#anyways did i ever tell anyone i really like the story of cain and abel?

[butchdykenormallen]

we were blood related. we had everything. we were a full family. safety, love, and care. we had everything i'd ever dreamed of. and i took it away. i ripped it from my hands with the force of my actions. i killed, i shed the blood of my own against the beautiful landscape. i loved, and my love was a vile thing. you both left me here. my blood was tainted. the only thing that could possibly connect us was blood, and even that was running thin. i stand before four graves. only three are dead here. only one wishes to be. my blood rumbles through my veins, keeping me here, keeping me in this damned state for life. i watch your shadows dance in flowers, just as we did. i watch your smiles in my vision whenever you go. and just as i walk close, i feel everything crumble. i feel it all slip through my fingers like sand, and you leave me again. why do i carry your blood? why can't i get rid of this? why cant i rid myself of this curse, give myself the love of another blood? is it because i, myself, am ruined? my flesh, seperate from blood, is still cursed? will i have to rid myself of everything? my identity, my soul, my everything? if thats the case, if thats what this takes, if thats what i need to be free, then i wont hesitate. ill drain myself of life here, in my own grave, far away from everything. far away from anywhere my blood could hurt again. ill make sure that i am solitary, i will make sure i am gone, i will make sure that nothing of me is seen again. i will be someone you never knew. maybe then you'll be able to love me. when im not me.

[bdbdhdjdhdh]

My Hero PSLE: S2E9 "Rewriting history"

"Well, it's clear, whoever wrote the Cain and Abel story clearly didn't use the Adam and Eve story as reference,"

-Random guy on the internet

"WE ARE REWRITING HISTORY HERE!" So Kain was really going mad sia. Omg like Mr Lee last time.

So anyway, Xiao Ming quickly put on the armor that Grandmaster has snuck with them and turned into battle-ready mode.

So he fought hard and dodged many attacks and also landed many attacks that should have been fatal but he's dealing with a god here so meh.

Fighting Kain, while Grandmastef, Juqla, Zhi Hua and the rest fight off Ma Xiao Tiao and Rainslasher.

The godly god of all gigachads, Ma Xiao Tiao.

Oh damn he looks really hot when he rips of his shirt and enters battle mode

So anyway they fought long and hard and eventually overpowered Ma Xiao Tiao and Rainslasher.

But Kain really too strong liao.

Even with Grandmaster and the rest helping Xiao Ming out to fight him right, still cannot win him sia.

So Juqla decided to do something idk if is crazy or just stupid or actually fucking works but he said this: "Ok Xiao Ming, I'm gonna be transferring you my power and strength and energy and stuff so you can fight him ok!"

And so he did. He connected Xiao Ming's soul to a device, and then channeled all of his strength into the device to enpower Xiao Ming.

Now with this newfound power Xiao Ming managed to defeat Kain.

And then Kain is like dying already. But in his last dying breath he just has to drop another lore bomb again:

"Ok so I know I'm dying and this is like the last time I'll ever be able to tell anyone this but I need to let ya'll know that we are not alone in this universe, we are part of a trilogy called the Tri-cohort state, the other two worlds were also formed from the residue of the dead god, and thus must also have their own ways to deal with it, maybe if you go travel to them you'll be able to find a cure for your pain, Juqla,"

"Oh, ok, whatever," He just said.

"HUUHHHH??? MORE TRAVELLING TO OTHER WORLDS LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO FIND AND KILLLLLL?" Xiao Kang said.

And then with that Kain died. But when he died something rose from his corpse, like a large teardrop-shaped blood drop, and then Xiao Ming had to be the idiot here and touch it.

Oh but luckily it didn't kill him. Instead it brought him back a lot of memories he forgot about- why Izanagi "abandoned" Juqla and Kain, didn't help them with their endless pain and suffering and just them left then on their own, what kind of struggles Izanagi had himself, how he eventually got reincarnated as a Dreamwalker Turbidus and stuff.

Oh and most importantly- how Xiao Ming is actually the reincarnted or like sort of weakened form of Izanagi.

[the-siren-and-the-sailor]

On SCP-054-N + SCP-073-N

Dr. Clef never liked plants very much. They made his nose itch and his eyes water, they were overrated because they always rotted after a couple of weeks, and they took up way too much space. In fact, Clef couldn’t fathom why anyone would would want plants outside of necessity.

Thus, you can imagine his bewilderment at the overgrown vines, the tall trees, the myriad of flowers, and the hearty vegetable gardens that covered and surrounded his step-son’s new home. 

Clef huffed and began to trot along the winding stone path that led through the woods. A breeze ruffled his hair and he sneezed. Damn these hippies, he thought wearily to himself. Before he could script a rant to spout off at them however, the house came into view.

It was something akin to a log cabin, with two stories and a large porch that wrapped around the top half, leading to the front door. Every three feet or so, a potted flower would make an appearance, much to Clef’s distaste. But, he also had a job to do (one that didn’t involve home design), so he simply sighed and climbed the stairs.

As soon as he rapped his knuckles on the door, a mighty crash was heard from inside, followed by a rather loud profanity. Commotion continued to stir inside for a moment before the door opened, revealing a short and rather frazzled looking old woman. As soon as she saw Clef, however, she grinned and threw her arms around him.

“Cleffy! I was wondering when you’d come back to visit us!” she exclaimed. Clef laughed and put the small person down. “Honey, c'mon, Alto’s here!” she said to someone inside.

“Hey, business is just business, Daffy, you know the Foundation. They wanna make sure that putting you guys up here is still worth their time and money,” he explained as he made his way inside and to the kitchen table. It was now that another person came into view; a tall man this time, looking even more disheveled than the lady but still just as old. “Christ, Cain, what happened to you? A bug jump on you again or something?”

“Something like that, yes,” the man said, sitting down at the table.

The woman, Daphne, giggled. “Abel made him eat a spider when he was little. I don’t think he ever quite got past it,” she said as she ruffled Cain’s silvering hair and sat down next to him. Cain tried to shush her but she merely laughed and kissed his cheek.

Clef smiled. The two's appearances had finally started reflecting their ages a few years ago. Daphne’s hair, once a royal blue, was now a brilliant white, and Cain’s, once a dark raven, had done the same. Both now wore glasses, sported more than a few wrinkles, and Cain would occasionally walk with a cane (much to Clef’s amusement). “Is that so?” he said. “I’ll add that to the list of stupid shit you guys did, then. Do you still have that tattoo?”

“Ah, no, please, I wish you wouldn’t-” “He does, actually, it’s behind his ear,” Daphne said as she reached to brush Cain’s hair aside but he pulled away in protest. “Oh! And remind me to tell you about the time he-” “Yes, thank you, Daphne, that will be enough,” “Well, the past is in the past, Cain. It’s good to be able to laugh at yourself!”  Clef chuckled. Some things never changed; they still bickered like there was no tomorrow.

In the middle of their squabble, however, a ping was heard from the oven and Cain got up from his seat to check on it. Inside was a tofu dish of sorts, accompanied by an assortment of roasted vegetables. Clef scoffed. “What the hell, Cain, you’re not seriously still doing the vegan thing, are you?”

“I am, actually, and it’s been quite enjoyable! Besides, I’ve had more than my fair share of animal products in my life thus far, wouldn’t you say?” Cain said, setting the dish on a counter to cool.

“Eh, you’re all a bunch of hippies, anyway. By the way, can you fill this out?” Clef slid a clipboard with a rather boring looking survey on it towards them. “Foundation’s still not sure if they want two former SCiPs living in the woods so casually.”

“Oh honestly, I haven’t been able to use the water for years now. And just look around. Clearly Cain’s curse won’t be causing any more problems,” she complained. She looked to Cain and took his hand, squeezing it. “Besides, we won’t be around much longer anyway.” A somber quiet fell over them for a moment.

Clef was the first to break the silence. “And are you okay with that? Can you honestly tell me that after being alive this long, that you’re ready to die?”

“The world will go on without us. We’ve had plenty of time here. It’s high time we move on to the next world,” Cain’s voice was quiet as he spoke.

“That doesn’t mean that we’re ready, but we’ve had a long time to come to terms with it. Whatever happens, where ever we end up on the other side, we’ll always have each other. That much has always been true,” Daphne finished Cain’s thought.

When they had lost all their anomalies, they had not crumbled; rather, they started back up again at their original ages, leaving Cain at about thirty-two, and Daphne at about twenty-nine. It had been fifty-five years since then. “And what if there is no other side?”

“Then it was a good life,” said Cain. “Wish I coulda robbed more banks, though,” Daphne joked. Cain smiled and rolled his eyes, while Clef chuckled, glad to have moved on from that conversation topic and onto business.

Daphne picked up the survey handed it to Cain, who dutifully began filling it out. As Daphne and Clef waited for him to finish, they talked about the Foundation and everything it was doing and planning. Cain followed along and occasionally added to the conversation with what information the Foundation was still giving him.

When the survey was finished, however, Clef got a message letting him know that it was time to get back to site. He informed the couple of this, both of whom were disappointed to see him go but glad he came. Daphne walked him to the door and Cain got up behind her to see him off.

That was something Clef had noticed a long time ago; when they were expected to be polished and adept, she stood at his side or close behind. But when they were just husband and wife, he followed her everywhere.

