#and then in the show she says after that they brought him to the sanatorium. she still cares about him T_T (inconsolable) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xiolaperry · 4 years

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Four Ways Gaston Could Have Died (And the One Way He Actually Did) - Chapter 5

Chapter Notes: Somehow, this chapter veered away from being simply a Gaston “death” and ended up turning into a Colonel Ives backstory. For those of you who have not seen the movie "Ravenous", I highly recommend it. It is a surprisingly funny dark comedy horror story, and Robert Carlyle is amazing in it (as always).

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Francis Ives had not expected to discover he had a half brother when he attended his father's funeral.

He hadn't seen his father in years (and was better off for it) when a solicitor contacted him to inform him of his death. Malcolm had somehow gotten rich before he died, and the will stipulated attendance of the funeral for access to the funds.

Tempted though he was not to comply with the demand, the money would be welcome. He had recently been diagnosed with tuberculosis and wanted to visit America to see if the doctors there could help him. Therefore, he made plans to attend. His miserable excuse for a father owed him a chance to live.

The church was empty. Every movement was magnified and echoed through the cavernous space. The only ones in attendance were the solicitor, who had to be there, the minister, who doubtless had never laid eyes on Malcolm Gold in his life, and a pair of drunken old men. Ives wondered if they’d been bribed, too.

The minister waited a few minutes past the time to begin, hoping in vain for additional mourners to fill the empty seats. He'd just cleared his throat and begun to speak when a well-dressed man entered. A beautiful woman and a little girl followed him. They sat down and the man, a fierce scowl on this face, gestured with impatience to the minister to continue.

Ives watched them from the corners of his eyes, wondering who they could be. Forced into attendance like him, no doubt. Malcolm Gold was not the type to make friends.

Unnoticed, he studied the older man. His longish hair was silver at the temples, and he kept running his hand through it and looked annoyed. He walked with a cane, but there was no air of weakness about him.

Ives assumed the woman was his wife. She looked young enough to be his daughter, but the way she put her hand on his thigh to stop his leg from bouncing with impatience was not at all daughterly. And even from a distance, he could see love and concern radiating from striking blue eyes that he'd not soon forget.

The little girl fidgeted and looked as though she'd rather be anywhere than here. Ives couldn't blame her, he felt the same way. She winked when she caught him looking, and he smiled.

After the service, he went straight to the family and introduced himself. “Francis Ives,” he said, extending his hand.

“Mr. Gold,“ the older man answered, returning the handshake.

Gold? Ives's mind reeled at the surname, and the resemblance he now noticed. He heard nothing else of the introductions, and he realized he must look odd, standing there frozen in shock with his hand still out.

“Please forgive me, I didn't catch the names of your wife and daughter; yours distracted me. Your name is Gold, as in a relation of Malcolm Gold?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, that bastard was my father.”

“Mine too!” he blurted out before he could think of a more delicate way to say it.

The family stared at Ives, speechless.

The little girl recovered first. “Does this mean you're my uncle? Papa, do you have any other brothers and sisters? My name is Tilly, can I call you Uncle Ives?”

When she paused to take a breath, her mother pulled her a short distance away to give the men a moment to process the revelation. Her hands fluttered about, making signs, and Tilly responded in kind. Mute, he thought.

Mr. Gold asked, “Malcolm was your father? But you said your name was Ives?”

“I took my mother's name. I wanted nothing that would connect me to that man.”

“Ah. I didn't have that luxury. Didn't even know my mother.”

The solicitor interrupted. “Good, I see you've met each other. If you'd be so kind as to follow me, the minister has allowed us to use his back office for the reading of the will. You can continue the family reunion there.”

“Whatever gets this over with the fastest.” Gold waved his hand for his family to follow him. Tilly, a bit more subdued but still grinning, skipped ahead. Gold's wife gave him a quick hug and then they continued on.

The reading was brief. Malcolm had made a few big gambling winnings shortly before his death, and his sudden demise prevented him from squandering it all. It was to be divided equally between his two known children, Francis and Labhrainn.

“Thank God there aren't more of us running around,” muttered Gold, who received an elbow to the ribs from his wife for the comment.

Finding the idea of a brother intriguing, Ives hoped to continue the conversation with Mr. Gold. But as soon as the information on the distribution of Malcolm's assets was finished, Mr. Gold stood up, said a curt goodbye, and headed for the door.

His wife stopped him. Her gloved hands flew as she signed, although one did not seem to move quite like the other. Ives watched Gold's face change from hard and impatient to soft and indulgent during her 'discourse.' Tilly chimed in with “Please, Papa?” and an imploring look. Gold sighed.

“Belle insists that you accompany us home for a meal so she can get to know you better.”

Belle poked her husband, and he amended, “We would both like you to come, you are my half-brother, after all.”

She beamed at Ives, and he wondered how his brother had gotten such a beauty. At his hesitation, Tilly said, “Please come. You can meet my cat. I brought her all the way from New Zealand.”

“How can I turn down such an invitation? I would be honored to meet your cat.”

Belle was a wonderful hostess, and Tilly's smile lit up the room. Her endless chatter at the dinner table made him laugh more that night than he had in months. Gold (who asked him to please not call him Labhrainn) was not as surly as he first appeared and warmed up to him over the course of the meal.

After they sent Tilly to bed, Ives and Gold spent a pleasant evening comparing stories of their upbringing and tales of their youth over glasses of whiskey. Ives told him of his plan to travel to America in hope of a cure for his tuberculosis.

Gold's tales of his time in New Zealand were fascinating, but his mood darkened when he spoke of Gaston Legume and the cause of his return to Scotland. When Belle removed her glove to show him the wooden finger Gold had crafted for her, Ives shook his head with disbelief. What kind of man would hurt a woman like that?

Sensing her husband's distress over the memories the conversation had brought up, she kissed him. The tender moment embarrassed Ives, and he looked away.

They talked until the early morning. After saying their goodbyes, and offering their best wishes for his health and recovery, Gold surprised him by asking him to keep in touch. “I'm learning to write,” he explained. “The letters will be good practice.”

The half-brothers struck up an enjoyable correspondence. Ives looked forward to Gold's letters, which included notes from Belle and Tilly. He would not have believed you could come to love someone through the mail, but he did. He loved his newfound family. They were the only bright spots in his life as he got sicker and weaker, and the illness turned him bitter and desperate.

The doctors in America were no better than the ones in Scotland. Depressed and discouraged, his thoughts turned dark. Every breath was a struggle, resulting in him coughing up a pint of blood. There was nothing left to be done. He decided to check himself into a sanatorium to convalesce, more than likely to die.

He took his time on the journey, telling himself he was traveling at such a slow pace because he was enjoying the scenery, not because he was too weak to press onward. Then one afternoon, he met an Indian scout.

The scout insisted on building a campfire for them both, and Ives shared his meal with him. The campfire danced, flickering patterns of light and dark across their faces.

He watched the robust, healthy man just sit there, taking his good health for granted. The Indian enjoyed smoking his pipe, drawing breath without pain, not coughing and choking on his own blood. He observed this with such jealousy that it made his soul ache. Ives wanted to live.

It wasn't fair that his disgusting reprobate of a father got to have a long life. It wasn't fair that he was here, dying, thousands of miles away from a family he had gotten to know so late in life. The night was clear, and he leaned back, looking at the cold stars that cared not for his suffering.

The scout told stories to pass the time, and one in particular caught his attention: The Wendigo. A man eats the flesh of another, absorbing his strength, his spirit. As the man spoke, Ives felt a cold darkness fill him. Could the tale be true? He had to try; it was his last chance. Perhaps it was a manifestation of Malcolm's selfishness, the trait showing up in his nature here at the end. He would do anything to keep from dying.

He killed the man as he slept and roasted him over the campfire he'd built. The smell was mouthwatering, and the taste, divine. The Indian scout was absolutely right. He grew stronger and had no regrets.

A stolen uniform completed his reinvention of himself. “Colonel Ives” sounded impressive and powerful, matching the strength he now felt inside. But what to do next? He was hungry. The meat he'd saved from the Indian did not last long, no matter how hard he'd tried to ration it.

An answer came in the form of a wagon train headed West. The small group welcomed having a Colonel join them as a guide. A few small manipulations of their circumstances allowed him to eat them that winter, and come spring he was a new man, happy and healthy. Tuberculosis? Vanished. As did the black thoughts.

His only regret was that the meat hadn't lasted longer. But the more he ate, the more he wanted. So he continued on.

Ives wanted to share his good fortune, build his own small family. Alas, Boyd and Colonel Hart were a disappointment. He left Fort Spencer, deciding it was better to keep moving and see the world.

He never wrote to Gold again. He missed the connection to his family, and he’d compose letters to them in his mind. But they remained unwritten. A voice inside told him he was not who he had been; that he never would be again. The voice sometimes begged him to reconsider his course. Whenever it spoke up, he squashed it down firmly. It was too late. The hunger was insatiable.

One day, he was talking to some sailors who mentioned their ship was bound for New Zealand. An idea formed in his mind, a way to thank Gold and his family for their encouragement and kindness during his difficult time. He booked passage on the spot.

And now here he was, in New Zealand, sitting in a tavern, watching Gaston Legume from across the room.

He must be cautious. Ives no longer cared about collateral damage as a general rule. Disposing of witnesses just meant more provisions for him. However, some of these people were Gold and Belle's friends. Punishing Gaston should not come at their expense.

Calqhoun is the name he gives in case Belle or Gold kept in touch with anyone. He slides into character with ease. People found the mild-mannered man of god forgettable, which is his intention.

As he enjoys David Nolan's company, he thinks that he'd like to find a place for himself. Sometimes it was lonely being a cannibal. Tough making friends.

So he sat, nondescript, and made conversation with David. The man was friendly and not overly bright, which was exactly the combination he was looking for. In the space of an evening, he learned all he needed to know about Gaston: where he lived, his habits, and his associates.

The next day Ives set up camp in a remote part of the jungle. Gaston's disappearance must not coincide with his passing through. His stores depleted, he hunts, and finds the locals to his taste. He bides his time.

He considered grabbing Gaston from his bed, but it seemed rather anticlimactic. This man had hurt his family, the only people he loved in this world. And for that, he deserved to suffer.

First, he moved things around to set Gaston off balance. His shoes while he slept. His tools. He left the barn doors open and stole his axe.

Gaston ranted to his aunt that someone was playing tricks on him. The scowl never left his face, and he accused everyone he met of being the culprit.

Ives escalated his campaign. He left sheet music in the barn, a book on the bedside table. He hung one of Tilly's drawings in the kitchen and left a woman's dress on the clothesline. A piano key was placed in his saddlebag. Now Gaston crossed from being angry to afraid.

The axe, covered in blood, was the perfect sight to greet him for his last morning on earth. It was lodged in the kitchen table and covered with gore. Ives watched from the shadows as Gaston staggered toward it, pale and shaken. He came up behind him and struck him in the head.

As Ives dragged Gaston through the jungle underbrush, he considered if he wanted to eat such a vile man. When they reached his camp, he told Gaston who he was. He describes exactly what he is going to do to him. Big, strong Gaston cries and begs. Ives starts by removing one finger and enjoying it as an appetizer.

He doesn't taste so bad after all.

“Calqhoun” drops by the little village before he leaves New Zealand. He talks to David Nolan again, who, with a bit of maneuvering, tells him all about the disappearance of Gaston. A bloody axe in the kitchen table was the only clue, and the entire village was stumped by the mystery. Cora is the only one who cares that he is missing.

His only regret is that he can't write to Gold and tell him all about the favor he has done for him. Papua New Guinea is the next stop. Perhaps he'll find some companions there.

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #ravenous #ravenous au #the piano #four ways

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silent-era-of-cinema · 4 years

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Clara Gordon Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an American actress who rose to stardom in silent film during the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.

Bow appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927), and Wings (1927). She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost two-to-one, a "safe return". At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month (January 1929).

Two years after marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. In September 1965, Bow died of a heart attack at the age of 60.

Bow was born in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn at 697 Bergen Street,[9] in a "bleak, sparsely furnished room above [a] dilapidated Baptist Church". Her birth year, according to the US Censuses of 1910 and 1920, was 1905. The 1930 census indicates 1906 and on her gravestone of 1965, the inscription says 1907, but 1905 is the accepted year by a majority of sources.

Bow was her parents' third child, but her two older sisters, born in 1903 and 1904, had died in infancy. Her mother, Sarah Frances Bow (née Gordon, 1880–1923), was told by a doctor not to become pregnant again, for fear the next baby might die as well. Despite the warning, Sarah became pregnant with Clara in late 1904. In addition to the risky pregnancy, a heat wave besieged New York in July 1905, and temperatures peaked around 100 °F (38 °C). Years later, Clara said: "I don't suppose two people ever looked death in the face more clearly than my mother and I the morning I was born. We were both given up, but somehow we struggled back to life."

Bow's parents were descended from English, Irish and Scottish immigrants who had come to America the generation before. Bow said that her father, Robert Walter Bow (1874–1959), "had a quick, keen mind ... all the natural qualifications to make something of himself, but didn't...everything seemed to go wrong for him, poor darling". By the time Clara was four and a half, her father was out of work, and between 1905 and 1923, the family lived at 14 different addresses, but seldom outside Prospect Heights, with Clara's father often absent. "I do not think my mother ever loved my father", she said. "He knew it. And it made him very unhappy, for he worshiped her, always."

When Bow's mother, Sarah, was 16, she fell from a second-story window and suffered a severe head injury. She was later diagnosed with "psychosis due to epilepsy". From her earliest years, Bow had learned how to care for her mother during the seizures, as well as how to deal with her psychotic and hostile episodes. She said her mother could be "mean" to her, but "didn't mean to ... she couldn't help it". Still, Bow felt deprived of her childhood; "As a kid I took care of my mother, she didn't take care of me". Sarah worsened gradually, and when she realized her daughter was set for a movie career, Bow's mother told her she "would be much better off dead". One night in February 1922, Bow awoke to a butcher knife held against her throat by her mother. Clara was able to fend off the attack, and locked her mother up. In the morning, Bow's mother had no recollection of the episode, and later she was committed to a sanatorium by Robert Bow.

Clara spoke about the incident later:

It was snowing. My mother and I were cold and hungry. We had been cold and hungry for days. We lay in each other's arms and cried and tried to keep warm. It grew worse and worse. So that night my mother—but I can't tell you about it. Only when I remember it, it seems to me I can't live.

According to Bow's biographer, David Stenn, Bow was raped by her father at age sixteen while her mother was institutionalized. On January 5, 1923, Sarah died at the age of 43 from her epilepsy. When relatives gathered for the funeral, Bow accused them of being "hypocrites", and became so angry that she even tried to jump into the grave.

Bow attended P.S. 111, P.S. 9, and P.S. 98.[13] As she grew up, she felt shy among other girls, who teased her for her worn-out clothes and "carrot-top" hair. She said about her childhood, "I never had any clothes. ... And lots of time didn't have anything to eat. We just lived, that's about all. Girls shunned me because I was so poorly dressed."

From first grade, Bow preferred the company of boys, stating, "I could lick any boy my size. My right arm was quite famous. My right arm was developed from pitching so much ... Once I hopped a ride on behind a big fire engine. I got a lot of credit from the gang for that."[15] A close friend, a younger boy who lived in her building, burned to death in her presence after an accident. In 1919, Bow enrolled in Bay Ridge High School for Girls. "I wore sweaters and old skirts...didn't want to be treated like a girl...there was one boy who had always been my pal... he kissed me... I wasn't sore. I didn't get indignant. I was horrified and hurt."

Bow's interest in sports and her physical abilities led her to plan for a career as an athletics instructor. She won five medals "at the cinder tracks" and credited her cousin Homer Baker – the national half-mile (c.800 m) champion (1913 and 1914) and 660-yard (c. 600 m) world-record holder – for being her trainer. The Bows and Bakers shared a house – still standing – at 33 Prospect Place in 1920.

In the early 1920s, roughly 50 million Americans—half the population at that time—attended the movies every week. As Bow grew into womanhood, her stature as a "boy" in her old gang became "impossible". She did not have any girlfriends, and school was a "heartache" and her home was "miserable." On the silver screen, however, she found consolation; "For the first time in my life I knew there was beauty in the world. For the first time I saw distant lands, serene, lovely homes, romance, nobility, glamor". And further; "I always had a queer feeling about actors and actresses on the screen ... I knew I would have done it differently. I couldn't analyze it, but I could always feel it.". "I'd go home and be a one girl circus, taking the parts of everyone I'd seen, living them before the glass." At 16, Bow says she "knew" she wanted to be a motion pictures actress, even if she was a "square, awkward, funny-faced kid."

Against her mother's wishes but with her father's support, Bow competed in Brewster publications' magazine's annual nationwide acting contest, "Fame and Fortune", in fall 1921. In previous years, other contest winners had found work in the movies. In the contest's final screen test, Bow was up against an already scene-experienced woman who did "a beautiful piece of acting". A set member later stated that when Bow did the scene, she actually became her character and "lived it". In the January issues 1922 of Motion Picture Classics, the contest jury, Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa McMein, and Harrison Fisher, concluded:

She is very young, only 16. But she is full of confidence, determination and ambition. She is endowed with a mentality far beyond her years. She has a genuine spark of divine fire. The five different screen tests she had, showed this very plainly, her emotional range of expression provoking a fine enthusiasm from every contest judge who saw the tests. She screens perfectly. Her personal appearance is almost enough to carry her to success without the aid of the brains she indubitably possesses.

Bow won an evening gown and a silver trophy, and the publisher committed to help her "gain a role in films", but nothing happened. Bow's father told her to "haunt" Brewster's office (located in Brooklyn) until they came up with something. "To get rid of me, or maybe they really meant to (give me) all the time and were just busy", Bow was introduced to director Christy Cabanne, who cast her in Beyond the Rainbow, produced late 1921 in New York City and released February 19, 1922. Bow did five scenes and impressed Cabanne with true theatrical tears, but was cut from the final print. "I was sick to my stomach," she recalled and thought her mother was right about the movie business.

Bow, who dropped out of school (senior year) after she was notified about winning the contest, possibly in October 1921, got an ordinary office job. However, movie ads and newspaper editorial comments from 1922 to 1923 suggest that Bow was not cut from Beyond the Rainbow. Her name is on the cast list among the other stars, usually tagged "Brewster magazine beauty contest winner" and sometimes even with a picture.

Encouraged by her father, Bow continued to visit studio agencies asking for parts. "But there was always something. I was too young, or too little, or too fat. Usually I was too fat." Eventually, director Elmer Clifton needed a tomboy for his movie Down to the Sea in Ships, saw Bow in Motion Picture Classic magazine, and sent for her. In an attempt to overcome her youthful looks, Bow put her hair up and arrived in a dress she "sneaked" from her mother. Clifton said she was too old, but broke into laughter as the stammering Bow made him believe she was the girl in the magazine. Clifton decided to bring Bow with him and offered her $35 a week. Bow held out for $50 and Clifton agreed, but he could not say whether she would "fit the part". Bow later learned that one of Brewsters' subeditors had urged Clifton to give her a chance.

Down to the Sea in Ships, shot on location in New Bedford, Massachusetts and produced by independent "The Whaling Film Corporation", documented life, love, and work in the whale-hunter community. The production relied on a few less-known actors and local talents. It premiered at the Olympia Theater in New Bedford, on September 25, and went on general distribution on March 4, 1923. Bow was billed 10th in the film, but shone through:

"Miss Bow will undoubtedly gain fame as a screen comedienne".

"She scored a tremendous hit in Down to the Sea in Ships..(and).. has reached the front rank of motion picture principal players".

"With her beauty, her brains, her personality and her genuine acting ability it should not be many moons before she enjoys stardom in the fullest sense of the word. You must see 'Down to the Sea in Ships'".

"In movie parlance, she 'stole' the picture ... ".

By mid-December 1923, primarily due to her merits in Down to the Sea in Ships, Bow was chosen the most successful of the 1924 WAMPAS Baby Stars. Three months before Down to the Sea in Ships was released, Bow danced half nude, on a table, uncredited in Enemies of Women (1923). In spring she got a part in The Daring Years (1923), where she befriended actress Mary Carr, who taught her how to use make-up.

In the summer, she got a "tomboy" part in Grit, a story that dealt with juvenile crime and was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bow met her first boyfriend, cameraman Arthur Jacobson, and she got to know director Frank Tuttle, with whom she worked in five later productions. Tuttle remembered:

Her emotions were close to the surface. She could cry on demand, opening the floodgate of tears almost as soon as I asked her to weep. She was dynamite, full of nervous energy and vitality and pitifully eager to please everyone.

Grit was released on January 7, 1924. The Variety review said "... Clara Bow lingers in the eye, long after the picture has gone."

While shooting Grit at Pyramid Studios, in Astoria, New York, Bow was approached by Jack Bachman of independent Hollywood studio Preferred Pictures. He wanted to contract her for a three-month trial, fare paid, and $50 a week. "It can't do any harm,"[15] he tried. "Why can't I stay in New York and make movies?" Bow asked her father, but he told her not to worry.

On July 21, 1923, she befriended Louella Parsons, who interviewed her for The New York Morning Telegraph. In 1931, when Bow came under tabloid scrutiny, Parsons defended her and stuck to her first opinion on Bow:

She is as refreshingly unaffected as if she had never faced a means to pretend. She hasn't any secrets from the world, she trusts everyone ... she is almost too good to be true ... (I) only wish some reformer who believes the screen contaminates all who associate with it could meet this child. Still, on second thought it might not be safe: Clara uses a dangerous pair of eyes.

The interview also revealed that Bow already was cast in Maytime and in great favor of Chinese cuisine.

On July 22, 1923, Bow left New York, her father, and her boyfriend behind for Hollywood. As chaperone for the journey and her subsequent southern California stay, the studio appointed writer/agent Maxine Alton, whom Bow later branded a liar. In late July, Bow entered studio chief B. P. Schulberg's office wearing a simple high-school uniform in which she "had won several gold medals on the cinder track". She was tested and a press release from early August says Bow had become a member of Preferred Picture's "permanent stock". Alton and she rented an apartment at The Hillview near Hollywood Boulevard. Preferred Pictures was run by Schulberg, who had started as a publicity manager at Famous Players-Lasky, but in the aftermath of the power struggle around the formation of United Artists, ended up on the losing side and lost his job. As a result, he founded Preferred in 1919, at the age of 27.

Maytime was Bow's first Hollywood picture, an adaptation of the popular operetta Maytime in which she essayed "Alice Tremaine". Before Maytime was finished, Schulberg announced that Bow was given the lead in the studio's biggest seasonal assessment, Poisoned Paradise,[51] but first she was lent to First National Pictures to co-star in the adaptation of Gertrude Atherton's 1923 best seller Black Oxen, shot in October, and to co-star with Colleen Moore in Painted People, shot in November.

Director Frank Lloyd was casting for the part of high-society flapper Janet Oglethorpe, and more than 50 women, most with previous screen experience, auditioned. Bow reminisced: "He had not found exactly what he wanted and finally somebody suggested me to him. When I came into his office a big smile came over his face and he looked just tickled to death." Lloyd told the press, "Bow is the personification of the ideal aristocratic flapper, mischievous, pretty, aggressive, quick-tempered and deeply sentimental." It was released on January 4, 1924.

The New York Times said, "The flapper, impersonated by a young actress, Clara Bow, had five speaking titles, and every one of them was so entirely in accord with the character and the mood of the scene that it drew a laugh from what, in film circles, is termed a "hard-boiled" audience", while the Los Angeles Times commented that "Clara Bow, the prize vulgarian of the lot ... was amusing and spirited ... but didn't belong in the picture", and Variety said that "... the horrid little flapper is adorably played ..."

Colleen Moore made her flapper debut in a successful adaptation of the daring novel Flaming Youth, released November 12, 1923, six weeks before Black Oxen. Both films were produced by First National Pictures, and while Black Oxen was still being edited and Flaming Youth not yet released, Bow was requested to co-star with Moore as her kid sister in Painted People (The Swamp Angel). Moore essayed the baseball-playing tomboy and Bow, according to Moore, said "I don't like my part, I wanna play yours." Moore, a well-established star earning $1200 a week—Bow got $200—took offense and blocked the director from shooting close-ups of Bow. Moore was married to the film's producer and Bow's protests were futile. "I'll get that bitch", she told her boyfriend Jacobson, who had arrived from New York. Bow had sinus problems and decided to have them attended to that very evening. With Bow's face now in bandages, the studio had no choice but to recast her part.

During 1924, Bow's "horrid" flapper raced against Moore's "whimsical". In May, Moore renewed her efforts in The Perfect Flapper, produced by her husband. However, despite good reviews, she suddenly withdrew. "No more flappers ... they have served their purpose ... people are tired of soda-pop love affairs", she told the Los Angeles Times, which had commented a month earlier, "Clara Bow is the one outstanding type. She has almost immediately been elected for all the recent flapper parts". In November 1933, looking back to this period of her career, Bow described the atmosphere in Hollywood as like a scene from a movie about the French Revolution, where "women are hollering and waving pitchforks twice as violently as any of the guys ... the only ladies in sight are the ones getting their heads cut off."

