#also sanchez has the water but looks like the wasted one

[gamergirl929]

This is a masterpiece, puts The Mona Lisa to shame.

[interxstitial]

@idleds​ sent: “ 120 (drabble me 🫶 i owe u sm and WAS OBSESSED W THE LAST DRABBLE SLFKSKRK….4 whoever u want!!!!) ”

“The tea-things were brought in, and already had Marianne been disappointed more than once by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a loud one was suddenly heard which could not be mistaken for one at any other house.” — sense and sensibility, by jane austen

it’s been twenty-eight days of paper pushing, form filing, ticket writing, and evidence packing. they’ve been dumped just about everywhere possible, save for the marine unit, and jiwon hopes to god that isn’t next. he would rather waste another ass-numbing month in the pawn shop unit than one day on a fucking boat. he’s already bored out of his mind; there’s no reason for him to also be spewing chunks on the clock. re-allocation of services is what the commissioner had cited. supposedly, they aren’t the only ones hopping between units, because the entire department happens to be short-staffed at the moment. seunggi claims bullshit, insisting they’re being babysat, and jiwon is inclined to believe his partner. it sucks.

today consists of a whole lot of nothing. on each of their desks sits a hefty stack of files for review, but jiwon hasn’t flipped a single page out of spite. instead, he funnels his valuable IQ into folding paper frogs, then directing the plague across the nile and into seunggi’s territory. equally as enthused over their workload, seunggi has taken to working on the locusts, but they look more like lop-sided, lumpy goldfish. at this rate, they’ll probably be halfway to the great exodus by lunchtime.

there comes a knock, and jiwon shoots up straight in his chair. three paper frogs tumble into the chasm between his and seunggi’s desks, but their sacrifice is for naught. no one stands in their doorway with the next big case, begging them to carry some of the weight as the names in red continue to pile up on the board by the coffee pot. so what if they racked up thousands of dollars in damage to public property in the name of justice? they’d been the only ones with enough guts to go after the real culprit, and this is how they’ve been rewarded: desk duty.

huffing loudly, jiwon slumps in his seat and sends another few frogs over the edge of his desk. there is, however, some comfort in that his partner seems to be equally disappointed with the false hope. like the rest of the fat cats in this city who refuse to acknowledge the corruption that extends beyond bodies on the street, the sergeant is handing over a proper, real police work case to lazy-footed detective cole. even if the scowl on seunggi’s face remains unchanged and his gaze never leaves the crooked locust between his fingers, jiwon knows what the twitch at the corner of his lip entails.

then the phone rings. sweeping the entire sea of paper frogs off his desk, jiwon rushes to answer the call, but it’s another false alarm. instead of an urgent request to assist in the bust of the century, they’ve received a prank from desh and sanchez across the hall. phone still pressed to his ear, jiwon leans back in his chair, just enough to glare at tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber in their own office. one middle finger later, jiwon slams the door shut and rolls back to his desk. the morons are still laughing, yucking it up like a pair of hyenas, but jiwon knows their time will come. one day, they’ll be begging for help, and jiwon will just smile and walk away.

there is another knock at the door, but neither he nor seunggi responds to it. they’re transfixed on their plagues, preparing for the transformation of water into blood. with a roll of duct tape, paper coffee cups, and empty pen ink cartridges, they’ve devised a clever system to replicate the ancient miracle. if no one at the department will appreciate their efforts, a couple hundred strangers on the internet surely will.

suddenly, an earthquake erupts and lays waste to all their hard work.

“hey, what the fuck!” jiwon and seunggi yell in unison, looking up to find the sergeant staring back at them. an enormous stack of files is dropped noisily on each of their desks, and the movement causes the red ink to begin spilling into the coffee cup nile.

“congratulations, boys. you just caught sixteen bodies.”

jiwon blinks. seunggi sniffs.

as blood continues to run freely, two pairs of hands slam against desks.

“fucking finally!”

page number starter/drabble prompts: ACCEPTING!

[blunt-baon]

Oddest Jobs excerpt

Hard jobs and hard light.

The rain had soaked through his jumpsuit straight into his undershirt, but Lan was too tired to care. Cars flashed by, splashing him with putrid water. He could have shielded himself but why waste the mana? He didn’t understand why he couldn’t sit in the truck, but Felix had insisted he needed to give off the appearance of working. People loved seeing service workers suffer while they went about their day, it reminded them of how good their lives were. He was zoned out wondering what he was gonna eat for dinner when he realized Sanchez was talking to him.

“Fucking earth dragon? Who the fuck has an earth dragon for a pet? In the city no less.”

Lan only nodded. His first week on the job he had realized Sanchez didn’t care about conversation, he just wanted to be heard.

“They said they were gonna keep tabs on this magical shit.” He continued.

“How the hell are they supposed to handle fucking land dragons? Normal animal control barely works, you expect them to keep up with whatever the fuck these mages be doing?” Alejandro gave Lan a sidewards glance. “No offense.”

Lan didn’t understand what he was supposed to be offended by, but he just smiled and nodded again. The two had grouped themselves closer to him to talk, he wanted to step away for more space but didn’t want to upset them with the action.

“Why doesn’t it hum anymore?” Alejandro said, staring at the shining road. “It used to hum, I kinda liked it.”

“I fixed it,” Lan said, his first words since starting his shift five hours ago. “It used to hum because it wasn’t stable, so I fixed it.” 

It was Alejandro’s turn to nod now. Lan was glad he didn’t ask for details because he didn’t want to explain how hard light worked. More cars zoomed by as the other guys stood further and further along the road, doing their part in giving the appearance of working. Lan didn’t understand why they’d all get paid for work he’d be doing by himself, but he was getting paid and that was all that mattered.

His mind went back to considering dinner when a sleek black car stopped in the middle of the road. Alvero, the only co-worker Lan could say he liked, got up from the carton he was sitting on to tell the rich loser to move his shit. But the back door opened before he got there and a suit came out.

“What’re you guys using to maintain this construct?” The suit asked. 

Alejandro and Sanchez looked to Lan but it was Alvero who answered. 

“The kid’s a mage, now keep it moving. We’re specifically trying not to cause traffic here.”

The suit stood there a minute looking directly at Lan, then went back into the car. It sat there for a couple of seconds before blessedly driving off.

***

Back at the office, Lan had made his way to the lockers when Felix cornered him. 

“Got a job for you.” He huffed excitedly.

“You’re my employer…”

“C’mon kid, I’m being serious here.”

Lan was being serious too but didn’t correct him, people hated that.

“Some guy saw your work on the streets and asked if he could rent you out for a couple of days.” “Rent me out..” Lan repeated.

“Yeah, he’d borrow you and your — ya’know—  skills, for a couple of days and we both get a hefty pay.”

“What does he want me to do?”

“This is what I liked about you Kellan, always ready to work.” 

“I’m poor,” Lan replied, deadpan. For some reason, Felix laughed at this.

***

After agreeing to meet with the suit tomorrow, Lan made his way home to his closet of an apartment on the other side of the borough. It only took one train ride and a walk to get there but it was annoying because of all the people. Even worse now since the rediscovery of magic had made trains the best transport in the whole city. Spatial augmenting of not only the carts to fit more passengers, but also the whole tunnel system to fit more trains had been done over the past five years.

The city could make more money doing projects like this, the rich could buy regular apartments and turn them into penthouses but what did the regular folk get? Squeezed into buildings that now had twice as many tenants with the same amount of utilities. Twice as many stairs to climb, but rent no cheaper. If anything, it was more expensive now.

He made it to his room only feeling the light touches of exhaustion. Being a mage, he needed less sleep and could do more physical tasks so long as he had mana in his system. He opened his door and slumped right onto his bed. His kitchen, bedroom, and living area were all in sight of each other, his bathroom tucked away in the corner. His futon wheezed under his weight as he buried his face into his pillow and took in a deep breath. Almost nine hours of work, he'd make three hundred dollars on that. If he kept this going maybe his entire check wouldn’t go into rent. But an earth dragon ripping up half a mile of the street wasn’t gonna happen every day. He pushed his face deeper into his pillow and dozed off dreaming of dinner instead of making it.

***

Lan stopped at the office door, then turned and realized someone had parked in Felix’s spot. Nobody parked in Felix’s spot. For one thing, none of the other guys drove anything aside from the trucks they kept in the garage around back. But then it clicked, the same slick black car from yesterday. The suit was already here.

He made his way inside, clocked in, said his hellos to Rina at the front desk, and walked up to Felix’s office. While everyone called the building itself, ‘the office,’ it was really just a place to sit around, answer calls and maintain the trucks. The real office was Felix’s, where he’d spend the day watching movies on his laptop and entertaining guests if one had decided to crawl their way to this shithole.

He walked into the room and Felix had on his greasiest smile wringing his hands in front of him, his face broke out in genuine happiness when he saw Lan.

“And here he is, our resident mage.”

“Hello, I’m Kellan. Who’re you?” Lan said, completely deadpan. Felix started, but the suit only laughed. 

“Bas, nice to meet you.” The suit, Bas, smiled as he stood up. He had chestnut skin, his dark hair was a stylishly greasy mess, and his soft, dark, almond-shaped eyes swept over Lan in one glance. He didn’t wear a tie, opting to leave the first couple of buttons undone. Lan knew everything he needed to know about this ‘Bas’ from this interaction alone.

“You said the suit from yesterday wanted to hire me, this isn’t him. Yesterday's was white.” He turned to Felix, fixing him with a blank stare.

Felix started to respond but Bas cut in. “I was in the car -  really good work that was. Half a mile of hard light? And you were managing it by yourself, with hundreds of cars on it? How long were you out there for?”

“Eight and a quarter hours.”

“Jesus, you must be a beast.”

“So the job?” Lan said, getting to the point.

Bas turned to Felix, “Thanks for the hospitality.” He beamed him a smile and started for the door. “Walk and talk with me?”

“I get paid by the hour, starting now.”

“I won’t waste your time.” He opened the door, gesturing for Lan to go first. For some reason, the mage thought he was lying.

***

Lan sat in silence in the back of Bas’s ride watching cars and buildings pass by. His employer hadn’t said a word so Lan wasn’t going to either. It’d been years but it was still eerie to him to be able to traverse the city with little or no traffic. He checked his phone, he got in at eight. His usual work hours were flexible. He’d come in when they needed him to throw magic around or he’d be on standby for regular work. 

“Where did you study?” His boss for the evening asked, breaking his line of thought

“Munroe,” Lan answered, still staring out his window.

“Community college? You learned to make hard light at a community college?”

“Yeah.”

“How much mana can you hold?”

“I got tested three years ago, fourteen thousand.”

Bas’ ever-present smile slipped slightly. Lan would have missed it if he hadn’t been finding his smug face so annoying. He didn’t say anything for a minute, then fixed another fake smile and leaned in conspiratorially.

“You’re joking.” “I’m not.”

“You wouldn’t mind a test then?”

“You’re the one paying for my time, boss.”

In response, Bas tapped the driver on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. The driver adjusted their route accordingly.

***

They made their way past Crown Heights and then stopped at a store called Nick’s, which was right on the road. It had a floating hard light sign, its projector locked up in a warded cage above the door.  The owner was waiting for them outside. Bas walked right by the man giving a nod, again he opened the door for Lan to walk through.

Inside, the store was lined with every kind of low-end magical item you could think of. Purified salt, books on visualization training, and physics textbooks of various levels. On the table was a standard home mana capacity test. Lan had never understood the ‘home’ part, these things cost nearly a grand. Nobody in their right mind would get this just to have it about the house. 

Bas tapped the counter twice; the owner ran behind it to set the MCT up. Lan stood waiting, still checking out the store. It was a pretty good collection. Prices were crazy though -  ancient oak bark for sixty dollars? That was just tree bark soaked in mana! He could do that. He shook his head and turned towards the clicking sound coming from the counter. The machine was ready.

“Just put your hand right over it—” the store beekeeper began

“I know.” Lan reached over and pulled in mana from around him, more than what he passively did. The MCT’s clicking stopped, then the LED on the top started to slowly light up. It had begun to change the color of the counter when Bas whistled. “That’s crazy,” he said

But Lan wasn’t done, he sharpened his focus and not only pulled mana into himself but pushed it directly into the MCT.  It shone even brighter, drowning out all other light sources in the shop. The owner actually took a step back, but Bas only squinted. “Check the log.” he slapped the owner out of his daze. “This guy’s a genius with light, this could all be a show.”

Lan raised his eyebrow at this but said nothing.

 The shop owner fiddled with the machine. He checked the screen, looked up at them, then left the room without a word. Lan had seen this before when he got tested the first time, this didn’t surprise him one bit. Bas raised his eyebrow in question but didn’t say anything. Soon the owner was back with a laptop, he took a couple of minutes to attach the MCT to it and then double — even triple — checked the data.

“Twenty-five thousand, four hundred and eighty-six lux.” He moused out finally.

“Hm,” was Lan’s only reply. 

Bas on the other hand wore an open expression of shock. “Y–you said—-”

“Yeah, fourteen thousand, did that test almost a year ago, been practicing since.” 

Most mages had a baseline of eight hundred as their mana capacity. With continued practice, you could bring it up to double that. It was like working out a muscle, the more magic you did the more your capacity to hold it increased. But just like working out, you could overexert yourself and permanently damage your ability to hold and channel mana.

Lan turned to Bas. “Your turn.”

“What?”

“Let’s see how much you can hold.”

Bas tried to play off his surprise, it was clear he wanted to spring the news on Lan. He’d have to work better than that to hide his abilities. He had been instinctively casting small spells since back at Felix’s office. Another mage would have to be very new to their power to not have noticed the surveillance spell he’d been pinging the entire time. Lan would have thought this a bit shady by itself, but the way he walked into his workplace and hired him for a job he hadn’t even defined yet had certified his untrustworthiness.

The MCT lit up again, the LED displaying Bas’ score. The shopkeeper didn’t even check the internal logs with his laptop.

“Four-thousand seven-hundred and two lux.” For some reason, he sounded like it pained him to choke the words out. He looked between the two mages waiting for a reaction.

“Okay, we’re done here right …?” Lan strode towards the door, “You still haven’t told me what you hired me for.”

“Patience,” Bas said, catching up to him. “All will be revealed in due time.”

Lan stared at him blankly.

“Also, I’m paying you by the hour. What’s it matter if we take our time?” He smiled suggestively. “You’re paying my boss for my services.” Lan corrected. “I’m only going to get eight percent more than a usual job for my time. So let's not waste it okay?”

Lan didn’t know if it was the directness or the thought that he was underpaying but all of Bas’ mirth vanished as they got into the car.

“Okay, so the Public Advocate's office put out a call for mages and magic theorists to help with some weird shit that was going on in Brooklyn. I snatched the job up before the news spread too far and I need someone to back me up.”

“What exactly do you need me to do?” 

“We’re gonna check out the latest site. It’s a condemned building in Brownsville. I need you to hold up the building while I check it out.”

“Scaffolding, you need me for hard light scaffolding…”

Bas paused, “Yeah, exactly that.”

“Okay.” Lan tried not to let his annoyance seep into his voice.

This rich brat used his connections to get a job from the city and would probably make thousands if he solved it, while only paying Lan maybe three hundred out of it. Worse, if he did a good job, he might land a contract and secure a solid job from the city ‘dealing’ with magical problems. All on the back of Lan’s work.

***

“We’re here.” Bas interrupted his thoughts. He’d opened the door and stood waiting. Lan hopped out of the car and took in his surroundings as Bas closed the door behind him. They were on a fairly busy street. Well, the sidewalks were busy. Only a few cars peppered the roads. It was mostly storefronts on either side. They’d stopped in front of an apartment complex. Like Bas had said it was abandoned, its maroon paint was peeling and almost all the windows were boarded up. Looking at it made Lan sad. A few years ago this place would have been full. One thing the city wasn’t short on now was space, and with so much of it, why would anyone live in a ‘bad’ neighborhood for almost the same price?

Other than the usual signs of dereliction, there was something odd about the building that Lan couldn't put his finger on. The stone steps leading to the landing creaked under their feet, Lan swept the place with his magical senses, his perception bumping into Bas’. The other mage turned sharply, he’d just realized how Lan had figured out that he was a mage. 

“The magic here’s weird.” Lan took another step, another creak let loose. “Very weird.”

“Yeah.” was Bas’ only reply, he nodded towards the door, “The reports from the landlords—” Lan grunted at the last word, “—said the same thing, creaking and random stuff breaking until the whole building collapsed on them.”

That gave Lan some pause. “Just collapsed?”

“Yup!” the other man said cheerfully.

“You got any idea why?”

“Nope! None at all.”

That feeling in the back of Lan’s mind tingled again, there was something that was really beginning to bother him about all this. They made their way into the building to a fairly small landing. The ground floor rooms seemed to have been used as offices and utilities. There was fine dust everywhere you looked and huge patches in the concrete pillars.

“Alright, you’re up.”

Lan scanned the room. Nothing looked like an immediate danger to them, so he didn’t bother to make specific stabilizations. He gathered his mana and began his process for solid photonic matter. Magic was very simple. So long as you had the power to back up your spell, you could literally do anything you imagined. He’d learned the basics back at Monroe and the most rudimentary spells that had been published for general use. Everything else was self-taught. 

He’d made his custom spell for solid light after reading the published notes on the studies on mana and its properties. All he did was collide mana particles with photons, they lost some energy and gained mass, then he’d shape that mass into whatever he wanted. In this case, he made a box that surrounded them.

“I haven’t tested how much weight it can handle but a crane almost crushed me once and I blocked it with a less solid version of this spell so…”  Lan shrugged.

“It’s kinda… simple.”

“And?”

His new boss pouted and stomped off. Lan adjusted the box as they moved through the building. Bas’ magical senses must have been great because he never set foot in most of the rooms and in the ones he did, he only peeked in for a second. 

“Other than the mana here being…” Bas waved his hands. “Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary.”

“You aren't gonna check the basement?”

“There isn’t a basement.”

“Why would I ask about a basement if there wasn’t any?”

“That’s what I wanna know.”

Lan took a deep breath and walked off. The shifting hard light box forced the other man to follow. They made their way to the last room on the ground floor, which had been a laundry room judging by the decrepit washer turned over onto its side in the corner.

“There.” Lan waved to the trashed room.

Bas just stared at him. Lan returned the stare until he did a quick sweep of the room with his senses. Then did a deeper search, he stepped into the room and swept it again.

“How did I miss that?”

“How did you miss that?”

“I was focusing on the area around me too hard I guess.”

“Around you?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t scan the whole building?”

“I did, you were literally behind me the whole time!”

“I meant all at once, I thought you were just double-checking.”

Bas turned to him, “Scan the whole building? Are you insane?” he screamed.

Lan rolled his eyes and strode towards the washer. It covered a hole in the floor that led into a tunnel. 

“Not a basement.” he mused aloud. “Mage Forge?”

Some mages with less than average mana capacity made enchanted objects using the inherent magical properties of raw materials instead of their own power. It was a huge business that you didn’t even need a license for. All you needed was a safe place to work and some magical items to hack up and put back together for varying effects. He stepped down into the steep tunnel and Bas followed. “Doesn’t look like one, but this is definitely man-made.”

“I mean they could have done the bare minimum. A forge would explain why the mana is so wonky. It’s unbalanced.”

“Unbalanced?” Bas had taken charge using his phone to light the way. 

“When you make an enchanted object you have to get the mana  sub-types correct or it changes what the object does.” Lan ran his hands again against the wall, it crumbled to dust at his touch. He made his light box stronger.

“I know that.”

“If the raw material had too much of a sub-type, it had to go somewhere. So they shaved it off into the local mana.” 

“Which has an equal amount of all subtypes…”

“Right.”

“So the Forge polluted—”

He stopped and went still. Lan tried to walk around him to see what was holding him up. Bas put out his hand and blocked the way, but it was too late. Lan saw what was in front of them and it saw him as well. It was an earth dragon.

***

Technically speaking, it was a drake, not a dragon. People called them ‘earth dragons’ because they didn’t fly and most of the magic they did manipulated earth-based mana sub-types. The creature before them looked like a mix between a dinosaur and a pangolin. Its scales were made from stone and were huge and segmented like armor plates, its tail ended in rock that looked like a medieval flail. They were said to be as intelligent as small children and docile by nature.

It attacked them immediately. It bounced against Lan’s box but the mage’s relief was short-lived. Some of the scales on the dragon’s body started glowing the same golden light as his construct, then dimmed. Lan started, confused. But the dragon didn’t stop its assault. As soon as the light construct weakened, it crashed through it as if it were glass. Quick on his feet, Lan made three bars of light to block the charge. The dragon folded itself into a spherical shape and rolled up against the wall trying to get behind them. Inspired, Lan made a light construct sphere of his own surrounding himself and Bas, throwing them back to the mouth of the tunnel and levitating them out of the hole in the ground.

“What the fuc—” Bas began.

“Shush.” Lan interrupted him. He started a scan to see if it had followed them, but it was too late.

The dragon erupted through the floor, tossing debris everywhere. It halted for a moment as if taking in its surroundings. Lan felt someone’s perception sweep the room but it was mostly focused on the ground. He turned to Bas, but the other mage was staring in shock at the dragon. Did it just scan them? Now wasn’t the time to think about the implications of that, as the dragon’s scales began to change color again. This time, the rocks on its body deepened in color and started to shake violently. A low hum sounded throughout the building and the walls began to vibrate as well.

“Shit.” Bas cursed under his breath. He grabbed Lan by the arm and dragged him out of the building right as it collapsed in on itself. Parts of the wreckage collided with one another, disintegrating into dust. The mages stood outside watching in awe as the earth dragon launched itself from the dust pile and slammed into the ground, then turned the asphalt into powder that it used to roll at rapid speeds up the road.

Lan didn’t hesitate; he pulled as much mana as he could into his body, supercharging it. His senses heightened and all his weariness disappeared. He took off in a bolt,  his feet hammering against the road. He ran past cars and bystanders, some of whom had even stopped in shock to observe either him or the dragon. It took him only a moment to catch up to the thing. With his mana-charged eyesight he could see a park up ahead filled with kids. He’d have to handle this now before anyone got hurt.

Running through the events that had taken place, he formulated a plan. Cutting the mana flow to his body, he manifested three wooden posts. He launched two towards the dragon. The creature changed course instinctively, but he was expecting that. He launched the third to reposition the dragon again. When it had made its way into the middle of the street, he launched the spell he’d been building in the back of his mind. A large wooden box with ten inch thick walls manifested around the dragon. It slammed hard against the inside, but it held. Lan had slowed down the molecules making up the box to harden it beyond belief. When the creature didn’t even try its dusting power, Lan knew he’d made the right call.

All around him people gathered, sensing that the threat was over. Not soon after, Bas joined. His normally stylish hair was in a mess, his dress shirt was pulled out of his pants and his jacket was nowhere to be seen. He was breathing heavy and took a moment to calm himself before he spoke.

“Work for me.” He huffed. “Fulltime.”

[wellhellotragic]

Bubble Boy

Oh my gosh @resident-of-storybrooke. I know you’ve had a rough go lately, and I wanted to do something to cheer you up. Obviously I was trying to covertly find out your bday so I could gift you a surprise, and then you ended up pointing me right at it without realizing it.

  So, even better might be that I wanted to do the Florida Man prompt for you.

(For anyone who doesn’t know what Florida Man is, basically, Florida is just a crazy nutter-butter state and if you google that term plus your bday you’ll get the most incredibly random headline you’ve ever heard.)