Daphne stood on the porch and Cain leaned against the wooden doorframe as Clef stepped out and said his goodbyes. Before he went a few steps however, Cain stopped him.

“One last question. How is my brother?” He said it quietly, almost like he was afraid of something despite knowing that whatever it was couldn’t hurt him. Clef scoffed. “He’s pretty mellow these days, and still living with that goat lady. Would you believe me if I said they have six cats? And real sheep? Really, I think they’re worse than you guys.”

Cain smiled and thanked him, letting him finally start to walk away. He looked back at them a few times on his way out. They waved at him a few times before going back inside the house. As soon as they left, though, Clef sneezed again. And then again. Yeah. Not much is set in stone in this universe, but one thing always was. Dr. Clef never liked plants very much.

[mothbug]

maggie i’ve been trying to suss out the plot of ur bug lesbians for so long please tell me abt them. somehow it got into my head that they were?? like jaeger pilots? please confirm or deny

i can’t do a read more on mobile so i’m sorry in advance (coming back here after i’ve written this: it makes no sense. it’s all rambling. sorry. and i just put things everywhere randomly so this won’t even be typed chronologically)

yeah there’s giant fun robots! most of them are normal and fine but like a few of them are very fucked up

so there’s four pov characters and at the start of the story three of them are on the same ship and the fourth is the target they’re chasing? only one of them knows they even HAVE a target and is trying her best to stall because she and the target were roommates in fucked up robot catholic school. the other two are playing crazy 8s and being romantic and also terrified all the time but also doing a lot of theorizing about things because they know SOMETHING is up they just don’t know what’s going on. Bc you know. their commander won’t give them any information. and also avoids them because she hates narrative parallelism

also the one stalling is also having her blood drunk by her giant robot. and maybe being mildly possessed by it? so it’s maybe The most fucked up robot. it’s also a giant dog and a good boy. and an heirloom of a fucked up family. which may explain some stuff but honestly i think nisa’s mom was just a bitch and it didn’t have anything to do with the robot she’s just like that.

and she’s stalling bc she Knows she won’t turn perovskia in she knows she wouldn’t let her get hurt she Knows it’ll change her life forever if she finds her and she’s just not ready to face that. but yknow she has to so it was all just very silly of her but when something will change your life dramatically it’s terrifying even if you know that things currently Suck.

somewhere in here Arkansas’s family is threatened and it’s. upsetting. and i’m not sure what direction to go in with it but it will be important because her family means a Lot to her. she has two very good kind dads and a little sister named Tinsel. basically she has the only functional biological family out of all the characters and they make me :’) I also think they eventually meet Idabel and ADORE her and since she grew up without parents it’s just a very strange and emotional experience and. h. they r Wives. and the Trust family is all very sweet and kind even if Arkansas struggles a lot w gifted kid syndrome like i think her dads did their best even if they fucked up sometimes yknow. idabel goes fucking wild at the arcade like legitimately bloodthirsty and arkansas is just like i love my furious and powerful wife

anyway there’s some (a lot of) homoerotic space fighting (which perovskia usually wins BECAUSE she remembers when she and nisa used to spar and can predict what she’ll do. nisa ALSO remembers this bc. ofc she does. but perovskia had to learn how to adapt after Events bc her physical health changed a lot and she had to learn to be more careful about overexerting herself and also now knows how to swordfight. and moves more fluidly and confidently. so what nisa expects to happen often doesn’t bc perovskia’s fighting style has changed so much while nisa hasn’t really bothered to refine hers. anyway) perovskia (the gay little target that does a gay little crime and makes fun of you to piss you off) is like hey. what if you all committed treason it’s really fun and sexy. and then her adoptive mechanic mom gives everyone spinal surgery so their bodies don’t shut down and they won’t die :) that’s a thing by the way i won’t elaborate bc uhh :( but it is why perovskia has all the. nerve damage and chronic pain. i can elaborate on the actual Pre-story perovskia stuff later bc i think about it A Lot and it has a lot of bearing on her character but it’s also. before all this. but anyway if she hadn’t been bleeding out on Slice’s front lawn specifically she Would be dead. and there’s some fun narrative foil character shifts that happen four years before the main storyline but i will not say bc i’m tired

after this is Vague in my mind but a lot of it is Perovskia and Nisa reconnecting and just. talking. but being weird and repressed and deflective about anything Meaningful. And I have written a Lot about this so there’s more than I can condense but it’s very fucking good and. Idk. it’s a big shift in the narrative at this point and they’re just Agonizing about their dumb little feelings and it’s good. and P doing some work to make their giant fucking spaceship more stealthy. and Idabel and Arkansas being really cute and also going THROUGH it because i mean. a lot is happening. And it’s nothing either of them ever expected to happen but they’re like. hopeful for the future or whatever don’t look at me. It’s just like. put all of these characters on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere in transit and they all Have to have conversations even if they don’t want to because it’s HARD. nisa is forced by slice to learn how to make pancakes

Slice makes stew. They’re good at stew and contraptions and having a mild new england accent somehow. also canonically back in the scrapyard they would make things like the knife wielding tentacle constantly and perovskia would just stumble upon them. slice changed the live laugh love sign to say die cry hate because perovskia made fun of it. they r her mom.

so now they do some fun fun robberies and various crimes and it’s so sexy and i don’t think N and P are like. fully caught up at this point or know where they stand, so there’s a lot of very fun banter and having to work together despite really being afraid but also yearning to get to know each other again and just connect with one another honestly and openly after four fuckin years apart. because they’re both so different now but also very much the same. horse staring out into sea MAN. the thing is there’s no direct like. reason for them to avoid each other (at first P was shocked and overwhelmed and felt a little bit betrayed when she found out who was chasing her until she found out WHY. oh i forgot to mention Nisa BEGGED to be assigned commander for this mission bc she knew anyone else wouldn’t hesitate to get Perovskia killed. Forgot to mention that it’s IMPORTANT she fucking loves her so much god DAMMIT) but it’s just. tense and there’s a lot happening and it’s just. Ghhhdhbnm and ofc I and A have picked up on it since P showed up but it’s like. ok so what is Happening here. OH AND ONCE THEY START WORKING THINGS OUT IDABEL DOES START BEHAVING LIKE NISA’S SHITTY LITTLE SIBLING AND ACTING FUCKING DISGUSTED BY THEM ITS VERY FUNNY. they’re like perovskia you’re pretty cool what’s up with this. nisa sucks and also is a bitch. and perovskia says SHE CAN GET IT. and idabel says GET WHAT? BANNED FROM OLIVE GARDEN? and perovskia fans herself and is like yeah~ and idabel was just joking around but now is debating between mercilessly making fun of her and hitting her with a cricket bat. but god when P and N just get to hold each other in silence and security and just be. it’s . they. god. fuck. man.

oh i know this is a space story but perovskia just straight up has a sword (and some knives and maybe a gun idk) don’t ask me why idk but it’s very lesbian of her and she does gay little flourishes and is just. very annoying and i like her a lot. she’s very dramatic like her alias was madame revenant when she was living in the scrapyard and just doing some petty crimes like. she embroidered that jacket herself nobody calls her that she’s just a goofball. also warrior cats exist and she makes warrior cat fan animations. that just has to be true so warriors has been preserved for centuries. also she was presumed dead for a while uhh don’t think abt it too much but she likes that aesthetic.

Idabel takes the best to this new life of crime they are fucking FOR it she gets a FLAMETHROWER and Arkansas is like. wrow honestly my favorite thing abt them is that they’re both fucking INCREDIBLE pilots. like they know what they’re doing. and nisa is really really bad at it btw she cannot pilot a mech well. but this block of text isn’t about her i’m talking about THEM. Their chemistry is so good they r just. 🥺. and they both become Fast friends with perovskia because she’s just pretty likeable?? and ofc nisa’s jealous bc a) you guys don’t even like me :( but also b) that’s MY friend. it’s very funny. honey of course they didn’t like you you were being very unpleasant to be around. but arkansas does rlly wanna be friends with her and she and idabel have so much sibling energy it’s insane. i think they’d abel and cain each other for a scooby snack but also kill for each other. because they’re tiny girls who will growl at you solidarity and also probably hang out and just destroy things with bats sometimes. they all become closer and get a rlly sweet found family dynamic it just takes a While. oh also idabel is basically the chosen one and can set things on fire with her hands but it’s barely touched on because i think that’s a really funny thing to just ignore. but i also think it does become important because it’s largely fueled by anger and emotion and. h. i think idabel has a lot of feelings ok. Arkansas and Perovskia bond over having fucking anxiety disorders and have caprisun drinking competitions. i think it’s just like. these people all have similar trauma and need people to lean on when things are hard so they stick with each other once they have the option to split apart because by then they’re friends and work well together and Care. auto tuned baby crying mp3.

Alia and Agent Variety show up somewhere around here? They’re Slice’s very cool wives and Alia has a Vechicle Collection and own fucking stupid race cars and stuff and I love her. perovskia is afraid of being in vechiles so she has to take a fucking benadryl every time they have to make a getaway. Variety isn’t actually an Agent anymore and I also love HER because she’s very fucking good. they started out as just contacts slice had but it turns out they’re all in love <3 alia is also actually a sports car racer like. unprofessionally. illegally. which is just very cool of them.