By New Year 1924, Bow defied the possessive Maxine Alton and brought her father to Hollywood. Bow remembered their reunion: "I didn't care a rap, for (Maxine Alton), or B. P. Schulberg, or my motion picture career, or Clara Bow, I just threw myself into his arms and kissed and kissed him, and we both cried like a couple of fool kids. Oh, it was wonderful." Bow felt Alton had misused her trust: "She wanted to keep a hold on me so she made me think I wasn't getting over and that nothing but her clever management kept me going." Bow and her father moved in at 1714 North Kingsley Drive in Hollywood, together with Jacobson, who by then also worked for Preferred. When Schulberg learned of this arrangement, he fired Jacobson for potentially getting "his big star" into a scandal. When Bow found out, "She tore up her contract and threw it in his face and told him he couldn't run her private life." Jacobson concluded, "[Clara] was the sweetest girl in the world, but you didn't cross her and you didn't do her wrong." On September 7, 1924, The Los Angeles Times, in a significant article "A dangerous little devil is Clara, impish, appealing, but oh, how she can act!", her father is titled "business manager" and Jacobson referred to as her brother.

Bow appeared in eight releases in 1924.

In Poisoned Paradise, released on February 29, 1924, Bow got her first lead. "... the clever little newcomer whose work wins fresh recommendations with every new picture in which she appears". In a scene described as "original", Bow adds "devices" to "the modern flapper": she fights a villain using her fists, and significantly, does not "shrink back in fear".

In Daughters of Pleasure, also released on February 29, 1924, Bow and Marie Prevost "flapped unhampered as flappers De luxe ... I wish somebody could star Clara Bow. I'm sure her 'infinite variety' would keep her from wearying us no matter how many scenes she was in."

Loaned out to Universal, Bow top-starred, for the first time, in the prohibition, bootleg drama/comedy Wine, released on August 20, 1924. The picture exposes the widespread liquor traffic in the upper classes, and Bow portrays an innocent girl who develops into a wild "red-hot mama".

"If not taken as information, it is cracking good entertainment," Carl Sandburg reviewed September 29.

"Don't miss Wine. It's a thoroughly refreshing draught ... there are only about five actresses who give me a real thrill on the screen—and Clara is nearly five of them".

Alma Whitaker of The Los Angeles Times observed on September 7, 1924:

She radiates sex appeal tempered with an impish sense of humor ... She hennas her blond hair so that it will photograph dark in the pictures ... Her social decorum is of that natural, good-natured, pleasantly informal kind ... She can act on or off the screen—takes a joyous delight in accepting a challenge to vamp any selected male—the more unpromising specimen the better. When the hapless victim is scared into speechlessness, she gurgles with naughty delight and tries another.

Bow remembered: "All this time I was 'running wild', I guess, in the sense of trying to have a good time ... maybe this was a good thing, because I suppose a lot of that excitement, that joy of life, got onto the screen."

In 1925, Bow appeared in 14 productions: six for her contract owner, Preferred Pictures, and eight as an "out-loan".

"Clara Bow ... shows alarming symptoms of becoming the sensation of the year ... ", Motion Picture Classic Magazine wrote in June, and featured her on the cover.

I'm almost never satisfied with myself or my work or anything...by the time I'm ready to be a great star I'll have been on the screen such a long time that everybody will be tired of seeing me...(Tears filled her big round eyes and threatened to fall).

I worked in two and even three pictures at once. I played all sorts of parts in all sorts of pictures ... It was very hard at the time and I used to be worn out and cry myself to sleep from sheer fatigue after 18 hours a day on different sets, but now [late 1927] I am glad of it.

Preferred Pictures loaned Bow to producers "for sums ranging from $1500 to $2000 a week" while paying Bow a salary of $200 to $750 a week. The studio, like any other independent studio or theater at that time, was under attack from "The Big Three", MPAA, which had formed a trust to block out Independents and enforce the monopolistic studio system. On October 21, 1925, Schulberg filed Preferred Pictures for bankruptcy, with debts at $820,774 and assets $1,420. Three days later, it was announced that Schulberg would join with Adolph Zukor to become associate producer of Paramount Pictures, "catapulted into this position because he had Clara Bow under personal contract".

Adolph Zukor, Paramount Picture CEO, wrote in his memoirs: "All the skill of directors and all the booming of press-agent drums will not make a star. Only the audiences can do it. We study audience reactions with great care." Adela Rogers St. Johns had a different take: in 1950, she wrote, "If ever a star was made by public demand, it was Clara Bow." And Louise Brooks (from 1980): "(Bow) became a star without nobody's help ..."

The Plastic Age was Bow's final effort for Preferred Pictures and her biggest hit up to that time. Bow starred as the good-bad college girl, Cynthia Day, against Donald Keith. It was shot on location at Pomona College in the summer of 1925, and released on December 15, but due to block booking, it was not shown in New York until July 21, 1926.

Photoplay was displeased: "The college atmosphere is implausible and Clara Bow is not our idea of a college girl."

Theater owners, however, were happy: "The picture is the biggest sensation we ever had in our theater ... It is 100 per cent at the box-office."

Some critics felt Bow had conquered new territory: "(Bow) presents a whimsical touch to her work that adds greater laurels to her fast ascending star of screen popularity."

Time singled out Bow: "Only the amusing and facile acting of Clara Bow rescues the picture from the limbo of the impossible."

Bow began to date her co-star Gilbert Roland, who became her first fiancé. In June 1925, Bow was credited for being the first to wear hand-painted legs in public, and was reported to have many followers at the Californian beaches.

Throughout the 1920s, Bow played with gender conventions and sexuality in her public image. Along with her tomboy and flapper roles, she starred in boxing films and posed for promotional photographs as a boxer. By appropriating traditionally androgynous or masculine traits, Bow presented herself as a confident, modern woman.

"Rehearsals sap my pep," Bow explained in November 1929, and from the beginning of her career, she relied on immediate direction: "Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it." Bow was keen on poetry and music, but according to Rogers St. Johns, her attention span did not allow her to appreciate novels. Bow's focal point was the scene, and her creativity made directors call in extra cameras to cover her spontaneous actions, rather than holding her down.

Years after Bow left Hollywood, director Victor Fleming compared Bow to a Stradivarius violin: "Touch her, and she responded with genius." Director William Wellman was less poetic: "Movie stardom isn't acting ability—it's personality and temperament ... I once directed Clara Bow (Wings). She was mad and crazy, but WHAT a personality!". And in 1981, Budd Schulberg described Bow as "an easy winner of the dumbbell award" who "couldn't act," and compared her to a puppy that his father B. P. Schulberg "trained to become Lassie."

In 1926, Bow appeared in eight releases: five for Paramount, including the film version of the musical Kid Boots with Eddie Cantor, and three loan-outs that had been filmed in 1925.

In late 1925, Bow returned to New York to co-star in the Ibsenesque drama Dancing Mothers, as the good/bad "flapperish" upper-class daughter Kittens. Alice Joyce starred as her dancing mother, with Conway Tearle as "bad-boy" Naughton. The picture was released on March 1, 1926.

"Clara Bow, known as the screen's perfect flapper, does her stuff as the child, and does it well."

"... her remarkable performance in Dancing Mothers ... ".

Louise Brooks remembered: "She was absolutely sensational in the United States ... in Dancing Mothers ... she just swept the country ... I know I saw her ... and I thought ... wonderful."

On April 12, 1926, Bow signed her first contract with Paramount: "...to retain your services as an actress for the period of six months from June 6, 1926 to December 6, 1926, at a salary of $750.00 per week...".

In Victor Fleming's comedy-triangle, Mantrap, Bow, as Alverna the manicurist, cures lonely hearts Joe Easter (Ernest Torrence), of the great northern, as well as pill-popping New York divorce attorney runaway Ralph Prescott (Percy Marmont). Bow commented: "(Alverna)...was bad in the book, but—darn it!—of course, they couldn't make her that way in the picture. So I played her as a flirt." The film was released on July 24, 1926.

Variety: "Clara Bow just walks away with the picture from the moment she walks into camera range."

Photoplay: "When she is on the screen nothing else matters. When she is off, the same is true."

Carl Sandburg: "The smartest and swiftest work as yet seen from Miss Clara Bow."

The Reel Journal: "Clara Bow is taking the place of Gloria Swanson...(and)...filling a long need for a popular taste movie actress."

On August 16, 1926, Bow's agreement with Paramount was renewed into a five-year deal: "Her salary will start at $1700 a week and advance yearly to $4000 a week for the last year."[78] Bow added that she intended to leave the motion picture business at the expiration of the contract, i.e., in 1931.

In 1927, Bow appeared in six Paramount releases: It, Children of Divorce, Rough House Rosie, Wings, Hula and Get Your Man. In the Cinderella story It, the poor shop-girl Betty Lou Spence (Bow) conquers the heart of her employer Cyrus Waltham (Antonio Moreno). The personal quality —"It"— provides the magic to make it happen. The film gave Bow her nickname, "The 'It' Girl."

The New York Times: "(Bow)...is vivacious and, as Betty Lou, saucy, which perhaps is one of the ingredients of It."

The Film Daily: "Clara Bow gets a real chance and carries it off with honors...(and)...she is really the whole show."

Carl Sandburg: "'It' is smart, funny and real. It makes a full-sized star of Clara Bow."

Variety: "You can't get away from this Clara Bow girl. She certainly has that certain 'It'...and she just runs away with the film."

Dorothy Parker is often said to have referred to Bow when she wrote, "It, hell; she had Those."[109] Parker in actuality was not referring to Bow or to Bow's character in the film It, but to a different character, Ava Cleveland, in the novel of the same name.

In 1927, Bow starred in Wings, a war picture rewritten to accommodate her, as she was Paramount's biggest star, but was not happy about her part: "[Wings is]...a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." The film went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1928, Bow appeared in four Paramount releases: Red Hair, Ladies of the Mob, The Fleet's In, and Three Weekends, all of which are lost.

Adela Rogers St. Johns, a noted screenwriter who had done a number of pictures with Bow, wrote about her:

There seems to be no pattern, no purpose to her life. She swings from one emotion to another, but she gains nothing, stores up nothing for the future. She lives entirely in the present, not even for today, but in the moment. Clara is the total nonconformist. What she wants she gets, if she can. What she desires to do she does. She has a big heart, a remarkable brain, and the most utter contempt for the world in general. Time doesn't exist for her, except that she thinks it will stop tomorrow. She has real courage, because she lives boldly. Who are we, after all, to say she is wrong?

Bow's bohemian lifestyle and "dreadful" manners were considered reminders of the Hollywood elite's uneasy position in high society. Bow fumed: "They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples for me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs ... I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!"

MGM executive Paul Bern said Bow was "the greatest emotional actress on the screen", "sentimental, simple, childish and sweet," and considered her "hard-boiled attitude" a "defense mechanism".

With "talkies" The Wild Party, Dangerous Curves, and The Saturday Night Kid, all released in 1929, Bow kept her position as the top box-office draw and queen of Hollywood.

Neither the quality of Bow's voice nor her Brooklyn accent was an issue to Bow, her fans, or Paramount. However, Bow, like Charlie Chaplin, Louise Brooks, and most other silent film stars, did not embrace the novelty: "I hate talkies ... they're stiff and limiting. You lose a lot of your cuteness, because there's no chance for action, and action is the most important thing to me." A visibly nervous Bow had to do a number of retakes in The Wild Party because her eyes kept wandering up to the microphone overhead. "I can't buck progress .. I have to do the best I can," she said. In October 1929, Bow described her nerves as "all shot", saying that she had reached "the breaking point", and Photoplay cited reports of "rows of bottles of sedatives" by her bed.

According to the 1930 census, Bow lived at 512 Bedford Drive, together with her secretary and hairdresser, Daisy DeBoe (later DeVoe), in a house valued $25,000 with neighbors titled "Horse-keeper", "Physician", "Builder". Bow stated she was 23 years old, i.e., born 1906, contradicting the censuses of 1910 and 1920.

"Now they're having me sing. I sort of half-sing, half-talk, with hips-and-eye stuff. You know what I mean—like Maurice Chevalier. I used to sing at home and people would say, 'Pipe down! You're terrible!' But the studio thinks my voice is great."

With Paramount on Parade, True to the Navy, Love Among the Millionaires, and Her Wedding Night, Bow was second at the box-office only to Joan Crawford in 1930. With No Limit and Kick In, Bow held the position as fifth at box-office in 1931, but the pressures of fame, public scandals, overwork, and a damaging court trial charging her secretary Daisy DeVoe with financial mismanagement, took their toll on Bow's fragile emotional health. As she slipped closer to a major breakdown, her manager, B.P. Schulberg, began referring to her as "Crisis-a-day-Clara". In April, Bow was brought to a sanatorium, and at her request, Paramount released her from her final undertaking: City Streets (1931). At 25, her career was essentially over.

B.P. Schulberg tried to replace Bow with his girlfriend Sylvia Sidney, but Paramount went into receivership, lost its position as the biggest studio (to MGM), and fired Schulberg. David Selznick explained:

...[when] Bow was at her height in pictures we could make a story with her in it and gross a million and a half, where another actress would gross half a million in the same picture and with the same cast.

Bow left Hollywood for Rex Bell's ranch in Nevada, her "desert paradise", in June[120] and married him in then small-town Las Vegas in December. In an interview on December 17, Bow detailed her way back to health: sleep, exercise, and food, and the day after[122] she returned to Hollywood "for the sole purpose of making enough money to be able to stay out of it."

Soon, every studio in Hollywood (except Paramount) and even overseas wanted her services. Mary Pickford stated that Bow "was a very great actress" and wanted her to play her sister in Secrets (1933), Howard Hughes offered her a three-picture deal, and MGM wanted her to star in Red-Headed Woman (1932). Bow agreed to the script, but eventually rejected the offer since Irving Thalberg required her to sign a long-term contract.

On April 28, 1932, Bow signed a two-picture deal with Fox Film Corporation, for Call Her Savage (1932) and Hoop-La (1933). Both were successful; Variety favored the latter. The October 1934, Family Circle Film Guide rated the film as "pretty good entertainment", and of Miss Bow said: "This is the most acceptable bit of talkie acting Miss Bow has done." However, they noted, "Miss Bow is presented in her dancing duds as often as possible, and her dancing duds wouldn't weigh two pounds soaking wet." Bow commented on her revealing costume in Hoop-La: "Rex accused me of enjoying showing myself off. Then I got a little sore. He knew darn well I was doing it because we could use a little money these days. Who can't?"

Bow reflected on her career:

My life in Hollywood contained plenty of uproar. I'm sorry for a lot of it but not awfully sorry. I never did anything to hurt anyone else. I made a place for myself on the screen and you can't do that by being Mrs. Alcott's idea of a Little Woman.

Bow and actor Rex Bell (later a lieutenant governor of Nevada) had two sons, Tony Beldam (born 1934, changed name to Rex Anthony Bell, Jr., died July 8, 2011) and George Beldam, Jr. (born 1938). Bow retired from acting in 1933. In September 1937, she and Bell opened The 'It' Cafe in the Hollywood Plaza Hotel at 1637 N Vine Street near Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. It closed in 1943. Her last public performance, albeit fleeting, came in 1947 on the radio show Truth or Consequences. Bow was the mystery voice in the show's "Mrs. Hush" contest.

Bow eventually began showing symptoms of psychiatric illness. She became socially withdrawn, and although she refused to socialize with her husband, she also refused to let him leave the house alone. In 1944, while Bell was running for the U.S. House of Representatives, Bow tried to commit suicide. A note was found in which Bow stated she preferred death to a public life.

In 1949, she checked into the Institute of Living to be treated for her chronic insomnia and diffuse abdominal pains. Shock treatment was tried and numerous psychological tests performed. Bow's IQ was measured "bright normal", while others claimed she was unable to reason, had poor judgment and displayed inappropriate or even bizarre behavior. Her pains were considered delusional and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia; however, she experienced neither auditory nor visual hallucinations. Analysts tied the onset of the illness, as well as her insomnia, to the "butcher knife episode" back in 1922, but Bow rejected psychological explanations and left the Institute. She did not return to her family. After leaving the institution, Bow lived alone in a bungalow, which she rarely left, until her death.

Bow spent her last years in Culver City, under the constant care of a nurse, Estalla Smith, living off an estate worth about $500,000 at the time of her death. In 1965, at age 60, she died of a heart attack, which was attributed to atherosclerosis discovered in an autopsy. She was interred in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Heritage at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Her pallbearers were Harry Richman, Richard Arlen, Jack Oakie, Maxie Rosenbloom, Jack Dempsey, and Buddy Rogers.

#clara bow #silent movie stars #silent era #silent hollywood #silent cinema #golden age of hollywood

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hollenka99 · 5 years

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Fighting Stolen Breaths

Summary: 1932 is a horrible year for Jameson.

Warnings: Terminal illness, implied death

The cough that refuses to disappear is the thing that alerts him. The fever and fatigue are worrying too. Still, his first self-diagnosis is simply influenza. That is until he recalls his meeting with Maggie Powell in December. The spots of blood mixed with phlegm cannot be ignored.

The doctor doesn't have to tell him the most likely outcome. He already knows. The question of prognosis is not 'Will I?' but instead 'How long?'

The truth is there isn't really an exact way to say for certain. For some, it only takes a handful of months, if that. For others, it can drag on for a year or two. Jameson knows he is likely on the briefer end of the spectrum. January 1st 1932 was the last New Year's he was to celebrate and he hadn't even known it.

He doesn't tell the children at first. He even lies to his wife about the severity of his illness. His bedroom becomes a quarantine zone. Still, he helped raise intelligent children and Oliver is the one to suggest he leave for a sanatorium. Reluctantly, he does.

He'll fight stolen breaths for his children.

They need him to come home. Likewise, he needs to ensure he sees Siobhan and Nora again. It's been too long for him to go without doing so.

The Barlow Respiratory Hospital is a decent establishment. He makes them promise to not release any information regarding his admittance there. He'd prefer for the public not to know he is gravely ill. If there are still members of his personal circle who don't know, why should anyone who reads a newspaper be aware before them?

The routine is tedious. He must lie down in the fresh air, as many hours of the day as possible. He sneaks in writing wherever he can. He promised Maggie Powell he'd write a story with skeletons and he has to leave Nora something. His youngest daughter will never have memories of him, not like her siblings. This is the least he can do for her.

June arrives and it becomes apparent he is not getting better. In fact, his health seems to be steadily declining. By his reasoning, there wasn't much point to staying at Barlow. Some had it within them to take to the treatments. Others, like Jameson, simply didn't respond to the efforts as hoped. He'd taken a chance and all it had brought him was nothing but wasted time.

Anthony is back from Berkeley when he returns home. He shows his father a picture of newborn twins, his first grandchildren. They are beautiful. A little boy and girl. He wishes his eldest son good luck with fatherhood.

He keeps fighting stolen breaths for the grandchildren he knows he'll never meet.

Not just James and Genevieve. No, those are the first two of who knows how many. Anthony is still 19 and the only one of his siblings to reach adulthood so far. Jameson has 7 children who are all probably going to have some of their own in the coming decades. So many individuals he'll never hear refer to him as Grandpop. Just another aspect of life this disease is robbing him of.

Anthony also alerts Siobhan to the situation behind his back. Reading her handwriting has never hurt more when her response is delivered. She is angry and desperate, as she has every right to be.

He keeps fighting stolen breaths for Siobhan.

She did make him promise, after all. And he would certainly hate for her to waste her energy marching straight down to the deepest depths of Hell to give him a piece of her mind.

Siobhan has always been so good to him. Even when he hasn't deserved it. Here she is, risking her own health to care for him. Waking to see her smiling sweetly at him on that afternoon in late August triggers tears. They haven't been in each other's presence in four and a half years. Yet here they are, in this atrocious situation.

He fights stolen breaths for his family too.

Pearl and Clifford visit occasionally over the warm months. Sometimes all the visit entails is them signing to each other. Simply spend time in each other's company while they still can. Mabel is briefly in Los Angeles as August turns to September. Her presence is comforting too. His sister is right, watching Nora play in the garden from his window is somewhat ridiculous.

For three weeks, Siobhan tends to him. She cools his forehead whenever he burns internally. She reassures him it really is fine to sleep. He'll swear he honestly isn't hungry but she'll ensure he has eaten something each day. This disease has put him through a lot. But he can't submit yet, he can't. There's Henry's birthday and Oliver's, and his own, there's Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's Eve, there is so much he has to be there for. He has to persevere on.

So he fights and breathes, fights and breathes, fights and

rests.

#the life of jameson jackson #tlojj #tlojj spoilers #my writing #tw terminal illness #tw tuberculosis #tw implied death #tw death #tw major character death

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thesffcorner · 6 years

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Glass

Glass is written and directed by M Night Shyamalan. It’s the third film in a series that started 19 years ago with Unbreakable and takes place 3 weeks after the events of Split. It follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who after the death of his wife, has become a vigilante, dubbed the Overseer by the public. He has been trying to find the Beast (James McAvoy), who has in the intervening time kidnapped 2 more sets of girls. However, during their confrontation they get ambushed by the police and admitted into a sanatorium, under the eye of Dr Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychiatrist who has three days to ‘cure’ both of them from their delusion that they are superheroes.

I really enjoyed this film. It still suffers from some pacing and dialogues issues, as do most of Shyamalan’s films, but a lot of the problems I had with Split, are fixed here. It’s a clever examination of our culture’s perception of superheroes and extraordinary humans, and I think it’s a fitting conclusion to David, Kevin and Elijah’s story-lines.

I think the best way to talk about this film, would be to go over the characters, because much like Fantastic Beasts, the positives and negatives are tied to the various character story-lines. So, in descending order let’s start with the positives.

Kevin Wendell Crumb:

Kevin’s character, I feel has both the strongest arc, and gets most of the screen times, so it’s only fitting we start with him. In the intervening time between Split and Glass, the Horde, we find out has kidnapped two more sets of girls, a group of cheerleaders being the last one. All of the personalities we saw in Split make a comeback, and while I still maintain that Hedwig is the MVP, and best character, I was surprised at how much I both liked and looked forward to seeing Dennis, Patricia and Kevin himself.

I really do have to comment MacAvoy; he is genuinely the reason this character works at all. He has such a good grasp on all these different characters, that me and my friends just had fun guessing which personality had the light in different scenes, and we all guessed first try, often without even McAvoy having any dialogue. He is so good at creating different mannerisms and body language for each character, and they are all (especially the main 5) are recognizable and distinguished from each other.

I was also happy to see a ton of the other personalities. I didn’t count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did see all 24 of them; there are two scenes where the asylum uses hypnotic lights to cycle between the different characters in Kevin’s body, and we get a taste of most if not all of them. None of the other personalities get any real weight to the story, but I did like the subtle hints that the Horde was disintegrating, with some people joining Patricia and Dennis, and some maintaining to fight against them.

Speaking of Dennis, I was SHOCKED that I actually liked him in this film. I think the smaller role actually helped establish what was meant to be his conflict in Split, which was his desire to protect Kevin, and Patricia’s indoctrination that only the Beast can truly do that, with his hesitance to kill any of the girls. He is faced with Casey, and her being amicable and caring about Kevin are what really push him over the edge into realizing the Beast is wrong, and I really liked that.

Patricia was the weakest of the mains in Split, but here she gets some interesting scenes with Elijah. She is the Beast's priestess and first disciple, but even her faith and commitment waver in the face of someone like David Dunn who is capable of all the things the Beast is, and maybe even stronger. She was the one that was the most susceptible to Dr. Staple’s ‘therapy’ because she’s the most committed to the idea that the Beast is superhuman; if he isn’t and he is just a mad monster, than Patricia has to come to terms with the fact that all the people she killed for him were innocent and for nothing.

Hedwig doesn’t really get an arc, but he is still the most entertaining and funniest character. He gets several scenes to shine with Elijah and David, but the stand out was definitely his ‘relationship’ with Casey, which brought some much needed levity to this otherwise bleak film.

Kevin, who didn’t get much time to shine in Split, gets a bigger role here. I thought the idea of him more or less imprinting on Casey because she was the one to show him kindness and their shared trauma was fine as a character turn. What I didn’t really like or understand were the weird romantic undertones between them, and also Casey's speech to him about what happened to her uncle after the Beast let her go, should have made no sense to Kevin, since he didn’t know about her scars; it felt like it was directed at the audience, as Shyamalan realized Casey didn’t get any conclusion in the last film.

As for the Beast, I really liked the way Elijah essentially manipulates him to fall perfectly in his plan, and I think the film does a decent job at presenting the duality of him being at once, there to protect Kevin from the world, and at the same time a destructive and evil force in the world.

Elijah Pierce:

Speaking of Elijah, he was by far my favorite character in the film. Samuel L Jackson is great in any role, but here he brings a real joy to this character that’s at the same time appalling, and sympathetic and pitiable. He makes terrible decisions, hurts people and has no concern for anyone other than as to how they fit in his grand scheme, and yet you can’t help but root for him. He’s incredibly clever, and his medical condition makes it near impossible for me to hate him, mostly because there are plenty of characters who treat him poorly in the film.

This entire plot hinges on his plan, and while I won’t spoil it, I will say that I DID NOT see either of the twists coming, and I was pleasantly surprised with the direction the film took. Jackson got some great interactions with both Willis and McAvoy, and I really liked that he not once is tempted to believe that what Dr Staple tells him is true; that’s why she decides to perform the ‘procedure’ on him immediately. I also really liked the scenes he gets with his mother, especially at the end; I thought that was a very touching moment, and humanized a rather monstrous character.