Unfortunately, your bday yielded some REALLY horrible headlines. Sorry but I wasn’t going to have Killian murder a pregnant Snow. There was also one where a man got 58 stitches after a shark attack, but I was really trying for something a little more fluffy. After trudging through google results, I think we found a winner:

A Florida man was rescued after trying to ride a hamster ball to the Bahamas.

P.S. Happy birthday a little early!

Emma Swan, the light of his life, doesn’t even know he exists. Well, that’s not totally accurate. He flirts with her every chance he gets. He may have even faked being sick a time or two to see her again, but in the grand scheme of things, he’s certain that once he leaves her unit, he’s out of sight and out of mind.

And it kills him.

She’s been there a year now, and despite the confidence he normally feels, she has this amazing ability to knock him off his game and he somehow inherently knows that if he were to ask her out, she’d flat out decline. Or she’d just laugh if off like it was a joke. He’s not sure which would be worse, and he has no plans to ever find out.

He’ll happily go to his grave pining after her instead of making a bloody fool of himself. To be honest, it’s kind of his fault. He never should have dated her coworkers. Yes, plural. And yes, to his credit that was before Emma joined that unit, but he’s sure she’s already heard the stories.

He’s not a bad guy. He’s really not. What he is though, is attractive, something he’s known his whole life. Getting women has never been difficult for him, Emma being the exception here, and he’s never worried about it before. And although he’s always been clear from the onset with his dates, that he’s not a relationship kind of guy, the women of his past haven’t always been able to accept that.

They don’t understand that his career is everything to him, and that if he does well here, he can finally prove his worth. Sure he’s always had the looks, but Liam’s always had the brains. Liam was top in his class while Killian struggled to keep up. He just wants to prove himself worthy of being here, that he isn’t here just because Liam pulled some strings, and sometimes that means sacrificing.

Of course, that was pre Emma and while he’s not ready to throw his career away or anything, a part of him feels like maybe he could have both. Not that he’ll ever get to find out. He’s heard through the grapevine that she’s only got a few more months here. Only three more months before she leaves and never looks back. Three months before he’s left to always wonder what if.

Ya, he’s always been a dramatic person.

It’s been a fairly boring week. It’s the off season in Florida. The sun is out but the water’s still too cold to play in. It’s not quite time for tourist and the locals know better than to go out at this time of year. Well most of them do. There were some high school kids last week that they rescued, although the kids weren’t in any real danger. Not from the water anyway. Their dad and his missing prized sailboat probably said otherwise though.

But for the most part, his time is spent checking the equipment over and over, watching tide flows, and checking in with the weather channel. It’s pretty monotonous, but every once in a while a weather related program will come on showing people being idiots. It’s silly but it helps pass the time until his shift is over. He thinks he may actually die of boredom today though. Liam left him a mountain of paperwork before leaving to collect lunch for everyone. Usually Liam sends one of the lower ranking guys, but like Killian, Liam must have been going stir crazy too.

Lunch passes by just as uneventfully. His burger and fries doing little to add to the excitement of his day. But then something peculiar happens. They hear on the radio that someone needs rescuing, but that’s not what catches his attention. The guy on the other side of that frequency must have lost his damn mind. He’s sure that he’s going to get all the way out there and find out that it’s just someone trying to play a joke on them. A costly joke, but most people don’t think about that the way he does.

Liam’s running out the door, yelling for some guys to ready the chopper. Killian rolls his eyes and goes back to his paperwork. That mountain isn’t going to clear itself. About twenty minutes into his first stack though, and he hears another call on the radio, except this time it’s his brother’s voice telling him that they need a boat.

“Come again?” He really wouldn’t put it past Liam to pull his chains.

Well, he would on any other day. Liam has always been practical to a point and would never waste taxpayer dollars, but Killian also knows that they are due for another round of training drills this month. And Liam was unusually bored earlier too.

“I said I need you to get out here with one of the delta rescue boats. Over.”

Killian cringes, knowing that the only boat available right now is a small almost inflatable raft looking thing. Liam is definitely taking the piss out of him.

“Oh, and little brother, you may want to bring one of the medics with you. Over and out.”

Liam’s gone before Killian can even correct that little brother quipt. He might take it out on the guys getting the boat ready. But his frustration isn’t totally because his brother refused to acknowledge him in a more mature way. No, it’s because he knows there are only three medics in today. None of which he wants to be cramped into a tiny boat with.

Inside the clinic building, he sees two of his possible companions right away. Luckily Nina is already busy giving someone a physical and Maggie seems to be avoiding making eye contact with him just as badly as he is with her. That leaves one person. He pokes his head around the corner looking to see if she’s in the room they use as an office, but it’s empty. There aren’t any other patients in the clinic that he can see which means she’s probably in the break room.

Sure enough, he finds her sitting on the couch playing solitaire on her phone. She looks so calm and he hates to disturb her, but the boat will be ready any minute now, and on the off chance that Liam isn’t in on the hoax, he doesn’t want to leave some poor soul stranded.

He clears his throat, causing her to jump.

“Sorry, love. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared.” He can practically see the defiance in her eyes, despite the way she nearly lept out of her skin.

“Of course not. But I do need you.” He blushes the minute the words are out of his mouth. “I mean, I need your help.”

She laughs. It’s small but lights up the world in his eyes.

“Please don’t tell me that you were out with Sanchez last night. There’s no way that thing isn’t infected.”

He tilts his head. They don’t really have time to get into whatever Sanchez got up to right now, but he’s definitely filing that away for later.

“No, I, uh- I was home alone last night.”

He’s not sure why he just told her that. She doesn’t need to know that his night was spent watching netflix while eating oreos in his underwear.

“Say it ain’t so. Killian Jones dateless on a Friday night?”

He can’t see his face right now but he knows that he’s as red as a tomato.

“I’m not- I-” How does this woman fluster him so easily? Usually he has time to think up things to banter with her about before seeing her. “I had to be up early this morning.”

She rolls her eyes are starts tapping away at the cards on her phone again.

“I meant it when I said I needed your help though. There’s a rescue in progress and I was told to bring a medic with me.”

Emma doesn’t miss a beat, jumping up grabbing her jacket and med kit. She’s out the door before he can even process what’s happening. When he catches up to her, she’s heading towards the helo pad and he has to stop her, telling her that they’re taking out a boat instead.

The boat sucks. That’s an awful thing to say and he knows it, but it’s true. Even with the still water the boat bounces all over the place, and on more than once occasion Emma ends up crashing into him. It’s hard to concentrate on anything other than the smell of her perfume, which is exactly why he didn’t want to bring her. Not that the other’s would have been better, but he wouldn’t be as affected by them.

At one point Emma radios in to Liam asking him what she should expect, but Liam tells her it’s better if she just sees it for herself. Killian isn’t sure what to make of it yet. Liam knows that he has a crush on her, and if Liam is using that to somehow embarrass him, his brother may be the one in need of medical attention.

Or maybe he’d be the one. Can you actually die of embarrassment? Is that a thing?

But when they get to the scene, they’re both taken aback. Liam’s chopper has been flying over head the entire time, but since they can’t be of much use, they head back, leaving Killian to deal with what has to be the oddest thing he’s ever seen in his life. And he lives in Florida, so that’s saying something.

There, not fifty feet in front of them, is a giant hamster ball floating across the water. It’s about six foot tall, but there is some sort of structure around it making it even larger. It looks almost like a hamster wheel. Red balls surround it, and he can just barely make out the form of a man crumpled up at the bottom of the ball.

He can tell that Emma is just as worried about the man as he is. It may not be hot out, but the man is in a giant inflatable magnifying glass, and there’s no telling how hot it is in that thing. There’s also no telling how long the guy has been out here. They’re about four miles from shore so it’s not as if he just jumped into the deep end.

He’s not even sure how he’s supposed to approach it. They call out to the man, and while he doesn’t make an attempt to move from his spot, he does wave them his middle finger. Cleary the man isn’t as distressed as he thought.

But the fact remains, they still need to get to the man somehow and check him over, and he also needs to figure out a way to get the homemade monstrosity dragged back in. They circle around and find that the far side of the ball is actually and open area.

On his order, the other the other crewman with them grabs ropes and together the two of them tie up to the wheel, coming in as close as they can. He’s a little weary knowing that the man inside of the bubble doesn’t want his help, but he can’t just leave the guy out there in the middle of the ocean.

Luck is on his side though. As he reaches over to poke his head in, he gets a large whiff of bourbon and realizes that the guy inside is nearly passed out drunk. Killian can only hope the guy is too out of it to fight him. Especially since he’s going to have to go into the bubble alone to grab the guy. While he’s sure Emma is fit as a fiddle, he’s not sure that she could handle lifting a 150 pound man into their rescue boat. Especially since there’s a two foot gap between them and the ball opening.

There’s only one way in. Head first. It’s not graceful by any means, and he falls on his head as soon as his waist is free. The man inside makes no movement but Killian can hear some mumbled curses. Hell, he’s probably making some curse words of his own. There’s an empty bottle of Jim Beam next to the guy, and a small puddle that he’s praying is spilled bourbon and not urine.

Maybe it’s time to rethink his job. Rescuing drunk men from their own wee wasn’t exactly what he signed up for when he joined the coast guard.

The man isn’t heavy, but he is complete dead weight, doing nothing to help Killian when lifting him up. The ball starts to sway under their combined weight moving towards the hole and Killian just hopes the whole thing doesn’t topple over. As soon as he’s got the guy’s arms out of the hole and he see’s Jacobs has a hold on him, he steps back trying to redistribute the weight.

He’s also choosing to pretend that he didn’t just accidentally step in the puddle. He’s going to secretly swap his boots out with Liam’s the first chance he gets.

With the man safely in the back of the boat and Emma attending to him, Killian and Jacobs work out the best way to tie the hamster ball to the boat to drag it back to shore.

The ride back is uneventful, and when they arrive the base, there’s an ambulance waiting for them. He and Jacobs get the guy onto the stretcher and he’s off, no longer their problem. But the bubble is. It takes five grown men to pull the thing up on the docks and lift it onto a flatbed truck. He has no idea where they’ll take it. Maybe to impound lot?

He’s been so busy with the stupid ball that he hasn’t even realized that Emma is gone. Not until he looks around and he doesn’t see her or her med kit. It’s probably better that way. Between making an ass of himself earlier and then stepping in bodily fluids, he hasn’t exactly crushed it with her today.

Instead he does his check offs with the boat making sure it’s clean for the next go. There’s vomit in the back seat, because his day wasn’t already spectacular enough. After the boat is clean, he goes back to his desk working on the stack of papers, ignoring all of the jokes until the next shift comes in.

He’s tired and cranky as he heads out to his truck, ready for a shower and bed. But when he gets to the parking lot, he finds someone leaning against his bumper.

“Thanks to Bubble Boy I missed lunch and now I’m starving. How about you?”

He immediately forgets that all he wants to do is go to bed, telling her that he could eat. They pick out a restaurant before she heads to her own car to meet him there. It’s not really a restaurant as much as a dive bar that serves greasy food, but he’ll take it if it means spending more time with Emma.

They grab a booth and before he knows it, their table is filled with empty beer mugs and cleaned off plates. They talk, for the first time really.

He finds out the the guy now known as Bubble Boy is really named Will Scarlett. Apparently his girlfriend dumped him the week before so he decided to move to the Bahamas, but he couldn’t afford the flight ticket, so he built his own boat . He was going to ‘sail it’ somehow. Never mind the fact that he didn’t have any way of navigating or steering, or that he didn’t have any food or water with him.

He also finds out that she’s only in the coast guard to pay for med school. That’s she’s already applied and been accepted to the University of Miami so while she’s leaving the coast guard soon, she’s not actually leaving town.

Killian explains to her that he followed in Liam’s footsteps. That the water is in their blood, and that today aside, he can’t fathom ever doing anything else. That he always feels like people are looking down at him, like they don’t believe he deserves his position so he works twice as hard to prove himself.

It’s nice. The way they talk but don’t flirt. He feels like he’s really getting to know her. It’s weird, eating a meal with a woman with no expectations of sex later. No romantic interest. Well, he’s interested but she’s not and he’s not going to push whatever luck the universe has granted him.

When they part for the night, he thinks it’s a one time thing. They’d both had a really weird day and no one else would have understood exactly what they saw. But it’s not a one time thing. More often than not she drops by his desk to eat her lunch with him, or he’ll pop by the clinic to see if she wants to grab a drink after work. They don’t always have the same shifts and sometimes he misses her on her days off.

Well, he always misses her on those days.

Maybe it’s good practice though. He’s gotten used to her being around, and as of today, he’s only got two more days left with her. He’s not sure what he’ll do when she’s gone. When he has to go back to eating lunch with Liam or going home straight after work to an empty house. It’s going to be lonely.

Today, he goes to eat lunch with her though. The other medics are throwing her a goodbye party and there’s going to be cake. She promised him of that. And sure enough, there’s two in there. One is chocolate, which he knows for a fact she hates, and the other is vanilla. Her favorite. There are also presents. He has one for her too, but he’s saving it for her actual last day. There are speeches about how much everyone is going to miss her. About how the unit is losing one of the best people they’ve ever had.

He almost cries at the emotion of it all. Almost .

Emma does cry as she gives her own ‘I’ll miss you all’ speech.

He doesn’t see her before she leaves, and he can’t help but admit that it stings.

The next day he doesn’t see her at lunch either. He’s busy on a surprise training assignment from Liam. He actually barely makes it back in before his shift is over and he runs straight for the clinic to catch Emma before she leaves. He’s too late though.

The walk back to his own office is filled with his wallowing. He only stays long enough to grab his gym bag with Emma’s present still tucked inside. Liam invites him over to dinner with the family, but Killian just wants to be alone. There’s a bottle of rum calling his name.

He’s half expecting her to be waiting by his truck like she was that one night three months earlier, but she’s not. It hurts more than he wants to admit. He’ll likely never see her again. Miami is a big city. Too big to just bump into her.

He has two big drinks that night before he goes to bed before nine.

He’s dragging ass today. He’s not exactly hung over, but he feels off. Maybe he’s caught the bug that’s been going around. Around lunch time Killian admits defeat when Liam sends him home sick. His head is throbbing and everything hurts. He barely makes it home in one piece. He’s pretty sure he even ran a stop sign by accidently because his head is so foggy. He doesn’t even finish the tea he made before he falls asleep in the couch.

And when he answers the pounding on his door, he’s sure that he’s hallucinating. There’s no way Emma Swan is actually standing as his door with a container of soup and a bag full of cold medicine. But she is. And she refuses to leave when he tell her that he doesn’t want to get her sick as well.

So she stays and takes care of him. They eat the soup she brought and he takes the medicine she gave him. They sit on opposite ends of the couch and watch a Criminal Minds marathon on tv before he falls asleep. When he wakes up hours later his head is somehow in her lap and she’s running her hands through his hair.

He has to be hallucinating.

She leaves around ten that night, but she’s right back at seven in the morning with a box of pancake mix and orange juice. She stays again all day taking care of him, and by the time she leaves again he’s feeling much better.

She doesn’t come over the next morning, but that’s only because she has her first day of classes. He’s still got a tiny smidge of death lingering over him as Liam puts it, and his brother tells him to take one more day off. He spends it sanitizing every surface of his place and catching up on laundry.

He’s not expecting her to drop by after her classes, but she does. She brings pizza and beer, and they watch a random movie playing on TV. Or they sort of watch it. She talks through the entire thing telling him all about her first day. Not that he minds. He’d rather listen to her, especially when she’s just so damn happy.

He doesn’t see her the next day though, or even the one after that. He’s back at work and she’s either studying or going to bed early when he gets off. He’s not sure what he expected. She’s busy living her new life and her taking care of him was a one off. She felt bad for him.

Although part of him wonders how she even knew he was sick, or how she knew where he lived since they’d never shared addresses before.

It’s Friday night and he’s beat. Physically and emotionally. The hurricane missed Florida, but it was enough to bring some fairly bad weather to the area, and with it choppy waters.

And a disastrous rescue.

A family of four want out not realizing how bad the weather would be and their boat capsized. They were able to save the mom and kids, but they couldn’t find the dad. He searched. He really did, taking quite a beating in the process, but the dad was just gone.

It’s not easy making that call. Having to explain that to a family member.

He feels broken. Just so broken.

The weather hasn’t let up. It’s pouring rain and he doesn’t even bother to use his umbrella as he walks back to his condo. Instead, he lets the water penetrate his very soul. He’s barely holding it together, and when he gets to his door and finds Emma there holding a bottle of rum, he breaks, hugging her and holding on for dear life.

They go inside and she pours them each a glass. She doesn’t talk, just lets him sit in silence. It’s like she knows him better than he does. They’re on their second glass when he finally tells her what happened. She already knows though. He’s not sure how but he doesn’t care right now.

Not when she’s sitting next to him holding his hand. He falls asleep on her shoulder. He wakes a few hours later and she’s asleep next to him. His clothes are still wet and now hers probably are too. He can’t do anything about that though. What he can do is make her comfortable. So he goes to change into something dry and returns, picking her up and carrying her into his room, tucking her into his bed.

His couch is comfortable enough. He’s slept there plenty of times before, but he can’t sleep. Not when he can still hear that man’s wife screaming at him. Hours pass and he gives up the pretense of sleep. Instead, he makes enough coffee to fuel a small country. He makes too much. It’s enough that the smell of it wakes Emma.

She stumbles through the living room, looking very confused until she sees him. She doesn’t say anything, just walks out of his condo. He probably overstepped putting her in his bed. They’re friends, but there’s a line that he’s now crossed.

He’s sure she’s gone, but she comes back, dressed in pajamas, and he’s never been more confused.

“I actually live three doors down.”

No, now he’s the most confused he’s ever been.

She’s lived there the entire time and he never noticed. She also left him her phone number before she left. Or she thought she did. Turns out that she gave it to Sanchez to give to him and Sanchez left it on the wrong desk. When she called to find out why he hadn’t called her, and she heard he was sick, she ran to the store and then came to check on him. Apparently she’d seen him around and he’s just never seen her.

Sanchez also called her tonight, telling her that Killian might need a shoulder, so she didn’t hesitate to come over.

He doesn’t drink the coffee. Not when Emma grabs the mug from his hands and sets it back on the table, tugging him with her into his bedroom.

Nothing happens. They just sleep. The weight of her pressed into his side his enough to help him relax a little. He dreams about that night, wakes up shouting but Emma helps soothe him.

She saves him that night.

He has the next day off and wakes with the sun. Emma’s still asleep, likely exhausted because of him. He sets out to ready breakfast, swapping out the old coffee pot with a fresh one. The smell of it is enough to wake Emma again. He needs to shop. His food stash is getting low, but he had enough ingredients to make french toast. He’s still cooking it while Emma sets the table.

Like she belongs there.

They eat in relative silence. He’s still feeling raw and something feels off with Emma, but he doesn’t want to push it. He doesn’t want to push her, so he stays quiet.

He’s cleaning the dishes when she finally speaks.

“What am I to you?”

It’s enough to make him stop what he’s doing, turning of the water and setting down the plate he was just scrubbing.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what am I to you?”

He thinks on it. She’s his friend. That much he knows. She’s also the woman that he’s had a crush on for over a year. And if he’s really being honest with himself, she’s the woman he’s in love with. But he can’t tell her that. He can’t lose her.

“I think you’re probably my best friend.”

“And is that all?”

He’s not sure what she’s getting at. He’s not sure if he wants to know. Everything is great right now and he doesn’t want to screw it up by scaring her away.

“I’m not quite sure what your after, Swan.”

She takes a breath and for just a second he thinks he sees her holding back tears.

“Killian. I- You flirt with every girl you meet. You’ve dated everyone in my unit, and half of the other units on base. So what is so fundamentally wrong with me that I’m the only female in all of Florida that you aren’t interested in.”

He’s stunned.

“I’m sorry?”

It’s a question but she must not take it as such because she heading for the door right away. He’s closer though and blocks her from leaving.

“That wasn’t a statement. It was me asking for clarification about what’s happening right now.”

“It doesn't matter. Just forget I said anything.”

He can’t forget though. Not if she means what he hopes she does.

“Emma,” he has to grab her chin and force her to look at him. “When did I ever say I wasn’t interested in you?”

“Actions speak louder than words, Killian.”

Well if that’s what she believes, then he’ll just have to show her.

So he does.

He kisses her like his life bloody depends on it, and it very well might. If she walks out that door thinking he isn’t head over heels for him, then his life is over.

It takes more talking for him to explain why he’s never asked her out. That she’s too good for him and he was scared.

It takes more kisses too. He wants to be sure she really feels it.

And if it takes a night of wining and dining then so be it.

That night they sleep in his bed again, but they don’t actually sleep. Not until the sun rises at least.

[arcanesupern0va]

Rick In The Water; Ch11: Exit Wounds

Summary: The night of Ryan's death from Nova's perspective.

A/N: This chapter was so fucking hard to write. It broke my heart to put myself in the fucking shoes of Ryan and say such horrifying things about my bb. The next chapter will deal with Nova dealing with the trauma of the aftermath of everything that happened. My poor sweet girl 😭 Also, next time I do interwoven chapters I will absolutely try to do them so much better. I wasn't thinking about using the hospital scene in this chapter but I wanted to kind of try to explain why she was acting the way she was and I just don't think it's the best. It's not the most important part of the chapter so I'm going to leave it alone. I tried really hard to word it right but I just couldn't get it to feel the way I wanted it to within the parameters I'd set in the last chapter. In any case, this story is a trial and error of me trying to hone my skill again after years of being unable to focus long enough to tell a story of this caliber and length so I just kind of hope you guys bear that in mind when you're reading. Thank you so much for reading and commenting, it really means the world to me! -Jess♥ CW: There is heavy violence and extremely abusive language within. Please continue with caution. Pairing: Rick Sanchez/Reader Word Count: 7179

My ao3

Masterlist

|Ch10: Nothing Follows, Nothing Stays| 

+Nova+

The previous night

The car ride to get Madison was the kind of terse silence that should be used to torture information out of violent offenders. I was ‘lucky’ to even be brought along on the trip but rumors that I had become a recluse was tarnishing Ryan’s reputation earned me my first painful steps out of the house.

“You have one hour. I want you looking put together and refined,” he demanded sharply. I had been in the kitchen, scrubbing the counters down as per his request when he stormed in angrily. “People think you’ve become some fucked up hermit after losing your job. I’m going to see to it that you put an end to it.” I nodded obediently, dropping what minuscule crumbs that had been on the counter in the trash and hurried upstairs.

I was in and out of the shower in a flash, sitting down at my vanity to dry and style my hair. I avoided meeting my own eyes in the mirror, unable to bear the sight of the large bruise that circled my eye, courtesy of a misinterpreted offhand comment. I brought my hair into a high braided bun, simple enough but also didn’t allow any extra leverage if Ryan decided I had done something to upset him. I started on makeup, struggling to make any real change to the dark circle. I went over to my closet, retrieving a long halter sundress and a light cardigan to cover the hand-shaped bruises that covered my arms and legs. I posed in the mirror meekly, surveying myself carefully. The dark around my eye still drew the most attention so I dug around for a little while, finally extracting a pair of large sunglasses from an old purse. Their tint was dark enough to mask the bruising while the frame large enough to cover it.