Also i don’t think it has. a very BIG end, yknow? it’s like, they’re doing very good things and are up against a lot, and I don’t think they like.. singlehandedly take down the government or anything because they’re only a few people. but i think they get a happy ending and get to grow old while making positive changes to the world around them. like i don’t think they’ll be able to solve everything but they’re sure as hell gonna do what they can. But idk maybe they actually do get like. some good shit done. but again they’re not. an army. they’re a bunch of 20-somethings and their rube-goldberg-machine-creating chaperone. but i think they should get a fun climactic moment so i guess this is all to say i don’t. have an ending planned. but there should probably be one at some point.

OH AND the giant evil blood sucking dog vineyard vines robot Definitely almost kills Nisa (or at least fully destroys her in some way) and. it’s very narrowly avoided and she’s very very weak for a while because it took a lot out of her. also the dog robot does make grape vines grow and uhhhh any grapes that show up are 100% full of the pilot’s siphoned blood. also i think there’s still some remnants of that bitch in nisa’s mind afterwards bc an old mechanical god is hard to get rid of. but it’s mostly ok.

Also the bug people are just. a thing. like every person in the most recent generation in this specific society are at least a little bit genetically experimented on because. it sucks there. and i think if your parents bribe the government you can be a little Less fucked up but yknow. everyone’s a little weird. this was an excuse to put bug ppl in here they’re just the folks who were probably the most fucked with and i have many bug people here because i think bugs are cool and i want them to look like weird little bugs. This was all also an excuse to give the main characters fangs bc i’m gay. i don’t think randomly fucking with your genetics will make you a bug in real life so do not try this at home or at all PSA

SPEAKING of the society ok it’s very much obsessed with earth nostalgia and stuff and very yknow. basic cyperpunk shitty capitalism you know the drill you’ve seen space operas whatever but it’s also weirdly oligarchical? and like? it’s weird and bad and kind of a corporatocracy?? and. fuck. idk man they’re a fucked up space catgirl greeble-y amazon with catholic imagery. The Academy is also a thing but. idk how to describe it more than i already have it’s just kinda shitty boarding school. And after a certain point ppl can get sent on like. missions and stuff? in their fucking robots? but again i’m not sure what For. an option could be that there’s nearby Shit and nobody can tell if it’s safe because space is weird? also it’s only about 3200 so i’d say like. whole societies out in space is a relatively new thing and there’s some weird shit going on. so they sometimes send teenagers out in robots to see what’s up and that ends SUPER well for EVERYONE. hmm something SHOULD be going on actually there should be some weird eldritch space stuff. it should be connected to the more fucked up robots. it should also be Core’s fault somehow because uhhh capitalism and lack of foresight? anyway here’s women kissing i don’t know things. WAIT FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HOW SHADY SOME OF THE STUFF GOING ON IS LIKE THE DEATHS OF THE CREW PEROVSKIA WAS ON UHHH JUST TRUST ME DUDE like they are NOT afraid to get kids killed which was IMPLIED but also like it goes a little deeper than that and uhh i don’t know exactly what’s happening. but i’m sure it’ll all fall into place eventually. basically it’s very fatt shitty faction vibes idk how else to describe it. man it‘s like. just. there’s stuff happening they have goals and ideals and there’s probably more to it than i know so far bc stuff happens but i don’t KNOW what i’m tired and have been typing this for a year i don’t want to talk abt the bad capitalists i want to talk about tenderness and girls but unfortunately the ways in which the girls are tender are deeply informed by the environment they grew up in so i do have to think about it even if they all deserved better.

i think they all get a cat or a dog or something eventually. like they all deserve it. i think the final home they build together is actually pretty reminiscent of the scrapyard house. i think they get to live there for the rest of their lives and. just build something small and wonderful for themselves :’)

also i forgot to put men in the story they exist i just forgot about them. there’s nisa’s one ex i already forgot his name but he’s mentioned i think.

[lux-i-fer]

Can you explain why you view Cain’s emotions as being frozen by the passage of time? I’ve read a very convincing theory that he’s a psychopath so it’d be interesting to see your take ( on why he isn’t??)

Yeah I sure can! So the basic story of Cain is  that he was condemned by God to live an eternal punishment on Earth right? So he’s been alive for a pretty long time. And over that long span of time he’s become quite jaded to the world around him. Think of how Lilith or s1 Amenadiel act. Neither of them care all that much about humanity or their happenings because what is a decade in the face of someone who has lived through millennia? More importantly, why should an immortal enjoy the ‘small things’ so to speak if they have infinite time to enjoy them? Writers often wax poetic about how humans burn so bright because they never know when their flame will be snuffed out, and I think there’s some truth to that. An immortal like Cain would eventually grow tired of seizing every day like his fellow humans do. He has an infinite amount of days, what’s the rush? Eventually that mindset morphs into what’s the use? Why should I go out and do things when time doesn’t matter to me? Why should I form bonds with people I know will perish? Why should I participate in this life, knowing full well that it’ll just pass me by? Cain himself is quoted as saying this: 

“I have walked this Earth for thousands of years. I have seen everything, I have done everything. I have watched everything I have ever known turn into ashes over and over again. And I’ve been searching for a way out forever.”

This type of thinking is a slippery slope. I will say that Cain was never quite “good” to begin with, he kills his brother with a rock because he felt like Abel was taking up too much spotlight I mean who does that? Cain is a selfish and manipulative person who uses others as if they were mere chess pieces to get what he wants, there’s really no way around that. However, I would not classify him as a psychopath. An absolute asshole, yes perhaps, but not a psychopath. Like I said, he’s become impassive to the world at large. He’s a human with the world view of a celestial/infernal being. Momlotte had a similar world view (oh what’s another human death, they’ll just make more. He was getting annoying anyways) yet no one ever categorized her as a psychopath. While I admit Mom is not the best comparison, we cannot deny that she and Cain share that aspect of themselves. Because like Mom, Cain does show moments of true emotion. Tom 2.0 might not have done the best job showing that (sorry Tom :/ ) but there were still traces of it. 

I think the most notable example of this is in 3x12 when Cain tells Lucifer he wants to die. Like I said before, Cain isn’t a very expressive character but we do see some indication of emotion when Lucifer pries his desire out. I think where a lot of people get hung up is on Cain’s lack of empathy for other people--and that’s valid--but again we forgot that he has the mentality of an immortal. He just does not care about other people, and yeah that’s a dick move but it is what it is. Sometimes people just really are assholes and that’s just who they are. Forgive my forwardness, but not every prick on the street is a psychopath just because they didn’t help you pick up your groceries when the bottom of your bag gave out or because they said they loved you and then fucked off with a hooker. People can just be assholes for no reason sometimes, and that’s just what Cain is. 

But like most assholes, Cain still cares about things. Usually those things pertain to only one subject, himself, but he still values them. And like I said before, this is most visible in his quest to die. Cain truly wants to end his life and I feel as though he has very genuine emotions for why. Think about it: you’re an immortal. The first few years seem alright, but then your friends and family start to die off, one by one. Over the next few years you make more friends and acquaintances. They also die. You have to move houses because your neighbors are suspicious of your eternal youth. You now have to move every fifty years and cut all contact with the life attached to that identity. You continue this cycle for hundreds of years with no end. Doesn’t that sound depressing? Doesn’t just thinking about that grate on your very bones? Of course it does, you’re human. And so is Cain. (We could almost draw a Lilith comparison here, no?) Humans were born knowing that eventually this will all just end. In a twisted way that’s what makes living so great; it won’t last forever. Cain knows that ultimately death is where he belongs, yet it is the one thing he will never be able to do. Can you imagine that? You have the power to do anything you could ever want, but you have no power to achieve what you truly desire. I think it’s safe to say that that would do a number on anyone. 

Now I have not addressed his manipulative side in detail yet so lets carve out some time for that. Did Cain manipulate Chloe, Maze, and pretty much everyone else to get what he wants? Yes. Did he feign emotion in that process? Yes. But then again, who hasn’t? I’m not trying to justify his actions, because he did some truly horrific things, but I’m just putting it out there. How many times do we put on fronts in our own lives just to get what we want? We see it all the time. Someone flirts their way out of a situation, serial cheaters tell their spouses they love them while stringing along three other people behind their backs, or we say something we know will set someone off just to see their reaction. If we diagnose psychopaths using this logic, do we not all contain some hint of psychopathy? Well yes, we do. Humans aren’t perfect creatures. Some are better than others and some are worse. Like I said, I’m not saying that Cain was justified in his actions, but I do not think we can slap a psychopath label on him just because he’s a dick. 

I believe the psychopath theory does not take Cain’s situation into account. I believe it neglects to recognize the warped way in which he views both humanity and the world at large. Cain is a human condemned to live an immortal’s life and I don’t think that’s something to shrug at.

[julesdelorme]

faller

Chapter 8

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home.

I put money in it every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to.

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions after all I put her through. I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point. Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. There’s a bunch of them now and they don’t do anything but sit there full of money. I don’t touch them. She doesn’t touch them. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am. She knows the kinds of things that I do. She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her. She knows. And still she stays. Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker. And I decided a long time ago that I was going to be the guy taking the sucker.