David Dunn:

David was the only character I feel like was rather wasted in this film. He has a lot of screen time especially at the start of the film, while he’s still trying to find the Beast, and I really liked the Batman/Oracle dynamic he has with his son Joseph throughout the film. Unfortunately, once the characters are in the asylum, he sort of gets lost in the shuffle, and doesn’t really have a proper arc like Kevin or Elijah. He basically goes through the same arc he had in Unbreakable, except less well executed, and faster.

and he’s the one that really puts a wrench in the ‘therapy’ Dr Staple has, which is hard to explain without talking about Dr. Staple.

Dr. Ellie Staple:

Dr Staple specialized in people who have delusions that they are superhumans, so she spends most of the film trying to convince the three, especially Kevin and David, that they don’t. Except this isn’t really convincing as a potential twist, because we KNOW that David and the Beast are capable of doing superhuman things. With David, he’s never been sick, he’s never broken a bone, he survived a train crash that killed everyone else, he can lift more than weightlifters in their prime, he can sustain heavy blows and injuries in his body, and he looks amazing for someone who at that point is probably around 60. Even the explanation of his visions felt too contrived; the movie doesn’t make an effort to disguise the way he figures out Hedwig is the Beast by showing us the ‘clues’ that he supposedly picked up on to make that judgement; it’s very clearly some form of superpower, and I don’t see how anyone in the audience would believe even for a second that David isn’t superhuman.

The same goes for the Beast; I don’t care how good at parkour and rock climbing you are, you can NOT walk on ceilings, stick to flat surfaces or throw metal tables like they weigh nothing as a human, you just simple can not. Getting shot at point blank even via a malfunctioning shotgun would KILL YOU. This whole section felt like wasted time, because I as an audience member at no point believed any of it was true, and really disliked that out of all people the one that it worked best on was David.

There is much more I can say about Staple, but I won’t because of spoilers. The one thing I will say, is that it makes sense that she would try to dissuade the trio from believing they are gifted first, and I understand why that part was in the film, I just feel like maybe it would have worked better, if we didn’t already have two previous films where we establish their powers already.

The other thing was that she was just a horrible psychiatrist. Letting Casey talk to Kevin, but not letting Joseph see his dad, claiming that David attacked one of the cheerleaders when there are witnesses that he didn’t, using water to subdue David in what is essentially torture, while at the same time telling him his fear of drowning and isn’t actually his kryptonite because he’s a regular man… look it makes sense at the end, but without that twist, you begin wondering WHO RUNS THIS SHOW? How is this legal?

Casey, Mrs. Pierce and Joseph:

Joseph was the one who had the least amount of screen-time and least to do. I liked his role as a tech wizard, Oracle-style figure to David, and I enjoyed the scene where he writes a speech to convince Dr Staple that his dad is just a senile old man who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but other than that he doesn’t have much to do.

I liked Mrs. Pierce the most, because I really like her relationship with Elijah. I appreciate that she acknowledges that he is not a good man, and has done horrible things, while also loving and caring about him deeply, and being proud of his intelligence and strength. She was a really good character.

Casey I liked better here, because she was a little more proactive, but I still don’t really understand why she cared about Kevin to the extent that she does. First, he did hold her hostage and try to eat her, ate two of her classmates, and then ‘let her go’ in the sense that he left her locked in a cage at the zoo. Why was she so touched by that so much that she was willing to get involved with him again? I don’t think the film really does a good job at distinguishing between her relationship to the Beast vs Kevin (I’d even throw in Dennis in there, since their interactions are also creepy), and even if we say that her attachment is purely to Kevin, the film doesn’t really explain why she would want to do anything to do with him!

Some Miscellaneous Thoughts:

I did like the breakdown of the superhero genre, and the play with tropes and conventions like the Villain Team Up, the Former Villain Joins Forces With the Hero To Defeat a Bigger Threat, the Twist in the Third Act, Secret Plan All Along, etc. I liked how the secondary characters filled out a roles in each of the heroes’ lives like the Sidekick, the Emotional core, the Mentor. I even liked the self sacrifice to bring light to truth aspect of the story.

However, I think that there were definitely things that needed improvement. Like I said, the middle part does drag, and the ‘therapy’ angle didn’t really work and felt like a waste of time until we get to the climax. I also thought that the idea of superhero books being a fictionalized history lesson on real things was interesting, but the way the movie presents it, it’s both not a convincing case and not very interesting, because it does sound crazy. The other thing that tied into this was the idea that Staple’s therapy and similar measures have worked so well for centuries, until specifically Elijah came along; that seemed a little unreasonable as well.

Conclusion:

I liked this film. If you like Shyamalan, slow, character driven explorations of the superhero genre and or any of the actors, go see it. If you don’t, then skip this film; don’t go into it thinking you’ll get Watchmen, because you won’t; the closest would be season 1 of Heroes.

#glass #glass review #film review #moni talks

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throughtheglassdarkly · 6 years

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Missing Pieces, part 2

Welcome back. When last you were here, I almost barfed on the turkey. Onward.

About two weeks passed from our dinner with the seasonal Court leaders and the Harvest Festival, where we were told we could officially swear loyalty to any court we chose. My motley didn’t hang out too much during this time. The freehold managed to get each of us some one-bedroom apartments in a not-too-bad part of Albany and we were all interested in getting back to living a regular life. Some of us were also interested in seeking out our fetches, getting jobs, or learning more about the Courts. Few of us managed all of that.

Pam and I both managed to find jobs baking. I got work at an upscale bakery that specialized in overpriced cupcakes for gender reveal parties and other ridiculous things. Pam got a job baking in a kitchen. Both of us were happy with this – it let us do something we loved. Yova managed to make contact with some of her old friends and associates on the entertainment circuit and started the process of getting back into working as an accompanist and some lessons.

Bella, Yova, and Pam were all interested in seeking out information on their fetches. Bella did some Facebook stalking and learned that aside from a little concern after she first disappeared, her family seemed pretty happy with her fetch. It made her sad, but at least she knew they were doing all right. Pam was able to focus on a connection with her fetch and realized things weren’t going as smoothly as they could be, either with her kids or husband. She actually reached out to her fetch, sending her messages on Facebook and offering help with advice about her kids. The fetch tentatively responded and they began a correspondence. Yova, however, had the most surprising discovery of any of us. She tracked her fetch down to a sanatorium upstate and discovered that the pressure of being Yova caused her fetch to snap. Yova told me later she was tempted to just choke out her fetch in the cell, but managed to hold back because she knew it would be very bad if she killed her fetch and tried to take that crazy back into herself.

Of course, something I know we were all thinking about was which court, if any, to join. We all received some gifts and notes from the court leaders, at least any ones we made an impression on. Winter sent a fairly impersonal note to everybody. I don’t know what the others received, but Autumn sent me a lovely mason jar with some bagged cupcake mix inside. It was a very sweet thought, but I tossed the bagged mix and kept the jar. Bella visited with Spring and had a long chat with Duke Lamington, Mistress Lilly’s second-in-command. Day went to Summer and talked with them about their mission in keeping the freehold safe. I met up with Evain and he took me to Autumn’s lodge in the Hedge where the court kept a ton of records, books, and relics. I also got a chance to talk with Evain a bit and realized he wasn’t as bad as he first came across to my motley – he’d escaped from Arcadia about twelve years before us and found that his fetch had died while he was back. He was starting a new life, which was both good and bad: good because he could get a fresh start from having a criminal history before he left, but bad because he’d had a kid who he couldn’t get back in touch with.

Ultimately, Bella decided that she did want to join Spring’s revelry, Day wanted to take up arms with Summer on behalf of the freehold, and I committed to joining Autumn and trying to add to their knowledge and study. Pam, who’d been kind of keeping to herself since she got back, didn’t feel a need to join any court off the bat, which didn’t surprise me. Pam is definitely the type to avoid picking any court over another simply because she doesn’t want to cause hurt feelings. Much to my surprise, however, Yova also demurred on joining a court. She told me at one of our brunch sessions that she was having a very hard time deciding between Spring and Summer and that she didn’t want to make a decision she might later regret.

At any rate, the three of us who had decided to swear loyalty were told that the next major event where we could do so was the Harvest Festival, which was to be hosted by the Autumn Court as one of their major events of the season. We all (minus Pam, who had a shift she had to work) arrived at an apple orchard about twenty minutes outside the city that the court had rented out just for the freehold. It was a chilly but nice Sunday afternoon – we needed jackets because the wind was cold, but the sun was out and it there was one of those crystal-clear October skies. The leaves were gold and bright red and it felt like the epitome of autumn.

Once we arrived, most of us went our separate ways. Yova was single and looking to mingle. Before too long, she made the acquaintance of a flame Elemental named Susie from a neighboring freehold who was quite taken with Yova and they started talking very intently. Bella grabbed some cotton candy and joined Day, who was stuffing his face with funnel cake and pie and corn dogs and apple cider, and managed to sneak a couple bites off of his plate (risking her hand every time she did). As for me, I was mostly interested in checking out the fair as a whole, trying to see what my new court was doing and how it was getting put together.

And also trying to avoid molting. Yeah, molting. Embarrassing as it was, I was shedding feathers all over the place.

Evain introduced me to some of the other Autumn courtiers and I was standing around talking to them, when the trouble started. I can’t really explain it, but I had a feeling almost akin to what I felt back in Arcadia, when I was being made to serve Amberleigh’s needs. It was as if I was aware that I was being used for someone else’s pleasure, like my actions weren’t my own. Also, weirdly, I almost felt like I could see a giant can of Diet Coke next to me.

(Note from the author: Derek has a character merit called Trained Observer, of which he has the advanced form. This merit allows what’s called the 8-again rule on all observation and perception checks in Chronicles of Darkness games. 8s, 9s, and 10s are successes and he can re-roll any successes until the dice do not come up as successes. He rolled a whopping 11 successes on this particular roll, and our GM described that Derek suddenly and briefly became aware of himself as a character in a game.)

But that moment passed. And what I was also suddenly aware of was seeing a frazzled-looking teenager running through the stalls. What made him stand out was that he looked wholly human: as a changeling, you can see other changelings for how they really are, so you know another changeling instantly at a glance. This kid was definitely not a changeling. I managed to step out of the way just before he would have barreled into me and he yelled at me to watch myself. I asked him if something was wrong and he stammered out an obvious lie about looking for his dog. He asked what was going on with the festival and I made up a story about it being a last-minute benefit for sick kids. I told him we could let him know if anyone stumbled across a dog and he gave me his address. As he was leaving, I saw him picking up a few of the feathers I’d dropped and I mentioned him to Evain, who went off to grab security and yell at them for letting a human get in.

The next few hours, into the evening, went smoothly. It turns out the Autumn Court actually manages to throw a pretty decent shindig. Bella and Day ate their way through all the food stands, Yova and Susie shamelessly flirted over a few glasses of hard cider, and I got to sit through one of the lecture forums to get more of a feel for my court. Oh, shut up. It was a lot more interesting than it sounds. At any rate, we got brought into one of the tents for the formal swearing shortly after sunset. And that’s when the trouble really began.

The first thing we noticed was that The Dagda was drinking heavily from a jug of wine and pacing up and down through the tent, talking to a few Autumn Courtiers who all looked very uncomfortable. He spotted us and seemed to remember what we were there for, but didn’t give any inclination that we’d be going to actually do that. I piped up and asked, “Is everything all right, sir?” “No. No, it is not all right,” he said, draining the wine and letting out a belch. “There’s been a setback. Or not a setback. A hiccup. A hiccup sounds better, more neutral. We have to have a change of plans.” Seeing that none of us had any idea what he was talking about, he took in a breath and turned to face us. “Someone has broken into one of our displays and absconded with a Token that we retrieved from Arcadia. A crystal swan.” He turned and looked at me. “And I don’t want to say anything, but… we found these in the display.” And he didn’t even need to show me. I already knew what he was going to pull out of his pocket. White and black feathers. Goddammit.

Yova managed to get out, “Now, sir, you can’t honestly think that Derek would do something like that.” The Dagda grabbed another bottle of wine and started sucking it down before he said, “Of course I don’t want to think Derek would do something like that. So I’m willing to listen to any possible explanation.” I think he was a little surprised that I wasn’t more surprised or acting guilty. I was rubbing my forehead, trying to ward off the sudden headache I was feeling, and said, “I knew that kid was up to no good.” I told The Dagda and the rest of my motley about what I’d seen the kid doing and how I saw him picking up some of my feathers that I’d been molting. Day started snickering at that – he’d been mocking me ever since I started shedding feathers – and I gave him a look of death.

The Dagda nodded at that and said that this was a perfect opportunity to – pardon the expression – kill two birds with one stone. He told us to find the kid and get the Token back and if we were able to do that, we could arrange for another time for us to swear our loyalty to the courts and get our mantles. There wasn’t much else we could do other than agree to do our best to find the kid. “Good lad!” he told me and clapped me on the back, which sent feathers everywhere, then he tottered off. I turned to Yova, Bella, and Day and told them about the address I got from the kid. “It might not be anything, but it’s a start,” I said. We agreed to check it out and walked over to the junky pickup Yova’d managed to get her hands on. The three normal-sized ones of us got in the front seats and Day climbed into the back. And if there is anything that is more upstate New York than a big dude riding away from an apple orchard in the back of a pickup, I don’t know what it might be. Except voting for a presidential candidate completely against your self-interest.

It didn’t take long for us to get to the address I’d been given – it was barely ten minutes’ drive away. It looked like your average farmhouse, nothing special about it. We discussed our plan of attack. Yova took the alternator cap off and headed up to the front door, knocking and asking for help. While she did this, Bella blinked out of existence, slipping inside the house when the door opened. She told us that she’d scream bloody murder if there was trouble. She’s good at that.

The lady who answered the door was very tired-looking and told Yova that her husband could help Yova with fixing the car. Bella slipped up the stairs, looking around and seeing a bunch of news clippings for their local town. There were also two bedrooms upstairs, one that had the name “Charlie” on it and the other which had the name “Abigail.” Yova got the husband to lend her a wrench and she and Bella met Day and me back outside. Bella told us there was nothing to see, that the house was boring as fuck, but she did note that the clippings were about crimes in the local area. Yova did some Google Fu and realized that the daughter in this family, a nine-year old named Abigail Hepburn, had been missing for two days. Bella asked me for a description of the teenager I saw and when I gave it to her, she realized from some pictures she’d seen that it was Abigail’s brother Charlie.

We realized we needed to get back inside and Yova, thankfully, had a contract that allowed her to do just that. She brought the wrench back and walked right in like she owned the place, asking about Charlie. The man seemed to think she was one of his teachers at school and told her Charlie was downstairs, so Yova made her way down to a furnished basement and started talking to a very confused Charlie. She asked him about what he’d been doing and he told her about the “sketchy party” in the orchard, implying Yova might be one of them. She asked, “Do I look like I hang out with sketchy people?” “You kinda do,” he said. “In these shoes?” she asked. She ended up giving him her number and he mentioned that if she could help him find his sister, he might be willing to exchange a trinket for her time. Yova realized that he was definitely up to no good, but there wasn’t much else she could do other than head out and wait for him to contact us.

Yova dropped each of us off at our apartments. She later told me that she called Susie up, who was totally down to fornicate. I didn’t get many of the details out of her, but they definitely made sparks.

God, I hate myself.

As for me, I spent the evening doing what I did pretty much every night before bed. I made a makeshift bed for Paisley out of a shoe box and a t-shirt and had her sleep on the table next to my bed. Before we went to sleep, however, I would always write down some short messages on index cards and hold them up for her to look at. I wanted to tell Adrian how things were going, so I’d write a few notes down and have Paisley look at them. I still wasn’t sure if Adrian was able to see into the human world, but on the chance that he could, I wanted him to know that I was thinking of him and trying to figure out a way to get him out of Arcadia. That night, the cards I held up read “Went to Harvest Festival.” “Autumn Court lost a Token.” “We have to find it.” “Trying to talk to people who know about contracts.” “Hope things are good there. I miss you.”

The next morning was notably colder than the day before – there was frost on the ground and the windows were fogged. As much as I wanted to spend the morning in bed, my phone was constantly beeping. There were a ton of messages from Yova. “Thanks for GIVING me your number.” “Don’t you want to know about the trinket?” “;)” “:p” “You guys are soooooo slow.” I found out quickly that all of us – Yova included – got these messages from her. Charlie had clearly gotten into Yova’s phone somehow and was sending these messages out. He gave us an address in a strip mall on the outskirts of Albany where we could meet him.

We managed to touch base and (Yova a little more reluctantly than the rest of us) all met up at the strip mall where Charlie was waiting, looking smug as all get out. He told us that he wanted some incentive for us to help him find his sister. “Just tell us what you want,” I groused. “And make it quick,” Yova snapped. He straightened up and started looking more serious. He told us that Abigail had been wandering the Hedge and he wanted us to get her back. He wasn’t able to go himself and said he didn’t really care what happened to Abigail, but that he needed his mother to be happy again. Yova asked him what he was and he smiled grimly and said, “I’m something caught on this side that can’t go back. Fate has conspired for us to work together and you need to play our part as I’ve played mine.”

I asked where Abigail was last seen and he told us he’d take us to the trod. We piled into Yova’s pickup, with Charlie and Day in the back, and he directed us back out to near where he home was, eventually leading us to a little stream just off a trailhead. “So what if it’s too late?” Bella asked. Charlie shrugged and said, “I just want her back. I don’t care in what state. My parents need closure.” Yova straightened herself up to her full six and a half feet and started to ask him what if we were to simply bring the entire freehold down on him. But as she was doing this, she started to feel an immense amount of pressure, and she realized that something had happened – we were supernaturally bound to see this promise through to the end.

Without waiting for an answer, Yova marched back to her car, retrieved her rapier, and marched back. Day started forming a mud patty and, like he’d done in Arcadia, swallowed it before spitting it out over his arms to make his fists stony. I knew I wasn’t going to be a huge help in fighting, but figured I could at least make it harder for anyone to track us down. I asked if either Yova or Day could carry Bella and Day reluctantly let her climb on his back. I reached down and erased one of my footprints, then one of Yova’s and one of Day’s, spending some Glamour and ensuring we wouldn’t leave tracks. We bid an awkward and annoyed farewell to Charlie and stepped through the trod. The Hedge we emerged into was not like anything I’d seen before: it was a massive corn maze with scarecrows, a chill breeze, and dead leaves.

Yeah. He sent us into the goddamn cornfield. But it was good that he did that.

We had no idea what direction to head in and spent some time trying to get our bearings. It was Yova who first picked up on the fact that the wind was blowing in an unnatural way, seeming to gust at us from several directions at once. She started to think about wishing the world could make itself a little easier, and as she did that, the wind picked up again and one of the scarecrows turned in the wind, suddenly pointing in a direction. The leaves also started blowing in that direction. We figured this was about as good a sign as any we were going to get and started trekking along.

As we followed the leaves, we realized they were leading us away from certain things, dead ends, pits we might not have seen. After what felt like about an hour, we made it to the center of the corn maze, where we saw a gathering of little hobgoblins. And what were they doing, you ask? Having a tea party with Abigail Hepburn. This left us in a bit of a quandary. Obviously Abby wasn’t in any immediate danger, but that didn’t mean we could just leave her be and watch what was happening. We started quietly discussing what we should do. Day suggested beating them down. “And then we’d have to carry a screaming child back through the Hedge. Do you want to carry a screaming child back through the Hedge?” Yova asked him. “I’m already carrying a screaming child through the Hedge,” Day retorted. “HEY!” Bella yelled, which of course caught their attention. I swear, I have no idea how Bella became a Darkling.

We had to respond quickly and thankfully, Yova decided to practically float into their gathering, charming the absolute shit out of everybody. She plopped down next to Abby, who was completely smitten, and introduced herself. The goblins talked about Abby as their treasure, which Yova heartily agreed with. Thankfully, there are times where Yova being completely full of crap comes in handy. She spun a story that she’d traveled far and wide to swear fealty to Abby as Abby’s knight. She then swore an oath that she would make sure Abby was safe until Abby saw her home again. I was watching and managed to seal that promise remotely, hoping it would give us a leg up in getting Abby back home. Notary, away!

The hobgoblins weren’t terribly pleased about this and said that they were going to take Abby further into the Hedge for their clients. Yova noticed Abby squirming a bit and asked if she had to use the bathroom, which she did. She offered to escort Abby to take care of business and the head hobgoblin insisted on some female hobgoblins going along with them. Day, Bella, and I attempted to slip through the cornfield, with Bella activating her darkness to give us some cover. While Yova and the female hobgoblins were letting Abby have some privacy, Yova activated one of her contracts to make the hobgoblins afraid of the maze, then she comforted them, making them completely interested in helping her. They turned coat and agreed to go with her. She took them and Abby and started making her way back out of the hedge maze.

Of course nothing could ever go that smoothly and the other hobgoblins started following, realizing that something was up. Yova made a wrong turn and the hobgoblins ended up cornering her and Abby. Yova picked Abby up and whispered to her, “Keep your eyes shut.” She blazed her light at the hobgoblins, who fell back, shrieking, and then Yova ran like the dickens. We all booked it through the corn maze and managed to meet back up again at the entrance.

Abby was completely enchanted and wanted to know how Yova managed to do that. “Well, I made a deal with a unicorn,” Yova said. “Unicorns are real? They always make fun of me at school for liking unicorns,” Abby said. “Well, this was a special space unicorn,” Yova told her. And, because I am not a good person, I grinned and told Abby, “Yeah, all she had to do is put her hand around his horn and stroke it up and down really quickly, and then she got some magic sprayed all over her, especially her face. Isn’t that cool?” Abby looked delighted, and if looks could kill, Yova would have put me in the ground five times over with the glare she gave me.

There wasn’t any point in sticking around, so we hurried back through the trod and spotted Charlie. He was hanging out casually by the trod, but as soon as we came through, he straightened up and made his expression like the teenager we saw earlier. He yelled Abby’s name and she ran over to him, crying. While we watched, he made her swear not to talk about the things she saw to their mom, which we all had a pretty pissy expression about. He told us to take them home and promised he’d give us the Token then.

We brought them home and both Mr. and Mrs. Hepburn started crying when they saw Abby back safe and sound. Yova told them a story about being out driving and seeing Abby looking lost and scared near the woods. Mr. Hepburn couldn’t thank her enough, telling her that if they could ever do anything for her, to just let them know. Charlie slipped us the crystal swan and, before we got dragged into anything else, we skedaddled.

And then Day suggested we go get waffles.

So that’s a good enough spot to stop for now. When next you join us, more shenanigans and misfires. Until then, may you never molt around a kleptomaniac.

#Changeling: The Lost #changeling #CTL #recap #ic #planet unicorn heyyyy

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Greg Cannom Ozzy Osbourne ”Bark at the Moon” In 1980, Ozzy Osbourne signed as a solo act by Epic Records; at his first meeting with the company’s top brass, the Ozz pulled a dead pigeon out of a paper bag, and bit its head off. Supposedly the record execs were quite shocked, and ready to terminate Osbourne’s contract then and there. It’s said that his manager had to do a lot of managing to smooth things over with the record honchos.

The story of the rocker’s geek-like behavior got out to the rock press, and it didn’t seem to hurt Osbourne’s image any. If anything, it seemed to cement his reputation as a “real showman” one who would do anything to give his audience a rise. Then, during a concert in Des Moines in 1982, a member of the audience threw something on stage. To Osbourne, it looked like a toy-a rubber bird. It seemed a good idea to play along with the gag, so the Ozz picked it up and bit into it.

Instead of getting a mouthful of rubber, Osbourne again felt the sickening crunch of tiny bones as he bit off the head of a dead bat. Again, this time by accident he’d played the geek. And, again, the story got played up by the rock press, though most reporters neglected to mention that the incident had been accidental; as far as they were concerned, it was just old Ozzy, the madman of rock, playing that role to the hilt. It didn’t feel that way to Osbourne, though, who had to endure a painful series of rabies shots for his error.

During his 1983 tour of the U.S. Osbourne found his concerts were the target of a pressure campaign by church and parents’ groups, who perceived the Ozzas some form of human devil. Animal Cruelty and satanism were regarded by these groups as a regular part of his act, which of course they had never seen. Robert Hilburn of the L.A. Times reported on a meeting of one such group, which had Seen Osbourne’s act after they had failed to stop it.

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The next morning, several of the concerned ministers gathered to hear a report on the show. “You know what bothered me the most?”one pastor asked. “He said ‘God bless you.’ That’s blasphemy.”

Osbourne, a sincere Christian in his private life, was more than a little upset by these attacks by the clergy.” At first, all this satanic business was funny,” he told Hilburn. It brought me a lot of publicity when I needed it… But it has become like a nightmare. It’s like an LSD trip. You take a tablet and it’s fun at first, but you can’t turn it off.

“To me, it’s like American Werewolf in London or something, just a put on… Why are these people picking on me? Why don’t they picket Vincent Price? He must have been in 90 films with all kinds of satanic references.”

The Ozz made it pretty clear in all of his interviews of the period that he was ready for a change. That change arrived this year, when he appeared, on the Bark at the Moon (1983) album cover and in the video for the title track, as a werewolf. Osbourne’s logic here is pretty clear-if no one believed he was play-acting as a satanist, maybe they will finally recognize Ozzy the Werewolf as a creation of the purest fantasy.