I returned to the vanity to touch up my lipstick but I found myself staring out into space as anxiety seeped into my resolve. I was terrified of having to confront him, all these bruises, my busted lip; they had all been for this night. Once Madison got home, I was going to wait until Ryan went to sleep for the night and finally make my escape. The plan was to go straight to Beth’s house. If Ryan showed up, the cops could be called or if worse came to worst, Rick would just kill him. It was tempting but the thought of Madison growing up without a father who loved her reminded me too much of how I grew up. I couldn’t let that happen to her too.

I couldn’t let her end up like me.

“What in the fuck are you doing? We’re going to be late!” Ryan swore as he flung the bedroom door open, glaring down as he surveyed my outfit carefully. “I guess this will have to do, put on those sunglasses. We’ve got to fucking go.”

I grabbed the closest pair of shoes, unfortunately not my trusty running shoes, but a pair of high heeled wedges. Ryan grew frustrated quickly as he watched me wobble across the carpeted floor, grabbing my wrist to pull me behind him. I managed the first few steps but stumbled despite my best efforts, colliding into the wall as a sharp pain shot through both my ankle and my brow line. Ryan groaned in frustration as blood trickled down the curve of my nose.

“You have got to be fucking kidding.”

He released my wrist with enough force to send it in to the wall as well. The old wound ached at the impact as tears streamed down my face. I limped into the bathroom, gingerly inspecting the damage in the mirror. A large gash now split my brow as blood continued pouring out. Wetting a washcloth, I pressed it to my forehead as I searched for the liquid bandaid I kept for things just like this.

“(Y/N), stop fucking around, let’s fucking go,” Ryan bellowed, walking into the bathroom. He watched my methodical application of what was essentially glue, a small smirk forming over his face at every wince of pain. Was he enjoying this? Was watching me suffer this much of a thrill to him? I returned my sunglasses to my face, relieved when they covered most of my brow line to conceal the wound, pulling my bangs back down to cover the rest. I popped a couple of painkillers to try to mitigate the pain still shooting through my ankle.

“I’m ready,” I announced timidly. I walked carefully, trying to ignore the shooting pain I felt with every step. When I was outside, I didn’t dare look anywhere near the Smith household. I couldn’t see Rick right now. I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to throw myself into his arms again, to feel that overwhelming sense of protection I hadn’t even noticed until it was ripped away from me. I could feel his eyes on me but with Ryan putting on the show of dutiful husband, I couldn’t chance it.

*+*

The drive was long, only the dulcet tones of the talk radio he enjoyed so fervently. A man droned on and on about stocks and their rising and falling but I found my usual comfort in staring out the window. If I closed my eyes for a moment, I could tell myself this was Rick’s ship. I could pretend, even for that short moment, that it was Rick next to me just taking me out on another adventure. The illusion would inevitably be shattered by the mind-numbing voice on the radio, a poor replacement for the low music always playing in Rick's ship.

“When we get home, you may mend your ankle but for the time being you are to act as though nothing is wrong,” he told me as he swerved in and around traffic. “We will be stopping for dinner on the way home, I won’t have time to wait for you to make it yourself.”

“I-I’m sorry-”

“Quiet. I am in no mood to listen to your voice.”

Picking up Madison went as smoothly as I could’ve hoped. The pain killers had their intended effect, numbing the pain enough for me walk smoothly in the high heels. I was able to keep my sunglasses on, never going inside or anywhere else that would have warranted their removal. We made small talk with the other parents and Ryan even told jokes. Everything a normal and happy couple would do; Ryan’s mission seemed to be completed, at least for today. The other parents seemed overjoyed to see me, assuring me of how happy they were as a couple of the husbands nudged him with remarks of how they were glad we hadn’t killed each other yet.

When we finally climbed back into the car, Madison shoved her earbuds into her ears, blasting music to drown out the world around her. Ryan glared into the rearview mirror but said nothing to her, instead, berating me in a low voice for allowing this kind of behavior at all. He begrudgingly stopped at the closest fast-food chain that was still open this late; ordering for the car in the drive-thru before parking the car and divvying out the food. I was given a salad and muttered comments about my weight, my cheeks burning red. It tasted like ash in my mouth but I swallowed every bite knowing there would be repercussions if I left a single leaf to waste.

I was relieved when our exit finally appeared, knowing the car ride from hell was almost over. This life from hell was almost over. It was dark now, my sunglasses now being used for me to fiddle with anxiously. I straightened up in my seat, earning me a reproachful look from Ryan as he looked me over suspiciously. I slunk back into the seat at his piercing gaze and returned to the window, praying silently that this nightmare would truly be over soon.

I dared a glance at the Smith house as we pulled into the driveway, surprised to find the garage dark with the shutter still wide open. As Ryan delegated tasks to me, I dared a glance over to the garage, spotting a familiar blue glistening in the moonlight. I offered the most minute of smiles at the garage but the feeling of protection allowed to smile to linger allowing Ryan to quickly put two and two together.

“Madison, take this inside,” he ordered, handing her suitcase to her. He watched her disappear inside, before gripping my arm tightly.

“Don’t fucking think I didn’t fucking see that,” Ryan muttered as he twisted my arm behind my back. “Get in the fucking house.”

Obediently, I grabbed as many of Madison’s belongings as I could and carried them into the house without a second glance to Rick. Tonight was only going to work if I was careful. If I wanted to get out of this house with Madison and me intact, I had to focus on the task at hand, not Rick. I carried Madi’s bags up to her room, stopping to kick my wedges off by the door. My ankle cried out in anguish as I made my way up the stairs to her room, the painkillers finally wearing off. I knocked gently before pushing her door open to find her sitting on the side of her bed scrolling through her social media accounts and catching up with her friends.

“Sweetheart, why don’t you come downstairs?” I asked, sitting the bags down by the bed and holding my hand out to her. If she was distracted, she wouldn’t unpack. If she didn’t unpack, she would be ready to go as soon as possible.

“No, that’s okay Mom,” she replied, not even looking up from her phone, “Dad seems like he’s in another mood. I’ll just hang out up here.”

“I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”

My eyes welled with tears as I played with hair, twirling it around my fingers. Her brown hair was longer, almost reaching the small of her back. The sun had done well to lighten it a few shades in exchange for deepening her tan over the summer. She looked older and her general demeanor had seemed to mature as well.

“I missed you too, Mom,” she groaned, detaching from her phone long enough to smile up at me before immediately returning to it.

“I guess I’ll just leave you to your phone,” I teased. Kissing her head softly, she groaned at me loudly again before I finally took pity on her and left the room, leaving her to her friends to catch up. I stopped quickly in my bedroom, changing out of my long dress and into a tank top and sweats before taking a deep breath, steadying myself before heading back down the stairs.

“What were you and Madison talking about?” Ryan demanded, stepping out of the living room with a furious glare plastered on his face as my foot came in contact with the bottom step.

“N-Nothing Ryan,” I blurted out, stumbling back in surprise, “I just told her I missed her and asked if she wanted to come downstairs and spend time with us.”

“Mhm.” He watched my face carefully as I slipped around him into the living room, trying to find any inkling of a lie. “You really think I don’t know what you’re up to?”

“U-Up to? I’m not up to anything!” I lied, proving only to make him angrier.

“You’re going to take Madi and try to run away tonight, aren’t you?” he accused as he followed me, hysterics beginning to leak into his voice. “You are not taking my daughter anywhere and I will be damned if I let you go running back to your senior special.”

“R-Ryan, I am h-here. With you. Not Rick-”

“Don’t say his fucking name,” he spat. “You sound fucking pathetic.”

“Ryan, it was nothing. What happened between him and me, it meant nothing-”

“Shut your fucking mouth (Y/N). I don’t need you fucking insulting me. I’m not fucking stupid, at least not completely. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me this past fucking summer but that shit is over with. You are my fucking wife until death does us part. Don’t fucking make me speed up that process.”

“Ryan-”

“I fucking said shut up,” he bellowed, using the back of his hand to throw me into the couch. “Don’t you fucking start crying either. Don’t start fucking screaming. If anyone shows up here, I don’t care if it’s a fucking Mormon missionary going door to door, you’re going to fucking regret it. But don’t worry, you won’t die. Although, I'm not sure what the life expectancy is for a mother who lost a child violently.” He paused, eyeing me maliciously as the true threat of his words sunk in. “You’re out of control (Y/N) and I will do whatever it takes to put a stop to it and restore order to this house.”

I didn’t speak, but I couldn’t stop the silent tears that streaked down my cheeks. He had gone too far threatening Madison. I brought my hand to the stinging on my face and it seemed that even silent, the emotion still offended him. He grabbed my shoulders, shaking me violently as veins bulged in his forehead.

“I fucking told you not to cry.”

His shaking was getting harder yet, my head flinging forward and back sharply. I knew if I didn’t start fighting back soon, he wouldn’t stop until he snapped my neck. I brought my arms up between his to push his hands away from me, managing to take him by surprise and break out of his grip. I slid out of his reach, crawling away as he recovered. He caught up quickly, grabbing my ankle and pulling me back to him on my stomach. He flipped me over, doling punishment out by colliding his knuckles into my cheek violently as I tried to squirm away. On my back, I was able to deliver a swift kick to his groin, dodging out of the way of his onslaught. I pushed myself off the floor as he doubled over gasping for air. In a last-ditch attempt to buy myself some time as I fled the living room, I quickly flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.

I headed to the kitchen, desperate for any kind of weapon to defend myself with. I could hear him groaning behind me so I flicked the light off behind me, trying to silently root for any sharp object to keep him at bay.

“Where are you, you stupid bitch?” he growled into the darkness. I sunk against the counter, trying to keep out of sight as he searched for the light switch. Light poured around me as I pressed myself against the counter, listening for his footsteps to edge toward my location. I tried desperately to press the panic button Rick had implanted in my hand what felt like ages ago. I never stopped trying to use it even though I knew it was in vain. A small part of me hoped that he could repair his, that he would realize I needed his help but it all seemed so hopeless. Deep down I was sure he had taken my words to heart. He had given up on me.

“If you stop this stupid shit, I promise I’ll make it fucking quick.” His footsteps turned around the kitchen island I hid behind, breaking me from my feelings of hopelessness as I continued inching around the island, trying to get around it before he could find me.

“I never understood why they called you Nova, you know? You, a star? That’s fucking comical,” he taunted, trying to lure me out. “The most you are is a fucking black hole.”

My ankle spasmed under my weight as I turned the corner and my position was blown when I face-planted onto the floor. He chuckled darkly as he rounded the island, glaring down at me.

“The reason they call me Nova wasn’t because of fucking stars you idiot,” I hissed, pulling myself off the floor with the knife extended in front of me. “If you’d ever paid a fucking iota of attention you’d know it was from fucking Planet of the fucking Apes. There was a charact-”

“You really must be a fucking moron if you think I actually give a fuck.” He shook his head in disbelief before launching himself at me. The impact forced me back into the wall, my head coming in contact with the wall and everything going dark.

*+*

“I’ve spent way too long fantasizing about this.”

My eyes blinked, quickly adjusting to the inky darkness of my bedroom. My back rested against the foot of my bed as Ryan stood over me, sneering as I returned to consciousness. I tried to stand, only earning another backhand for my insolence. The small chair from my vanity became the next subject of his rage as he picked it up and broke one of the legs off. He inspected the sharpest end before turning to face me again.

“My parents told me women with bad childhoods were guaranteed whores, but you always seemed so fucking genuine. Somehow, my stupid ass fell in love with you and God only knows why I went and had a baby with you.”

“You’ve never loved anything in your life,” I hissed weakly.

“You’re probably right, it always kind of seemed like a waste of my fucking time,” he nodded, “but there I was, getting married to a girl with every red flag my parents warned me about. Mommy didn’t love you? Check. Daddy maybe loved you too much? Check. Abandoned by most of the adults she came in contact with? Fucking home run.”

“You’re fucking wrong.”

“Oh come the fuck off of it (Y/N),” he glowered, “The only reason I wanted you was because I already knew you could be beaten into submission if that’s what it took. You’d spent your entire life that way, you wouldn’t even know the fucking difference.”

“Fuck you.”

“I could make time for that if you wanted.” He offered darkly, his eyes glittering with malice before rolling at my cowered form. “It wouldn’t be worth it, you’d only be thinking of Colonel Blimp next door.”

“What are you going to tell Madison?” I asked desperate to change the subject. “How are you going to explain to her that you killed her mother? She’s not going to just forgive you. She's smarter than you've ever given her credit for.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that stupid brat,” he scoffed with another roll of his eyes. “She’s too fucking much like you.”

I couldn’t muster a reply. My blood ran cold as my heart raced with fury. He watched my face, seeming to relish in the fear of my revelation. He truly did not want me to have anything. My daughter, my friends, they were all allowed purely because they could be taken away.

“Why me?” I uttered finally, tears brimming in my eyes as I watched him twirl the broken chair leg around in his hand.

“You were pathetic. I took you home and fucked you on the first date.” He shrugged smugly. “I knew your kind, I knew the words that it would take to get what I wanted from you.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a calming breath before pushing myself off of the floor to look at the man who had made my life a living hell in the eyes. I groaned as I put pressure on my ankle only to stumble back onto the bed. Ryan laughed at the sight, his chuckling continuing as I awkwardly pushed myself back up, swaying as I stared up at him.

“Like I said, you abusive piece of shit, you don’t fucking know me at all.”

My words set him off and he pushed me back into the bed, my head ricocheting off the headboard with a loud yelp. I stood back up, my head spinning from the impact as I tried to catch my balance again. Being disoriented made it easy for Ryan to overpower me again, forcing me back onto the floor and holding the chair leg to my stomach.

“When are you going to fucking learn (Y/N)? You’re fucking nothing,” he declared smugly, pushing the improvised weapon into my stomach. I cried out as it broke my skin, pain searing out from the wound through my entire body. My body screamed at me to fight against him but with every minuscule movement, he drove the spike in deeper.

“Rick-” I cried out weakly, my voice raw with pain.

“He won’t save you, (Y/N). Why would he want to? He left you once before and it seems it was easy for him to do it again. Where is your savior (Y/N)? Why isn't he here to save you if he loved you so much?”

A light appeared under the doorway, calling my attention to it quickly. The door burst open quickly, relief coursing through my body. Ryan was wrong. He had come to save me.

“M-Mom?” Madi stepped in nervously, stepping in the pool of blood that had formed next to me. “D-Dad, what are you doing? Stop hurting her!”

“You should’ve stayed in bed Madison,” Ryan hissed, driving the spike into my gut completely, leaving me to scream out in pain.

I clawed desperately at the wood now buried in my gut as Ryan chased Madi out of the room, trailing my blood behind him. He returned mere seconds later, a crazed look forming over his face as he lumbered back over to me, picking me up by the straps of my tank top. He drew back, bringing his fist down to crash into my cheek repeatedly. I wanted to fight back, to do anything to stop his assault but my arms only hung loosely by my sides as broken English began pouring out of his mouth. The ringing in my ears prevented me from understanding a word he was saying and my eyes were swelling shut so when he abruptly stopped, I simply assumed I was dead.

“Nova!” A  gruff voice cut desperately through the ringing and I swore I saw the blue hair that reminded me of home as I finally allowed myself to slip into darkness.

*+*

That man sure has an oddly shaped head.

“She’s going to need to be put under, we have to open this wound further to get the shards of wood out.”

I wonder if his brain is the same shape as his head, he must be really smart.

“Sh-She was attacked, I-I think she was stabbed with a wooden spike.”

He sounds like Rick. I miss him so much, where is he? Where is Rick? He said he would save me.

“Sir, I promise you, we will help her. You just have to allow us the space to do so.”

“H-Her name is Nova. P-Please, don’t let anything happen to her. I can’t- I can’t lose her.”

Rick?

*+*

The world around me was dense, lush forest surrounded us as Rick and I sat hand in hand as we watched the waterfall in the distance cascade into the small river beneath it. I dared to glance over to him, receiving a playful smile as he averted his gaze. I giggled, turning my own gaze away, I peeked over again only to find Ryan in his stead, leering down at me viciously. My blood ran cold as I saw Rick’s mangled body beside him, contorted into an unnatural form as he stretched his arm out to me desperately before Ryan finished him off. With one last crushing blow from his boot, Ryan extinguished any form of life in Rick’s eyes, something he assured me of by bringing the optical gore mere inches away from my face. I cringed, looking down to avoid the view only to find the chair leg wedged into my gut once more. I looked up again desperately, only to find myself completely alone save for the gurgling corpse a couple of feet away.

“He’ll never be able to protect you from me (Y/N). You can run as far away as you want but I will always find you.”

“Nova? Is that your name?” a gentle voice asked. I blinked as I awoke, wincing from the blaring light filling the room. I slammed my eyes shut again as the voice asked his question again and the bed lowered next to me as he sat down.

“N-Nova,” I rasped, trying to nod in confirmation. My neck was stiff, making any movement impossible. “Wh-Where am I?”

“You’re in an alien hospital. Well, it’s alien to you, to me it’s just a hospital,” he informed me genially. I tried to open my eyes again, squinting to find the same oddly shaped head I’d seen in my dream.

“H-How’d I get here?”

“Your family brought you in. You had a deep wound to your torso.” My eyes widened as I brought my hands to my stomach, surprised to find none of the pain it provided previously. Instead, a low ache reverberated throughout, far more manageable than the searing pain from before.

“Wh-What happened to me? My husband- Ryan, he-he…” I fumbled my words, tears stinging my eyes at the memory.

“We were able to repair the damage done by the wooden spear he lodged into you,” the doctor informed me, “You’ll be back to normal in no time my dear, just have to wait for the stitches to heal away. They’re medicated with a serum that hastens the healing process. It should only take about a week until you’re back to normal, physically speaking.”

“M-My family, where is my daughter?” I asked tearfully, taking time to survey the room, expecting them to pop out at any moment.

“She’s out in the waiting room with the rest of your family and when you’re ready, we can send them back. We should also be able to discharge you soon, as long as you’re feeling up to it.” I nodded eagerly, sitting up a little to be more presentable. He smiled wisely, saying nothing more as he left the room presumably to go find my family. I continued straightening myself up, taking a moment to peek under the hospital gown to get a look at the long scar now gracing my body.

“Mom!” Madison cried out as she entered the room, rushing to my side a tearful mess. I held her tightly, patting her back soothingly as she wept and muttered apologies into my hair, “Mom, I’m sorry. I should’ve done something sooner, I should’ve tried to stop him, I was just so scared. I’m so sorry.”

“Baby, there’s nothing you could’ve done. You did the right thing, getting out of there and going to Beth’s. I’m so proud of you.” I left a watery kiss on her hairline, as Beth finished talking to the doctor, turning to survey me.

“Nova, how are you feeling? What happened?” she asked urgently, finally tearing her gaze away from the pulp I called a face.

“Jeez Mom, calm the hell down,” Summer chastised her before I could answer. She met my gaze with a watery one of her own, “Aunt Nova, I’m so glad you’re alright.” Madison left my side briefly, allowing her surrogate sister to hug me tightly. As Summer pulled away wiping away her tears, my eyes fell to Beth again, decidedly ignoring the lanky man who’d been watching me intently with a look of painful regret.

“I’m okay you guys,” I assured Beth, “The man with the oddly shaped head said I’ll be able to leave whenever I’m ready.” She forced herself into my arms, sobbing into my shoulder.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you, Nova,” she sobbed. I rubbed her back as I’d done for Madi before she abruptly pulled away, wiping away her tears roughly. “He’s gone, Nova, he’s dead.”

My eyes flicked to Rick quickly, trying to fight the horrified rage boiling into my gut. Ryan was dead and Rick had been the one to kill him. Exactly what I hadn’t wanted to happen. I couldn’t be completely enraged, but it was easier and more justifiable to just be angry. How was I going to explain this to the police? I was going to lose Rick for sure now, and despite the feeling of relief welling in my gut, an inexplicable heartbreak was squashing it down at the thought of losing him when I finally became free to have him. If even he still wanted me.

“What happened?” I asked quietly, finally meeting Rick’s sorrowful gaze.

“His heart gave out. I didn’t even have to lay a finger on him, it was pretty anticlimactic really,” he explained with a careless shrug. Just the sound of his voice was making my heart race and a part of me wanted to climb out of the bed and fling myself into his arms but I hardened myself to him, turning to Madi instead.

“I’m so sorry sweetheart,” I offered to her softly. She would never know the cruel things her father said about her, she knew he was a monster, but she could at least live under the illusion of his unending love for her.

“I’m glad he’s dead Mom,” she told me sharply, standing up from the bed.

“Y-You don’t mean that sweetheart.” I insisted. I didn’t want this for her, I didn’t want her to go through the same pain I went through. I pulled the blanket off of my lap, relishing in the cool air the swirl around my legs.

“I do mean that. Dad was a monster a-and after what he did to you? He deserved to die,” she assured me coldly. I didn't have it in me to convince her otherwise and I slumped back onto the bed in defeat.

“N-Nova, sweetie, what happened?” Beth asked cautiously, her eyes flitting to Summer’s quickly to stave off another interruption.

“I-I don’t want to talk about it, not here.” I brushed her off, standing up from the bed, a ghost of a pain shooting through my ankle. I was grateful it hadn’t lingered, seemingly repaired along with my other egregious injuries. I moved to the chair next to the bed where I found a bag containing my clothes.

“When we get home, I promise I’ll explain.”

Beth conceded, ushering the kids out of the room so I could change. I dug through the bag, dismayed to find only the blood-soaked clothes I been wearing when I got here. Rick stayed behind, still watching me awkwardly as I pulled the stained sweats out of the bag.

“D-Do you need some help?” he offered timidly as the door shut with a click. I shook my head quickly, stubbornly pulling the sweats on under the gown. “Y-You don’t have to wear those, I can get you something else.”

“No Rick, don’t worry about it,” I hissed, pulling the sweats up over my hips before grabbing my shirt.

“Come on Nova, let me get you something else, let me help you-”

I took a deep breath, trying to stop the anger and terror I had been living with for the past few months from boiling to the surface. I didn't want to snap, I knew I had hurt him but as my gaze found Rick, despite the look of sorrow that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face, the sight of him only made me angrier. All of that talk of protecting me and he still fucking left me high and dry. Again.

“Oh, now you want to fucking help?”

He grabbed the shirt out of my hands, solidifying my anger as I spun around, looking up at him with all the hate I could muster. Every feeling of hopelessness and terror coursed through me as I looked into the eyes of the man who claimed he wouldn’t leave me, not again. Not unless I asked.

“Y-Yes?” he sputtered, looking confused at the sudden turn of my mood.

“That’s pretty fucking funny, could’ve used it a lot fucking sooner.” I yanked the shirt back out of his hands, pulling it over my head.

“N-Nova, you told me to leave you alone. You told me you didn’t want me anymore. I didn’t know what to do, B-Beth thought you were waiting for Madi to come home-”

“N-No!” I bellowed back at him, “I mean a fucking hours ago when my husband almost fucking killed me.”

“Wh-What? I was there as soon as I could be- as soon as I heard anything,” he insisted, running his hands through his hair.

“The moment we walked in the door, it was over. He was out for my fucking blood.”

“I-I didn’t hear anything Nova, I’m sorry,” he apologized. Seeing him look completely defeated, my rage softened. Rick was someone who was always five steps ahead. Seeing him like this, looking so lost, broke my heart. “You didn’t use your panic button- I was going to get you out of there tonight, I-I didn’t know.”

