vistkitww

[temeyes]

the Captain and his Baby Captains!!!! [Ghost | Soap | Gaz]

[comphy-and-cozy]

Sundress Season - Andrei Svechnikov

Pairing: Andrei Svechnikov x teammate’s sister!Reader (f)

Summary: Being a Staal sister, you’ve seen your fair share of cute hockey players, but none that have struck you like Andrei has. What will happen at the postseason summer barbecue at the captain’s house?

Word Count: 4.3K

Author’s Note: I am a sucker for the summer sundress trope. The rest is just pure, unadultered filth. I don’t know where it came from, but I will be blaming (crediting) @ryanpulock for keeping Tumblr’s Svech-thirst train alive.

Warnings: Smut (18+ ONLY). A cocky Russian, swearing, brief alcohol use/mention, absolutely filthy dirty talk, risqué sex, unprotected sex, choking, very brief voyeurism reference, creampie.

Masterlist / Sequel

As a Staal sister, you’d spent more than your fair share of time around hockey players — of all kinds. The rugged veterans, the hot shot rookies, the career 4th line grinders. You grew up around it, living in the rink alongside your brothers, old sticks and rolls of tape scattered in the trunk of your car. You’d met some legends, both humble and cocky, and you’d met fresh faced kids who were just drafted, still pimply and uncertain. 

But none of them struck you like Andrei Svechnikov. 

Most of the Canes were cordial to you, friendly, but kept their distance because you were their captain’s sister, duh. It was a respect thing, but it was also a little bit of a fear thing. There had been a few guys through the years that weren’t careful with their lingering glances and flirtatious winks, and had promptly been chewed out by one — or more — of the menacing Staals. 

That wasn’t the only reason things had never progressed, though. For the most part, your own interest was never piqued past some surface-level flirting, primarily because you knew that the large majority were scummy, and dirty, just looking for a quick fuck — certainly never the kind of guy you’d bring home to meet mom, dad, and four huge brothers.

Simply put, none of them caught your attention enough to even consider the idea of risking the wrath of the Staal boys.

Except Andrei.

When he came back from his summer break following  his rookie year, he was stronger, more filled out, and, undeniably, downright delicious. It was a notable change, to everyone, and you were no exception. He was cooler, more confident, almost cocky in the way he carried himself, and what’s worse is that you liked it — you couldn’t help it. In just a few short months, he’d transformed from just another one of your brother’s teammates to an absolute Russian dreamboat who you couldn’t keep out of your head. He was pesky, cropping up on Instagram or in casual conversation just as soon as you’d forget about him, never completely slipping from your mind.

He noticed, too. Being less than an hour from your brother, spending holidays and the occasional weekend with him, you saw Andrei somewhat regularly, and he never failed to make you sweat with just a glance. The tension between you two had been growing, steadily and slowly, over the last few months, through subtle glances here, ghosting touches there. Which is why you found yourself nervous for today, an excited energy fluttering low in your belly.

Playoff hopes dashed, Jordan was hosting an end-of-season party before everyone parted ways for the summer. It’s pure coincidence that you happen to be visiting at the same time, having just finished your semester at Duke. Mostly coincidence, at least. 

Just like it’s a coincidence that you picked your flounciest sundress, the one that ripples in the wind and fits your bust in just the right way to show the perfect amount of cleavage while still maintaining your ‘Captain’s Little Sister’ image.

And you play your part well, flitting through the groups that form, making the casual conversation and ensuring that drinks are filled and snacks are stocked. You play catch up with Brendan, joke around with Aho, tell Brady about your program. Heather appreciates the extra hands, chopping up the veggies for the dip, mixing the lemonade for the pitcher, and replenishing the huge spread of food on the kitchen island.

You’re chatting with Jaccob’s wife, Kylie, when Andrei walks in, the air suddenly different and the feeling of eyes that aren’t Kylie’s on you. A glance at the patio confirms what you already know to be true: the object of your affections has arrived, and he’s already taking in the sight of you, offering a close-mouthed smile and a wink before he turns to find a drink.

“He always looks at you,” she comments when she sees where your eyes have trained, returning his smile. “I think our not-so-little Andrei has a crush.”

“My brother would skin him alive, and then kill me, too,” you shake your head, ignoring the heat that her observation brings to your cheeks. Surely the sun beating down had more to do with your sudden hot flash than a certain Russian’s presence, right? 

“He’s a really sweet kid,” she says, as if she’s talking about a boy who is courting her teenage daughter and not a six-foot-something professional athlete. “Always so polite.”

You hum, nodding vaguely in agreement, before stepping away to refill the chips on the table. Once you’ve completed a quick check of the spread, you retrieve your beverage, moving out of the sun to cool under the shade of the large oak tree. Casually, you glance over your shoulder, eyes sweeping over the groups chattering in the yard, until you’re met with two rich sepia irises, already staring back at you. A shy smile quickly forms on your lips, and you look away.

Not two minutes later, you glance back to see a large, dimpled Russian offering a wave as he walks up to you. Part of you wants to smirk, to chirp him that he’s by your side the moment you’re alone, but then he’s standing next to you and his cologne is invading your senses and suddenly you can’t think straight, barely able to look up at him and meet his eyes. 

“It’s nice to see you,” he greets you, smiling, taking a swig of beer from the sweating bottle in his hand. You can’t help but let your eyes drag along the tendons of his arms, over his enormous hands. Had his fingers always been that thick?

You blink, snapping yourself out of it, and offering a, “You too, Andrei.” Then, “I’m sorry about the playoffs.”

“Ah,” he waves his hand, as if all of the frustration and pain could be shooed away with the gesture. “It sucks, but we’ll do it next year. I’m sure of it.”

Humming, you agree, and when you ask if he’s going home for the summer, he says, “I’m here for another few weeks, and then my brother and I are going to Hawaii. Should be fun.”

Again, you nod in agreement, doing your best to push out the mental image of him sitting shirtless on a beach.

“Marty wasn’t sure if you would be here,” he changes the subject, wordlessly in control of the conversation, like he has a purpose and isn’t even going to bother with small talk. “But I knew you would be.”

“How’s that?”

He smirks then, smug in the way he looks at you, and somehow you know he’s got you right where he wants you. 

“Since you’re dying to fuck me.”

Instantly, your eyes widen and you choke on the Mike’s Hard you’re sipping on, heat rushing straight to your cheeks at the blatant, sudden call out. How — ?

“You’re not very good at hiding it, you know,” he continues, as if he can read your mind, has seen every single filthy thought you’ve had about him since he strolled in through the sliding door with his casual, easy air and his shirt that’s just a little too tight around his biceps.

“I — you — it’s —“ you splutter, all thoughts in your mind completely void. What are words, anyways? 

Andrei ignores you, shifting on his feet in a way that looks casual but ultimately gets him a few inches closer to you. He lowers his voice, “It’s okay, ‘cause I’m dying to fuck you, too.”

The air of the conversation shifts dramatically as his words settle in, right into your core where you’ve been dreaming of having him, and you’re both mortified and inexplicably turned on at his certainty. He loves watching you squirm, you can tell by the pleasure in his fiery eyes, like he’s playing a game that he has all the cheat codes to.

“Andrei,” you finally manage to choke out. “Jesus Christ.”

“Moaning my name and I haven’t even touched you yet,” he shoots back with a smirk.

“You can’t – you can’t just –” you gulp again, looking around frantically, ensuring that no one is listening in, “– say that!”

He shrugs, taking another swig of his beer, and you know you’re fucked when you watch his tongue dart out to lick the leftover foamy liquid off his lips, wishing you could do it for him. “Why not? It’s true.”

“That doesn’t mean – I’m – Jordan –” a pause, a deep breath, a collection of thoughts. “Jordan is my brother, and your captain, in case you forgot.”

Andrei must have known that response was coming, because he’s quick with a, “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, it kinda makes it hotter, no?”

You feel like your brain is going to explode at his casual air, as if he’s asking you to pass the salt at the dinner table instead of suggesting you fuck your brother’s teammate inside his own home. To keep up the image of casual conversation, despite the fact that it is far from it, you take another sip of your drink, willing it to cool you down.

He watches you, amused at your attempt to gather your thoughts. Of fucking course you want to, your pussy practically screaming at you to have his mouth on her, and, you admitted to yourself, it would be kind of hot —

“You gonna let me? Fuck you?” his low voice pulls you out of your thoughts, posing the question plainly, and you can’t decide if the bluntness is the Russian in him or simply just his confidence. 

Despite every ounce of your brain shouting at you to say no, you’re nodding before you can think twice about saying yes, head moving of its own accord. With a short glance around the yard to Jordan, ensuring he’s thoroughly preoccupied as he holds someone’s newborn baby, you feign a goodbye to Andrei, muttering, “Guest bathroom. 5 minutes.”

All he does is smirk, and you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes, tempted to take back your words if he doesn’t bottle up his attitude. But you know that’s not what you want, not really.  

Once you’re in the bathroom, door shut firmly behind you, you take a deep inhale and look at yourself in the mirror as the reality of your decision comes crashing around you. Are you fucking crazy? In Jordan’s bathroom?

This isn’t you, never daring enough to do anything even remotely risqué as this, but you can’t deny that the anticipation that thrums through your veins is exhilarating. Besides, it was only a matter of time before you’d develop a crush on one of your brothers’ teammates, and they’d be stupid not to expect it. 

There’s a soft knock on the door, startling you and popping your thought bubble. With another quick inhale, heart panging in your chest, you open the door, your knees nearly buckling at the smirk that greets you on the other side. 

Andrei pushes in, making sure the door is closed and locked behind him before he’s on you, grinning, hands gripping your hips to pull you close to him. His enthusiasm encourages yours, and your hands find purchase on the sides of his face, pulling him in to tug your mouth to his. For a moment, you’re taken aback by the taste of him and the fullness of his lips against yours, distracted by the way his tongue teases you. It’s everything you wanted and more, and he’s only just kissed you.

“What took you so long?” you ask, voice muffled, broken by a sigh as one of his large hands reaches to squeeze your ass.

“Your fucking brother cornered me on my way in here,” he says, giving your other cheek a knead, grinning at the involuntary moan that he pulls from you.

“Y’tell him what we’re about to do?” you tease, deciding that if he was going to let his hands roam free over your body, you’d do the same. Palms run over the smooth, hardened muscle of his chest, feeling the cut of his pecs, then his strong core, admiring with your hands through the material of his shirt.

You’re not sure if it’s your movements or your words that draw a low groan from him, a dark chuckle sounding from his throat as he moves to press kisses along your jaw. “He’d murder me if I told him what I wanted to do you.”

You hum, his admission sending heat directly to your core. Head turned to the side to allow him more access to the tender part of your neck, you manage, “Why don’t you tell me instead?”

“Driving me fucking crazy with this dress all afternoon,” he murmurs hotly, taking advantage of the space you allow him. “Could barely control myself.”

A gasp leaves your lips as he nips at a spot beneath your ear, careful to place it so that it’d be covered by your hair. Fingers tangle in the fringes of his hair, holding his head close to you.

“You still haven’t told me.”

It’s Andrei’s turn to hum, distracted when he unceremoniously tugs the ruching of your dress down, exposing your breasts and immediately moving to get both hands and his mouth on them, fondling and kissing every bit of skin he can touch. A shiver runs through you as his lips find your nipple, flicking and laving the sensitive part with his tongue. 

“This, for starters,” he murmurs, voice muffled by your skin. The depth of it rumbles through you, vibrating your chest. “Been wanting to see these tits for so long.”

He tastes you, hands cupping your breasts as he allows his face to press between them. Your hand moves between your bodies, tugging at his shirt, and he pulls his scorching mouth away from you for a few unbearable moments to throw his shirt over his head before he’s back on you. 

“Andrei,” your voice calls him, a sharp reminder that he doesn’t have time to worship you the way he really wants to.

“All I could fucking think about all afternoon was pulling this,” he says after tearing himself away from your tits, grabbing the flowing skirt of your dress, “Over these pretty hips of yours and bending you over, fucking you ‘til you scream.”

“Well, what are you waiting for, Svech? We don’t have all day.”

He lets out a mix between a groan and a growl, twisting your body so your back is to his chest, facing the mirror, and you watch his hand, heavy on your thigh, move its way up to your breast while he plants another open-mouth kiss to your neck. Your mouth falls open, eyes fluttering shut, unable to do anything but revel in the pleasure — and he hadn’t even touched you yet, not really.

You’re impatient, and a whine slips through your lips as your hips move against him. He’s hard, you can feel him where he’s pressed up against your ass, and if not for the layers and layers and layers — far too many layers — of clothing between you two, you think you could shift your hips just so and he’d slip into you with ease.

“Be quiet,” he mutters in your ear, the depth of his voice settling into your core. “I’m the one who’s gonna get my ass beat if we get caught.”

Andrei’s hand latches to your hip, his other hand moving under the fabric of your dress, finding the soaked cotton of your panties. He’s smirking behind you, into your shoulder, but you can see his dimple poking through and you want to smack the smugness off of his pretty face. You open your mouth to retort, but the words falter on your tongue when you feel his fingers running over your slit, pausing briefly to prod at your clit. 

“A-Andrei,” you groan out, doing your best to keep your voice from wavering. “We don’t have time for teasing.”

“Can’t help it, baby,” he grins back. “Been wanting to feel this pussy for years.”

Your head falls back against his shoulder when he pushes one thick finger past the waist of your panties, slipping into you, pushing, teasing, working you. It’s not long before he adds another, and you gasp because fuck, are his fingers thick. 

“God, you’re fucking tight,” he groans, twisting his arm to get better leverage so he can fuck you better, working you open until your eyes are ready to roll back in your head, white hot waves of pleasure coursing through your veins.

The sound of distant chatter down the hall makes you freeze, and if you weren’t moments away from coming all over this man’s fingers, you’d probably laugh at the sight of yourself in the mirror: hair a mess, mouth hanging open, tits haphazardly hanging out of your dress, skirt bunched up with a very large, very talented, hand down your gray cotton thong. Your eyes lock with his, brown and wide, not scared but listening intently, as you frantically search for an excuse of why you could possibly be in the bathroom with your brother’s teammate. 

Heather’s voice gets closer in the hallway, eventually passing and moving further into the house. As soon as he realizes the coast is clear, Andrei resumes his movements, bringing you closer and closer to the climax that the brief moment had quelled.

“Give it to me, baby.” His voice is deep, rough, muttered in your ear as you watch the toned muscles in his forearms flex with his movements. “Just give me one and I’ll fuck you so good you see stars.”

It doesn’t take much longer for you to fall apart, slumping forward against the support of his arm as your orgasm hits you, clenching tightly around his two thick fingers. Your hips rolls against his wrist, already desperate for more of him.

Andrei presses a kiss against your neck, gently, drawing the final waves of your release out with long, slow strokes of his fingers. Without an ounce of hesitation, he brings his fingers up to his mouth, as you watch, jaw dropped, while he sucks your essence off of his digits.

“God, you taste fucking good,” he says, smacking his lips. “Next time, I’m gonna spend all day eating this cunt.”

“Oh, there’s a next time, is there?”

“Judging by the way you just soaked my fingers, yeah, I’d say so.”

“Shut up and fuck me, Svechnikov,” you fire back, pressing your ass back against his crotch, sending him a smirk through the mirror as you grind against him.

He growls, not liking your display of control, and murmurs, “Bend over, then, baby. We don’t have much time.”

“Whose fault is that?” 

“I didn’t see you complaining,” he’s quick to retort. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you were moaning.”

“Are you gonna fuck me or not?”

He smiles, clearly enjoying your banter, as the palm he places between your shoulder blades pushes you down until you’re leaning against the marble countertop, shivering when your bare breasts hit the cool surface. Your dress is still bunched up around the swell your hips, but he tugs up the material even further before he’s making quick work of his own pants, shucking them down his legs and stroking himself. You barely get a glance at it, thinking vaguely to yourself that next time you’d like to spend a lot more time studying.

“You can have it down your throat next time,” is the statement that pulls you out of your daydream, another dimpled smirk meeting your gaze in the reflection of the mirror.

With one smooth push, Andrei takes the words — as well as any snarky remark — out of you, only able to focus on the feeling of him filling you up. Your mouth falls open, pleasure flooding your system as he begins to move, the friction enough to have you throbbing against him.

Hands grip your hips, pulling you back onto him and you swear you can feel him in your stomach, sure he is quite literally rearranging your guts. He’ll leave bruises, you think, hope he does, so that you can trace your fingers over the marks tomorrow when you’re remembering what he feels like inside you, drawing pleasure with each push of his hips.

When his hand trails up your body, securing a place at the base of your throat, fingers wrapping around with ease due to the size of his hand, your eyes lock with his in the mirror, pleading with him to squeeze tighter. Being the gentleman he is, he obliges as he fucks into you, rough, but careful to make sure his hips don’t slap too loudly against your ass for fear of attracting unwanted attention. He’s forceful with steady, slow thrusts opposed to the fast, hard ones he’d like to give you if you were in private, the ones he’s dreamed of giving you since he first met you years ago. Biting the meat of your palm to stay quiet, you lose yourself in the feeling, letting the desire and heat of the moment take over.