I’m definitely going to find a way to take this particular sucker. Even if he is in jail again. His kid is still there. Just the kid and that dirty goat. I can find a way to leverage that situation. Give a man a lever and he can move the world. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there. I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not. Predator or prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten. That’s the world. That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Rez to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once that shit shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. We don’t think of sweat or scratch as swear words. They’re just things that we do but don’t like to talk about. Lots of things like that. More that we don’t want to talk about than we do. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or doesn’t. No matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day but just don’t want to talk about.

Let her have that. Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense. And sometimes you just make up the rules as you go. Sometimes you find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpses of your stupid rules.

My job, in theory, is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far. But my job in the real world is to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, we’re not the prey.

Not like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now. All the casino money. And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year. It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house.

They can keep their boats. But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those are the people who aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me. It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

It was good enough for Joseph Brant, it’s sure good enough for me.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid. Himself. And even that dirty goat. He doesn’t deserve that land. He never earned it.

All these idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all this valuable border land. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what they’ve been given. They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform, that most of them didn’t even bother to vote to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no. Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money. Somebody’s going to take their land. Might as well be me as anybody else. Suckers are born to be suckered. Prey is born to be eaten. It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself. It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space. That was on him. He was the sucker. And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me.

Not me.

No, I joined the army just to get off this shitty reserve, off this shitty island. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too. I’ll take more than that the first chance I get. I keep the peace. I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Three.

Four.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them. Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half, and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting each other when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. The suicides. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars. Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts. Cut off Brebeuf’s lips and stuck a burning stick down his throat.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now. Maybe a paradise for the winners. Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers. Paradise is what you make. Paradise is what you can take. Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid and too weak to be alive.

Survival of the fittest. Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid. His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk. Just another sucker. And that kid. That kid gives me the creeps. Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to that stupid goat of his. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head. Gives me the creeps.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like.

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps. Damn goat gives me the creeps too.

Damn’s not a swear work either. They say it on TV all the time. They say all kinds of shit on TV nowadays.

Fuck.

Two more.

Best thing that ever happened to that kid if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole. That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too. But maybe the boy could give me some leverage. Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah.

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar. Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps. Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway. There’s a fucking car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her here before. Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian or maybe Oriental. Hard to tell sometimes. Could be related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from this place. Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out.

Going to have to dig into that. Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s just standing in the driveway. Staring at something. Behind the house. Maybe the field. She’s just standing there. Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

What the hell is she doing?

I don’t like complications. I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

Two more. Losing count.

I can’t see the boy. I can’t see anything behind that burned up house. Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen. Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Just stop the car. Sit here for a moment. Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

Fuck. She’s looking back at me now. She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that look on her face? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’m going to have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Hate complications. I really fucking hate complications.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into. Only one way to find out, I guess. One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks. This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar.

Going to need some way bigger fucking jars.

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[goodfemalecharacters]

Season Finales by Mary

For the Great Meta Scavenger Hunt.  The latest challenge?  Rank the season finales by any ranking of your choice.  I’m doing it by Mary--metaphorically and otherwise.

11. Season Seven: “Survival of the Fittest”

Wow I really hate this episode.  I can’t think of a possible Mary connection, so it’s coming in dead last.  If anybody else can think of something, let me know.

10. Season Nine: “Do You Believe in Miracles?”

Dean’s “I’m proud of us” is the link to Mary in this episode.  That’s a very parent thing for Dean to say, born of an instinct of jumping into Mary’s role as a young child.  (And wow, sidenote, that’s so sad.  I’m still looking for a little bit of conflict between Mary and Dean when it comes to Sam once Mary falls a little more into the ‘mom’ role this season.)

9. Season Five: “Swan Song”

I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but Sam is saved, at least in part, by the Impala. Throughout the show, the car has weirdly taken on an almost motherly quality.  I’ve pretty much accepted the headcanon that Dean was conceived in the car (Mary’s little eyebrow raise, anyone?) and it acted as a sort of womb for the boys as they grew up.  A Mary surrogate.

8. Season Eight: “Sacrifice”

I’m going to talk more about this in my season six analysis, but the fall of the angels made me think of Mary the first time that I watched the episode.  She believed so strongly—I don’t know if she was religious or spiritual or what--but it’s almost a deconstruction of her beliefs to watch them fall.

7. Season Six: “The Man Who Knew Too Much”

One of the few scraps of information we got about Mary for a long time was the belief that ‘angels are watching over you.’

If I had a buck for every gifset with Cas and Dean with those words stamped on it, I could probably buy spn myself and make it canon.

Cas is the angel watching over them.  At first, he seems like the exception to the rule when every other angel is trying to kill them. In this episode, he becomes the villain, subverting Mary’s message once and for all.

6. Season Four: “Lucifer Rising”

Ever since Dean and Sam were paralleled to Cain and Abel, I’ve been thinking about the implications.  In that little metaphor, Mary is Eve, the mother who doesn’t actually have much of a role in the story at all.

In this episode, Lilith wears a white gown, mimicking Mary’s white nightgown.  Biblical lore states that Lilith, the first demon, is the woman God first made for Adam.  She rejected the idea that she should be subservient to Adam, so God got rid of her and replaced her with Eve.

So we’ve got Mary (Eve) and Lilith, both wearing white.  Fun house mirrors.

5. Season Three: “No Rest for the Wicked”

The Winchester self-sacrificing merry-go-round mary-go-round:

-Mary sells her family’s future to Azazel to get John back,

-Mary dies as a result of Azazel entering their home; John sells his life (and the boys’) to get revenge

-Dean nearly dies as a result of the quest for revenge; John makes a deal with Azazel that kills him, restoring Dean to life

-Dean sells his soul, partially as a result of feeling like he shouldn’t be alive because he knows about John’s deal; Dean dies

Thanks to all of this, Mary is present in the first three finales, which all come as a result of her actions.  I’m ranking 3x16 the lowest of the three because I think it has the least to do with Mary, as it’s the furthest removed from her decision.

4. Season Two: “All Hell Breaks Loose”

Part two of the trifecta of Winchester Terrible Life Decisions.  Dean sells his soul, just like we later learn his mother did. (Okay.  Mary doesn’t sell her soul.  But she does sell her family, and in the world of the Winchesters, that’s basically the same thing.)

Also, Dean takes the mother role in Sam’s life left vacant by Mary.  That maternal attitude—save your child at any cost—is the biggest motivator.

3. Season One: “Devil’s Trap”

Yes, I know John doesn’t make the deal in this episode because cliffhangers, but I don’t care. Dean gets hit with the truck, precipitating John’s deal.  I’m ranking this highly because both husband and wife make parallel deals with Azazel.

(On an actually serious note, did John kiss Azazel to make the deal?  I’m banking on yes.  I mean, this was before that was established show canon, but retcon.  In-show, this interests me because John and hypermasculinity. Out-of-show, this interests me because kissing for a deal is only fun when the demon is a hot woman).

2. Season Ten: ��Brother’s Keeper”

Seeing as this episode almost made me quit the show, I’m shocked to be giving it such a high score, but Mary’s presence is undeniable.  Sam brings photos of Mary to convince Dean that there is another path than…launching himself into space.  (There’s a reason I will never forgive Carver for this finale).  This was the first moment that I thought maybe they would actually bring Mary back, but I was still so salty about Charlie and the show’s treatment of women that I didn’t think it was possible at that point.

Anyway, Mary managed to have an impact on her sons and the narrative, even from beyond the grave.

1. Season Eleven: “Alpha and Omega”

I have to rank 11x23 first, obviously, because it did the one thing I never thought Supernatural would do: it returned Mary Winchester to the playing board.  In that respect, it lived up to its name, representing both the beginning and the end.  The cultural shift represented by bringing Mary back is incredible.  While fridging still happens on an annoyingly frequent basis, I don’t think it’s nearly as pervasive as it was in the nineties and earlier (despite being an early 2000s show, SPN represents an older television style, at least in the earlier seasons).  And here we have an un-fridging, the reversal of Supernatural’s original sin.  In case you couldn’t tell, I’m still incredibly excited about this.

0. Season Twelve “Mary Does Something Cool”

Though I am decidedly not Andrew Dabb disguised as a blogger, I can’t help but ranking this at the front because I’m sure that Mary is going to do something really awesome in this season finale and I can’t wait for it.

[stephspencer10]

Post updated.View Post

In 2017, I bought and read Maud’s Story, a 2013 self-published/Vanity Press book written by my Aunt Charlotte LeBaron — my Mother’s brother Verlan LeBaron’s first wife. 

It’s a short book consisting mainly of letters supposedly written by Maud Lucinda McDonald LeBaron* — letters run-together in often hard-to-decipher paragraphs more akin to vignettes. 

It appears, at the time of this book’s writing, Aunt Charlotte still held fast to The Church of the First Born. This I assume because “Maud’s Story” contains a revised version/a rewrite of the history and teachings of the “Prophet Joel LeBaron” saga; wherein she turns the tale upside down and Joel into a martyred Prophet. By so doing, she shows, though not intentionally, how religious myths are made.

Maud Lucinda McDonald LeBaron is my maternal grandmother, of whom I’m “the spittin’ image” — I was always told while growing up. The above photo of her looks so much like me at that age, I look at it and think it is me. I can’t tell the difference!

When I saw, on Amazon.com, Aunt Charlotte had published my Grandma Maud LeBaron’s story, I spent $4.00  … and three hours reading it. Such was its brevity. That even includes the many times I had to re-read parts, attempting to understand what the heck had been said.