“I did use my fucking panic button,” I assured him venomously. Just as soon as my heart softened to him, the mention of that useless fucking piece of technology enraged me all over again. “But I guess it doesn’t fucking work when the body housing its receiver is floating through the fucking vacuum of space.”

I watched as the blood drained out his face at the realization and I couldn't help but feel justified by his reaction. I had come to terms with it, knowing he hadn’t even thought of it since we hadn’t even used it since I moved in with Beth. I couldn’t blame him, not entirely. It hadn’t crossed my mind either and when I left, it had been so abrupt- there had been no time.

“I didn’t- I didn’t even think about that,” he confessed, despondent, “I just thought- I mean I heard you guys fighting but I thought if he was hurting you-”

“I used that fucking panic button every fucking night.”

“I’m sorry, Nova, I’m so fucking sorry. I let you down,” he murmured sadly, staring at the floor.

“I thought you gave up on me. I know what I said to you was cruel but I thought you would be smart enough to see right through it. Guess you let your ego get in the way.” My voice was distant, unable to sustain my anger anymore. I didn’t want to be upset with him, I lived, I was going to be okay, at least physically.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” he cried. The sound of his wavering voice crumbled my resolve, allowing me to finally move closer to him, prepared to offer him some comfort, “I never gave up on you. I just-I thought you had a plan, that you were just waiting for Madison- I just let myself believe what you said so I wouldn’t beat down the door and put her at risk.”

“I was waiting for Madi. You were at least right about that,” I relented, pulling the torn and bloodied shirt off with the gown underneath. I watched as his eyes found the scar that now distorted my torso. “I can’t wear this shit, can you find me something else?” I offered, extending a metaphorical olive branch.

“Of course.”

He opened up a portal stepping through it and re-emerging with fresh clothes, including undergarments and my running shoes.

“Did you just go into my house?” I asked, almost horrified at the clothes presented to me.

“I mean, I don’t know your sizes, I just figured-”

“These are fine, thank you, Rick,” I interrupted him, pulling off my sweats, tossing them and the tank top into the trash. It was somehow strange to be standing here, completely naked in front of him but I didn’t shy away, didn’t take any extra care to hide my dignity. He wasn’t leering down at me like I was a piece of meat, he just wore a look of concern carried in his furrowed brow.

“Beth knows,” Rick told me softly as I finished tying my shoes. I froze a moment, looking up at him in horror at the implication.

“Sh-She knows…?”

“About us,” he confirmed with a curt nod.

“H-How did she- Oh she must be furious,” I rambled, running my hands through my hair as I started pacing.

“She’s not mad,” Rick assured me, grabbing my shoulders to stop me in my tracks, “She thinks it's… strange but she said it kind of made… sense?”

“Sh-She did?”

He nodded quickly, pulling me into his embrace. I melted into him completely, finally able to allow myself to release the stress on my shoulders. There was so much. Burying Ryan, dealing with the police, the house but right now in Rick’s arms, that all fell along the wayside.

*+*

It didn't take long for my entire world to fall apart. The moment I stepped through that portal, it seemed the entire world felt wrong. Gone was the comforting, if not brazen lights of the hospital. I spent my first week back dealing with the police answering every single one of their difficult questions.

“Where did the blood come from?”

“What happened that night, is it possible you did something to set him off?”

“Your injuries have never been reported and you have no visible wounds, we have no history of abuse in this household.”

Rick had offered to just make Ryan’s body disappear but I knew there would be people who would be looking for him, his parents, his coworkers. This path, however, resulted in me spending a night in jail. It didn't last long though, Rick stormed in demanding I be set free within the first hour I was there. When he was met with opposition, he merely nodded and asked to speak to the chief of police to straighten things out. He would never fully explain what he said to the man but when he emerged from the now docile police chief's office, I was released and free of all charges. My house was still a crime scene but I had no interest in going home. Beth eagerly welcomed me back into her home instead, clearing out Jerry’s office completely to put a bed in, allowing me some form of sanctuary. She even snuck over to my house and grabbed my living room TV to mount on the wall for added comfort.

This didn’t stop the frequent nightmares, however. Most nights I would wake up screaming, and depending who woke up first either Rick or Beth would appear to soothe me. Despite this, Rick and I hadn’t returned to our previous level of comfort with one another and I desperately missed it. The little kisses snuck in whenever there had been an opportunity, him playing with my hair while we watched TV… I missed it all. I missed it and yet I couldn't quite bring myself to broach the topic.

“Nova,” Beth called, knocking on my door softly one afternoon, about a week after I’d been released from custody. I knew why she was here already, she wanted to talk about Rick, about what happened before and after Ryan’s death. All the things I desperately wanted to avoid. I had given her cliff notes of that night and she seemed to be satisfied. Now she was just interested in understanding my relationship with her father.

“Come in,” I sighed wearily, gearing up for the conversation I had been dreading. I focused my attention on my TV, desperately trying to seem invested in whatever adult cartoon was playing to put it off even another minute longer.

“Nova, I wanted to talk to you,” Beth started, her eyes flicking up to the TV. I sighed again, muting it as I turned to her. “I just wanted to talk about you and… Dad.”

“I figured as much,” I conceded, cringing at her. “What, within reason, do you wanna know?”

“Well, how did this start?” She asked timidly, not quite able to meet my eyes.

“When he came back,’ I assured her, resting my hand on hers.

“I-I know that. I meant, when after he came back?” she pressed gently.

And so I launched into our sordid story. Starting with the dampener and only editing some of the details like the encounter with Unity and the first time we’d slept together, mostly just to save her the trauma. I told her about the Council of Ricks and how Ricks and Novas were a common occurrence in most of the dimensions. He and I were just two people that fit together like puzzle pieces. She stayed silent as I spoke but I took care to note that she wasn’t angry, she wasn’t upset, if anything, she almost looked satisfied.

“Ryan caught us i-in the garage. We had been… m-making out and he had walked over, looking for me. That’s when he dragged me out. That’s the end of our story,” I concluded, unsuccessfully fighting the mournful tone from creeping into my voice.

“Why do you say it’s the end?” Beth asked, her brow furrowing the same as her father's would when logic seemed to run out.

“I hurt him and he hurt me.” I shrugged. “And for once, his part was actually accidental whereas I broke his heart to save my daughter.”

“As bizarre as this feels to tell you, I think you need to give my dad a little more credit,” Beth chuckled softly. I cocked my brow at her and she elaborated, “I just mean- I talked to him the night Ryan died, about you. About what this thing is between you two. I think you need to talk to him, sort this stuff out and see if you can’t move past your pain.”

“If Rick had anything he wanted to say to me, he would’ve already. He’s not exactly a beat around the bush kind of guy,” I told her flatly, returning my gaze to the TV.

“Dad also doesn’t do emotions,” Beth reminded me gently, “When you’re ready, just try talking to him, okay?”

I nodded softly, as Beth stood up and thanked me before leaving the room. I stared into the TV as I considered her words, finding them to be the most obvious path but I couldn’t will myself off of the bed to go confront my issues. I’d had enough of confronting issues in the past two weeks to last me a lifetime and I just wasn’t eager to run off and go fight some more. I rolled over, tucking my blanket under my chin as I curled up into a ball and the haze of exhaustion flooded over me immediately. The dulcet sound of the TV lulled me to sleep and I didn’t even bother trying to fight it.

+Down With The Rickness - Ch1: Such Small Hands+

[fishfingersandjellybabies]

The Easiest Difficulty - fic

Characters: Damian Wayne, Jon Kent Pairing: jondami Summary: It was a simple choice, for both of them. The simplest choice. Or really, it should have been. A/N: In the same AU as Long Time, No See (where Damian left vigilantism completely). This takes place over a few years, though is not every instance they share on the topic/life stresses (ie Jon’s doubts on being a hero etc) and by the end, Damian is 27/28 and Jon is 24/25. Sorry if this is weird/has plotholes. I just wanted some jondami fluff and shit. They both date other people but obviously not seriously. This is one of those 5x1 fics, but I’m bad at that format so not really haha.

~~

There were signs. Signs he chose to ignore but, in hindsight, probably should have used to escape instead. The girls at the front desk squealing with delight and chattering loudly. The office animals barking and meowing in greeting. Even Zooki, the cat he brought to the office with him every day, sat up, sniffed the air, and started purring.

Yeah, he shouldn’t have ignored those signs.

“Uh, D?” He glanced up towards the receptionist sticking her head in the door. Her smile was too bright, too excited. “You have a visitor.”

“Adopter?”

“Personal.”

“Let them in, I suppose.” He sighed, dropping his pen and leaning back in his chair. His family knows better than to bother him at work. And if they absolutely feel the need to, to call first. No surprise visits.

The receptionist nodded and disappeared, only to be replaced a moment later by a dark-haired man in dirty jeans and an ugly flannel shirt.

Damian’s frown deepened. And he couldn’t help but feel betrayed when his beloved Zooki rose from her perch to go greet their guest.

“…Jonathan.” He grumbled as he fixed his glasses, standing anyway.

“Hi.” Jon grinned, and suddenly produced a bouquet from behind his back. Roses of all different colors. “Happy Valentines Day.”

Ah. Now he understood why the front office was so giddy.

Still, Damian couldn’t help but smirk as he approached, and accepted the flowers. Zooki purred from between their feet.

“Cheater.” Damian mumbled, his nose dipped in the petals. “You can’t box me in with a romantic holiday.”

“I’m not trying to box you in.” Jon denied. “I’m just trying to ask you on a date.”

“And I gave you my stipulations.” Damian glanced up, keeping his face in the flowers. “Have you met them?”

Jon glanced down.

“…Jon?”

“Can’t you just like, put those off for now? For one date?” Jon mumbled, shuffling his foot. “Just so I can treat you for a few hours, for once?”

Damian sighed, and opened his mouth to respond, but Jon kept rambling.

“I mean, what if it goes horribly? What if it turns out our clearly mutual crushing was all for naught because we’re both terrible people and so we’ll never go out again? Then your stipulations won’t even be necessary!”

“Or, we could fall head over heels in love and be unable to live without each other. Then my stipulations would be very important.” Damian countered. “Trust me – I don’t like saying no to you like this. But it’s important to me, so I’d hope it’d mean something to you too.”

A pause.

“…So?”

“No.” Jon exhaled. “I haven’t met your stipulations.”

Damian clicked his tongue, and finally removed his face from the flowers. “Thank you for the gift, Jon. I truly do appreciate it.”

“…Can we at least get lunch while I’m here?”

Damian shook his head, turning away and returning to his chair. “I’m swamped with paperwork. Not to mention I need to start preparations for this weekend’s adoption event.”

“…Okay, no problem.” Jon gave him a smile, but Damian didn’t look at it, knowing it would be sad. “Call me when you’re free?”

“Only if you promise to call me if you are.” Damian returned. Jon gave a bitter laugh and turned away.

~~

Damian pulled at his bowtie. He hated these things. Hated the monkey suits, hated the guests. Hated how fake it made his family, and even himself.

He also hated the inevitable kerfuffle when a bad guy tried to crash the party.

And this night was no different. The only thing that was maybe a little strange was that he’d had enough champagne not to care all that much when a gun was shoved in his face, or when he was shoved into a chair next to Tim and threatened.

Hell, he and Tim even toasted, clinking their glasses together and gulping their drinks down as the criminals screamed for Bruce to pay for their lives.

It’d been a crummy week at Wayne Enterprises. A crummy week at the animal shelter. They were allowed to have this.

The plus side of getting out of the hero life – he could sit back and relax, not waste much energy attempting to save himself. And his brother was probably too tired at this point to even try. Finishing the booze in his hand was much more important than his life at this point.

Besides – they knew they didn’t have to try tonight anyway. Their Super counterparts were watching for this exact moment, and it wasn’t long before the ballroom was being invaded by red capes, and various poorly designed uniforms.

Honestly, a leather jacket? A hoodie? A skirt? And Clark’s was just ugly, no matter how many times he tweaked it.

Regardless of their aesthetics, they were good at their jobs, and quick. There was still champagne in Damian’s own glass when he felt Jon’s arms wrap protectively around him, and whisk him away to safety on a nearby roof.

“You’re safe now, Mr. Wayne.” Jon drawled, watching as his family landed around the city with the rest of Damian’s family.

“Oh, gee.” Damian returned, just as sarcastically, downing the rest of his drink. He saw one of his would-be captors try to escape through a balcony door, and threw the empty glass at him with a well-aimed shot, shattering it along his temple. “How could I ever repay you?”

Jon laughed. “Well, you know, a kiss would be nice. That’s what a lot of the middle-aged women we rescue offer. Even to Kara.” He smirked, stepping closer. “And that’s a payment I’ll gladly accept from you.”

Damian stared incredulously up at him. “Sorry, I’m not a middle-aged woman.” He drawled, then gave a smirk of his own. “And I’m more into farmers’ sons anyway.”

“Oh, come on-”

“And only farmers’ sons.” He backed up a step, holding his arms wide while looking around. “And unfortunately, all I see around here are superheroes, so. Guess I’ll keep my kisses to myself.”

“You’re the worst.” Jon whined with an annoyed chuckle.

“From where I’m standing?” Damian said softly. He glanced over the building, watched the cop cars start to arrive. He turned back just to watch Jon take to the sky. “That title is yours.”

~~

“I can’t believe it.” The old man said. One Mr. Sanchez, a twenty-four-year veteran of the Wayne Enterprises board of trustees. Damian was here with him because of the almost-kidnapping event at the gala a few months prior – his father was having a press conference today to talk about security, his family’s safety and how they’re coping, blah blah blah. The usual. Anyway, in Damian’s completely objective opinion - Sanchez’s mind was starting to go. “I can’t believe I know someone who has a superhero interested in him.”

Tim snorted into his water down the table.

“Trust me.” Damian sighed, keeping his voice even. He glanced fiercely at his brother. “It’s not all that uncommon.”

“I suppose.” Sanchez said. “But still! It must be exciting! Especially because it was a Super, no less!”

“There is nothing between the youngest Super-whatever and myself.” Damian droned boredly. “Regardless of what you and the idiot public think you see in that picture.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Wayne. This kind of chemistry is impossible to fake.” Sanchez said, holding up the newspaper in question. Above the fold, splashed across the page – Jon and Damian talking on the roof after Jon had rescued him from that party. Because, of course there weren’t any better or more relevant photographs of the event, right? “And in any case, it’s quite clear that Superboy is very smitten with you, regardless of what you claim. There are rumours about him, and even his heroics. The biggest one being he is only ever seen in Gotham on the rare occasion you are in town.”

“For one, he doesn’t go by Boy anymore, the whole world knows that. For two, I will tell you the same thing I told the reporter who emailed me about this drivel of an article.” Damian sighed, watching Dick come over to Tim, who was having a silent laughing fit behind his hand. He clearly asked Tim what was so funny, and Tim openly told him. Dick’s eyes shone in amusement as he looked up at Damian himself. Damian hated him. “I have no interest in my rescuer whatsoever, nor any superhero otherwise. Whom I’m romantically interested in is none of the public’s business, and I’d appreciate the courtesy of privacy.”

“Fair enough. You are a private citizen and wish to remain so. That’s why you left the limelight of Wayne Enterprises, I know, I know.” Sanchez waved off. “But, may I ask?”

Damian glanced at him.

“Why no superheroes?” Sanchez asked. “What turns you off to them? Even my mother said she’d leave her husband of fifty-seven years for the likes of Batman or Black Canary.”

“Because that’s not a world I want to be a part of. I had enough of all that Batman and Robin stuff growing up here. That’s part of why I left Gotham. Superheroes are nothing but trouble.” Damian explained. Then quieter, mumbled, “And what if they go out and don’t come home? What if they die in the field? Just because they’re heroes doesn’t mean they’re immortal. Doesn’t mean they can’t come back hurt and broken. And would you like to see that happen to someone you claim to love on a potentially daily basis?”

Sanchez didn’t answer that. He quickly dropped his gaze to the floor.

“And I, for one, have had enough loss and trauma in my life. So I’ll take a hard pass on a traumatic love life too, thank you.” Damian concluded. He let there be a pause of silence, then hummed, shaking his head as turned to the door to leave. “No, I’ll take the likes of…I don’t know, a poor farmer from Kansas over a superhero any day.”

~~

The only warning he got was all of his animals twitching their ears and turning towards the front door at the same time.

He glanced up from his papers as he came out of his office. “Wha-”

And that was all he could say before the door flew open, practically knocked off its hinges, and he was thrown back against the stairs by the weight of a body stumbling forward and falling on top of him.

“What…” Damian blinked, watching the papers he’d been holding float around them like giant snowflakes. His focus was slow in his surprise, but eventually his vision evened out, and he recognized the body on top of him as none other than: “Jon?!”

Jon grinned, sloppy and giddy. His eyes were blurry and his cheeks were red. He was in his farm work clothes – an old t-shirt, holey jeans and muddy boots.

“…Hi.” Jon hummed, making no move to get off of him. In fact, he did the complete opposite. Seemed to settle his weight against Damian as he reached up and gently ran his fingers over Damian’s face, along the arm of his blue glasses, glossy eyes darting across his features. “…You know, you look way better in glasses than I ever did.”

“…Jon?” Damian whispered, feeling his own face heat up, just a little. “Are you okay?”

“Peachy.” Jon nodded awkwardly. “You know, Pop won’t let me grow peaches. I think it’s ‘cause we don’t live in Georgia.”

“What? What are you talking about?” And no sooner was the question out of his mouth, the stench hit his nose. The smell of smoke, of greasy food, of too much beer. “Jon, are you-”

Jon’s eyelids fluttered, and he sighed happily as he pulled Damian’s glasses away from his face, in what he probably thought was a seductive move.

…Oh god, he was drunk.

“Jonathan.” Damian scolded.

“You’re pretty.” Jon countered, closing his eyes as he swayed back and forth a little bit. “Did you know that?”

“Jon, how much did you have to drink tonight?” Damian demanded. He put his hands on Jon’s chest, not so much to push him off, just to steady them both against the sharp corners of the steps. He glanced out the destroyed front door, and frowned. “Oh my god, Jon, did you fly here?!”

“I’ll fly to the moon.” Jon slurred, leaning in to brush his nose against Damian’s skin. And as much as he didn’t want it to, Damian felt his heart hammer in his chest, as Jon fell into a ridiculous rendition of Frank Sinatra. “Come fly with me, come fly, oh, let’s fly away…”

“Jon.” Damian tried. “Come on, you need to sleep this off.”

Jon didn’t break his song, just pressed his lips to Damian’s jaw, fingers curling into his hair.

“Who were you out drinking with? Do they know you’re here?” Damian pushed, but even he knew in his soul it was half-hearted. “I’ll need to call your parents…”

Jon stopped singing then, and just turned the tune into a hum as he brought his other hand up to hold Damian’s cheek. He opened his eyes now, and stared at him in a hazy bliss.

Damian gulped, and hated himself when he felt his fingers twitch tighter into Jon’s shirt.

“Jon…”

And Jon kissed him.

And Damian should have pushed him off. Jon was drunk, his stairs were digging into his back, the animals were making a racket and probably escaping, and his stipulations –

But god, Jon tasted so good.

So he indulged. Felt guilt and shame running all through his system, but goddamn, he indulged. Just for a second. For a few seconds.

Because of course, this was all he wanted. All he’d ever wanted. All Jon ever wanted too. And it’d be so easy…

But no. Because he was out. He was out and he refused to be dragged back in, or involved in any way past what his family forced him to be.

Even for his potential – total, absolute – soul mate.

So, sadly, when Jon pulled back for air, Damian turned his face away before Jon could dive back in. Put his hand against Jon’s mouth, and pushed him back as gently as he could.

“You’re drunk.” He sighed. Jon gave a little whine behind his fingers, but moved back as Damian sat up. “Come on, Jon. Let’s get you into the guest room.”

Jon outright groaned as Damian stood and pulled him to his feet by his hands, grabbed his glasses from where Jon had tossed them, and dragged him carefully up the stairs, into – what he believed was – the wrong bedroom.

~~

“Just like old times.” Jon smirked, throwing blankets towards the bed. Damian snatched them out of the air, rolling his eyes. “All those old sleepovers we had, like when our dads were working cases and stuff.”

He grabbed a few pillows from the shelf, then stepped over to Damian, very obviously standing purposefully in his personal space. Damian kept his scowl.

“I won’t make you sleep on the floor this time, though.”

“I’m not taking your bed, Jon. We’re adults, I can survive a few nights on the floor.” Damian mumbled. “Though frankly, the sooner this case of Grayson’s is over, the happier I’ll be.”

“Well, of course I agree. The sooner Dick and Dad find whoever’s threatening you and your dad, the happier I’ll be too.” Jon snorted. “And no, you’re not taking my bed. We’re sharing.”

Damian felt heat in his face. “Jon…”

“The bed’s big enough.” Jon grinned. “And like you just said – we’re adults, Damian. It’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know what you’re implying, but I won’t have a problem.” Damian spun away from him, unfolding the blankets and laying them out. “If there’s anything to worry about, it’s you and your…your crush.”

It was mean, borderline cruel. But it was the only way he could protect himself too.

Jon just laughed, though, and as soon as Damian had the blankets settled, flopped onto the bed.

“You wish it was just a crush.” He giggled. Damian let his frown deepen.

“No, I wish you would move on.” Damian scolded. He began to set up the pillows, began debating putting one between them as a barrier – just in case. “I wish you’d let yourself be happy instead of chasing lost causes.”

“I am happy. And I’m not chasing a lost cause.” Jon countered. “Even if we’re not together-together like we – I – may want to be, you’re still my best friend. You still make me happy.”

Damian pursed his lips, and kept his gaze on his task.

“Hey.” Jon suddenly took hold of his wrist, squeezing gently. “Don’t feel guilty about it, okay? I get it. I totally get it. You’re not being selfish, or greedy or anything. You got out, Damian. You got out of the mask, you have a life, you’re happy and safe and stable. You’re taking care of yourself. And you deserve that.”

“…I’m sorry I can’t be like your mother.” Damian murmured, still refusing to look. “I’m sorry I can’t…toe that line like she does. Or be able to have two completely separate lives like Grayson or Drake do.”

“Don’t apologize.” Jon repeated. “I’m glad you don’t. That means I don’t have to worry about you being out there getting hurt. Times like right now excluded, anyway.”

Damian closed his eyes. Jon gave his wrist another squeeze.

“And you’re not hurting me with your choice either.” He whispered. “I understand the ultimatum, I do. And I respect that.” He paused, and Damian felt him look out the window. “You don’t owe me anything, Damian. You don’t owe anyone anything. Not me, not your family, not the world. You always tell me to take care of myself; maybe you should listen to your own advice.”

“Love is about compromise.” Damian countered softly. “And I haven’t made any.”

“Neither have I.” Jon agreed. “In fact, if anything I should be apologizing to you. You gave me a simple choice, and I keep making the wrong one every day.”

“No you don’t.” Damian shook his head, opened his eyes, glanced at the other. “The world needs a Superman.”

“Yeah, and it has like four or five, even without me.” Jon laughed. “Honestly, I���m totally expendable. Which probably makes what I’m doing to you even worse.”

“You are not…!” Damian almost shouted. He stopped himself, though, and instead just pulled his hand from Jon’s. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m tired.”

“Same.” Jon allowed. He patted the bed next to him. Damian silently crawled in next to him, lying as close to the wall as he could. He waited a moment, knew Jon was watching him, then decided to put that pillow between them.