A knock at the door has both of you freezing yet again, Andrei pausing with his hips pressed against your ass, conveniently completely sheathed within you. He’s so fucking deep, stretching you to your fullest, wrapped tightly around his cock, and you know he can feel the way you flutter around him as your heart threatens to beat out of your chest.

“Y/N? You in there?” It’s Heather.

Andrei’s hand releases its grip on your throat slightly to let you speak, though his fingers stay pressed against your neck. Your voice fails you, swallowing, before you’re coughing and replying, “Yeah?”

“Have you seen Andrei? Jord’s looking for him, they’re starting a game of volleyball.”

Resisting the urge to laugh, thinking that you’ve more than seen him, you meet Andrei’s eyes in the mirror and see the sparkle in his eye as his free hand moves to place his finger over your clit. With a glare at him, you do your best to ignore the way he rubs, threatening to pull a moan from your lips. “Uh, no. Think maybe I saw him by the — by the cooler.”

She hums a thank you, and you hold your breath before you hear her shuffling away. Andrei lets out a low chuckle, muffling the sound with your shoulder blade. 

“God, that was so hot,” he murmurs, so low you can barely hear him. “Should’ve felt the way you were squeezing me, fuck. Almost makes me want to get caught.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

With a wink, he resumes his movements, this time rougher now that you’ve both had a brief moment to catch your breath, and you know he’s determined to get you off. Thick fingers tighten around your throat once more, tugging you backwards by your neck so your spine is arched and his lips are pressed against the back of your head, breathing heavily against you. “You gonna hurry up and come for me?” he whispers, breath hot in your ear, his accent thick as he nears his own release. “As much as I want to, I don’t think we should have big brother Jordie walking in while I’m balls deep in his sister’s pretty little pussy.”

“Andrei, please,” is your choked reply, eyelids fluttering shut as he begins to hit that spot repeatedly. “God, right there, please —“

He’s a good listener, striking with precision, and it’s only a few more pumps before you’re shuddering in his arms, your strangled cry quickly muffled by his large hand over your mouth. He fucks you through it, pulsing around him before he’s groaning, pressing deeply into you as hot liquid fills you.

A long exhale leaves you, panting, as his arms release their hold on you, ensuring that you’re stable enough to stand with a smirk. The feeling of his cum leaking down your legs makes you bite your lip when he pulls out, and you watch his eyes flick to it, licking his lips at the sight.

You feel like a kid learning how to bike without training wheels, shaky on your legs, briefly wondering to yourself how the fuck you’re supposed to walk back into the backyard and continue socializing like you didn’t have the lights fucked out of you by your brother’s star teammate. 

Andrei seems to have similar thoughts as he’s tugging his pants back up, running a hand through his hair, laughing, “How am I supposed to go play volleyball with your brother now?”

“Guess you should’ve thought about that before you decided to fuck me in his bathroom,” you say, accepting the tissue he offers you to clean up your legs.

“I would never pass up the opportunity to fuck you,” he says, and you see a hint of seriousness and sincerity behind his eyes, despite the crude words coming out of his mouth. “As hot as this was, next time it should be in private. After dinner, maybe?”

You feel heat in your cheeks at his insinuation, the invitation hanging out in the open before you’re hesitating, your brother’s name hanging heavy on the tip of your tongue.

“I’ll deal with him, when it comes time,” he adds, noting your hesitation, already knowing the look he’d have in his eyes — he’ll save that for another day. 

You smile, nodding an agreement, suddenly shy despite the fact that his cum is pooling in your panties as you adjust your dress. A date. A real date. With a hockey player, your brother’s teammate, yes, but more than that: a gentleman. Finally, a man that was worthy to bring home to the Staals. 

When you make your way back to the party, carefully staggering your arrival from Andrei’s, you can’t help the smile that tugs at your lips when you make eyes with him as he takes his position by Jordan at the volleyball net. 

This one, you thought, was worth the wait.

[pricescigar]

Kalli Aguilar

Born: 12th of Febuary 1936

Age: 40 (As of 1976)

Nationality: German (Half Mexican)

Gender: Male

Spouse: Mia Jäger (What if)

Parent(s): Andres & Anna Aguilar

Hair colour: Black (Small streaks of grey hair)

Eye colour: Dark brown

Height: 182cm (6ft)

Nicknames: Kal

Alter Ego: El Diablo (The Devil) _______________________________________________

Personality: Kahili is a caring man, and had no intention to harm anyone other than those who dare to harm him and all those around him. He's the one who drives the evil away, even if you have to be the evil force that has to do it.

Likes: Working, enjoying life, travelling, caring for others, fencing, drinking alcohol, the rich life

Dislikes: Perseus, his loved ones getting hurt, failing his job, arm dealers

_______________________________________________

Backstory:

Kalli's parents moved back to Germany shortly after the first World War, his father was a Veteran of the First World War. He could no longer work properly after his leg had gotten amputated, but still... He had his ways in bringing his income. His mother was a stay at home mum taking care of him and now his father, occasionally she would have to work too.

Kalli's mother Anna who was originally from Düsseldorf, Germany, was an archelogist and Historian and went to Mexico. Where she met her soon to be husband, Andres he got drafted into the war. And she promised him she'd wait for him, so she waited for him. Until he had returned... They remained in Mexico until 1939, until Anna became pregnant and they went back to her home town in Germany.

Kalli was a bright young boy, you could say everyone loved him. After all, he had ways of capturing people's hearts, no one never doubted that. He had his ways, he was almost like his father on that way. He knew German and Spanish. When Kalli turned thirteen years old, his family moved to Germany in 1949 after his dad got a promotion. He hand his family lived on the same street as the Jäger family did, easily welcoming the Aguliar family with open arms, he also befriended Mia. Around that time he went to secondary school, before eventually graduating in 1954.

Temporarily Kalli went to Mexico to reunite with his family and stay with them until the foreseeable future, knowing one day he would eventually go back to Germany. During his time in Mexico he got involved in dangerous business with a arms dealer, (Whom he was his Uncle at the time) Unintentional or not he killed the man in cold blood after he saw what his Uncle had did.

Due to him not having any heirs, Kalli rightfully took it and turned it upside down. Destroying the "family business." One by one, making sure it all fell down to the ground, also killing off any enemies that dared to cross his path. In his home town of Toluca, Mexico they dubbed him "El Diablo."

In 1960 Kalli returned to Berlin, Germany when he was 24 years old after he got invited to Mia and Deitrich's wedding. Gladly he attended, reuniting with his friends. Also telling what he had been doing in Mexico for the last past 9 years.

In 1968 Kalli got the news that Mia had died, being deeply heartbroken he occasionally kept in contact with Dietrich to make sure he was alright.

As of 1981 his wareabouts are between Mexico and Germany occasionally wiping out the Arm dealers one by one.

(What if )

As of 1968 with Dietrich dying in Vietnam. Kalli attended the funeral and was sympathetic towards Mia, after she lost her husband. He ensured her that he'd always be there no matter what.

As the years went by he always regularly visited, and over time Elvira always got curious about the man who had always visited her mother. It wasn't until Elvira was a teenager, was when she realised his true intentions, in trying to woo her.

In 1976 Kalli and Mia got married, it was around the time Perseus was hellbent on getting Elvira, to take over her father, and finished what he almost had done. Kalli almost did anything for her to not get kidnapped, thanks to his deep connections. However, Elvira went willingly with no cause in 1979...

[babybluebex]

sugar pie, honey bunch [lee bodecker smut]

➽ pairing: lee bodecker x fem!reader(y/n) ➽ word count: 4.3k ➽ summary: lee gets tired of your secret rendezvous at work, so he comes to your house and does something about it.   ➽ warnings: NSFW/MDNI. explicit language, smut, unprotected sex (pls wear a condom), daddy kink, degradation, infidelity by both parties, loss of virginity, mentions of anal sex ➽ a/n: if you know me irl no u don’t <3

It was quiet. Too quiet. I hated that. The silence let my thoughts run amok and that was never good for anybody, but least of all me. I had a tendency to overthink things, and quiet and still only amplified that. Knockemstiff, Ohio was the absolute worst place to live if you hated silence, because nothing happened in that little town. About twelve years ago, there had been a veteran who killed himself after his wife died, but that was the loudest thing that had ever happened to my little Knockemstiff. I should know; I worked as a secretary at the police station. I heard all of the gossip from around town. Earlier today, someone had been arrested for being drunk, which I think everyone in Knockemstiff could be in violation of. Every other day was quiet. It was hell. 

I could hear the crickets way out in the fields as I walked around the house. Those bugs served as my soundtrack as I found a box of matches and quietly slid a few into my mouth, and I padded through the house until I reached the front door. Knockemstiff was the sort of town where people didn’t use their front doors unless the Pope was showing up; it was all side doors and garages (if you were lucky enough to have one, which most of us didn’t). All that to say, I knew I could smoke by the front door and nobody would smell it. 

The night was hot. Oppressive and stifling, nearly suffocating. My skin was tacky against my nightshirt as I struck a match and lit a cigarette, and I leaned up against the side of the house. The moon was full, casting silver light onto my barren front yard and the dirt road that stretched exactly from one side of town to the other that ran in front of the house. It was a weird sort of beautiful. But quiet. Oh so quiet. 

Quiet, until I heard the far-off rumbling of a car. It wasn’t unheard of to get visitors in the night-- usually someone coming to ask me about the police station, because nobody had the balls or willpower to call our sheriff after hours-- but the noise drew closer at a snail’s pace. Whoever this was wasn’t in any hurry at all. Finally, a car rolled up in front of the house, the headlights off. There was a moment where I watched the car, then I sighed when the door wrenched open to reveal Lee Bodecker. The sheriff was a nice enough guy, maybe at the risk of being too nice sometimes and a total prick at others, but I was at a loss for why the hell he’d be here this late at night with his cruiser’s lights off. If it were an urgent police matter, he’d have his flashing lights on. 

“You shouldn’t do that,” Sheriff Bodecker told me, his voice carrying across the yard. 

“Do what?” I quipped. 

His boots brushed the porch as he climbed the steps up, and I caught his eye in the moonlight. “Smoking’s unbecoming of a young woman,” Bodecker told me pointedly. “Anyway, it’s a bad habit.” 

“You come to lecture me on smoking?” I asked. “I ain’t quite finished typing up that arrest report yet, if that’s what you’re after.” 

“No, no,” Bodecker said. “Nah, I ain’t here for that, sugar.” 

“Oh?” I said, crossing my arms. “And what are you here for?” 

“We’ll get to that soon enough,” Bodecker said. “Ain’t you gonna invite me in? It’s awful late.” 

“Exactly why I’m not gonna do that,” I said quickly, taking an exaggerated drag on my cigarette. “People talk, Lee. Blowjobs in the supply closet during lunch break are one thing; showing up to my house unannounced at half past midnight is something else. And I ain’t gonna be no Whore of Knockemstiff, ya hear me? Run along. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Invite me in, Y/N,” Bodecker said, tilting his head down to look me in the eyes. Bodecker was imposing: six feet tall and sturdy as a mule, even if his middle was getting a little soft. He had these steel-blue eyes that cut right to my core and gorgeous eyelashes, with puffy pink lips and a little cleft in his chin. Maybe if he were ten years younger, thirty pounds lighter, with one less marriage, I’d be into him properly, but that wasn’t the case. Our relationship was one of necessity (but aren’t they all?). His pretty little wife had stopped sucking his cock and he had a thing for my pink lipstick. It worked. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy our little trysts, because I definitely did, but something felt off about this certain encounter. He had never paid me a visit at home before. “Be a good little host for me.” 

I huffed and stamped out my cigarette. “Come in, won’t you?” I grumbled, throwing open the squeaky screen door. It felt off to have Lee in my house, but everything about us was off. I guess this was only normal. 

I flipped the light on and settled myself against the counter as Lee pulled off his tan sheriff’s hat. His hair was dark as pitch, shorn short on all sides but getting a little long at the top, and little wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes as he squinted at the pictures I had on the fridge. “And who’s this?” he asked, pressing his thumb into a picture. 

I looked at it and clenched my teeth. “Boyfriend,” I answered simply. 

“Oh?” Lee chuckled. “And where is he?” 

“Well, right now, he’s in ‘Nam,” I answered. “He enlisted, got sent over.” 

“And he didn’t propose before he left?” Lee asked, and I shook my head. “Hmm. Usually when men go to war, they make sure that they’ll have someone waiting for them when they get back.” 

“Why are you here?” I asked suddenly. “What do you want?” 

“The wife’s mad at me tonight,” Lee said. “She was drinking and started yellin’ at me. Said I was better gone.” 

“And you came here?” I said. “Why?” 

“Got nowhere else to go,” Lee shrugged. “And I figured that you’d welcome me.” 

“You couldn’t go to a bar?” I asked. 

“Not unless I wanted to run into my sister,” Lee said. “And I don’t feel like having a fucking lecture.” 

I sucked in air through my teeth. “Fine,” I finally said. “But you’re on the couch.” 

“Aw, c’mon, babe,” Lee groaned. He approached me at my place at the counter, and his arms went on either side of me, keeping me right where he wanted me. “It’s been a long day for me. You’re not really gonna make me sleep on no stinkin’ couch, are ya?”

“I sure am,” I told him. “‘Cause you’re sure as hell not sleeping in the bed.”

Lee tilted his head. “Not even a good night kiss?” he asked. 

“No,” I said. “This is an inconvenience for me. I got shit to do tomorrow and I need sleep.” 

“Which is why you were outside smoking,” Lee said. 

“Helps me calm down,” I snapped. “Lee. Let me go.” 

“You sure are a stupid little bitch, huh?” Lee sneered. “You really think I rolled up to your house just wanting a place to sleep? Honey, you shoulda been expecting more.” 

Lee regularly spoke to me like this, but it was usually while I was tying my hair back and kneeling down in front of him. “Don’t call me that,” I said. 

“It’s true, though, ain’t it?” Lee asked. “Just a dumb bitch, that’s all you are. You fuck a married man and try to act like you’re better than everyone else. And you don’t think everyone knows?”

My ego deflated in half a second. “Do they?” I asked shakily. 

“That’s why the wife kicked me out,” Lee said. “Someone told her I was fuckin’ you, and she got mad. Asked for a divorce and all.” 

“We’re not fucking, though,” I tried to counter. 

“Oh, so you’ll put my cock in your mouth and call it ‘convienience’, but you draw the line at calling that ‘fucking’?” Lee scoffed. “C’mon, sugar. The whole town already knows it.” I tried to keep my chin up, but I know that Lee saw my lip trembling. “Oh,” he chuckled. “Except the whole town doesn’t know, do they? Your little boyfriend goes to sacrifice himself for the betterment of our fuckin’ country, and you’re here, whoring yourself out for me? Is that why you don’t wanna fuck me proper? Saving your first time for that bitch-boy?” 

“I’m not a virgin,” I said, but Lee instantly saw through my lie. 

“Bullshit,” he said. “You know how I know? You suck cock like a high schooler.” Lee’s hand went to my waist, and he held me a tight, bruising grip. His hands were so much stronger than I had imagined, and an unfamiliar heat bloomed between my legs. My arousal wasn’t usually a part of the supply closet moments between us, and I had never really felt that before my boyfriend left. This was uncharted territory for me, and I hated that Lee seemed to instantly know that. “I bet you think about me every night, don’t you?” Lee asked. He leaned into me and pressed a kiss to my neck, and a shiver ran down my spine. “Don’t you?” He growled, taking my skin between his front teeth. 

“Fuck,” I hissed. “You’re a dick.”

“Answer me,” Lee snapped, smacking my ass hard enough to make me gasp in pain. “You think of me fucking you stupid every single goddamn night, don’t you? I can tell, with the way you eye me at the station. You’re not subtle, honey, not in the slightest.” 

“Lee,” I whimpered. “You’re hurting me.” 

“Good,” Lee huffed into my neck. He shoved his hips against mine with enough force for my waist to collide with my countertop, and I became well and truly stuck between Lee’s rock-hard cock and the counter. I knew what he was offering, and I couldn’t deny that the thought of his thick cock inside of me made butterflies erupt in my tummy. He kissed my neck, becoming more needy by the second, and he finally sank his teeth into my skin. “Gonna have to make up your mind, sugar, or I’ll do it for you.” 

I gulped down my anxiety, and I whispered, “Be gentle.” 

“That’s a good girl,” Lee chuckled. “Show me where that bed is, sugar. I’m gonna fuck you ‘til you can’t remember your own goddamn name.” 

As soon as I pulled Lee into my bedroom, he had pushed me onto the bed and was kissing me hard. He bit my lips and sucked on my tongue, and he swallowed every pathetic moan I let out. God, I was pathetic. I was shaking, I wanted him so badly. Lee obviously knew that and had no problem with letting it go to his head, because he situated himself over me and gave me a wolfish smile. “You want me to undress you, sugar?” he asked. 

“I can do it,” I told him. 

Quickly, I rid myself of my nightshirt, and my skin tingled at the exposure to the air. Lee gave a gentle sigh, almost like one of relief, and dipped his head to my chest. He ran his tongue from the dip of my neck to between my breasts, and he latched his teeth onto one of my nipples with no warning. I nearly gave a shout of surprise, but I kept it contained. If this bit of foreplay was any indication, there would be enough time for shouting and crying later. 

“These…” Lee growled, grabbing at my breasts with rough hands. “Perfect fuckin’ tits, sugar, Jesus. Wanna come all over them. I just might have to.” 

