“I cannot watch you die, Wei WuXian.”

Just keep breathing.

At some point, he has leaned so far down that his face is close enough to feel Wei WuXian’s breath. His eyes slide closed for a moment, taking comfort in the puffs of air against his cheek, before he sits back up. His eyes stay on Wei WuXian’s face. After a moment, he starts to hum again. He drifts off key and struggles for focus, but he imagines it makes Wei WuXian breathe a little bit easier, and so he doesn’t stop. He sings so quietly he can feel it more than he can hear it, and pretends to himself that the way one hand brushes over Wei WuXian’s forehead and other comes up to gently cradle his cheek is mindless. He is only checking his fever, or trying to soothe him so he stays asleep. Wei WuXian should keep sleeping. It would do him no good to wake up and start wasting energy by trying to chat again. That he might wake up and not try to talk is not something Lan WangJi is willing to picture.

At some point, despite his efforts, he drifted asleep himself, because he wakes to the sound of falling dirt, and distant shouts from the cave mouth. His heart seizes in his chest. His eyes dart down. Wei WuXian’s chest is still moving. He sags against the wall with relief, and leans down again, until his mouth is right next to Wei WuXian’s ear.

“They came,” he whispers. “They’re here. You’re going to be alright.” He stays there an impossibly long moment, before, for a barely an instant, he turns his face toward Wei WuXian so that his lips brush against Wei WuXian’s temple, lighter than air. Then, he very carefully shifts Wei WuXian back onto the ground, setting his head down as gently as he can. He climbs, wobbling and aching, to his feet, carefully brushes off his clothes as best he can, and calls out to the people breaking open the sealed up cave.

There is a sudden confusing mess of people, triumphant and relieved shouts overwhelming his ears, the blur of robes and faces incomprehensible. Jiang Cheng lifts up the still-unconscious Wei WuXian to fly him out of the cave on a borrowed sword. Someone Lan WangJi does not recognize and is too exhausted and distracted to introduce himself to properly helps him onto another sword and flies him up, steadying him with his arm. A crowd of Jiang Sect disciples cheer as they are brought out, and it roars dully in his ears. There’s already a crowd of bodies around Wei WuXian, hiding him from sight. Lan WangJi blinks and turns away.

#mdzs #wangxian #mo dao zu shi #my writing

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rusharound · 7 years

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TPoH: The Maze, Chapter 2

Well, I wrote another chapter. Enjoy!

Sleep did not arrive so much as found him like a streetlamp snapping ablaze, arresting a walker. It became too taxing to both think and feel the pain, and so he made a choice. RGB could not pinpoint the moment he decided to take the day, fold it thrice and put it in some tightly packed box at the bottom of everything, but at some point, he felt the back of his head come to rest upon the soft curve of the sandbank and let the world swirl into a deep dark drain. An ache in his bad leg permeated the dredges of his consciousness but he couldn’t for the life of him discern the cause before the silt settled and he was off.

Hero, curled up against his knee and eyes half open to watch, saw the line of his mouth shape something before he tilted into rest much needed. She decided she wouldn’t pester him about it later.

Exactly what it took to break RGB had crossed her mind from one end to the other, steadying into a large monochromatic eye, a dark palette and a hum in the air like some greater machine bursting to life beneath the ground. What that sight represented remained a mystery, but the last time she’d seen it, her guide had been in dire straights and surely had no choice but to become more dire in turn, more frightening than anything this strange world could stitch together. It scared her even now, however, and so she stopped thinking about it, evacuated the images like water out an ear to avoid giving herself nightmares.

But nothing disappeared in this place, like true energy of any breed, indestructible, it vacated and found a new home.

RGB became, sketched into some charcoal black scape by a cosmic slip of chalk. Offered only a moment to flicker in half questions of what and who, he spotted the ironing board, the spitting steam warping into a husky, papercut voice almost immediately, and turned tail.

Hero had fallen asleep far too close to him again, despite telling her time and time again her dreams did not agree with him, case in point. However, given the Tower still loomed some yards away like a tombstone, he couldn’t fault her. He himself wished he could have moved so he might’ve laid with his back to it.

This was a dream, of course. Hardly a total sense of place, only a vague tug at fingers and toes telling him he was not where he last left himself. Inner compass spinning in vain, he turned from one side of absolutely nowhere to the other, his only greeting an expanse of rich blackness divided by a soft chalk horizon. The symbol of aggression and its accessories had gone. He suspected the moment they’d left his view, they’d dissolved, vanished, as things did in dreams. Formless without observation, without thought.

Hours passed, perhaps. Or minutes. Time scratched its head and reviewed its notes, the projected subconscious a gray area, a clock over a campfire, numbers running. The skyline offered no indication of passage, bare and jagged in some illusion of topography though he knew he’d find no mountains far and beyond. Void as it was, moving through dreams felt heavy, clouded, as if he were chin deep in sand, carving a path for himself. He needed to stop and catch his breath, or he must have, for his hands were suddenly braced to his knees. It must have been the squeeze of some proverbial thickness in the air weighing him like a cement jacket, for he felt as if he’d been sprinting for some time, though he hadn’t been. Breathing wasn’t especially easy. RGB pressed a hand to his side as if to plug some hole through which he was sure great gulps of air were escaping.

The drip did not register until it had run to his elbow and when his hand came away oozing and red, RGB felt himself panic, then panicked. He tried to find the source, some unfelt wound on his flank, but in the selective focus of his dreamer’s eye, he could only see the spreading oval pool at his heel as the stream channeled down his leg. He bled and bled, and yelped suddenly, cries evaporating against the backs of his teeth, strangled by the air.

It spread, soaking him warm and heavy until his chalky figure filled to the edges like a flawed watercolour. He blinked hard, trying to clear the filmy pull in his eyes and his eyelashes stuck together. It stung, blinding, and he folded, cursing like a snapped wire. The flats of his fingers drilled into his eyes, trying to squeeze the pain out the corners, on his knees now, elbows pressing tightly together until the outline blurred and they shared a sleeve.

He shook his head side to side, wet hair licking his ears before he stuffed his hands through it, gripping hard handfuls and letting his eyes burn. Red squeezed under his palms, dribbling into his sleeves until his cuffs overflowed like cups. He bowed over to reverse and pour them out.

His nose and mouth filled and he raised his chin, staring through acid into the scape of a red sea rising around his knees. Hands shot down to push off the bottom and he straightened to his feet, a gasp straining between teeth, grit in terror. Drenched hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and snagged his collar like small fingers, indeed too much like them to be anything else. He tried to pivot and escape but they were too strong and too many, grips born of death, exceeding the sum of parts broken at his hand.

He couldn’t see their faces despite turning until his body locked, sides creaking like the tin man. Only their arms, thin and new, extending into his blind spot. His own voice ripped the air and he shaped his lips to catch it but it turned over, splitting off like the braid of a river to fill their mouths instead.

The weight came and he began to sink. Their arms slipped through space, all but their elbows slipping under the red as they pulled. It seemed the sea itself had sprouted hundreds of hands and all were grasping at his clothing, swallowing him at the knees and higher still, determined to drown their charge. He couldn’t feel his feet and their fingers pierced like glass in a car accident. RGB screamed with the voices of many children, thrashing and coughing up lungfuls of red, movement stunted as if key frames had gone missing. His face felt claws as liquid spilled from his nose and mouth before the sky narrowed into one thick line flanked in blazing white like twin screens in a dark cave. A massive, black Tower roared above, swallowing the xenith from horizon to horizon.

RGB awoke on his bad side to a jostle that helped the pain none. His mouth fizzled, twitched whole and back, his dials quivered in their sockets as a cry leapt from his throat, feeling more like a sob as it dragged its feet through his voice. Hero spoke his name, panicked and grainy with sleep. She must have only just woken up. His good hand found his chest as if his heart hammered beneath, an attempt at curling up bringing a true sob from his shoulders. He couldn’t move, not on his own.

It must have taken a fair amount of strength on her part to sit him up. He tried to tell himself her small hands would not pull him into some abyss but the press of the nightmare and all its fingers felt humid against his heart, and his head spun. Pain’s nest in his right half anchored him to the here, at least, though it had abated somewhat in the way the tide recedes. He knew it would be back, but he needed to take advantage of its absence.

A foundation of sand spoke for itself. RGB could not get to his feet, even with Hero’s support. More than once he fell back into his divot against the small dune, breath trembling as if it were rattled from his body like pocket change. Soon, shaking his head, the pain cracked an eye open and he knew his window had passed. Head tilting, he stole a glance at his own damaged half and poorly stifled a hitch in his next words at the sight of his outline. It had been broken, stuttering where the Tower had pierced him as if ripped from his shell. Like the sharp, snapped face of a broken bone, the edges of his very story dug into him as he moved, burning dry ice and molten rock.

“Hero-” He began, shaking his head. “I can’t- I need to lay down, will you help me?”

He did not blame her when her grip found the unceremonious ending of his lineart, deciding to hold his breath instead and try not to let the agony find a foothold. She worked to make him comfortable, straightening his lapels and smoothing his sleeves. Somehow, she knew he liked to look presentable, even prone and riding the vestiges of a truly horrible dream. She would make a fantastic coroner. The irony made him smile, and she smiled, which made him smile.

She hugged her legs when she was unsure and waiting, and did so now, her chin and mouth disappearing behind her knees. She spoke and he heard her smile waver.

“...Are you going to be okay, RGB?” Something in the fixed gaze she gave him made him want to give her an answer worth something, like the first brick that builds a home.

No throat to speak of but he swallowed, and laying on his back spoke up against gravity. It sounded crushed.

“...My outline is damaged, Hero.” He said.

“...Oh…” She’d grasped the concept as one would the sun in the curl of a finger and thumb, an eye shut tight. Her gaze flicked to the wound, looking as if she might reach for it, but did not. He flinched anyway.

“Can...Can I fix it? I can find a marker...or- or you can have some of mine…”

“...It doesn’t quite work that way…” He explained, softly.“...An outline comes from inside...and far away. Finding oneself and...and the story elsewhere…”

His consciousness flickered again. She rolled forward onto her knees, hung over him, and he saw her shape his name, but a thick static jolt drowned her voice for a moment.

“..Ah...Hero…”

“Yes? I’m here, RGB. What is it?” He heard.

“...I will be fine-” A necessary preface though he could see skepticism in the frown pulling at her lip corner. “...I will…”

“..Okay...”

“...But...I do have a...a favour to ask of you.”

“Yes, RGB? What can I do?”

A task would pull her energy away from worrying. A busy body had no room for concern, and he couldn’t have her scared for him only for that fear to show up.

“...I need you to...watch some telly.”

Her head tilted. His fingers twitched.

“...I...don’t want to go back to sleep at the moment...not truly, anyway. I do need to rest, however.” It was only in Hero shuffling closer, turning her ear to his speakers did RGB notice how far his voice had fallen. So weak he didn’t much think the volume dial would make a difference.

“...But when you’re a TV, you go into a sort’ve....sleep mode, right?” She asked, quietly.

“...That’s right…” He said fondly, and tried to shift his better shoulder and settle in. It seemed his aches had pooled into his back, lining his blazer with thumbtacks. He wheezed and it crackled his speakers.

“...You can watch...whatever you like, really...Be it cartoons or...history...even a cooking show...I shant judge…” He said, tightly though he meant to tease.

“...Okay, RGB. I promise I’ll turn you back on when I’m done, I won’t leave you too long.” She said with a smile that could lift a mountain.

“Thank you.” His good hand rolled over as if he’d meant to do something, but it fell away like a failed card trick. He was too tired to try again. “...Thank you, Hero.”

“You’re welcome. Have a good rest, RGB.”

Some imperceptible tension left his frame the moment she switched his channel, his gentle grin chased away by the marvel of moving picture. She watched for a moment before her eyes drifted to the broken half of him.

Hero’s time in the market had familiarized her with the importance of a strong outline, a reflection of becoming real, of finding one’s story or one’s story finding them. She wondered then, briefly, where RGB’s story was, or whether he had one at all.

Hero didn’t know close to enough about the man to suppose what sort of story would take him away, eventually, and the thought had her tucking her knees closer, hugging her arms. Somehow, though, she couldn’t resign to the idea of RGB going gracefully. Her pose loosened as she imagined him fighting with all his might against the ascension to stay here, grabbing onto other creatures, hanging lights, the sun itself. That seemed more his style.

This place seemed like the one for him. It was dangerous and terrifying and beautiful. RGB was dangerous and terrifying, though it didn’t look like he knew about that. She wondered what a monster might have nightmares about. She did not ask what could push quiet pleads through the static of his sleep until he was thrust from the dream, crawling desperately on his hands and knees back to the waking world. No ill-eaten curiosity existed in Hero, she just wanted to know what had made her friend cry.

The commercial break passed and she was caught by the brightly coloured program, leaping and jumping in shades and sound, beckoning her attention. She stared, glazed and unseeing before reaching over and turning the dial, cycling through the stations, searching until the flash of stark gray caught her eye. Doubling back, Hero found some film in black and white, as musical as it was silent. A pair of men, one fat and the other thin, argued back and forth in a car that moved quicker than it should have, but the way it whipped around corners and the exasperated takes of the larger man made her smile.

It looked like something they could both enjoy, so she left it and watched all the way through.

#tpoh #rushwrites #y'all asked for it #tw: blood #tw: nightmares #tw: drowning

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That Was the Year That Was – 1979 Image by brizzle born and bred 1979 For the first time in history in 1979 a woman Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime minister in the UK. As technology becomes smaller Sony released the Walkman a worldwide success costing 0 which at that time was a significant amount of money. Also the first Snowboard is invented in the USA. The bombing by the IRA in England continues with Lord Mountbatten and three others assassinated. Following the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Iran becomes an Islamic Republic and 63 Americans are taken hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran on 4th November.