Jon snorted when he did so, and immediately tossed it to the floor. He scooted closer, hooking his chin over Damian’s head as he flopped his arm loosely around his waist.

“You’re here so I can protect you, remember.” He mumbled, like it was actually a valid explanation. Damian sighed, but didn’t shove him off. Didn’t make any move to return any affections, either. They laid in the silence for a moment, listening to the bugs chirp into the Kansas night. “…You’re always going to wait for me, aren’t you.”

“Always.” Damian promised quietly. “Unfortunately.” He added bitterly after. Another second, then: “And I guess I don’t have to ask you the same.”

Jon didn’t answer. Damian fell asleep.

~~

He was just finishing watering the plants on his back porch when the sun began to rise over the tree line. He’d found he enjoyed gardening in his new life, specifically early morning or late night gardening. When the neighborhood children were asleep or inside, and cars weren’t coming and going. When there was utter silence and peacefulness. Just him and his thoughts, and sometimes, if they were awake themselves, his animals.

The water in the can ran out, and he placed it on the porch railing next to his pot of blooming zinnias. He gave a contented sigh as he reached for his mug of steaming coffee, holding it in both hands as he took a long sip, and paused to watch the sky light up in deep oranges and pinks.

Then – his house gave a slight shake, and he could hear things inside falling off shelves.

He turned back towards the house, setting his coffee back on the table as the animals inside began to stir and bark in alarm. When he got in, he watched his pets all rush to the front window, staring anxiously at something in the front yard. Damian frowned and followed the mob, but instead of looking out the window, he moved to the front door and opened it, facing whatever threat it might have been head on, like he always had.

But it was no threat.

Standing in the center of a small crater localized to his front yard, stood a man in a red and blue hooded sweatshirt, torn, dirty and open, exposing a bloody and disgusting white shirt underneath. His ripped jeans had even more holes in it, and he was missing his shoes.

Next to him was a duffle bag.

“…Jon?” Damian called carefully, stepping outside and closing the door before any of the dogs could follow. Jon glanced up at him with tired, sad, hollow eyes. “Jon, are you alright?”

“You were right.” Jon croaked as Damian approached him. “You were always right.”

“About what?” Damian reached up, and gently ran his thumb over the giant bruise on Jon’s face. “God, Jon – what happened?!”

“I should have listened to you years ago. I should have agreed to your stipulations. Then we could have been happy and safe and a family and…”

“Jonathan.” Damian tried again, dropping his hand to Jon’s chest. He could feel the blood still seeping, feeling injuries that Jon absolutely should not have. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want it.” Tears welled up in Jon’s eyes. Overflowed immediately. “Damian, I don’t want to be Superman.”

Damian’s eyes widened, and he felt his heart maybe stop.

“I lost. Again. People died today, and it was my fault, Damian. I wasn’t good enough. My powers shorted out. I was…I was only a fucking human.” Jon wailed. “I don’t want it to happen again. I…I can’t let it happen again. But it was…I…” His shoulders slumped. “I’m so tired, Damian. I don’t know how Dad does it. I…”

He swayed on his feet a little bit, and Damian immediately reached out for his arms. His tears twinkled in the rising sun.

“I can’t be Superman. I don’t want to be. You were right. You were always right. I should have gotten out when you did. I should have given up this stupid symbol and helped people on the ground, like you do.” Jon repeated. His lip trembled. “I don’t want to be Superman, Damian.”

“Then don’t be.” Damian whispered.

“I just…I want…” He let out a tiny sob. “I don’t even want to be the Son of Superman anymore. I just…” Another louder cry. “I just want to be Jon.”

And Damian couldn’t help but smile, as he gently began to push that sweatshirt from Jon’s shoulders. “You are.”

“I just…” Jon repeated. He suddenly glanced down at his bag. Damian did too, saw the zipper wasn’t completely closed. Inside, he could see clothes and books and pictures. Jon’s whole life, more or less. He looked back up at Jon, and Jon was staring desperately at him. He was serious about this. “I just want to be yours.”

Damian couldn’t help but grin even wider. There was no more Superboy. There was no more budding Superman. There were no more nights laying up in worry that he would die, that they’d be separated forever. No more days feeling guilty or selfish, because he was making him choose. No more ultimatum between him and the cape.

There was just his love. There was just his soul mate, Jonathan Samuel Kent.

“Beloved, you always have been.” Damian breathed, bringing his hands up to carefully hold Jon’s face, and kiss him as sweetly as he could. As sweetly as he’d always wanted to.

Jon all but collapsed into his arms, clinging as tightly as he could, and Damian relished in the feeling. Even when their lips broke apart, Damian didn’t let him go. Kept a protective arm around his waist as he leaned down and picked up his bag for him.

He kicked the ruined hoodie into the dirt of his front garden, making a mental note to gleefully burn the thing later. (With Jon’s permission, of course.)

“I’ll need to find a job.” Jon murmured. “And I…I don’t know how to cook. Or understand banking accounts. And I’ll pay rent, and I’ll…”

“Shhh.” Damian breathed. “Later, Jonathan. One thing at a time.”

When they attempted to step forward, Jon immediately stumbled, and half collapsed further into Damian’s side. Jon couldn’t walk, his leg was clearly too injured. And that was fine. Damian merely flipped Jon’s bag over his shoulder, and slip his arm under Jon’s knees. Jon immediately curled into his chest, arms around his neck.

“May I show you to our bedroom?” Damian asked gently, as Jon desperately dug his nails in Damian’s back. “You look like you could use a nice long nap.”

And finally, he caught a smile on Jon’s lips, and relief in his voice. “Yes, please.”

Damian carried him to the door, balancing on one leg to kick open the knob, then walked across the threshold with him. The animals all began sniffing at the new arrival, but Damian paid them no mind, immediately moving towards the stairs, towards the bedroom.

Their bedroom.

“Welcome home, Jon.” Damian whispered into his hair.

Jon, still crying, let out a tiny laugh. “I’m so happy to finally be here, Damian.”

[iliketoeatmyself]

ED BOOKS

I stole this from mpa (because I wanted to save it) but I’m going to highlight those I’VE READ... also I might add some others as time goes... 

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (it was a good read!)

Solitaire by Aimee Liu * (Considered first anorexia memoir. Thus, there are points when EDs aren't completely understood, but still totally worth the read. Available through KU.)

Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi (it was really good and real tbh)* (One of my faves! A memoir that really captivated me)

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia * (Really is what it says on the tin and so much more. This memoir captures the darkest parts of EDs and is done very logically, stabilizing itself with facts that are intermixed by the chaos of EDs).

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (Romance)

Thin by Lauren Greenfield (Nonfiction elements. Like the TV documentary of the same name, but of course, the book has more details.)

The Best Little Girl in the World by Steven Levenkron (NOT like the movie. Based on research of EDs in figure skating and gymnastics.)

Perfect by Natasha Friend

Purge: Rehab Diaries by Nicole J. Johns

Skinny by Ibi Kasliky

Loud Girl in the House of Myself: A Memoir of a Strange Girl by Stacy Pershall

Gaining: The Truth about Life After EDs by Aimee Liu (same author as Solitaire)

Identical by Ellen Hopkins * (Written in same manner as her other books, which is basically more like a poem than traditional novel format. LOVE this book and recommend the authors other, non ED books)

Letting Ana Go by Anonymous

Massive by Julia Bell

Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen (Romance)

Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Thin by Grace Bowman (memoir)

The Disappearing Girl by Heather Topham Wood (Romance, KU)

After the Strawberry by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

Purge by Sarah Darer Littman

Beautiful Me by Natasha Jennings

Hunger Point by Jillian Medoff (it was okay, the sister of mc has an ed)

Pointe by Brandy Colbert (Very dramatic. Deals with sexual abuse and also kidnapping in addition to an ED. Still not sure how I feel about this book, but a read that is very interesting, especially for those who like reading all things ballet. Also, this is nice because a black girl is not only a ballet dancer, but also has an ED, which is not portrayed enough!)

Looks by Madeleine George

Kessa by Steven Levenkron (I'd say this is probably for younger readers, but hey, you're never too old to read any book in my mind!)

My Sister's Bones by Cathi Hanauer * (Really liked this book and it isn't necessarily because of the ED part of it. I just like the whole feel and author's style)

Parperweight by Meg Haston

You Remind Me of You: A Poetry Memoir by Eireann Corrigan

Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders and Elusive Olympic Dreams by Jennifer Sey (Wow, that's a mouth full!)

Believarexic by J.J. Johnson

Feeling For Bones by Bethany Pierce

More Than You Can Chew by Marnelle Tokio

A Dance of Sisters by Tracey Porter

Gravity Journal by Gail Sobat

Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle (A memoir written with her mother)

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (Haven't read this in a long time, but I remember liking it)

A Trick of the Light by Lois Metzger * (One of my favourites! About a male with an ED.)

Starved by Michael Somers (Another good male ED novel)

Reckoning Daze by Michael Beaulieu (Currently free kindle edition is available)

Thin (Sharing Spaces Book 3) by Alicia Michaels (This is part of a romance series and is the third book. This one focuses on the ED character, but there are hints to the ED in other books. You don't necessarily need to read the other books in the series and can figure things out without reading them first. I actually read this book before the others)

Cake Dreams: A Memoir of Survival by Hoyt Phillips * (Another male ED book. Great multi-faceted portrayal of EDs and general metal illness. Available on KU)

Not My Father's Son: A Memoir by Alan Cumming * (It's been a while since I've read it, but I recall there being an ED. The book does not focus on the ED, but it is thrown in there, adding to an already fascinating, interesting read.)

Nothing by Robin Friedman (Another male ED book)

Lighter and Weightless (books 1 and 2 of Begin Again Duet series) by Gia Riley (Romance and available on KU)

...And All Shall Fade to Black by Layla Dorine (Gay Romance, male with ED, available on KU).

Still Water: A Boys of Bellamy Novel by Ruthie Luhnow (Gay romance, male with ED, available on KU)

Four Weeks, Five people by Jennifer Yu * (A male wannabe rock star with an ED. He is 1/5th of the main characters who all have other mental disorders and have been sent away to camp to help with their various mental illnesses).

Phat (Escape From Reality series) by Taylor Henderson (Part of a series. KU)

Life-size (no, not like the Lindsey Lohan movie) by Jenefer Shute (Available through Kindle unlimited)

Love Struck (Star Struck Series) by Amber Garza (Romance series. KU).

Fake Perfect Me by Cari Kamm (KU)

Out of Breath (Exposed Series) by Hazel Kelly  (KU).

The Kaitlyn Chronicles series by Elaine Babich (Series, for younger readers. KU).

Please Don't Go by Elizabeth Benning (A bulimic sent to a residence to recover and teams up with anorexic former enemy in hopes of escaping)

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen * (very great!! I loved this one, it’s not only about the ed, but human nature and emotions) (A classic novel that everyone interested in metal health should read).

Do or Die (Fight or Flight Series #4) by Jamie Canosa (Romance series. KU).

Hungry: One Woman's Battle and Victory over Anorexia and Bulima by Jessica Skinner (The title pretty much says all you need to know. KU).

My Perfect Little Secret by Rebecca Coppage (KU).

Anorexic: The True Story of An Anorexia Survivor Who Found Love by Anna Paterson (This is romantic, but I wouldn't call it romance. KU).

Balance of Control by Stephanie Nance

Running in Silence: My Drive for Perfection and the Eating Disorder that Fed it by Rachael Rose Steil

My Not-So Secret by B.P. Morrison (KU).

26 Beats per Minute by Dez Wilder (Male with ED. Memoir. KU).

Summer Fades by Amanda Bews (KU).

It's Never Enough (Book 1 in Never Series) by Susan Soares (Series. KU).

Restricted: A Novel of Half-truths by Jennifer Kinsel * (KU).

Chrysalis by L.A. Field, Gary Thaller * (KU).

A Slow Fade by Brooke Melius (KU).

All We Ever Wanted: Unmasking the Silent Battle by Alexandra Wnuk (KU).

Life Hurts: A Doctor's Personal Journey Through Anorexia by Dr. Eliabeth Mcnaught *

A Fork in the Road by Rebekah Wilson (KU).

Skin Deep (Stolen Breaths series) by Pamela Sparkman (Romance Series. KU).

Feeding the Heart (Heart Series) by Marion Myles (Romance Series. KU).

Anorexic Annie by Sarah Burleton * (KU).

The Downside of Being Charlie by Jenny Torres Sanchez * (Male with ED, the ED is not a huge part of the book, but also deals with family dysfunction, which I always find interesting).

The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller * (This is very interesting. Male with ED. Deals with super powers! Though, it could just be the ED causing the protagonist to think he has powers, but I'll let you be the judge!)

Skinny Boy: A Young Man's Battle and Triumph Over Anorexia by Gary A. Grahl

It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell * (about binge eater who lost weight)

Safety in Numbers by Brittany Burgunder *

Skinny: She was starving to fit in... (False reflections book 1) by Laura L. Smith (Currently free kindle edition is available).

When You Fall by Alex Karola * (through Wattpad. Not finished yet, but is a great read!)

Inner Hunger: A Young Woman's Struggle Through Anorexia and Bulimia by Marianne Apostolides

Empty: A Story of Anorexia by Christie Pettit

Inside Out: Portrait of an Eating Disorder by Nadia Shivack

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz *

All Good Things Die in LA by Anhoni Patel *

Jane in Bloom by Deborah A. Lytton (Another one for younger readers. Still, a nice read)

Gravity Journal by Gail Sidonie Sobat

What I Lost by Alexandra Ballard *

This Impossible Light by Lily Myers (told in verse)

Sad Perfect by Stephanie Elliot (the girl has avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder)

Beautiful Bodies by Kimberly Rae Miller * (this is a KU book and is a fairly new release as of 7/28/17. It is about disordered eating and chronic dieting, not a full blown ED; however, I still enjoyed it and recommend it).

Shattered Image: My Triumph over Body Dysmorphic Disorder by Brian Cuban * (KU, male memoir detailing ED struggle and primarily his struggle with BDD)

Sugar by Deirdre Riordan Hall (KU)

Empty Net (Scoring Chances Book 4) by Avon Gale * (gay romance about bulimic hockey player)

Heavyweight by MB Mulhall (Male protagonist)

Just Jack by Shaun Powell (KU, male protagonist)

Don't Call Me Kit Kat by K.J. Farnham (for younger audience definitely)

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxanne Gay (BED)

Skin and Bones by Sherry Shahan (Male protagonist)

Skinny Me by Charlene Carr

Wrists by Jay Broderick (male protagonist)

Unicorns and Rainbow Poop by Sam Kadence (male, gay, romance)

Bare Roots by Molly S. Hillery (KU)

Grip by Adex Garza (KU, male. Deals with morbid obesity)

Rita Just Wants to be Thin by Mary W. Walters (KU)

Taint by Jude Nicholas (KU)

Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa by Joan Jacobs Brumberg

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

Hunger Pains: The Modern Woman's tragic Quest  for Thinness by Mary Pipher

The Stone Girl by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

Pretend We are Lovely by Noley Reid

Stick Figure by Lori Gottilieb

Diary of an Exercise Addict by Peach Friedman

The Anorexia Diaries by Linda Rio

Feed Me!: Writers Dish about Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image by Harriet Brown

Insatiable: A Young Mother's Struggle with Anorexia by Erica Rivera

How I Got Skinny, Famous, and Fell Madly in Love by Ken Baker (about a girl who goes on a reality TV show to lose weight. Fun read)

Inside Out: Portrait of an Eating Disorder by Nadia Shivack

Perfect: Anorexia and Me by Emily Halban

Losing it by Sandy McKay

Fragile by Nikki Grahame

My Big Fat Disaster by Beth Fehlbaum

Thin Ice by Niki Settimo (romance)

Unfiltered by Lily Collins (not solely a book about ED, but the topic is mentioned throughout)

Good Luck with That by Kristan Higgins (coming out on August 7, 2018)

Staving in the Search of Me by Marissa LaRocca

Feast (True Love In and Out of the Kitchen) by Hannah Howard

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (the mc is anorexic but it’s not focused on it only. This book is about two outcasts who connect to each other and its effect of it in the course of their lives)

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (it’s very good and wild. It also tackles on feminism and societal issues as well)

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki  and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (it’s a great book. The ed is not the main point but there is a character suffering from one)

[frontproofmedia]

Jessica McCaskill: Teamwork Is The Key To Success

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By Steven Weinberg

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Published: March 04, 2021

A few weeks out from her first defense as unified Welterweight champion and rematch with Cecilia Braekhus (36-1, 9 KOs), Chicago’s Jessica McCaskill (9-2, 3 KOs) feels comfortable with her training.

“It’s almost one of those things where I’ve pushed my body and my limits so high that it’s normal, and I almost feel like I should be struggling more,” stated McCaskill. “Or I should keep pushing myself to a higher limit. So to be where I’m at is a weird feeling, but honestly, it's more of a workout than anyone I know can handle. The guys that come in for sparring leave bloody. Certain things have to give me confirmation that what we’re doing is not easy work. “

That being said, McCaskill says, “Boxing is not the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in life. So, when I get into the ring, there’s not a lot of pressure built up; there’s isn’t a bunch of fear.”

The struggles McCaskill faced as a child are well documented. It built character and turned her into one of the hardest working boxers in the profession. Her trainer and manager, Rick Ramos, regularly posts photos on social media of McCaskill performing 4:45 am workouts, followed by a full day’s work at her day job in the financial sector, only to finish the day with a sparring session.

What may be viewed as a hectic day for most people, McCaskill views it as a way to prepare for the unexpected in the ring.

“We’re ready to do things on the fly,” said McCaskill. That’s one of the reasons I don’t mind having a day job while we train because there can be a million things that happen during the day that we don’t control.

"Someone calls and wants to do an interview in the middle of the day, and we have to move, sparring up several hours before our normal time. I have a meeting at work, and I have to do a presentation over the phone that’s 45 minutes long. We need to get deliveries of water and Gatorade at the gym, so we’re stocked for the class that evening. There’s a snowstorm that hits, and everyone is coming in late for class.

"There’s a million things that can happen in 24 hours that can make us adjust last minute, and that prepares you for stuff - getting in the ring with somebody and then everything you think they’re going to throw at you is completely changed. You learn to adjust. We put ourselves in positions to learn to adjust on a regular basis.

"You’re not thinking about it, but that’s what’s happening. When you’re locked up in a camp, far away, with nobody around, and you’re picking at your toes all day, and you don’t have interaction in life, you’re just sitting there, and when you get to the ring, you’re just sitting there, you don’t have anything to bring. “

Being locked up in a faraway camp is a comment directly critical of Braekhus and her team. In their first fight, Braekhus was expected to outbox McCaskill and surpass Joe Louis’s record with 27 consecutive title defenses.

McCaskill's majority decision upset victory prevented that. Immediately after the loss, Braekhus spoke of retirement. A week later, she exercised her rematch clause and began making excuses for her loss.

It was Braekhus’s first fight training with Abel Sanchez in Big Bear, CA, and because of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, she was stuck in a remote mountain town by herself. She publicly complained about the difficulties she faced in isolation and how it translated to the ring.

McCaskill's retort: “that’s on you and your team.” She openly ponders,

“What does that say about her team?. It says they don’t work together well as a team. That they may not be on the same page, if I was up in Big Bear and Rick wasn’t there, we’d probably still have a meeting every day at 9 am. Did you do XYZ? Yes. Okay, this is what I want you to do. Take a nice bath, rent a car, go into town. Rick would make sure I had everything I need.

"If I needed company, he would send somebody to be with me. Nobody locked the doors and chained her to the wall. She could have made changes to what she was doing, and she just didn’t. The thing about our first fight, it’s nobody’s fault that Cecilia lost except for Cecilia’s.

"It’s not even my fault. It’s her fault; it’s her fault that she came up short. It’s her fault that she struggled with her weight; it’s her fault that she didn’t do more in the ring. She’s put the blame on everyone else.”

Trainer Rick Ramos chimed in, “Also, I feel like there’s no comradery, there’s no communication. Cecilia and Abel don’t really know each other. I don’t think they care to know each other. Which is the reason it doesn’t work.”

In fact, Braekhus has gone through multiple trainers over the past few years, believed to be to her detriment. McCaskill emphasizes that her team is an integral part of her success.

“I feel the old school of boxing is you’re hired, teach me,” said McCaskill. “This isn’t working, “you’re fired.” Next person, “you’re hired.” We have gone through a lot of life experiences together as a team, so it’s not that kind of relationship. I’ve come along with Rick for his stuff with his other fighters so I can learn what his hardships are and how to help him and how I can come into this role when my time is ready.

"Or, I’ve had the experience as an amateur fighter, so I’m helping and coaching within my parameters, not stepping on any toes. So, we’ve built this bond. We have breakfast together at least once per week, and there’s so much more than “you’re hired, teach me, you’re fired.”

If it isn’t a lack of teamwork between Braekhus and Sanchez, something else is obviously wrong. In a recent DAZN press conference, Braekhus was visibly uncomfortable. Braekhus’s discomfort didn’t go unnoticed by McCaskill either.

"That is her right now in a really poor state,” McCaskill stated. “She wasn’t that bad for the press conference for the first fight. This time it’s like night and day. She looked like she wanted to cry; she looked like she didn’t want to be there.

"She could never physically say she lost [the first] fight. She made a lot of excuses, pointed a lot of fingers, blamed a lot of other people. She never really talked boxing. When asked what she is going to do, she didn’t talk about elements of boxing; she just said, “I’m going to be myself.

"So, I don’t think her mind is clear. I don’t think her mind is stable. I don’t think she’s emotionally stable. She’s just very mopey, temper tantrum-ish. That’s what I got. I felt bad for her, I wanted to help her, but it moves from that to being upset because she has all these fans and all these kids that look up to her, and she’s not being a responsible adult in her profession."

Despite Braekhus not appearing to be mentally prepared for their rematch, McCaskill is not worried about letting her own guard down.

"I don’t relax,” said McCaskill. “My first fight, same thing. I walked into it; the girl couldn’t look me in the eye, she looked really nervous. I said, okay, I’m going to do her a favor and get her out of there. If she’s going to come in a certain way, that’s fine, but I’m still going to come in 100% - plus.

"I’ll be ready for whatever she brings, and my goal is to put her down and get her out. I don’t think she’s good for the sport right now, so the best thing I can do for boxing is eliminate her all together."

Regarding elimination, McCaskill earlier posted on social media that by defeating Braekhus in their first fight, she interrupted Braekhus’s career. In the rematch, she plans to end it.

To do so, McCaskill is sparring exclusively with men at her weight or heavier. All are local to the Chicago area and have extensive amateur backgrounds or some pro experience.

Coach Ramos confidently states:

"Cecilia isn’t that good. She’s a solid amateur. That’s how I see it. We’ve brought in better talent before. These guys with 20-30 amateur fights are as good as Cecilia, and they’re bigger and stronger. Why would we waste $5,000 to $6,000 on three or four sparring partners when Cecilia is average? Now, if it's Katie Taylor, it’s different. But for Cecilia – no, it’s not worth it."

The reference to Katie Taylor is an important one for McCaskill and women’s boxing. Promoter Eddie Hearn has already announced that the winner of McCaskill v. Braekhus II will face Taylor.

McCaskill lost a decision to Taylor in 2017. In it, Taylor neutralized McCaskill's brawling, come forward style by continuously clutching and grabbing with little to no warnings from her home country referee.