Lee’s mouth went to my other breast, and one of his hands fluttered down from my chest to my waist, and even lower. Again, without so much as a censure, he pushed a finger past my folds and sunk himself knuckle-deep into my throbbing heat. My back arched against my will and I cried out at the amazing feel of it, and Lee laughed into my tits. “I’m only doin’ this ‘cause it’s your first time,” Lee told me, slowly dragging his finger in and out of me. It was a feeling like nothing I had ever experienced before, and I felt tears welling in my eyes. It was so fucking good. “If I had it my way, I’d already have my cock in you. Have you on your belly, fucking the hell outta you, watching myself fuck you so deep.”

“Please, Lee,” I sobbed. 

Through my watery gaze, I saw Lee smile against my chest. “Oh, what a good girl,” he moaned softly. “You’re my little fuck-toy, ain’t ya? Just fuckin’ desperate and begging for it. I guess it won’t take too long to fuck you absolutely stupid, will it?” I shook my head, and I jerked in surprise when his calloused finger drove itself into that spot inside of me. I called out his name; I was too far gone to care about the sick pleasure I knew it gave him. “Beg for it, sugar. Beg me to fuck you dumb.” 

“Please, Lee,” I whimpered. “Lee, fuck, please. I-I want you to fuck me so hard, please, babe.” 

Lee withdrew his fingers from me and sent a hard slap to my throbbing clit. This time, my gasp was one of genuine pain. “That ain’t what you call me and you fuckin’ know it,” he grunted. “Do it right or don’t do it at all.” 

I knew what he wanted, and I was too far gone to care. “Oh, Daddy, please,” I mewled, squirming, longing for his touch once more. “Fuck me, Daddy, fuck me ‘til I can’t walk. I want you so deep in my pussy, please.” 

“That’s more like it,” Lee whispered. Then, with a strength that I didn’t know that he possessed, he turned me onto my stomach and tugged my hips into the air. My arms shook as I tried to steady myself, and I felt my wet arousal drip down my thigh. As I tried to steady my breathing and remove the fog from my mind, I heard the sounds of Lee undoing his belt and shoving his pants down his thick thighs. His big hand captured a handful of my hair unexpectedly and he tugged me upright with only a small huff of exertion, and he bit my neck again. Lee Bodecker was an animal, and I liked it that way. 

One hand stayed in my hair as his other guided himself inside of me, and I nearly felt sick. The stretch was otherworldly and, dare I say, painful. Maybe the prep he had been doing wasn’t such a poor idea. But I had made my bed; now I had to lie in it. “Slow down,” I panted, feeling the tears return, and I writhed in his grip. “Fuck, Daddy, it hurts.” 

“I know it does,” Lee whispered, biting my ear. “But you asked for this. You asked for me to fuck you, and I’m gonna do just that. And ya know what? I think I’ll come in this pretty little cunt. What do you think of that?” I started to protest, but Lee shoved his fingers in my mouth, effectively shutting me the hell up. Even if I wanted to say something, I couldn’t. “Fill you up to the fuckin’ brim, have it drip outta you, it’ll be such a filthy thing to see. Your little boytoy comes home from the war and you’ve been letting an older, married guy stuff you full of cum? You think he’ll like that? Think he’ll wanna share?” Lee snapped his hips forward, fully burying himself inside of me, and I gave a wrecked sob around his fingers. I thought for sure that he would split me in two. 

Lee’s fingers dug into my hip as he started a steady rhythm. I truly had no idea how old he was-- I imagined probably late 30s or early 40s-- but he was fucking me hard and fast with the stamina of someone my age. Either he had a lot of expertise in the field or he truly had the fantasy of coming inside of me and was wanting to hurry the process along. The more I thought about it, I realized that I really knew nothing about Lee. Not his wife’s name or if he had kids; I didn’t even know that he had a sister until he had mentioned it earlier. However, something about not knowing was better than knowing. At least, this way, I could sort-of distance myself from the act. I was fucking the sheriff (or, technically, he was fucking me), but we weren’t an item. I was just his favorite toy. 

Lee suddenly wrenched my arms behind me and captured them against his chest, fully restraining me and leaving me pliable for him. With his fingers still in my mouth, I could hardly do anything but submit, but I liked that. I couldn’t tell if the throbbing in my pussy was pleasure borne from the way he was punishing my g-spot, or pain derived from his taut balls hitting my wet pussy every second. I had gotten my wish; there was to be no walking in the morning. I could feel spit gathering at the corners of my mouth, and I nearly choked on it, but Lee suddenly slowed down, molding his soft body against my back. “Fuck, honey, I’m gettin’ close,” he panted in my ear. “Now’s the time to tell me if you want me to come in ya or not.” 

His fingers left my mouth, and I tried to form any thought. Lee was the only thing in my head, though, and I could only whimper out his name. That was answer enough for him, because he released my arm and shoved me down onto the bed. His hand grasped the back of my neck and held me down as his hips pounded in and out of me, huffing and panting. I never could have imagined that the sound of that would have turned me on as much as it did, but my muscles tightened around his fat cock, and he laughed. “Aw,” he cooed. “Does the little cunt need to come? I’ll be honest, I forgot all about that. Wanna make a mess all over Daddy’s cock, don’t you?” 

I answered with a keening whine, but that didn’t seem to be enough for Lee. He smacked my ass hard, surely adding to the redness and bruising that I know already existed, and he fisted my hair tighter. “Answer me, bitch,” he growled. “Say it. Say ‘I wanna come on your cock, Daddy’.” 

“I wanna--” I started, and a shudder went down my body when I felt something warm and wet find home on my asshole. I was so far past the point of degradation, and my mind instantly went somewhere else. I had heard about that, sure, but I had never imagined that that could be something that I wanted. And yet, here I was, Lee’s spit coating my ass, mumbling out words that would send me to hell. “Fuck, Daddy. Can you fuck my ass?” 

“Oh, is that what you want?” Lee asked. “As tempting as that is, I’ll save that for another night. I’m not sure you’re a virgin, sugar, begging for it up the ass. But, fuck, it looks so good… I guess we have something to look forward to, huh?” 

Lee’s arm wound around my body and he instantly went to my poor clit. His fingers had tugged at it enough to make it tender to the touch, and he abused it as he fucked right into my g-spot. “Jesus Christ,” Lee whispered. “Squeezing the shit outta me. I’m serious, honey, let me know if you don’t want me to come in you. You’re about to not-- fuck, Y/N-- have a choice.” 

“I want it,” I told him. “I fuckin’ want it.” 

That seemed to be the final straw, because Lee sent one more hard fuck into me, and I felt his cock twitch before warmth spilled into my pussy. The squelching as he continued to fuck me through his orgasm was so loud that I was afraid that the whole of Knockemstiff would hear it, but I couldn’t make up my mind on whether I cared or not. Somewhere in the middle of that, Lee cussed and began to rub my belly, whispering sweet things to me that would have felt out of place only minutes before. I didn’t realize that I had come. I liked the feeling of it, though, especially with how sweet Lee was suddenly.

“Good girl,” Lee told me. He shushed me as I moaned and cried, my pleasure edging on pain, and he pushed my hair away from my neck and placed gentle, open-mouthed kisses on my throat. “So, so good for me, ain’t ya? So goddamn pretty when you’re coming all over my cock. I can’t tell you how much I dreamt of this…” 

My entire body trembled as Lee pulled out of me, and I collapsed onto my bed, panting and trying to form a coherent thought that wasn’t just the sheriff’s name. Only a few seconds passed before he was on me again, but it felt different this time. Lee moved the two of us under the blankets and rubbed my back, and he kissed my forehead gently. I nearly thought it was love. As my tears dried and feeling returned to my fingers and toes, I became aware that Lee was naked against me. As far as I knew, he hadn’t undressed as he had fucked me. His skin was so warm and it was comforting, and I nuzzled my head into his soft chest. My throat was so dry as I tried to swallow to form words, and Lee titled my face up in order for me to look him in those pretty blue eyes of his. 

“How’re ya feeling, sugar?” He asked, his voice as wrecked and raw as mine. “Feelin’ alright?”

“Sore,” I mumbled. “It hurts, Lee.” 

“I’m sorry, honey,” Lee whispered, and I knew that he was being honest. Lee was perhaps the biggest jerk in town, his elected title obviously inflating his ego more than it should have, but I never knew that he was capable of being sweet in this manner. “I was real rough with ya and I just shouldn’t have been. I feel plum awful ‘bout it.” 

“No,” I croaked, splaying my hands against his chest. Underneath the coarse hair, I could make out white marks on his skin, and I pressed my forehead against him. As I studied his body, I saw more and more of the marks, and it was only when I saw my hip against his that I connected the dots. Stretch marks. My Lee had stretch marks all over him, just like I did. “Please don’t. I woulda stopped you if it was too much. Thank you.”

Lee nodded and sighed into my messy hair. “You looked so beautiful,” he told me. “Any man that calls you his is a lucky fuckin’ bastard, I’ll tell you that much.” 

I couldn’t help myself. My lips pressed against my chest, and I took care to kiss every mark I laid my eyes on. “You’re…” I began. “You’re gorgeous, Lee.” 

“Nah, knock that shit off,” Lee chuckled. “I ain’t nothin’ compared to you, sugar.” 

“No, really,” I told him. “Those big blue eyes, your pink cheeks… Your fat fuckin’ cock--” I laughed at myself, and Lee kissed the top of my head. “You’re the most handsome man I ever met.”

“Even more than your soldier boyfriend?” Lee asked. 

“My soldier boyfriend’s like a twig, Lee,” I told him. “There’s nothing there for me. But you…” 

“I’m fuckin’ fat, s’what I am,” Lee said with a smile, but I saw the hurt in his eyes. “I’m old and I’m fat--”

“Alright, shut up,” I said. Suddenly, a different sort of desire burned in me, and I pushed Lee onto his back before I straddled his waist. “There ain’t nothing wrong with you, ya hear? You are fucking perfect, Lee.”

The insecurity flashed across his face, darkening his features for only a second. “But the marks--” 

I twisted my body to show him my hip and thigh. “I got ‘em too,” I said. “And don’t act like you didn’t see them, not for one second. And what did you do? You didn’t give a shit. I don’t either. They’re a part of you, and you are so sexy, Lee. I wanted to jump your bones from the moment I met you, and nothing ‘bout that’s changed and nothing’ll make it change. And ya know what? I’d reckon you’re stuck with me, so get used to it.” 

“Oh, I’m stuck with ya, am I?” Lee asked with a smile. He tugged me down to him, pressing his tongue into my mouth once more, and the ache between my legs was replaced with the now-familiar pleasing tingle. “And I get no say in it?” 

“I think you got your say when you wanted to fuck me up the ass,” I said, sinking my teeth into his plush bottom lip. “What a fuckin’ cliche we are, huh? The sheriff fuckin’ his secretary.” 

“When I first hired you,” Lee began, his warm hands traveling all over my body, and his fingers took special care to trace the white marks along my thighs, hips, tits, and ass. “My wife hated the idea. She said she was worried that late nights at the station would wreak havoc on me, and having a pretty little thing like you there with me was dangerous.” 

“Don’t go talkin’ ‘bout your wife,” I groaned. “That’s such a turn off, Lee.” 

“Oh, is it?” Sheriff Lee Bodecker laughed, stuffing his fingers back inside me, just like nothing had ever happened. “‘Cause you seem all wet for Daddy, just the same.” 

[coppicefics]

Masked Omens: Prologue

Read the fic here!

[Image Description: Image 1 - A simple rendition of the Masked Singer UK logo, a golden mask with colourful fragments flying off of it. The mask has a golden halo and a golden devil tail protruding from either side. Below, gold text reads 'Masked Omens'.

Image 2 - A scrapbook with two newspaper cuttings pasted in. Each has a date handwritten by it; the first reads ‘Tadfield Gazette, 24th July 2009′. The second reads ‘Toffley Courier, 10th August, 2009′. Full text transcription below cut. End ID.]

Tadfield Gazette, 24th July 2009

HIDDEN GEM: O’LEARY’S LATEST STUNS CRITICS Masterful casting highlights themes of innocence and fear against a background of domestic drama. [”What do you care, David? Maybe I’d rather he dream of monsters than wake alone, like me.” ~ Jane Winsome, Act 2, Scene 3] RUMOURS OF Colleen O’Leary’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated. While it’s true that in recent years her name has been conspicuously absent from the glossy playbills and bright posters of the West End, the Dublin-born playwright still has plenty to say. Her latest offering, Hidden, is on the surface a simple domestic drama about an upper middle class family with a young son. It follows their trials and tribulations through a single fraught year as ten year old Matthew (played by the talented young team of Warlock Dowling, Gert Johnson and Adam Young in rotation) questions his relationship with his parents, his nightmares, and ultimately the world around him. Anita Lovett is both adoring and adorable in her role as Matthew's mother Jane, while Oscar Williams fulfils the role of a baffled, slightly distant father as David Winsome. The cast is rounded out by Anthony Crowley, making a return to acting in the role of Ashton Storeth, Matthew's babysitter. What might have been a fairly pedestrian premise – a child becomes unsettled as his parents fail to find time for him – is elevated to new and sinister levels by Crowley's double role as both minder and monster; Matthew is plagued by nightmares of a dark creature that dwells beneath his bed, a creature that seems to have a lot in common with the mysterious Storeth. As Matthew's nightmares increase in both frequency and severity, strange events unfolding in the household lead the audience to question just how much of what they're seeing on stage is real. The script seems to demand introspection of its audience; how much can we ever really know about the world we live in or the people we invite into our homes, even trusting them with our most precious treasures, our children? And yet, ultimately, Storeth and the Nightmare have more meaningful interactions with young Matthew than either of his parents. It's a thought-provoking piece with an ending that must be seen and not spoiled. All in all, a triumphant return to the stage for both O'Leary and Crowley, who seem to have come determined to prove themselves and done so admirably. Hidden is now booking until September 30th this year; for venue information and to book tickets, visit www.hiddenuktour.com.

Lots Donated To Charity Fundraiser WITH PREPARATIONS well underway for the Anna and Eve Foundation’s upcoming auction, it seems there are still more celebrities prepared to offer up their most prized possessions for a good cause. The latest announcement of items going under the hammer includes: The upright piano played in the drawing room scene in The Grasswater Affair, kindly donated by Celestireel A flaming sword used in the original magic act of The Amazing Mr Fell, as seen on last year's Royal Variety Performance, with personal instruction in its use from the magician himself A signed drumskin and drumsticks used by Queen drummer, Roger Taylor A Nike Total 90 Omni football signed by every member of this year’s league-topping Tadfield FC squad The stunning faux-diamond necklace worn by Angela Crowley in the 2003 film More than a Memory, contributed by Pace Productions (newspaper cuts off here)

An advert for the Four Horse Inn is also cut off at the bottom of the cutting.

Toffley Courier, 10th August 2009

Toffley Gate Protests Planned [Uriel Scrolle, Reporter] When Lawrence Richmond was elected as MP for Toffley South, it was partly on the strength of his campaign promise to invest in building affordable housing for local people. Sure enough, within a year of his election, his flagship development had been completed. Having opened its doors in 2006, Toffley Gate is a towering edifice of concrete and glass, boasting over 300 individual homes, most of which are luxury apartments – but many of them still stand empty. Now local housing campaigners are calling for lower rents to be imposed on these unoccupied units in a bid to open them up to local people who cannot afford the current rates. (Continued below.) [Image: A large, modern block of flats in yellowed black-and-white newsprint. End ID.] [Caption] The Toffley Gate development, pictured shortly after completion. Local housing activists say the affordable housing they were promised has never been provided. Photo: Daniel Brubaker on Unsplash. [End caption.]

Local Theatre Reports Record Sales for O'Leary's 'Hidden' Masterpiece: Former 'Kilcridhe' star steals show with moving performance [Citron Deux-Cheval, Arts Critic] Greater Deville’s Inferion Theatre has long struggled to fill seats as the rise of commuting in the town has left residents with far les [sic] time and money to spend on the town’s recreational offerings. It relies, therefore, on the continued patronage of those who are able to attend regularly, and on the rare piece of theatre that causes its audiences to insist friends and family go along and watch, too. This week, it reported its highest ticket sales for a single show in over ten years for the Saturday night showing of Hidden, a new play from veteran playwright Colleen O’Leary. Naturally, I had to go along and see what all the fuss was about, and I was glad I did. Hidden is a deep, dark exploration of the psyche masquarading [sic] as a simple drama about two unhappily married parents and their neglected child. While the story of David and Jane Winsome (Oscar Williams and Anita Lovett respectively) and their strained marriage is compelling, with painful betrayals and soft, poignant moments aplenty, it’s their son Matthew who steals the show, along with his au pair, Ashton Storeth, played to perfection by Anthony Crowley (once a familiar face on our television screens as heart-throb Father Jacob MacCleod in Kilcridhe). On the night I attended, Matthew Winsome was portrayed by eleven year-old Gert Johnson, one of three children who take turns in the role. For such a young boy to take on such a complex role is a very tall order, but Johnson more than rose to the challenge, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the mix of fear and adoration with which Matthew regards Ashton. In scenes with his mother and father, Matthew is quiet and respectful, almost withdrwan - but opposite Crowley, who plays the double roles of Ashton and The Nightmare, he becomes expressive and unspoken, loud in his anger, his fear and, yes, his love. Crowley, too, gives an incredible double-edged performance as warm, gentle Ashton and the silent, sinister presence that lurks beneath his charge’s bed - perhaps drawing on his own inner demons to lend authenticity to the role. Hidden is a play that leaves much open to interpretation: whether The Nightmare is real or imagined, what, if anything, it has to do with Ashton, and what the surprising ending means for the family. It’s a play to get you thinking, and I highly recommend you go along. Hidden is playing at the Infernion until August 15th. Contact the Box Office on 01632 496055 to book.