1979 the Britain Thatcher Inherited

The Conservative Party appointed her as their leader on 11 February 1975. She was the first woman to head a British political party, and went on to become the country’s first female Prime Minister in 1979.

Britain wasn’t a country gagging for modernization in 1979 so much as one in a state of nostalgia-tinged denial: a country still traumatized by the retreat from empire and the loss of its global economic clout, symbolized by its humiliation at the hands of the International Monetary Fund three years earlier. A generation on, and the political and economic debate is still tinged as much by the nostalgia as the modernization.

In the “Winter of Discontent” in 1979, almost half of the hospitals in the U.K. were accepting only emergency patients. Household rubbish collection stopped. Petrol shortages loomed as flying pickets of transport workers blocked refineries. And it was the coldest winter in 20 years to boot.

One of Margaret Thatcher’s first political battles after becoming Prime Minister in 1979 was with the unions and Red Robbo in Birmingham.

The British Leyland era at Longbridge became a byword for wildcat walkouts, union militancy and industrial chaos – and helped clear the path to political power for Margaret Thatcher. Just two years after the arrival of hardliner Michael Edwardes, the diminutive South African car chief who took on Red Robbo and the unions at Longbridge, she was voted in as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. The former Communist works convenor was drummed out of Longbridge after 38 years in November 1979 – within six months of Thatcher’s ascent to power.

The mood of the country had changed dramatically.

Robinson was sacked by BL for putting his name to a pamphlet that had criticised the BL management. A strike ballot opposing the dismissal was held but was thrown out by an overwhelming 14,000 against to just 600 in favour. It was the end of the road for Red Robbo at Longbridge and a watershed in industrial relations in the West Midlands car industry. Significantly, in her memoirs, Thatcher later described Robinson as a ‘notorious agitator’.

The BBC had once claimed that between 1978 and 1979 Robinson was credited with causing 523 walkouts at British Leyland, costing an estimated £200 million in lost production. The BL-style disruption had spread across the nation, and the so-called Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 saw 29.2 million working days lost, with bodies left unburied following a gravediggers’ strike and uncollected rubbish piled high in the frozen streets, when dustbin workers walked out.

It was in that climate of lingering industrial chaos that Margaret Thatcher came to power the following spring.

In his last newspaper interview at the time of the closure of MG Rover in April 2005, Robinson, who is now in his 80s, told the Mail: “Edwardes wanted to reduce it to a small motor company and closed 13 factories, but he never made a profit. “I grew up with the company, joining as a toolmaker at 14 in 1941 and loved my time, both as an ordinary worker and then convenor. “But when Edwardes took over the writing was on the wall. Shutting plants down was not the way to go.”

He described his Red Robbo tag as a badge of honour.

The backdrop to the industrial climate which saw Sir Michael Edwardes – and his spiritual political leader at Number 10, Mrs T – defeat Red Robbo is described in Gillian Bardsley and Colin Corke’s history of the famous Birmingham car factory, Making Cars at Longbridge. The authors wrote: “The formation of British Leyland in 1968 created the fourth biggest motor manufacturer in the world, a formidable player in terms of jobs, finance and exports, something no Government could afford to ignore.

“BL dominance of the home market evaporated as Ford strengthened and imports grew in volume, including the rapidly improving products of Japan.

“The company changed its name to Rover Group in 1986, officially banishing the last vestiges of British Leyland, though it would prove more difficult than this to wipe these words from the British consciousness. “Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister elected in 1979, would certainly not be fooled by a change of name. Nevertheless in 1988 she sold the Government’s unwanted shareholding in Rover Group to British Aerospace.”

Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, head of the WMG manufacturing arm of Warwick University, who was an industrial adviser to Mrs Thatcher for much of her period in office, said: “She came to the fore at a time when the perception of Britain as an economic entity was very low.

“I can’t think of anyone else in recent history who was so single-minded in her determination to turn Britain round. Today we are enjoying the fruits of what she put in place. “She gave power to young people and the working class. She ensured that Britain escaped the image of being strike ridden and suffering a lack of competitiveness.”

All had disappeared forever by the time Mrs. Thatcher left the stage in 1990, many of them succeeded by privatized versions of the same companies that have come to be every bit as bitterly resented, for various reasons.

1979

Population: 56.27 million

Gross domestic product: £199.22bn

Average household income per week: £248.96

Average house price: £83,169

Life expectancy: men, 70.33 years; women, 76.41 years

Britain in 1979

The average house cost £13,650, and inflation was 17%. Sony launched a portable cassette player called a Walkman, marketed in the US at 0, and McDonalds introduced Happy Meals. Mother Theresa won the Nobel peace prize, China ordered its citizens to have no more than one child, and smallpox was eliminated.

Britain’s trade unions entered 1979 in a state of deep discontent at Jim Callaghan’s attempt to control soaring inflation by limiting pay. But while graveyards were locked and civic squares piled high with uncollected rubbish, popular culture offered merciful release. Britons watched home-grown favourites Are You Being Served and Last of the Summer Wine, and indulged in the comparative glamour of American imports Dallas and Charlie’s Angels . For most of 1979 they were unable to read the Times, which did not appear for almost a year owing to an industrial dispute.

The Clash released London Calling and Pink Floyd released The Wall, while Off the Wall became Michael Jackson’s breakthrough solo album. 1979 was also the year the performer had what is thought to be his first cosmetic surgery, after breaking his nose while dancing.

The release of the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight in October 1979 was credited with heralding the birth of hip-hop. Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose while on bail for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Kramer vs Kramer was the year’s top-grossing movie in the US, and Alien and Apocalypse Now were also in the top 10, with The Muppet Movie.

Punk and new wave dominated the music scene, with Ian Dury & The Blockheads’ ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ and Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass’ two of the year’s first number one singles. Joy Division’s debut album Unknown Pleasures – an aptly dark, brooding picture of despair – was released in June. Amid the gloom, the television schedules were packed with what would become Britain’s most affectionately remembered comedy series. New episodes of Fawlty Towers, Yes, Minister, Terry and June, Minder, and To The Manor Born were all screened throughout the year. The two Hollywood blockbusters Alien and Mad Max proved hits in cinemas, propelling their stars Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson into the 1980s A-list.

1979 was a unique year for Top of the Pops, which saw the show record its highest audience of 19 million viewers and in which physical format singles sales hit an all-time high of 79 million. 1979 is maybe the most diverse year ever for acts on Top of the Pops with disco at its peak, new wave, 2 Tone, reggae, rock, folk and electro records all making the top five.

Original interviews with Gary Numan, Nile Rodgers, Woody from Madness, Jah Wobble, Chas and Dave, Janet Kay, Linda Nolan, Jim Dooley, Secret Affair, the Ruts, Legs and Co and many others tell the story of an exceptional year.

In the year that the ‘winter of discontent’ saw continuing strikes black out ITV and TOTP reduced during a technicians strike to a narrator introducing videos, the show also found itself the site of conflict backstage. TOTP’s old guard of 70s MOR acts had their feathers continually ruffled by new wave bands, as the Skids spat at the Nolan Sisters backstage and Generation X urinated off the roof onto the Dooleys.

Elsewhere in the corridors of TV Centre, in preparation for playing their single Death Disco, Public Image Ltd demanded their teeth were blacked out in make-up to appear ugly while Gary Numan remembers the overbearing union presence which prevented TOTP artists moving their own microphones without a union technician and the Musicians Union trying to ban him from the show for his use of synthesizers.

The most popular musical styles of 1979 were 2 Tone, reggae and disco. The latter saw Nile Rodgers, the man of the year, score four hits with Chic as well as writing and producing a further four hits with Sister Sledge, Sheila B Devotion and Sugarhill Gang, who appeared with what would prove to be the first ever rap hit.

Jamaican and UK reggae artists scored continual hits through the year and then watched as the Police notched up three hits with white reggae and the label 2 Tone revived the 60s reggae style known as ska. In November, in what is remembered as the 2 Tone edition, all three of the label’s new acts – Madness, Specials and Selecter – appeared on one historic night and took the show by storm, with Madness capping off their performance of One Step Beyond by leading a ‘nutty train’ conga through the studio.

The Murder of Earl Mountbatten

2015 – The Irish police have been accused of failing to fully investigate IRA terror suspects responsible for the Mountbatten killings in 1979, along with other terror attacks. A Westminster source has made clear his suspicion that the Irish authorities were fully aware of who caused the death of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the Queen’s cousin. But the source continued that the motivation to investigate past terrorist attacks had dissipated following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The agreement gave those suspected of attacks an amnesty, the source told the Sunday Telegraph, in a secret deal for peace. The source added that ‘of course’ the Irish knew who had committed the murders, as they were ‘very good at gathering intelligence’ but were not successful when it came to taking the cases to court.

The revelations have emerged in the lead up to the ground-breaking first official visit by the Prince of Wales – the murdered Earl’s great-nephew – to the site of the attack, to be made this week. Prince Charles will visit the scene of the murder in the fishing village Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, as part of a four-day tour of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Only one man has ever been convicted over the Mountbatten killings, the now 67-year-old bomb-maker Thomas McMahon. But as he was 70 miles away in police custody – and therefore unable to detonate the bomb – when the boat was blown up it is clear that at least one accomplice managed to escape justice. A bomb packed with 50lb of explosives was stashed aboard the Earl’s boat, Shadow V, in August 1979.

The bomb was detonated when the boat was about 200 yards from Mullaghmore harbour, as it was being taken out to sea. It is certain that the bomb was detonated by an accomplice keeping watch, and not by an automatic timer, because it was not certain when the group of passengers would board the boat. Two teenage boys were also killed in the explosion, the Earl’s 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell, a local boat hand.

The 83-year-old Dowager Lady Brabourne – who was also aboard the boat – died from shock and internal injuries the day after the attack. Mountbatten’s daughter Lady Brabourne and her husband Lord Brabourne were both injured but survived the blast, as did their son Timothy, Nicholas’ twin brother. McMahon served 18 years before being released in 1998 under the Good Friday peace agreement. But a spokesman for the Irish police – known as the Garda – has insisted that the case remains open while urging any members of the public who may have information about the killings to come forward.

Onlookers have insisted that the Westminster sources claims, along with the upcoming visit of Prince Charles, should inspire a renewed urgency within the investigation.

The source insisted that the Garda was in fact aware of names of those suspected of carrying out the Mountbatten bombing, as well as other terror attacks. But he continued that they failed to act on that knowledge as a result of an ‘amnesty’ struck up as a result of the Good Friday Agreement, signed by the British and Irish governments.

IRA suspects received what have become known as ‘comfort’ letters from the British government, it has previously been revealed. The letters reassured suspects who had not yet been prosecuted and were ‘on-the-run’, that they were not being pursued for any specific offence. The ‘comfort’ letter controversy emerged after the trial of John Downey collapsed last year. Downey had been charged with the murder of four soldiers in the Hyde Park bombing in 1982, but had received a ‘comfort’ letter while he was on the run.

The source insisted that as a result of this covert amnesty, the authorities did not pursue those suspected of carrying out these notorious attacks. Although Charles’ visit comes 36 years after the bombing, it is believed that he has wanted to visit the village for some time. The Prince of Wales – accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall – will arrive on Tuesday, when they fly to Galway for a reception at the city’s university to celebrate the area’s links with Britain.

They will later attend a private dinner hosted by the Irish president, Michael D. Higgins, in Lough Cutra Castle in South Galway. On Wednesday they will attend a service of peace and reconciliation at Drumcliffe church in Sligo.

Car bomb kills Airey Neave

Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Airey Neave killed by a car bomb as he left the House of Commons car park. The bomb, said to be highly sophisticated, exploded as Mr Neave began driving up the exit ramp shortly before 1500GMT. Emergency services were on the scene in minutes. The 63-year-old Conservative MP, known for his tough line on anti-IRA security, was taken to Westminster Hospital where he died from his injuries. So far two groups, the Provisional IRA and the Irish Natonal Liberation Army, have claimed they carried out the killing.

It is not yet known when the bomb was attached to his car but investigators believe a timing device and trembler – which detonates the bomb through movement – were used to ensure the bomb went off as Mr Neave was leaving the Commons. The area around Parliament Square was immediately closed as police began a full-scale search of the premises. Despite increased threats to the safety of MPs not all cars are checked fully as they enter the car park. Gilbert Kellard, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said Mr Neave was aware of the dangers and was "happy and content" with his security.

Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher led tributes to Mr Neave saying: "He was one of freedom’s warriors. Courageous, staunch, true. He lived for his beliefs and now he has died for them." Prime Minister James Callaghan said: "No effort will be spared to bring the murderers to justice and to rid the United Kingdom of the scourge of terrorism."

The killing is thought to have been timed to coincide with the start of the election campaign which was announced yesterday. Mr Neave was a close adviser to Mrs Thatcher, he led her campaign to become the Conservative Party leader and headed her private office.

Teacher dies in Southall race riots

A 33-year-old man has died from head injuries after a bloody battle broke out between police and demonstrators in Southall. The fighting began when thousands of protesters gathered to demonstrate against a National Front campaign meeting. The extreme right-wing organisation had chosen Southall Town Hall to hold its St George’s Day election meeting. The area has one of the country’s biggest Asian communities.

Police had sealed off the area, and anti-racism demonstrators trying to make their way to the town hall were blocked. In the confrontation that followed, more than 40 people, including 21 police, were injured, and 300 were arrested. Bricks and bottles were hurled at police, who described the rioting as the most violent they have handled in London. Among the demonstrators was Blair Peach, a New Zealand-born member of the Anti-Nazi League. A teacher for special needs children in east London, he was a committed anti-racism activist.

During an incident in a side street 100 yards from the town hall, he was seriously injured and collapsed, blood running down his face from serious head injuries. He died later in hospital. Witnesses said his injuries were caused by police baton blows. Martin Gerrald, one of the protestors, was nearby Mr Peach at the time. "Mr Peach was hit twice in the head with police truncheons and left unconscious," he said. "The police were wielding truncheons and riot shields. It was a case of the boot just going in – there was no attempt to arrest anybody."