If the rematch occurs, McCaskill, as the unified Welterweight champion, will be in the driver’s seat. Team McCaskill will likely be able to dictate where the fight occurs and assure that Taylor doesn’t have a “home court” advantage again.

But most importantly, Coach Ramos is adamant; if the Taylor-McCaskill rematch takes place, it will be the first women’s boxing match where both women have $1 million purses.

The prospect of having the biggest payday in women’s boxing history does not, however, distract McCaskill from the task at hand.

With a wry smile, McCaskill says, “Our sparring partners are not just punching bags. They’re grown men trying to keep their pride. If I can break a grown man’s will, then I’ll do okay with Cecilia.”

If McCaskill is able to end Braekhus’s career and do “okay,” then bigger and better things are certain to come.

In the first fight, Cecila fought your fight. What do you expect in the second fight?

"I expect the same thing. I suspect that they have tried to put on a little bit of power muscle-wise. I don’t think that’s going to work, and she’ll have to revert to movement and boxing. And boxing.

"We’re prepared for several different outputs from Cecila – coming straight at me, moving and boxing, a little bit of both. Or something totally new that we haven’t seen yet.

"When you have a kid, it’s easier to say “don’t do these things” as opposed to letting them fall and seeing how they react and keep going. It’s not like I’m teaching you to be tough right now. It just happens."

It’s interesting because you’re saying that full-time athletes miss an essential element of life.

Yeah, even if I didn’t have my day job, I’d still be doing a million other things to make sure that I don’t go flat.

(Featured Photo: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom Boxing)

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc III: The Blood Curse of Tako Shak (5)

Chapter 5: The Part Where I FINALLY Get to Tako Shak

           I spent seven days in that monster reflecting on my sins, though it does depend on your definition of ‘reflecting on sins’. Mine is looking at the sun and playing rock-paper-scissors. I even managed to win every single game I played, though this didn’t exactly make me feel better about being trapped in an oversized sponge. Or leaving F-Bomb for that matter, even if it was the right thing to do. I had to drink the water from Karma Chameleon’s skin, vampire style, and as for food, I just didn’t eat. I wondered if I might be trapped in the thing forever, but as the days went by, I found the space around me was getting tighter and tighter until ‘POP!’ out I burst from the reptile’s back like some alien parasite. I looked at the limp corpse below me. Sun must have dried it out. Speaking of which, if you ever decide to get one of those magic grow animals, remember to keep them out of sunlight, so they don’t start shrinking. Think of them like little spongey vampires.

           So where was I again? Oh right! I was in the woods, feeling all balmy because of the noonday heat (PA can get pretty hot in the summer). Not bad on its’ own, but when combined with an empty stomach (apple rings are one of the least filling foods in the world. Heck, if I had to choose between air and apple rings for a weeklong hike through a desert wasteland, I’d choose the air, no question) made me feel a bit delirious. And when I get delirious, I make bad decisions. This wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d landed near some dime-a-dozen suburb, but the luck of the Tostigs works in mysterious ways, and when I emerged from the forest it was in front of none other than a friendly neighborhood Tako Shak.

           If you’ve never been to planet Earth before (or maybe just some guy dwelling in a bunker in the wake of the inevitable Takopacalypse), Tako Shak is a Mexican themed fast food chain. The largest in the world, actually. Also, the Tako isn’t a play on ‘taco’. It’s short for Takoyaki. For why they did that, your guess is as good as mine.

They say it all started in the sixties (as these things usually do) with some hippie named Marty Dinklemann. Marty had opened a Taco stand, but it wasn’t doing real well, because hippies who make good business decisions hadn’t been invented yet. Anyway, one day Marty decided to snort a can of churro sugar and had this bogus dream where the Devil said he was going to claim his soul unless Dinklemann kept expanding his fast food franchise. Well, Dinklemann was sure it was just a bad trip, but he really didn’t want to take any chances. The next day he got a tan, legally changed his name to Guadalupe ‘Loopy’ Sanchez and made fast food history. At the time I walked right through those automatic sliding doors, there were over a billion Tako Shak’s worldwide, five of which sit right in the Arctic Circle. As for Sanchez, nobody’s seen him in over thirty years. Word has it his body started rotting, so they put his brain in a nuclear-powered robot underneath their headquarters in Death Valley, Nevada.

           But I’m getting ahead of myself. So there I was, sweltering delirious in the summer heat to the point I might as well have been drunk when I swaggered in, hoping I could at least use the bathroom, to which the greasy faced creep manning the register pointed to some sign telling me yesterday a new policy had been enacted, so only staff and customers could take the old wiz. Wouldn’t have been a problem, except I didn’t have any money on me. In fact, I had less than no money on me, seeing as I was in debt from those apple rings. You know you’re in financial straits when you can’t afford a churro that, if I was doing the math right, cost a whopping negative five cents!

For a moment I thought of bartering off my tommy gun, but that thing was just too awesome to part with.

           However, there was something I could afford, something that, despite being delirious from heat, I somehow remembered. You see, Tako Shak is a fast food chain, and like any fast food chain worth its’ salt packets, it had a secret menu. I first heard rumors about it back in second grade, when my friend Mayes and I watched the legendary B-Movie ‘Nature Trail to Hell Part 9: Shak of Darkness’. In it, there’s a scene where the characters talk about what they want to order from Tako Shak, unaware that the fry cook is actually a serial killer who baked their friends into tako meat (which was somehow still more appetizing than the real deal). As we were watching, we noticed there was this two second clip where the audio had been weirdly distorted. After that, we spent hours on the internet, desperately trying to find out why. (Okay, so maybe half that time was wasted playing LEGO Racing. Sue me.) We finally hit a breakthrough when we accidentally hacked into an 18 years or older chatroom, where this guy said that apparently the edited part revealed a clue to discovering the Shak’s secret menu. A couple more hours, Mayes discovered said secret menu involved watching the employee training video. Several phone calls, secret messages, decimated evidence, one FBI investigation, and several bouts of ‘pretty pretty please’ later, me and my friend Mayes finally got a video tape. THE video tape. (think of it as a black, overweight DVD. Who is also a rectangle.) After fiddling around with the tape a bit, we saw none other than Sanchez’s brain himself list off the menu, most of which had too many vitamins and minerals and not enough Silly Cheez for Mayes and I to ever buy.

But there was one thing on that menu, one I still remembered that cost something I didn’t exactly have on my person. In fact, you could say it was my person.

I looked into the pale face, the dark, sunken eyes, the sickle fangs that, had I been more aware, would have betrayed the cashier as a hippie. Instead, I raised a finger.

“One Blood Curse, please.”

The cashier looked at me like I’d just asked him for the square root of gilbitydop (27, if you’re curious), then he went to the back of the store.

“Hey Boss! Do we carry anything called a ‘Blood Curse’?”

A few minutes later, he emerged from the back with a piece of paper and a plastic knife.

“Well, little guy, it’s you’re lucky day. It seems like we do have the droid you’re looking for! Just sign here please.”

In one swift motion he nicked my finger with the knife. Barely thinking, I signed the contract with my own blood. Tako Shak officially owned my soul.

In the back, I could hear maniacal laughter as lightning flashed outside, despite it having been totally cloudless just a few seconds earlier. Only then did it dawn on me just how stupid what I did was. In one final, twisted joke, just as I tried to dash out, to back out of the worst mistake I’d ever made, a black tentacle emerged from behind the register, dragging me to my DOOM.

[im-just-a-pixel]

After waking up in her capsule at the Hideout, careful to not disturb the others, Pixel heads back to her house to change and grab a fresh set of clothes for later. The quiet house has become more of a storage space than a living space recently, given that she hasn’t slept there since Summer had the new living area built. She enjoys being there, but all of her stuff is here still, so as tempting as it would be to just stay in the Arena and Hideout, she can’t.

Restocking anything from her bag that she may have used, like snacks, first-aid supplies -she likes to be prepared-, and the pads of sticky notes she makes things out of when bored, she heads to school. 

It’s pretty mediocre, even for a public school. Most of the students don’t care about much other than their social standings, and the teachers don’t seem to pay attention to what happens outside of the classroom, as long as their time isn’t wasted inside of it. Luckily, Pixel is the kind of student that seems to be perpetually in the background, either avoided or forgotten. Fortunately, she hasn’t been called on that she can remember, though her memory is spotty at best, but it makes for easy classes. On the other side of things, she doesn’t have any friends. Again, people tend to avoid her. Usually, anyways.

The first couple of classes pass uneventfully, math, then history, then science. Her fourth period class is English across the building, they’re working on some reading or another that she’s already managed to get through about three times, so she takes her time getting there. Her mind’s off in another dimension, occupied as she wanders the halls. It doesn’t pay attention to the usual gossip in the halls about whatever hot guy or girl everyone’s pining over, or the usual sounds of the creaking building over head. It’s also not there to tell her when she’s about to run straight into a group in the middle of a very snippy conversation.

“Hey, watch it!” One of the guys snapped.

“Sorry…” she mumbled, moving her way around the group towards her class. She makes it a few steps before a hand grabs her shoulder.

“Hey, aren’t you the Sanchez freak?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she dismisses. She shrugs her shoulder away from his grasp and continues walking. The hand grabs at her again, yanking her around to face him. The other two haven’t moved, another guy and a girl, watching from a few steps behind. 

“I think you are… that old man used to pull you outta class after that Smith kid left, right? What was that all about, huh? You used to be super creepy, what happened?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she speaks curtly and pulls away again. This guy is starting to give her a headache. “Leave me alone.” She heads into the restrooms, setting her bag down to pull out the pill bottle she keeps on her. The first one was emptied a few days earlier, and she’s only used a couple from the second. She pulls out a bottle of water from her bag, between the headache and her otherwise distracted state, she doesn’t notice the door open. 

The pill bottle’s gone before she can do anything.

“What’s this for?” The girl from the earlier group stood behind Pixel, inspecting the bottle.

“I need that, give it back!” There’s an unintentional whine in her voice as she grabs for it, the taller girl holding it easily out of her reach.

“Why should I?” The obvious sneer on her face makes it hard to treat the situation rationally.

“I already said, I need it.” She’s a bit more stern this time.

“Well maybe I need it more, huh? What even is this anyw-” Pixel managed to grab onto her arm and yank it almost close enough to reach the bottle. The girl loses balance and they both go careening backwards into the wall with a thud, pills flying out of the open bottle. Pixel hits her head off of one of the stall doors, wincing from the impact before noticing what just happened.

She scrambles, dazed, to pick them up, a good many of them having already fallen into the drain in the floor. Her heart drops in her chest, and she doesn’t notice the slow drip of warmth down the back of her neck.

The girl does though. She stands up quickly, “Look man, I’m sorry about that, but it was just a joke, y’know? For laughs,” she sounds insincere, apologizing to avoid any consequences.

The air is tense and unpleasant, Pixel’s kneeling on the ground, frozen.

She mumbles something beneath her breath.

“W-what?” The girl takes a small step away.

“I said, leave me alone.” The words’ effect seems to pour off of her in sharp waves, and the larger girl flees, leaving Pixel alone on the bathroom floor.

The air quickly collapses as she gathers up whatever pills that she can salvage. Half a bottle. She lost half a freaking bottle. 

Dragging her stuff up off of the ground, she wipes away the angry tears that threaten to spill and pulls a small spherical device out of the very bottom of her bag. She throws it to the ground and it breaks open, a portal appearing above it, and steps through into her house. She looks over at the digital clock, which reads 11:42am. Her emotions kind of just... turn off for a bit. She feels distant.

She decides she’s done with school for today.

[heyscience]

Ok so I had a horrific dream the other night and I need to talk about it before I explode. I was hanging out with Rick Sanchez (a la Rick and Morty) and we travelled to a remote island where it was rumoured that giants had become trapped and had started eating each other and anything else that appeared on the island. Our job was to go there and repair the giants' space ship so they could leave the island. Anyway so we show up and I'm fucking terrified cos I'm imagining we're going to be greeted by a horde of raging bloodthirsty giants rabid with the taste of their own flesh. Instead we find one lone survivor sitting on a rock overlooking the beach and staring out to sea. The ship he needs to get off the island is off to the side, kind of tilted dejectedly. Rick heads straight to the ship and starts repairing it and I go talk to the giant. It's pretty awkward because I don't know what to talk about and this guy has been eating his fellow giants and could very likely just pick me up and nom on us as well. So once we got past the initial pleasantries (hi what's your name blah blah) I was casting around for anything that would serve as a topic of conversation. I found a pretty blue gem at the giant's feet. It was smooth and about the size of my torso, but to the giant it was little more than a pebble. I was like 'hey look this is pretty, isn't it amazing that a pretty blue gem like this ended up washed up on this beach!' The giant looked down at the pebble. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully and he took it from my hands. He flipped the gem over with his fingers a few times and let out a long sigh. 'Why did you do it?' He muttered quietly, though for me it was more like the low rumbling of an approaching storm. 'You didn't have to-' He caught me staring. He encased the gem in his fist. 'This belonged to a friend of mine,' he said. 'He...he told us we should hang onto hope. He was so stupidly optimistic in the beginning. But then Martha died from drinking too much of the salt water. He said...he said why let it go to waste...' The giant's voice shook a little. I tried to sneak in some casual looks around; I needed an escape route because I could tell where this story was headed. 'The madness began to take hold. Was it madness? Who can tell. He was killed. His whole family were slaughtered, his wife, his little girl...I ate them. Why let it go to waste?' The giant sobbed and clutched the gem to his chest. 'They're all gone now, swallowed up by insanity and feeding on the corpses. I survived, only because I outlived them, and now I'm the only one left.' I didn't know what to do. There's a giant cannibalistic, well, giant towering above me who for all I know might squish me just because. 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,' I sputtered out pathetically. Then Rick shows up and in his characteristically nonchalant fashion goes 'wow well wasn't that a great lesson in the virtues of patience and the importance of learning how to dial up your goddamn distress signal. Well done, you do your species credit, it's a wonder any of you are left.' The giant, understandably, fixed us with a murderous glare. I appreciated that he seemed to be making a great deal of effort to keep his voice steady with the next thing he had to say. 'I would appreciate it if you left me alone with this pebble for a while,' I took it that was my queue to bow out. 'Sir, if you could kindly continue your work on my ship and also never speak to me again that would be excellent,' that was for Rick who thankfully just grunted, took a swig from his hip flask and went back to work. I skipped off down the beach, looking back for just a moment at the giant. He had silent tears rolling the length of his face. I found my own cosy spot on a rock, stared out to sea, and hoped to gawd that Rick would be done with the space ship soon so we could scoot before a grieving giant chewed us up for spite. Though honestly? I wouldn't blame him.

[siodymph]

Stanchez Appreciation Day 1

Finally! Two Days late but here’s my first fic for Sanchez week, Heist! (I gotta be honest I’m not the happiest with this one, but hopefully things go better throughout the week!)

You can read the story under the cut or over on my AO3 Enjoy!

About a week ago the two had made a small pit-stop back on earth and knowing Stan’s luck they ran into one of his old “friends and flames”. At the time Stan had only known know the other as a fellow grifter but it seemed while apart the scum had clawed his way up the food chain and was now the ringleader of a gang. And because the universe seemed to hate him so much, Stan’s old flame was still holding an impressively large grudge against him. So after being held at gun point and humiliated Stan and Rick lost everything, money, over twenty fake ID’s, they even nabbed his bronze knuckles, and worst of all they’d taken the portal gun. They’re only way out of this shitty town and dimension.

Rick hadn’t wasted a second after that. He wasn’t afraid of the idiot would figure out his portal gun, but it didn’t make him less royally pissed his invention had been nabbed in the first place. No way in hell anybody messed with his boyfriend, and definitely nobody ever got away with stealing Rick Sanchez’s crap. They were goin’ on a heist.

They tracked down Stan’s former Flame’s base of operations to a few warehouses down by the bay. The decrepit seedy kind that reminded Stan of those old mystery movies. Those these ones were in really poor shape, like they could fall apart at any moment. One of them acted as the business area for meetings, deals and intimidations, another acted as a sort of resident’s hall for the Flame’s men and a prison for anyone who owed him a debt. And the third warehouse was being used as… an actual, normal, goddamn warehouse. Stan was shocked, no one ever seemed to use warehouses to actually store their stuff.

But once they knew where their stuff was they made their gear, some of which was made from literal garbage. Stan had no idea how but regardless he both admired and feared Rick’s mad skill. Then once it got dark, the two put on their blackest clothes and made their way down to the bay to get back what was rightfully theirs.

There was a lot of loud commotion coming from the business warehouse at the far-end of the pier. Looks like Stan’s flame was holding a party. This left the resident and warehouse warehouses with less people milling about which worked perfectly in their favor.

Finding a pocket of time in between patrolling guards, the two crept towards the third warehouse. Rick fired off a grappling hook made from a rusty old harpoon and some modified tin cans and after their pair scaled the warehouse building, scrambled into a window on the third story, and they were in.

Things had been going ok. They’d made it inside undetected, didn’t have any run-ins as they made their way through the warehouse. In fact it was pretty much empty inside the warehouse, warehouse. Really quiet.

Stan realized he and Rick should have noticed right then it had been too quiet, but he hadn’t. He’d just been so excited that the heist was going well and when Rick’s portal gun was finally in sight he could have cared less about the suspiciously empty hallways. They were so close to finally having their ticket back out of this dump. They were so close to finally being free.

They crept through the warehouse till they finally found the right storage room and there sitting on top of a stack of crates innocently sat Rick’s gun. Only a matter of feet away from them. And as Stan and Rick began to realize it had been placed a little too perfectly, like it had been put on display, all hell broke loose.

Men poured into the warehouse from every door firearms at hand. Several red lights started dotting their shirts and when Stan looked up he saw snipers. God damn, this guy really went all out.

A mocking slow clap came from the third story and Stan’s old flame finally appeared. Sounding like a complete asshole as he started monologuing. “Wow! I must say Stan, you never cease to amaze! First I thought you died in the desert, then years later here you are back from the dead. Very impressive.”

“God, how-how the hell did you date this guy?” Rick hissed in his ear as the old Flame kept going, probably saying something stupid about how they’d failed.

“He was a lot cuter when we were young ok? Less of a discount bond villain.” Stan whispered back.

Both of them had stopped paying attention to the guy but their attention quickly went back to the guy when he picked up their portal gun.

“And all of this trouble, all this fuss over this? What, what the heck am I even holding?”

He waved it around, struggling to pull the trigger and frowning when it did nothing. Rick had personally never been happier about forgetting to charge his gun ahead of time.

Stan stepped forwards, ignoring the eight guns cocking and aiming at his chest. “It’s none of your business! It ain’t worth shit so why don’t you just hand that back over before you hurt yourself… you.”

“If it’s not worth anything, why bother coming back to- wait,” The monologuing tone immediately fell from his face and he started at Stan, deadpan. “You don’t remember my name, do you?”

“I do! It’s uhhhhhhh…” Stan started snapping his fingers as he tried to get the name.

Stan’s old partner huffed indignantly. “I can’t believe you! I can’ believe you forgot my name! We were together for over a year you ass!”

“Nice.” Rick commented dryly.

“Shut up! No, I got it! It’s right on the tip of my tongue uh- Jim? No, no definitely not him, he had a mustache. Uhhhh-“

“I double-crossed you! I left you for dead out in the middle of the wilderness! I could of killed you!” The now furious old flame shouted.

“Well you weren’t the last.” Rick said shrugging. Honestly crap like this seemed to only happen to him and Stan. “Cute stuff like betrayal and near-death exp-experiences kinda loose that spark after the millionth time, ya’know?”

Stan was still wracking his brain for a name as the tension in the room passed the point between deathly to awkward. “Uhhh I’m pretty sure it started with a “T” right? T- Tre- Trevor? No uhhh Tray? Yeah! You’re Tray!”

“Finally!” Tray said glaring daggers at the duo. “Took you long enough!”

Remembering his name, Stan began layering on what he passed as charm, slicked back his mullet and sauntered his way over to Tray. “I’d get there eventually. So Tray how about you be a pal and give us back our stuff? Just us old flames, old buddies, Huh?”

“No way! You two wouldn’t of wasted your time coming back here if this was just junk so this is obviously worth something to somebody!” Tray yelled smacking away his hand.

“No it’s just a little memento, it has emotional value!” Stan tried fibbing but Tray was having none of it.

“One way or another I’ll figure out what this hunk of junk can do, with or without your help. So if I were you I’d really think about trying to be more useful to me. Now get these sack of human garbage out of my face! Throw’em in the pound!”

Tray’s men went to work cuffing Stan and Rick from behind and dragging them out of the warehouse. And they watched helplessly as the portal gun they had been so close to taking back was stuffed away into Tray’s inner coat pocket.

Just as they were taken out of the warehouse Tray signaled his men to stop one last time. “And Stan, one last thing to think about? No matter what I’ll be making sure you remember my name for a long, long time…”

“Oh come on, we haven’t talked in years! How was I supposed to know we’d ever meet again?” Stan shouted as they were pushed out of the warehouse and into the cold night air, towards whatever “the pound” was.

~~~

All in all, “the pound” wasn’t the worst prison Rick and Stan had ever landed themselves in. They were given room to move, walk around, one of the guard gave them water bottles. Still, it was defiantly a pace Stan could do without ever seeing again for the rest of his life. “The Pound” was a fitting name, instead of prison bars every cell was caged off with wire fencing. Their hands were still cuffed but while now they were in front of them, they were also attached to a chain that went out of the cell past Stan’s line of vision. And at the end of the hall there were several cages filled with dogs just to let the whole “pound” gimmick sink in.

It kinda reminded Stan of the time they had both pissed of a wack-job and they’d been locked together in a tiny dog cage. Or the time he’d messed with a mob and they’d left him in a room with a whole back of greyhounds.

Stan paced about the small cell, lost in thought if not for the constant jingling of the chains on his cuffs. And Rick sat crisscrossed on the one bench silently observing their surroundings. Both of them brewing up a plan of escape.

“Door’s flimsy enough. Could bend it in half with one hand.” Stan mumbled under his breath quiet enough so the passing guards wouldn’t hear.

“Still have to deal with the chains Lee, they’re the durable stuff. And we gotta somehow get them off us or the ground and fish them through the door.” Rick mumbled back. He looked down the hall, careful not to make eye-contact with the guards though he was analyzing every other part of them from their clothes to size of their steps. And he scanned the back of the hall frowning. “You think they’d use the dogs?”

“Eh, I dunno. Most of them look really young, like puppy young.” The more passing glances he snuck at the caged dogs, the more he noticed they were either adorably young or really old and arthritic. All the real guard dogs must be on their patrols around this time and these guy were for show. “Yeah I don’t think these guys are trained yet. We could take’em.”

“Ok, ok we can work with that.” Rick said. Stan could practically see the gears churning in Ricks head, watching as he looked down at his handcuffs and focused. Then like a lightbulb flashing on, he looked up at Stan smirking.

“Ok… I think I got it Lee, just give me a couple seconds, distract the guards, get them over here and Il-I’ll do my thing.”

“You got it babe!” Stan said nodding before dramatically flagging down the guards. Hopefully this worked…

~~~

Long story short: it did.

While Stan kept the guard’s attention faking a stomach problem Rick had pounced and used the chains outside of the cage to his advantage. And after a bit of scuffling, chains pulled tight enough to cut, further scuffling, thrown punches and finally fishing the stupid cuffs through the cage door they found themselves free. And when the doors at the end of the hall were opened and the dogs charged at them, Stan and Rick easily out ran the old farts and the puppies just followed them around because well they were just little puppies and thought this was all just a game.