[asiaberkeley]

Afghan is beautiful

I am a half Afghan woman. An Afghan-European American. An Afghan American.

Admittedly, it took me awhile to offer up this information in the aftermath of 9/11 when Afghanistan became synonymous with terrorism in the eyes of many Americans. Taking pride in my heritage suddenly and painfully became controversial.

People didn’t know about my Afghan-ness though because I had my mother’s surname and not my Pashtun father’s: Hotaki. Also, I didn’t wear any kind of head covering because I was raised Catholic. It was easy to hide and pass for completely White.

My late father, an aspiring doctor and med school student who spoke six languages, left Kabul with his family before the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan as a child. They were the lucky ones. He spent most of his life in Germany where many Afghans have sought refuge. One of my fondest memories is flying kites with him and my Irish-Swedish-French American mother in the Munich Public Gardens as a child. There was no wind that day and we dragged the kites in dizzy circles…laughing together...just as I imagine him now when he was a boy: kite flying in the streets of Kabul.

Since my father died when I was six, I returned to my mother’s hometown of Boston with her in 1996. I was later left to contemplate what it meant to be Afghan in a place with very few Afghans compared to Virginia, California, and New York. In college, as an Asian Studies major at Wellesley College and later at the University of California, Berkeley, I often corrected people who said that Afghanistan is in the Middle East and not in South-Central Asia. I wondered why it seemed that no one had received much education on this country’s history or people outside of reading the popular Khaled Hosseini novel, The Kite Runner, especially since we have been at war—fighting together with the Afghan forces against the Taliban in the longest war in American history.

Many Americans don’t realize that the attackers on 9/11 were not Afghan. The attackers did seek a hiding and meeting place in Afghanistan, however. But those facts shouldn’t matter. Because it doesn’t matter what ethnicity, race, or nationality someone is if they commit a crime and it doesn’t matter where they were hiding. The guilty party does not represent all people of their background or country just like Hitler does not represent all Germans or all of Germany and El Chapo does not represent Mexico or all Mexicans. Similarly, the latest mass shooter in El Paso doesn’t represent all white American men.

After former President Trump pondered out loud the mere possibility of a concocted plan to kill 10 million Afghans and wipe the country off the face of the earth – presumably through the use of nuclear weapons – I have thought more about what it means to be Afghan American today. And it’s not because of those unimaginably cruel musings which add insult to injury in the homes of all Afghans traumatized by decades of war. Indeed, nearly every person who is not a white man has been made to feel worthless, subhuman and criminal under the rhetoric of the former Trump administration...so Afghans are not alone.

But Afghans were alone in the discussion of their genocide in 2019. I have contemplated my identity even more because not one leader or politician in America of any background spoke out formally against those disturbing statements. (And it doesn’t matter if this was an actual plan of his or just an imaginary scenario dangling in the recesses of his mind.) What does the national silence mean?

After 9/11, Afghan American author of West of Kabul, East of New York and Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary, went viral with an email he sent.  In it, he wrote:

“The Taliban and Bin Laden are not Afghanistan. They’re not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think “the people of Afghanistan” think “the Jews in the concentration camps.” It’s not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity, they were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. I guarantee it…Some say, if that’s the case, why don’t the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they’re starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated.”

After 2001, my family warned me that just telling people I was Afghan may offend or anger them because they may have lost a loved one on 9/11 or they may have had a son or daughter deployed to Afghanistan. In middle school, a classmate told me I was from the land of the terrorists after I proudly showed her an autographed book I received from an Afghan British writer, Saira Shah, called "The Storyteller's Daughter." My American cousin, a veteran, was later deployed to Afghanistan and brought back a burqa which I showed to my classmates in high school to teach them about the Taliban’s oppression. Contrary to what they may have assumed, what they saw was not traditional Afghan clothing. Traditional Afghan clothing, banned under the Taliban, is colorful, intricate, deeply hued, bright and beautiful. Google it.

A year has passed since Trump discussed wiping Afghanistan off the face of the earth. After it happened, I regularly checked Twitter and the news to see if any of our nation’s leaders denounced those remarks. I called my Governor, Congresspeople, and many others asking if just one would put out a statement to support Afghans and Afghan Americans against talk of our annihilation. The Governor’s office simply said that he did not put out a statement. I still haven’t found any. However, some Americans did speak out on social media. Thank you.

We have studied the long-lasting horrors of the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in our classrooms. I thought we concluded as a nation that something like that could never happen again. That not a single person in power thought it worth it to speak out against the possibility of the U.S. committing another nuclear genocide bewilders and frightens me. Is it controversial to say out loud that Afghans civilians do not deserve to die en masse? Are Afghans so vilified in our society that it’s a public risk to defend us?

If you still blame the Afghan people for 9/11 even if only on an subconscious level, think again. Many of the Afghan people are suffering in ways you can only imagine in your worst nightmares. They are not responsible and took no part in this. Like the poor souls who were killed in the Twin Towers, Afghans are survivors and casualties of terrorism as well. Afghan women have lost their entire families. They have been abused and pillaged. Men, women, and children have been bombed and maimed. Their history, including the rich Buddhist Silk Road history of Afghanistan, has been destroyed by the Taliban and others.

Discussing our nation's capability to conduct nuclear genocide of an entire people and country is an affront to all humans.

So I suggest to all of our nation’s leaders who have remained tight-lipped in the face of the unspeakable: Take time to learn something you don’t know about Afghanistan. Perhaps that could start with the story of progressive Afghan Queen and feminist Soraya Tarzi who asked, "Do you think, however, that our nation from the outset only needs men to serve it? Women should also take their part as women did in the early years of our nation..." Or it could be about the life and death of iconic Afghan singer Ahmad Zahir. You could learn about the courageous resistance of Afghan women and girls throughout history or visit that Afghan restaurant you were too timid to enter and try a sweet pumpkin kadoo dish.

As the war in Afghanistan, a war based on lies and deceit, may be coming to another tragic end with even graver implications for the women left behind who have fought so hard for equality,  maybe it’s finally time to read another book that is not the Kite Runner... and most importantly, time to look deep inside of ourselves and question the possible anger, hate and bias that has developed towards the Afghan people after the catastrophic and traumatizing events of September 11, 2001.

*See the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers which deemed that the American military did not know what it was doing there and that the war was based on lies and deceit. Government officials misled the American public about the war. The war has cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers with many more wounded as well as 100,000+ Afghan civilians killed or hurt. Many of the American troops have returned with PTSD. 30% of the Afghan casualties were children.

Sources

https://apnews.com/a2a8d7a4f89ec0515379dc4d4a38b56a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/

[mikesierra]

Football coach/car mechanic AU ⚽️ (helmet party)

Solly is training a boys' team of soccer, and Engie is his car mechanic. He doesn't need his truck checked out that often, but he still likes his company.

So, Jane has 12 jumpy kids around, three times a week for football practice. They run up and down the field for hours and get completely smashed. What's more, most of the times he practically babysits like 5 of them even after training hours, when their parents should have come to pick them up but for some unknown reasons they are regularly late. Jane ends up realising that the parents can't pick them up because they have 2, 3 jobs, so he doesn't really blame them - besides, he wouldn't have had anything better to do either way.

So he drives around in the afternoon in his truck, 5 chaotic toddlers jumping around in the back seats and beside him,

And they got to grow fond of the smart "Engineer" that amazes them everytime with his big complicated engines and pumps and workshop filled with tools!! Dell shows them some "tricks" to fix stuff at home, and in a couple of visits they become his little elf helpers (while others just play with some tools while covered in car oil).

One of the afternoons, while the toddlers let hell loose in his workshop, Dell and Jane share a beer while keeping an eye on them. Engie asks Solly if he had kids of his own, because he really was great with them. Jane says that he's never had a family of his own - he's a veteran that got to come back home only a few years before, so basically, he's single. And when Dell says he has a little girl, Jane supposes he's married and that's Sad™ because he's Gay™ for him

But turns out it was a past marriage, and now he's a single father. Which is Good because one evening, as they watch the football match together at Engie's house, Solly really makes an impression on that little Amazon warrior princess of his daughter, so much that in the same evening she announces to her dad that she's enlisted in Jane Doe's Army of Destroyers of Worlds™ with the other toddlers.

She's a little older than the kids, say a pre-teen, but she has always wanted a little brother and now she gets like 12.

[dragoneyesstuff]

My ideas of a modern avatar au.

( I've seen others headcanons of the gaang in more modern times so I wanted to share mine!)

(Some small notes on the gaang)

Aang:

Lived in an orphanage for a long time until meeting katara and sokka

Likes aesthetics ranging from cottagecore to frog core.

Loves puppets (in the style of the muppets of course) and made one that resembles Momo.

Absolutely LOVES Nintendo games, with pokemon and animal crossing being his favorites.

Vegan, but doesn't force it on others, he just reminds his friends that he is a vegan when going out to eat or when they have the occasional sleepover.

Goofball. Katara constantly has to watch him and sokka so they dont get into trouble, since together they share one braincell and katara has it.

Katara

Because of her caring nature, I could see her wanting to be some kind of doctor.

Makes sure that no one gets into trouble.

If she didnt wasnt apart of an argument, either her or aang will stop arguments.

Acts like a mom, despite her age. (And has probably done the classic "mom arm" at some point.

Sokka

The best way to describe his intelligence: Has been a straight A student throughout his entire life, but has also has done things like microwaving raw eggs because he thought it would hard boil them. (He found out it didn't)

Laughs at stupid memes and probably has either the best or worst sense of humor.

Plays soccer and is a part time coach.

Eats a lot and will eat random things at random times (zuko once caught him eating a bowl of cereal at 3 am and was like "wtf, dude?")

Like aang, he likes to play video games, but plays games like doom or super smash brothers.

Used to be sexist and kinda tight minded, but now he regularly chugs his "respect women and men juice"every day.

Will pull either really good or childish pranks on everyone. Ranging from that time attacked katara with a nerf gun, to that time he wrapped everything in zuko's room with Christmas wrapping paper (beware of him on April fools day)

Toph

Doesnt really spend money on herself, rather, she spends it on her friends. Most of the time its things that her friends cant really afford but they want, things like a Nintendo switch for aang, or tickets to a baseball game so sokka could take himself, suki, and zuko. But shes also used her wealth to personally help her friends, like helping them pay off tuition and student loans while in college, to personal things like buying an absolutely beautiful headstone for katara's mother, or personally paying for zuko's therapy sessions after he ran away from his abusive home life.

Even in the modern world, toph can still kick your ass with very little effort.

Wears baggy clothes often.

Wants to be a professional wrestler.

Appa was originally her seeing eye dog, but he wasnt really good at it, and she could already used her seismic sense to see, so she ended up giving him to aang

Zuko

Came from a really abusive and toxic home and still has trauma about his scar, but he never told anyone how he got it, except for his therapist.

Has major depression and anxiety. Sometimes he has an endless amount of energy, and sometimes feels like doing nothing all day and lies in bed. Iroh has tried his best to help his nephew, and is proud that zuko eventually realized he needs help.

Did some pretty bad things as a teenager. Ended up serving a stint in juvenile hall.

Had some really unhealthy coping mechanisms. Ranging from shoplifting to setting things on fire.

He started opening up more after befriending the gaang and even discovered more things about himself that he never really focused on.

He is a huge dork/nerd. Dont let that glare fool you.

Loves theater and will talk to suki for hours about their favorite musicals.

Is actually a really good cook. Aang, katara and sokka opened him up to showing this talent that nobody thought he would have.

Lived with his uncle iroh for a while until he had enough money to live in an apartment.

Goth boy. Absolutely loves going to concerts (especially grunge or metal)

Secretly craves the sweet release of death.

Has a thing for idiots.

Suki

Football player

Once absolutely destroyed sokka in a wrestling match and katara couldn't stop being smug about it for weeks

Was the catalyst for sokka realizing that sexism is worthless.

Yue

Sokka's ex.

Died from a terminal illness in her teens

Sokka occasionally visits her grave and leaves flowers on it.

Azula

Power hungry and really insecure.

Capable of really terrible things

Eventually gets admitted to a psych ward.

Ty lee

Bubbly cheerleader

Loves drama and people-watching

Kind of an airhead at times.

Loves to show off.

Mai

Goth girl.

Loves cryptids and witchcraft. Has a lot of merchandise relating to both

Deadpan in just about every kind of social interaction.

Very blunt. Is not afraid to call people out.

Will detect bullshit.

Works with zuko.

Ran away from her family in her teens, but is still financially supported by her parents.

(Now for the adults)

Hakoda

Hard working single dad.

Loves and supports his kids equally.

Basically a father figure to both aang and zuko.

Loves taking everyone on trips.

Will tell sokka to stop messing with his sister.

Police chief.

A good dad.

Ozai:

Owns a very valuable business company worth billions of dollars.

Secretly a cult leader.

Wins the worst father/husband of the year award.

Iroh

One of the few people who ran away from ozais cult and lived to tell the tale.

Hopes his nephew will get his life on track.

War veteran.

Has a great inheritance that he got from his father, but he uses it for three things. 1. To expand or pay off debts for the jasmine dragon. 2. Donating it to non for profit charities. 3. Helping his nephew get through life.

Some general stuff about places and events)

The jasmine dragon isnt just a teashop, its also a bistro/bakery. It's just more famous for its tea.

Ozai's cult is the reason why katara and sokka's mother is dead. Her murder has remained unsolved for years and hakoda has dedicated a good portion of his life to solving his wife's murder.

[malachite-isms]

Your Kiss is on Their List Pt 5: Yang Xiao Long

This was familiar. This mental soup of lingering ecstacy and satisfactory subordination, she hadn’t always known it, but it was normal for her now. It wasn’t overly often that this would happen, all parties involved had things to do of course, but it was common enough that there was a sequence of events she was used to going through. As were they.

First, she would go to the club, that fateful club where she had made an impressive, if a bit unnecessary, show of force on the establishment’s security detail and owner in lieu of getting the information she needed. There, she would do some drinking, maybe a bit of dancing, or even, more recently, shoot some pool in that newly renovated nook beside the bar. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing one couldn’t find in most other nightclubs in cities like Vale. Great music though.

Then, the odd dance would begin. They would approach her, those bedeviling women, and they would flirt like they’d only met once or twice before and hit it off. They’d give her an opening line, she’d shoot something charming back and they’d go back and forth like that for a while. Then they’d invite her to the back, she’d push through the cool rush in her chest and say yes at an appropriate volume. They’d then escort her to the back, and she would positively relish the jealous looks she’d get from charmless men. Very few got the honor of meeting up with the twins in private regularly, save for Yang Xiao Long and one other.

Then they’d lead her to their room, lavishly furbished with leather furniture, modern art, and the most well-stuffed bed she’d ever been on. It was always just a little chilly in there; not cold enough for an additional layer, but you’d always be doing the little things to warm up ever so slightly. Things like crossing your arms, or being close to someone else. Part of their setup, no doubt. There, one of them would sit her on the couch and heap compliments on her while the other sat on an adjacent chair and methodically apply vibrant red lipstick. She’d catch her staring, she’d always catch her staring, and the other would know exactly when to stop talking and redden her own lips as Yang was caught in a suggestive gaze. They were frighteningly good at what they did.

Then, with gentle tugs, they’d pull her from the couch to the bed and begin the main event. They’d lean on either side of her and start with her cheeks. Gentle, lingering kisses that let her relish in the contact and warmth. They’d refresh the kiss-shaped stamp they had on her brain. They would work their way to her nose, and her forehead, and her temples, and her jaw, and her neck. Then they’d help her remove her jacket and scarf, she’d often already in a trance at that point. With only her tube top remaining on her torso, they’d kiss her neck, then her shoulders, then they’d let her slowly fall to the bed as they worked their way down her arms and to her hands.

At that point, they would ask her the question; how far would they go tonight? Yang would have to tell them, with a please. They never demanded one, never even asked for one, but she’d always say please. They’d always oblige her, if she asked for a full coat, they paint her red from head to toe. Sometimes,  when she was in the mood, she’d ask for something along the lines of “the full package,” and they’d oblige her.

Finally, they’d be done, and she’d be speechless. It had been a long time since the first occurrence of this, but she would always be speechless, staring at the ceiling, and simply plastered in impressions of lips, residue of blissful kisses that would put her firmly on cloud nine, regardless of whether or not her pants stayed on. They’d leave to the adjoining bathroom and clean themselves up.

Recently, if they hadn’t gone all that far, another step would occasionally come up. She would, without cleaning herself up, pick herself off the bed and wobble her way to the bar. She would be too love-drunk to care about the bewildered stares she’d get from the jealous and the envious, and order herself a lite beer, or even a water. Something simple to revitalize her system. There, she’d be joined by the only one to be able to truly sympathize with her, the only one who could claim to be in her shoes more often than Yang herself.