Another witness, 24-year-old Parminder Atwal, took the injured teacher into his house and called an ambulance. He said, "I saw a policeman hit a man on the head as he sat on the pavement. The man tried to get up, fell back and then reeled across the road to my house." The Anti-Nazi League claim Mr Peach bore the brunt of a "brutal" and "excessively violent" police baton charge.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said it was impossible to comment on the death until a full-scale inquiry had been completed.

Thorpe cleared of murder charges

Former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe has walked out of the Old Bailey a free man, after a jury cleared him of the attempted murder of Norman Scott. Mr Thorpe, who resigned as leader in 1976 amid allegations that he had had a homosexual affair with Mr Scott, hailed his acquittal as "a complete vindication".

Mr Thorpe and three other men were charged with conspiracy to murder, after the bungled assassination attempt of Mr Scott on a deserted moor in Southern England.

All were found not guilty. It took the jury 15 hours of deliberation spread over three days to reach its verdict. Mr Thorpe was also acquitted on a charge of inciting one of his co-defendants, David Holmes, to murder Mr Scott.

The trial lasted 31 days but Mr Thorpe’s ordeal began when he was charged last August. Although he was found not guilty, the case has probably ruined Mr Thorpe’s political career. As the verdict was read out he sat motionless. Afterwards he leant over to give his wife a long kiss.

Speaking later he said: "I have always maintained that I was innocent of the charges brought against me and the verdict of the jury, after a prolonged and careful investigation by them, I regard as totally fair and a complete vindication."

He added that he would be taking "a short period of rest" away from the glare of publicity.

Jeremy Thorpe’s political career was indeed ruined by the case.

Mr Thorpe had risen to prominence in 1967 when he became leader of the Liberal Party, but stepped down in 1976 as Norman Scott’s allegations about their relationship surfaced. At the May general election, shortly before the trial began, the voters of north Devon threw him out of the Parliamentary seat he had held for 20 years.

In 1999, two decades after disappearing from public life, Mr Thorpe published his memoirs in which he asserted that he never had any doubt about the acquittal of all the defendants on trial. Not long after the trial, Thorpe was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and retired from public life. For many years, the disease was at an advanced stage. In 1997 he visited the Liberal Democrat party conference, where he was given a standing ovation, and he attended the funeral of Roy Jenkins in 2003.

In 1999, Thorpe published his memoirs, In My Own Time, describing key episodes in his political life. He did not shed any light on the Norman Scott affair and never made any public statements regarding his sexual orientation.

On 4 December 2014, Thorpe died at his home in London of Parkinson’s disease, aged 85.

David Steel, who succeeded him as party leader, said: "He had a genuine sympathy for the underprivileged – whether in his beloved North Devon where his first campaign was for ‘mains, drains and a little bit of light’ or in Africa, where he was a resolute fighter against apartheid and became a respected friend of people like President Kaunda of Zambia."

1979 The Yorkshire Ripper Murders

4 April – Josephine Whitaker, a 19-year-old bank worker, is murdered in Halifax; police believe that she is the 11th woman to be murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper.

Police found in the wounds of Josephine Whitaker traces of milling oil used in engineering shops. Unfortunately, they also found traces of a similar oil on one of the envelopes from Sunderland sent by a man claiming to be the Ripper, but who turned out to be a hoaxer. This gave the letters an added credibility to the claims contained in them. They also found pinhead traces of metal particles in Josephine Whitaker’s wounds (possibly from when Sutcliffe sharpened the screwdriver into a bradawl). The police thought the killer might be a skilled machine tool-fitter, or an electrical or maintenance engineer, or a skilled or semi-skilled worker with engineering or mechanical connections.

2 September – Police discover a woman’s body in an alleyway near Bradford city centre. The woman, 20-year-old student Barbara Leach, is believed to be the 12th victim of the mysterious Yorkshire Ripper mass murderer.

Barbara Leach’s roommates were concerned when she still had not returned late Sunday night and called the police. The following day at 3:55 pm, while engaged in a police search of the area to find the missing student, Police Constable Simon Greaves found her body where Sutcliffe had hidden it in Back Ash Grove, about 200 yards from where she had left her friends. Her wounds, similar to the wounds received by Josephine Whitaker, clearly indicated to the police that the Yorkshire Ripper had struck again, and as in the previous murder, not in a red-light area.

1979 Timeline

5 January – Lorry drivers go on strike, causing new shortages of heating oil and fresh food.

10 January – Prime Minister James Callaghan returns from an international summit to a Britain in a state of industrial unrest. The Sun newspaper reports his comments with a famous headline: "Crisis? What Crisis?"

15 January – Rail workers begin a 24-hour strike.

22 January – Tens of thousands of public-workers strike in the beginning of what becomes known as the "Winter of Discontent".

1 February – Grave-diggers call off a strike in Liverpool which has delayed dozens of burials.

2 February – Sid Vicious, the former Sex Pistols guitarist, is found dead in New York after apparently suffocating on his own vomit as a result of a heroin overdose. 21-year-old London-born Vicious (real name John Simon Ritchie) is on bail for the second degree murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, who was found stabbed to death in a hotel room on 12 October last year.

9 February – Trevor Francis signs for Nottingham Forest in British football’s first £1 million deal.

12 February – Over 1,000 schools close due to the heating oil shortage caused by the lorry drivers’ strike.

14 February – "Saint Valentine’s Day Concordat" between Trades Union Congress and Government, The Economy, the Government, and Trade Union Responsibilities, marks an end to the "Winter of Discontent".

15 February – Opinion polls show the Conservatives up to 20 points ahead of Labour, whose popularity has slumped due to the Winter of Discontent.

22 February – Saint Lucia becomes independent of the United Kingdom.

1 March – Scottish devolution referendum: Scotland votes by a majority of 77,437 for a Scottish Assembly, which is not implemented due to a condition that at least 40% of the electorate must support the proposal.

Welsh devolution referendum: Wales votes against devolution.

Conservative candidate David Waddington retains the seat for his party in the Clitheroe by-election.

National Health Service workers in the West Midlands threaten to go on strike in their bid to win a nine per cent pay rise.

17 March – Nottingham Forest beat Southampton 3-2 at Wembley Stadium to win the Football League Cup for the second year running.

18 March – An explosion at the Golborne colliery in Golborne, Greater Manchester, kills three men.

22 March – Sir Richard Sykes, ambassador to the Netherlands, is shot dead by a Provisional Irish Republican Army member in The Hague.

28 March – James Callaghan’s government loses a motion of confidence by one vote, forcing a General Election.

29 March – James Callaghan announces that the General Election will be held on 3 May. All of the major opinion polls point towards a Conservative win which would make Margaret Thatcher the first female Prime Minister of Britain.

30 March – Airey Neave, World War Two veteran and Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman, is killed by an Irish National Liberation Army bomb in the House of Commons car park.

31 March – The Royal Navy withdraws from Malta.

April – Statistics show that the economy shrank by 0.8% in the first quarter of the year, largely due to the Winter Of Discontent, sparking fears that Britain could soon be faced with its second recession in four years.

4 April – Josephine Whitaker, a 19-year-old bank worker, is murdered in Halifax; police believe that she is the 11th woman to be murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper.

23 April – Anti-Nazi League protestor Blair Peach is fatally injured after being struck on the head probably by a member of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Patrol Group.

1 May – The London Underground Jubilee line is inaugurated.

4 May – The Conservatives win the General Election by a 43-seat majority and Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe is the most notable MP to lose his seat in the election. Despite losing the first General Election he has contested, James Callaghan is expected to stay on as leader of a Labour Party now in opposition after five years in government. Among the new members of parliament is John Major, 36-year-old MP for Huntingdon and Thatcher’s successor.

8 May – Former Liberal Party leader and MP Jeremy Thorpe goes on trial at the Old Bailey charged with attempted murder.

9 May – Liverpool win the Football League First Division title for the 12th time.

12 May – Arsenal defeat Manchester United 3-2 in the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium, with Alan Sunderland scoring a last gasp winner in response to two United goals inside the last five minutes which had seen the scores level at 2-2.

15 May – Government abolishes the Prices Commission.

21 May – Elton John becomes the first musician from the west to perform live in the Soviet Union.

Conservative MPs back Margaret Thatcher’s proposals to sell off parts of nationalised industries. During the year, the Government will begin to sell its stake in British Petroleum.

24 May – Thorpe Park at Chertsey in Surrey is opened; it becomes one of the top three most popular theme parks in the country.

25 May – Price of milk increases more than 10% to 15 pence a pint.

30 May – Nottingham Forest F.C. defeat Malmö FF, the Swedish football league champions, 1-0 in the European Cup final at Olympiastadion, Munich. The only goal of the game is scored by Trevor Francis.

7 June – European Parliament election, the first direct election to the European Parliament; the turnout in Britain is low at 32%. The Conservatives have the most MEPs at 60, while Labour only have 17. The Liberals gain a 12.6% share of the vote but not a single MEP, while the Scottish National Party, Democratic Unionist Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party and Official Ulster Unionist Party all gain an MEP each.

12 June – The new Conservative government’s first budget sees chancellor Geoffrey Howe cut the standard tax rate by 3p and slashing the top rate from 83% to 60%.

18 June – Neil Kinnock, 37-year-old Labour MP for Islwyn in South Wales, becomes shadow education spokesman.

22 June – Former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe is cleared in court of the allegations of attempted murder which ruined his career.

5 July – The Queen attends the millennium celebrations of the Isle of Man’s Parliament, Tynwald.

12 July – Kiribati (formerly Gilbert Islands) becomes independent of the United Kingdom.

17 July – The athlete Sebastian Coe sets a record time for running a mile, completing it in 3 minutes 48.95 seconds.

23 July – The government announces £4 billion worth of public spending cuts.

1 August – Following the recent takeover of Chrysler’s European division by French carmaker Peugeot, the historic Talbot marque is revived for the range of cars previously sold in Britain as Chryslers, also taking over from the Simca brand in France.

9 August – A nudist beach is established in Brighton.

10 August–23 October – The entire ITV network in the UK is shut down by a technicians’ strike. But Channel Television remains unaffected.

14 August – A storm in the Irish Sea hits the Fastnet yacht race. Fifteen lives and dozens of yachts are lost.

Disgraced ex-MP John Stonehouse is released from jail after serving four years of his seven-year sentence for faking his own death.

24 August – The Ford Cortina receives a major facelift.

27 August – Lord Mountbatten of Burma, his nephew and a boatboy are assassinated by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb while holidaying in the Republic of Ireland, the Dowager Lady Brabourne dying the following day in hospital of injuries received. He was an admiral, statesman and an uncle of The Duke of Edinburgh.

Warrenpoint ambush: eighteen British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland by IRA bombs.

30 August – Two men are arrested in Dublin and charged with the murder of Lord Mountbatten and the three other victims of the bombing.

5 September – The Queen leads the mourning at the funeral of Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

Manchester City F.C. pay a British club record fee of £1,450,000 for Wolverhampton Wanderers midfielder Steve Daley.

8 September – Wolverhampton Wanderers set a new national transfer record by paying just under £1,500,000 for Aston Villa and Scotland striker Andy Gray.

10 September – British Leyland announces that production of MG cars will finish in the autumn of next year, in a move which will see the Abingdon plant closed.

14 September – The government announces plans to regenerate the London Docklands with housing and commercial developments.

21 September – A Royal Air Force Harrier jet crashes into a house in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire killing two men and a boy.

25 September – Margaret Thatcher opens the new Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre, the largest indoor shopping centre in Britain, after its final phase is completed six years after development of the huge complex first began.

October – Statistics show a 2.3% contraction in the economy for the third quarter of the year, sparking fresh fears of another recession.

11 October – Godfrey Hounsfield wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Allan McLeod Cormack "for the development of computer assisted tomography".

23 October – All remaining foreign exchange controls abolished.

27 October – Saint Vincent and the Grenadines gains independence.

28 October – Chairman Hua Guofeng becomes the first Chinese leader to visit Britain.

30 October – Martin Webster of the National Front is found guilty of inciting racial hatred.

November – British Leyland chief executive Michael Edwardes wins the overwhelming backing of more than 100,000 of the carmaker’s employees for his restructuring plans, which over the next few years will result in the closure of several plants and the loss of some 25,000 jobs.

1 November – The government announces £3.5 billion in public spending cuts and an increase in prescription charges.

5 November – The two men accused of murdering Lord Mountbatten and three others go on trial in Dublin.

9 November – Four men are found guilty over the killing of paperboy Carl Bridgewater, who was shot dead at a farmhouse in the Staffordshire countryside 14 months ago. James Robinson and Vincent Hickey receive life sentences with a recommended minimum of 25 years for murder, Michael Hickey (also guilty of murder) receives an indefinite custodial sentence, while Patrick Molloy is guilty of manslaughter and jailed for 12 years.

11 November – Last episode of the first series of the sitcom To the Manor Born on BBC1 receives 23.95 million viewers, the all-time highest figure for a recorded programme in the UK.

13 November – The Times is published for the first time in nearly a year after a dispute between management and unions over staffing levels and new technology.

Miners reject a 20% pay increase and threaten to go on strike until they get their desired pay rise of 65%.

14 November – Vauxhall launches its first-ever front-wheel drive car – the Astra range of hatchbacks and estates – to compete in the growing family hatchback sector. It replaces the traditional rear-wheel drive Viva saloon, which had been produced in three incarnations since 1963. Initial production of the Astra will take place at the Opel factory in West Germany, with production set to be transferred to Britain by 1981.

15 November – Minimum Lending Rate reaches an all-time high of 17%.

Art historian and former Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures Anthony Blunt’s role as the "fourth man" of the ‘Cambridge Five’ double agents for the Soviet NKVD during World War II is revealed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons; she gives further details on 21 November.