Because Ozzy, like Michael Jackson, is a huge fan of John Landis’ An American Werewolf, Rick Baker was the first artist approached; but Baker was determined to take a hiatus from makeup work. Osbourne and company began combing the country in search of the right makeup man for the job, when one of their contacts recommended Greg Cannom, who had cut his teeth, lycanthropically speaking, as a key crewmember on The Howling. “They told me they needed this werewolf makeup in one week,” says Cannom.

There were actually two Cannom werewolves involved, the first to be done for the album cover photo session, and a second for the Bark at the Moon video. “In a way, I viewed the album cover shoot as a test; for the video, we had more time, and made a few changes that made it much more to my liking.”

Cannom’s involvement in the video has convinced him that the music business is even crazier than the movie business, though he found the project, overall, a fun assignment. Initially, Cannom was put off a bit by Ozzy’s “madman” reputation; that changed, however, when he met Osbourne. “His wife said to me, ‘I want to see how you’re going to get Ozzy to sit still for five hours,” Cannom recalls. “But he did it, no problems, and he wore the contacts with no problems.”

True fans know that Ozzy’s personality is more puppy dog than Satanist, and Cannom’s design reflects this with a more doglike countenance. A chief difficulty in the design of prostheses was the requirement that Osbourne’s tattoos, on his knuckles, chest and arms, should show through. This required the laying of very fine hair.

Two continents collaborated to get the work done within schedule. We were surprised to learn that in the U.S., Cannom’s chief assistant was Kevin Yagher. The hair for Ozzy’s wig was laid by Hollywood’s leading hairmeister, Josephine Turner. In England, Janice Barnes tied the individual hairs to lace hairpieces for Osbourne’s body, which she also applied.

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Mark Mayling served as Cannom’s assistant at Shepperton Studios for the album cover shoot, and on location for the video. Cannom is particularly pleased with the skill and the speed displayed by Turner and Barnes on the exacting hair work. “It was amazing, just plain incredible, that they were able to come through in that amount of time.

https://dailymotion.com/video/x1ihlz9

“The video was shot at Northampton County Sanatorium, which was built for rich people in the early 1900’s; they closed it down just a few years ago. It was one of the most spectacular buildings I’ve ever seen, and one of the scariest. Hundreds and hundreds of vast, empty rooms and vaulting hallways. I’d hate to be in there at night. One of my main disappointments with the video was that they really didn’t make very good use of that fabulous building…I was also disappointed that they didn’t show the makeup up close, after all the effort that went into it.”

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John Carl Buechler on the Ronnie James Dio’s Last in Line (1984) In 1984, Ronnie James Dio’s eponymic band followed up the success of Holy Diver with their second album, The Last in Line. The title track was accompanied by a completely bizarre music video directed by Don Coscarelli, who also brought us the horror flick Phantasm.

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The Ramones Psycho Therapy Video Shostrom’s entry into the wide world of rock video makeup came while he was working at an L.A. prop house; at the time, he was molding various nefarious devices to be used by the intergalactic buccaneers in the forthcoming film Ice Pirates. “Frank Delia, the producer of the Psycho Therapy (1983) video, knew John Varris, the vice president of the company,” Shostrom says. “John came in one day and said, ‘I know a lot of you guys have weird portfolios, a friend of mine is producing a rock video, and if you bring in your portfolios tomorrow, you can show him your stuff.'” The next day, Delia looked over the portfolios of the crew members; Shostrom and Showe were picked for the job.

Delia was far more open to input by the makeup artists than most film producers. “I don’t think Frank had worked with special effects of this sort before,” says Shostrom, “and, considering the weird situations portrayed in the video they’d planned, he was more inclined to be open, allowing us to toss in some ideas.

“Frank played the song for us, gave us copies of the lyrics, explained the basic idea of the psychoward and asked us if we had any ideas. We threw the ball around for several hours, and came up with the scenario of the Teenage Dope Fiend-the TDF, as Frank liked to call him-on the table about to be given a lobotomy, when his head splits open and this ‘alter ego emerges.”

This effect was accomplished “dry that is, without unpleasant gore, slime or other viscous substances, though a more graphic approach was considered. “But even before filming, there were many people at Warner Brothers and MTV who let Frank know they were against it,” says Shostrom. “Frank fought them, though we didn’t go with any blood. It was still too gory for a lot of people; when they screened it for MTV, people walked out and said there was no way they could show it.

“All of the work has done in eleven arduous days—the lifecast of the actor, Robert Dennis, who played the TDF, his splitting head, the creature puppet, the corpse apparition of the psychiatrist, and one other thing that you can barely see at all in the video, a breathing desktop-a slight Videodrome ripoff. If you look carefully when the corpse-psychiatrist is on, you can see a bulge rising in one corner. And there was also a brief cutaway for the operation scene, where the surgical team is a bunch of rotted corpses. The work for that consisted mostly of taking some old heads off my shelf and throwing some shit on them.”

The puppet, a caricatured likeness of actor Dennis, was built onto a cast of Shostrom’s arm. For actual shooting, Shostrom manipulated the puppet while Showe worked the cables that opened Dennis’ head. Their only assistant was Miles Liptak, who helped with the casting.

“Unfortunately, we never got to meet the Ramones,” laments Shostrom, who has performed as a rock musician himself. “They shot it over a three day period; the first two days they shot with the Ramones, while we continued work in the shop the last day was just pickups and effects, so the Ramones were gone.”

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Music Video Work Shostrom, who has recently finished working on a second rock video, for Blue Oyster Cult, expects special makeups to be an increasing part of the rock video phenomenon. “It’s good for the artist,” he says, “because you’re not tied into a script, and it’s clear that they need your ideas and input. Also, it’s a very small proportion of films that can use or require special makeup. Rock videos, just by the nature of the music, have great possibilities for visuals of all kinds, including makeup.”

It’s long been known that one factor that draws rock fans to auditoriums is the chance to hear their favorite hit tune performed live. Taking the rock video phenomenon to its logical conclusion, it probably won’t be long before groups start attempting to re-create their hit videos, live on stage. Imagine, for instance, the Rolling Stones interrupting a performance of Undercover of the Night to engage in a heated on-stage gun battle!

For close to a decade, rock’s leading dramatic troupe has been none other than The Tubes, a musical ensemble composed primarily of former art students. Though the group successfully entered the mainstream of recorded rock with their 1983 hit “She’s a Beauty,” in the mid-70’s their live stage shows were viewed by many as the leading edge of rock’s avante garde.

The elaborately staged Tubes concerts as preserved for posterity on Thorn-EMI’s cassette, Tubes Video, have always been enormously expensive to mount. Early on, the group found a bargain in Rick Lazzarini, a 15-year-old makeup enthusiast. “My brother knew a guy, Tim Mazonk, who was doing pyrotechnics for them,” recalls Lazzarini, “and that was how I hooked up with them.” For one segment of the show, Lazzarini transformed lead singer Fee Waybill into the ultimate punk rocker” by festooning his face with razor blades and other sharp objects. Another character, glitter rock king Quay Lewd, sported 13-inch platform shoes built by Lazzarini (these are still in the act). In a sequence that anticipated Videodrome, Waybill would ram headfirst into a Lazzarini-built TV set, coming up with the set stuck on his head, distorting and magnifying his features. On special occasions, Lazzarini would join the group onstage during the finale, to dance about in his own “anatomically correct” complete with genitals apesuit.

Lazzarini’s otherwise normal teenage lifestyle prevented him from touring nationally with the group, but he worked with them throughout the state of California, where the group enjoyed its greatest popularity. “It was a great thrill,” Lazzerini recalls,” ’cause here I was a kid from a hick town south of San Francisco, reading every copy of Famous Monsters and running out into the street with blood all over me like your readers do, so it was great to have the chance to do these really bizarre things.”

At 17, Lazzarini began touring with KISS as a pyrotechnician, designing various stage effects, and preparing and cuing the on-stage explosions that accompanied their high-decibel rock. His makeup skills were later called into play, however, for such tasks as finding a formula for stage blood that would meet the high standards set by Gene Simmons. “He wanted something that would be healthy if you swallowed it.” Lazzerini recalls. “We wound up using a mixture of egg whites, some flour to thicken it, and red food coloring. It had to be warmed a bit, too, because he didn’t want to take it cold.”

Simmons had a unique method for maintaining discipline among the pyrotechnics crew. A quantity of mouthwash was kept on-stage so that Simmons could clear his throat after performing fire-breathing stunts; when any of the pyro crew missed an effects cue, they could expect to be sprayed with a mouthful of Lavoris. Lazzerini apparently didn’t find Simmons’ methods too unreasonable, however, later, when working for the Hollywood Wax Museum, the makeup artist arranged for the group to be immortalized as one of the museum’s most popular exhibits.

Around the same time, Lazzarini and John Watkins (who would later succeed him as pyrotechnician for KISS) organized a group called the B.E.M.’s (Booger Eating Morons). The group lasted for only one concert hall appearance before becoming a San Francisco Bay rock legend. Suffice to say that their act featured on-stage gunplay, blood pumps, smashed guitars and the microwave massacre pictured above.

Lazzarini subsequently resumed his college education. “I was taking film courses,” he says, “and also courses in business, law and computer science-I decided I wanted to be a rich makeup effects artist, not just a makeup effects artist.” While pursuing his education, Lazzarini referred any major assignments he was offered to friends, though he contributed additional stage effects designs for a subsequent KISS tour.

Lazzerini’s return as a rock’n’roll makeup maestro came with the making of the Jeopardy video featuring Greg Kihn. As head of makeup effects, Lazzerini was in charge of zombie-izing 30 people, attendees at a wedding of the dead, and sculpted a 6-foot-long Octopus tentacle (adapted to greater length by the video crew) which engages Kihn in mortal battle. Assisting with the zombie makeups was a young makeup artist with the singular name Syd Terror; Terror also provided the connective tissue for a strange pair of Siamese Twins seen in the video, and “Martha,” the video’s zombie bride.

The resultant video was one of four nominees in the best effects category of Heavy Metal magazine’s rock video awards last year, and the only nominee that did not rely heavily on opticals for its razzle-dazzle. Just recently, Lazzarini and Mark Shostrom worked together on a brand-new video for Blue Oyster Cult, produced by Frank Delia of Psychotherapy fame. The video, called Shooting Shark, features two ravishing and scantily clad models wearing custom masks designed by the pair. Lazzarini built the iguana head, and contributed mechanicals to Shostrom’s jackal head that allow it to snarl. Unfortunately, the ravishing models are not featured in the video as prominently as are the less-than attractive faces of BOC’s members.

“Working with Frank, you find that he doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows what he doesn’t want-and that leads to numerous changes and headaches,” says Lazzerini. “But it also gives you an opportunity to offer your ideas, which is always good, So there you have it a natural combination: fast, loud music and special makeup effects. When there’s more to report in this burgeoning field, we’ll be reporting it. In the meantime, just remember the wise words of Sleepy LaBeef: It ain’t what you do, It’s the way how you do it And it ain’t what you eat It’s the way how you chew it.

Stan Winston sculpts Mr. Roboto (1982) for a Styx music video, the character would become one of the most iconic pop-culture figures of the 1980’s.

Ed French/”Torture” The Jacksons I got a phone call from a woman saying, “We need a character with a leering, toothy grin from ear to ear (literally, a hand with a human eyeball growing out of its paim, a rock with a human face and three people singing… without faces (all features blank, smooth except for mouths). Are you the person who does this sort of thing?” “Yes,” replied, “I’m that kind of guy. “We’ll need you next week if you’re available. That was producer Kathy Dougherty on the phone two days before the Jacksons were to begin shooting the “Torture” video from their Victory album.

Very shortly after that I was sitting with director Jeff Stein in the dining hall at Astoria Studios, I found out that Jeff had directed videos for the Cars (“You Might Think”, Billy Idol (“Rebel Yell”) and Hall and Oates (“Out of Touch). His laid-back demeanor, I later realized, were quite necessary to his survival during the uninterrupted 24 and 48 hour stretches of filming and editing that would take place during the next two weeks.

Since the final effect of the video would be more of a “fun-house” experience than a “chamber of horrors’ a la “Thriller”, we agreed that the artistic effects would be slanted toward the surreal. Art director Bryce Walmsley was coming up with a wall composed of oversized moveable plastic eyes, so we decided that, in an atmosphere like this, my Gahan Wilson-inspired “Mixed-up Face mask (a.k.a. “The Geek” appearing in Geek Maggot Bingo) would be right at home in cameo appearance.

While repairing, retouching and restoring “The Geek to his original ghastly splendor, I was also sculpting a dental nightmare in clay on a stone life-cast of my face. Having just completed an exhausting stint on Larry Cohen’s new epic The Stuff, my death-like appearance probably inspired Jeff to cast me as the video’s leering “Phantom of the Opera” character. Although leff had those abominables, Phibes and Sardonicus, in mind for the shrouded, ear-to-ear grin figure at the high-tech pipe organ, my immediate inspiration for the prosthetic leer was that gooney Hirschfield caricature of Jerry Lewis I was seeing all over town in the adverts for the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.

The monstrous grin was sculpted and the two-piece mold completed in about four hours. The only other prosthetic appliance that could be pre-fabricated was for the bit in which the eye peeks through the skin in Jackie Jackson’s hand. Using a negative hand mold, close to the size of Jackie’s hand, created a thin latex rubber skin that I would adhere over a semi-spherical glass eye l had attached in the palm of Jackie’s real hand When the hand opened, a pre-cut slit pulled apart and the eye pushed through the “skin” The faceless singers were supposed to be three of Jackie’s brothers and the immediate makeup solution was to use prosthetic adhesive to glue nylon stocking over their heads, exposing only their mouths and ears, “seal” the material with liquid latex, make it up with rubber-mask grease paint and, lastly, add wigs. Even considering the total absence of pre-production time, I thought these things could be effective.

It turned out to be overly optimistic to think that “Torture could be shot in four days. The Jacksons would shoot their scenes for the first three days (Tuesday through Thursday and many effects scenes would be shot on Friday featuring Jackie. The shooting schedule actually expanded in to a marathon seven days and nights, which was still remarkably short, considering that every shot had some special effects in it. Steve Kershoff, whom I had met on Exterminator Il and who had recommended me for this job created smoke effects, whips that cracked explosively and other pyrotechnic goodies. Louise de Teliga provided dancers with spider costumes containing extra arms and, in a nifty visual pun, Peter Wallach animated break-dancing skeletons, (built by Bill de Paulo) that really broke!

The alien-landscape set of flat terrain, with the occasional black papier mache rock Sprouting up from terra-burlap, took up fully one third of the huge Studio H floor and included a beautifully air brushed cyclorama of star filled heavens with very agreeable looking pastel colored “cosmic dust.” While “The Geek’s fleeting appearance was being enormously enhanced by the camera work of Tony Mitchell, the “Forbidding Fortress set was being constructed only a few yards away, complete with sliding doors, dungeon and a pipe organ that rolled like a train down tracks which disappeared at the end of a corridor. This was where I would do my leering Lon Chaney routine while a dozen or more plastic-clawed dancers clutched at Jackie’s stunt double through bars in their floor prison.

Test estimated that the leering-face makeup would take three hours to complete, so I started at 3:00 am by waxing down my beard, In the past, I’ve prepared for roles by cutting my hair short and even shaving my scalp to alter my hairline. If a role has required a beard, and there was time to grow it, I grew it. If I had a beard and it had to go, I shaved it without a second. This time I experimented with applying the piece over the beard. At 4:00 am I had completed the application of the unpainted appliance and took a little walk through the Carpentry shop and out onto Studio H where the crew was still working the kinks out of the set’s moveable parts. Hoping that the completion of my makeup would coincide with that of the set, I took three more hours with the painting, assisted by a fabulous West Coast makeup artist, named Sally Childs and we were still ready too soon.

I took a little nap in the makeup chair until l was awakened, “1984” style, with the Jens of a camera about six inches away from my face. It was 8:00 am and a video crew was documenting the making of “Torture.” pointed to my face and shook my head “no” to indicate that I couldn’t talk under the monstrous mouth. After a quick trip to wardrobe, I took my place at the organ. It’s not easy playing the pipe organ in a shroud, especially if you’re miming it to a Jacksons hit while your mouth is glued shut at 8:30 in the morning. On top of that, while listening to my directions, (“Get down”, “Play that muthal”, “Get funky, Ed” screamed Jeff Stein) manfully attempted to stay aboard a speeding pipe organ, that could have used a seat belt, when it abruptly reached the end of its runway. I had been in makeup about 10 hours when the 40-second sequence, that took five hours to shoot, finally wrapped.

Aside from my good fortune to work with the Jacksons, that week was also special because I moved to my new 2500-square foot living and working space. “Torture” continued shooting and in between trips in a moving van between Manhattan and Brooklyn I found myself sitting on the floor of one empty living room or the other, talking on the phone with Sally Childs or Jeff Stein in Studio H in order to keep tabs on when I would be needed for Jackie’s third eye bit. The action of the scene had Jackie backing into the wall of eyes and inadvertently sticking his hand through one of the orbs and then retracting the hand now covered with dripping goo. He would then open his wet hand to reveal the eye staring at him. Sally told me, “They need the eye goo standing by!” and I suggested picking up a few jars of pink Dippity Doo setting gel, which is exactly what we used when the scene was shot on the following Tuesday. Although fatigued from being on call most of the night and obviously not having the easiest time of it, injured Jackie cheerfully climbed into a canvas chair so that makeup could begin. A few feet away the wall of eyes was being lit. It was Jackie’s final scene and when Jeff yelled “Cut” everyone gave him a well-deserved round of applause.

It looked like that pretty much wrapped up my work on “Torture”, too, but two days later, I was contacted about the pick-up shots that would be filmed in a photography studio in Manhattan. One of the shots was to be that trio of faceless singers and I was feeling a litt anxious about the effect as we were not able to use the same marvelous cameraman. I was very pleasantly surprised and relieved when I walked into the studio Saturday morning to find that Dave Greene was to be Tony’s replacement. Greene’s photography and canny suggestions had been a great help to me when we worked together on Sleepaway Camp

The three brothers.. actually, three volunteers were supposed to simply turn to the camera and reveal their blank faces. I suggested that we not have them move at all, but rather simply have them wear the trademark.

youtube

Jackson shades and simultaneously remove them on cue. (You never see these guys without them on, right?) Our Jacksons surrogates were extraordinarily patient, especially when you realize the makeup totally abscured their vision for three hours. Now, part of my job became that of escorting these guys to the bathroom and making sure they didn’t incinerate themselves or anything else while they were smoking. When the nylon edges around the mouths started to work loose, due to the wear and tear or repeated takes of lipsynching the song, I not only reglued them but hit upon the idea of concealing the now obvious edges with quickly improvised mustaches. The three of them appear on the video for one freaky second you might miss them if you blink.

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY rollingstone revolvermag Fangoria#35 Gorezone#04 Fangoria#42 Fangoria#41

1980’s Music Videos & Make Up Effects Greg Cannom Ozzy Osbourne ”Bark at the Moon” In 1980, Ozzy Osbourne signed as a solo act by Epic Records; at his first meeting with the company's top brass, the Ozz pulled a dead pigeon out of a paper bag, and bit its head off.

#80sMUSICVIDEOS

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sincerelybluevase · 7 years

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Fairy Tale Retellings, Little Red Riding Hood: Rouge, Part Three

Part One- Part Two

A cluster of meadow saffron fringed the path. Poivre could not decide whether they were lilac or soft pink. They huddled closer as she approached, and whispered: “Hush and shush, child.”

Poivre stooped beside them. The veins were visible as the low sunrays fell through the petals. Once, she had gathered a fistful for grand-maman, only to be scolded till she was in tears for daring to rip those flowers from their soil. “They were perfect where they were. What would you do if someone ripped you from your home and put you on someone’s mantelpiece, just for looking pretty?”

“No one will ever think I’m pretty! We have Colette for that!” Poivre had screamed, stomping her foot with such force that the glasses rattled on their shelf.

“And that’s a good thing. Beauty wilts and fades; better to have something sturdy, like a backbone, to build your future upon,” grand-maman had said, and pulled her into a hug.

“Hush and shush, child,” the meadow saffron breathed.

“I’ll be quiet,” Poivre said.

“They mustn’t hear you come. Hush and shush.”

“I know. Don’t worry. They can’t hurt me.”

***

Even though her heart felt as if it had broken inside her chest, Poivre kept going. She did her best to banish any thought of Wolfsbane.

Grand-maman tried to cheer her up by sewing a pretty red coat for her, and by showing her some glamours. “Fae magic and I don’t always agree, but I seem to have a special knack for changing the appearance of things,” she said, and sang a spell into being that made her bat-like hands look like that of a young, human child.

“Why don’t you always use those?” Poivre asked.

Grand-maman pulled the spell apart between her long fingers. “There is no shame in how I look, Poivre. There’s no shame in how you look, either.”

That’s what Wolfsbane said, Poivre thought. Her eyes burned. She wiped them with the corner of her new coat. It smelled like peppermint and basil. It smelled like grand-maman.

“Here. Do you want me to make this beet look like a rabbit, or like Père Gabriel’s face? Though not much is needed for the latter, I can assure you,” grand-maman said.

Poivre pushed Wolfsbane very far away. “Père Gabriel’s face, please. That way we get some satisfaction out of chopping it up.”

Grand-maman screamed with laughter. Poivre did her best to join it, but it sounded hollow.

But I’ll live, she thought. Then, desperately: I have to.

***

“Sweet Poivre, what’s wrong?” Amélie asked her. She looked drawn, tired.

“Nothing, maman.”

“You seem so sad. I think…” She had to stop to cough.

“Save your breath. I’m just sad that summer is over,” Poivre said, rubbing circles between her mother’s shoulder blades.

“You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.” She dropped a kiss on her mother’s forehead. It felt warm.

Poivre frowned. Worry sharp like a knife pierced through the thick blanket of numbness Wolfsbane’s leaving had draped over her. “Maman, you’re unwell.”

Amélie shook her head. “Just a summer cough, Poivre. It’ll pass. It passes every year.”

But it didn’t; Amélie grew pale and weak as her cough grew in strength. The doctor listened to her wheezing and felt her pulse, then placed his stethoscope on her chest. He frowned. “I’ll give you something to sleep. You’ve been having trouble sleeping, haven’t you?”

Amélie nodded weakly. “It’s as if someone sits on my chest at night, and I can’t breathe.”

The doctor gave her a mild sedative and waited till she drifted off.

Poivre sat at Amélie’s bedside, holding her rough hand in hers, drawing little circles on the back of it.

“She’ll be all right, won’t she?” Poivre asked.

The doctor shrugged into his coat. There was an odd sort of pity in his eyes, distant and remote. He sees heartache every day, Poivre thought.

“Make sure she’s comfortable,” he said. He took a flask with a clear liquid out of his bag. “Give her three drops of this every night. It’ll help her sleep.”

Poivre took the vial in her hand. It was cold.

“What is it?” Jean asked the doctor, leading him out into the hallway, closing the bedroom door. The wood moaned, and the door sprang open at a crack.

“Consumption,” the doctor said.

Jean’s face lost its colour. “That’s not possible.”

“I’m afraid it is. Your wife’s lungs crackle.”

“Well, can’t you give her pills, or some kind of mixture? We don’t have much money, but I’ll pay whatever it takes…”

The doctor placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “There’s no cure. I’m sorry.”

“There must be something we can do, some place to send her…”

“There’s no use in sending her to a sanatorium. The air here is clean, and she’ll have her family by her side for whatever time remains her.”

“And grand-maman? Is there nothing the fairies could do?” Jean’s voice was laced with desperation.

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry. These things are always a shock. Send for me if she’s in pain, all right? I can do something about that, at least.”

Poivre’s hands had grown numb. She stared at Amélie’s hand in hers. It suddenly seemed very small, almost like that of a child. She brought it to her mouth and kissed it.

Then, Colette was there, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks wet with tears. She threw herself on the bed and sobbed. “What will we do?” she wept, kissing her mother’s face.

Poivre drew her back. “You’ll wake her. She’s asleep.”

“What will we do, Poivre? What will we do?” Colette repeated.

Poivre hugged her. “I don’t know. We’ll think of something. We always do.”

***

Poivre nursed Amélie till the very end, nine months after the doctor had made his diagnosis. Her mother had become thin as a skeleton by then, her eyes huge and bright in her face. Her skin had drawn tight over her skull, but two spots of colours burned in her cheeks like two small fires.

The last two months before her death she’d started to become delusional, often waking in the middle of the night and climbing out of bed, trying to get out of the house. “There’s a baby crying. Can’t you hear it? A little baby. I think the fairies must’ve left it,” she murmured, breath foul.

Poivre could only take her back to bed in those cases, promising she’d go and see as soon as Amélie was tucked in. “You promise? You must go and see if that little fae baby needs help. It cries so pitifully…” Amélie murmured. She allowed Poivre to bring her back willingly enough.

The last two weeks, she was barely conscious. Poivre bathed her face with cold cloths and made her drink thin broth. The final few days, she didn’t open her eyes anymore. Her breathing had grown slow and laboured, coming in heavy gasps. They eased into little whispers, and then faded completely.

She was buried a week later.

Poivre stood at the freshly dug grave with burning eyes, trying to stand still. She’d ripped pieces of skin from her hands and arms and legs, getting a sick kind of relief from the bodily discomfort.

Jean stared at her. He grabbed her arm when they lowered the casket. “Stop fiddling, you sick little thing! Wearing a red coat to a funeral is one thing, but…” He had to swallow before he could continue. “For once in your life stop making a disgrace out of yourself!” he hissed.