Tonight was one of those nights, and Cody Baxter was that individual.

Cody was, in many ways, Yang’s polar opposite. A passive pacifist who never looked to instigate anything aside from chill vibes. He was a writer by trade, and wouldn’t consider himself charming. Which made it as baffling to him as it was to many others when the infamously seductive Malachite Twins rented out a space in the club for the guy and showered him with affection whenever they got the chance. The only one more often covered in lipstick from the twins than Yang was Cody.

Though tonight, he was clean and Yang was the recent target.

“Y’know,” he started “,we gotta stop meeting like this.” 

“What,” she shot back, words slightly slurred “,you think you could hold up any better?”

They both chuckled like old war veterans, warmly recalling what others would consider nightmares.

“I take it this was your way of getting a ‘lightened sentence’ as it were?” he asked with a glance at the blonde.

“Yyyyyyou could say that I guess.” She took a swig of beer. “If what they did to my team was their version of going easy, I’d rather this,” she gestured to her marked self “,than whatever they were planning for an old vet like me.”

“Y’know, you say that,” he said, melancholy slowly entering his voice “,but I don’t think either of us handle them better now than when we got got for the first time.”

“Oum, the first time...”

-----------------------------

That club was so nice on her first visit, and cleaned up so nice the second, why not go again just for fun?

She was owed a drink, after all. Yang strutted into the club, the music was back, the patrons were back, and Junior was back. Back, too, were those twins who she never got to be properly introduced to.

With strawberry sunrise in hand, Yang took a seat between them at the bar. This place was worth being a regular at, best to ingratiate herself with the staff, especially the boss’s right hand girls.

But there was two of them so... right and left hand? Anyway.

“W’hey there!” she opened “So, I’m not so great at apologies, so how about I just buy you ladies a round?”

The two haughty women rolled their eyes and nodded in acquiescence.

Yang signaled to the bartender who promptly slid some fancy drinks to the twins, their favorites, Yang presumed.

“So, dunno if you’re cool enough with me for this, but would you mind if I got your names?”

A heavy pause followed.

“Melanie.”

“Miltiades.”

Yang was thoroughly surprised. She would’ve bet her bike that, no, they were not cool enough with her yet. Might as well strengthen her advantage then.

“Well, I gotta say, Melanie, Miltiades,” holy shit, did she just nail the red one’s name on the first try? “you girls are pretty damn good fighters.

Apparently, the praise was enough for the twins to deign her with their gazes instead of cold shoulders.

“I mean, most people have to fall back on their semblances when I go on the attack, but you two? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you guys didn’t even raise your aura when I hit you, did you?”

Another heavy silence.

“Knowledge is power,” Melanie said plainly.

“Uhhh... huh?”

“If we used our semblance for every punk with their head in their ass,” Miltiades clarified “,people could scout us for planned attacks.”

“Not that you’d know anything about that.” They scoffed in unison.

Ouch.

“W-well,” Yang tried to get back on balance “,I’ll be the first to tell you, I have a lot of muscles that might be the strongest,” she flexed her arms to drive the point home “,but my brain ain’t in the running!”

Self-deprecating humor, she didn’t use it often, but this seemed like a good time to bust it out. Some humility never hurt when trying to earn some forgiveness, right?

*chu*

Yang felt what happened, heard what happened, but her brain needed some time to process it. she looked to each of her biceps and found a red lipstick-imprint on each of them and a twin caressing an arm each.

Yang’s face lit up like a traffic light, but no words came out. Noises escaped her mouth for sure, but they were most definitely not words.

“You know, for as hot-headed as you are,” Melanie said, pausing to kiss Yang’s forearm “,you definitely have a charm about you.”

More noises, no words.

A soft hand cupped her cheek and turned her toward its owner; Miltiades, who had closed the distance and was inches away from her face.

“Y’know, you’re so cute, we can’t stay mad at you. How about we get away from the crowds so we can... get to know you better?”

There was a heavy silence.

Without taking her eyes off Miltiades, Yang picked up her strawberry sunrise, downed it in one go and croaked out “Sure.”

------------------------------

“Well if it isn’t our two favorite patrons!”

Melanie’s peppy arrival snapped Yang out of her recollection.

“Heyo, Mel,” Cody greeted the twin “,to what do we owe the honor?”

“Just a quick bit of correspondence we would like our blonde friend to deliver.”

Curious, Yang turned to the pair fully to find Miltiades holding out a business card. She took it, read it, and her eyes widened.

“Uhh... girls?” she said with trepidation in her voice “,I don’t wanna tell you how to go about your business, but this... this might not be the best idea.”

“Yang, for real, we appreciate the concern,” Miltiades said with uncharacteristic bluntness given their recent escapades “,but we’ve done our research. Trust us, we’ve planned this one out thoroughly. We know what we’re doing.”

“If you say so.” Yang looked down at the lipstick-stained card. “Better brace yourself, vomit-boy.”

[antoine-roquentin]

IN A SLEEPY German town called Oberursel, tucked into rolling hills north of Frankfurt, the Nazis had operated a transit camp for captured British and American pilots. The U.S. Army took it over in 1946 and named it Camp King, after an intelligence officer who had been killed a couple of years before. Since it was already configured with prison cells and interrogation rooms, it became the place where recalcitrant ex-Nazis and other prisoners were sent for “special interrogation.” Officially it was said to house the 7707th European Command Intelligence Center. That was not the whole story. Camp King was home base for the “rough boys,” a handful of Counterintelligence Corps officers known for abusing prisoners. Some of their methods were traditional, like immersing victims in freezing water or forcing them to run through gauntlets of soldiers who beat them with baseball bats and other weapons. Others were pharmacological. They injected some victims with Metrazol, which was thought to loosen tongues but also causes violent contortions, and others with cocktails of mescaline, heroin, and amphetamines. Victims’ screams sometimes echoed through the base. “The unit took great pride in their nicknames, the ‘rough boys’ and the ‘kraut gauntlet,’ and didn’t hold back with any drug or technique,” one veteran of the Counterintelligence Corps later recalled. “You name it, they used it.” The “rough boys” at Camp King gave Allen Dulles all the muscle he needed for torture of the traditional sort. Most appealingly, as one CIA officer in Frankfurt put it, “disposal of body would be no problem.” Dulles, though, was looking beyond traditional methods of interrogation. He resolved to take advantage of Camp King’s assets, but in a way that would allow him to test forms of persuasion more sophisticated than what the “rough boys” doled out. Senior CIA officers saw Bluebird as a portal that might lead them toward an undiscovered world. At Camp King they had a site where they could test any drug or coercive technique. They had a ready supply of human subjects. If any died, disposing of their bodies would be “no problem.” Best of all, since their work would be in American-occupied West Germany, they were beyond the reach of law. Rather than rely on the thuggish “rough boys,” the CIA began sending Bluebird teams to Camp King to carry out interrogations. Then it went a step further. Bluebird work was so secret that even a secure army base was not secure enough. Behind tightly closed doors, a far-reaching plan took shape. The CIA would open its own secret prison where captured enemy agents could be used as subjects in mind control experiments. It would be under the formal control of Camp King but located outside the base perimeter and run by the CIA. To put it another way: a CIA “safe house” under the protection of the U.S. Army. A few miles from Camp King, in the village of Kronberg, a gabled villa stands at the end of what was once a country lane. Over the heavy wooden doors is chiseled the date it was built: 1906. For a generation it was known as Villa Schuster, after the Jewish family that built and owned it. The family was forced to sell during the Nazi era. In early 1951, Americans from the CIA and the Special Operations Division who were looking for a “black site” drove up the lane and found it. From the outside, Villa Schuster—also known as Haus Waldhof, after the name of the lane that leads to it—looks almost regal, a calm survivor of history’s tempests. It is spacious, with an elegant entryway and sturdy beams. The grand living room has a high ceiling, leaded windows, and an imposing fireplace. On the two upper floors are a dozen bedrooms. The basement is a complex of bricked-in storerooms, easily configured as sealed cells. With the coming of the Cold War in the late 1940s, a different sort of prisoner began arriving at Camp King. Many were from Eastern Europe, including East Germany. Some were captured Soviet agents. Others claimed to be refugees but had been judged unreliable. The guilty were mixed with the simply unfortunate. All were what the CIA called “expendable,” meaning that if they disappeared, no one would inquire too closely. The especially expendable, along with those believed to be guarding especially valuable secrets, were sent to Villa Schuster. In its basement, doctors and scientists conducted the most extreme experiments on human beings that had ever been carried out by officers of the United States government. “This villa on the edge of Kronberg became the CIA’s torture house,” a German television documentary concluded decades later. CIA officers who conducted Bluebird interrogations at Camp King and Villa Schuster counted on guidance from “Doc Fisher,” a German physician who had worked at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington and spoke good English. “Doc Fisher” was General Walter Schreiber, the former surgeon general of the Nazi army. During the war he had approved experiments at the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Dachau concentration camps in which inmates were frozen, injected with mescaline and other drugs, and cut open so the progress of gangrene on their bones could be monitored. According to one American researcher, his experiments “usually resulted in a slow and agonizing death.” After the war Schreiber was arrested by the Soviets and imprisoned at the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow. Finally he persuaded his jailers to allow him to accept a professorship in East Berlin. Once there, he slipped across to West Berlin and presented himself to officers of the Counterintelligence Corps. As soon as they confirmed his identity, they sent him to Camp King. There he was welcomed like an admired colleague. “The former chief physician of the German army, who had been responsible for overseeing many concentration camp experiments, sat for weeks of questioning,” according to one report. “But these were not the kind of questions an accused prisoner would be asked about crimes against humanity. They spoke as scientists and colleagues, about their knowledge and experiences.” Within a few months after his arrival, Schreiber rose to become Camp King’s staff doctor. Part of his job was to advise members of visiting Bluebird teams in techniques of “special interrogation.” One CIA-connected researcher, a Harvard Medical School professor named Henry Beecher, spent a long evening with him at Villa Schuster. In retrospect it seems a chilling scene: sitting in an elegant salon, probably sipping good drinks, almost certainly with a fire blazing, these two mutual admirers, one a former Nazi doctor and the other a Harvard professor who worked with the CIA, talked shop. They were among the world’s few true experts on the subject of psychoactive drugs and had much to discuss. Directly below their feet were stone cells where “expendables” were kept for use as subjects in Bluebird experiments. Beecher wrote afterward that he found Schreiber “intelligent and cooperative.” He enjoyed their “exchange of ideas.” Teams of Bluebird interrogators flew regularly to West Germany to conduct their experiments. Most often, they did their work at Camp King and the nearby “black site” at Villa Schuster. German researchers would later identify other secret prisons where Americans also carried out extreme experiments. One was in Mannheim, near the baroque palace from which princes once ruled the Palatinate. Reports have placed others in Berlin, Munich, and the outskirts of Stuttgart. At these secret prisons, Bluebird interrogators worked without any outside supervision. This set a precedent that marked a breakthrough for the CIA. By opening prisons, the Agency established its right not only to detain and imprison people in other countries, but to interrogate them harshly while they were in custody without regard for U.S. law. So successful was this network of prisons in West Germany that the CIA duplicated it in Japan. There, Bluebird interrogation teams injected captured North Korean soldiers with drugs including sodium amytal, a depressant that can have hypnotic effects, and with three potent stimulants: Benzedrine, which affects the central nervous system; Coramine, which acts on the lungs; and Picrotoxin, a convulsant that can cause seizures and respiratory paralysis. While they were in the weakened state of transition between the effects of depressants and stimulants, CIA experimenters subjected them to hypnosis, electroshock, and debilitating heat. Their goal, according to one report, was “to induce violent cathartic reactions, alternately putting subjects to sleep, then waking them up until they were sufficiently confused to be coerced into reliving an experience from their past.” CIA officials in Washington ordered the officers who carried out these experiments to keep their true nature secret even from the American military units with which they were working, and to say only that they were conducting “intensive polygraph work.” As the pace of these experiments intensified, scientists at Camp Detrick renewed their interest in Kurt Blome. Immediately after the war, they had declined his offer to come to the United States, but by the early 1950s his knowledge of poisons and hallucinogens seemed to qualify him as an ideal adviser to the Bluebird project. The CIA found him practicing medicine in Dortmund. On a spring day in 1951, an officer visited his office with a proposition. If he would agree to spill his secrets, the CIA would arrange for an “accelerated Paperclip contract” that would bring him to the United States. Blome was enjoying his new life, but admitted that he liked the idea of a “return to biological research.” Finally, drawn especially by the prospect of working once again with his former Nazi comrade Walter Schreiber, who had accepted a Paperclip contract and was at that moment preparing to board a ship for New York, he decided to accept the CIA’s offer. He sold his medical practice, listed his home with a real estate broker, and pulled his children out of school so they could concentrate on learning English. The timing was bad. Schreiber’s arrival in the United States set off a scandal. The newspaper columnist Drew Pearson published excerpts from testimony at Nuremberg that implicated him in war crimes, specifically the assigning of doctors to carry out experiments on concentration camp inmates. Much outcry followed. Schreiber’s American sponsors reluctantly decided to cancel his Paperclip contract. Rather than return to West Germany, he chose retirement in Argentina. This scandal erupted as the chief of U.S. Army intelligence in Berlin, Colonel Garrison Cloverdale, was reviewing Kurt Blome’s application for a Paperclip contract. He had rubber-stamped dozens of others, but this time he balked. The extent of Blome’s crimes, he decided, disqualified him from entry into the United States. In a memo to General Lucius Clay, the High Commissioner for Germany, he recommended that the “accelerated Paperclip contract” be rejected and that Blome be denied a visa. Clay agreed. Cloverdale sent a curt cable to the Camp Detrick scientists: “Suspend shpmt Dr. Kurt Blome—appears inadmissible in view of HICOG.” CIA officers working on the Bluebird project were furious. “Blome contract signed and approved Commander in Chief,” one of them wrote in an angry memo. “Subject completing preparations for shipment late November. Has already turned over private practice Dortmund to another doctor. In view of adverse publicity which might ensue and which may destroy entire program, this theatre recommend[s] subject be shipped.” The CIA’s appeal was unsuccessful. Admitting Blome to the United States threatened to focus unwanted attention not only on him, but also on the hundreds of other former Nazis who had been quietly brought to work at American military bases and research laboratories. Yet Bluebird operatives remained determined to tap his uniquely valuable store of knowledge. Fortunately, the ideal job had just become available. Walter Schreiber had been staff doctor at Camp King, and now that post was open. The CIA offered it to Blome. He would resume the work he pursued during his Nazi years: testing what one memo called “the use of drugs and chemicals in unconventional interrogations.” Since he would be based at Camp King rather than in the United States, he could help direct the interrogations as well. Blome accepted. His wife refused to move to Camp King with him, and the couple separated. “Doc Blome” was free to devote all of his time to his new work.

Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief

[rookisaknight]

No Cult AUs, but like, still sad about it

The thing is I'm deeply uninterested in "no cult" AUs where the Seeds are just like, completely functional members of society because so much of what we see of their personality is linked directly back to their own trauma. Obviously, your pain doesn't necessarily define who you grow up to be, but just because they're not inherently evil doesn't mean they wouldn't have rough edges. Starting a murder cult in Montana isn't the problem, it's a symptom of the problem. (That's a fun sentence)

I want a Jacob who did some fucked up things during military service, and who didn't get the help he needed. Who still spent time in the shelter before John and Joseph found him. Things are a bit better in Montana. At the very least he finds some solace in the woods, away from people and overwhelming stimulus.

But he still refuses therapy. Refuses to sit down with anyone he thinks is trying to poke around in his head. He's unwilling (some might say afraid) to give up all the ugliness inside of him. Miller, juvie, his father, all of them shaped him into the man he is. He doesn't know who he is apart from all that, and he refuses to find out.

He's as mean and tough as the timber wolves he trains. More than a few establishments have barred him for violent incidents, sometimes when he's having an episode and others that are just a part of his personality. There's very few who understand that there even is a softer side. That there's only a handful of people on this rock that he cares about, but he'd move heaven and Earth for them without batting an eye, no questions asked.

Jacob also struggles a lot with his own understanding of his masculinity. Juvie and the military were both toxic environments for a boy to come into manhood. He's not a monster, but it's hard for him to push that out of his head. To not snidely remark that maybe John should try skirts if he's gonna spend so blessed long on his clothes. To stop himself from pushing Rachel out "while the men talk" or snort that maybe Deputy Pratt is "batting for the other team" if you catch his drift. And it sucks, and it's gross, but it's there. 

It's also the only part of himself that he allows to change. Grace Armstrong is one of the few Hope County veterans he actually talks to and feels any sense of connection to. They get drinks on occasion, swap the few war stories they actually have any fondness for and shoot the shit. And one night, she quietly informs him one night that while he’s probably the closest thing she has to a best friend if he calls Adelaide Drubman a whore or insinuates that Jess needs taming, she will not hesitate to stick her boot so far up his ass he won’t shit right for weeks. She’s giving him a crash course on “feminism for gross white mountain men” and helping him come to terms with parts of his own sexuality that he’d been afraid to look in the eyes before. He’s not there yet, but he’s learning.