21 November – Six months after winning the General Election, the Conservatives are five points behind Labour (who have a 45% share of the vote) in an MORI opinion poll.

23 November – In Dublin, Ireland, Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon is sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.

4 December – The Hastie Fire in Hull leads to the deaths of 3 boys and begins the hunt for Bruce George Peter Lee, the UK’s most prolific killer.

7 December – Lord Soames appointed as the transitional governor of Rhodesia to oversee its move to independence.

10 December – William Arthur Lewis wins the Nobel Prize in Economics with Theodore Schultz "for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries".

Daredevil Eddie Kidd performs an 80 ft jump on a motorcycle.

14 December – Doubts are raised over the convictions of the four men in the Carl Bridgewater case after Hubert Vincent Spencer is charged with murdering 70-year-old farmer Hubert Wilkes at a farmhouse less than half a mile away from the one where Carl Bridgewater was murdered.

The Clash release post-punk album London Calling.

20 December – The government publishes the Housing Bill which will give council house tenants the right to buy their homes from the following year. More than 5 million households in the United Kingdom currently occupy council houses.

Inflation rises to 13.4%.

The largest number of working days lost through strike action since 1926.

Dame Josephine Barnes becomes first woman president of the British Medical Association.

The first J D Wetherspoon pub is established by Tim Martin in the London Borough of Haringey.

The band Spandau Ballet begin to play under this name.

Scottish Gaelic service Radio nan Eilean established in Stornoway.

New plant species, Senecio eboracensis, the York groundsel, is discovered.

A record of more than 1.7 million new cars are sold in the United Kingdom this year, with the best selling car, the Ford Cortina, selling more than 190,000 units. Ford Motor Company enjoys the largest share of the new car market, following in second place by British Leyland, the former Chrysler Europe brands (now owned by Peugeot) in third place, and Vauxhall in fourth place. Foreign brands including Datsun, Renault and Volkswagen also prove popular.

1979 in British music

23 February – Dire Straits begin their first American tour, in Boston.

27 March – Eric Clapton marries Patti Boyd, ex-wife of Clapton’s friend George Harrison.

31 March – In the Eurovision Song Contest, UK representatives Black Lace finish 7th.

2 April – Kate Bush begins her first and, to date, her only live tour.

6 April – Rod Stewart marries Alana Hamilton.

1 May – Elton John becomes the first overseas pop music artist to perform in Israel.

2 May – The Who perform their first concert following the death of drummer Keith Moon. The band performed with new drummer Kenney Jones.

11 August – Led Zeppelin play their last ever British concert at Knebworth in Hertfordshire.

21 August – Cliff Richard achieves his tenth UK No.1 and the first for over 11 years.

August – Brotherhood of Man members Martin Lee and Sandra Stevens marry.

26 November – Bill Haley & His Comets perform at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in a command performance for The Queen. This was Haley’s final recorded performance of "Rock Around the Clock".

The Welsh Philharmonia becomes the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera.

Richard Rodney Bennett becomes a resident of New York City.

Arthur Oldham founds the Concertgebouw Orchestra Chorus in Amsterdam.

Number one singles

"Y.M.C.A." – Village People "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" – Ian Dury and the Blockheads "Heart of Glass" – Blondie "Tragedy" – Bee Gees "I Will Survive" – Gloria Gaynor "Bright Eyes" – Art Garfunkel "Sunday Girl" – Blondie "Ring My Bell" – Anita Ward "Are ‘Friends’ Electric?" – Tubeway Army "I Don’t Like Mondays" – The Boomtown Rats "We Don’t Talk Anymore" – Cliff Richard "Cars" – Gary Numan "Message in a Bottle" – The Police "Video Killed the Radio Star" – The Buggles "One Day at a Time" – Lena Martell "When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman" – Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show "Walking on the Moon" – The Police "Another Brick in the Wall Part II" – Pink Floyd

1979 in British television

2 January – BBC2 broadcasts the first in Michael Wood’s groundbreaking history documentary series, In Search of the Dark Ages.

28 January – Thomas & Sarah, a spin-off of Upstairs, Downstairs premieres on LWT. It runs for only one series.

24 March – Tales of the Unexpected, an Anglia Television series based on the short stories of Roald Dahl, makes its debut on ITV.

3 May–4 May – BBC1 and ITV broadcast coverage of the 1979 General Election. The election is won by the Conservatives and sees Margaret Thatcher become the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

6 August – Technicians at Thames Television go on strike following a long-running dispute.

10 August – The whole of the ITV network except the Channel Islands is affected by a technicians’ strike for eleven weeks.

27 August – Lord Mountbatten was murdered by IRA bombers. His death set a record audience for a news bulletin, as 26 million viewers watched the coverage on BBC1. Strike action at ITN led to the record viewing figures.

2 September – Subtitling of television programmes on Ceefax begins.

25 September – Robin Day presents the first edition of the long-running political debate programme Question Time on BBC1. The programme continues to air to the present day.

24 October – On ITV’s first night back on the air after the strike, Quatermass, the fourth and final serial featuring Professor Bernard Quatermass, begins its run on the network.

11 November – Last episode of the first series of the sitcom To the Manor Born on BBC1 receives 23.95 million viewers, the all-time highest figure for a recorded programme in the UK.

1 December – BBC2 unveils the first computer-generated television presentation symbol in the world. US broadcaster NBC unveils their first computer-generated symbol later that year.

BBC1

18 January – Blankety Blank (1979–1990, BBC1 1997–1999, ITV 2001–2002) 18 February – Antiques Roadshow (1979–present) 9 June – The Paul Daniels Magic Show (1979–1994) 25 September – Question Time (1979–present) 30 September -To the Manor Born (1979–1981, 2007) Shoestring (1979–1980) 24 October – Terry and June (1979–1987)

BBC2

28 September – Friday Night, Saturday Morning (1979–1982) 16 October – Not the Nine O’Clock News (1979–1982)

ITV

3 January – The Book Tower (1979–1989) 6 January – Dick Turpin (1979–1982) 14 January – Thomas & Sarah (1979) 25 February – Worzel Gummidge (1979–1981) 11 March – Agony (1979–1981) 24 March – Tales of the Unexpected (1979–1985; 1987–1988) 15 April – End of Part One (1979–1980) 10 July – Sapphire & Steel (1979–1982) 12 July – Shelley (1979–1992) 25 September – Once Upon a Time (1979–present) 29 October – Only When I Laugh (1979–1982) Minder (1979–1994; 2009)

#China #Cool #factory #images #Line #Machine #Milling #Price

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cynicaldesire · 7 years

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I haven’t touched it in a couple weeks because I lost inspiration to work on the Kingsglaive fanfic. Where I would be going in it would require knowledge of FFXV, which I don’t have or have money for. So I thought I’d talk about the OC I made, because I’m always so proud of making an OC that I feel is realistic.

Important to note: I never imagine what my character’s look like, so my descriptions will almost never include their height, weight, eye color, hair color or length (though I love long hair, so you can usually bet my character would have long hair), or anything else to do with appearance. Probably because I don’t hold my own in high regard, I’ve always felt the contents of the package are what matter.

Artemicia Reliqua.

She’s nothing special, and she knows it, a little insecure about everything but her studies. She was allowed into the Royal Academy? Whatever university on a scholarship for researching magic without reliance on the King’s magic. (Like Ignis and his Gifted thing? I don’t fucking know man, I’m trying to avoid as many spoilers as possible.) Her thesis is basically Magic existed before the King, wild animals use it, daemons? are a thing? So there’s got to be wild/natural magic that we can use without relying on the King’s magic. So, in the FF job system, I figure she’d be a sort of Alchemist. She performs experiments and mixes all kinds of things together in an effort to make magical items. (Then I saw Noctis and Ignis having magic after Regis died and I was like fuck.) It ends up that she makes like potions and items that she can use to make a spell happen when she throws them at shit.

While her science and academics and shit are amazing, she’s insecure and shit because she’s a Galahdian sympathizer. She trusts and believes in the Glaive because they are oddities, being able to use the King’s magic. And this gets her bullied in the dorms, which causes her to become really wary of everyone. She has no real friends in Insomnia and is scared to stay at the dorms because of the bullying, and she has so little money because she’s on scholarship and her family isn’t really wealthy enough to send her any spending money. She ends up carrying all her stuff around, notebooks and the school provided electronics, because otherwise people would ruin it because of her affection for the Glaives.

Her work is the last thing she really has to make her happy. And she wants to do some experiments with the Glaive, since she knows they can use magic, but she can’t get access to them. She tries to just go there, but they turn her away. She lingers outside the HQ and creeps the Glaive out. Because again, she can’t go to the dorm and she only really enjoys her studies, so this is all she can do. This leads to her kinda stalking Nyx and then becoming friends with the Glaive group.

With their help, she strengthens a bit. She’s able to stay in the dorms, or they just let her stay in their apartments. She doesn’t get along with Libertus, because who does really. Everyone else is pretty cool with her. But she’s super flustered and nervous with Nyx because she’s a college girl with a crush.

After Insomnia falls, she finds out everyone died but Libertus. She’s so ready to just give up because the only friends she had in the world was the Glaive, but then this asshole is alive. She’s so happy to see him, regardless of the fact they don’t get along. And it’s her desperation that reinforces her spine and she runs back into the city to find Nyx’s body. She can’t lose everyone. She has to cling to this one vestige of hope to give her strength.

The idea I had was that Nyx doesn’t actually die at the end of Kingsglaive because his will is stronger than the Lucii, so they take his Glaive life, the life he had before. He will never use magic, he will never fully recover from his injuries, so he has lost A life. The deal is still fulfilled.

Finding Nyx alive, he still has a duty, so the three of them follow it because they are clinging to some semblance of purpose at this point. Without magic, without Insomnia, with the fall of Regis and everything else, the only thing they have is finding and protecting Luna and fulfilling their duty to the new King. Artemicia, being a resourceful student, says she can help if she just had some potions and shit. So they get some equipment from Glaive HQ, spend the night recovering at whatever is left of the Academy labs while Arte mixes shit, and head off on adventure.

(The stream of consciousness outline thing I wrote is like 32 pages of this adventure. Most of it is garbage romantic drivel, but then I remembered I don’t have to pair Arte with Libertus, I could pair her with IGNIS and I immediately regretted all the work I put into Arte and Libertus making More Than Friends. So. I sorta abandoned it. And also I have no reference for FFXV’s story. I figure she’s heard of Ignis, another scholarship recipient, so when they meet up she’s starstruck and he kinda acknowledges her as a kouhai and their mutual intelligence and stuff sparks a romance.)

(Also, I didn’t realize how fucking ripped Libertus was. He’s the barrel-chested strong guy character. Nyx is lithe and agile. I kept wondering why Libertus was in the Glaive if he was shit at magic and also fat, but he’s swole. Still not great at magic. He’s the heavy. Just wish he had a fucking jawline.)

#writing #fanfic #oc #arte

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sebassstian-stan · 8 years

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20-ish Hours in LA [Self Para]

[Takes place between Saturday afternoon and late Sunday morning.]

“What’s this meeting for again, babe?” Minka asked as she and Sebastian watched the large digital board change the status of his flight, the gate finally being displayed. Picking up his hand luggage – he knew he wouldn’t be there long enough to justify a checked back – he leaned down to press a lingering kiss to Minka’s lips in response.

Sebastian had planted the seed weeks ago that he might have out to LA to meet with some studio executives for his next Marvel jaunt, the details of which he couldn’t discuss. While he hadn’t meant ‘executives’ in the terms the two of them were used to in their line of work – Sebastian felt it was close enough to the truth to assuage his conscience from misdirecting her away from why he was really going: to meet with her father, Rick.

With a wink, he assured her brightly, “gotta see a guy about a metal arm tomorrow morning, then a quick pop in to meet with my agent out there; then I’ll be back late tomorrow afternoon. Not even twenty-four hours, you won’t even know I’ve been gone,” he smiled, besotted, and cupped her cheek to kiss her again. Knowing time was counting down, Sebastian shouldered his bag and wove their fingers together, nodding his head as he lead them towards the blessedly short security line. Knowing Minka couldn’t go any further without her own ticket, Sebastian spent a few more minutes kissing his girlfriend; running his hands through her hair, and finally pulled back to bend down and press their foreheads together, despite their height difference.

Looking into her eyes, his heart beat out an even tempo: you’re it. You’re it. You’re it. Feeling deep in his bones that this was the right move, that this woman was the person he wanted to spend his life with. Grinning widely, he pressed his lips against her forehead, he murmured against her skin, “Minka Kelly, I love you all day,” quietly to keep the precious words between them in the bustling terminal, “and I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.”

With a final kiss, and a wink at her telling him to not stress out too much on his flight – already a lost cause, since the moment they parted Sebastian felt his palms begin to sweat – he made his way towards the gate, every step closer causing the small velvet box in his pocket to press happily against his thigh.

Settling into his seat, Sebastian ran a nervous hand through his hair before digging his phone out of his pocket. He considered the device for a moment, glancing around to see if any of the still incoming passengers were paying attention to him. Noting more of them were focused on finding their way to their seats, he thumbed open the camera function, and turned the camera onto selfie mode, feeling slightly ridiculous but the need to document this moment winning out.

To say that Rick hasn’t been the easiest person for Sebastian to get to know was an understatement. Between the not to veiled comparisons between Sebastian, his superhero alter-ego, and the not unimpressive men Minka had dated before him, it had taken Rick’s particular brand of ‘good-natured initiation’ five, long days to get under Sebastian’s skin far enough that he had exploded at Minka during one of their rare arguments. Since then – much to the credit of the woman herself, who had told her father to dial it down – Rick had begun to give Sebastian more of than a snowball’s chance in hell for the two men to form a relationship of their own.