Suffice it to say, the book was no bargain! It left me wanting more. It’s supposed to be Grandmother LeBaron’s story; but missing in the biography are many tales Grandma used to tell about her life.

Nevertheless, nobody else has published anything much about Grandma Maud. So I’m glad Aunt Charlotte wrote as much as she did. “If you don’t like how the story was written, write it yourself,” they say.

Still, I resent that Aunt Charlotte used Grandmother Maud: She wrote a book “about” Grandma that was largely meant to draw in Grandma’s progeny, relatives and others; and convert them to her’s/Charlotte’s and Uncle Joel’s Church of the Firstborn doctrine — a la Charlotte LeBaron’s viewpoint, however — if they were not already members of Joel’s church. In that sense, Maud’s Story really should be “Charlotte’s Story.” 

I was disappointed “Maud’s Story” wasn’t imbued with more of Grandmother’s colorful history. And disgusted she borrowed heavily from The LeBaron Story — a book my mother Esther LeBaron Spencer largely wrote — without stating she was quoting from that book; let alone crediting my mother.

She includes in her booklet numerous “Quotes from Grandma’s Notes.” Doesn’t write much, otherwise, about Grandma. Perhaps, to get more of Grandma’s history, Charlotte expects us to read The LeBaron Story, a manuscript consisting mostly of my mom’s work that Aunt Charlotte helped her husband Verlan LeBaron compile, finish, and publish.

Both The LeBaron Story and Maud’s Story strike me as an apologist’s story written to preach the Church of the Firstborn/CotFotfot doctrine. 

In other words, Maud’s Story‘s general flavor is biased and provincial. It whitewashes and glorifies the Alma Dayer and Maud Lucinda McDonald LeBaron family, making them, the Mexico-LeBarons, look like a Godly family with a saintly mission.

I find this covert preaching of the CotFotfot dogma distasteful — especially the revising of its doctrine and history to make it more palatable than it was when my Uncles Ervil and Joel LeBaron first spawned this sect/cult in 1955—a take off from their older brothers Ross Wesley LeBaron Sr. and Ben LeBaron’s cults, as well as other Mormon fundamentalist cults.

 To summarize, Aunt Charlotte has white-washed history in The LeBaron Story and Maud’s Story so as to turn Uncle Joel into a Prophet, Saint, and Martyr. And his untimely murder into a Modern-Day Cain and Abel Story. But there’s a lot more to this dirty tale than meets the eye. So “Charlotte’s Story” is as much a myth in the making as it is a revisionist-history’s gold mine.

My final thoughts on Maud’s Story: Grandmother should have given a sermon or two in church if she was as erudite and well-versed in the cult’s dogma as she appears to be in Charlotte’s short biography where she uses Grandmother Maud to preach Joel’s dogma.

In truth, Grandmother was a musician and homemaker … no Scriptorian! She left the preaching and proselytizing up to leaders in the cult; preferred to be in the kitchen cooking and feeding people, when she wasn’t teaching piano lessons and taking care of kids and the homestead.

Perhaps Aunt Charlotte didn’t know it but William Preston Tucker (my now-deceased husband) and my Uncle Ervil LeBaron put their heads together to write those letters Charlotte says Grandma wrote to Spencer W. Kimball!

I was there at the time. I recall these two leaders of the LeBaron Church/cult talking about how they could use Grandma Maud as a ploy to get the President of the LDS church to read their [LeBaron cult] literature because she had grown up with Spencer W. Kimball.

They figured he would read a letter from Maud, his childhood friend, though not literature from her sons and their LeBaron cult. (So they were sneaking up on Pres. Kimball by way of Maud.)*

Suffice it to say, Aunt Charlotte wasn’t honest about the story of how my Uncle Joel became the self-proclaimed One Mighty and Strong. Therefore, I don’t trust much of what she relates in her book. I know for sure, for example, Grandmother Maud DID NOT write most of those letters Charlotte credits her with.

You only have to look at Grandma’s “Notes ‘n’ Quotes” Charlotte wrote “in Grandma’s own words” to get a good example of how Grandmother wrote. When you carefully compare “Grandma’s words” to those eruditely-written letters to Spencer W. Kimball, you can see they were NOT written by Grandma LeBaron.

A final word: Should anyone consider doing a reprint of Maud’s Story, please get a good Editor to go over it beforehand. Also, do not run Grandmother’s “Notes ‘n’ Quotes” together as if they were one organized piece. They’re not!

They are short vignettes, and should be separated as such; so the reader isn’t hoping to find the rest of the tale in the next paragraph, only to be left hanging by the tail — for a whole new tale takes up in the next paragraph!

*”Ghost writing“/deception was the name of the game when I was sequestered in the LeBaron cult in the 1960s. The sect’s two leading Scriptorians My Uncle Ervil LeBaron and my husband William Preston Tucker would write the exposé or such. Then publish it with whatever name or signature they thought would be most impressive and most likely to convert those receiving the literature.

(Comments transferred from Facebook”:)

Says Moira Blackmore:

I knew Maud, she went out of her busy days by visiting me all alone in Galeana with my 4 baby girls, and when their were shooting guns in my back neighborhood… thank you Steff … I love you, Maud, I love Charlotte as well, years later … 

  My response to Moira: I appreciate your feedback, Moira, and your attempts to always be positive and loving. That’s what makes the world go around. I’m so happy Grandma visited you and helped lift your spirits during a very bad time.

I remember her being concerned about your being over there alone; and her begging someone to take her over to visit you. I do not remember who she got to do the driving as she could not drive.

And now I’m getting off onto a bunny trail: I know she visited you out of care and concern for you and your situation. But she was also often there for visitors and people she was trying to help convert to the cult. Converts meant more people saved, more tithing money — and consecrations of all their wealth to the Bishop’s storehouse!

Such money was largely how Grandma and her sons managed to survive down in the Mexico-LeBaron colony. Especially was more money needed as each of her sons married more and more wives who bore more and more children. 

Given her help with the church’s conversion of new members, it seems aging Grandma Maud had no energy and time left over for her own hundreds of grand, great-grand, great-great, and great-great-great-grandchildren, and so on and on … not to mention her thousands of other relatives ad infinitum.

During the two years I lived at home, before I was married off at age 16, I recall only a few times after we moved to the LeBaron colony that she ever came by her daughter/my mother Esther LeBaron Spencer’s place to visit; even though we lived within walking distance of Grandmother Maud.

 Nor did my Grandmother Maud ever visit me, once I was married, even in my hours of need and desperation; although I lived within walking distance of her.

I may as well have not had a grandmother. But she did help Mother a lot after my father died. By then I was 18 and married — no longer living with my mom. 

When I was fourteen and we moved from the United States to where Grandmother Maud lived in Mexico, I had thought: Now I will finally have one of those grandmothers I have so often read about in children’s literature and so longed to have as I was growing up. 

But Grandmother Maud, though she had favored and spoiled my mama when she was raising her, was never emotionally there for me nor the rest of my mother’s thirteen other children, as far as I know. Not much, anyway.

For me, she never was a grandma that made cookies for her grandkids, let alone did she give us grandchildren any other gifts. Nor even hugs. She always had a big twinkling smile for me and her other grandchildren, though; whenever we saw her at church or elsewhere.

 Our Family was not a hugging-touching family. But pioneer-woman Grandmother was also simply overwhelmed and overworked, given her primitive lifestyle and her monumental duties; including being the church pianist and the colony’s piano teacher.

To put it succinctly, there was simply no way my ever-aging grandmother could muster all the time and energy needed to keep up with her exponentially growing progeny. She was already 68 years old when my family moved to the LeBaron colony; I was 14 years old then.

I had always lived within walking distance of her, while in the LeBaron colony; so she did come by three or four times, after I was married, to give me some piano lessons. She was around seventy-three years old then! Thanks, Grandma! 

But, other than that, in the four years I lived near her, and on my own, after I was married at sixteen, Grandmother dropped by one other time — though not to see her new grandchild, my first child, that I had almost died giving birth to, at age seventeen. My baby and I were simply taken for granted, as was generally the custom there!

 The reason she came by that one other time was to take back a piece of piano sheet music she had given me that she now wanted to turn around and take away from me to give to an investigator of our cult who was a pianist! I told Grandma, “No! You gave the music to me!! It’s mine now! I want it. You can’t take it back to give to somebody else!”

Grandmom was furious with me for not giving it back to her so she could gift it to the investigator of our “Church”! Getting converts — new people into God’s work — was part of her and her sons’ bread and butter. So that investigator was more important than I, her granddaughter. On top of that, she treated me as if the music still belonged to her, though she had given it to me the year before. Such “Indian trading”! 

Now I know where Mother learned this taking-back what she had given me, as if she still had tabs on it; so could turn around, whenever she wanted to, and give it to somebody else — even though I still very much wanted it and it belonged to me!

I never knew what to depend on. Then you wonder what causes schizophrenic kids? I’m at least sure this behavior did not help any. 

Bottom line: When there are lots of kids and relatives, they are not highly valued. They get taken for granted. They are pawns in the hands of the powers that be and regularly sacrificed for “the cause”!

     Rachel LeBaron Anderson:

 The BIG question: “Will what you are going to say improve the world by being said?”