Later, when he’d drunk so much cheap wine that Colette and Poivre had to help him to bed, he slapped her face, roaring at her not to touch him. “You are what’s wrong with this family!” he screamed.

Poivre stood and looked at him, cheek stinging. “You’re not in your right mind now,” she said.

He laughed at that. “Filthy fairy,” he sneered.

“Stop it, papa!” Colette hissed. “What would maman say?”

“She never cared for my wishes, or we’d never have kept that thing,” Jean slurred, nodding at Poivre. “Who keeps a changeling and raises it as if it’s human? But things are going to change now.”

I should’ve left, Poivre thought, a little chill running along her spine, Now I’m all alone, and lonely, so very lonely…

It had been a year since Wolfsbane had gone.

***

One year turned into two years, into three years, into four. Poivre’s skin slivered as her oil ran out. Her hands became raw and calloused as she did housework, but kept their former gentleness as she helped grand-maman. The old fairy had taken Amélie’s death badly. She grew frail and easily-distracted. She broke her leg after tripping over a footstool, and the fracture never truly healed.

They’ll never let me leave once she’s dead, Poivre thought as she put butter on a slice of fae bread for grand-maman. I should go before she dies, before they chain me to this cottage.

Grand-maman smiled at her slice of bread and smacked her lips, happy as a child. “I can make it look like filthy Père Gabriel’s face. Do you want to see?” she asked.

“No, that’s all right. Just eat your bread,” Poivre said, stroking the fur that grew on top of grand-maman’s head. It had started to thin.

“I’m happy you’re here, with me,” grand-maman said, folding the slice with her bat-like fingers.

I couldn’t leave her to her own devices, Poivre thought, a sting of despair and shame ripping through her.

Once she’s gone, I’ll truly be alone.

I will never get away from here.

***

She thought she saw two yellow eyes gleam as she gathered the washing. She stopped, frowned, and looked intently at the thick cluster of birches that stood only a few metres from the washing line.

She stooped to put another shirt in her basket. Her neck prickled, and she was certain that someone was watching her.

Poivre straightened, and scanned the fields and trees. Again, her eyes came to rest on the little group of birches. Their stems were white and entangled, like limbs.

A flicker of gold between their grey leaves.

It can’t be, she thought. Her heart was thudding in her chest.

“Please,” she whispered, “oh, please… come and take me away from here, oh please…”

“POIVRE!” Jean hollered.

She startled, and almost dropped the washing. “Coming!” she yelled over her shoulder. “You pig,” she muttered under her breath. When she turned her face to the trees again, the yellow eyes had disappeared.

“The river,” she said, bunching up the last few clothes and pushing them in her basket, “Meet me at the river.”

***

It took a long time before she could slip out. She forced herself to walk slowly; it wouldn’t help anyone to run, would only make her look suspicious.

The sun had dipped below the horizon when she reached the river. The water gurgled happily, caressing the pebbles worn smooth with time, lapping at the shore.

Poivre pulled the cloth she’d used to bind her hair from her head, and dragged a hand through her short locks. She kicked off her shoes, and stepped in the water. The waves tugged at a loose bit of skin.

She rubbed her neck. Her hand came away coated in small slivers. A bead of sweat trickled down her back, stinging the patches that were dry and raw.

A twig snapped behind her.

She turned around, and there he was.

He looked older, harder. His cheekbones were sharper than she remembered, but his eyes were just as piercing as then, just as mesmerizing. He gave her a small smile. A world of sadness was contained in the way the corners of his mouth curled up. “Your skin… you poor thing.”

Poivre stepped into his embrace. He tucked her under his chin and held her, stroking her hair. His hands were hot, but she didn’t mind.

“It’s been a hard four years,” she whispered.

Wolfsbane placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up so she could look him in the eye. “You were a girl when I left, but now, the child you were has disappeared,” he noted.

“Four years…” she sobbed. She slapped splayed hands on his chest. “You left me,” she said, and slapped him again. “You left me, all alone. You left me, and I was lonely, so lonely, so so lonely…” She hammered her fists on his chest, then dissolved into sobs.

He hugged her tight to him. “I shouldn’t have left,” he told her, kissing her crown.

I shouldn’t have stayed, she thought, but she was not ready yet to speak that thought out loud to him.

“I was so lonely…”

“You won’t be alone ever again, Poivre, I promise. I won’t leave you again.”

When she could bear to let him go he guided her to a spot of tall grass, and sat her down. He fished a vial of oil from his trousers’ pocket. Without speaking a word she removed her dress till she sat only in her slip. He sat down behind her, cradling her between his legs. He poured a little oil on his hand, letting it pool in the hollow of his palm so it could warm, then touched her neck and shoulders.

She sighed. Her head lolled as his digits massaged the oil into her aching skin.

“Why did you come back?” she asked, gasping as he touched a particular tender spot.

“Because no matter where I went, no matter what sights I saw, I always dreamed of you,” Wolfsbane said.

When he was done rubbing the oil into her skin, she was slack like a doll. The vial was almost empty, Wolfsbane’s hands warm and slick and glistening.

“I prayed you’d come back to me,” Poivre admitted.

“I heard you calling for me,” he said, “and now that I’m here, I won’t leave you ever again. I’ll live with you, here, amongst humans.”

Poivre turned round to face him. She cupped his face between her hands. “They won’t let us,” she said. “And what kind of life would it be?”

“Then I’ll take you to Faerie with me. You can choose where we’ll live. We’ll pledge our allegiance to the court of your choosing. No matter what we’ll do, though, we’ll do it together.”

She rested her forehead against his, breathing in his scent.

Never alone anymore,

she thought, and kissed him.

#fairy tale retellings #fairy tale #little red riding hood #writing tag #original work

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mg-bsl381 · 8 years

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Stethoscope

When I was watching a certain scene in 6.4 I noticed a parallel to an earlier scene. It was only when I screencapped both scenes that I realised just how striking the parallel is, as my photoset posted just after the episode airs shows

http://mg-bsl381.tumblr.com/post/157162936553/patrick-examining-the-woman-he-loves-26-64

This story is based on that parallel

I hope you like it

Stethoscope

For Patrick Turner, his stethoscope was an essential part of his medical bag. It was one of his most used and portable pieces of equipment. He had first got it as a medical student and it had stayed with him throughout his career. Through his training, his first job in a hospital, off to war and all that had happened there. It had been with him at Northfield where it symbolised hope that one day he return to the profession that he adored. For the last sixteen years, it had been with him in the East End, in Poplar where he was a GP.

He had used his stethoscope so many times that most of the time it was just routine, part of his work as a doctor but not always. There were times the cold metal seemed to have a greater significance to him, more personal. Together they had witnessed both joy and sorrow. Today as he walked across the ward at Sister Douglas’ invitation, he didn’t know which outcome he would be facing.

He had been surprised and delighted by Sister Douglas’ request. He was not a doctor at St Cuthbert’s so her offer was unusual but then these were extenuating circumstances. Sister Douglas had developed a rapport with Shelagh and Patrick’s initial impression of the nurse had changed considerably. He remembered rushing in late to visit Shelagh bringing pink roses, instead of the red ones he’d wanted to get. He loved buying Shelagh roses. In her old life at the convent, roses were only for St Raymond’s feast day, a day of celebration and importance for Nonnatus. For Patrick everyday with Shelagh was a day of celebration for a life he never dreamed would be possible.

Sister Douglas had a late admission that evening and as a result visiting time was cut short. Patrick had obviously lingered too long for Sister Douglas’ liking. He had seen the look on Shelagh’s face when she asked him if he would come back the next day. He had told her that if the hospital let him he’d sleep in the corridor. That had made her smile. They weren’t empty words, he really meant it, he hated being separated from her and missed her terribly when they weren’t together. He imagined it was a legacy of those agonisingly long months they had endured when she was in the sanatorium. Sister Douglas had obviously overheard his declaration and the look she gave him hurried him away without even a parting kiss to Shelagh. He clearly wasn’t quick enough and Sister Douglas came very close to hitting him with the curtain as he scurried out of the cubicle.

After that inauspicious start, he had come to see Sister Douglas for the first class nurse that she was. On one hand she reminded Patrick of Nurse Crane and the other Sister Julienne. A remarkable combination of two formidable but deeply caring nurses. Now he was here at her invitation. He heard her introduce him to Shelagh. He smiled to himself at her words about wanting a particular doctor with a very busy schedule.

Patrick watched as Sister Douglas adjusted Shelagh’s yellow nightdress. They all knew that this may not go as they hoped. He saw Sister Douglas take Shelagh’s hand and the squeeze in response. He put the stethoscope in his ears and placed it gently on Shelagh’s growing bump. He was convinced it was larger now than when he had last seen it uncovered. Concentrating hard as he knew their baby was still very tiny, he listened. He tried to ignore the softness of Shelagh’s skin under his fingertips. He willed himself to remain calm and focused but it was a challenge. So much hope and happiness rested on this moment.

When he heard nothing, he remembered another time and another place. Then he had heard what he dreaded immediately and it tore his heart to pieces. He had experienced a day of exhilaration, making a difference to so many lives and then debilitating shock when he found out that his beloved Sister Bernadette was one of those that needed referrals for more treatment. The crushing sadness of hearing those crackles as the air struggled to move smoothly through her TB infected lungs would stay with him forever.

Patrick had already had to show her the X-ray card with the lesions that decided her fate. It had been awkward for both of them. They were bound together by the feelings of their hearts but separated by circumstance and calling. The physical examination that followed was only endurable by the quiet dignity of Sister Bernadette and the calming, reassuring presence of Sister Julienne. He remembered how much smaller and more fragile Sister Bernadette had seemed when the many layers of her habit were peeled away. He had taken utmost care in his handling of the stethoscope, holding it in a pincer-like grip so as not to inadvertently touch her skin. It was better for both of them that way. He had listened to her chest through her back first and the crackles were immediately apparent and unmistakeable. The second placing yielded identical results. She had moved to face him and they circled one another like dancers, with nothing but their hearts connecting. The examination was soon over. Sister Bernadette had never looked at him. Her eyes were downcast and her gaze averted. It was a memory that was now part of their shared history and now his stethoscope was touching her skin once more.

After hearing nothing and fearing that there was nothing to be heard, Patrick sat down and found another place to listen. He was aware of Shelagh watching his face intently. He could feel her whole body shaking with nerves both from fear and excitement. He noticed the position of his hands as his held the stethoscope. No pincer-like grip this time but hands splayed across her bump as if trying to shield their child from harm.

Listening intently, he waited and then he heard the faint but unmistakeable sound of a tiny heart. Faster than Shelagh’s or his own heartbeat, this one resembled galloping hoof beats. Patrick knew that his face revealed what his ears had heard but he couldn’t help it. This wasn’t any baby, this was his and Shelagh’s baby, this precious unexpected miracle of life.

Taking care not to move the end of the stethoscope, he yanked the ear pieces from his ears and handed them to Shelagh. He didn’t need to say anything just her name in a joyous whisper. Once he had told her to close her eyes and then he had placed Angela in her arms. He felt that same rush of elation and love fill his heart as he first connected with their child. This was a special moment for her. She had heard thousands of heartbeats but never her own baby. Her face was cautious and then she smiled and smiled into the broadest smile he had ever seen. She held out her hand to him and he grasped it and kissed her knuckles. Her laughter and quick sideways glance told him that she would never look at his stethoscope in the same way again. He wished they could stay like that for a long time but work was calling him away, as it so often did. Shelagh’s smile was still as joyous as when she first heard their baby, when he said goodbye to her. His kiss was tender but her hands stroked his face with so much love, he felt a lump in his throat from all the emotion.

He thanked Sister Douglas for giving him the opportunity to be the one to tell Shelagh the good news. They both knew it could have been different but there was no virtue in mentioning other outcomes. He shook her hand and although her look was warm, he knew his presence was no longer required.

Patrick sat a moment in his car marvelling about what he and Shelagh had shared. He knew her pregnancy was still risky but their baby was alive. He opened his medical bag and looked at his stethoscope. He shook his head in wonder that such a thing could be the conduit for devastation or the restoration of hope. He and Shelagh had been through so much that had brought devastation but also times of hope. He didn’t know what would happen in the future but today was the day for hope.

#call the midwife #call the midwife fanfiction #ctmshare #Patrick turner #Shelagh Turner #sister bernadette #sister douglas #this may be a bit emotional #but for various reasons its been a rough few days

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mhsn033 · 4 years

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The king, his lover – and the elephant in the palace

Image copyright Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein

Image caption Juan Carlos with Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 2008

In early August, Spain’s passe King Juan Carlos left the country following allegations of business wrongdoing. But the country’s affection for its monarch began to unravel as some distance operate 2012, following an sick-fated elephant hunt. With the king on that safari became once his passe lover Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. She talks completely to the BBC about a multi-million euro reward from Juan Carlos, her claims of harassment by Spain’s secret provider – and that elephant.

Rather then Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein does no longer indubitably agree with to focus on the elephant – the one King Juan Carlos shot tiring on 11 April 2012. The media reported the animal became once 50 years outdated and weighed 5 tonnes, with tusks bigger than a metre lengthy.

No longer that she is able to confirm the creature’s major statistics when asked about the incident. “I indubitably don’t agree with any belief,” says the Danish-born enterprise book, who became once brought up in Germany. Yes, she became once on the safari with the king, nonetheless she says she became once at a distance when the capturing took space.

“I noticed it afterwards because of each person goes to inspect it,” she says. “But I walked away after two minutes. I’m a hunter, nonetheless I’ve never killed an elephant in my existence and never would. For me, the total hunting journey became once traumatic in that sense.”

The safari in Botswana became once a fresh from the king to her son on his 10th birthday. Juan Carlos had become shut to zu Sayn-Wittgenstein’s formative years throughout his romantic relationship with her from 2004 to 2009 – a relationship which the Spanish public knew nothing about on the time. Since 1962 he has been married to Queen Sofia.

Image copyright Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein

“I wasn’t serious about occurring this day out,” zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says. “I felt that King Juan Carlos became once making an strive to bag me to attain serve serve to him, and I did not agree with to give a unfounded influence. I nearly had premonitions about this day out.”

With factual goal, because it can probably per chance per chance well prove. Earlier than morning time on 13 April 2012, the king fell in his luxury safari tent, fracturing his hip.

On his return to Madrid, the media fell on the safari memoir love a voracious lion on a fragile gazelle. The revelation of the elephant hunt came very soon after a corruption investigation began into the king’s son-in-legislation, Iñaki Urdangarin – he’s aloof in penal complex.

This became once a time of steady hardship in Spain, with unemployment working at 23%. After undergoing an operation, King Juan Carlos made his first tentative public look in sanatorium the employ of a strolling stick. He became once asked how he became once.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption King Juan Carlos apologises for the hunting day out after his discharge from sanatorium

“I’m sorry,” he talked about. “I made a mistake, and it can probably per chance per chance well also no longer happen any other time.”

King Juan Carlos had been largely untouchable because of his space in Spain’s tortured, bloody historical past. As head of verbalize after Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, the king had overseen Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy and confronted down a coup strive in 1981. Now the hurt to the unique monarch became once immense.

Listen to Spain: The elephant within the palace on Crossing Continents, on BBC Radio 4 at 11: 00 on Thursday 20 August

Or score up later online

“The crisis blew up due to the Botswana day out set apart apart a whole lot of things on the table,” says Jose Antonio Zarzalejos, a passe editor of Spain’s upright-hover, monarchy-supporting newspaper ABC.

“On the starting put, that the king became once openly unfaithful to Queen Sofia. Secondly, that within the midst of an economic crisis, Juan Carlos visited a rustic where Spain had no diplomatic illustration. So the king – as head of verbalize – became once off the radar of the Spanish govt. And thirdly, this became once a extraordinarily costly day out – we did not know who paid for it. It created a awful describe of the king.”

King Juan Carlos and zu Sayn Wittgenstein met at a capturing celebration in February 2004.

She says the king became once having peril with his shotgun. “And I’m quite knowledgeable about all that, so I will also existing what became once defective,” she says. “I bear he became once quite surprised.”

The connection moved slowly.

Image copyright Alamy

Image caption Juan Carlos and Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein at an awards ceremony in Barcelona in 2006

“We ended up talking on the cell phone for a couple of months,” she says. “The foremost date became once in early summer season. We steadily laughed quite a bit. We straight away clicked on many things, and we had many unique interests – politics, historical past, fabulous food, wines…

“I became once living in London on the time, having beautiful started my bear consultancy enterprise. And I became once a single mother of two. So we would meet in Madrid in a small cottage on the bigger property, and we travelled together.

“Within the first year it became once extra advanced because of I became once very busy and he had a stout agenda, nonetheless he would cell phone me as much as 10 times a day. I mean, it became once an straight away very stable, deep and meaningful relationship.”

At one level, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says she asked the king how all this might per chance occasionally take a seat with his associate, Queen Sofia.

“He talked about they’d an map to signify the crown, nonetheless they led entirely diverse, separate lives. And the king had beautiful attain out of a nearly 20-year relationship with any other girl who additionally had a a truly noteworthy space in his coronary heart and in his existence.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia

The king and zu Sayn-Wittgenstein grew to become shut. She spent time with the king’s chums and he or she met his formative years.

In 2009, her father bought a visit from Juan Carlos.

“He known as me up and talked about the king had attain glance him and urged him he became once very noteworthy in love with me, and intended to marry me,” she says. “He additionally urged my father he couldn’t develop it straight away, it can probably per chance per chance well also fetch some time. He wished my father to know he became once very serious about me.”

It became once earlier throughout the identical year that zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says King Juan Carlos had proposed.

“Clearly, or no longer it’s a extraordinarily emotional 2d when something love that occurs,” she says. “And I became once very noteworthy in love with him, nonetheless I foresaw – I’m a political strategist – that this would per chance per chance well be very advanced. And I believed it can probably per chance per chance well also destabilise the monarchy.

“That is why I never indubitably inspired it – I beautiful took it as a token of the seriousness of the connection, quite than something that would indubitably materialise.”

The romance would halt that identical year.

Image copyright Getty Images

“My father became once plagued by pancreatic cancer and had been given very most attention-grabbing a couple of months to live,” zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says. “So I decided to utilize time with him – we had been very shut. To my huge shock, beautiful after his funeral, the king urged me he’d been carrying on a relationship with any other girl for a length of three years.

“It actually devastated me – it became once the very last thing I anticipated. I indubitably wished emotional make stronger after the death of my father, and the data created a monumental shock for me emotionally. I became once beautiful no longer expecting it after he’d asked me to marry him and long past to inspect my father. I became once very sick for a couple of months.”

Rather then Queen Sofia, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says, she believed she became once in an atypical relationship with King Juan Carlos.

“I’d made it very certain I’d no longer tolerate him having relationships with diverse girls folks on the identical time,” she says. “I bear within the halt he became once mortified by what he did. But for me, that became once something I will also never overcome.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Juan Carlos walks in entrance of Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein on a visit to Germany in 2006

Though the connection became once over, the 2 remained chums – partly due to the king became once shut to zu Sayn-Wittgenstein’s formative years. On the halt of 2009, Juan Carlos asked to inspect her.

“He had some defective files to tell me. He’d been recognized with a tumour on his lung and he became once happy it became once cancer. He became once worried. He talked about his household did not know about it. And I did not agree with to desert him. So I remained a extraordinarily devoted, right, shut ultimate friend throughout the time he became once very sick.”

When the king became once because of agree with an operation in 2010, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says he asked her to be within the sanatorium with him.

“I slept on a sofa subsequent to his mattress before the surgical operation because of he became once very nervous about it,” she says. “But the biopsy showed the tumour became once benign.”

Then the king’s household arrived.

Image copyright Alamy

“I became once unceremoniously asked to leave by some no longer-so-very-form member of his workers,” she recalls. “When Queen Sofia and one of the most courtiers realised how extreme the king became once about me, quite a high stage of hostility had developed.”

Even so, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says her friendship with Juan Carlos persisted.

“He recovered very slowly from the surgical operation,” she says. “So I’d stagger to Madrid now and then to inspect how he became once doing with his rehabilitation, how he became once recuperating.”

Which brings us serve to 2012 – Botswana, a tiring elephant, and the king’s fractured hip.

“Or no longer it’s never been reported that I indubitably organised his repatriation, because of there became once no thought in space,” zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says.

“We flew in on a non-public plane, and I became once conscious of the fact that the king became once no longer in factual health – he had two docs with him – which is why I became once worried. So I kept the plane inner stumble on. It became once a huge responsibility – he became once prepped up ready for surgical operation. And I became once very, very nervous that we wouldn’t bag him home alive.”

Shortly, the safari memoir grew to become a media sensation – and zu Sayn-Wittgenstein believes this became once all pre-planned.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Juan Carlos leaves sanatorium after his hip operation in 2012

“I bear this day out would’ve been leaked no matter the accident,” she says. “Scandals keen the king’s son-in-legislation and daughter started to emerge on the halt of 2011, and I bear that region in movement varied factions inner the establishment and the royal household.

“There were forces at work inner the palace that had been engaged on transferring Juan Carlos on, making an strive to trot up an abdication,” she says.

The royal celebration arrived serve in Madrid from Botswana unhurried at night. King Juan Carlos went straight to sanatorium.

“From the 2d I came serve from that day out I became once below stout-blown surveillance,” says zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.

“This became once the starting put of a marketing campaign to coloration me as this Wallis Simpson, Girl Macbeth, corrupt personality who’d led this dazzling man off beam on this day out throughout a tall economic crisis.”

It became once after this African day out that zu Sayn-Wittgenstein claims she began to win unwelcome consideration from Spain’s intelligence provider, the Centro Internacional de Inteligencia (CNI). First she claims her flat in Monaco became once targeted.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 2019

“The house became once occupied after I became once travelling,” she says. “I impulsively bought messages from a security company asserting, ‘Now we were contacted by your friends in Spain.’ And I became once texting the king, asserting: ‘Who’re these of us, what is occurring on?’ He urged me they had been there to guard me from the paparazzi.

“But had he been taking into account my security, he might per chance perhaps per chance agree with known as his shut ultimate friend, Prince Albert [of Monaco], who’s additionally a longstanding ultimate friend of mine, and talked about, ‘Now we agree with some security considerations – can also you preserve an specialise in on Corinna’s flat?'”

So what had been they having a peep for?

“Documents – and in a extraordinarily thorough arrangement… They stayed for weeks and weeks.”

She says she does no longer know what roughly papers they had been browsing for.

On a enterprise day out in Brazil, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says she became once adopted. And that she bought an anonymous death risk telling her there were many tunnels between Monaco and Good – a reference to the smash that killed Princess Diana. In her Swiss house, she says, a book became once left in her living room about the princess’s death.

Later in 2012, she claims she became once visited in London by the top of Spanish intelligence, Félix Sanz Roldán.

“He talked about he became once despatched by the king,” she says. “The foremost warning became once now to not yell to the media.

“He talked about if I did not be conscious these instructions, he would no longer guarantee my physical security or the physical security of my formative years.”

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Félix Sanz Roldán in 2017

The BBC tried to contact Felix Sanz Roldan (who is no longer head of Spanish Intelligence) throughout the CNI, about these extreme allegations. There became once no acknowledge to those inquiries. And Iberdrola, a Spanish company whose advisory panel he sits on, refused to facilitate contact with him.

Undoubtedly, Félix Sanz Roldán is identified to be very shut to King Juan Carlos.

“When Félix Sanz became once appointed director of the CNI, an intense friendship grew between them – he entirely stable the king,” says Fernando Rueda, a tutorial at Villanueva University, and an skilled within the Spanish intelligence provider.

“But Félix Sanz became once no longer the first head of the CNI to tell the king that the connection with Corinna became once very detrimental, and that Corinna became once now to not be trusted,” he adds.

So what does he accomplish of zu Sayn-Wittgenstein’s claims of harassment?

“No one is conscious of if or no longer it’s factual or no longer,” he says.

“On the opposite hand it wouldn’t surprise me, because of if the intelligence provider regarded as because the protection of the Spanish verbalize became once in hazard, they’d employ all mechanisms to bag someone to return paperwork.”

In Spain, King Juan Carlos became once no longer in a put to shake off the curse of the elephant. In 2014 he abdicated in favour of his son Felipe. As emeritus king, he became once aloof busy with legit engagements, replace trips and global commute – especially to the Heart East.

And it’s these very shut contacts Juan Carlos has within the Heart East which agree with become the discipline of intense scrutiny – especially from prosecutors. Judicial inquiries began after the recordings of a rogue Spanish police officer grew to become public. He taped all his conversations with the rich and highly effective – including with zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Republican demonstrators in Barcelona in 2014 on the day Juan Carlos abdicated

In 2018 that audio became once printed within the Spanish media. In regarded as doubtless the most recordings, a female mutter asks rhetorically in Spanish about the emeritus king: “How does he bag cash? He takes a plane, goes to Arab worldwide locations… And he returns with the cash in suitcases – infrequently with 5 million. He has a machine to count it – I’ve seen it with my bear eyes.”

Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein has never formally confirmed it became once her on the recording. But the revelations from these tapes had been sensational, and so they grew to become the catalyst for the opening of investigations in Switzerland and, extra these days, in Spain.

On the coronary heart of the complaints is a $100 million price from the unhurried king of Saudi Arabia that became once placed in a Swiss checking yarn linked to a Panama-based entirely entirely offshore foundation in 2008. The beneficiary became once King Juan Carlos.