Though it had taken some time, they had eventually found commonalities between them that extended beyond their shared love for Minka. Now, he was used to receiving trash-talking updates about NBA teams, and had a growing stack of “educational” classic rock mix CD’s, ones Rick still used actual CD’s for and hand wrote liner notes (also trash talking those artists Rick knew personally) – all of which delighted Sebastian to no end.

Smiling to himself at the irony, Sebastian pulled up one of the many, too-long-titled CD’s from Rick that Sebastian had uploaded into his iTunes and leaned back into the stiffly upholstered seat of his Uber, slowly making its way through typically horrendous Saturday night LA traffic. Checking his phone, he shot off a quick text to the woman this whole trip was about letting her know he was on his way to his hotel, safe and sound.

Tony, who’d accompanied Sebastian on multiple afternoons of sneaking to jewelry stores under strict confidence, even from his mother, had originally been the only person he’d divulged his real intentions of visiting the West coast. The following week, in a fit of nervousness and uncertainty, he’d confided in Zach what he’d been planning, relieved and bolstered once again that he’d been making the right choice by his friend’s excitement and encouragement.

However, that didn’t make the thirteen hours Sebastian had ahead of him, ones separating him from meeting with Rick the following morning, any less nerve wracking. Pulling his lips into a considering frown, he momentarily wished that he’d alerted one of his friends in LA that he was going to be in town - his previous paranoia that Minka would somehow get wind of what he was planning preventing him from reach out to someone. He checked his watch and realized he wouldn’t want to wake Zach’s kids to call him - and calling Tony at this hour would absolutely alert his mother that something was up. The person he really wanted to call and talk to, the one who always assuaged his concerns and grounded him when he was spiraling, ironically, was the one person he couldn’t talk to this about. Unplugging his phone from where it was half-charged, he called up the camera application once again, sitting himself at the edge of his all-too-empty bed, and considered what to say.

Sebastian then attempted to channel his emotional energy into rehearsing the words that had started off as an anxiety-fueled ramble, but which had eventually taken shape into a nearly eloquent testament of love and devotion. One Sebastian hoped would be enough to convey to Rick exactly what his daughter meant to him, how seriously Sebastian had thought about what he was asking for Rick’s blessing over, and how desperately he need him to say yes.

Sometime around three o’clock in the morning, Sebastian had dozed off, fully clothed, on top of the hotel bed. Startling awake without the assistance of an alarm, he swam up through the last vestiges of sleep, jolting into complete consciousness as he realized he had just enough time to shower, make himself presentable, and make his way over to the cafe where Rick had suggested they meet for an early lunch. Biting down on a groan when his Uber, once again, encountered a traffic jam destined to make him a few minutes late, he shot off a quick text to let Rick know, feeling relieved when the man responded that he had no other plans that day.

Laughing at the ridiculousness of his Sebastian’s careful timing going to shit because he hadn’t factored in the street congestion the city was infamous for, he took advantage of the delay to slide his trusty iPhone out of his back pocket and began to film.

“Fifteen minutes late but no entourage? What kind of movie star are you?” Rick asked with a wry smile, standing to shake Sebastian’s hand. The younger man was grateful when, in a subconscious movement fueled by nerves from being late, the hug he went in for with Minka’s father wasn’t rejected or treated unusually. While they hadn’t hit it off to nearly the extent with which Sebastian’s own parents embraced Minka, upon their return home from their New Year’s trip to Hawaii, Sebastian had received a surprisingly candid and thoughtful email from Rick, apologizing for his rough demeanor – and that her father was trying meant a lot to Sebastian. Despite their growing bond, Sebastian knew this was cashing in all the good favor he’d earned from the man, and tried to keep himself from immediately chugging the glass of water waiting for him at the table.

Keeping the conversation light between them, Sebastian found that he actually enjoyed Rick’s company these days. The man was an endless fountain of knowledge about music and navigating the, sometimes tumultuous, entertainment industry, and was generous with his stories about some of the wilder nights of his extensive career. Filling the other man in on the projects he’d been working on recently – including Rick’s insistence Sebastian listen to his daughter and retire his long-gone mustache for good – he waited until they had finished their meals and waiter had been served their after-lunch coffees to the table before he sat forward in his seat and took a deep breath.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about something else,” he fixed Rick with a smile he hoped didn’t betray the way his heart started thumping into overdrive. “Do you remember a while ago, after the last time we were in LA, you sent me an email and told me that my relationship with Minka was going to end up one of two ways?”

“I remember,” Rick said, the edges of his mouth curling as he settled back in his chair.

“Good,” Sebastian said with a smile before shifting his weight to one side to pull a small box from his pocket. Opening it, he glanced down at the sparkling ring nestled in the black velvet before placing the box on the table facing the other man. “Rick, I want nothing more than to ask your daughter to marry me,” Sebastian watched as Rick slipped on one of the, undoubtedly, seven pairs of glasses on his person and picked up the box, inspecting the ring closely, “but I’d like your blessing as her father first.” Feeling a prickling cap of sweat break out over his scalp at the older man’s continued silence, Sebastian forced himself not to fidget in his seat.”

“Why?” Rick drawled eventually, placing the ring box back on the table and waving away a hovering waiter.

The question threw Sebastian, all of his carefully planned words flying out of his head at the unexpected turn of the conversation. “Why do I want to marry her?” When Rick nodded, Sebastian felt a small crease form between his brows as he shook his head once, and stared down at the table, fearing this wasn’t going to be as simple as he’d been anticipating.

“Because she’s the most important person in my life - and the best person I know. Her happiness makes me happy, and when she’s not, I want to set the world on fire to find out why. I want to champion her victories and comfort her after her losses. And I know with every part of me, that no one on earth will ever love or care for your daughter more than me.” Sebastian cut himself off before he started rambling further, licking his lips nervously and glancing up to see his lunch date smirking back at him, clearly amused.

“She ever tell you you’re a little dramatic sometimes?” Rick laughed, shaking his head back, but not unkindly.

Sebastian huffed good naturedly, realizing now that the question had been a teasing one, ��all the time,” he grinned. “That or she’s telling me how stubborn I am.”

“Sounds like her,” Rick agreed fondly, before clasping his hands together on the tabletop. “I’m not going to sit here and give you a shovel talk, Sebastian,” Rick said with near uncharacteristic seriousness, changing the tone of their conversation again and catching Sebastian off guard. “I think you and I both know that I won’t stand for anyone hurting my daughter; she’s been jerked around enough.” Sebastian nodded, pursing his lips as flashes of stories about the woman in question’s cheating, lying, and uncommitted exes floated through his head.

“I agree,” Sebastian said with an edge of defensiveness creeping into his tone, both at the thought Rick could ever lump him in with them, but more so that Rick thought he would think Minka deserved anything less than everything.

“I know you make her happier than she’s ever been; which is all I want for my little girl.” He tapped the table in front of the ring box “and I have no doubt this is going to make her even happier.” Motioning to the still-hovering waiter with an irritated glance they’d like their check, Rick waited until they were alone again to continue, “and yes, of course you have my blessing – she’d murder me if I said otherwise - and I don’t doubt your love for her. From what I’ve seen of the two of you together, and the way she goes on about you on the phone,” he complained good-naturedly, “she’s just as gone on you as you are on her.” He met Sebastian’s eyes seriously before smirking, “s’a very nice ring, Hollywood.”

“Well, you have a very nice daughter, sir,” Sebastian retorted smartly, mouth curling proudly when Rick laughed loudly in the quiet restaurant. Quickly settling the bill, after Sebastian insisting on paying the check much to Rick’s dismay, the pair exited the restaurant into the pleasant Californian sunshine. Ambling over to the valet stand, Sebastian had to check the grin on his face more than once, hands nearly shaking, giddy with relief and excitement, as a single thought danced through his head: this was happening.

“Here’s me,” Rick said as a tiny, classic convertible slowed to a stop in front of the valet check, to Sebastian’s complete lack of surprise. “Where’s your meeting? Let me drop you,” Rick offered kindly.

“I – uh,” Sebastian stammered, shouldering his backpack more securely. “That’s okay, I can just,” hitching a thumb over his shoulder, “call an Uber.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not on a schedule – where you headed?”

“I’m… uh, the airport, actually?” Sebastian’s voice climbed in pitch as he realized he hadn’t through this part of the plan all the way through.

“The airport?”

“Yeah, I – I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Seb?” Rick interrupted, the diminutive sounding unfamiliar on his tongue, “did you come all the way out here just to have lunch with me?” Rick said, tone and expression unreadable.

Feeling the tell-tale heat in his cheeks, Sebastian held Rick’s gaze for a few moments before insisting, “no.”

Seeing it for the blatant lie that it was, the older man barked out another loud laugh, throwing an arm around Sebastian’s shoulders and jostling him twice as the engine of the tiny, red car rumbled loudly, awaiting them.

Later, Sebastian wouldn’t remember the details of what they’d talked about for those forty minutes, or really any salient detail about their trip to the airport. The only thing that stuck with Sebastian was as he once again thanked the older man - the man who would hopefully someday become his father-in-law - for his approval, and the ride, was the bone crushing bear hug that he was pulled into. One that Rick had initiated. His brain skittered offline, quickly rebooting as Rick shook him gently by the shoulders one last time, studying Sebastian over the wire frames of his glasses.

“You’re a good fucking kid,” Rick said gruffly, “you know that? I’m glad you’re sticking around.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Sebastian smiled, overwhelmed and painfully grateful for the affirmation as Rick gently shoved him towards the automatic doors of LAX, waving a final goodbye in response to the quick beep beep of the car’s parting honk. Patting the box which was once again snuggled comfortably against his leg, Sebastian made his way through the check in line, a renewed excitement to get back to Bayview.

Settling down in the airport lounge with a few moments to spare, Sebastian studied his reflection in the darkened screen of his phone before sliding open the lock, and starting to record his final installment of this journey, laughing delightedly “So, final installment of this ‘road journal’ - that I still don’t know if you’ll ever see - and you’re never going to believe this, babe, but I swear to God your father just hugged me…”

#20ish hours in LA #self para

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davidaolson · 7 years

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The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. ~Roy T. Bennett

With the sale of the family Summer Estate in Central Wisconsin in March of 2018, the second to last vestige of my childhood goes the way of the final Dodo bird clubbed over the head by a sailor for food. Death. Extinction. The last vestige is my childhood home, a red brick bungalow still housing my Mother. It is the saving grace connecting me to my personal history. A place I can visit and feel connected to a youth characterized by reckless stupidity, a youth experiencing more joy than any one person deserves.

This travel blog will be different than most I have written. It is an amalgamation of experiences occurring in chunks as small as one day up through a maximum of two weeks occurring over 45 years compressed into a single offering. It is the story of yesteryear, a memory filled yesteryear with my last memory painted a few yesterdays ago. I am trekking deep down memory lane living mostly in the time before mobile phone, the land before internet, the world before nearly every human was connected by six degrees of separation.

This blog is longer than most and possibly too long to keep the average person’s attention. I am ok with that. I wrote it for myself as both a celebration of 45 years and a cathartic experience to release my pain into the collective consciousness so to begin the healing process.

I had a rudimentary plan for the farewell blog one that saw me deep dive into a sea of memories, study all the offerings, then surface with those carrying the weight of ages for sharing. It did not work out that way. I fell into labyrinthian memory corridors without Ariadne to guide me back stumbling my way through a memory fog bumping into remembrances I had completely forgotten existed, people whose faces I hadn’t thought about in decades who may no longer be breathing.

The vignettes contained herein are those that allowed me to see them giving me comfort during a challenging time. They chose me. Each is both an anchor grounding me in my youth and a springboard into my unknown future. The two may appear to be conflicting, anchoring and springing, but they are harmonious dualities, complementary. This duality is not good balanced with evil as in the Western tradition but the harmony of Mother and Father, yin and yang. To maintain the harmony of my subconscious, I laid them out in the same sequence they spoke to my soul.

Many remembrances echoed from the depths of forgotten time during the drive from my home in Chicago the Friday before my last ever visit. I foresee no reason to ever return. Long solo drives are enjoyable. I set the cruise control a nickel over the posted speed, slide into the right lane, settle into a mantra of sunflower seed, preferably David & Sons brand, eating…pop a handful into my mouth, crack individual shells and eat the seed, spit the saliva drenched shells into an empty soda bottle. Repeat.

It is a meditative process where my mind wanders only interrupted when a thought I want to explore further is spoken into Siri for a note. Most of the time, the notes are garbled, sometimes too much to be of later use. Or a song reaches through the speaker and grabs my attention but I always fall back into my sunflower seed rhythm where my mind, uncluttered, senses the echoes before they become full-fledged remembrances.

The drive is 250 miles and takes four hours, three and a half if you push it, four and a half when taken leisurely. My dad had the ability to stretch it into a solid eight hours. Granted, the speed limit was 55 in those days, a number he held tightly. Eight hours inside a van full of camping gear, six restless kids, a dog or two, and not a lick of air conditioning to abate the August heat.

We always left just before dawn. The first stop was a mile away for coffee and donuts. The next stop 90 miles later for a restaurant breakfast at the Clock Tower in Rockford followed by another 120 miles and lunch in the horror show known as the Wisconsin Dells. Then 25 miles up highway 13 to friendship for yet another cup of coffee, at which time the passengers were ready to stage a violent revolution, before the final 19 miles to the land.

Some events echoed clear as the day they happened and I was able to write with assuredness as if I was taking notes from a film reel playing in real-time. Others were apparitions, shadows steeped in thick fog allowing near blind glimpses leaving a trail of unresolved emotion I tripped over skinning my soul.

I am not sure if any vignette is my singular experience, a fusion of various experiences, or recitations of other’s experiences that sublimated into my mind taking up residence as my own first-person stories. My understanding of reality rises and falls with the color of the sun, waxes and wanes with the phases of the dark moon, fluctuates with the intonation of the voices carried in the wind. Their essence remains if not the exact facts. Facts don’t speak whole truths anyway. Statistics are facts and most of them are used to support damn lies. There are still other incidents so hidden by the mists of time, if I don’t receive the help of others to clear the clouds, they may never again illuminate my personal history. I weep for those losses.

