#c: clarence

[voicesofthegrid]

VotG - Topaz Blue

A story exploring the emotions of Edward Barnes during the events of 9/11. Content warning for depiction of 9/11, mild suicidal/self-harm ideation, and emotional distress.

6 AM: BEEP BEEP BEEP BE– CLICK. My fist slams down on my alarm clock, rattling the bedside table that it sits on. I groan and roll over, covering my eyes with my forearm  to block out the beams of sunlight filtering through my curtains before grasping the covers and throwing them off of me. Another sleepless night. Must just be too much on my mind. Maybe I ought to get my apology over with today. I’ll have to think about it when I’m not still half asleep. I never make good decisions before coffee. 

6:07 AM: The shower hisses to life as I turn the knob just a hair away from the highest temperature. Wispy steam rises from the water, filling the small room with wavering clouds. 

6:29 AM: Goddamnit. Got lost in thought again. There goes my sit-down breakfast. At least I can read the paper on the train. 

6:42 AM: I adjust my hat in the hallway mirror. My eyebags are dark and heavy. 

6:50 AM: Thank god for travel mugs, huh? My brother was nice enough to have coffee ready for me as I rushed out the door. And to think we hated each other at one point. I take a sip as I sink into my seat in the subway car, snapping open today’s newspaper. Just a touch of sweetness. Exactly how I like it. 

7:33 AM: The door to my office clicks shut behind me. I hang up my coat and hat on the rack in the corner, just as I have for the past… However many years I’ve been here. I pull the shade that hangs over my window up to gaze out on the city before I start my work for the day. Nary a cloud mars the topaz blue of the sky that extends out as far as the eye can see. I glance at the World Trade Center in the distance, the two great towers that anchor the campus. They stare back at me with their thousands of tiny windows, unblinking. Judging me. I have got to apologize to those kids. I just… can’t believe how goddamn immature I’ve been. Fuck. 

8:05 AM: I tap my pen impatiently against my desk. Guilt is making it incredibly hard to focus on the task at hand. 

8:43 AM: Goddamnit. I’m not going to get anything done like this. I’ve been up and pacing around my office for the past twenty minutes. I can feel those towers with their thousands of little eyes on my back burning straight through to my soul. Fuck it. I’m going home and I’m apologizing to the kids. Work can wait. I frantically shuffle papers into my desk and lock it shut before marching over to the coat-rack in the corner of my office. I grab my hat and—

8:46 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: BOOM. 

I wheel around. There’s a dull thump as my hat falls from my grasp. My jaw hangs open in… Shock? Awe? Terror? I don’t even… I don’t know what to call it. I can’t name it. I just feel it. 

I rush to the window. 

There on the North Tower – Wyatt’s building – Is a gaping maw of shredded steel spewing black smoke. 

Shit.

Is he hurt? What the hell caused… That? 

I rip my phone from its cradle and frantically dial home to my brother with trembling hands.

“Clarence…?” My voice breaks as I barely choke out his name. 

“Yeah, I – No, I don’t know what happened– Clarence– I– A plane? How? What?”

9:03 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: BOOM. 

A soft gasp and a muffled sob filter through the receiver. 

I look up from my desk. I… Know… I know what must have happened but I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to see. But I force myself to look anyway. 

A gash clawed through the South Tower – Winona’s building – is spewing the same black smoke that her brother’s building is. Oh my god.

“Clarence?” I ask, trepidation thick in my throat, “Are you…?”

He sees it too. I’m not dreaming. A nightmare then, surely. I… No, no this isn’t real this is just some god-awful nightmare, my subconscious trying to teach me a lesson. 

Some… cruel trick. 

9:33 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: I haven’t been able to peel my eyes off of the smoke pouring from the Towers. I have no idea where the twins are. If they’re hurt. They have to be hurt. I remember when I – No, no. Goddamnit, Ed. Don’t think about you. This is about them. They’re hurt. I hurt them. I. Fuck. They’ll be okay, right? If I survived back in ‘45, surely… 

9:35 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: They’re evacuating my building. What happened to the towers is deliberate. 

I’m not leaving.

A captain always goes down with his ship. 

If I’m next, so be it. Maybe I deserve it after what I put those kids through. 

9:38 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: I tell Clarence I’m leaving. I lie. I don’t want him to worry about me. 

Click.