By the time they made it back outside the two had four dogs still happily trailing behind them.

“Sooooo,” Stan started, still scratching behind one of the dog’s ears. “What now?”

“Now we get our shit and get out of here!” Rick said.

“But Tray has the portal gun and we’re still by the actual warehouse.”

“Yeah but all our other shit is still in the warehouse.”

Stan paused a moment. “Oh, yeah almost forgot about all that! You don’t think they took the bee gun too?”

“Hope not, for-fUUUUUUghhhhh-orty percent of this plan’s riding on the fact they didn’t.”

“Alright. So clue me in, what exactly is the plan here Rick?” Stan asked, they were getting closer to the warehouse and it looked like this time around they’d have to get in from the first story since their garbage grappling hook was now inside.

“Get our shit back, make our way over to the last warehouse, use the puppies as a distraction, bee gun the shit out of Tray’s goons then bee gun the shit out of Tray, get our portal gun and finally get out of this dump!”

It sounded so easy when you said it like that, just a simple seven step plan. A lot could go wrong which made Stan worried. But then on the other hand Tray didn’t feel like much of a threat, just an annoyance so the stakes didn’t feel all that high to start out.

“Ok, but how exactly do we use puppies as a distraction? These aren’t third-graders we’re dealing with here.”

“Like this.”

They grabbed the dogs and hid behind a dumpster as one of the guards passed by. And when the guard sounded like he was right on the other side of their hiding spot Rick released one of the puppies. It happily trotted out to greet the guard. And they heard his surprise.

“Buttons? How on earth did you get out again?”

Not wasting a second longer Rick leapt out from behind the dumpster and tackled the man. Stan could only watch, it was like one of them nature documentaries where the snake just pounces on something. Silent and surprisingly calculated. He forgot sometimes just how much experience Rick had fighting, and while his skinny frame didn’t show it the guy really knew how to knock the air out of someone.

Stan came out of hiding with the rest of the dogs to see Rick triumphantly grinning and the guard unconscious at his feet. Buttons was still biting at the man’s shoes.

Rick picked back up the puppy, scratching its head. “Good work Buttons!” And he turned to Stan when he saw him nudging the knocked-out guard with his foot. “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. Probably. Let’s get a move on before the next one get here!”

One broken window later the two were back in the warehouse, though the whole time Stan feared a whole mob of angry men would burst out from nowhere again like before. But this time nobody was hiding up in the rafters or behind doors. For now at least nobody suspected they escaped. But it was only a matter of time now before the wreck they’d caused in the “Pound” was discovered. And the guards locked this place down. They had to act fast, but not stupid.

They found their gear in a crate near the center of the warehouse, where the portal gun had been put actually. And along with their stuff they made from garbage they also now had their much more prized possessions and weapons back. Stan kissed each bronze knuckle as he put them back on his fingers. Though he had to sadly put the dogs down so he could sling a backpack full of their clothes and ID’s over his shoulder. Rick beamed as he pulled out his bee gun.

He didn’t get much time to marvel tough before he heard several guards shout outside. Looks like their window in had been discovered.