And so it goes…

The End is Nigh

At 4:41 pm CST on Sunday, 04 March 2018, the siblings, siblings-in-law, and the grandchildren received a group text telling us the sale closing on the cottage was imminent and our help was needed to ready the house for the buyer. My first tear fell the next day during a flurry of texts planning a final visit to clear out the home, gut the fish and leave it for dead, slip a thin, sharp knife in the soft underbelly of my youth ripping forty-five years from stem to stern scraping the vitality of youth to be tossed in a pile of decomposing offal. I am officially old.

When Mom informed us last Fall it was being sold, I was indifferent. I had not been there for five years and that last time was only for one night on the way back from a mountain biking trip a couple hours further North. I did not want to drive the remaining four hours home to Chicago and I was with a hot lass. Drive home in the dark or spend the night in a wooded forest cabin with the hot babe? It was an easy decision. It was a decision that made itself. As for future trips, well, none were anywhere on my horizon. I have come to enjoy international travel and prefer to spend my leisure time immersed in unfamiliar cultures that bombarded the senses and obliterate my understanding of reality.

The Summer Estate had become the dying limb on a tree, a drain on the financial health of my mother. Better to sever the limb than allow it to siphon off resources needed elsewhere. Since my dad passed, it had become too much for her to maintain. She valiantly held on to it for 10 years thanks in large part to my brother-in-law who helped her open and close it year after year. Looking back, I have to say he is somewhat a hero.

We dubbed the upcoming event a reunion, a euphemism keeping the pain at bay for as long as possible. The first stage of grief is denial. The euphemism helped me deny the coming loss for a couple of weeks. The actual reunion/cleaning day was filled with stories, multiple trips to the dump, laughter, photographs, and a tribute. It is amazing how pain can be dissipated when it is countered with love.

What can we throw away?

Lunch

Cleaning the Main Quarters

Paul Bunyan

Boat is Frozen

Cleaning the Shed

Worky, worky

The Fire Pit

The Fire Pit & Home Made Benches

HUH???

Dousing the Flames

The Address

Herstory/History/Gender Fluidstory/Gender Neutralstory

The land, a small heavily wooded pine and oak copse within scent range of the freshwater lake, was purchased in the Winter of 1973. It was young and vibrant then but, like us, it aged not so gracefully. Today, there are fewer trees in the area. A blight took many of the oaks. Pine trees were removed to build the house and by others purchasing lots on either side of ours. What felt like a forest now feels closer to a suburban subdivision.

It was bought at the behest of my dad’s best friend, Bob, who had his own plot a short traipse through the tick-infested woods. I didn’t know it at the time but Bob, the consummate outdoorsman and storyteller, was destined to become a second father figure to me. After my father died, Bob’s stories unwound from the reel of his mind while we fished the Canadian wilderness brought my dad back to life. He repeated the same stories endlessly yet I never grew tired of hearing the tales.

I grew to love Bob, was distraught when his children didn’t tell us he passed in 2017 until months after he was laid to rest and then it felt like an afterthought. I would surely have made the 500-mile round trip to pay my last respects and immerse in communal grief which disperses the pain so no one person has to carry the entire burden. Instead, I cried alone, bore the loss alone. One only gets so many fathers in life, for some the count is none. I was lucky to have had two.

I was 12 when the land was purchased, immersed in little league baseball as were my brothers. The Vietnam conflict was still littering bodies of both sides over the lush jungle landscape pockmarked by unrelenting bombs dropped from heaven. I can’t recall if my father and I had already had the disagreement we never resolved about the moral corruptness characterizing America’s role in the fiasco. We existed at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Even in my 50s, when most people seem to have long ago navigated toward conservatism, I have not budged an inch toward the center. To be so would make me feel complicit with the evil perpetrated by our lying government. The war never directly influenced our lives. We kids were simply excited to know we would vacation in Wisconsin where we could fish and swim.

In the beginning, we tented. We built a compound, the Olson compound. Three tents set up in u-shape, a sleeping tent on the left with eight double bunked cots and thick cotton, brown sleeping bags. The storage tent lived in the center with the portapotty. The final tent, the screen tent for eating insect free to the right. A canopy connected all three tents ensuring we could walk between them and keep dry during the rains. One just had to avoid the rivulets falling between the gaps. Every night before bedtime, the tent was sprayed with Raid to kill off the creepy crawlies.

One late night, we heard scraping at the cooler in the food tent. We peeked out with a flashlight and saw a skunk trying but failing to pry open the cooler. We immediately turned off our light and quieted into to bed for fear of startling the skunk and suffering uplifted tail umbrage. Another time, a brother who will remain nameless…for now, jumped up on a cooler and screamed when a tiny mouse ran through the screen tent.

The worst tent vacation ever occurred the year it rained every day for the entirety of our two-week vacation only clearing up after we broke camp and started driving home. During sunny weather, the sleeping bags were hung to dry every day on lines stretched between the trees. Sleeping bags absorb body moisture. Two weeks of rain meant the bags never dried. We were forced to sleep in increasing dampness the entire vacation. The lodge, too far for us city folk to walk, had 25¢ showers along with ice cream, soda pop, a pool table where quarters near the slot reserved the next game, and pinball machines on the lower level. It was a nice place to hang out during the rains.

I love tenting. In the old days, they were massive canvas beasts. Heavy. They required many aluminum poles fitted together, anchor ropes without which the structure would collapse, were cumbersome and required multiple people to erect. Consequently, we only enjoyed ‘The Land’ for a couple of weeks each year with those two weeks squeezed between the end of baseball season and the beginning of football season. Then came the luxury of the camper. The camper rolled in during the Spring, was taken away to storage, per the property owners association rules, in the Fall. The relative ease of a camper increased our time spent at the land.

The ultimate abode was a small, prefab house was brought in two halves on flatbed trucks and slapped together. The back half was two bedrooms and a bathroom, the front half a combination kitchen and living room. Ever the builder, my dad soon added a deck. Years later he removed the deck and built a new one with a large screened in porch. I loved the porch. It allowed me to sit outside on those nights too rainy for the campfire. The patter of rain while reading is comforting. Also with the house came TV. It always felt blasphemous to have the contraption spoiling the wilderness.

Having a house meant visits increased significantly for all of us. Being older with our own vehicles to travel as did the allure of the lower than Illinois drinking age. Wisconsin allowed 18-year-olds to purchase alcohol, the same age as military service. I always thought it hypocritical that one is believed adult enough at 18 to die for the country in a war but too immature to consume alcohol. I should not be too surprised. 18-year-olds drinking can’t put nearly as much money into the silk-lined jock straps of politicians as does the kickbacks they get from the war machine.

There were many party weekends in Wisconsin where the music played from early morning until well into the night. Somewhere there is a music video we created with dancing. People were on the porch and on the roof. I would love to see it again. The music continued for years…until some people wheeled in their own camper next door and complained that we were too loud for their younguns. It did not matter to them that their kids were running around screaming while many of us tried to sleep in the morning.

Ironically, as the years wore on, I slept in the house less and less often. It was too crowded, too noisy. And I enjoyed sleeping outdoors. Instead of the house, I popped up a tent with the opening directly looking toward the fire pit. My tents were the much lighter nylon versions, stand-alone with a screen roof for ventilation that could be set up by a single person in less than ten minutes and in the dark. My preferred bed was a comfortable Thermarest mattress and a down-filled sleeping bag. I slept well in the cool of those nights.

The Memory Vignettes

I wish I had chronicled the decades bounded by ownership of ‘The Land’ become ‘Summer Estate’ allowing me to read back and relive the many life-enhancing, some life-defining moments experienced on that 1/2 acre. Alas, my drive to write had not yet kindled into the raging fire it is today which sees me scribbling every morning. There are some moments that emoted into my mind leading up to the weekend and while we, as a family, emptied the house. They surfaced like bubbles when my mind was fixated on the road heading home forcing me to stop before the memory dissipated or call out to Siri to capture fragments. A few times tears rolled down my cheek. Still, I catch myself tearing up for memories lost.

He knew that forgetfulness was the most painful death. ~Jaume Cabré

The Sacred Bonfire

The indigenous peoples (is it right to call them Native Americans being they thrived on these lands long before they were dubbed America by European invaders?) made/make use a sweat lodge in purification ceremonies to prepare for divine intervention and God’s blessings. It is one of the seven sacred rituals of the Lakota people, a spiritual experience reconnecting participants with their oneness, with the universe, with nature.

Similarly, we had nightly bonfires…weather permitting. The quest to build a raging pyre with a single match was a skill a few of us mastered. It meant spending significant time with the hatchet splitting pine logs into slender, tender splinters. These are set in the middle on top of a loosely crumbled wad of dry newspaper. Next, a slightly larger, mini-teepee of thicker pine slices is built around the flimsy strips forming a chimney which, when the fire starts, pulls in oxygen from below to feed the flame. When the fire is strong enough larger, quartered pine logs are added and finally, the dense oak logs which burn hotter and longer ensuring an outstanding fire for many hours requiring minimal care and feeding. The other methods, a blow torch, a cup of white gas, were easier but much less satisfying.

We shared hours upon hours, hours galore in a lodge made of smoke, smoke keeping the raging mosquitoes at bay, buzzing vampires, seeking to hold a rave with our blood as the centerpiece of the revelry. Our blood, their sacred communion. We shared hours drinking under legal age, shooting the shit frequently until sunrise. The faces changed repeatedly over the years. Some visiting once, others regularly featured. A few now flash before my eyes, most are obscured by the mists of time. My soul weeps for those I have forgotten.

Bonfires were a time, a rare time in my life where I felt an intimate connection with people. I never wanted the nights to end and would hold on tightly to those moments fending off sleep as long as possible. I think I feared the isolation I would inevitably return to with the dousing of the flames. Dark of night, shadow descending upon my soul. I would stay awake with the anyone not ready for bed. Stayed awake until the sun rose and the birds burst into a conflagration of song, a chorus of mostly sopranos with some altos, the occasional tenor, the rare croaking baritone of a heron seeking an early breakfast, a cacophonous symphony lasting less than an hour then finally to bed once the sun shot its orange wad over the horizon.

I realize, now, the bonfire time evolved into a sacred ritual, a spiritual experience connecting me with the universe, with nature, with people. If I could reside in any one moment of my Wisconsin history, it would be fire time. Better yet, string them all together into one long film reel where I could jump in and live them over and over again.

Oh, what have they done to my song, ma?

The end of night ritual was for the boys to drain the weasel one final time directly into the fire. The logic was we were dousing it so it would not spread while we slept and start a forest fire. As Yogi says, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The reality. We enjoyed the sound made when our streaming piss hit the white-hot embers.

On this trip, my son and my brother stayed at the house the Friday before the cleaning, braved the cold and slept in the cottage. Had I not already paid for a non-refundable hotel, I would have joined them. They built a fire which burned deep into the night and through our reunion time the following day. Our final act before climbing into our vehicles and driving away was to douse the flame…with snow. It made the same sound as pissing the flame into submission.

The Pissing Tree

When you are male, the world is not only your oyster, it is also your bathroom. Every tree, every nook, every cranny, every dying fire is a potential place to discreetly, if possible, obvious if necessary, let the dachshund out for a walk. We have the anatomy to take advantage of zipper fly clothing allowing the one-eyed snake to stick it’s head out and spit anywhere and everywhere without exposing the rest of the anatomy to prying eyes or, worse, biting insects. The more talented are able to write their name in the snow. My willy was once attacked by a mosquito. Shaft sting, not head probing. It was painful, mainly itchy requiring lots of hand time in the pants to relieve the irritation. There is an unwritten rule with men. Shaking it more than three times means you’re playing with it. There was a party in my pants. It’s not an experience I want to repeat.

When you live in tents and there are eight of you and half are little girls there tends to be a line for the portapotty. Worse, the portapotty is not tied to plumbing so must be manually emptied when full. It is a stinky job so it is advantageous to drain the vein in places other than the portapotty. What better place than the outdoors?

Outside the tents, a few yards into the woods, there was a natural clearing and a small tree, perhaps it was a deer bed during the fifty weeks we were not at the land. There was enough bramble ensuring we could not be seen from the road during the brightest part of the day nor from the screen windows in the tents. It was not too far that it was scary to walk into the woods at night for that final piss before crawling into the sleeping bag.

We all, the three boys and our dad, migrated to the exact same spot multiple times each day. It wasn’t planned more evolution along a common path. At the end of two weeks, The piss smell became daunting. The grasses had yellowed and the tree was wilting. It, the oak, never recovered and we returned to a standing cadaver the following year. On the plus side, it was fuel to feed our nightly bonfires.

Skinny Dipping

Before the house years, showers were only available at the lodge. If you were male a shower came in at $0.25. For the womenfolk, it was upwards of $5. The showers operated on a timer with incremental time added per quarter. Us dudes could get two showers in for that twenty-five cents while the girls carried in a bucket full of quarters.

But the lodge closed around 5 pm necessitating a shower before dinner or going to bed nasty sweaty. And as we aged and our bodies physically matured, a day of playing hard in the heat, we worked up enough sweat to fill that quarter bucket to overflowing. We boys were as rank as a half-eaten deer on the side of the road a week after it had been run over by a vehicle. The insect riddled, decaying deer smelled like perfume compared to teenagers.

What to do?

Take advantage of the freshwater lake, obviously. After dark, we would run down to the lake, out onto the small pier, disrobe and skinny dip in the pitch of night, skinny dip with a bar of biodegradable Ivory soap to clean ourselves without upsetting the fishies we would be catching the next days. An added benefit to Ivory soap is it floats so we could throw it to the next body and without fear of losing it in the depths.