I keep my hand on the phone for a moment after I’ve returned it to its cradle. I wish I could tell him how much he means to me. I wish I had been a better brother. 

I go to my liquor cabinet. I pour myself a drink. The good stuff. 

9:58 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: Smoke is still pouring from the gaping wounds in the towers. I am numb. Sunken into my chair. Eyes glued to the blackened horizon in my window. My glass dangles precariously in my loose grasp. 

9:59 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: CRACK. 

The glass falls from my limp hand and shatters on the floor as I bolt upwards out of my chair.

She’s gone.

The South Tower… Winona… It… She’s… Just.

Gone. 

Hot tears well in my eyes. 

10:21 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: I pace the length of my office in front of my window. I am an animal, trapped in a cage of my own making. The glass remains shattered on the floor. How long have I been pacing? When did this start? When did it all go so wrong?

10:28 AM, SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001: There is a great roaring in the distance. 

The North Tower falls. 

Dominoes. A house of cards. A structure that once held the title of tallest building in the world, reduced to nothing. 

Ash. 

Wyatt is gone. Winona is gone. That wish that I had made so long ago, that awful, awful wish of just wanting them to disappear…

Here it is, come to fruition. 

Fuck. 

[fightingwithallreality]

Blaze and Thunderbolt (1955) written and illustrated by Clarence William Anderson

[pmatga]

so here's my latest pmatga idea

bitter exes: old man edition™

[odinsblog]

I hate sellouts with a passion, but I try to remember something I once read:

“Every minority and every people has its share of opportunists, profiteers, freeloaders and escapists. The hammer blows of discrimination, poverty and segregation must warp and corrupt some. No one can pretend that because a people may be oppressed, every individual member is virtuous and worthy. The real issue is whether in the great mass the dominant characteristics are decency, honor and courage.”

—Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1968

Anyway, this may be old news for some of us, but definitely not for all of us. Salute to all of the Black and Brown people with morals and heart, who don’t sellout, even though the overwhelming majority of us could easily get rich quick (if we were sellouts). 🫡

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Today in thoughts that would make C. S. Lewis roll in his grave: watching HRT take effect, especially when I touch my skin (especially especially after shaving), feels like how Eustace must have felt when Aslan peeled off all that scaly dragon skin to restore his true form. Come to think of it, a constrictingly tight metal bracelet makes an apt metaphor for the low-intensity gnawing dysphoria that became the background radiation of my life from adolescence onward.

[carbone14]

Lieutenant Général Ira Clarence Eaker, commandant de la 8e Air Force

[natequarter]

Henry [VII] spared Richard's nephew and designated heir, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, and made the Yorkist heiress [from 1499] Margaret Plantagenet Countess of Salisbury suo jure.

unless i'm very much mistaken... wrong henry

[random-brushstrokes]

Clarence C. Wiley - Car-Balick-Acid sheet music (1905)

[ghostsmp3]

Wait I’m curious, when you reblogged that bruce song Lift Me Up you tagged it something like “I can’t listen to this without thinking of Clarence listening to it on repeat in his dressing room”. Did that actually happen? Or did you just mean you get Clarence vibes from the song bc same here :’)

it actually happened! in clarence's semi autobiographical book "big man" that he wrote with his friend don reo there's a chapter where don talks about clarence's genuine love of bruce's music and that one day at a show in los angeles he walked in on clarence in his dressing room (the temple of soul) listening to sad eyes and lift me up on repeat.

[voicesofthegrid]

VotG - APRIL ‘73 (One-Shot)

FOUND HERE.

Wrote this a couple months ago but just got to posting it somewhere. It’s always so rewarding to write scenes with these guys :-)

[gatutor]

María Ouspenskaya-C. Montague Shaw "Vinieron las lluvias" (The rains came) 1939, de Clarence Brown.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[odinsblog]

Black Republicans listening to Fox News

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Trans!Eustace Narnia AU where Aslan does her a solid and restores her human form as a girl instead of a boy, and she immediately proceeds to change her name to Literally Anything Else. Also now Lucy has company in her cabin (though honestly in this AU maybe more of the crew was female to begin with, so Lucy wouldn't even need her own room).

[carbone14]

Capitaine Ira Clarence Eaker devant un chasseur Boeing P-12 – 1930's

©United States Air Force

Ira Clarence Eaker était un général de l'United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) qui a notamment commandé la 8e Air Force pendant la seconde guerre mondiale.