    Steph Spencer Good question, Rachel! I ask myself that important question all the time as I write my Memoirs!

  Rachel LeBaron Anderson You are bringing healing to the younger generations trying to make sense of everything, building strong roots, many generations will be glad someone wrote things down.

  Steph Spencer Thanks so much for this insightful response and feedback! As always, Rachel, you show wisdom and intellect. Your remarks are much appreciated and will help me as I take time to make sense of everything on my end. That is certainly one of my goals!

    Dena McLean I enjoyed reading this book, not only to learn about family but specifically learn more about my Great Grandmother Maud. I know the story is all in perspective but I like to hear all perspectives.

Even if I don’t agree with the religious views, I find it fascinating how they chose Joel LeBaron, Alma’s priesthood keys and all the people connected to each story and then trying to find them in genealogy. Right now, I’m trying to discover if the man who baptized Maud was John Smith, as in Joseph Smith’s brother’s son or another John Smith. I hope to find some truth.

Steph Spencer Thank you for this valuable feedback. As always, I’m impressed with your scholarliness. To be sure, Charlotte’s Maud’s Story is skewed: It attempts to convert people to the belief that Joel was a true Prophet, etc.

Aunt Charlotte Kunz LeBaron was there pretty much from the beginning of Joel and Ervil’s “Church,” but chose to change how Joel got the “priesthood keys,” et cetera. Newcomers to the story believe her fabrications. That’s how myths are built.

Review of Charlotte LeBaron’s “Maud’s Story” Post updated.View Post In 2017, I bought and read Maud's Story, a 2013 self-published/Vanity Press…

[julesdelorme]

faller

Chapter 8

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. 

I put money in it every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to. 

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions after all I put her through. I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point. Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. There’s a bunch of them now and they don’t do anything but sit there full of money. I don’t touch them. She doesn’t touch them. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am. She knows the kinds of things that I do. She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her. She knows. And still she stays. Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker. And I decided a long time ago that I was going to be the guy taking the sucker. 

I’m definitely going to find a way to take this particular sucker. Even if he is in jail again. His kid is still there. Just the kid and that dirty goat. I can find a way to leverage that situation. Give a man a lever and he can move the world. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there. I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not. Predator or prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten. That’s the world. That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Rez to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once that shit shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. We don’t think of sweat or scratch as swear words. They’re just things that we do but don’t like to talk about. Lots of things like that. More that we don’t want to talk about than we do. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or doesn’t. No matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day but just don’t want to talk about.

Let her have that. Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense. And sometimes you just make up the rules as you go. Sometimes you find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpses of your stupid rules. 

My job, in theory, is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far. But my job in the real world is to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, we’re not the prey.

Not like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now. All the casino money. And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year. It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house. 

They can keep their boats. But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those are the people who aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me. It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

It was good enough for Joseph Brant, it’s sure good enough for me.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid. Himself. And even that dirty goat. He doesn’t deserve that land. He never earned it.

All these idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all this valuable border land. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what they’ve been given. They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform, that most of them didn’t even bother to vote to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no. Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money. Somebody’s going to take their land. Might as well be me as anybody else. Suckers are born to be suckered. Prey is born to be eaten. It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself. It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space. That was on him. He was the sucker. And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me. 

Not me.

No, I joined the army just to get off this shitty reserve, off this shitty island. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too. I’ll take more than that the first chance I get. I keep the peace. I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Three.

Four.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them. Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half, and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting each other when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. The suicides. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars. Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts. Cut off Brebeuf’s lips and stuck a burning stick down his throat.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now. Maybe a paradise for the winners. Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers. Paradise is what you make. Paradise is what you can take. Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid and too weak to be alive.

Survival of the fittest. Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid. His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk. Just another sucker. And that kid. That kid gives me the creeps. Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to that stupid goat of his. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head. Gives me the creeps.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore. 

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like. 

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps. Damn goat gives me the creeps too.

Damn’s not a swear work either. They say it on TV all the time. They say all kinds of shit on TV nowadays.

Fuck.

Two more.

Best thing that ever happened to that kid if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole. That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too. But maybe the boy could give me some leverage. Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah. 

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar. Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps. Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway. There’s a fucking car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her here before. Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian or maybe Oriental. Hard to tell sometimes. Could be related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from this place. Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out. 

Going to have to dig into that. Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s just standing in the driveway. Staring at something. Behind the house. Maybe the field. She’s just standing there. Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

What the hell is she doing?

I don’t like complications. I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

Two more. Losing count.

I can’t see the boy. I can’t see anything behind that burned up house. Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen. Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Just stop the car. Sit here for a moment. Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

Fuck. She’s looking back at me now. She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that look on her face? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’m going to have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Hate complications. I really fucking hate complications.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into. Only one way to find out, I guess. One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks. This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar. 

Going to need some way bigger fucking jars. 

#fiction #writing #writers #authors #author #novels #novelnovels #newnovels #julesdelorme #julesfdelorme #faller #delormewriting #scarboroughwritersfightclub #story #bear #native #nativestories #metis #metisstories

[julesdelorme]

faller

Chapter 8

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. 

I put money in it every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to. 

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions after all I put her through. I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point. Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. There’s a bunch of them now and they don’t do anything but sit there full of money. I don’t touch them. She doesn’t touch them. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am. She knows the kinds of things that I do. She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her. She knows. And still she stays. Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker. And I decided a long time ago that I was going to be the guy taking the sucker. 

I’m definitely going to find a way to take this particular sucker. Even if he is in jail again. His kid is still there. Just the kid and that dirty goat. I can find a way to leverage that situation. Give a man a lever and he can move the world. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there. I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not. Predator or prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten. That’s the world. That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Rez to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once that shit shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. We don’t think of sweat or scratch as swear words. They’re just things that we do but don’t like to talk about. Lots of things like that. More that we don’t want to talk about than we do. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or doesn’t. No matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day but just don’t want to talk about.

Let her have that. Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense. And sometimes you just make up the rules as you go. Sometimes you find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpses of your stupid rules. 

My job, in theory, is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far. But my job in the real world is to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, we’re not the prey.

Not like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now. All the casino money. And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year. It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house. 

They can keep their boats. But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those are the people who aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me. It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

It was good enough for Joseph Brant, it’s sure good enough for me.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid. Himself. And even that dirty goat. He doesn’t deserve that land. He never earned it.

All these idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all this valuable border land. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what they’ve been given. They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform, that most of them didn’t even bother to vote to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no. Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money. Somebody’s going to take their land. Might as well be me as anybody else. Suckers are born to be suckered. Prey is born to be eaten. It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself. It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space. That was on him. He was the sucker. And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me. 

Not me.

No, I joined the army just to get off this shitty reserve, off this shitty island. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too. I’ll take more than that the first chance I get. I keep the peace. I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Three.

Four.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them. Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half, and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting each other when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. The suicides. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars. Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts. Cut off Brebeuf’s lips and stuck a burning stick down his throat.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now. Maybe a paradise for the winners. Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers. Paradise is what you make. Paradise is what you can take. Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid and too weak to be alive.

Survival of the fittest. Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid. His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk. Just another sucker. And that kid. That kid gives me the creeps. Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to that stupid goat of his. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head. Gives me the creeps.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore. 

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like. 

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps. Damn goat gives me the creeps too.

Damn’s not a swear work either. They say it on TV all the time. They say all kinds of shit on TV nowadays.

Fuck.

Two more.

Best thing that ever happened to that kid if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole. That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too. But maybe the boy could give me some leverage. Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah. 

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar. Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps. Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway. There’s a fucking car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her here before. Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian or maybe Oriental. Hard to tell sometimes. Could be related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from this place. Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out. 

Going to have to dig into that. Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s just standing in the driveway. Staring at something. Behind the house. Maybe the field. She’s just standing there. Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

What the hell is she doing?

I don’t like complications. I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

Two more. Losing count.

I can’t see the boy. I can’t see anything behind that burned up house. Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen. Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Just stop the car. Sit here for a moment. Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

Fuck. She’s looking back at me now. She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that look on her face? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’m going to have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Hate complications. I really fucking hate complications.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into. Only one way to find out, I guess. One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks. This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar. 

Going to need some way bigger fucking jars. 

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#fiction #writing #writers #authors #author #novels #novelnovels#newnovels #julesdelorme #julesfdelorme #faller #delormewriting#scarboroughwritersfightclub #story #bear #native #nativestories #metis#metisstories

[julesdelorme]

faller

Chapter 8

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. 

I put money in it every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to. 

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions after all I put her through. I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point. Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. There’s a bunch of them now and they don’t do anything but sit there full of money. I don’t touch them. She doesn’t touch them. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am. She knows the kinds of things that I do. She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her. She knows. And still she stays. Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker. And I decided a long time ago that I was going to be the guy taking the sucker. 

I’m definitely going to find a way to take this particular sucker. Even if he is in jail again. His kid is still there. Just the kid and that dirty goat. I can find a way to leverage that situation. Give a man a lever and he can move the world. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there. I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not. Predator or prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten. That’s the world. That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Rez to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once that shit shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. We don’t think of sweat or scratch as swear words. They’re just things that we do but don’t like to talk about. Lots of things like that. More that we don’t want to talk about than we do. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or doesn’t. No matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day but just don’t want to talk about.