In the early years, the only light was thirty yards away, a back porch light attached to the lucky sods who owned the house butting right up to the water. The light was just bright enough to see what we were doing but not so bright that our birthrights were readily visible. Then the house was sold, the new owner put a streetlamp style light right at the water’s edge. It was bright, a sun on a giant corn stalk. Glaringly white. Intrusive. Still, we swam at night so as not to stink and for potential viewing pleasure.

Our skinny dipping, sometimes, was co-ed, so the new light promised advantages for a boy with raging hormones. This was pre-internet so porn was not ubiquitously available on the yet to be invented mobile phones. The only time we saw hooters was when one of our friends happened upon an old Playboy or Penthouse and were kind enough to share.

My sisters had some hot teenage girlfriends. Even the not so hot friends had shapely girl parts. So, I was hoping, we boys were hoping while swimming sans clothing our eyes would enjoy a flesh feast. This was in the pre-pube shaving days so it was unlikely we would have seen much more than a black beaver patch glistening in the moonlight. Still, we played tricks like throwing the soap just out of reach and a little high so a girl might get caught up in the moment and reach exposing some forbidden skin. Perhaps, one would climb out of the lake ‘Birth of Venus’ like and their long hair would slip exposing boobage. Nothing. Not a once. The girls were much to smart for the boys. Girls are much smarter than boys.

To my teenage frustration, I never did see side boob or a perky nipple or, the holy grail, the furry little kitty. God knows I tried. The only clams I fondled were of the non-bearded variety laying just beneath the sand filtering small organisms and algae from the water. Those I threw along the surface of the water watching them skip with the aplomb of a smooth rock.

Losing The V-Card

The romantic in me would love to say I lost my virginity on a Wisconsin beach by the light of a full moon with an incredibly hot babe as we lay legs immersed in the gently rolling waves, that I busted-a-nut in a wild country girl with the leg strength to crush a mechanical bull in one of those honky-tonk saloons and emerged from my boyhood chrysalis into a fully fledged man. But it would not stand up in a court of truth. Fantasy? Yes. Reality? Not even close. Well, I did come close once and only once. Sigh. Double sigh.

She was either a year-round local or a Summer girl spending the months between the end and start of school at her parent’s lake home. I forget which. Their multi-story home was built on a lot with direct access to water. We had to walk a couple of blocks from our place to see the lake. My mom had a dread fear of people drowning so wanted ample distance to ensure safety. Little did she know we frequented the lake unsupervised many a time.

Her family had motorcycles that we rode, illegally, in a large depression across highway 13. She and I were on the same bike. Me pretending to be in control despite rarely being on a motorcycle while she sat behind with arms around my waist, a setup causing me to tingle in the loins. These were the days I was still immortal. Helmets were not mandatory riding attire as they became when I eventually purchased my own street bike decades later. We went down once. The rear time slid sideways in the loose sand on a decline and we eased down our legs still wrapped around the bike.

The depression in which we were riding was clear-cut in the forest that was in the process of being dredged later to be filled with river water eventually becoming the bottom of Lake Arrowhead where decades later I took my son fishing for the ubiquitous bluegill. The lake homes surrounding Arrowhead tend to be larger than those built around our Lake Camelot, also a manmade lake, with the whole area feeling more upscale. But those homes came much later.

Her name was Karen. My friends, Bob’s kids, year-round residents, referred to her as Karen QF. The QF standing for Quick Fuck which, I was told, meant she was quick to fuck not too fucking quick to catch for a fuck nor having jackhammer hips making the act of fucking literally quick. She may truly have been quick to fuck but I wasn’t quick enough to fuck…her. I waited one day too long to make my move only to be thwarted by nature’s cycles. My little man didn’t take a dip into the pink.

She was a brunette, a long-haired brunette with brown eyes. Perhaps the frustration with not hitting a home run is why I am still attracted to brunettes tending toward raven black above all other hair colors. Though, the blues and purples and pinks are alluring. It may be that I never recovered from the strikeout and am still trying to make up for the one that got away by knocking as many as possible out of the park (hitting for sixes for cricket fans). Or, maybe the adage blonds have more fun is poppycock and it is the ravens that are ‘funner’ to play with. Whatever the case…I struck out….yet again.

One Is The Loneliest Number

As deep as I can see into the sootied waters of my past, I see a person more comfortable being alone or with a one or two others than in a group. A person craving human connection but keeping everyone at arm’s length for reasons I still don’t fully fathom. This was definitely a truth in my twenties. It may reach back further but time has yellowed many of those movies either from the effects of an aging brain or my soul protecting itself from needless pain.

These days, I get great satisfaction from alone time and seek it out with increasing hunger. Back in the day, it seems to be the natural outcome of me not being particularly socially adept or a foundational arrogance preventing me from seeing my own faults digging moats none dare cross. Perhaps, I did not realize I needed to change my ways to make connections or there are some reasons not yet dredged from my psyche. Most likely, a combination of many.

I was in my late twenties, a gorgeous evening. Of course, there was a fire with lots of drinking and talking and drinking. Family friends outnumbered family members which was often the case. I was mostly listening to conversations waiting for an opening to shine my brilliance before retreating back into my head. Or I was mesmerized by the ghosts floating up from the dancing flames becoming lost in my own thoughts, ensconced in a world no one, not even my then wife, was able to penetrate to any meaningful depth. Again the dichotomy…wanting to know and be fully known yet walling off anyone seeking understanding.

Years later I was dating a woman who shone a light on this same predilection. We were having a conversation over dinner and I remarked that I was pretty much an open book for the world to see. She stopped midmovement from putting a fork full of kimchee into her mouth and said, “Seriously? Almost all I know about you is surface. You never let me inside.” I stared back trying to hide my grinding teeth, my tell in times of stress. It wasn’t long after she decided seeing me was not worth her time. This tiger was unable to change its spots. I have since wondered if I subconsciously kept her at bay or there was simply nothing below the surface worth knowing. Was as shallow as the Platte River, a mile wide but only an inch deep?

Some of us went for a late night swim. Afterward, all but one returned to the house and the bonfire. The one being me.

I stretched out on the wooden pier listening to the night voices, insects, the purr of waves against the shore, watching the waning Moon against a blanket of stars. Millions of stars and solitary Moon, a celestial body without the ability to generate light so cursed to reflect the essence of Sun, a satellite revolving around Earth yet never touching her. A being in isolation.

My guard dropped allowing a crack for emotion to enter and implode. I felt the pain of isolation. Loneliness gnawed with the ferocity of the walleye beneath the black water clamping sharp teeth into unwitting prey sucked into a gullet where acids attacked and slowly dissolved the body. I pulled out my pocket knife. I always carried a knife. I carved the letters O-N-E into the pier weeping all the while. It was my code for one is the loneliest number I will ever be. A cry for help? Maybe.

Eventually, I went back to the house. I had been there for at least an hour and I don’t think anyone noticed. Did anyone even care? I can’t say. That is a question requiring vulnerability. I lacked the courage to be vulnerable. So, I grabbed a drink, never being a beer drinker it was probably a whiskey and seven-up, and pulled up a chair by the fire. I watched everyone, talking, laughing. I remember wondering if I was cursed to be Moon forever isolated from the stars and Earth.

Buried Kegs, Panty Hats, & Stinkweeds

The big Summer weekend at the land was Frolic Weekend in August. We usually planned an event spanning the weekend plus a day or so at either end. Driving home to Chicago on a Sunday evening meant heavy traffic especially at the toll booths which were still insatiable mouths feeding on quarters. The lodge hosted a party with music, beer, more beer, brats, beer, grilled corn, volleyball tournaments, ski shows, and beer. They had a penchant for selling alcohol to minors then washing their hands when those same minors were ticketed by the PoPo resulting in a return trip for a court date with parents. I always thought the two were in collusion. Money to the lodge from beer sales. Money to the city in fines.

A few of us guys went up early. The WAGS (wives and girlfriends) followed a couple of days later. My brother and a brother-in-law bought a keg and buried it in the sand to keep it cold. Only the tapper stuck above ground. There was cold beer at the fire, cold beer at lunch, cold beer at breakfast. The beer was cold until the keg was tapped out a day or so later. So, I’m told. It was likely they purchased a second but I don’t clearly recall. If I was betting man, I would wager on yes.

The second night, the girls came up well after dark. When they arrived, we were seated around the fire drinking, cooked halfway to roasted by the flames and toasted by the alcohol. The brother and BIL were wearing women’s underwear, their women’s underwear on their heads. This was a day or two into their stinkweed contest so what greeted their girls was two stinky dudes wearing panty hats. Funny and repulsive at the same time.

Why stinky? The two of them, for some reason I will never grasp, decided they would have a contest to see who could go the most days without a shower or swimming or washing of any type. Day one, not a big deal. Day two, erm, they were given more than their normal share of personal space. By the third or fourth day, we couldn’t get near either of them and, I imagine, their ripeness offended their own nostrils. My brother caved at the behest of his girlfriend. The BIL won. He was officially the stinkiest of the stinkweeds.

Fishing & Other Animal Stories

Wisconsin stories would not be complete without animal stories. Animals, primarily scaly fish, were a huge (yuge) reason we boys were excited to visit The Land. For me the priority was fishing followed by swimming, I think. If not in the early years then soon thereafter as I grew increasingly fishing obsessed.

Hook, Line, & Sinker

Fishing. Ahh, fishing. We are a fishing family because of my dad’s friend Bob. The same Bob who talked my dad into buying the plot in Wisconsin. The same Bob who felt like a second father. Bob taught my dad to fish when he invited him on annual trips to Boulder Junction for Muskie and the Boundary Waters for monster pike. The love of fishing has moved through the generations. We are all connected by a proverbial stringer.

I remember hot days standing in the shallows casting toward a sunken tree for bass while everyone else splashed around. I remember setting overnight lines and running to the pier in the morning to see if we caught bullhead and, if so, were they still alive since they typically swallowed the hook deep into their stomachs. I remember fighting mosquitoes in the night while we fished for bullhead and were surprised by the rare walleye sometimes big enough to legally eat. I remember the sheer joy of catching tiny bluegill after tiny bluegill for hours on end. I remember fishing in the sticks with my brothers, a place near the start of the lake where the feeding river flooded a woodland drowning the trees leaving them naked carcasses and prime habitat for bass. It felt like we had traveled into pre-history. We became spooked when a few large Blue Heron took to air from dead branches looking like Pterodactyls on the wing hunting meat. I remember standing in the water fishing by the upper spillway later emerging with leeches on my legs that I scraped off with the knife always in my pocket. There are three fishing memories larger than all the others combined. They involve Pumpkinseeds, a Largemouth Bass, and a shit load of crappie.

Nine Inch Pumpkinseeds

My daughters were probably three and four when this memory was created. I had taken the two of them for a long weekend in Wisconsin for some Daddy-Daughter time. I was recently divorced and wanted to make sure they had ample daddy time now that I was not seeing them on a daily basis. The weekend necessarily included fishing time. I bought them each identical Orca reel fishing poles from Sportmart which were very easy for little ones to manage and inexpensive.

The weekend was overcast with intermittent rains meaning most of the time we were stuck in the house. We took advantage of a lull in the weather and walked down to the lake. Each of the girls wanted to carry the tub of worms. Rather than have a battle, I gave each their own worm to carry, a worm they petted as they walk. As was her norm, the younger said her knees hurt and she wanted to be carried.

I was already carrying the fishing poles, the worms, and a Mountain Dew so there was no space for her plus I wanted her to kick the habit of always whining until someone caved and picked her up. At the time, she was frustrated because her hair was not very long. It was then I dreamed up a solution to both problems. I told her the more she walked the longer and faster her hair would grow. Her eyes lit up. And, by corollary, I told her if she walked backward it would get shorter. The plot worked and anytime she asked to be carried, I reminded her of walking and hair length. Carrying her soon ceased to be an issue.

They each caught a few small bluegills, the first fish of their young lives. Every fish caught inched the smile on their faces wider. Then we hit a slow patch and the girls began to lose interest. Suddenly, Sammy’s bobber was pulled deep, unlike the tittering from the smaller fish nibbled at the bait, and the pole was ripped out of her hands and pulled under water. I saw it flashing in the weeds and thrust my hand in to pull it out. I let her reel it in and she landed a Pumpkinseed. They are an aggressive member of the bluegill family with a shiny orange belly patch showing like a bursting sunrise. It measured nine inches from lips to tail. While dehooking and measuring, Stephanie also had a strong hit. She had a tighter grip on the fishing pole so there wasn’t a repeat of a pole in the water. She, too, landed a nine-inch Pumpkinseed.

The rain started so we packed up and headed back to the house. I carried everything to hurry them along in case the drizzle became a downpour. They walked with their faces up, mouths open catching raindrops while laughing hysterically.

A Not So Lucky Largemouth Bass

A few years later, I was fishing with all three kids. The girls and I were on the same pier they caught the Pumpkinseeds but Brian decided he would fish from the pier on our beachhead. He was highly coordinated so was already able to cast with ease and accuracy. It was difficult trying to manage all of them at once and attend to the inevitable snags, hook baiting, and removal of hooks set deep in the fish internals.

He called saying he was snagged and needed help. I looked over and saw the fishing tip bouncing with ferocity and immediately knew he had a substantially larger fish than the bluebill and perch we were landing. I ran over to the pier by which time he had walked off the pier and was standing on the shore. The monofilament, a 10-pound test, was stretched across the pier and the fish was still dancing. How the wood slats did not cut the line I will never know. I took him back onto the pier and helped him land his first Largemouth Bass. I would normally throw the fish back into the water for future growth. But, it was the legal length and the kids wanted to eat it so I cleaned it and cooked it for a dinner.

If I was to hazard a guess at the same time he landed the fish, fishing set its hook deep into his soul. He has been an avid angler since that day.