There are untold sleepless nights. Many of those spent curled up under his blankets, blocking his ears against imaginary gunfire and closing his eyes tight against what he fears he’s going to see. Jacob Seed wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror, and doesn’t recognize or like a single bit of what stares back at him. But he hopes he’ll find peace in the mountains. He’s taken up wood-carving. Maybe using a knife for a less bloody purpose would help...

Joseph takes regular medication for schizophrenia. Alarms are set on his phone (An old flip model, Faith has yet to convert him to a touchscreen), and he rarely misses a day. The meds aren’t perfect: the drowsiness can make his temper shorter than it should be, and the weight gain and constipation can make diet maintenance a struggle. But he’s a disciplined man. He manages. And keeps the voices at bay to the best of his ability.

Medication and regular therapy (when he could afford it) have killed off the more manic sides of his religion, but it hasn’t taken away his faith.  Their miserable youth drove Jacob farther from God. It drew Joseph closer. Perhaps an instinctive desire to understand whatever it was that drove their father into such fits over perceived wickedness. And yet, the God he encounters is not one that belonged to his father. It seems to be one that belongs entirely to Joseph. Not exactly a comfortable Hallmark brand, but something that compels him to disciplined behavior. Fills him with peace, and a desire to share that peace with others.

He talks theology with Jerome on fishing trips. They don’t agree on a lot regarding God. But there’s a kinship there. If they’re two blind men trying to feel out the shape of an elephant and coming to different conclusions on what they hold, at least they agree there is something to feel. 

He remains something of a manipulator. Father Seed is an open and accepting presence, one with the ability to reach into the very heart of your pain, expose it, and then apply a quick and ready balm. When he takes the lectern he is a gifted thinker, an eloquent speaker, and a charismatic communicator. Perhaps its an aspect of himself. But when he goes home Sunday night, takes off the suit and steps into jeans, he becomes reserved once more. Those who have seen the transformation find it almost spooky. The eyes go from a warm embrace to a cold calculation. The Father doesn’t get crossed often, but those who scheme against his congregation or offend his family finds themselves quickly exposed by him, their insecurities laid bare and attacked. It's unnerving how he can easily pick up on the tells of a weak self-image, of a troubled family or a problem with drinking. The Sherriff sometimes jokes he’d make a good detective. Or a con man.

Joseph Seed has a knack for sowing discomfort. Something about him is a little too...open. Like he unlocked a part of his soul most keep to their private selves and laid it out on the surface. But his perceptiveness gives him great strength as a counselor, and for every person who swears he's a devil, there's someone who knows he helped them out of their deepest and darkest places.

John had to work hard to unlearn the lessons from his abusers. He could afford the finest therapists in the world but until Joseph found him he refused to go. At some point, before reaching adulthood he picked up on the general notion that parents shouldn't hurt their kids the way all of his had. But it was so hard to tell himself that he didn't....deserve it.

Was it wrong to say there were moments where he was almost proud of it? The world was full of sinners, but thanks to his parents he had the courage to face it. To take his punishment and atone. The self-mutilation, the whippings and fasting and hours in prayer until his voice was hoarse and his knees bled.....maybe others viewed them as grotesque but to him, they were redemption. He didn't ask why it had to happen to him. He could only think that maybe the world would be a better place if everyone did it.

It created a split in his sense of self-worth. On the one hand, he viewed himself as a maggot straining for approval from on high, unworthy of even the crumbs of forgiveness yet anxious to gobble them up. That self-loathing tormented him, drove him to drown his agonies in substance abuse and turn to the pain of a knife or a needle to make him feel punished enough. And yet, on the other hand, he saw himself as superior to everyone else. At least he knew his place in the hierarchy of creation. Better a worm that knows he's a worm than a worm that thinks he's a lion.

John's a mess of coping mechanisms. In college, there was the bottle, self-harm, and a lover or two or three. Always putting himself in the most degrading position possible, because at least then he felt like he could deserve affection. And after graduation...there was a tight control. Every hour was stuffed for maximum productivity because free minute meant time where the dark thoughts could creep and catch him unawares. he wouldn't let himself go to bed until he was ready to drop from exhaustion.

Joseph, Jacob, and even Faith learn to spot the signs of when things are getting bad for him. When the dark circles under his eyes are growing more and more prominent but his clothes are immaculate. When Joseph finds him stashing razor blades (he hasn’t hurt himself since moving to Montana, but having them within reach becomes important to him). When Faith finds him screaming at someone because they brought him the wrong blueprints for the youth center. It's tricky, because openly acknowledging The Thing will only make John try harder to cover it up. But they find subtle ways of defusement. Jacob lays off giving him a hard time, for once. Joseph finds ways of lessening the work on his table and manages to carefully sneak in commendation during their weekly meetings. Faith insists on cooking for him and visiting regularly under the pretense of discussing her college plans. It's not a perfect system, but its the best they know to pull him out of it

Rachel Jessop still takes the name Faith Seed. Not for any heraldry purposes. But because she wants to feel....a part of something. The converting process asks you to put off your old self. Rachel Jessop, the druggie, the abused, the disappointment, the unloved, was such a bundle of hurt and anguish and self-destruction that the only way she felt she could put it behind her was to recreate herself. The last name was easy. The Father had given her a family, and she would wear that fact proudly. 

Faith was because it was what was required of her every day. The faith that tomorrow she would be able to stay off the needle. That she wouldn’t harm herself tomorrow. That the only tears she would shed would be tears of joy. Joseph said faith was perhaps not the right word for it. After all, all these things took effort on her part. But for her, they also required trust in a higher power, to guide her and keep her on the Path. 

Though she cast off Rachel’s name, so many of the worst parts of her followed into the new identity. The codependency and abandonment issues, so strong sometimes that she can’t go home that night, to the small, but empty cabin that she’s made her own. Joseph and John both have a guest bedroom set aside for her, and she takes advantage of this frequently.

Her desperate need to please the people around her is often imperceptible. She seems so bright and happy and full of life that many take her as the finest example that Eden’s Gate saves lives. But there is so much pain behind the smile. An offhanded comment about her hair from one of the teens in her bible study sets her off in an obsessive spiral for a couple of days after. At church events, she stays longest, cleans everything up. Her phone is constantly buzzing with messages from all the lonely hearts of Hope County. She neglects her mental health in favor of helping others.

If she can just....if she can prove to Joseph that she was worth saving...She hated feeling like a pity case. Like in her core she was still that same wretched sinner that showed up stoned to her first sermon. Who stole her best friends credit card and went on a shopping spree. Who baited her sickly mother with empty promises of daughterly love in order to get money for rent, or more often, meth. She’d been hurt by so many people in her life that she had felt like she was justified in hurting everyone else in a directionless act of revenge. And now that she’s older, she’s worried she’s ruined herself for honestly helping others. Every act she does is not enough to assuage her guilt, that sometimes fills her up so much it makes her nauseous.

She’s working with Joseph on this. They meet once a week to discuss her spiritual progress. At his recommendation, she also visits a counselor fairly regularly, which seems to help. And in all honesty, this might be what makes her connect so well with the teenaged population of Hope County. She knows what its like to feel like an unlovable outcast, to worry that you are disappointing everyone. Faith, in her own way, is dazzling. Most just wish that she knew that too. 

[takaraphoenix]

Jercy Week Day 3: Loyalty

Prince Perseus was the second youngest child of King Neptune and Queen Salacia.

Prince of the ocean and of all merpeople. And he was absolutely breathtaking. Everyone who got to meet the prince in person knew that. His skin was a light, soft blue and so was his long, sleek tail, his eyes were a sparkling sea-green and his hair black, softly floating around his face.

Jason had watched the young prince grow up, through the press and through official events when the royal family would visit Atlantis. He had always admired the prince, who had the kindest smiles and who always interacted with everyone. The prince got into a lot of trouble all the time, it was always a topic of gossip around Atlantis.

Jason? He came from nothing. His mother had died when Jason was only two years old. His big sister Thalia and her best friend Luke had basically raised him. Jason and Thalia grew up on the streets, urchins living in a gang of orphans. Stealing to get by and have food on the table.

He worked hard. As soon as he was old enough, he started working hard. He joined the army, went through basic training, he worked his way through the ranks, climbed the ladder.

He came from nothing and he got everything.

He was a decorated general, the youngest that Atlantis' army had ever seen. He was highly respected and had the king himself pin the medal to Jason's chest. Probably the last medal he would ever earn, because during that last battle, he had lost one of his fins. He couldn't go back to war, not like that. And just like that, he was back at square one, back to having nothing.

/break\

Jason was sitting on the couch, glaring at the wall. He had bought the house for them, once he had the money. Thalia and Jason's three best friends – Leo, Piper and Reyna. Luke had moved in with his by now fiance a couple of years ago and had taken the youngest street-kids with him. Jason and Thalia had taken the older. Jason wondered how long they'd be able to afford it.

"Stop sulking, Jay", sighed Reyna and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"We'll be fine", assured Piper gently, tilting her head.

Reyna was also in the army. She'd leave soon again for deployment. Piper had gotten a job as a chamber-maiden at the palace, Leo worked at the forges. They would be fine, probably. And Atlantis took care of their veterans, so it wasn't like they stood there with nothing now that Jason was honorably discharged. It still stung. Jason had worked so hard and now it was all gone.

A knocking at the door disturbed Jason's gloominess. Thalia swam right through the living room to go and open the door. Jason sighed and slipped lower on the couch, fingers clawed into the armrest.

"...Jason. Jason, it's... for you", called Thalia out, sounding stunned.

"I'm not in the mood for visitors", growled Jason back.

"I did hope you would welcome your queen."

Jason froze and turned slowly to see that indeed, it was Queen Salacia. She smiled kindly, her brown hair flowing around her as did the pink silken robes she was wearing. The light from outside caught in her crown, making it sparkle. Piper and Reyna exchanged a surprised look.

"Queen Salacia, what... It's an honor, but... what are you doing here?", asked Jason slowly.

"I've watched your career very closely, General Jason", replied the queen with a smile.

"My... You... have?", grunted Jason stunned and confused.

"You and I, we're much alike", continued Queen Salacia with a kind smile. "We both came from nothing and we worked very hard to get to where we are."

Slowly, Jason nodded at that. She had come from nothing, that was true. A teenaged orphan working hard at a bakery and catching the recently widowed king's eye. She never forgot her roots though, she had always watched out for the little guy. She always kept close to her neighborhood.

"Percy... Prince Perseus, he's a good boy, but oh, he is a lot of trouble", sighed the queen, brushing her hair out of her face. "He's a free spirit. He's not made to stay cooped up in the palace. He wants to explore. I... I'm so afraid that something will happen to him."

"I... understand that. He's your son", nodded Jason. "But... what do I have to do with this...?"

"You are a good, honorable man, General", replied the queen. "A strong fighter and brave soldier. And you are, above all else, loyal to the royal family."

"I... am", nodded Jason, still very much confused.

"I felt for you, during the ceremony. Being discharged. I know the service meant a lot to you. I'm here because I want to offer you a job. It might not be what you are used to, it might not be what you were expecting of your life at this point, but I had hoped you might be up to becoming the prince's personal guard", explained Queen Salacia. "He wants to travel the ocean and I don't want him to travel alone. If that is... in any way a job you could see yourself doing... come to the palace and see me. For now, just think on it, please."

All Jason could do was nod in confusion and watch the queen leave. What had just happened...?

/break\

"Wait, so the queen wants you to become the prince's bodyguard?", asked Leo excitedly.

He rubbed the dirt off his cheek. He had just gotten home from work to hear the news. Piper and Reyna were making dinner together, Thalia was setting the table and Jason was just sitting at the table, staring into the figurative void. He was still trying to process.

"Apparently, my little brother left an impression", chuckled Thalia.

"Percy is pretty amazing", shrugged Piper.

"Percy?", echoed Jason doubtfully, one eyebrow raised.

"Yeah. He prefers to be called Percy. We ran into each other a lot – he regularly steals laundry from the laundry room to build pillow-fords with his younger brother", grinned Piper. "He's a good guy."

"No one doubts that", sighed Jason. "But... am I fit to protect the prince?"

"Well, how about a trial run?", suggested Reyna with a shrug. "Test it. For... a week or two. See how well you two work with each other. See if this can work."

"Not a bad idea", agreed Thalia.

"You know exactly what I mean", grumbled Jason with a glare, flapping his tail.

"Oh please", huffed Leo and rolled his eyes. "The new fin I built you works perfectly as a replacement. You might not be as fast anymore as you were and you can't use your tail for fighting anymore, but it's not like you can't swim straight."

"Leo-", started Piper with a frown.

"No", grunted Leo and shook his head. "Jay, I love you man, but we're all getting real tired of your moping. You lost your fin during battle. It sucks. It really sucks. But it's been... months. And it's been months that you have returned home and... you need to get your shit together. You gotta train, learn to use your new fin and you got to sort your life out again. You did it before. You worked your ass off to achieve what you had. It took years of hard work, but you did. You gotta do it again and it sucks, but you know you can do it and sitting here and giving up is not like you."

Jason stared at his best friend in surprise, before he let his eyes wander over the others. Piper and Reyna avoided his gaze, Piper shuffling around a little. Thalia was the one to heave a sigh.

"Leo's right", agreed Thalia. "You've been... bitter and moping since you got home. If this is a new chance, in any way or shape, then take it. Please don't give up, Jason. Give this a chance."

"Who knows where it'll take you", tagged Reyna on gently. "Try it."

/break\

Percy was laying on the ground in the stables, arms crossed over his chest, a deep glare on his face. He wanted to travel the ocean, but his mom and dad were being overly protective of him. Dad flat-out said no, mom got him down to 'in the company of a guard'. Percy was twenty-three. Other, normal merpeople that age went to college or had work already, some were even already married. And he was being coddled, just because he was the prince. He hated it.

"Big brother? Why are you moping?", asked his baby-brother Tyson.

Sighing, Percy opened his arms and welcomed his brother in his arms. Tyson happily snuggled up to him. The little boy was barely eight and he absolutely adored Percy and Percy adored him.

"I wanna travel, but mom and dad are being... mom and dad", sighed Percy.

"But they said yes?", offered Tyson, even more confused.

"If I take a guard with me", grumbled Percy. "That's... like a babysitter. I'm too old for a babysitter."

"That's true", agreed Tyson and tilted his head. "But it's because mom and dad love you and are worried, right? That's not a bad thing... right?"

"I guess", sighed Percy with a frown. "But still..."

"You should at least meet him, right? I didn't want a babysitter either, but then I met Rachel and now I really-really love her and spending time with her sister Ella", suggested Tyson. "Maybe you'll like your babysitter too and it'll be all okay?"

"...Maybe", mused Percy with a small smile, kissing the top of Tyson's head. "Thanks, bro."

"Boys. Here you are", sighed Sally as she entered the stables.

"Mom? You were looking for us?", asked Percy and sat up.

The queen sighed as she swam up to her children. "Percy. I want you to meet General Jason. He agreed to come and guard you for a week, to see if the two of you can get along. And if you do, if he agrees to take the job, then you... Your father and I agreed to send you to the Pacific Ocean as our ambassador, officially. You can go, if you take a guard."

Percy perked up at that. He got to travel and do official family business. Two birds, one stone. All he had to do was get along with his babysitter. His babysitter, who... oh. Nice. Tall, broad-shouldered, muscular arms, sharp features, a golden tail and golden-blonde hair, electric-blue eyes. There was a scar on his lip and he was missing his right tail-fin, but neither made him any less handsome.

"General Jason", said Percy slowly, surprised. "Mom. When you said guard, I was not expecting a highly decorated general of our army. Are you kidding me?"

"Please", huffed Sally amused. "You really think your dad would have agreed for just any guard?"

Percy rolled his eyes and got up to properly greet the general. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for your service, general."

"It will be an honor to work for you, your highness", replied Jason and bowed.

"Right, no. First rule: No highness and majesty stuff. I'm Percy. Not Perseus", stated Percy. "That's a really important one, okay? Okay. Now... mh... Right. How about I show you around?"

"That would be much appreciated, your... Percy", nodded Jason with a small smile.

Percy laughed at that and flipped his tail. "Okay, so, this is Blackjack. He's important. He'll come with us, when we travel. I've trained him since he was a foal."

Jason stared in amazement. Everyone usually did. Hippocampi were shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow, but Blackjack was, as the name might suggest, pitch-black. He whined and tilted his head, leaning in to sniff Jason suspiciously.

"That the babysitter, boss?", asked Blackjack.

"That the babysitter", confirmed Percy with a smile. "And aside from Blackjack, two more will accompany us. Annabeth and Mrs. O'Leary. They're very important."

"Annabeth... Chase? Your personal adviser?", guessed Jason, earning a nod. "And who is this Mrs. O'Leary? I'll be happy to meet her, if she is that important to you."

Percy grinned and whistled. Moments later and an orca tackled Percy, licking his cheek.

"That is Mrs. O'Leary", grinned Percy, patting the orca's head.

"...Of course does the prince have a pet orca", muttered Jason beneath his breath.

Percy's grin grew at that. He had a feeling he was going to like Jason.