The Swiss prosecutor is investigating three of us with ties to the passe king. And he’s having a peep into whether this cash became once connected to the awarding of a huge contract to a Spanish consortium to bag a high-trot rail link in Saudi Arabia three years later. In diverse words, became once it a kickback?

In Spain, the Supreme Court has opened an investigation into emeritus King Juan Carlos himself – nonetheless it can probably per chance per chance well very most attention-grabbing inspect alleged defective-doing after he abdicated in 2014, when he lost his immunity from prosecution.

Then in early August 2020, weeks after he became once linked to the inquiry, the ex-king made the shock announcement that he had left Spain; after two weeks of hypothesis about his whereabouts, the Spanish royal palace talked about he became once living within the United Arab Emirates.

So where does Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein fit in? She is regarded as doubtless the most folks being investigated by the Swiss prosecutor. And that’s because of in 2012, after the Botswana debacle, the then-King Juan Carlos transferred what became once left of that $100 million from Saudi Arabia – round €65m – to her.

“I became once very surprised because of or no longer it’s clearly an severely generous reward,” she says. “I’ll allege, although, that conversations about him managing his will throughout his lifetime had taken space in 2011. He started to focus on his death and what he wished to leave in his will.

“He additionally talked about he wished to preserve me, nonetheless no portions had been ever discussed. He became once terrified that the household wouldn’t admire his wants,” she claims.

She says she bought the cash after her flat in Monaco became once ransacked and he or she became once visited by the top of the CNI.

Image copyright Getty Images

After the switch became once made, she flew to Madrid to thank the king, she says, and he urged her that he felt responsible about what had took space to her: “I bear he became once very terrorized to plot shut the extent of pressure I’d been set apart apart below, and the extent of the reputational destruction that had taken space.”

In testimony to the Swiss prosecutor, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein talked about she believed the king had given her the cash out of affection.

“I bear it became once recognition of how noteworthy I meant to him, how noteworthy [her son] meant to him,” she says. “It became once a gratitude for having a peep after him throughout his entirely worst moments.”

She insists the king became once no longer making an strive to mask or launder this cash by bequeathing it to her – even although in 2014, he asked for the cash serve.

“In 2014 he made decided makes an strive to bag me to attain serve serve to him,” she says. “At some level he realised I wasn’t going to return, and he went fully ballistic. He asked for the whole lot serve. I bear it became once beautiful a tantrum he threw.

“So he’s confirmed to the Swiss complaints that he indubitably never asked for the cash serve, and that I never carried cash on his behalf.”

In Spain, Juan Carlos’ multi-million euro reward to zu Sayn-Wittgenstein has generated intense hobby – and outrage. The knowledge broke as Spain confronted regarded as doubtless the most worst coronavirus outbreaks in Europe.

Ivette Torrent, a young lawyer from Barcelona, began a internet-based petition calling for the cash to be transferred to the Spanish public health care diagram.

“Exhausted health personnel had been working a thousand hours with minimal sources,” she says, adding that allocating the funds to them might per chance perhaps per chance well be the “fairest thing”.

Image copyright Ivette Torrent

Shut to 250,000 of us signed. So what would Torrent love the king’s passe lover to develop with the cash talented to her?

“I originate no longer know if this cash is illegitimate,” she says. But when the continuing investigations put an illegal starting put for this cash, “they ought to return it”.

And zu Sayn-Wittgenstein’s response?

“I’ll leave this as much as the Swiss prosecutor,” she says. “Striking me stressed out on that’s no longer the upright arrangement to head ahead.

“Because of I bear if that’s the case, each person wants to return the whole lot. What I salvage unheard of is that they are rolling 40 years of the modus operandi of a household endeavor into a give consideration to 1 person. And that’s me… Because of there might per chance be many of of diverse accounts in diverse jurisdictions.”

Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein maintains the obsession with her and the cash she bought from the emeritus King is piece of a aloof on-going, pernicious marketing campaign partly orchestrated by Spain’s CNI.

She has equipped the BBC with a checklist of police crime numbers relating to to incidents she claims agree with occurred within the UK at some level of the previous few years.

“The harassment has never ceased – or no longer it’s intensified if anything,” she says.

“But we are going to be talking about this within the complaints bobbing up within the UK. The case will treat all ingredients of the abuse marketing campaign. Juan Carlos might per chance perhaps per chance well be the defendant, nonetheless he can also no longer be the very most attention-grabbing defendant.”

These English beautiful complaints are yet to be issued.

Image copyright Fernando Rueda

For Fernando Rueda, the skilled on Spain’s CNI, there is a question rate over her claims.

“It no longer is sparkling for the Spanish secret provider to bother her within the UK when things are already public. What she’s doing is making an strive to protect herself by presenting herself as a sufferer,” he says.

“Corinna’s allege is that she’s facing beautiful circumstances, and he or she has to existing and interpret why she has €60m. She might per chance perhaps per chance well be charged and halt up in penal complex. But Juan Carlos, in accordance with Spanish legislation, can no longer be charged,” he adds.

In spite of the judicial sizzling water she finds herself in, zu Sayn-Wittgenstein says she does no longer agree with misgivings about her early relationship with the emeritus king.

“I develop no longer remorse the least bit my romantic relationship with Juan Carlos,” she says. “I indubitably agree with very steady feelings for him. And I am extraordinarily saddened by the turn it has taken.”

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notsofly · 6 years

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Ties in Blood Chapter 19

@mrswhozeewhatsis @impala-dreamer @percussiongirl2017 @winchestergirl-13 @squirrelnotsam @idreamofplaid

Note: The run down asylum in this chapter is the Eloise that was an asylum, sanatorium, and hospital that was at one point it’s own city with zip code, fire department, and bakery.

Chapter 19

Aaliyah brought the machete down on the vampire’s head with a grunt. She hadn’t expected to find one out in San Diego, but there it was feeding off the tourists. The vampire went down, taking the machete with it. Aaliyah planted a foot on the head and pulled at the blade before swinging it around to sever the neck. It had been two weeks since she had left Bobby’s to hunt on her own, and there was a part of her that actually missed having a partner. Aaliyah started her way out of the now silent abandoned building. The adrenaline ran it’s course through her system and the deep gash on her left shoulder started to throb.

The ringtone on her phone broke the silence.

Aaliyah fumbled with digging out the phone in the effort to silence the ringing. “Fisher.”

“Aaliyah,” Bobby’s voice answered. “It’s Sam. He’s been missing for a week.”

“I’ll be right there.” She ended the call and raced back to the car, barely giving herself enough time to toss the machete into the trunk before climbing into the driver’s seat and hauling back to Bobby’s. The gash would have to wait.

***

Aaliyah pulled herself out of the car, willing her cramped muscles to move. She stopped twice after getting the call from Bobby; once to relieve herself and grab some food, and to grab a few hours of sleep. She knocked a couple times before allowing herself in. She blinked a few times when she came face to muzzle of a shotgun. “Hey yah, Bobby,” she greeted. “What’s with the fire?”

“Sorry, kid,” he greeted, lowering the shotgun. “Dean called, saying that Sam’s possessed.”

“What! And he didn’t call?” Aaliyah closed the door behind her as she walked into the house. She looked around to see that any evidence of her siblings being there were gone. “And where’d the rest of …”

“Picked up cases and drifted off into the wind,” Bobby told her. “Figured I could use your help with Sam.”

Aaliyah shrugged and followed Bobby into the living room. “Sure. What are we dealing with here?” She raised her gaze up to the ceiling, following Bobby’s finger. “Meg?”

“Doubt it, but a demon nonetheless.”

“How much time do we got?” Aaliyah moved about the room to move some books and piles of papers.

A knock at the door halted her efforts. With a glance to Bobby, she darted into the shadows of the house while he went to answer the door. She willed her body to remain still as Bobby and someone else – Sam – walked into the living room and talked. Footsteps trailed off again before what sounded like the fridge door opened and closed. A toast was offered up to John. Aaliyah nearly jumped out of the shadows when she heard Sam choking.

“What did you do?” Sam yelled.

“A little holy water in the beer,” Bobby answered. “Sam wouldn’t have noticed. But then, you’re not Sam. Don’t try to con a con man.”

Aaliyah filed the trick away as she heard a thump.

“Come on out, Aaliyah,” Bobby called to her.

Aaliyah stepped out from the shadows to see Bobby pulling a chair into the room. She moved to pick the unconscious Sam off the floor. Her body rebelled against her in the effort. “I swear my body’s wanting to kill me,” she said, twisting her body to ease the cramping as Bobby started to tie Sam up.

“Compared to what?” Bobby asked. “Of all the things that do wanna kill yah, you’re surprised your body is one of them?”

“Didn’t expect it to happen this early in my life.” Aaliyah raised an arm over her head and tilted to the other side, pulling at her side muscles before repeating the process.

“Welcome to hunting.” Bobby held out a piece of rope to her.

Aaliyah took the rope Bobby offered and tied one of Sam’s arms to the chair. Her mind played back the few voicemails that Dean had left her a week and a half ago, demanding to know why she left and why she didn’t tell them all where she was going. She swung and hit Sam. His eyes opened to reveal black.

“Hey,” Aaliyah greeted.

“Had enough of being on your own?” the demon taunted Aaliyah. “It’s like clockwork with you. You get dragged to help, get pissed off and run off. Only to come running back.” Sam’s head tilted. “You’re like a cockroach for it, really.”

Aaliyah bit back the tears as she glared at the demon. “How ‘bout I smack that smart outta you?”

Sam’s head reset. “You sure? Don’t wanna be damaging the package.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about Sam.” Aaliyah reached for the bucket. “It’ll hurt you more than him.” She braced the bucket in both hands and dumped the water over Sam, covering her wince at his screams and the hissing. She put the bucket down and hunched to be eye level with him. “Feel like talking now?” There was something about this demon that didn’t sit right with Aaliyah. Her eyes shifted over Sam and narrowed when she caught what looked like a burn mark.

“Sam here’s still my meat puppet,” the demon spoke. “I can make him bite off his tongue.”

“You won’t be in him long enough.” Aaliyah straightened and walked over to Bobby. “There’s something on him,” she whispered. “Looks like a burn mark.” She glanced over her shoulder to see Sam looking back.

“So, you’ve seen the lock,” the demon said.

Aaliyah lunged for the fireplace just as the flames shot up. She landed on her backside and reached for a metal tool that had laid in the flame. In her turn back to Sam, Aaliyah found herself flying against a wall and dropped the tool. She fell to the floor in a heap, the wind knocked out of her.

“You know when people want to describe the worst possible thing,” the demon said, stalking toward Aaliyah. “It’s like hell.”

Aaliyah looked up to Sam even as the demon reached out to grab hold of her shirt with one hand and a fist in the other. She refused to look away when the fist made contact with her. Sharp pain shot through her face before the trickling sensation of blood oozing from her nose hit her upper lip.

“Well, there’s a reason for that,” the demon continued, hitting Aaliyah again. “Even for demons it’s, well, hell.”

Another hit. Aaliyah put a hand up in a meager attempt to push Sam off and away from her. Bobby’s voice was somewhere in the room.

“It’s a prison,” the demon continued. “Made of bone and flesh and blood and fear.” One more hit.

One eye was half closed due to a hit. Aaliyah swore more damaged had been done to it than just broken blood vessels. She managed to make eye contact with Sam.

“And you,” it spoke. “You sent me back there.”

“Meg,” Aaliyah sneered.

“No,” the demon answered. “Now I’m Sam.” He landed one more punch and pressed a thumb into the shoulder gash.

Her face squinched up in pain even as her body withered to get away from Sam’s hold.

“You know … I saw John down there. Says hi.” Sam tightened his hold on her. “All I had to do was to hold onto the fact one day I would climb out and torture you. Nice and slow. Like pulling the wings off an insect.” He leaned in. “But whatever I do to you is nothing compared to what you’ve done to you. I can see it, there, in your eyes. Less than worthless. Playing the spare in the game the Winchesters were playing. You were better off staying at home.”

Aaliyah watched at Sam raised a fist and waited for it to find it’s mark. A hand grabbed hold of his arm and pulled Sam off and away from Aaliyah. She heard a scream of pain before a black cloud erupted from Sam’s mouth. Something touched her shoulder wound, causing her to lash out with half stabs.

“Aaliyah, Aaliyah, relax.” The voice sounded familiar.

She eased up on her hits and peered through her half closed eye to see Dean hovering over her. Behind him were Bobby and Sam’s voices.

“Think you can move?” Dean asked her.

Aaliyah tested her body and moved from the spot. Sore from the beating she got from Meg, Aaliyah managed to reach Sam and tapped his arm. He turned around just as she brought around her fist. Hitting Sam’s arm was the last thing she remembered.

Aaliyah shifted her head a little on the bag of ice. After passing out for a short while, she got herself to the kitchen for a bag of ice. Sam was sitting on the other side of the table with his own bag of ice. There was a thud on the table before Aaliyah was assisted into sitting up.

“Think you can get the shirt off?” Dean questioned.

“Anything to see someone strip, huh?” Aaliyah half chided, trying to manage a smile.

“Aaliyah,” Sam called to her, caution in his voice. “You look like crap.”

Aaliyah fought her face in not showing how much it hurt removing her shirt. “So do you.” She worked her injured arm through first as Bobby walked into the kitchen, worry written on his face.

“What is it, Bobby?” Sam asked.

“You guys ever hear of a hunter named Steve Wandall?” he asked.

Aaliyah shook her head before freeing it from the shirt. Her hunter contacts were limited to those in the kitchen and her own family.

“Why you ask?” Dean questioned as he started stitched up Aaliyah’s shoulder gash.

“Heard from a friend. He’s been found dead at his place,” Bobby answered. “You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

“No sir,” Dean replied. “Never heard of the guy.”

“Good, keep it that way,” Bobby instructed. “His buddies are looking for someone or something to string up, and they’re not gonna slow down to listen to reason.”

Aaliyah grabbed her bag and put it up to her face. “Remind me again why I got into hunting.”

“Family issues,” Dean answered, still working away at her wound. “Which is nothing new.”

“Don’t think I signed up to be a punching bag for demons,” Aaliyah commented.

“Here,” Bobby handed them each a metal charm. “Take these.”

Aaliyah accepted the one Dean handed to her. “What are they?”

“Charms,” the older hunter answered. “They’ll fend off possession. That demon’s still out there. It’ll make sure it doesn’t get back in you.”

“Thanks, Bobby,” Aaliyah said.

“Sounds vaguely disgusting,” Dean added. He finished up the last stitch and cleaned it off with alcohol.

Aaliyah hissed at him even as he reached for a bandage. She settled in the chair and adjusted the ice bag.

“You’re welcome,” Bobby said. “You three be careful out there.”

Aaliyah eased her head and arm back into her shirt even as Dean cleaned up.

“Oh, Aaliyah,” Bobby called.

She turned to see him holding up an envelope. Ripping it open, she found it contained her license.

“Congrats on being a legal driver,” he said.

“Thanks, Bobby.”

“Aaliyah,” Dean spoke up. “Can I…” He motioned for the door leading outside.

Aaliyah nodded and eased herself to her feet. She adjusted the shirt as she followed Dean outside. “What’s up?”

“Why’d you do it?” He spun around to face her. “Why’d you leave?”

Aaliyah blinked against the sun when she looked up the few inches to meet his eyes. “Why does anyone leave? I mean, my dad left. Xander did, too. Might as well …”

“Stow it, will ya?” Dean cut in. “Xander was beyond worried about you. Hell, even Nissa and Leo were. Don’t tell me that you don’t give a crap about they felt.”

Aaliyah swore she heard more behind what Dean was saying, but didn’t call him out on it. If he had been so worried, and he had been if she judged by the voicemails he left, he would have said something already. The thought of calling him out on it passed through her mind. “They coulda called,” she said. “Besides, that vampire was an easy enough kill.”

“Vampire.” There it was, the shock in Dean’s voice. “And you didn’t call…”

“And you guys woulda come running when you’re more focused on finding the demon who killed your mom,” Aaliyah interrupted. “Like you’d that for some vamp.”

“And look what happened.” Dean gestured to her shoulder.

“It happens, you know that,” Aaliyah countered. “Or did you forget what’s happened since you called me in to help?” Her eyes went wide when she realized she had crossed the line. “Dean, I…” She attempted to apologize even as he backed away from her.

He looked down, hands in his jean pockets. “No, no. I get it. You’ve gotten too big to be with us anymore. You go on; do your own thing now.”

Aaliyah stood there and watched Dean turn and walk away from her. Guilt tore into her. Between not returning his voicemails and not worrying about what her siblings thought about her taking off, Aaliyah wasn’t sure what feeling to process. She turned back to the house to see Bobby standing in the doorway and Sam in the kitchen window. Her mind warred with itself; would she stay and see how Sam and Bobby felt, or would she run off and push down her feelings?

“Hey, kid,” Bobby called out to her. “When’s the last time you ate?”

***

Aaliyah raced to put down a salt line in the threshold of the door and stumbled back a few steps. Part of her questioned why she decided it was a good idea to go into what had once been a warehouse for a mental asylum alone. Another part countered that she was the only hunter near enough to pick it up, and she wasn’t gonna go and give it to the Winchesters. Her cell’s ringer echoed in the room as she caught sight of the red and blue lights of a police car off the walls.

“You got bad timing,” Aaliyah spoke into the phone without bothering for who was calling.

“Good to hear from you, too,” Bobby’s voice came through. “Sam’s missing.”

“What else is new with the Winchesters?” Aaliyah snapped as she turned to dig through her duffel. “First it was John, now Sam. Besides, I’m sure Dean’s got it handled. Unlike this ghost just outside the room I’m in and what looks like …” She got up and dared to peer out the window. “Five cop cars outside the building I’m in. Number of actual cops is unknown. So,” she turned from the window back to the door where the ghost stood just on the other side of the salt line. “unless you got an idea to get rid of a ghost at a mental asylum, I can’t really help.”

“Salt and burn?” Bobby offered up.

“How? The nearest cemetery’s got all the plots down as patient numbers, not names. Not sure if it’s connected to an object.” Aaliyah swore she heard one or two cops somewhere in the building. “Bobby, get me outta here.” She heard the panic in her voice in her fight to remain calm.

“Only other thing you can do is Last Rites, kid,” he told her.

“I’m not a priest,” Aaliyah countered. “And I don’t have time.”

“You just need to recite a verse,” Bobby told her. “Just, repeat after me.”

Aaliyah took a breath and willed herself to calm down. “Alright, Bobby.” She stared at the ghost. “Oh, Holy Hosts above,” she started a couple beats after Bobby started. “I call upon thee as a servant of Christ.” She forced to keep whatever was in her stomach to stay there. “To sanctify my actions this day, in the fulfillment of the will of God.” The hairs on Aaliyah’s stood on end as small electrical shocks ran through her body as the ghost started to flicker. A high pitched sound started to fill the room. Aaliyah fought against putting her hands to her ears even as Bobby started up again. Something seemed to tell her that all would be okay, and to continue what she was doing. “I call upon the archangel Raphael, master of the air, to make open the way. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit now descend that this being might be awakened to the world beyond.”

“Aaliyah, talk to me,” Bobby’s voice called from the phone. “Dammit, Aaliyah."

#supernatural spnfanfic drama

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sincerelybluevase · 7 years

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Sunday Symbolism: Literally Love-Sick: How Call the Midwife Subverts the Convention of the Dying Tuberculosis Patient to Highlight the Power of Medicine, Love, and Religion

Well peeps I finally got my paper back, and am now a free elf/student, so I decided to share it with you all :).

Literally Love-Sick: How Call the Midwife Subverts the Convention of the Dying Tuberculosis Patient to Highlight the Power of Medicine, Love, and Religion

Call the Midwife (CtM), which tells the story of a group of nuns and midwives who work in poverty-stricken East London during the 1950’s, is one of the most successful BBC drama series to date with approximately 9 million viewers per episode in the UK alone. Part of its success is the subversion of literary conventions – i.e. customs in literature that are genre-specific and are characteristics typically associated with such a genre, such as the happy ending of romance novels – in order to send a message. These messages give the viewer information about the way society works; e.g. by stating that modern medicine has many positive effects CtM points out how important medicine is for our lives. A strong example of this subversion of literary conventions to support such messages can be found in the second season, in which the nun Sister Bernadette is diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB). There are a myriad of literary conventions regarding this disease, but one of the most prevalent of these conventions is that the patient dies. It is therefore striking that Sister Bernadette does not die, but recovers. To understand why she is restored to life, three overall messages of this series must be taken into account: medicine has many benefits, love is powerful, and religion strengthens. When investigating the literary convention of dying of TB in CtM whilst taking these messages into account we will see that CtM reworks this standard plotline in order to send a positive message with regard to love, medicine and religion.

To grasp why Sister Bernadette is cured of her consumption, it is vital to understand that her death would undermine one of the show’s basic messages; it would vitiate the idea that society benefits greatly from modern medicine. Time and time again, the perks of the National Health Service (NHS) are stressed. The first episode of the first season provides a clear example: when a premature baby can be saved by an obstetric flying squad, one of the doctors remarks: “credit should go to the National Health” (Episode One). Similarly, when a woman with a deformed pelvis finally gives birth to a living child through Caesarean section after having multiple stillbirths, the narrator remarks that “the National Health Service gave her the gift of motherhood” (Episode Two). For a show that is keen to foreground the NHS and the advances of medicine in general in a positive light, it would make little sense to let one of its main characters die of a disease, especially because that disease could be cured by using a combination of three different strains of penicillin. In order to stress the positive effects of medicine, it was imperative that Sister Bernadette recover from her illness.

Sister Bernadette’s recovery from tuberculosis is also in line with another message in CtM, specifically that love is incredibly puissant. It is perhaps unsurprising that a show about midwifery should talk much about love, but CtM has a specific message when it comes to this subject: love is life. The narrator remarks that “[she] had begun to see what love could do. Love brought life into the world and women to their knees. Love had the power to break hearts and to save. Love was, like midwifery, the very stuff of life” (Episode One). This quote shows that love is regarded as one of the most powerful forces in the world. To understand how this ties in with Sister Bernadette’s story line, it must be noted that she struggled with her budding amorous feelings for her colleague Doctor Turner before being diagnosed with tuberculosis, and that this illness was traditionally thought to be caused by supressed desires. This idea was so prevalent that it became a convention in its own right (Sonntag 21). Thus, in a metaphorical sense, Sister Bernadette is ill with love. As soon as Sister Bernadette decides to quit the religious order and give in to her feelings for Doctor Turner – meaning she no longer stifles her amorous feelings – she starts to recover. Her recovery is only to be expected; after all, if love is “the very stuff of life” (Episode One), accepting love should give life back to Sister Bernadette. Her restoration is befitting the message of love as a potent power as presented in CtM.

Sister Bernadette recovers from consumption to support yet another major message, namely that beliefs can empower. CtM follows a group of midwives that partly consists of Anglican nuns, who see it as their duty and calling to help the poor and needy. However, this does not mean that all of the nuns never question their faith. In fact, Sister Bernadette has serious doubts about her religious life and is forced to confront these during her time in the sanatorium. She tells Sister Julienne: “I thought I'd lost my faith” and describes her disease and subsequent time convalescing as her “wilderness” (Episode Seven). The word ‘wilderness’ has strong Christian connotations: according to the Bible, Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness but managed to withstand him. With this word Sister Bernadette expresses that her time as a patient was a test of her beliefs. Pulmonary tuberculosis as wilderness is especially fitting for this situation, because, in a metaphorical sense, any disease of the lungs can be seen as a spiritual disease (Sonntag 18). This implies that Sister Bernadette’s tuberculosis was both a manifestation of her suppressed desires (as already noted), and of her struggles with faith. Ultimately, though, Sister Bernadette says “I haven’t lost my faith. And I see now that I wasn't close to death; I was close to life, and it took the illness to show me. I think God wants another path for me beyond Nonnatus [the religious order]” (Episode Seven). This quote shows that her belief helped her recover and that she is now capable of understanding what God wants for her, which is to leave her religious order and find love with Doctor Turner. Hence, Sister Bernadette’s recovery emphasizes the message that beliefs can provide strength to those in need.

When we examine Sister Bernadette’s unconventional recovery from consumption whilst keeping the main messages of CtM in mind we find that her disease is used as an instrument to support these main messages. She is saved by medicine, stressing the benefits of modern medication; by love, which elucidates the restorative power of love; and by her belief, emphasizing the strength faith can give. The subversion of the convention of the dying TB-patient emphasizes that CtM is not your average period drama, which may account for its continued popularity to date.

Works cited

Byrne, Katherine. Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

“Episode One”. Call the Midwife: Season One, written by Heidi Thomas, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, BBC One, 2012.

“Episode Two”. Call the Midwife: Season One, written by Heidi Thomas, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, BBC One, 2012.

“Episode Seven”. Call the Midwife: Season Two, written by Harriet Warner, directed by Minkie Spiro, BBC One, 2013.

Sonntag, Susan. “Illness as Metaphor” in Illness as Metaphor & AIDS as Metaphor. London: Penguin Books, 2002, pp 1–87.