Let her have that. Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense. And sometimes you just make up the rules as you go. Sometimes you find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpses of your stupid rules. 

My job, in theory, is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far. But my job in the real world is to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, we’re not the prey.

Not like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now. All the casino money. And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year. It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house. 

They can keep their boats. But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those are the people who aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me. It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

It was good enough for Joseph Brant, it’s sure good enough for me.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid. Himself. And even that dirty goat. He doesn’t deserve that land. He never earned it.

All these idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all this valuable border land. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what they’ve been given. They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform, that most of them didn’t even bother to vote to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no. Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money. Somebody’s going to take their land. Might as well be me as anybody else. Suckers are born to be suckered. Prey is born to be eaten. It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself. It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space. That was on him. He was the sucker. And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me. 

Not me.

No, I joined the army just to get off this shitty reserve, off this shitty island. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too. I’ll take more than that the first chance I get. I keep the peace. I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Three.

Four.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them. Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half, and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting each other when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. The suicides. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars. Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts. Cut off Brebeuf’s lips and stuck a burning stick down his throat.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now. Maybe a paradise for the winners. Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers. Paradise is what you make. Paradise is what you can take. Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid and too weak to be alive.

Survival of the fittest. Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid. His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk. Just another sucker. And that kid. That kid gives me the creeps. Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to that stupid goat of his. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head. Gives me the creeps.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore. 

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like. 

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps. Damn goat gives me the creeps too.

Damn’s not a swear work either. They say it on TV all the time. They say all kinds of shit on TV nowadays.

Fuck.

Two more.

Best thing that ever happened to that kid if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole. That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too. But maybe the boy could give me some leverage. Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah. 

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar. Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps. Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway. There’s a fucking car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her here before. Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian or maybe Oriental. Hard to tell sometimes. Could be related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from this place. Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out. 

Going to have to dig into that. Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s just standing in the driveway. Staring at something. Behind the house. Maybe the field. She’s just standing there. Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

What the hell is she doing?

I don’t like complications. I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

Two more. Losing count.

I can’t see the boy. I can’t see anything behind that burned up house. Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen. Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Just stop the car. Sit here for a moment. Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

Fuck. She’s looking back at me now. She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that look on her face? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’m going to have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Hate complications. I really fucking hate complications.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into. Only one way to find out, I guess. One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks. This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar. 

Going to need some way bigger fucking jars. 

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[julesdelorme]

So this is the latest chapter. Would be grateful for any feedback at all... faller

Chapter 8

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home.

I put money in it every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to.

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions after all I put her through. I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point. Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. There’s a bunch of them now and they don’t do anything but sit there full of money. I don’t touch them. She doesn’t touch them. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am. She knows the kinds of things that I do. She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her. She knows. And still she stays. Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker. And I decided a long time ago that I was going to be the guy taking the sucker.

I’m definitely going to find a way to take this particular sucker. Even if he is in jail again. His kid is still there. Just the kid and that dirty goat. I can find a way to leverage that situation. Give a man a lever and he can move the world. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there. I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not. Predator or prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten. That’s the world. That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Rez to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once that shit shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. We don’t think of sweat or scratch as swear words. They’re just things that we do but don’t like to talk about. Lots of things like that. More that we don’t want to talk about than we do. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or doesn’t. No matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day but just don’t want to talk about.

Let her have that. Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense. And sometimes you just make up the rules as you go. Sometimes you find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpses of your stupid rules.

My job, in theory, is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far. But my job in the real world is to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, we’re not the prey.

Not like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now. All the casino money. And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year. It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house.

They can keep their boats. But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those are the people who aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me. It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

It was good enough for Joseph Brant, it’s sure good enough for me.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid. Himself. And even that dirty goat. He doesn’t deserve that land. He never earned it.

All these idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all this valuable border land. They don’t know what they’ve got. They don’t know what they’ve been given. They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform, that most of them didn’t even bother to vote to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no. Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money. Somebody’s going to take their land. Might as well be me as anybody else. Suckers are born to be suckered. Prey is born to be eaten. It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself. It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space. That was on him. He was the sucker. And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me.

Not me.

No, I joined the army just to get off this shitty reserve, off this shitty island. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too. I’ll take more than that the first chance I get. I keep the peace. I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Three.

Four.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them. Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half, and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting each other when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. The suicides. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars. Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts. Cut off Brebeuf’s lips and stuck a burning stick down his throat.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now. Maybe a paradise for the winners. Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers. Paradise is what you make. Paradise is what you can take. Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid and too weak to be alive.

Survival of the fittest. Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid. His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk. Just another sucker. And that kid. That kid gives me the creeps. Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to that stupid goat of his. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head. Gives me the creeps.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like.

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps. Damn goat gives me the creeps too.

Damn’s not a swear work either. They say it on TV all the time. They say all kinds of shit on TV nowadays.

Fuck.

Two more.

Best thing that ever happened to that kid if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole. That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too. But maybe the boy could give me some leverage. Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah.

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar. Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps. Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway. There’s a fucking car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her here before. Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian or maybe Oriental. Hard to tell sometimes. Could be related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from this place. Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out.

Going to have to dig into that. Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

What the hell is she doing?

She’s just standing in the driveway. Staring at something. Behind the house. Maybe the field. She’s just standing there. Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

What the hell is she doing?

I don’t like complications. I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

Two more. Losing count.

I can’t see the boy. I can’t see anything behind that burned up house. Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen. Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Just stop the car. Sit here for a moment. Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

Fuck. She’s looking back at me now. She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that look on her face? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’m going to have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Hate complications. I really fucking hate complications.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into. Only one way to find out, I guess. One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks. This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar.

Going to need some way bigger fucking jars.

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[julesdelorme]

faller Chapter 6 Suckers

Chapter 6

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. I put money in every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to.

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions. After all I put her through.

I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have any point.

Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am.

She knows the kinds of things that I do.

She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her.

She knows.

And still she stays.

Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker.

This particular sucker’s in jail again, but his kid is there.

I can leverage that. Use it. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there.

I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not.

Predator of prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten.

That’s the world.

That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Island to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once it shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or not. Doesn’t matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day.

Let her have that.

Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense.

Sometimes you just make up the rules as you go.

Sometimes you can find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpse of your stupid rules.

My job is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far.

It’s also my job to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, that we’re not the prey.

Like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now.

All the casino money.

And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year.

It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house.

They can keep their boats.

But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those people aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me.

It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid and him.

He doesn’t deserve that land.

He never even earned it.

All those idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all that valuable border land.

They don’t know what they’ve got.

They don’t know what they’ve been given.

They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform that most of them didn’t even bother voting to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no.

Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money.

Somebody’s going to take their land.

Might as well be me as anybody else.

Suckers are born to be suckered.

Prey is born to be eaten.

It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself.

It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space but him.

He was the sucker.

And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me.

Not me.

Joined the army just to get away. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too.

I keep the peace.

I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them.

Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting off guns when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river while they’re drunk or wasted. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars.

Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now.

Maybe a paradise for the winners.

Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers.

Paradise is what you make.

Paradise is what you can take.

Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid to be alive.

Survival of the fittest.

Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid.

His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk.

Just another sucker.

And that kid.

That kid gives me the creeps.

Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to a barn owl. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like.

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps.

Best thing that ever happened to him if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole.

That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too.

But maybe the boy could give me some leverage.

Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah.

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar.

Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps.

Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway.

There’s a car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her before.  Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian. Could related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from the Island.

Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out.

Going to have to dig into that.

Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

She’s just standing in the driveway.

Staring at something.  Behind the house. Maybe the field.

She’s just standing there.

Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

I don’t like complications.

I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

I can’t see the boy.

I can’t see anything behind that burned up house.

Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen.

Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Going to stop the car. Sit here for a moment.

Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

She’s looking back at me now.

She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’ll have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into.

One way to find out.

One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks.

This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar.

   https://www.facebook.com/delormewriting/

[julesdelorme]

Chapter 6

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. I put money in every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to.

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions. After all I put her through.

I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have any point.

Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am.

She knows the kinds of things that I do.

She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her.

She knows.

And still she stays.

Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker.

This particular sucker’s in jail again, but his kid is there.

I can leverage that. Use it. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there.

I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not.

Predator of prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten.

That’s the world.

That��s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Island to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once it shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or not. Doesn’t matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day.

Let her have that.

Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense.

Sometimes you just make up the rules as you go.

Sometimes you can find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpse of your stupid rules.

My job is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far.

It’s also my job to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, that we’re not the prey.

Like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now.

All the casino money.

And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year.

It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house.

They can keep their boats.

But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those people aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me.

It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid and him.

He doesn’t deserve that land.

He never even earned it.

All those idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all that valuable border land.

They don’t know what they’ve got.

They don’t know what they’ve been given.

They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform that most of them didn’t even bother voting to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no.

Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money.

Somebody’s going to take their land.

Might as well be me as anybody else.

Suckers are born to be suckered.

Prey is born to be eaten.

It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself.

It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space but him.

He was the sucker.

And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me.

Not me.

Joined the army just to get away. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too.

I keep the peace.

I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them.

Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting off guns when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river while they’re drunk or wasted. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars.

Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now.

Maybe a paradise for the winners.

Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers.

Paradise is what you make.

Paradise is what you can take.

Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid to be alive.

Survival of the fittest.

Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid.

His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk.

Just another sucker.

And that kid.

That kid gives me the creeps.

Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to a barn owl. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like.

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps.

Best thing that ever happened to him if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole.

That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too.

But maybe the boy could give me some leverage.

Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah.

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar.

Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps.

Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway.

There’s a car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her before.  Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian. Could related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from the Island.

Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out.

Going to have to dig into that.

Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

She’s just standing in the driveway.

Staring at something.  Behind the house. Maybe the field.

She’s just standing there.

Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

I don’t like complications.

I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

I can’t see the boy.

I can’t see anything behind that burned up house.

Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen.

Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Going to stop the car. Sit here for a moment.

Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

She’s looking back at me now.

She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’ll have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into.

One way to find out.

One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks.

This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar.

[julesdelorme]

Chapter 6

Suckers

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Every single fucking minute.

The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. I put money in every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to.

She’s a good woman.

She’s entitled to her delusions. After all I put her through.

I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have any point.

Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years.

She knows who I am.

She knows the kinds of things that I do.

She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her.

She knows.

And still she stays.

Still she loves me.

So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and we laugh about that.

She’s a good woman.

I guess she’s a sucker for loving me, but she’s my sucker.

All those other suckers though. All those other suckers with their stupid vacant grins and their pathetic excuses for why their lives have gone to shit or why their lives have always been shit.

Two more for the swear jar.

You’re either the sucker or the guy taking the sucker.

This particular sucker’s in jail again, but his kid is there.

I can leverage that. Use it. Not quite sure how just yet, but I’ll figure something out when I get there.

I always do.

This way to the Egress, folks.

All those suckers lying to themselves all the time, telling themselves some story about god or the way the world is supposed to work, but in the end the world works the way it works whether they like it or not.

Predator of prey. The one that eats or the one that gets eaten.

That’s the world.

That’s the real world.

You don’t need to grow up on this piece of shit Island to know that.

Another one for the jar.

I tried arguing once with her once it shouldn’t be considered a swear word. It’s just describing a normal bodily function that we all have to do pretty much every single day. But I guess that a swear word is whatever we say it is, because we’re the ones that get to decide what offends us or not. Doesn’t matter if it’s all phoney and the words people get offended by are the things that they do every day or think about every day.

Let her have that.

Sometimes you’ve got to play by the rules of the game, even if they don’t make any sense.

Sometimes you just make up the rules as you go.

Sometimes you can find a way to use the rules or bend the rules a little, and you’re a fool if you don’t, because someone else will, and you’ll end up being the sucker. Someone else will get to feed on the broken corpse of your stupid rules.

My job is to make sure that those rules don’t get broken or bent too far.

It’s also my job to figure out how far those rules can be bent and to make use of this badge that they were fool enough to pin on me so that me and mine get the most out of this life, and that we’re not the suckers, that we’re not the prey.

Like this drunk and his messed up kid.

All that council money now.

All the casino money.

And these suckers got themselves some free land, a nice house, a boat, and then they go to blowing all the money they got and the money they get every year.

It doesn’t take a genius to talk them out of that land and that house.

They can keep their boats.

But that land is worth something to people who know how to take advantage, and it doesn’t matter that those people aren’t even allowed to own this land. There’s always someone who is. There’s always someone who is willing to take the money just to have their name on a piece of paper, and that someone is me.

It it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

This idiot doesn’t even have the boat and he burned most of his house down, almost killed that creepy kid and him.

He doesn’t deserve that land.

He never even earned it.

All those idiots would just sit there in their new houses, the same people that they were when there was no council money and casino money, and do nothing with all that land, with all that valuable border land.

They don’t know what they’ve got.

They don’t know what they’ve been given.

They just know how to lose it.

Suckers.

They see a badge and a uniform that most of them didn’t even bother voting to give me and they believe anything that I tell them, or they’re too scared of the uniform to say no.

Either way.

Suckers.

Somebody’s going to take their money.

Somebody’s going to take their land.

Might as well be me as anybody else.

Suckers are born to be suckered.

Prey is born to be eaten.

It’s not the wolf’s fault that the pigs didn’t know how to build a house.

I watched my old man drink and piss away everything he ever got. Blamed it all on the white man. Blamed it all on the system. Blamed it all on my mother. Never once looked in the mirror and saw that he was the sucker and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that he didn’t have the backbone or the brains to make something out of himself.

It wasn’t the Residential Schools or the Church or the Government’s fault that he stood there and took it and did nothing but feel sorry for himself.

Wasn’t anybody’s fault that he was a waste of space but him.

He was the sucker.

And my mother was the sucker for staying and taking all his shit.

Not me.

Not me.

Joined the army just to get away. Came back and made something out of myself. Got myself a degree and when they wanted to put me on the council, I took it. When they wanted to put the badge on me I took that too.

I keep the peace.

I can’t stop every single asshole from being an asshole, but I do what I can.

Another two for the jar.

Keep the laws that matter and bend other ones any way that I can bend them.

Law of the jungle.

Stupid people shouldn’t be alive anyway. They’re out there having babies by the bushel with no money that they earned, and no brains and their kids end up as stupid as them, like cows that don’t even know that they’re being fattened up for slaughter.

Fuck them.

One more for the jar.

Fuck them twice.

Two for the jar.

They talk about fairness and how the world was a paradise before the white man showed up, but half us were killing the other half and half of us are still killing the other half. Booze and drugs and shooting off guns when they’re drunk or wasted. Running each other down on the road or the river while they’re drunk or wasted. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the wrecks. I’ve seen the bodies. Some people are just too stupid to be alive, or too weak to be alive, and back in the old days if that was you, you were the one that ended up dead. Now you get to to do stupid things to hurt other people. Kill other people.

We had wars.

Our ancestors killed other people’s ancestors. Ate some of them. Parts of them. That’s what our own stories say. When the priests came here we did the same thing to them. They chose the wrong side so we killed them and we tortured them and cut their skin off and ate their hearts.

Paradise my ass.

Wasn’t one then and it sure as hell isn’t one now.

Maybe a paradise for the winners.

Maybe a paradise for the hunters and the killers.

Paradise is what you make.

Paradise is what you can take.

Paradise is for the ones strong enough and smart enough not to be the prey.

Cain killed Abel because Abel was too stupid to be alive.

Survival of the fittest.

Sucker born every minute.

Fuck them.

One for the jar.

If we had a kid he’d be one rich motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two.

Better off than this poor kid.

His father would sign anything you put in front of him once you get him drunk. Sooner or later he’s just going to kill himself and that kid. Too stupid to be alive. Dumb motherfucker.

Fuck.

Two more.

Just another mean drunk.

Just another sucker.

And that kid.

That kid gives me the creeps.

Hardly ever talks. Stands there staring off into space like he’s in some kind of trance. Talking to that kid’s like talking to a barn owl. Just stares at you and stares like he sees you but like he sees past you too. You just can’t tell what the hell is going on inside that kid’s head.

Hell is not a swear word.

Not anymore.

I’ve seen hell. I know what it looks like.

Definitely not a swear word.

Kid gives me the creeps.

Best thing that ever happened to him if I took him in, put him in the system. Living in that burned out house all alone. Not my fault his father’s an asshole.

That prick sober and locked up is meaner than any rattlesnake and more disagreeable too.

But maybe the boy could give me some leverage.

Maybe that kid could be useful for something at least.

Prick.

That’s a swear word.

Yeah.

It’s a swear word.

Fuck.

That jar’s going to be full. Our kid would be a billionaire, if we could have one.

Going to have to buy another jar.

Put it beside all the other ones.

Kid really gives me the creeps.

Probably retarded or something. Be better off in the system.

Car in the driveway.

There’s a car in their driveway.

Probably that girl. Pretty one. Seen her before.  Heard she’s trying to take care of the kid. Not sure why. What her angle is. Don’t think she’s a social worker or a teacher. Kind of looks like she could be part Indian. Could related to the kid somehow. Except she doesn’t look like she’s from the Island.

Not sure what her angle is and I don’t like people who are up to things I can’t figure out.

Going to have to dig into that.

Find out who the hell she is and if she’s going to be a problem.

She’s just standing in the driveway.

Staring at something.  Behind the house. Maybe the field.

She’s just standing there.

Bag of groceries spilled out all over the driveway. Can’t see what she’s looking at.  Must be something that matters. She should have heard my car. She hasn’t looked back even once, and she’s not taking notice of all that mess in the driveway.

I don’t like complications.

I fucking hate complications.

One more for the jar.

I can’t see the boy.

I can’t see anything behind that burned up house.

Maybe something happened to the kid. Out here all alone, something bad was bound to happen.

Not sure how that breaks down for me. Might be hard to reason with that prick after something like that. Or if maybe something like this’d leave him open to be manipulated.

I don’t like complications.

Going to stop the car. Sit here for a moment.

Try to figure out the situation before I go jumping in.

She’s looking back at me now.

She sees me.

The look on her face. What is that? Fear? Relief?

Guess I’ll have to find out.

If I wasn’t married I’d fuck the hell out of her.

Shit.

Going to need a whole new swear jar.

Okay.

Don’t like not knowing what I’m walking into.

One way to find out.

One way to find out who the sucker’s going to be.

This way to the Egress, folks.

This way to the fucking Egress.

Going to need a whole new jar.