/break\

Percy did like Jason. And it was a mutual thing. They hit it off right away. The trial week passed in the blink of an eye and both of them agreed that they worked together pretty well. King and queen seemed very pleased with the match-up too and a week after, they packed their stuff up and left the Atlantic Ocean behind. Blackjack and Mrs. O'Leary were pulling the chariot, with Annabeth, Jason and Percy in it. Annabeth kept eyeing the boys suspiciously.

"Why do you keep glaring at us, Annabeth?", asked Jason with a frown.

"Just waiting for Percy to crack", shrugged Annabeth with a small, nearly mean grin.

"What does that mean?", asked Jason confused, earning a huff from Percy.

Two hours later and he had his answer. The gorgeous prince was not good with being cooped up in enclosed space with nothing to do. Percy laid sprawled out on the bench, including Jason who sat next to him. It was startling for Jason, even though he had gotten used to Percy in the past week, but the level of comfort and physicality that was so quintessentially Percy was still... odd to him.

"I'm bo—ored. I'm so—o bo—ored, Annie, when are we the—ere", groaned Percy.

Annabeth rolled her eyes and didn't look up from the book she was reading. "The same as five minutes ago, minus five minutes. Pacifika is not exactly right around the corner, Perce."

"I kno—ow, but... urgh", grunted Percy. "When will someone invent a teleporter?"

"You are a god. You could teleport", offered Annabeth, raising one eyebrow. "Your dad's literally the god of the ocean. Me and the general, we would have to travel."

"Well, that'd be even more boring", pouted Percy with a huff.

Jason smiled, just faintly. Their bickering reminded him a lot of Thalia. After another hour of riding, he started caressing the prince's tail, more out of boredom than anything else. There was something soft laying on his lap, so why not pat it. It was instinct. But it seemed to actually help, because Percy settled down and quieted down, to the point that Annabeth lowered her book suspiciously and watched them in surprise. But all Jason could look at was the prince, calm and serene and beautiful.

/break\

Jason woke screaming from a nightmare. His eyes were wide and wild, his breathing rattled.

"Jason? Jay? You alright? What happened?"

He turned stiffly, looking unfocused at the figure at the door, ready to attack. The figure paused.

"Jason. Jason, you're alright. You're in Pacifika. It's me, Percy. You're safe. It's Saturday, it's... three AM, you're in your room in the Pacifican palace. You're safe. Everything is fine."

The voice was gentle and soothing and came very slowly closer. Taking shaky breaths, Jason slowly started to focus. The figure in front of him came back into focus. Percy. The prince.

"Breath with me", whispered Percy gently. "Slowly. In and out. You're fine. Can I... touch you?"

Jason shook his head jerkily, but he managed to regulate his breathing. Sighing, he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. When he looked up again, Percy was still there, watching him concerned and not looking as though he planned on moving.

"You better?", asked Percy carefully.

"I... I... yes", nodded Jason, taking deep breaths. "I'm sorry if I woke you. It's just..."

"Yeah?", prompted Percy very gently. "You had a flashback, right? PTSD, huh?"

"...Yes", nodded Jason tentatively, leaning heavily against the headboard.

"I get that. I mean, I don't get it. But... Proteus, my oldest brother, he's been a general for a while now. He sometimes gets that. Panic attacks and flashbacks", offered Percy carefully. "You... wanna talk about it? Or not? Not is fine too. I just... If you need someone, I'm here for you, okay?"

Jason stared at Percy in surprise. "I am your protector. I should be there for you."

Percy just shrugged. "You're supposed to protect me, sure. But that doesn't mean I can't be there for you. You... I'd like for us to be friends, you know? And friends are there for each other."

"...Thank you", whispered Jason gently, looking at the prince.

"So. Is there anything I can do?", wanted Percy to know.

"I... I don't know if it's asking too much, but usually, when I have... Thalia, my older sister, she'd stay with me, just... hold me", shrugged Jason and bit his lips. "It helps me feel grounded to know there's another living, breathing being there, here. Helps me keep from slipping back."

"That's okay", nodded Percy and got comfortable, laying down to face Jason. "So...?"

"It's the new place", sighed Jason and shook his head. "Every time I sleep somewhere else, the first night always... gives me flashbacks, because it's all... new."

Percy hummed softly and folded one arm under his head, looking at Jason. He started talking about something unimportant and silly, just to keep Jason distracted, until they both fell asleep.

/break\

People didn't give Prince Perseus the credit he deserved. It was all the way in Arctika that Jason's tail started acting up. He was still not a hundred percent used to the fake tail-fin. Long swims still were too much for him. He glared viciously at his tail as he slowed down.

"I'm sorry. I really need a break. I'm parched. Why don't we have some sushi? This place looks like a lovely inn and I could truly use the break", declared Percy with the brightest smile.

He was fanning himself and convincing the local royals to take a break. Percy turned toward Jason and winked at him. He had noticed that Jason's tail was acting up. Because Percy noticed things. Percy was brilliant and caring and sweet and kind and he always did everything to help those around him. Over the past weeks of traveling together... Jason had... fallen for the prince.

"Thank you, Perce", whispered Jason softly as they sat down at the table.

"What? Why? I'm absolutely starving and I'm very exhausted", hummed Percy innocently. "I am, after all, just a frail little prince, not used to such long, exhausting swims."

He winked and grinned broadly. How was this boy so cute and amazing...?

/break\

It was during their last stop that Jason had already gotten used to Percy sneaking into his bed during the first night. Every hotel they stayed at, whether it be the small stops during the way when the journey was too long, or when they had reached a palace, Percy would always come to him to make sure Jason would not be alone during the first night.

"I'm really liking this place", started Percy with a soft yawn, patting Mrs. O'Leary.

The orca was sprawled out half on top of the two. Jason smiled and also patted the small whale. He had gotten so used to Percy, to them all. To this all. Percy, after he had noticed that Jason was not fully used to his fin, had taken to doing exercises with Jason. He kept an eye on Jason, to make sure he was okay – even though it was Jason's job to make sure Percy was alright.

"You're amazing", whispered Jason as he stared at the prince's face.

"Ye—eah. What else is new?", asked Percy and laughed.

"No", whispered Jason more urgently, shaking his head. "No. You are absolutely amazing. I was... This was supposed to be a job. But you... you're so much more than a job. You helped me... through something I didn't think I'd ever get through. I'm not through it yet, but... you helped me so much. I... admire you. In a way I never admired someone before. I... adore... you..."

"So, this like... a platonic adoration, or is this a love-confession?", asked Percy cautiously.

"What... Whatever you want it to be", admitted Jason. "I know it is highly unprofessional and I know we have only known each other for a few, precious months now, but... no one has ever made me feel the way you make me feel. Even though I am your bodyguard and I am loyal to the throne, but I can not... I can't betray my heart either."

"Well. You're amazing too, you know?", smiled Percy and leaned in very slowly. "You're funny and cute and I love spending time with you. I've always made friends easily, but with you... with you it feels different. I... I feel different, when I'm with you."

"You... You do?", asked Jason surprised, eyes wide.

"I do", confirmed Percy and reached out to cup Jason's cheek. "So... kiss?"

Jason snorted at that, shaking his head. "You're absolutely ridiculous and I adore you."

"Yeah, yeah. We covered that. Now, kiss or no kiss?", asked Percy with a grin.

Smiling faintly, Jason bridged the last space between them and pressed his lips against Percy's. He could feel the excited flutter of Percy's tail, his fins brushing against Jason's tail because they laid so close. Eagerly, Percy scooted closer and closer to him until they were pressed against each other, Percy's hands against Jason's chest, trapped between them as Jason had his arms around Percy's waist to keep him close. Slowly, Percy wrapped his tail around Jason's to keep him close too.

"I adore you a lot, General Jason", whispered Percy against Jason's lips before kissing him again.

"Your father is going to kill me", whispered Jason with a crooked grin.

"Oh yeah, he will totally pull your scales off one by one", confirmed Percy seriously, nodding. "Seriously, you break my heart, he'll break your spine. That is one hundred percent a thing."

"Well, I guess I better not break your heart then, mh?", whispered Jason amused.

Mrs. O'Leary made a long-drawn cooing sound at that and nudged them both, as though she was agreeing to them. Percy and Jason laughed before they adjusted to lay more comfortably together, with the orca comfortable next to them. Jason smiled as he fell asleep with Percy in his arms.

~*~ The End ~*~

Read this here on FFNet & here on AO3

[ezatluba]

Which pups will make the grade as a service dog?Canine science aims to increase the success rate by analyzing minds, genetics and behaviorDuke University houses a sort of "puppy kindergarten" for future service dogs in Durham, N.C. 

Karin Brulliard

AUGUST 10, 2020

Yonder, 11 weeks old and 15 pounds, had two choices. In a white-walled room at Duke University, the wiggly Labrador mix faced a neon green squeaky squid toy and an upturned bowl topped with a piece of kibble. “Okay!” a researcher said perkily, and the puppy didn’t hesitate — she scurried straight toward the treat.

Yonder was bred for an exceptionally difficult job: to become a service dog for a human who needs her — by alerting to a doorbell or pulling a wheelchair while remaining composed and quiet, in crowds or on trails, and never chasing squirrels. Whether she’s capable was being gleaned in this room, with tests aimed at measuring her problem-solving, self-control and communications with people.

That was the hope, at least, for Yonder and her six furry cohorts. Early this year, they were the newest subjects of a $1.6 million study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, to help untangle a question long asked by breeders and trainers and now increasingly scrutinized by scientists: What makes a successful service dog — and can it be predicted in a puppy as young as Yonder?

At stake is a lot of money and a lot of dogs. Our expanding understanding of canines’ unique skills has fueled interest in service dogs among people with disabilities and the military, but it has also spawned scammers and years-long wait-lists. Although large organizations have honed the use of breeding and training to produce calm and obedient dogs, only about 50 percent make the cut. By that time, nearly two years and as much as $50,000 have been spent on one dog.

That is where another booming field — canine science — is coming in. Over two decades, the study of dog minds, genetics and behavior has given rise to laboratories at universities around the world. And in service dog organizations, with their controlled breeding and noble missions, canine researchers see ideal study populations.

Morgan Ferrans, left, and Kara Moore prepare to put Wisdom through an aptitude test at the Duke University Canine Cognition Center in February. Researchers are studying whether dogs' performance on aptitude tests is linked to success as a service animal. 

“We’re trying to understand the dog side of the leash and how we get more dogs helping more people,” said Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist who is co-director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, which is studying puppies bred by the California-based Canine Companions for Independence (CCI).

Some discoveries have already been made. Hare and a colleague found that successful service dogs more often make eye contact with a person when facing an unsolvable task and use inferential reasoning to find a hidden reward. Another study concluded that puppies with “helicopter moms” are more likely to fail as guide dogs, while young dogs that quickly solve a multistep problem are more likely to succeed. A neuroscientist who scanned the brains of service dog candidates found that washouts had higher activity in the area associated with excitability.

Other revelations are further off, but potentially revolutionary. One canine geneticist is collecting thousands of DNA samples in a bid to pinpoint the genetic markers of star service and working dogs.

“It’s huge, huge,” Brenda Kennedy, CCI’s director of canine health and research, said of the impact the research could have on a donor-funded group like hers, which provides dogs at no cost. “It really comes down to numbers. Every time we increase the percentage of dogs that succeed in our program, the more we’re going to be able to have an impact.”

Puppies frolic. Puppy day care

That is why Yonder and her peers — Arthur, Aurora, Westley, Wisdom, Zindel and Zola — were enrolled in a sort of boarding school for future service dogs on the campus of one of the nation’s elite universities. Duke calls it “puppy kindergarten.”

Pups that make it will become one of the five kinds of service dogs CCI provides, which include hearing dogs and assistance dogs for veterans with PTSD. Washouts might be “released” to another organization for a different job, but often they become pets.

In March, the spread of the novel coronavirus forced Duke to close, and Yonder’s cohort was sent to live in private homes. But the research has continued with puppies being raised off-campus, and Hare said he expects the kindergarten to resume at the university in 2021.

In normal times, this is how it works: A new group of puppies arrives each semester and bunks, for 12 weeks, in the brick biological sciences building home to the Canine Cognition Center or in dorms with students. During the day, all romp together around a linoleum-floored room that amounts to a puppy day care, with plush dog beds, soft lighting, birch tree decals on a wall and a white noise machine playing forest sounds. Outdoors is an artificial turf play area, where the sight of tussling puppies regularly stops passersby in their tracks.

The puppies are cared for and cuddled by student volunteers, who were, unsurprisingly, eager to help. (Six hundred — one-tenth of the undergraduate student body — responded to a call but were winnowed down to 150 after being required to take a five-hour online course about dog cognition and attending a meeting, Hare said.)

Duke students, including Zachary Horowitz, center, were eager to volunteer at the Canine Cognition Center. 

The pups face 14 cognitive tests every two weeks from the time they are 8 weeks to 20 weeks old, the most rapid period of brain development. At 16 weeks, Hare said, their brains are the equivalent of a 6-year-old child’s.

Hare has been working with CCI for about a decade, since, he said, he was shocked to learn at a conference that behaviorism — the idea that a person or animal’s behavior can be explained or altered by conditioning — was still canon among dog trainers. He and other canine scientists had known since the 1990s that dogs have different individual cognitive abilities.

Sitting in his office down the hall from the puppy day care in February, Hare described a test his lab gives to gauge a dog’s tendency to rely on its memory or a human’s gesture: A person hides a reward under a box as a dog watches. Then the human points to a second box, and the dog makes its choice.

“We’re trying to understand the dog side of the leash and how we get more dogs helping more people,” said Brian Hare, right, the center's co-director. At left is research scientist Vanessa Woods. 

“There is no right answer. And what you find is some dogs really rely on their memory, and they completely ignore you, and other dogs really listen to you. So it’s not one dog is smarter than the other,” Hare said. When testing service dog candidates, he added: “Our challenge now is even more specific, which is, can we figure out which outcome is best for you, given your cognitive profile?”

Hare said he and other scientists have already found, for a study not yet published, that puppies’ performance on some tests at 10 weeks mirrors how they do at 18 weeks. The Duke project aims to get even greater “resolution” on when these skills develop, Hare said, and how early they predict later success.

Innate skills are not everything. To an unknown degree, environment matters, too, and another side of puppy kindergarten is a socialization experiment. Might an amped-up social environment in these formative weeks provide a sort of “head start,” as Hare puts it?

Before starting training at 18 months, most service dogs are raised in homes by individual or family “puppy raisers.” The Duke puppies are being raised around one another and a stream of humans. Any student can visit the nursery and cavort with puppies, and 4,000 did so last fall. The puppies visit pediatric patients at Duke University Hospital. Medical students perform exams on the pups, as practice for interacting with nonverbal young children.

“When we see him starting to get frustrated, we can just re-engage him,” Margaret Gruen, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said as she held Zindel, a yellow Lab, on an exam table in the Duke cognition lab. Next to Gruen, who is co-directing the research at Duke, medical student Laura Noteware gently felt for Zindel’s lymph nodes.

“Good boy! Good job! Lovely lymph nodes,” Noteware said. Zindel, sitting calmly for the prodding, eagerly gobbled a treat.

Zindel gets a check-up. The genetic factor

Service dog providers have long used behavior and temperament tests — to measure fearfulness, say, or aggression — during puppyhood and training. But there’s been little large-scale data collection or consistency, researchers say.

“There are programs that change their policies with the wind — this year it’s Test A, and this year it’s Test B,” said Evan MacLean, who directs the canine cognition center at the University of Arizona and frequently collaborates with Hare. He said he’s optimistic the wave of research will boost providers’ success rates, but he warned that it will take time.

Some providers that breed puppies also use genetics, analyzing pedigrees to estimate the likelihood that a breeding pair will pass along certain traits, such as hip dysplasia or fear of thunder. By collecting this information over three decades, the New York-based Guiding Eyes for the Blind, which provides guide dogs, has raised its success rate from about 20 percent of puppies born to nearly 40 percent, said Jane Russenberger, its senior director for breeding and genetics. (Dogs’ most common reason for failure, she said, is not being able to bounce back into work mode after something alarming occurs.)

But each year, about 170 puppies graduate from the program, and about 400 applications for dogs come in, she said. Its wait list is about 150 people long. That is why Guiding Eyes is now working with Elinor Karlsson, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.

Karlsson studies the genetics of dog behavior, and she sees working dogs — a group that includes service dogs and those that do jobs like drug detection — as key subjects, because they are mostly selected for behavior, not looks. By sequencing working dogs’ DNA, she hopes to discover patterns that correlate with success. She figures she needs samples from 10,000 dogs to make this work; she has about 1,600.

“If you had a predictive test that would be able to tell you whether a dog is likely to be successful, you could do that as a puppy and decide whether you want to invest the resources,” or even test shelter dogs, Karlsson said.

Russenberger’s bar is lower. Her hope is that Karlsson’s work will help Guiding Eyes hone its selection of breeding dogs, leading to higher graduation rates.

“I’m not out to breed couch potatoes, even though they’re lovely pets. It’s really that we want as many guide dogs as possible,” she said. “Just think of the years of savings by being able to serve more people who are blind and visually impaired.”

Lab coordinator Morgan Ferrans watches Wisdom perform an aptitude test. Impulse vs. learning

Back at Duke’s test room in February, Anya, a 7-month-old giant compared with little Yonder, spilled over the black floor mat. The Labrador-golden retriever mix was a member of the puppy kindergarten’s fall cohort. She now lived off campus with a puppy raiser, but the lab was still following her progress.