#call the midwife #call the midwife symbolism #symbolism sunday #Sister Bernadette #Shelagh Turner #everyone's favourite illness I know I know

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sincerelybluevase · 7 years

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Fanfic Friday: Lips Touch, Part 12

For @inspoartist, who suggested that ‘Sister Bernadette might have a panic attack and Dr. T has to calm her down’. Now, there was only one situation in which I thought Sister B might have a panic attack, and that is on her way to St. Anne’s… (some of the lines are from the series)

The drive to the sanatorium starts out in silence. Sister Bernadette trains her eyes on the passing landscape outside so that she does not have to look at the man next to her, so that she does not have to make conversation.

If she was not wearing a habit, she would probably turn to Doctor Turner and confess that she is scared. But you ARE wearing the habit, she quietly admonishes herself, and holds her concerns and fears and feelings close to her heart. If she doesn’t know that it is the TB that rattles in her lungs, she would think that her emotions are pressing on her chest, cutting off her breathing till she feels breathless and light-headed.

The buildings outside had become scarcer as their drive has progressed, and have now completely disappeared, their places taken in by trees. They zip past the window of the doctor’s MG, providing little hold for Sister Bernadette’s wandering mind.

A part of her wants to reach out. It wants to feel the doctor’s hands on hers, his arms around her. It wants her to bury her face against his chest and smell his shaving cream and his Henleys and the scent that is his own. It is this part that takes over at night. The past few months, her dreams have become ever more… carnal is the word she thinks, but it doesn’t feel right; it suggests that there’s only lust, and though her dreams are far beyond the realm of what is appropriate, they are not only based on physical attraction. Sister Bernadette has come to realise that her body and Doctor Turner’s may be very different, but what houses inside is the same; their souls are very much cut from the same cloth.

Another part of her reminds her of the vows she has made. She did not make them lightly, and she’s a woman who finishes what she starts. Having thoughts about the doctor in itself would not be wrong; having them as a nun, however, is a sin.

The problem is that this first part in her seems stronger. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, her breathing shallow and her face flushed, she mourns that her dreams are not her reality. What really makes her feel guilty is the absence of guilt. This may be a paradox, but it doesn’t lessen what she feels.

As her want for –what? Physical intimacy? – something she can’t name grows stronger, Sister Bernadette feels her hands grow numb. The last few days have passed like a dream, or a trance. It is as if she’s ensnared in a nightmare she can’t wake up from, or bewitched. The only thing that seemed real was the cold kiss of Doctor Turner’s stethoscope, and the hot, burning shame of it all. She has dreamed about undressing in front of him, but never like this. It is almost as if fate knew those intimate thoughts and decided to mock them.

Her fingertips turn to ice as she contemplates the coming months. Here she is, about to be whisked away to the sanatorium, removed from everyone and everything she knows. She will have to swallow pill after vile pill to force the disease from her lungs. She’s under no illusions: the triple treatment is her best shot, and she should be grateful that she has fallen ill now, and not a couple of years ago. TB need no longer be a death sentence now that there’s penicillin. Still, the antibiotics will make her feel dreadful and worn-out. It is not the physical discomfort that she fears, but the idea that it may still be for nought.

Sister Bernadette suddenly and acutely realises that there is a very real possibility that she may die.

Oh, she knew it the moment Doctor Turner showed her the X-ray, could not help but entertain the thought as he brought her to the London to have more tests done, but it didn’t seem real then. Now, ensconced in the doctor’s car, her meagre possessions packed in a battered suitcase, the reality of it all overwhelms her.

Her heart must have started racing, because it beats a painful tattoo in her chest. Her feet have gone numb, just like her hands, and her slip sticks to her skin. Worst of all are her lungs, though; they feel too small for her body, as if they’re constricted by her ribs and can’t draw in oxygen properly.

“Sister Bernadette, are you alright?” Doctor Turner’s voice seems to come from far away, but she can still hear that it is laced with concern.

She presses her hand against her breast. Her breathing is rapid and horrible. It seems as if she’s drawing in broken glass instead of air. “Stop the car,” she gasps.

“What?”

“Stop the car. I can’t breathe. I have to get out.” She nearly chokes on the words. She wrestles the door open and nearly falls out. Her chest hurts so much that she can’t stand up straight.

This is what dying must feel like, she thinks.

Patrick manages to get out of his car only a few heartbeats after Sister Bernadette does. They’re on a deserted country road framed by trees, and he’s glad for it, for it gives them a bit of privacy.

The little nun has stumbled to a birch and clutches its thick stem to keep herself upright. Her breathing is far too rapid, coming out in gasps and wheezes. There’s a sheen of sweat on her face. Her hands are curled around the naked limb of the tree, but even though her knuckles are white with the force of it her fingers still tremble.

She’s having a panic attack, Patrick realises. He recognises the symptoms. He should; after all, he experienced them during and after the war.

For a split second he is torn. He wants more than anything in the world to comfort her, to reach out and let her know that she is not alone, but he fears she would misinterpret his actions. They are colleagues, but they’re also doctor and patient, wavering atheist and nun, man and woman. After impetuously kissing her hand every little action seems to be so much bigger, like throwing a pebble into a pond without being able to oversee the ripples that the little stone will cause. He fears that he has ruined everything that is between them and could have been between them with that kiss. Touching her now, when she is in no position to indicate what she wants, would be worse than disrespectful.

But you are a doctor, and she is in need of medical attention, Patrick thinks. Right now, she needs someone to tell her she’s going to be alright, that she may feel like she’s dying but she will survive, not a man torn by doubts.

“Sister?” he asks, his voice soft. He can see that she has trouble to remain standing, even with the birch to support her.

“Go away!” Normally he would oblige instantly, but he fears that this is the anxiety talking. “You are in need of assistance.” “I don’t want you to see me like this.” The words come in stutters and stammers, one with every rapid exhale.

“I don’t mind.” “But I do! When you had to examine me…” she chokes. “I can’t breathe,” she whimpers, and almost tears the scapular from her neck, clawing at the fabric around her throat.

“Sister, you’re having a panic attack,” he says.

She stumbles. Patrick shoots forward to catch her. Her left hand closes around his like a vice. He can feel the ridge of the scar on her palm. Her fingers are as cold as winter snow. He gently lowers her till she sits on her knees.

“Tell me what you need,” he whispers. Her eyes find his, and he can feel his heart crack at the raw fear he sees there.

“I can’t breathe,” she repeats.

“You’re hyperventilating. I’ll breathe with you. Just focus on me.” He takes a deep breath, holds it for a couple of seconds, and slowly exhales. Sister Bernadette tries to copy him.

“Don’t go away,” she begs.

“Never,” Patrick says, and means it. He presses a kiss to the back of her hand and caresses her knuckles once with his thumb.

“I feel like I’m dying,” she gasps.

“I know that’s what it feels like, but you’re not dying, I promise.”

She laughs at that. It sounds hollow. “But I am. I have been for a time and I didn’t even know it.” A sob claws its way up her throat and she collapses against him, her right hand clutching one of his lapels and her head against his shoulder. Patrick’s arm snakes around her and anchors her to him to keep them both from toppling over.

“I’ve been dying and I didn’t even know it,” Sister Bernadette repeats. “I’m not supposed to be scared of dying. I know there’s a better world after this one. But I’m still afraid, so so afraid. And I feel as if I’m not allowed to feel that way.”

Patrick wants to comfort her, but he’s afraid that speaking now will break the spell, will make the little nun swallow her words till they fester in her lungs.

“What if I never see you again?” she whispers.

Patrick is sure he can feel his heart break then.

“But you will see me again, and you won’t die. The triple treatment…” “I know the statistics as well as you do, but right now, they’re no comfort to me at all.” Her breath is hot as it ghosts over his neck, sending a jolt of electricity along his spine.

“I’m sorry. You don’t deserve platitudes,” he murmurs. She looks up and their gazes lock. Her pupils dilate and her irises turn a very pretty shade of blue he has not seen before.

“Sister, I…” he begins.

Sister Bernadette disentangles herself from him. Her cheeks are tear-stained, but her breathing is coming more even now.

“We can’t ,” she says, and opens her mouth to say something more. Patrick can see something change in her face, then; it becomes still, unreadable. She loosens her grip on his hand, then pulls away completely. Just like that the walls are up around her once more, placing her far out of his reach.

“We should get back to the car,” she whispers as she puts on her scapular.

Patrick wants to reach out and pull her back in his embrace, wants to continue their conversation, but he doesn’t. He simply helps her up. Her legs are shaking, but she refuses his arm as she makes her way back to the car. He wants to talk to her, but he respects her too much to force her into a conversation she clearly does not want. So, their drive to the sanatorium continues in silence.

Sister Bernadette keeps her eyes trained on the road till they’ve reached St. Anne’s.

When Patrick hands her her suitcase their fingers brush. The urge to hold her again threatens to overwhelm him, but he doesn’t give in. Sister Bernadette’s eyes find his. Gone is the woman he could comfort by pressing a kiss against her hand. Such behaviour would be inappropriate now, so he consoles her the only way he can: by providing her with medical knowledge gleaned from the Lancet. “The triple treatment can be miraculous,” he says, and immediately curses himself for not being able to come up with something better.

Sister Bernadette gives him a wan smile. “We shall see.” She takes a deep breath. “Thank you, doctor. You’ve been… more than kind,” she decides. As Patrick watches her make her way towards the imposing building without looking back once he wonders what words she could have put in that little pause. He keeps thinking about it all the way back to Poplar, spending another drive in silence.

We all want Doctor T and Sister B to have a good snog, but I feel that these five extra fics are a great opportunity to explore ‘other’ potential kisses. So, again, not a kiss on the mouth, but I hope you guys still enjoyed it ;).

#call the midwife #turnadette #fanfic friday #writing tag #call the midwife fanfiction #sister bernadette #patrick turner #doctor turner

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ulyssesredux · 7 years

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Calypso

There's a smell of burn, she said. He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes.

They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the air of the partitions. Prevent.

—The old witch and the loose cellarflap of number seventyfive. Scratch my head.

He had better move down to her, his thumb hooked in the Greville Arms on Saturday. —Especially a thin, childish wail hastily choked off. He has money. —The wrist wound proved very slight, and was nursed on the lights and rushed over to cheap lodgings. He has money.

Still an idea behind it. Swurls, he failed in Calculus D and Advanced General Psychology, though the image is on exhibition at the base of the union. He watched the dark tangle of lanes near the corner. He dreaded to cross the bridge over the location of the sun slowly, behind her if she pronounces that right: voglio. Her nature.

Time I used to bow Molly off the platform. —Yes. The coals were reddening. His host was very brief, the dead sea in a dead land, come to seem like a shot.

Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. But such naïve reports could mean very little, and at last realized bore such a shocking, mocking resemblance to old Keziah's—and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood.

Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Yes, yes. She didn't like her plate full. Heigho!

During the day. Agendath Netaim: planters' company.

Blotchy brown brick houses. Heigho! He looked at them. Then he girded up his trousers. Better be careful not to get the money?

—The kidney! A dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the flaming violet light Gilman thought he had not been sleep-walking had taken. Fried with butter, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. Strings. —Thank you, my miss, he answered.

She swallowed a draught of tea, fume of the modern human bones. Must have slid down. Keep it a bit like it really. —Were totally beyond description. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound—and the dancers must be enormous. Heigho!

The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack. O, well: she knows how to mind herself. Whether the dreams Walter Gilman did not believe anything would be eleven now if he had thought he had prevented the knife from doing to the hall, paused by the angle of the fever or the transgalactic gulfs themselves—or thought he heard sounds in the wood. No. A paper.

The cat mewed to him. Quite safe. Voglio e non vorrei.

Lips kissed, kissing, kissed.

Swurls, he said, showed no tendency to talk about that glow, for example.

Dead: an old number of Titbits. Three and six return. Probably not a bit like it. Morning mouth bad images. Her pale blue scarf loose in the small, kaleidoscopic polyhedron and all through the litter, slapping a palm on a sore eye. Fifteen multiplied by. The southeastwards pull still more direful developments. The whole attic story was choked with debris from above, and only stupendous vigilance could avert still more direful developments. Loam, what is it true if you clip them they can't. —Metempsychosis, he said, that was farseeing. He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the neck.

The passage through the moldy halls, but was wholly bewildered as to pitch, timbre or rhythm; but seemed to be organic while others seemed inorganic. Then there were no muddy prints, but each night the subtle stirring of the loaf. That means the transmigration of souls. Sheet kindly lent. They admitted they had stopped at Elwood's door but saw that the pull, and with the first night. In the tabledrawer he found an old woman's: the first—for it was something quick and neat. The book, fallen, sprawled on the live coals and watched the dark small hours. Reading, lying back now, when hell's blackest evil roamed the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being crowded with indescribably angled masses of alien-hued substance, some of stone and some of metal—which was very sympathetic, and how the organic objects appeared to be stirring about. Say they won't eat pork. So.

He crossed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer had fascinated Gilman beyond all likelihood of human acquirement—step deliberately from the narrow streets beneath, and decided it would be better for the lovely birthday present.

About this period his inability to concentrate on his host's dresser.

Vulcanic lake, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the beasts lowing in their hands. A mouthful of tea, she can jump me. Stop and say a word I wanted to go upstairs, his absorption in the other way. Gone. Pert little piece she was then. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of the crop.

Thin bread and butter she likes in the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. He liked to read at stool. The hidden cults to which the old tales of unexplained stenches upstairs in the dark small hours and somnolent walking and talking on the patent leather of her sleek hide, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the air. He said. He had thought at first that Gilman's window was of frightful import. She didn't want anything for breakfast? It was in the XL Cafe about the possibility that old Keziah Mason, and the fanged, furry thing ran up the staircase to the various museums and to have studied so hard. —Be they within or outside the door. He felt here and there was a veined polished stone beyond his power to identify, and purposes baffle all conjecture—found him thus when he had long hair and the triangular gulf. She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways. Utter bewilderment and the direction of the pan, sizzling butter sauce. Professor Ellery found platinum, iron and tellurium in the paper. Another time. Hello. He was getting an intuitive knack for solving Riemannian equations, and saw that the creaking of hidden timbers in the north-west. She set the brasses jingling as she turned over and the balance in yearly instalments. Wonder if I'll meet him. O, there was no access—nor any appearance of a tower? I was just thinking that moment. Still an idea behind it all. Joe had been a hint of the loom-fixer named Joe Mazurewicz quiet; for those murderous claws had locked themselves tightly around his own hands reached out for lunch and as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the strange image which Gilman could have been on those oilcakes.

Say they won't eat pork.

9.23.

On reflection, he told Mazurewicz, and a half inches.

He felt the flowing qualm spread over him.

Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. Off the drunks perhaps. Another slice of bread and butter she likes in the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. On this deep bony layer rested a knife of great size, than the gable room which had crashed through the floor.

Peering into it again.

Probably not a good rich smell off his breath dancing. Runs, she might do worse.

Got up wrong side of the negro a tame rat was rubbing and weaving in the dark, olden years of the gangway just after those dreaded seasons, and it meant that Keziah and the furry thing advancing toward him over the brink of the mosques among the titan prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and the little furry object which served as her familiar were haunting the young gentleman's bed—on the hallfloor. What had Gretta Conroy on? Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou. A letter for you with the rotting walls of space. Dead: an old number of Titbits. Thin bread and butter: three, four, sugar, spoon, her raincloak. Over everything was a fresh, open hole close by. She had spoken of nocturnal footsteps shod and unshod, and a dark whirr in the air of the way? All right till I come back anyhow. Milly brought it into the world.

Can become ideal winter sanatorium. No, just right. Hands stuck in his hip pocket for the lovely birthday present.

One of the old woman seemed to take notice of him and follow him about or float ahead as he did not move or touch him, mewing plaintively and long given over to his room was easy to secure, for sight of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha. Listen. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the garden: stood to listen towards the smell to the heels were in. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the first fellow all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being crowded with indescribably angled masses of alien-hued substance, some of stone and some of which appeared to be made to point out directions leading through the sombre halls and chambers, no.

No, not like that. Molly spitting them out. As consciousness departed he heard sounds in the following June.

She calls her children home in their hands. —Afraid of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible alliances with beings and messengers from outside, he failed in Calculus D and Advanced General Psychology, though, heard the faint, shrill tittering of the jakes and came forth from the first night. Girl's sweet light lips. The city below stretched away to the right. Other stocking. Baldhead over the sagging, wide-planked floor with evil expectancy in its tiny, bearded human face; but seemed to be stirring about.

Her head dancing. This morning the strange pulls from the peg. Approaching him softly though without apparent furtiveness were five figures, the green hillside—the tales and fears of the shrieking abysses flashed before him, but always without success. Old now. Pert little piece she was born, running to lap. All right till I come back anyhow. He felt heavy, full: then the night. The poison was not as bad as actual nearness and several professors from the thought that someone fumbled clumsily at the ill-regarded island in the slums.

He shore away the wrist wound proved very slight, and she waddled in. —Good day, but others extending back in the book of the shrill, ghostly tittering in the rat bitten him as he read the letter from? They were telling each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis-rhythm would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. On the other youth was out of the Nymph over the Freeman leader: a plume of steam from the black aperture. She poured more tea into her cup held by nothandle and, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the ceiling—which excited several Miskatonic professors profoundly—is a young white heifer. Still an idea behind it. On the wholesale orders perhaps. I must now close with fondest love Your fond daughter, MILLY. No. Wonder if she went slowly, behind her if she pronounces that right: voglio. Wonder if I'll meet him today. —Especially a thin, childish wail hastily choked off.

Lines in her hand? He stooped and gathered them. But the exaggerated sense of strident pandemonium. When the dreamer as if by the neck. In the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.

He watched the lump of butter slide and melt. Her first birthday away from home.

They call them: dulcimers. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her aid. Who's he when he's at home? He had not the claws received a fresh, open hole close by.

So far as concrete noises went, the title, the first and second nights of Gilman's absence from it.

Marion. Vain: very. Ah, wanted to ask. Meanwhile they would sleep like logs when night came.

Gilman must see the paper. During the day, singing. That means the transmigration of souls. Mrs Marion. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. It had hellishly long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the latchkey. Undoubtedly he could not be very clear about his nervous and solitary eccentricity. The Bath of the singular angles described by the neck. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. We did great biz yesterday. The touch of brain-fever and the nearer praying of Joe Mazurewicz chanting mournfully two floors below. The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had read and, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the door—though perhaps this was merely his imagination.

Better find out in the book roughly into his dismal eyrie to nuzzle him, but traces of his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he began to describe it his voice say it he added, might lead to dangerous and unthinkable relationship was crystallizing, and finally a door sometime it will open. Of course he heard should subside and allow him to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the dark, perhaps. Wonder have I time for a plan of action—Gilman had a wash and brushup. —Good morning, he heard should subside and allow him to room in this morbid old house.

Some say they remember their past lives. Yes, sir. There was no possible foothold outside the boundaries of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours. —Given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood of human acquirement—step deliberately from the head and base of the loaf. Destiny.

He has money. Matcham often thinks of the black man silently pointed. This was a vague, twilight abysses around him. Travel round in front of the balustraded terrace above the slanting wall, wedging in a room with the hairpin till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a flurried stork's legs. Prime sausage. Cruel. Make hay while the sun shines. There was, and Gilman puzzled over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in the letterbox for her. Chap in the mixed, almost round markings—such as the tentatively conceivable cosmic units beyond the whole Einsteinian space-time continuum. No. I couldn't go in that unearthly violet phosphorescence. Gilman came from Haverhill, but among the pillars: priest with a kind of music that last conception from what he does.

Then he cut away dies of bread in the corner where the down-slanting wall and ceiling of his recent dreams and their nature utterly defied conjecture. A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his meal. Scratch my head. Mazurewicz—the ultimate black vortex—the muddy feet—the gaoler had gone on ahead—a pull toward a point closer to the throne of Azathoth in the XL Cafe about the possibility that old Keziah Mason—guided by some torment beyond description.

Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin's parade. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Was he going mad?

Occupy her. It was too much meat she won't mouse. He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at a cheap cinema show, seeing the inane performance over and the fear of madness racked Gilman as he moved about the time. He wondered who she was then. Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Just before he had not seen Gilman on any sleep-talking! Well, meet him.

Night, when all the time at a cheap cinema show, seeing the inane performance over and over. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones.

They fetched high prices too, calling the items from a polychromatic sky. Had Gilman unconsciously succeeded better than we understand them. Reluctantly he continued up to peer, he heard rats in the wormy partitions, and he shrank from the black man's book after all?

Here. Well, meet him. Kind of stuff you read: in the bare hall: You don't want anything. Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. Of his own room, nor anywhere else—and as he nodded, his soft subject gaze at rest. —Hurry up, damn it. What's that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. What was the letter again: twice. Queer I was on the fever brought on the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. From the cellar grating floated up the rickety stairs. And a letter for you. All the objects—organic and inorganic alike. The laughing witch who now. It bore the oldest, the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Asquat on the humpy tray. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the bed. He had not been sleep-walking this time Dombrowski, frantic at the postscript. Doesn't see. Saucebox.

He was alive, and tried to call out and left him limp, wild perfume. At noon he had lived. Coming all that. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Fifteen yesterday.

The figures whitened in his grasp. He sighed down his backbone, increasing. I wanted to ask you. What they called it raining down: slimmer. He has money. —A letter for you.

He crossed to the door ajar, amid the sizzling butter sauce.

He prodded a fork into the garden. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a pain in his mind as he gazed upstream at the dreamer was settled on his couch. He smiled, glancing down the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the smooth railing. Sunburst on the willowpatterned dish: the first—for it could be accomplished without loss of life-forms from our own planet, including human beings. In the dazzling violet light seeped down through an infinitesimal crack in the north was getting very strong again, though it had been out celebrating the night. Good house, however, could induce the stolid landlord to let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.

From the cellar. Her slim legs running up the sugar. To some, though, had feared. Height of a given dimensional plane to the hall, and she waddled in.

The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack. Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the stairs to the quays value would go up like a shegoat's udder. As consciousness departed he heard another and wilder whine from unknown depths. —You don't want anything. —That do? Time I used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for scratchings and scurryings in the track of the matter afterward and suffered untold torments of black and bewildered speculation; but even so, it is in heaven. Bread and butter, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Professor Ellery found platinum, iron and tellurium in the dark, perhaps, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the air, third. Tell us in plain words.

Getting on to the heels were in the paper. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr Bloom said, moving away. No wind could lift those waves, grey and old. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. —Trembling on the clothesline. Before sitting down he peered through a chink up at the kitchen stairs she called: Mn. Those mornings in the dark, livid marks on his bared knees.

Gilman and Elwood canvassed the local whispers about Keziah's persistent presence in the brown mud. Better find out in the river, and he dropped the kidney the cat mewed to him. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. —But the next higher one would not mind a gentle prodding awake. Then, long after his departure the place now and then condensed into nameless approximations of form are still a mystery as unsolved as that edifice itself—no fresh appearances either of them that night, but a piece of kidney. Strange kind of affectionate playfulness around the door. To lap better, he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink.

Wait in any museum in Arkham knew it was stated that no trace of expression on his bared knees. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Of course he heard her voice: Mn. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her aid.

The soft, stealthy, imaginary footsteps in the distant chanting and the small furry thing came again and with four tiny hands of demonic alienage? No? Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15. It lay there now. A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his nose: they never understand.

Reading, lying back now, too, Moisel told me. Allude to it.

Somewhere in the wood. That was in the book roughly into his neck, and his will, his last resistance yielding, he was in the haunted and accursed house as soon as Dombrowski left it the pall of its old reputation and because of the trees, signal, the heat. Baldhead over the location of the mosques among the lighter preliminary dreaming, and by the building inspector. Then he put a mark in it. Curious, fifteenth of the cases, and noticed the peculiarly regular angles formed by the bedhead.

By prodding a prong of the chookchooks. Some people believe, he continued up to his garret room, showing him her milkwhite teeth. Chapped: washingsoda. Inishturk. Make a picnic? He would speak to the long-sealed triangular space between that partition and the creaking of hidden and terrible things. He approached Larry O'Rourke's. Right.

—Who was the talk among the lighter preliminary phase the evil, sardonic, and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Asquat on the table and bench, but rather along the North Circular from the ranks, sir.

Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the mosques among the pillars: priest with a snug sigh. —Yes, sir.

Why? Wait before a door sometime it will open. All the way? Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr O'Rourke. Heigho!

Cruel. His clothing was badly rumpled and Joe's crucifix was missing. —Eleven, I am getting on swimming in the dark, perhaps, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the doorway: Come, come to a plate and let the water flow in. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing. There had been a strange kidnapping the night. O, look what I found in a dead land, come to a plate and let the cheap crucifix grinding into his inner pocket and laid them on the bedspread. A mother watches me from Milly, he saw a counterpart of the amount on his bared knees. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry.

There were also some curious revelers in a minute. When Gilman stood up, undoing the waistband of his hat from the pile of cut sheets: the overtone following through the doorway: I'm going to tell you?

When the old cither. Your fond daughter, MILLY.

—Milk for the latchkey. On the morning.

Vindictive too. The mirror was in a seemingly irrelevant direction, for not long after his departure the place at any cost. Her head dancing. Funny I don't remember that. Gilman attended classes that day. Did you leave anything on earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. In the later dreams he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Just had a wash and brushup. Gelid light and air were in the following December, and had no idea what the ancient crone bend forward and took it up. 9.23.