A Shit Load of Crappie

Fast forward a decade. My son and I are fishing at the spillway. The spillway is a concrete structure funneling water from the upper to the lower lake. There is a constant flow of aerated water through the deep channel spilling into the lake. The depth varies from ten feet in the channel and becomes shallows once outside the concrete walls and the direct influence of the water flow. Thus the area has a variety of environments attracting many types of fish. It is a prime fishing spot.

Over a couple of nights, crappie were actively hitting on white plastic tubes. Other colors attracted a few but white was the primary color triggering their attack instinct. Once we mastered the proper technique, waiting until the second hit in a short sequence to set the hook, we would pull in one every few casts.

One evening, we headed out before dusk loaded up with bug dope to keep the skeeters off so we could fish in peace and carried an ample supply of sunflower seeds. We had a small tackle box of plastics with extra whites knowing white was the color of the day but included other colors just in case. Fish can be finicky and it pays to be prepared. I don’t know if there was some magic in the way the stars aligned or we just lucked into an aggressive school of hungry crappie. They hit like psychos for at least two hours. We were catching fish on most every cast. By the time the frenzy quelled, we had caught over 180 between the two of us. It was the most insane fishing experience of my life.

White Tails

There were White-Tailed Deer galore which we loved seeing…mostly. We were fishermen, not hunters, though big game hunting in Africa was a parttime fantasy of my youth along with being Tarzan swinging through the trees. We never participated in the annual Deer Hunt, the religion most common in Central Wisconsin. If you don’t hunt, the high priests will not allow you to be a congregant of the Most Holy Church of the White-Tailed Deer. Although, the will serve you venison communion hoping to make you a convert.

When I was older and driving on my own from the Dells to the house just after sunset, I counted 40 deer over a 40 mile stretch in the ditches along the road. And those were just the ones I saw. I can’t imagine how many were lurking just beyond the reach of the high beams. Each was a potential weapon of mass destruction if it was spooked and took flight across the road at precisely the moment I was cruising by. Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma’am. Wham…car slams into the animal. Bam…extensive damage and likely totaling the vehicle. Thank You, Ma’am, for crashing through my window and crushing me into the seat so I didn’t fly through the window.

Ant Wars

It was a party weekend. We were in our twenties, upper for me. ‘Back when I was in Nam‘ Steve who was younger than me and never a pincushion for bullets fired by the Viet Cong from Soviet weapons but liked to use the tag was bored as was blonde Andrea, pronounced On Drea who had an unusually high voice and was not afraid of insects. It was a sunny morning, too late to still be snoozing in a tent heated by the sun, too early to be two-fisting beers around the campfire. What to do before the action begins?

Wisconsin is home to a plethora of insect life the worst being the vicious mosquitoes swarming in any bit of shade to butterflies flitting between flowers on the sloping side of the earthen damn separating Lake Camelot from Lake Sherwood. Steve was watching some ants he found and placed in the dished underside of a white frisbee. This intrigued Andrea and they watched together.

One of them thought it would be interesting to add other insects to the mix. The two of them found another ant species and placed them in the same frisbee. The two species each threatened by their other’s pheromones and emboldened by their own fought to the death. It was a microcosm of almost every self-important politician’s wet dream sending youth to die in a senseless war.

Turtling in Lake Sherwood

Lake Sherwood, the lower lake from ours was continually filled by the spillway. Think of a spillway as a drain in a sink where excess water falls into the pipes and those pipes emptied into a lower lake on the other side of an earthen damn. The waters were lower in elevation, protected from the wind by thick stands of pine trees and walls of land descending from the road beyond the trees to the lake level. These waters were shielded from the wind, tended to be placid, conditions conducive to rafts of weeds forming along the shore. A semi-secure haven for small fish, frogs, and turtles.

We saw the turtles while fishing. Sometimes they were sunning on a dead tree branch. If you cast near them, hey would quickly slide into the lake with nary a splash. Mostly, we saw tiny turtle heads, black with yellow lines, poking above the water their shell a shadow hovering just below the surface intimating a chimerical flying saucer. Something you think you see but are never quite sure it’s real or it’s size. They were too far from shore to reach with our short nets.

On a sunny afternoon, some of us boys dragged a boat over the dam and launched it into Lake Sherwood with the idea of catching a few. What to do with them after? Young boys tend not to think that far into the future.

Our tactic was to row toward a head and, if it didn’t dive outside our reach, throw the net over the top. It was a tactic catching naught but weeds, weeds we had to clean out of the net. Mostly, the turtle dove well before we were within reach.

Through trial and error, we learned if you looked straight at the turtle it dove early. If they did not see you staring at them, they lingered until we were closer. We revised our strategy to approach at an angle and to monitor them from the corner of our eyes. The better proximity allowed us to realize when threatened the turtles did not dive forward in the direction they were facing but moved backward, quickly turn around and swam down toward the bottom for safety.

But they were still too far to catch. We fastened the net to a pole. We then thrust the net into the water targeting behind and below the turtles. Using this final stratagem, we pulled a good dozen from the lake. We brought them back to our tent compound where they were kept in a large bin with enough water to cover them but not enough they could escape. A day or two later, we released them back into the lake.

I only ever remember turtling the one time. I don’t know why we never went again. Maybe because dragging a rowboat up the damn was difficult requiring a few of us to push and pull. I guess, the difficulty outweighed the fun.

Tweeties

There was a season in my life, I was into all things feathered including bird watching. I had binoculars, a spotting scope, and a recording of a screech owl. I would take early jaunts around sunrise when every bird ever born seemed to be singing in a grand chorus and sunset when they stopped hunting and went to roost until dawn. Each new bird spotted sent tingles down my spine and a tick mark in my birding book.

I used the screech owl recording a few times. I set up a tape recorder near a tree on the land and hit play. I would describe the sound as a staccato burst or a trill or a tremolo. Each segment lasted a few seconds. Had I not known who was making the call, I would not be able to identify if it was from a bird, insects, or some animal hidden from my view.

When you are prey, it behooves you to know when a predator is lurking. If not, talons are much more likely to pierce your body and your final vision is a hooked beak tearing at your innards. The birds knew the call meant danger. The forest sentinels, Blue Jays and others, flew in to spot the owl and attempt to shoo it into another territory. They ignored me and I was able to add a couple new entries to my growing list.

Being a bird fan, I collected feathers. My preference is to see a plume flutter from the sky and catch it before it touches Earth. But that has yet to happen. I found them occasionally and only rarely could identify the species. I still kept them for their delicate beauty. A couple of times, I found the plucked remains scattered after a predator feasted. This was how I collected the yellow-tipped tail feathers of a cedar waxwing discovered near it’s bloodied skull.

The surest way to find feathers is to monitor the sides of higher speed roads for those losing their lives to cars and trucks. I once found a deceased Turkey Vulture and took the entire wing. Driving North on Highway 13 with my daughter, I found the intact remains of a Grey Catbird. It was on the other side of the road forcing me to make a U-turn. It was freshly dead without stench or oozing liquids, not even blood marred the otherwise splendid grey body. I wanted a few feathers but my daughter wanted to bring it home and keep it as a pet. So, it made the trip back to Chicago with us sometimes in her young hands, other times in a plastic Ziploc bag. A couple of days later, body fluids were oozing into the bag and it received a proper burial behind the garage.

Crawdaddies

Fishing at night near our pier, we carried flashlights so we could bait the hooks and remove the bullhead without having their spiny fins stick us. Those fins were as sharp as needles requiring care when grabbing them or a towel in which to wrap them. The towels grew to stink like hell and were eventually trashed. They were strong fish and wiggling bodies could stick a spine deep.

With the flashlights, we discovered crawdads scouring beneath the pier and near the shore for morsels to fill their bellies. Crawdads also known as crayfish or crawfish, look like miniature freshwater lobsters down to the segmented tail used for explosive backward movement and pincer claws to grab food and feed themselves. They easily fit into the palm of our hands. Of course, we deemed them a must to catch them. Why? The same reason people take arduous hikes in the desert or climb mountains. Because they’re there.

The pincers can cut human skin so catching them requires care. The technique we devised was to slowly move the hand into the water behind the critter, place the index finger onto the carapace and press it into the sand. It seems their eyesight was very poor and they may react more to changes in water pressure than seeing our hands. Thus immobilized, thumb and middle finger picked it up. We were safe from the pincers which, limited by the exoskeleton, could not reach us. It didn’t stop them from trying and their claws flailed in the air. We tossed them into a bucket with their brethren. Once they were cooked and eaten with butter. I wasn’t there that time.

Other Notables & Wish To Have Seen

For a short while, there was a herd of captive Bison near the intersection of Hwy 13 and Hwy 73. I stopped to marvel whenever I drove by. They are massive animals, an anchor to the American past, the sacred beast of the plains Indians. Once almost hunted to extinction, they are making a comeback in pockets across the plains. I have long longed for a Buffalo blanket for cold nights in bed or lying in front of a fireplace. I never did find out if the owner of this small herd sold them.

In recent years, wolves and black bears made their way into Central Wisconsin. The one verified Wolf sighting I know of involved a collision between a Harley rider and a wolf on a country road late at night. Neither survived. Kind of ironic that a one percenter killed another one percenter. Black Bear are spotted North of Wisconsin Rapids usually by garbage dumps. One man’s trash another’s treasure. We never saw any down our way. Just knowing both large predators existed a stone’s throw from our vacation lot excited me.

On my final trip to the land, I saw a couple of early migration, sandhill cranes sporting russet caps reminding me that I was and will always be a ginger no matter if my hair blooms white. They were standing on the side of the road, perhaps a mating pair. Quite a few Hawks were perched in trees and on the wing. Seven to ten deer were in various states of decay in the ditches along the road. Wisconsin DNR no longer collects the deer when killed by vehicles. They scrape them from the road and toss them into the ditch where Nature will perform final absolution and let her many children purify the bones. It’s the same process I wish for my bones to be liberated from my body, my soul forgiven for the untold sins of humanity committed against Earth. The dead deer felt apropos to the theme of our final weekend.

Jaws

No history of the land would be complete without the Jaws story. Jaws the movie came out in the summer of 1975. Quite frankly, it was terrifying to all of us but none more so than middle brother. As was our tradition, we were at ‘The Land’ in August so the movie was very fresh in our minds. We were playing in a rubber raft near the pier. Every so often, we would purposely tip the raft causing us to fall into the water then start yelling Jaws, Jaws. The fearful brother swam to shore with the speed, if not the flair, of seven gold medal winner Mark Spitz. We tormented him with ‘Jaws’ for most of the trip.

The Final Curtain – So long, Farewell, Goodbye

Dad’s Closed Face Reel and Cork Pole

When all was said and done, the mementos spared the fire or excused a trip to the dump were stuffed into cars along with a lot of sentimental junk that will either gather dust in attics or be given to charity. I took nothing, wanted nothing. Not even one of my dad’s earliest fishing reels and the poles bearing the scars of fish fins and the hard edges of boats. The only mementos I hold sacred are the memories.

We all gathered around the fire pit for pictures, dad was present in a large photo and in our hearts. We sat on the benches we made from the scraps when the first deck was ripped out for the newer, grander, porch. There was the Dan/Diane love seat and the two larger benches we angled in the middle to ensure proximity to the fire from every seat. The three benches are at least twenty years old and still solid as the day we made them despite never cozying up indoors during the cold and wet seasons. I expect the next owner, not knowing their history, will either burn or consign to the trash heap. Come to think of it, those are the souvenirs I would have liked to bring home. I would like to have replicated the sacred bonfire in my backyard using a cast iron fire pit.

Mom brought some of my father’s ashes in a vial for a closing ceremony. She spread some on the land itself in close proximity to the deck stairs. We then walked en masse to the beach, four generations interconnected by blood or marriage, with the photo of my dad held high. The pier where I carved the word ‘one’ is no longer there having been removed by the bureaucrats from the property owners association for some bullshit, legalistic reason.

The rest of the ashes were scattered in the lake with mom almost falling into the water. We laughed some more. Took a bunch of group photos then headed back to our cars and the drive home. I expected pain during the ashes ceremonies, the resurrected pain of loss but it never came. I don’t handle people leaving my life very well. Being there with family dissipated the pain in a jovial atmosphere.

Mom & Dad

The Originals

All of Us – Color Fading

The Fischers

The Son-In-Laws

The WInstons

Campfire Stylized

Ashes on The Land

Marching to the Lake

Ashes in the Lake

Ashes in the Lake After Almost Falling In

The First Family – Feels Like Sepia

They say catharsis with the rapid release of negative emotions is liberating. Not for me, not this time. I drove back to Chicago feeling bound and ball gagged by my internal dominatrix lashing my soul with a leather strop.

Afterword

If any of you out there in reader-land were among the hundreds that visited the Olson Summer Estate, I would love to hear your reminisces in the comments section…

Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds Hey, hey, hey, hey Ooh woh

Won’t you come see about me? I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby

Tell me your troubles and doubts Giving me everything inside and out and Love’s strange so real in the dark Think of the tender things that we were working on

Slow change may pull us apart When the light gets into your heart, baby

Don’t you, forget about me Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t Don’t you, forget about me Will you stand above me?

Look my way, never love me Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling Down, down, down

Will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling Down, down, down, down

Hey, hey, hey, hey Ooh woh

Don’t you try and pretend It’s my feeling we’ll win in the end I won’t harm you or touch your defenses Vanity and security

Don’t you forget about me I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby Going to take you apart I’ll put us back together at heart, baby

Don’t you, forget about me Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t Don’t you, forget about me As you walk on by

Will you call my name? As you walk on by Will you call my name? When you walk away Or will you walk away?

Will you walk on by? Come on, call my name Will you call my name?

I say (Lala la la lala la la) Will you call my name? As you walk on by

My Childhood Was Auctioned off To The Only Bidder The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. ~Roy T. Bennett With the sale of the family Summer Estate in Central Wisconsin in March of 2018, the second to last vestige of my childhood goes the way of the final Dodo bird clubbed over the head by a sailor for food.

#Animals #Family #Fishing #Memories #Youth

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