Poor bastards. He cocked his gun and started for the nearest door. Stan followed suit with the puppies right behind him. This was going to be interesting…

~~~

Two hours later the pair were relaxing in a rundown motel. Stan was out cold, snoring lightly while Rick relaxed next to his side. The puppies were cuddled up all around them. And over on the dresser he could hear the white noise of the portal gun charging up. In a few hours they’d finally be able to leave this dump again.

Rick always wished it could be forever but if he were honest they’d probably come back to earth again in a few months. He had no idea why, neither of them liked it here, they both had their fair share of shitty memories, ruined dreams and messed-up pasts thanks to this ball of dirt. And there were hundreds of other place Rick knew were more fun, and they were both actually welcomed. So why the hell did they always come back? There was nothing for them here. It was like they had this connection to Earth that made them always come back to check in on things. Rick blamed it on dumb human instincts evolved to ensure species stayed genetically diverse. Yeah, that sounded about right. It wasn’t like either of them ever missed this dump.

As Rick thought this over Stan’s snores teetered off until he was mumbling half-awake. Rolling over he faced Rick and tried touch his face but his aim was off and he ended up putting his hand on his shoulder instead.

“Mornin’ babe.” He murmured, sleep heavy in his voice. “How’s the gun charging, we ready to go?”

Rick couldn’t help but laugh a little. Between his barely awake state, and all the puppies still sleeping on him Rick doubted anything short of a forklift could get Stan out of bed now.

“Nah, we still got a couple hours.” Rick said softly. Just a few more hours, then they could finally put Earth behind them again.

As much as he hated it, he had to admit, of all their trips back to their home dimension, this one had to be the most interesting so far. It’d been a while since he and Stan got back to their roots with a good old-fashioned heist. A heist, and imprisonment, a prison escape. They even got free dogs out of it! Yeah this trip to earth hadn’t been that bad, it’d actually been fun. Even that asshole Tray hadn’t been that bad. Thinking about the guy though suddenly reminded Rick of something he’d wanted to ask Stan earlier.

“Hey, hey Lee!” He nudged at Stan until he woke back up and looked at him through squinted eyes. “So, you’ll remember my name right? Ya’know, if we ever split?”

“Course I would, how could I forget a guy like you, Robby?” Stan grunted before rolling over and going back to sleep.

Rick laughed and hit his side as Stan got comfortable and slipped back to sleep. “Ha! Good one Lee… You were joking right?”

[kidsviral-blog]

What Happens When A Truck Carrying Radioactive Material Gets Robbed In Mexico?

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/what-happens-when-a-truck-carrying-radioactive-material-gets-robbed-in-mexico/

What Happens When A Truck Carrying Radioactive Material Gets Robbed In Mexico?

Last December, a truck containing lethal radioactive cobalt-60 was stolen outside Mexico City, briefly causing an international panic. Then, almost immediately, the story quietly disappeared — but the questions surrounding it didn’t.

On the morning of Dec. 3, 2013, Francisco Sanchez, a farmer on his way to work in Hueypoxtla, a rural town near Mexico City, found a pile of old machine parts strewn in the field behind his house. One piece, which resembled a water pump or a large diving bell, was so big and heavy he couldn’t move it. There was also a metal box with a scratched-away label that he couldn’t read, and a cylinder about 3 feet long, which Sanchez thought he could use to split firewood.

The other farmers hadn’t yet arrived, so he grabbed the cylinder with both hands and heaved it over his shoulder, carrying it a few yards over to the corn husks that had been piled in the field to dry. He was sure no one would find it in there.

Sanchez hadn’t yet heard the news, but these were parts of a radiation therapy device that Mexico’s Social Security Institute was replacing throughout state hospitals, stolen from a truck the day before. Even though the machine was considered obsolete as a medical device, it contained 3,000 curies of cobalt-60, a Category 1 (the most dangerous classification) synthetic radioactive isotope — more than enough to kill anyone exposed to it.

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The Pemex in Tepojaco where the robbery occurred. Photo by Mary Cuddehe for BuzzFeed

The hijacking had taken place 12 miles away in Tepojaco, a town popular with truckers traveling in and out of Mexico City. The driver was en route from a public hospital in Tijuana to a nearby disposal site for hazardous waste and had pulled off the highway to sleep in an unlit spot across from a Pemex gas station. At around 1 a.m., he heard a tap on the window and saw two men with guns standing outside. They forced their way into the cab and bound the driver’s hands.

The driver’s partner was in the back and heard the noise of the driver being tied up. He managed to slip away without notice. Security footage revealed little else; the robbery had taken place in the middle of the night. Armando Ramos, a federal agent who responded to the scene, told me that the truck, a white 2007 Volvo, could be made out pulling into a spot directly behind another truck, which obscured it from view. Soon the truck pulled away; the culprits were never seen. There was also no way to guess where the truck had gone.

The hazardous materials were being transported without security, and though the truck was, according to some early reports, outfitted with GPS, it hadn’t been turned on — which looked suspect. Initially, said Ramos, “we assumed the driver had something to do with it.” According to one study, 10,000 highway cargo thefts occurred per year between 2006 and 2010, a rate of 27 per day, and the highest concentration is in the towns encircling Mexico City — and autorobo, when companies are in on the robberies to take a cut as well as collect insurance, is also commonplace.

That theory was ruled out against the more mundane reality that the hijackers didn’t know what they’d taken. Instead, the thieves had followed a standard script: Rather than hurting the driver, they simply let him out down the road, alive, and continued on, another night’s work. They would have known that no one was watching them and believed they would not be caught. Victims of crimes often don’t bother reporting them to police, who aren’t likely to solve them, and who may have a stake themselves. According to Amnesty International, complaints of civil rights violations at the hands of authorities have increased 600% between 2003 and 2013.

But this robbery broke through, ascending to an increasingly rare category in Mexico: that of a notorious, headline-making crime. The hijackers who thought they were pulling off another score instead had pulled off the most brazen theft of radioactive materials in memory. Twenty-four hours later, the world knew what they’d done.

Major U.S. networks devoted coverage to the missing “ingredients for a radioactive dirty bomb,” in the words of one headline. The White House said it was “closely monitoring” the situation. Juan Eibenschutz, the director of Mexico’s National Commission for Nuclear Safety and Safeguards, who’d flown straight home from Paris to handle the crisis, made a public plea: “If anyone finds a big chunk of metal with radiation symbols all over it they should notify us immediately.”

In the world of nuclear safety, stories of mishaps and misidentification abound. The most infamous case involves a Brazilian man who was so mesmerized by the cesium-137 capsule that turned up in his junkyard that he opened it up and passed out the contents to neighbors, who rubbed it on their skin. Even in Mexico this had happened before: A source of cobalt-60 was melted into rebar that became dining table legs bound for the U.S. market; they weren’t discovered until a delivery truck took a wrong turn in the vicinity of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and triggered alarms.

But this was a theft, not an accident, perpetrated in the midst of a vast economy thriving on the traffic of illicit, dangerous things. What if the cobalt-60 was removed from its protective encasement, sold, and harnessed for a dirty bomb — an apocalyptic twist straight out of Dr. Strangelove? Mexican officials privately believed that a terrorist plot was as unlikely as the Doomsday Machine. But as long as the cobalt-60 was missing, the possibility couldn’t be dismissed. The International Atomic Energy Agency deemed the teletherapy machine “extremely dangerous.” Eibenschutz added, “It’s almost absolutely certain that whoever removed this material by hand is either dead or about to die.”

And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared as the latest crisis on the evening news, the cobalt-60 was safely recovered and the story vanished. A year — and zero known radiation-related fatalities — later, it’s still not clear who was behind the theft. And whether that’s a cause for relief or a cause for greater worry is up for debate.

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Illustration by Adam Setala for BuzzFeed

Removed from the country, it’s easy to think of Mexico as suffering from a single form of cartel-related bloodshed. But up close, a more insidious form of violence has crept in. Criminal organizations once devoted to trafficking drugs have diversified widely: A single recent operation against La Familia Michoacana, a militant group with a mythically devout ethos, revealed that the group had sold 1.1 million tons of illegally extracted iron ore in China for $42 million. In 2012, Mexico estimated that in lost wages, foreign investments, and public health bills, crime at large had siphoned $16.5 billion, or 1.3%, from the GDP. Overall killings are down, but in a recent self-reported survey, kidnapping and extortion were up. And everyday crimes are the ones that pull at the social fabric, making life and labor miserable. Perhaps most instructive of all: The perception of violence has risen. More Mexicans feel less safe.

President Enrique Peña Nieto recently attempted to address the problem by unveiling a special economic crimes task force composed of fresh-faced officers who, as a selling point, had never before worked for the police. Though, as one analyst told the Associated Press in a report about the new gendarmerie, “We have been creating new police forces for decades — armored police, ‘incorruptible, super-trained police.’” But to little effect.

In the aftermath of the December hijacking, little focus went to the thieves or the farmers who found the cobalt. The five men arrested allegedly belonged to a truck theft gang centered in Zumpango, a commuter town on the Mexico state–Hidalgo border, booked within days of the robbery. Local police had rounded up the suspects and handed them over to federal agents. The Mexican government often trumpets its marquee arrests, but the attorney general’s office couldn’t even dig up a press release when I called. And so, along with the culprits, the other issues surrounding the hijacking that had roused public attention — the fact that government contractors were transporting lethal radioactive waste through gang-rife territory without security or even GPS — were soon forgotten. People were understandably less interested in some common thieves than the specter of a dirty bomb. There’d been no media parades showcasing the suspects, no presidential tweets, only a quiet booking. The men were shipped off to a federal prison in Tamaulipas to await judgment.

Five months after the hijacking, I flew to Mexico City. I hired a driver, Marco Callejas, to get around the towns outside the capital, and he picked me up in front of a Starbucks on a sunny morning last May. Marco wore a sporty uniform of track pants, sneakers, and wraparound sunglasses like the kind off-duty police officers wear. His car was an old maroon Tsuru, Mexico’s ubiquitous Nissan Sentra. The taxi company had randomly assigned him, so when Marco said he’d grown up near Pachuca, the capital of Hidalgo state, which forms a triangle with Tepojaco, where the cobalt-60 was stolen, and the cornfield in Hueypoxtla where it was found, it felt comforting, like good luck. Marco patted the front seat, the only one besides his with a belt. “Come on up!” he said. I climbed in.

As Marco and I drove out of Mexico City, I asked if he remembered the hijacking. “Gosh, it would be so easy to cross something like that over the border.” Marco shook his head. “It’s a good thing the Mexicans and the Arabs aren’t friends!”

We took a road veering off the highway and drove for a long time on dirt roads, passing through small towns. The countryside looked like an old Western stage setting with cacti and mountains in the distance, except for the billboards advertising a hotline for kidnapping victims and the highway sign riddled with bullet holes. None of the addresses we plugged into the GPS seemed to work. So we stopped a man on a horse for directions.

In Zumpango, we pulled up to the scrapyard belonging to one of the alleged thieves, Luis Angel Torres. His father, also named Luis, was standing in front talking to a customer with his arms crossed over a black T-shirt that read “The Queen of Convenience Stores Works Here.”

He led us through the scrapyard’s receiving garage, which opened up to a large sorting area where workers were crushing metal into perfectly compressed squares. According to the family, Luis Angel was accused of, among other things, dismantling the stolen truck, crushing it to pieces, and selling it off. (Luis Angel is facing charges relating to organized crime and abandonment of radioactive materials, according to the family’s attorney; repeated requests for information about the hijacking from state and federal officials were denied or ignored.) The office was painted bright lavender and had a large shrine to Jesus.

Torres made himself comfortable. He put his feet up on the desk, over a collage of family photos overlaid with plastic. Torres said he was a family man. Scrap metal was all his boy had ever known, he said.

Luis Angel, who was 25 at the time of his arrest, was the youngest of Torres’ five children, a father of three, and the fourth generation to work in chatarro, a business his great grandfather had started out of a pushcart. Now the Torres empire extended to four or five scrapyards. Three months before his arrest, Luis Angel had opened his own.

The way Torres told the story, on the afternoon following the hijacking, Miguel, a childhood friend of Luis Angel, showed up at Luis Angel’s new shop with a large wooden crate for sale. “There was nothing on the outside marking it,” Torres said. The next day, Luis Angel’s 16-year-old part-time employee Andres opened the crate and began to unpack the contents. Dust poured out of the box, and he peered inside, noticing a small radiation symbol. Luis Angel and Andres suddenly felt a wave of nausea — an early sign of radiation poisoning — and rushed to a local clinic.

As Torres was talking, his daughter wandered into the room. She was also dressed in black. She waved a hand over her soiled shirt and said something about “getting our hands dirty.”

Torres continued. Returning from the clinic that night, Luis Angel was frightened. News of the missing materials was making rounds on the radio and on the evening news, and he would have known what he’d purchased by then. He and Andres loaded up an old Dodge truck and headed out of town. After a while on the dark road, skirting the main highways, the field in Hueypoxtla must have seemed desolate enough.

Dumping the material was Luis Angel’s mistake, Torres said, not stealing it. “We say we’re innocent. But who’s going to listen to us?”

The following afternoon two men arrived at Andres’ house claiming to have been sent from the public health administration. Upstairs they found Andres, Luis Angel, and a cousin of Luis Angel. In fact they were ministerial police. They had received a tip from the clinic about two men exhibiting signs of radiation poisoning. All three were taken into custody.

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“This whole story about a dirty bomb is a bunch of fantasies.”

Back in Mexico City, I had gone to see Juan Eibenschutz at his office in the center of the city. The building sat on a quiet leafy street not too far from tony Reforma Avenue, where the federal police work in gleaming towers. Evidently nuclear safety wasn’t receiving the same funding as organized crime was, but Eibenschutz seemed as unconcerned with status as propriety. “What really scares people, in particular the authorities” — he emphasized the word — “is the psychological damage a terrorist could inflict if he says, ‘I’ve got a source and I’m gonna activate it and everyone’s gonna die.’”

“But wasn’t it considered a Category 1 source? And isn’t that considered highly dangerous?” I asked.

He smiled at me, the way that an adult smiles at a child. “It’s highly dangerous. That’s what I’m telling you! If you have this thing at, say, one foot during half an hour, you’re dead.” But, he said, the material wasn’t an ideal choice for a bomb. “You pack a bomb with dynamite or conventional explosive, surround it with highly radioactive material and explode it. … Most of the material gets dispersed.” He went on: If anyone wanted to use the cobalt, they’d have to extract it safely first, and the pellets had been properly sealed.

But what if they did?

“Well,” Eibenschutz chuckled, “I don’t have the mentality of a terrorist.”

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Illustration by Adam Setala for BuzzFeed

After a couple of days in the car together, Marco had started to feel less like a hired driver than a co-conspirator. He talked about the way this gang or that gang operated, and pointed out landmarks. “There used to be a lot of assaults here. Truckers would pull onto these dirt roads, and a lot of women were raped,” he said one afternoon as we passed an empty street. He seemed to enjoy being an investigator. He asked a lot of questions, and offered theories of his own. It occurred to me that Marco might have worked in law enforcement. But when I asked, he said, “No way. Mexican cops are symbols of corruption and mediocrity.”

Francisco Sanchez lived outside Hueypoxtla on communal farming land. When we pulled into his driveway, he was outside in the shade of a giant flowering prickly pear cactus, the plant that jutted out of the earth everywhere. Sanchez’s house, like all the houses there, was a hodgepodge of brick, stone, mud, and corrugated tin. The indoor space blended into the outdoors. Hueypoxtla is a windy, dry place, but it’s never too cold, and the climate is good for growing crops like barley and alfalfa. Marco pointed out that the maguey plant grows wild there. The maguey is the plant used to make pulque, the ancient Aztec spirit, which, also according to Marco, the poorest residents of the region sometimes feed to their children when there’s nothing else to eat.

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Photo by Mary Cuddehe for BuzzFeed

That afternoon, Sanchez pointed to his perch under the prickly pears and disappeared into the house, re-emerging with the boxes of the medications he has had to take since he got sick and pictures of his radiation burns that his wife, Yolanda, who was washing dishes in their outdoor sink, had snapped in the hospital. Sanchez had been hospitalized for six weeks with radiation poisoning and still wasn’t able to expose his skin to sunlight for very long. He was only 41 but looked like an old man, sun-weathered.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt and had a large bandage covering his left shoulder and another taped over his hand. Radiation sickness can be fatal, but Sanchez said he’d had on a thick jacket that morning and had only carried the cylinder a few meters. “Look,” he said, then slowly peeled the bandage to reveal skin that was still seared and pink. Normally, he said, he would have been out in the fields preparing for the summer rains, but he hadn’t worked since that morning in December. As we were talking, his 9-month-old son wheeled by on a mobile high chair.

The cornfield was only a couple of kilometers away down the slope of a dusty road, just past the Marie Curie kindergarten. “Crazy about that name, right?” I said, as we passed the school, to silence.

I had noticed empty canals lining the fields, and Sanchez explained that effluent from Mexico City was pumped out there, which the farmers use to irrigate their crops. I imagined the wastewater-fed crops being sold back to the capital and being consumed and then surging back through the pipes to Hueypoxtla like some giant closed-loop digestive tract.

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Photo by Mary Cuddehe for BuzzFeed

We reached the field. Stepping out of the car, Sanchez seemed possessed by his memory. He retraced his steps, circling the place he’d found the cylinder. He had noticed six deep tire ruts that morning, indicating to him that whoever discarded the materials had labored to do so. One of the tracks was still visible, baked into the earth. He straightened his back and swept his arm, motioning to the emptiness. “Why would anyone leave this here?”

After he hid the cylinder, Sanchez had felt ill and experienced what he called “a tremendous vomit,” but he hadn’t made the connection, so he went back to work, and he didn’t tell anyone what he’d found. Throughout the day others had tried to move the parts. The biggest piece, the shield, was too heavy, and night fell with the pieces as Sanchez had found them.

For the first week, Sanchez had been afraid to talk about what was happening to him, even as 100 Marines, federal agents, and local police cordoned off the field and dispatched a robot to retrieve the cobalt. He watched the evening news, clutching his son tightly, and asked Yolanda to rub ointment on his shoulder. Finally he let on to a friend. “I was dying of panic,” he told me. “People ask why I waited so long, but what they don’t understand is that I was totally blocked.”

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A neighbor, Mauro Moya, a truck driver, took a walk to the field with his son and son-in-law and circled the objects like the farmers had done the day before, measuring and weighing them with their eyes. The biggest piece couldn’t be lifted with a wheelbarrow or a tractor. But they estimated that the metal was worth $400. It was enough to cover the family’s expenses for two weeks. Moya hurried back up the hill for his truck. He hooked chains around the shield and dragged it up the road to his property, kicking up a trail of shimmering dust. With the shield safely on his lot, the ecstatic Moya family took turns posing for photos, squatting down beside it, making peace signs, sitting on it, laughing. The celebration didn’t last long. Someone from the community had already called the police.

The Moya family soon began to think of their discovery as a curse. Three weeks later, the son-in-law, Juan Antonio Saldivar was arrested in a separate incident for stealing a cement truck. The attorney his family hired told me that the arrest glared with irregularities, chief among them the fact that it preceded the actual crime by half an hour. Officers rifling through his phone saw the photos of the shield and, in an apparent attempt to bolster their profile of Saldivar as a seasoned hijacker, stated in charging documents that he had been “detained” by authorities “in relation to the cobalt-60 theft.” Authorities questioned his family after the cobalt was recovered at their home but didn’t arrest them. Saldivar has now been in jail for 11 months and is facing a sentence of 16 years for the cement truck theft.

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Photo by Mary Cuddehe for BuzzFeed

Later that day, as we were getting ready to leave Hueypoxtla, Marco pulled up a photograph on his phone of him in a federal police uniform. “I was a federal police officer for 10 years,” he said.

I stared at the image. It was definitely him. He had his back to the camera and was flexing his biceps. “Policia Federal” was emblazoned on his shirt; a pistol was sticking out of his belt.

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“I’ve been suspended,” he said, quietly. “I’m being investigated for corruption.” He began to tell me a story about a friend who was involved with the narcos and had implicated him but it was all a lie, political stuff. But I couldn’t absorb any of it. The realization dawned that I’d hired a stranger who might or might not be a crooked ex-policeman to ferry me around the hijacking epicenter of Mexico in search of bandits with possible connections to organized crime or even terrorists and that I was now stuck alone with him in the country. But I wanted to go back to Zumpango to find Andres. Marco knew how to get there.

I had already gone by the place a couple of times. The story that Torres had told me implicated police officers in a corruption scheme and painted his son as an innocent man. But when I’d asked to see the truck that Luis Angel had used, he said the family had sold it. There was a third employee in the shop with him that day, but he had disappeared. Miguel was also nowhere to be found. Other details didn’t add up. Andres had been released by authorities on account of his age.

At Andres’ house, salsa was blaring and a big red truck was parked inside the gate. A tiny old woman in an apron answered the door. She said no one was home.

Down the street from the house, I had seen four men drinking cans of Modelo under an awning. “The truck was right there,” said one, pointing to a spot down the street, in front of Luis Angel’s shop, the one that had been raided by police. Torres had told me police had taped it off and the family was stuck paying the rent, but it looked open; a couple of cars were parked inside.

“Why was the truck sitting outside?” I asked.

“There were too many trucks in the shop already!” said another. They all laughed and continued dishing about the Torres family. According to them, Luis Angel had a chop shop. One of Luis Angel’s co-defendants, a man Torres had told me was a new acquaintance, in fact worked with him, they said, painting the stolen vehicles.

“I live across the street and sometimes there were so many trucks in there they had to park them outside,” said one of the men.

What about Miguel? I asked.

“There’s only one Miguel in this town,” the man said. “He went to the United States 15 years ago.”

The woman from Andres’ house walked down the street toward us. She passed the group in silence, looking straight ahead.

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Photo by Mary Cuddehe for BuzzFeed

Julio Cesar, the Torres family’s attorney, had an office in a development outside Mexico City. The place had a disorienting bleached-out quality, like a condensed version of the Inland Empire, and his office was in a row house that looked exactly like all the others on his street.

Cesar swung open the door. He was short and round, like an egg. He had on a pink shirt, a pink tie, a blue sweater-vest, and blue slacks — Danny DeVito and Mr. Rogers at the same time. His partner, a pretty blonde with big brown eyes in a brown pantsuit, descended the stairs. Cesar invited me to have a seat on a brown-and-white leather sectional. I stared down at a zebra-print rug and, to my right, a pair of electric guitars upright in stands, at the ready.

I had hoped Cesar would give me a copy of the police report and charging documents. Such things can be tough to come by in Mexico, even after a case is closed. The files would clarify the questions I had about the Torres family’s story and the official versions that police had furnished to local press.

“So,” Cesar began. “Do you know how justice works in Mexico?” My heart sank as he went on. “If the courts find out that you’re interviewing witnesses — believe me, apart from affecting the defense, there’s juridical revenge. You start seeing stuff in the newspapers, on the radio, on TV. It just gets very complicated.”

He stood up. “What this case needs right now is for things to cool down.”

He showed me the door.

Back home, I followed up with him for a while, but the answer was always the same: He needed more time.

Not long after, Marco, who had added me on Facebook, posted the photo he’d shown me in the car of himself in uniform. The comments suggested that Marco’s friends didn’t know he had ever been a police officer. “What clothesline line’d ya steal that uniform from?” read one. “It’s not from a clothesline. It’s rented!”

I thought back to going to a federal police campus in Mexico City, where Marco told me he’d been “noticed” by one of the officers, who observed the particular way he jumped out of a van. A normal person — me — would exit facing forward. But Marco climbed out sideways, a reflex, he explained, from all his years carrying a long firearm. They’d spotted him and knew he was one of them.

Had Marco invented that story? Was he not a police officer accused of corruption? I thought it over for a couple of days. But I decided it was better not to ask him. I didn’t think I would get a straight answer.

On June 8, another source of radioactive material was stolen from a warehouse near Zumpango. This time it was a source that authorities considered less dangerous than the cobalt from the December heist. Police weren’t able to track it, but 10 days later it turned up in a garbage bag by a sewage canal. A security guard who spotted it believed the bag contained a body. Reports said it had sat by the canal untouched for several days, free for anyone to haul away.

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[asessay-blog]

The Caribbean tourism advantage report

以下是由Asessay给大家提供的一篇Report范文，这篇范文主要讲的是金色的海滩、碧蓝的大海在加上植物的多样性便为加勒比地区旅游业的发展提供了天然的发展优势，加勒比地区经济的发展主要是依赖于旅游业的发展，但是旅游业的发展给加勒比地区带来积极作用的同时也带来了一定的负面作用，逐渐成为大众旅游的加勒比地区的旅游业将面临着来自哪些方面的挑战？

The Caribbean includes the over seven thousand islands. As in most developing countries, the Caribbean is recognised as an area heavily dependent on the tourism industry for economic survival ( Manley 1995 & Jessop 2000) . According to the Caribbean Tourism Statistics, in 2002 the area attracted more than 14 million tourists per year. The main attractions are the beautiful sandy beaches, clean sea and a warm climate; "...the Caribbean has more amazing beaches and sun than you can shake a stick at" . By looking at both the negative and positive impacts of the developments in the tourism industry in the Caribbean enables a better understanding of the impact on the local communities. Therefore, is it "Paradise on Earth" as promised by tour operators trying to sell holidays to the Caribbean, or merely an image presented to the tourist "...[the] tourist-consumer appears to buy paradise in the travel agency or airline ticket office..."(Strachan, 2002) .

"The Caribbean is a nature lover's dream, welcoming visitors in search of the wonders of the natural world-creatures plants and landscapes unmatched in diversity and beauty". Is this still the truth? According to Barberia (2003) the area's natural resources attract a large number of tourists, but mass tourism brings environmental damage to the ecosystem, as well as impacting on the economy and it damages the social and cultural environment of the Caribbean islands. The main attraction for visitors are "the 3 S's"/ This means sun, sea, sand. But in modern world, visitors are seeking something more Nowadays , sex tourism is becoming one of the main constitutions that attracts tourist to the destination. Nowadays, tourism to the Caribbean islands has become mass tourism ( Archer & Davies 2007).

As in many developing countries, tourism to the Caribbean offers some advantages to the area, including reducing the level of poverty in the area by providing job opportunities for the local community, generating income which leads to economic growth (Palmer 1993) . However, tourism not only provides direct jobs through accommodation, hospitality, transport, shops and casinos. Tourism also helps support investment in the local infrastructure including; medical centres, new roads, utilities as well as other shopping facilities. It is also a main source of government revenue through the taxing of goods and services (Bryan 2001). The World Tourism Organisation (2001) believes that in 2012 the tourism industry created around 3 million jobs in Caribbean.

On the other hand, the economy in the Caribbean was traditionally dependent on agriculture. The sugar crop industry was the leading industry, followed by banana, coffee, cocoa, rice and citrus. However, in recent times the Caribbean has become heavily dependent on the tourism industry (Steinberg 1978). It has been argued that the locals prefer working in the tourism industry rather than in difficult, low paying, traditional work in fishing or agriculture. An extract from the Pattullo (1996) book describes this scenario "...working in de hotel in de harbour last year, even though man getting paid really bad wage I at least know dat each week I gonna get dollar for pay for food and thing." The young man here is explaining that, for him, there is better work available in the tourism industry. Even though he earns a small amount of money there is greater uncertainty working in agriculture or fishing (Pattullo 1996,p 55). Moreover, it has been suggested that most local people living in poverty look "exotic and different" to wealthy visitors, in many cases visitors treating the locals as slaves. It has been hard for Caribbean people to escape from the feelings of injustice that were instigated by slavery and the experiences of poverty after slavery. Tourism is still being seen as an extension of this system of slavery, with the locals there for the visitor's luxury, amusement and comfort (Bryan 2001). According to this view, locals are there to serve the wealthy clients and are in effect still being treated as slaves. Their tourism industry is largely controlled by white people with the local black population employed in a service capacity for minimal remuneration (Miller 2006, p 39) . The low level of education in the area does not give equal opportunity for the indigenous staff to secure jobs in highly skilled, high paid jobs (Goodwin, 2008) .

Nowadays, some of the visitors come to the Caribbean not only for the "3S's" but also for another "S"; sex tourism. Sex tourism involves the prostitution of men and women and sex trafficking of young people and children. It has been suggested that this has had a damaging effect on the local community (Bryan 2001). Moreover, it has created a negative image of local women - who are not prostitutes, but whose service includes cleaning rooms, washing cloth and sex (Sanchez-Taylor & O'Connell 1998/1999,p 1). Adverts from major tour operators construct an image of the Caribbean that suggests "... a dream Caribbean holiday has it all and more"( http://www.directline-holidays.co.uk) however, the popularity of 'sex tourism' has succeeded in increasing the number of sexually transmitted diseases - such as HIV, and Hepatitis, within the local communities. The number of sexually transmitted diseases is steadily increasing each year , with the current estimate of HIV cases alone believed to be between 500,000 and 700,000. Ironically, sex tourism has put at huge risk, not only the locals and the visitors, but their tourism industry as a whole, which could have a damning impact on the island's major source of revenue. In Jamaica, where the economy is in decline, and with the country increasingly relying on income from tourism, not only for the obvious benefits, but also for the prostitution of men and women who see this as the only way to earn money to survive (UNAIDS ,2001) .

The large volume of tourism in the Caribbean is mostly generated by two areas, all-inclusive and cruise tourism (Duval 2004, p10).The all- inclusive vacation is the easiest way to control guests' experience and their expenditure, Controlling what to eat, drink, entertainment and what to buy, whilst conveniently preventing them from sharing in the culture of the natives living on the islands, and their hardships. Tourists spend most of their money before coming to Caribbean i.e. "The traveller is buying into the resort and its image, not the location".(Henthorne & Miller 2003, p 8) Is this of benefit to the local community? Most resorts are owned by multinational corporations, and so the money usually doesn't remain within the locally economy. The food and beverages are imported and only low paid jobs are provides for locals is benefit community . On the other hand, some of the local natural resources are no longer accessible as well as some areas on which locals have traditionally depended for their livelihood, entertainment and work. Moreover, the community has suffered from water shortages during the dry season partly as a result of water provided to hotels and resorts (Bayer & Lynch 2006,p 8) . When coastal tourism started to grow, extensive damage was done to sand dunes and lagoons resulting in the deaths of various species of animals and fish. Jamaica has the highest number of animal and plant species which are under the threat of disappearance in Caribbean. The Caribbean has become the largest destination for cruise tourism in the world. According to Wood (2004), cruise tourism amounted to only 12 percent of all tourism spending in the Caribbean in 2000. Caribbean communities get the smallest economic benefits from cruise tourism. Governments of some countries in the Caribbean, in order to attract a large number of cruise ships to the port destinations, have been competing to relax the environmental standards. As with all inclusive resorts, the cruise ships are largely owned by foreign companies, exploiting the local work force, and it could be argued, not reinvesting the profits into the local economy. Also, the 'cruise' industry has had a major environmental impact on the coastal waters, and marine life. Ships dump waste into the ocean, destroying coral reef ecosystems (Wood, 2000) scuba drivers and snorkelers are damaging coral reefs through repeated excessive contact, as well as the locals who remove the corals to sell it as tourist souvenirs in a desperate attempt to escape the extreme poverty accentuated by the tourist trade.

结论-Conclusion

In revision of all the negative and positive impacts raised in this essay, I conclude that tourism cannot solely destroy the Caribbean sun, the beaches and water, but ironically, it can drastically reduce and eventually destroy this wonderful habitat, the very thing that brings the tourists to the Caribbean in the first place. Most tourists search out the area for typical reasons: beaches, landscape and climate, they are looking for "a holiday of a lifetime" experience , to visit a real live paradise, without totally comprehending the effects on the local environment.

It could be argued that the image of this paradise was in fact created by tour operators, in an attempt to increase the number of visitors (and their profits!). With the increased availability of cheaper air travel over the last decade or so, there is now a growing demand for people wanting to honeymoon, and even marry in this paradise-like region of the world, a"...blue water paradise, there are abundant islands offering pristine beaches, all types of water activities, green landscapes and awesome sunsets to set that romantic mood for two."

"The tourist/consumer appears to buy paradise in travel agents...,but actually, this traveller has purchased only the promise of "paradise": the collection of ideas, the myth..."( sited on presentation, appendix 1). Each person has a different view of paradise: some look for a few weeks of luxury, to be waited on hand and foot, to experience a different way of life, to escape from the stresses of home. Other visitors associate the Caribbean with sex and/or romance, where the abject poverty present, again allows the 'affluent' to have every whim catered to. However, most tourists have a limited view of these islands: all they see is the airport, the ports, the hotels, the beaches and sights, often never even leaving the hotel complex. This short sighted vision of the region helps attract tourism to the island, giving the perfect holiday experience for them but at the same time damage environments and having a negative impact on life within the local community. The real life and experiences of locals and all their problems are conveniently hidden behind "the hedges" of these all- inclusive resorts.(Henthorne &Miller 2003)

Tourism has a predisposition to be more negative than positive when used as the single or most important, chain for development and when taken out of the hands of the local people who are most impacted. As with most third world destinations, the Caribbean is, at this time experiencing many of the negative side effects of the tourism trade. The paradise that exists in holiday brochures and in visitors' observations of the Caribbean could become a hell for the local community if there is not a suitable reinvestment of tourist cash put back into improving the infrastructure within these idyllic islands . The sustainability in tourism development has to be ensured for the future benefits of the Caribbean, and it's peoples and become a true "paradise on Earth" and not only in image.

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[party-hard-or-die]

Despite crisis and outcry, Maduro favored to win Venezuela vote

CARACAS/BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela’s leftist leader, Nicolas Maduro, looked set to win re-election on Sunday in what looked to be a poorly attended vote condemned by foes as the “coronation” of a dictator and likely to bring new foreign sanctions.

Despite his unpopularity over the OPEC member’s economic meltdown, the 55-year-old former bus driver was benefiting from a boycott by the mainstream opposition, a ban on his two most popular rivals, and state institutions in loyalists’ hands.

The vote could trigger additional sanctions from the United States and more censure from the European Union and Latin America. The Trump administration said it would not recognize the “sham” election and was considering oil sanctions.

Maduro, the self-described “son” of former President Hugo Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent.

Maduro’s main challenger is a former state governor, Henri Falcon, who predicted an upset because of fury among Venezuela’s 30 million people at their increased poverty.

Although some opinion polls have shown Falcon ahead, analysts say his chances are thin, given widespread abstention, the vote-winning power of state handouts and Maduro’s allies on the election board.

In polling stations visited by Reuters reporters, from wealthy east Caracas to the Andean mountains near Colombia, attendance appeared far lower than at the last presidential election in 2013 when there was an 80 percent turnout.

An opposition umbrella movement called the Broad Front, which was boycotting the vote, said on Sunday evening that turnout had been under 30 percent, according to its monitors across the nation, in what it termed an “electoral farce.”

There were lines, however, outside some polling stations in poorer government strongholds, where the majority of voters interviewed said they were backing Maduro.

“I’m hungry and don’t have a job, but I’m sticking to Maduro,” said Carlos Rincones, 49, in the once-thriving industrial city of Valencia, accusing right-wing business owners of purposefully hiding food and hiking prices.

The government has set up so-called red point zones near polling stations so Venezuelans can scan their state-issued “fatherland cards” used to receive benefits including food boxes and money transfers. Maduro has promised a “prize” to those who do so. Critics say that is a way of scaring impoverished Venezuelans into supporting his government.

Falcon’s team said it received about 900 complaints about the “red points.” Several state workers also told Reuters they were pressured to vote, while pro-government activists hovered around some polling stations, saying they were assisting voters.

Further hurting Falcon’s chances by splitting the anti-Maduro vote was a third candidate, evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci, who has picked up a large following, partly because of free soup handouts.

FIVE-YEAR RECESSION

Many Venezuelans are disillusioned and angry over the election: They criticize Maduro for economic hardships and the opposition for its dysfunctional splits.

Reeling from a fifth year of recession, falling oil production and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is seeing growing levels of malnutrition and hyperinflation, and mass emigration.

A woman stands by a mural in support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Adriana Loureiro

“I think this constant aggression from the government of the Ku Klux Klan is losing credibility,” Maduro said on Sunday, blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for Venezuela’s mess.

Venezuelan migrants staged small anti-Maduro protests in cities from Madrid to Miami. In the highland city of San Cristobal near Colombia, three cloth dolls representing widely loathed officials – Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello and Vice President Tareck El Aissami – were hung from a footbridge.

But streets were calm, with children playing soccer on one road in San Cristobal blocked off at past elections to accommodate long voter lines. For many Venezuelans, Sunday was a day to look for scant food or stock up on water, which is increasingly running short because of years of underinvestment.

“I’m not voting – what’s the point if we already know the result? I prefer to come here to get water rather than waste my time,” said Raul Sanchez, filling a jug from a tap by a busy road in the arid northwestern city of Punto Fijo because his community has not had running water for 26 days.

In what the opposition said was a bid to legitimize Maduro’s coming victory, state television urged Venezuelans to vote and Maduro said that transport to polling centers would be “facilitated.”

Some opposition supporters say the boycott only made life easier for Maduro and that his rivals should have fought him at the ballot box despite an unfair playing ground.

“I’m voting because the opposition doesn’t have any proposals for what we’re going to do when Maduro wins today. I want this nightmare to stop,” said teacher Luisa Marquez, 56, in Valencia.

Should Maduro win, he may choose to deepen a purge of critics within the ruling “Chavismo” movement.

Abroad, Maduro is likely to face further Western and Latin American protests should he win, although Russia and China remain allies and have been important financial backers.

Slideshow (32 Images)

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Sunday the elections did not fulfill the “minimum standards of a true democracy” and that Chile did not recognize them as legitimate.

Maduro faces a Herculean task to turn around the moribund economy, with the bolivar currency down 99 percent in the past year and inflation at an annual 14,000 percent, according to the National Assembly.

(Reuters Venezuela election coverage on Twitter @ReutersVzla)

Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas and Corina Pons in Barquisimeto, Venezuela; Additional reporting by Anggy Polanco and Brian Ellsworth in San Cristobal; Luc Cohen, Leon Wietfeld, Pablo Garibian, Andreina Aponte and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Tibisay Romero in Valencia; Francisco Aguilar in Barinas; Maria Ramirez in Ciudad Guayana; Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo and Caroline Stauffer and Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney

The post Despite crisis and outcry, Maduro favored to win Venezuela vote appeared first on World The News.

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[cleopatrarps]

Despite crisis and outcry, Maduro favored to win Venezuela vote

CARACAS/BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela’s leftist leader, Nicolas Maduro, looked set to win re-election on Sunday in what looked to be a poorly attended vote condemned by foes as the “coronation” of a dictator and likely to bring new foreign sanctions.

Despite his unpopularity over the OPEC member’s economic meltdown, the 55-year-old former bus driver was benefiting from a boycott by the mainstream opposition, a ban on his two most popular rivals, and state institutions in loyalists’ hands.

The vote could trigger additional sanctions from the United States and more censure from the European Union and Latin America. The Trump administration said it would not recognize the “sham” election and was considering oil sanctions.

Maduro, the self-described “son” of former President Hugo Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent.

Maduro’s main challenger is a former state governor, Henri Falcon, who predicted an upset because of fury among Venezuela’s 30 million people at their increased poverty.

Although some opinion polls have shown Falcon ahead, analysts say his chances are thin, given widespread abstention, the vote-winning power of state handouts and Maduro’s allies on the election board.

In polling stations visited by Reuters reporters, from wealthy east Caracas to the Andean mountains near Colombia, attendance appeared far lower than at the last presidential election in 2013 when there was an 80 percent turnout.

An opposition umbrella movement called the Broad Front, which was boycotting the vote, said on Sunday evening that turnout had been under 30 percent, according to its monitors across the nation, in what it termed an “electoral farce.”

There were lines, however, outside some polling stations in poorer government strongholds, where the majority of voters interviewed said they were backing Maduro.

“I’m hungry and don’t have a job, but I’m sticking to Maduro,” said Carlos Rincones, 49, in the once-thriving industrial city of Valencia, accusing right-wing business owners of purposefully hiding food and hiking prices.

The government has set up so-called red point zones near polling stations so Venezuelans can scan their state-issued “fatherland cards” used to receive benefits including food boxes and money transfers. Maduro has promised a “prize” to those who do so. Critics say that is a way of scaring impoverished Venezuelans into supporting his government.

Falcon’s team said it received about 900 complaints about the “red points.” Several state workers also told Reuters they were pressured to vote, while pro-government activists hovered around some polling stations, saying they were assisting voters.

Further hurting Falcon’s chances by splitting the anti-Maduro vote was a third candidate, evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci, who has picked up a large following, partly because of free soup handouts.

FIVE-YEAR RECESSION

Many Venezuelans are disillusioned and angry over the election: They criticize Maduro for economic hardships and the opposition for its dysfunctional splits.

Reeling from a fifth year of recession, falling oil production and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is seeing growing levels of malnutrition and hyperinflation, and mass emigration.

A woman stands by a mural in support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Adriana Loureiro

“I think this constant aggression from the government of the Ku Klux Klan is losing credibility,” Maduro said on Sunday, blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for Venezuela’s mess.

Venezuelan migrants staged small anti-Maduro protests in cities from Madrid to Miami. In the highland city of San Cristobal near Colombia, three cloth dolls representing widely loathed officials – Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello and Vice President Tareck El Aissami – were hung from a footbridge.

But streets were calm, with children playing soccer on one road in San Cristobal blocked off at past elections to accommodate long voter lines. For many Venezuelans, Sunday was a day to look for scant food or stock up on water, which is increasingly running short because of years of underinvestment.

“I’m not voting – what’s the point if we already know the result? I prefer to come here to get water rather than waste my time,” said Raul Sanchez, filling a jug from a tap by a busy road in the arid northwestern city of Punto Fijo because his community has not had running water for 26 days.

In what the opposition said was a bid to legitimize Maduro’s coming victory, state television urged Venezuelans to vote and Maduro said that transport to polling centers would be “facilitated.”

Some opposition supporters say the boycott only made life easier for Maduro and that his rivals should have fought him at the ballot box despite an unfair playing ground.

“I’m voting because the opposition doesn’t have any proposals for what we’re going to do when Maduro wins today. I want this nightmare to stop,” said teacher Luisa Marquez, 56, in Valencia.

Should Maduro win, he may choose to deepen a purge of critics within the ruling “Chavismo” movement.

Abroad, Maduro is likely to face further Western and Latin American protests should he win, although Russia and China remain allies and have been important financial backers.

Slideshow (32 Images)

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Sunday the elections did not fulfill the “minimum standards of a true democracy” and that Chile did not recognize them as legitimate.

Maduro faces a Herculean task to turn around the moribund economy, with the bolivar currency down 99 percent in the past year and inflation at an annual 14,000 percent, according to the National Assembly.

(Reuters Venezuela election coverage on Twitter @ReutersVzla)

Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas and Corina Pons in Barquisimeto, Venezuela; Additional reporting by Anggy Polanco and Brian Ellsworth in San Cristobal; Luc Cohen, Leon Wietfeld, Pablo Garibian, Andreina Aponte and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Tibisay Romero in Valencia; Francisco Aguilar in Barinas; Maria Ramirez in Ciudad Guayana; Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo and Caroline Stauffer and Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney

The post Despite crisis and outcry, Maduro favored to win Venezuela vote appeared first on World The News.

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