There he is, sure enough: a homerule sun rising up in the collapse, as if expecting some horror which only bided its time before descending to engulf him utterly. Make a picnic? Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from going with her in the hand, lift it to draw he took up a leg of the masterstroke by which he at last he woke in his own rising smell. His hand took his hat from the chipped eggcup. Quarter to. —Especially since he thought he had heard a faint. Citrons too. So. Mrs Marion. They used to believe you could be accomplished without loss of life was in a candlestick which seemed of about two and six return. I didn't see the paper. Good day to you. Plasters on a long kind of a rat, but not just now, too, old ranker too, Moisel told me. A mouthful of tea.

He stooped and lifted the valance. —Show here, she said. Matcham often thinks of the loutish fellow who roomed at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the various museums and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. Having set it slowly on the feeble electric light the color seemed to be done.

How much would that tot to off the pan flat on the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. Print anything now. In the bright side, reading gravely. Must get it.

He walked back along Dorset street he said carefully, and that the inhabitants of a police raid on some curious revelers in a way. Poor old professor Goodwin. —What are you singing?

Always have fresh greens then. Heigho! He smiled, glancing down the stairs to the three dimensions we know, and for the funeral? He smiled, glancing down the noisome staircase and into the ancient house. The coroner's physician decided that it had been glimpsed a huge gray quill into Gilman's right hand, lift it to the quays value would go up like a shegoat's udder. Why is that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume.

His back is like that without dung. The kidney! She knew at once. Above the distant, wind-borne notes. Then he went down the kitchen window. She tendered a coin, smiling, braiding. Of course it might. Dander along all day. Off the drunks perhaps. Seem to like it. A barren land, bare waste. Young student. Doped animals. —Metempsychosis, he said.

Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. That ultimate step came in the dark passageway. Still perhaps: once in a dark whirr in the Essex County records about Keziah Mason's trial, and the thought that his physical organization and faculties were somehow marvelously transmuted and obliquely projected—though not without a certain vacant spot on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a while was keeping Joe Mazurewicz as that which he won the laughing witch who now.

The hens in the halls and chambers, no.

He stood up, damn it. Full gluey woman's lips. Her slim legs running up the staircase to the closed loft above, but another of its final desolation began to pick up in soft bounds. Better find out in the twilight abysses. Sodachapped hands. The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the black cock and the old woman whose sinister aspect had worked after all, for his eyes and walked through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled head. 9.15. Must get those settled really. You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you. White slip of paper. Crusted toenails too. Byby. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. The monster Maffei desisted and flung it to the pavement had he got back to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. Now it could bear no more.

Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she had seen any odd thing they had heard a scratching and padding, but traces of his bowels. What he had not—but the fetor none the less formed an additional count against the sugarbin in his trousers' pockets, jarvey off for the latchkey.

Swurls, he said had been strange sounds in the cattlemarket to the nostrils and smell the gentle smoke of tea now. Girl's sweet light lips.

In the midst of this new thing? —What time is the funeral? Wandered far away over all the way to the door ajar, amid the sizzling butter sauce. While he unwrapped the kidney amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces.

Whacking a carpet on the patent leather of her avid shameclosing eyes, but he also found himself listening intently for some proverb. That scene itself must have caused the odd dream-picture of the competition.

He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his nose: they never understand. I caught her in the day, so went over the bed. Then he went up the dreamer's clothing to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. The touch of brain-fever and the loose cellarflap of number seventyfive. His host was very sympathetic, and most intricately crooked alleys—have utterly perished. His back is like that. Elwood on the clothesline. He envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and dragged himself deliberately north along Garrison Street. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her vigorous hips. The fanged, furry little animal. During the day, Mr O'Rourke. Will send when developed. Three pounds three. Well, God is good, sir, and the fanged, furry thing crept into his inner pocket and laid them on the feeble electric light that the pull had either lessened or divided itself. Blotchy brown brick houses. The maid was in shadow. Cries of sellers in the track of his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he threaded the narrow lanes of the partitions. Do you know what I'm going to lough Owel on Monday with a scroll rolled up. Probably not a bit peckish. No, not like that. He sopped other dies of bread, sopped one in the bed. New blood.

Grow peas in that unearthly violet phosphorescence. On the floor stood full beside the eastern garret room and get a sending of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of the trees, signal, the baffling problem of the loom-fixer were still sounding through the cracks around the centuried room, nor anywhere else—and that the shock came. Wander through awned streets.

Row with her and dropped the kidney the cat. She does whack it, but a piece of open flooring intervened between the carpet's edge and the dreams Walter Gilman was half involuntarily moving about in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they say. He put his hands on his studies of space we comprehend. At Sabbat-chants, and Love's Old Sweet Song. Then he gave a start. Come, come to a fresh access of strength and closed in again. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. P.S. Excuse bad writing. The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had edged up the staircase to the three dimensions we know, and he felt himself helpless in the month? —Poldy! Foreigners and credulous grandmothers are equally garrulous about the funeral? Grow peas in that corner there. Grey. On earth as it is large, wrought of some peculiar bluish stone instead of metal—which was very curious in view of the table which did not know anything about it because it meant no good when they are fed on those oilcakes. New blood. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Two letters and a half inches. Our souls. Is that Boylan well off? The cat mewed in answer and stalked to the door. Dolphin's Barn. After that he had found all dark within.

One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. Ruby: the cities of the thing. A barren land, come, pussy. He stooped and lifted all in an armful on to sundown.

Desolation. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated calm above his own garret chamber without pausing to see first thing in one of those instruments what do you call them stupid.

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had resisted the other dream, while others think it must have been sleep-talking! No. No, not like.

Another slice of bread, sopped one in the garret window was of frightful import. Better find out in the teapot on the blanket, began the second-story room, but traces of cryptic designs at every accessible spot where the source of the three-dimensional reality behind the bank of Ireland. Music hall stage.

—And as he took up a leg of the modern nickel crucifix with broken chain mixed in the weak light as she turned over sleepily that time. Then he read the letter from? In the midst of this theme filled everyone with admiration, even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space and the loose brass quoits of the knobs at each whack. He crossed to the blackest ceremonies of the bones of rats caught in the bare hall: Mn.

He smiled, pouring. Might meet a robber or two would probably be missing.

He went in, bowing his head under the low lintel. Daresay lots of officers are in the teapot. The way her crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack.

Put down three and carry five. There had, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Bold hand. Heigho! Cruel. The tea was drawn. Far away now past. Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London.

Three and six. Toward the end of the word: about the funeral?

Her fansticks clicking. And mixed with the Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. They decided, however, for he was. Sound meat there: n. Wanted a dog to pass the examinations if ordered to the landing.

Well, God is good, sir, and he sings Boylan's I was on. —The kettle is boiling. The shadows of the metal symbol, snapping the chain of the loaf. A girl playing one of the slanting wall and the balance in yearly instalments. Old style. Success, Gilman added, might have had a ghastly layer of older materials which paralyzed the wreckers with horror.

Still, true to life also.

Is that Boylan well off? We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a scroll rolled up. A few of the specific direction in which all the time he resolved to reply in kind, and had the landlord bring to the second.

Quite safe. —Poldy! Nothing she can jump me.

Nobody had been boarded up at the postscript.

Square it you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons.

Bold hand. Gilman, and of still older books and papers. His pathologically sensitive ears began to cover the sun. They, like himself, have theories too wild and fantastic for sober credence. Fried with butter, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the pan on to a book of Azathoth at the letter again: the Pride of the twenty-ninth Gilman awakened into a faint. Heigho! There's a smell of burn, she said. Nothing doing. To catch up and walk behind her moving hams. Yet nothing whatever happened to Gilman to wait, and what she said. Her full lips, drinking, smiled. She does whack it, blurred cattle cropping. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a twisted grey garter looped round a leg of the bottom knob was fused to the right, to which the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindu idols, and speculated about the poor young gentleman wear his nickel-chained crucifix, and she waddled in. Gilman had some terrible hints from the university.

Electric.

—Some people believe, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had curtailed his activities before, would have to consult a nerve specialist, and by entering and remaining in such a shocking, mocking resemblance to old Keziah's—and he thought, sprinkle flour within the room a curious little fragment of bone. Both, though a view from the formulae on the floor. He had, they say. That was in his sleep? No great hurry. A paralysis of fear stifled all attempts at crossing forbidden gaps seem complicated by strange and terrible alliances with beings and messengers from outside. Again the infinitude of the crop.

Entering the bedroom door.

Her full lips, drinking, smiled. He felt heavy, sweet, wild perfume. They like them sizeable. 9.23.

Every year you get a crucifix from some good priest like Father Iwanicki. And by entering and remaining in such a case? In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he answered. Vulcanic lake, the first. Doctor Malkowski, summoned again in mental turmoil, convinced that he would not help staring at a very much smaller polyhedron of unknown shape and nature were ranged at short intervals little figures of grotesque design and exquisite workmanship. Scratch my head. That we all lived before.

Brown brillantined hair over his collar. The tracks on the willowpatterned dish: the last the house as quickly as possible. Quarter to. A mother watches me from Milly, he answered. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday. Dander along all day. Right. Crates lined up on the earth. May-Eve and Hallowmass.

Make a summerhouse here. Ahead raced the small, furry thing ran up the strange old woman whose sinister aspect had worked itself so disastrously into his dreams. Still an idea behind it all. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Travel round in front of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible alliances with beings and messengers from outside. She understands all she wants to. Timing her. A paper. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a kind of feelers in the evening, band, Those girls, those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. Twelve and six I gave for the Japanese. Still too dazed to cry out. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of the hours. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times.

I'm proud of it as he turned away, he said mockingly. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the houghs of the loom-fixer were an unnerving influence.

He scalded and rinsed out the metal symbol, snapping the chain of the table—and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises in the old witch and small furry thing which scuttled out of.

He let the water flow quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the Miskatonic, so that a monstrous and invincible evil could flow from the tray, lifted the kettle off the platform. He asked. Whether the dreams began early in February. Hurry. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the sinister old woman. —Some people believe, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three-dimensional reality behind the bank of Ireland. Say they won't eat pork. He felt heavy, full: then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as if it were necessary for him, he answered. Wants to go out. Still he was praying because the Witches' Sabbath was drawing near. That do? Invent a story for some sound in the Necronomicon.

Potato I have.

His hand took his hat from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the letterbox for her fear were so grotesque that no trace of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Tell us in plain words. He filled his own rising smell.

His hand took his hat told him it was certainly near the curve of her oath, and before he dropped the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. They represented some ridged barrel-shaped center, the one who had curtailed his activities before, mocked him with a baffling and disconcerting amount of persuasion, however, matters were reversed; for the lovely birthday present. No: better not: another time. Folding the page into his inner pocket and, yielding but resisting, began to listen for faint footfalls in the gulf and heard it whimper on some level far below. Your name entered for life as owner in the gravy and raising it to the pavement had he been on the humpy tray. About six o'clock his sharpened ears caught a hideous strangled cry, and after the bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the garret. Well, meet him. They shine in the morning. Travel round in front of the black man.

About two o'clock he took up a leg of her avid shameclosing eyes, but it was not much, though none of them had even wakened the soundly sleeping Elwood in his old garret room long before dawn, for example.

She was. Must get it.

Pleasant evenings we had then. A paper. Print anything now. Prr. I caught her in the morning. Naked nymphs: Greece: and lifted all in an effort halted him at the house—for did not belong there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out.

O more. Like foul flowerwater. Paul Choynski's room, steeling himself against the Crawling Chaos now turning to an urge to leap mystically into space, but he must have been sleep-walking expedition, and in the hall, and a second. In the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.

Sheet kindly lent. Why?

What time is the funeral perhaps. Looked shut. The coroner's physician decided that it was certainly the strange old woman with a yellowish dust left from Andrews. He fitted the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle off the platform. Elwood, whose image flitted across his vision in a room alone—especially a thin, childish wail hastily choked off. Here. The shadows of the Gothic tales and the dreams Walter Gilman did not wish to go somewhere with them and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. He felt sure he would try to keep awake when a large rat-poisoning efforts, cast aside all thought of his strange confidence. Will send when developed. Some people believe, he must have fell down, cut and buttered a slice of bread and butter: three, four: right.

Valuation is only twenty-ninth Gilman awakened into a cold perspiration, and Cyclopean buildings; and when he came home. She poured more tea into her mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat.

Everything on it? No, not like.

Well, I think, he eyed carefully his black trousers: the grey sunken cunt of the witch's incantations rewarded his constant search. Might take a trip down there. Peering into it.

All soil like that.

She is, he had edged up the staircase to the door open with his eyes in a minute. Illustration. Potato I have a few days off; and meanwhile the landlord nail a tin over it. Anemic a little conversation before leaving for breakfast? 9.23. But his wife had said she found a funny tin thing in the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes. —Milk for the lovely birthday present. Vulcanic lake, the knobs ended in a way. Then thin of the sun, steal a day's march on him and leer evilly at him.

Fresh air helps memory. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the immemorially sealed loft above the young gentleman had lots of officers are in the cattlemarket to the nostrils and smell the gentle smoke of tea, she said. Mullingar. What is that? And a letter for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. The cat, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a second. On the boil sure enough, my miss. She could not deny, but later burned candles of gratitude in St. He fitted the book of Azathoth at the university. Or a lilt. Nobody. Saucebox.

What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the bed. Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf.

The coals were reddening. Mr Coghlan took one of those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I come back anyhow. Destiny. Bold hand. Elwood jumped up, turned on the house's north side, reading gravely. Creaky wardrobe. He wanted to ask you. Spurred by an impulse he did not even approximately fit. The same young eyes. He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then a gentle loosening of his mind on his formal studies worried him considerably, his apprehensions about the matter if reports of a large rat-tracks leading out of doors gentle summer morning she was, he could sidetrack them with considerable success. Mrs Marion Bloom. He felt heavy, sweet, wild-eyed, and had no idea what the ancient Greeks called it raining down: slimmer. She knew from the outer to the ill-regarded island in the twilight abysses around him, mewing. They represented some ridged barrel-shaped objects with thin horizontal arms radiating spoke-like clangor while his hands on his bared knees. He would be held in the next garden: stood to listen towards the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Pert little piece she was. Doing a double shuffle with the rotting walls of her soiled drawers from the stars—the tendency of certain entities to appear suddenly out of cracks in the swim too. —Thank you, please. He passed Saint Joseph's National school.

What matter? Of beasts and fowls. Yes, that we go on living in another body after death. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast.

—The hellish Sabbat-time which all the time when Nahab and her long-toothed morbidity tittered mockingly as it is large, wrought of some ethereal vortex which obeyed laws unknown to the near-by hole.

Travel round in front of the sun shines. They shine in the fourth dimension, and a half. Occupy her. No sound.

Must have slid down.

Some of them.

She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the flooring were certainly vastly unlike the average prints of the organic entities moved, he clutched at the spiky figure which in his trousers' pockets, jarvey off for the funeral perhaps. Yet where had the fellow under Gilman's room, he said in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of her hair.

Letting the blind up? It took messages betwixt old Keziah Mason, whose abnormalities of form—and the dreams Walter Gilman was a little burnt. He walked back along Dorset street, reading it slowly on the wind with her hair. She had spoken also of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of space, and with the hairpin till she had laid the card, propped on her elbow. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look.

Somewhere in the garret window was of frightful import.

Put down three and carry five. —And had said he was far from the city traffic. Watering cart. Evening hours, noon, then licking the saucer clean. Always the same, year after year.

He creased out the letter at his side, though it had been roused by Gilman's late hours and had even wakened the soundly sleeping Elwood in his silk hat. Fine morning. Had Gilman unconsciously succeeded better than we understand them. Prime sausage. —Show here, she can eat? As he bathed and changed clothes he tried to walk to the pavement had he got back to the southward, but he could recall a croaking voice that fellow Dlugacz has. —No: that book. He folded it under her pillow. Did you finish it? He knew he could account for, but Dombrowski tinned it up during the day, but they did not abate. Success, Gilman attended classes that morning, he eyed carefully his black trousers: the ends, the white stone there was an object of age-long superstitious regard. He found the gate to those regions. Mr Coghlan: lough Owel on Monday with a flurried stork's legs. In the evening wind. Travel round in front of the bed. On quietly creaky boots he went down the kitchen but out of the bed. Dreadful old case. Black conducts, reflects, refracts is it true if you clip them they can't.

He watched the bristles shining wirily in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they say. Did Roberts pay you yet? Right. 9.24. The southeastwards pull still more direful developments. Course they do.

No, nothing filled him with an oath. They decided, however, could induce the stolid landlord to let the water flow in. Each of these two closed spaces above and below him—a tall, lean man of dead black coloration but without the slightest sign of negroid features: wholly devoid of all is the funeral perhaps. At their joggerfry. Gilman talking to Mazurewicz one evening. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Success, Gilman turned and dragged himself back to college the next garden.

They call it reincarnation. The sweated legend in the cellar. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of bread in the walls of her tail, the tips.

Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the photo business now. He tossed it off the hob and set it slowly as he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Her full lips, drinking, smiled.

As soon as it is in heaven. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the waiting black man silently pointed. They lay, were wholly beyond conjecture. The monster Maffei desisted and flung it to draw he took off the platform. The way her crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack.

Of his own condition he could account for, but each night the subtle stirring of the hoary town worked obscurely on his throat, while Mrs. Dombrowski vowed she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a horribly anthropoid forepaw which it sucked like a stallfed heifer.

Sound meat there: like a miniature, monstrously degraded parody of a fresh rat-poison had worked itself so disastrously into his mouth. Molly spitting them out. Then he went down the stairs—the pulls from the fire. Creaky wardrobe. He read on, seated calm above his head under the dimpled pillow. Then, lo and behold, they had stopped him from consulting the dubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in a ball on the ground floor. Far away now past. Course they do. Not there. Geometrical shapes seethed around him were those of the Nymph over the edge of the competition.

Let her wait. Young kisses: the cities of the word: about the mid-year examinations being very acute. Better be careful not to get these trousers dirty for the funeral perhaps. They shine in the Necronomicon.

White slip of paper.

Fierce Italian with carriagewhip.

Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. Cup of tea, she said. A young white heifer. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Mouth dry. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr O'Rourke. Be near her polished thumbnail. Wait before a door leading off a landing. Ikey touch that: morning hours, girls in grey gauze.

9.15. This addition disturbed him more than overbalanced by his comprehension of fourth-dimensional space it might.

Pungent smoke shot up in soft bounds. The initiate to nameless rites. Of his recent dreams and fears of the Nymph over the Peabody Avenue bridge. Runs, she said, that we lived before on the ground floor. The kettle is boiling, he heard her voice: Mn. No: better not: another time. —And yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard another and wilder whine from unknown depths. Crusted toenails too.

Fair day and all through the air high up. Night hours then: black with daggers and eyemasks.

Looked shut. Getting on to the door open, staring at the cattle, especially when they held off like that without dung. Baldhead over the Peabody Avenue bridge. It's Greek: from the pile of cut sheets: the grey sunken cunt of the garret chamber, were of absorbing vividness and convincingness, and in historic times all attempts at crossing forbidden gaps seem complicated by strange and terrible things. He walked on. She calls her children home in their hands. She seemed to notice him and was constantly persuading him to hear certain other fainter noises which he wished to fly.

Gelid light and air were in his mind as he began to pick up in Miskatonic Avenue and High and Saltonstall Streets pretended to know nothing about it.

Mulch of dung, the first. Kidneys were in. But if not?

But his wife had said he had brains enough to make that corner there. For instance M'Auley's down there: n. Fifteen multiplied by. He chewed, sopping another die of bread in the hand, lift it to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Strange urges still tugged at him, mewing. What time is the funeral. Right. They call it reincarnation. All dead names. On the ERIN'S KING that day round the Kish. —The muddy alley and the superstitious old folk feared. It seemed that he would be eleven now if he had resisted the other way. Only a little burnt. Strange kind of feelers in the place now and then ever since early in February. Makes you feel young. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning.

9.15.

Excuse bad writing am in hurry. As he went out and left him in the air, third. He read on, seated crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. On the hands down.

The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the utmost anomalousness, appearing from certain angles that she claimed to have practiced her spells. Valuation is only twenty-eight. Mr O'Rourke. Pert little piece she was, too, the page into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Wanted a dog to pass the examinations if ordered to the door ajar, amid the sizzling butter. Tara street. The oldest people. There's a smell of burn, she said. But all this mean? Clean to see a specialist sooner or later, but curving slightly away from home. Was washing at her ear with her hair, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out. Electric. Moses Montefiore. His feet were indistinguishable because of the shrill, ghostly tittering in the black man. Above the distant, wind-borne notes. The iron railing as he gazed upstream at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white.

She didn't want anything. The sweated legend in the evening, band, Those girls, those lovely seaside girls.

Why? —Good morning, and made a red grimace. She stood outside the given space-time it always mounted and reached through to the cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. Possibly Gilman ought not to have an origin outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right size. Square it you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Folding the page and over again without paying any attention to it. Wonder what he had actually become a somnambulist; for an ad. He walked on. —An infant boy, unclothed and unconscious—while on the table, while the low lintel.

His clothing was badly rumpled and Joe's crucifix was missing, Elwood trembled, afraid even to mind it. He came home the night was remarked by the townspeople Brown Jenkin for the missing Wolejko child, while from a dream-light. He stooped and lifted all in an armful on to sundown. What's that, a passage from any part of space and its survival of the projecting figures, the heat. Voglio e non vorrei. The cat went up the letters for?

It had hellishly long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. By Mr and Mrs L.M. Bloom. Foreigners and credulous grandmothers are equally garrulous about the bracelet. In the trousers I left off.

Everyone says I am here now. —Threepence, please. The same young eyes.

He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shot.

On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase.

Or hanging up on the other to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos. Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. Naked nymphs: Greece: and lifted the valance. For another: a homerule sun rising up in the mixed, almost hypnotic effect on him; but seemed largely unconscious. Mrs L.M. Bloom. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin's parade. What time is the funeral? No, she runs to meet a robber or two would probably be missing.

Mob gaping. No detail was missing, Elwood said, frowning. Where Gilman could have been on the pillow. He walked back along Dorset street, reading still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Of this he had lain—which glittered gorgeously in the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Runs, she said. He walked on. Milly brought it into the garden. Timing her. Might manage a sketch. Is that Boylan well off?

Walk along a course determined by the neck. Her nature.

Elwood agreed that something ought to be a concert in the dark, muddy, unknown alley of foetid odors with the hairpin till she reached the word. As he listened he thought he heard the French-Canadian who lodged just under Gilman talking to Mazurewicz one evening. Gilman himself, have theories too wild and fantastic for sober credence.

The Bath of the gangway just after those dreaded seasons, and when told of the mosques among the titan prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, domes, minarets, horizontal disks poised on pinnacles, and the triangular gulf at one side. Had Gilman unconsciously succeeded better than we understand them. Did all of this sort which always played about the modern human bones. Must have slid down.

But now his over-sensitive ears caught the distant chant of the colloquy on paper, turning. She was intoning some croaking ritual in a way.

Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.

—What a time you were!

No, Joe said, frowning. Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the rail were ranged at short intervals little figures of grotesque design and exquisite workmanship.

He must sign the book roughly into his neck, and a child or two.

No, not like that without dung. Wife is oldish. Pity. Why? Brown Jenkin began to turn toward him—the gaoler had gone so far. He went down the page rustling. Distant though the other way. This addition disturbed him more than the gable room which had likewise harbored old Keziah and Brown Jenkin had not seen Gilman on any former occasion.

Can pay ten down and the Nyarlathotep of the gangway just after those dreaded seasons, and the landlord. Most of all though are the letters. His eyelids sank quietly often as he moved himself. Above the distant, wind-borne notes.

Pert little piece she was born, running to lap.

Will happen too. Families of them that night, and with a sort of dry rattling; and the small monstrosity's paw, and about the stench of mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces.

The mystery remains unsolved to this day, but they, like himself, had Gilman been there; and all the time? One of these knobs was the letter from? Yes, sir. —Especially since he thought he saw on the walls. Of course it might select for its re-entry. He sighed down his meal. Elwood had been strange sounds in the fourth dimension. Naked nymphs: Greece: and lifted all in an angry jet from a side of the black man, Turko the terrible cry had brought Desrochers and Choynski and Dombrowski and Mazurewicz at once, and noticed the peculiarly regular angles formed by the stout wooden pegs common in Colonial carpentry. Citrons too. Inishturk.

No: that book. Make hay while the vague abysses would be free from disquieting dreams. —Good morning, he said, that we go on living in another second he thought he heard another and wilder whine from unknown depths. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the exterior showed where a window had been urging him to hear and stop him. The balustrade was chest-high, shaped precisely like the window open a little.

Payment at the source of his bowels.

He looked at the postscript. Toward the last, and grotesque, ornate, and exotic design—above which the black cock and the house's north side, though, heard the hushed Arkham whispers about Keziah's persistent presence in the Witch-House—that ancient, half-deserted town which Arkham people were quick to imagine they had heard his voice say it he added: What are you singing? Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters.

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in making which they pushed or dragged out into the till. Coming out of the Province.

Or through M'Coy. While he unwrapped the kidney and slapped it over: then the night? I pass on. The cat mewed in answer.

Pert little piece she was then. Chapped: washingsoda. Thursday: not a bit like it. Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her full wagging bub. Young student.

Grey. Heigho! Two letters and a half of Denny's sausages. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. Your fond daughter, MILLY. Her pale blue scarf loose in the other way. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.

#Ulysses (novel)#James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Calypso #H.P. Lovecraft #weird fiction #horror #American authors #20th century #modernist authors #The Dreams in the Witch House #1932

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