Ahead of her was a transparent tube covered in an opaque sheath, open at both ends, with a treat inside. In this warm-up portion of the test, she was figuring out how to get it. Next, research coordinator Kara Moore removed the sheath, and Anya watched as Moore placed a treat inside.

What Anya did next would be a measure of her inhibitory control, known as an “executive function.” Would she ignore her impulse to go straight for the treat, which she could now see, or use the information she already had and detour to the end of the tube?

Hare and others have done this test on many species. Lemurs, Moore said, “just cannot do it at all,” and bump into the tube repeatedly. Detection dogs Hare and MacLean tested did poorly, perhaps because their search tasks require a go-get-it lack of inhibition, Hare surmised. But successful CCI dogs did well.

Anya chose the detour. She was still many months away from starting service dog training, but on this small measure, she performed like a pro.

Medical student Laura Noteware, left, and co-principal investigator Margaret Gruen prepare to examine Zindel. 

[upshotre]

LIAD TELLA: THE MAN THE CAP FITS

By Ustadh Adam Adedimeji   Today, the 12th of October, 2019, all roads lead to Iwo, the Senatorial District Headquarters of Osun West in Osun State of Nigeria and birth place of Alhaji Liad Tella. This day, the retired Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Mass Communication, University of Ilorin, and former Federal Commissioner at the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON), will be turbaned as the Asiwaju Musulumi of Iwo.   The selection of Tella for the religious title by the League of Imams and Alfas in Iwo in conjunction with the Paramount Ruler of the ancient town and Deputy Chairman of the Osun State Council of Chiefs and Traditional Rulers, Oba Abdurasheed Adewale Akanbi, is unequivocally without contention. This is because, as an Arab poet once described Tella’s ilk, he is so eminently qualified for the position just as the position is profoundly befitting to him.   That Tella is being honoured as Asiwaju Musulumi now is a belated recognition for someone who has been a vanguard of Islamic propagation and activism for the past five decades. As one of the pioneers of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN) as well as a veteran representative Islam as well as Muslim icons and scholars such as Chief MKO Abiola and Sheikh Adam Abdullah Al-Ilory (May Allah repose their souls) in Islamic functions both at home and abroad, I will say that his recognition as a symbol of Islam is long overdue though it is better late than never.   My path first crossed with that of Tella within the premises of the famous Markaz Arabic Training Centre, an Arabic citadel established by the renowned legend and internationally recognised Islamic scholar, Sheikh Adam Al-Ilory, whom I later served as Private Secretary in Agege, sometime in 1987. I had arrived Agege from Iwo in December 1986 to further my Arabic and Islamic education at the Tawjihiyyah/ Thanawiyyah level after my Idaadiyyah and secondary education at Markaz Shabaab-il-Islam (Islamic Youths Center) and St. Mary’s Grammar School, Iwo respectively.   About three months after my arrival on a particular Friday, Tella came as usual to observe the Jumaat prayers at Markaz. He used to be in company of Alhaji Femi Abbas, the well- acclaimed columnist with The Nation newspapers and Chairman, Media Committee, Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). Alhaji Abbas is an alumnus of Markaz and former student of my father’s Arabic Centre, Markaz Shabaab-il-Islam, Iwo. Both Tella and Abbas were acquaintances to Sheikh Adam. The duo had been regular visitors to Baba and everyone in Markaz Agege as teachers or students recognised their position as two gentlemen in whom Baba was well pleased.   On this particular day, Tella was not in Markaz with Abbas but with one of his younger brothers, Alhaji Fatai Tella. Alhaji Fatai knew me very well in Iwo as one of his boys in the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria, Iwo Central Branch, which he headed as President. Unlike Liad, who was Lagos-based, Fatai knows everyone in my father’s household more so as we prayed in the same Masjid at Aroworeki’s Compound, a stone throw to Belewo’s Compound where he lived then.   It was Alh. Fatai who called me out when he saw me among my mates that hot afternoon after the prayers. Unknown to him, I had been nicknamed “Olooko" (the namesake) at Agege in deference to Baba Lagege who named me at birth after himself. Calling someone Adam is like a taboo within Markaz premises and so everyone looked at Alh. Fatai with scorn and bewilderment!   Alh. Fatai thereafter introduced me to Alh. Liad as the son of Baba ile Aroworeki, Sheikh Ahmad Adedimeji, the Otun Imam of Iwo and since then, I became one of Alh. Liad’s close protégés who usually visited him especially on weekends at his residence then at Alade Close, Jungle Bus stop in Iju Area of Lagos. Alh. Tella thus took me as son and I too adopted him as father and the relationship has been highly beneficial.   At Concord where Alh. Tella was then Group News Editor and later Deputy Editor Daily, his office became a meeting point not only for Concord Muslim staff but also all Iwo/old Oyo State young men and women who recognised him as mentor and role model that he was. Besides, his home at Alade Close, Iju, too was a rallying point for those of us who saw him as a benefactor of immeasurable value. Alhaji Kunmi Olayiwola was Alh. Tella’s neighbour at Alade then as his flat was directly opposite that of the Tella’s. Olayiwola was to later become Concord newspaper’s Abuja Beareu Chief and now into media consultancy and insurance marketing.   Those of us who usually thronged his office and residence then include Abdulfatai Oladehinde, Abdulwarees Solanke, Tunde Akanni, Mojeed Jamiu, Semiu Okanlawon, Bayo Adeyinka, Engineer Mudasiru Abisoye, Yinka Tella, Abdullahi Adam Al-Ilory, Rasak Bamidele, Qasim Akinreti and Kayode Awobadejo among others too numerous to mention.   I remember after my graduation from Markaz Agege and retention as both tutor and PRO for Markaz, I was fond of visiting him at home and office more regularly than before. It was during one of the visits that he introduced me to the Concord Managing Director, Dr. (Mrs) Hamidat Doyin Abiola, who was then looking for an Arabic and Islamic teacher for her daughter, Doyin Junior.   I started the lesson with Doyin but other Chief MKO Abiola’s children later joined, particularly children of Alhaja Bisi Abiola whose flat was then directly opposite Dr. Doyin’s. The children of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola (of blessed memory) also joined my class. If today I’m proud to say I was once a private tutor to many of MKO Abiola’s children, the credit should go to Alh. Liad Tella who facilitated my connection to that wonderful family.   I also remember that on many occasions, Chief Abiola would walk pass the corridor in the building of his palatial house off Toyin Street, Ikeja, where we usually had the lessons and ask me if his children were coping  well with their Arabic and Islamic lessons. In fact, there was a day he walked in with Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, who was his running mate in the ill-fated 1993 General Elections and after both of them exchanged pleasantries with me and the children, Babagana Kingibe dipped his hands into his pocket and gave me a substantial amount of money in appreciation of my work and care to his principal’s children.   It is also interesting that my part-time job as private tutor culminated in Dr. Doyin Abiola’s sponsorship of my first Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia) in 1993, the same year I got admitted into Bayero University, Kano (BUK) to study Common and Islamic Law. It was such a wonderful trip with Alh. Tella as Chairman, Osun State Pilgrims Welfare Board that year. Other pilgrims became envious of us close to him, the Chairman’s boys.   One of the peculiarities of Alh. Liad Tella is that he is a pioneer and pathfinder of a rare breed in Iwo. He started something that is very uncommon among the Yoruba by adopting the name of his compound/ neighbourhood as his surname. Many people will not dispute the fact that the practice is uncommon among the Yoruba and Southerners generally unlike the Hausa who culturally adopt the names of their villages and towns as surnames. Though examples are legion, names like Hassan Usman Katsina, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Abubakar Rimi, Maman Kotangora, Sani Kamba, Muhammadu Gambo Jimeta among Northerners are illustrative. By adopting Tella, the name of his compound in Iwo, Alh. Liad succeeded in publicizing Tella compound and setting precedence in the annals of Iwo.   Meanwhile, other prominent Iwo sons and daughters have since taken after him, such as Professor Lai Olurode from Olurode’s Compound. Olurode was the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos and former Federal Commissioner in charge of Training and Education, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under Professor Attahiru Jega’s headship of INEC. Others who adopted the practice include Honourable Gafar Akintayo Amere from Amere’s Compound, immediate past member of the Federal House of Representatives who represented Iwo/ Ayedire/ Ola Oluwa Federal Constituency in the 8th Assembly as well as my present principal, who I was introduced to by no one other than Alh. Liad Tella, Distinguished Senator Adelere Oriolowo from Oriolowo’s Compound, the Senator representing Osun West Senatorial District in the 9th Senate.   Alh. Tella has lived a fulfilling life of service to Allah, to community and to humanity at large. He is a magnetic personality and devout Muslim whose lifestyle shall continue to inspire generations of Muslim professionals for many years to come. He has been a Muslim leader and now that he is formally proclaimed as such by the Iwo community under the Oluwo, I wish the man the cap perfectly fits many years of dedicated service to Islam, Iwo and humanity.     #Adam Adedimeji, immediate past General Secretary, NBA’s Lawyers in the Media Forum is a former Editorial Board member of Daily Independent newspapers. He works with National Assembly Service Commission as Senior Legislative Aide (SLA) to Senator Adelere Adeyemi Oriolowo   Read the full article

[thatcookingfat]

Dizzy, the Early Years

Born as the war was coming to a close, Dizzy is the middle of 3 daughters. Grandad, a proud Lancashire Lad, was away in The Signals, doing his part for the war effort & Nan, Motherwell Matriarch, was a stay at home mum. We joke that if the war had continued there would have been a much bigger family; Grandad returned from leave 3 times, leaving Nan with a ‘Bun in the Oven!’  

Like many veterans, he was reticent to talk about his experience; only choosing to tell us his job was to lay down the communication system before troops moved into an area. Nan didn’t have time to work! When she wasn’t cooking one in the oven and running a house single handed, she was next door, at my great grandparents, helping her parents! Both he and Nan came from large families. I had over 40 great-aunts and uncles, counting their spouses. I may not remember them all, but I do remember the feeling of family closeness and laughter, lots of laughter! On Nan’s side, it was like ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys' on turbo settings and on Granddad’s side, it was less raucous, but an amazing talent of being able to ‘spin a good yarn' with such a dry sense of humour!

Mum talks about her childhood with such warmth and affection, apart from resenting she always got the hand me downs, whilst her 2 sister's got everything new, “Middle Child Syndrome”! Sadly, mum grew up being told, by her teachers, that she was stupid and illiterate! Dyslexia didn’t exist back then! It made her disruptive in school and totally switched off to learning. Her favourite word, apparently, was, “Why?” Back in an era where children were seen and not heard, she and Granddad would regularly be at loggerheads. Mum always the loser, sometimes with a fat lip for her efforts! So it was hardly surprising when she married as soon as she could, in an effort to escape her strict upbringing.

Sadly, mum swapped her authoritative dad for a manipulative wife beater! Not to begin with of course, that controlling side took a short time to develop. In an age where wives stayed at home, mum would be out working full-time to pay his gambling debts. As an added bonus, she would be punished because there wasn’t a hot meal waiting for him, when he got in from work! They also had problems conceiving, another reason for a ‘quick slap'! But sadly, both their bodies were working against them. Mum’s bits produced too many chemicals that would destroy his little swimmers and he couldn’t produce enough little swimmers, and those he did produce needed a sat nav to find their destination! So, although I call him my ‘Sperm Donor’ he wasn’t! I will never know who was! I was conceived in a petri dish in Harley Street, London, at the cost of £2000 in 1970s prices. A secretive procedure back then, Artificial Insemination by a Donor, I am the result of a quick one of the wrist! All I do know is, as a controversial procedure, donors weren’t exactly queuing up, so it tended to be other medical professionals that donated their services. (Shame I didn’t inherit the clever gene!)  

As I’ve said, it was a secretive procedure and frowned upon as it was creating Frankenstein babies ... now I know why I’m so twisted!! They had to swear, on a bible, that my parentage would never be revealed, although by law I had to be registered with the ‘father unknown' label on my birth certificate ! Erm, hello ... do you not think that might raise suspicion?? And, as my exes would probably agree with, technically I was a Bastard, not a term discussed in polite society back then! So Mum was now baking her own bun and received 9 months of peace from his fists, not his verbal abuse though. He never let her forget it was HER failings that made them do what they did. That man, and I use that term in the biological sense only, was a master of manipulation.  Mum genuinely believed it was all her fault, she was stupid, she was inferior!  

Anyway, this has gotten far too serious, so let’s resume normal service! Mum couldn’t wait for her bump to show. Sadly, we think I’m made of plain, not self-raising flour; as mum was almost 8 months pregnant before it was evident! After almost a decade of trying to conceive, even her mummy tummy was letting her down! Her eldest sister, cooking baby number 7, and younger sister on baby number 2, were the size of buses ... so was mum, only hers was Corgi toy size! Finally, after many hours of labour (the number varies) I came into the world. I’m not saying I was ugly, but they had to slap the midwife! Simply put, I was over baked. I had layers of dead skin caked onto me! But mum thought I was beautiful, thank goodness at least someone did! Her friends would come to visit her in the hospital, sneak a peek and recoil, trying to hide their horror! Eventually, the dead skin came away, and I resembled human form! A thoughtful baby, apparently I always waited until Mum was pulling up the covers to sleep before opening my foghorn lungs! Unable to breast feed, mum would be sitting there bottle feeding me, being told what a failure she was, she couldn’t even feed her down child properly and that maybe it would be better if he just took me away to a better family! It’s a miracle she ever bonded with me!

Looking back through my rose tinted child glasses, they have much thinner lenses than the ones worn today, life seemed idyllic. It seemed to consist of school, where I was labelled a swot, playing out with my friends and Enid Blyton! Despite her fear of the written word, mum instilled a love of books into me. Apparently, when I was a baby I had cloth books for the pram and water proof books for the bath. She was determined I wasn’t going to grow up with her phobia. Unaware at the time, mum had rote learned a ladybird book, “Telling the Time” and would read it to me at bed time. She confidently sat there holding the book and turning the pages at all the right times, “At 7 o’clock we all rise, to stretch, and rub our sleepy eyes.” ...

... ... ... ...

Sorry, had to stop for a minute there, my eyes have started leaking! Wow! Didn’t realise that was such a powerful memory, anyone know a good plumber?  

She was so clever, if I had a different book, she would ask me to read it to her, and I would mimic what I had learned from her. I was totally oblivious to her fear, but more importantly her sheer strength and determination. Not to be outdone, he drummed the times tables into me. He thought because I knew what 12 x 12 was at the age of 4, that he was the victor. But he wasn’t, I LOVED books, and 12 x 12 was just like a poem that you recite over and over again. It had no meaning, whereas I could pick up a newspaper and tell him that Star Trek WAS on, even though he’d said it wasn’t, to get me to bed early! He said I was lying, until I read the blurb in the TV listings! It’s probably the only time I remember getting a ‘good hiding’ from him. Looking back with adult eyes, to him, it was probably the equivalent of mum telling him HE was in the wrong, and I had to be put in my place!

I’m not saying I thought mum was perfect back then, far from it! Mum was strict, NO meant NO and please & thank you came as standard, not an optional extra! We had a 1, 2, 3 rule ... if I didn’t do as I was told by the time she got to 3, my arse knew about it! And I’m not saying I wasn’t defiant either, I soon learned that I could get away with waiting until she got to, “Thhhhhhh,” so long as she didn’t get to the, “Reeeeeeee” part I was ok! And I also learned that if mum said no, a few tears to him, got me what I wanted. I didn’t know that by telling tales like that, mum was given a good hiding, once I was in bed! What a selfish, spoiled brat I was!

At the age of 7, the year of Grease, Olivia Neutron Bomb and John Travolting, we moved to Blackpool! I dreamt of sun, sand and an endless supply of rock! Who knew there were schools and even bad weather? Trust me, beaches soon get boring, you can sicken yourself on rock and Blackpool in the closed season is like the Antarctic! We went into partnership with Mum’s childhood friend and her husband. We ran a 9 bedroomed guest house, 109 Albert Road, aka Durham House. Life was far from the idyllic dream I had imagined!  The men worked a window cleaning round and Mum and her best friend seemed to be constantly in the kitchen cooking, or making beds! A far cry from the luxury bedrooms our guests had, we slept in the cellar! The only natural light came from the glass tiles in the roof, that was often punctuated with the feet of people walking by above, at street level.  

That’s also where I learned that kids could be so cruel. Poor mum saw this only child, spoiled brat being a prize bitch, she didn’t see the slaps, pinches and name calling that can be so devastating to a child’s confidence! The bullying was always at its peak during meal times, as all the grown-ups were busy looking after the guests. I developed, what today would be called a psychosomatic illness, basically I smelt the food cooking and I would throw up! Bring rushed off her feet, mum would make me sit on the back doorstep, throwing up into the outside drain. It sounds gross, but it was my haven, until bedtime! Obviously, being a kid, I saw mum as a graceful swan, cooking a million meals effortlessly, I didn’t see the frantic paddling her feet were doing below the water. The so called best friends were scamming the business and eventually it all went tits up! So he moved back to Coventry first, with the premise of getting a job and finding us a place to live. Mum and I moved in with a friend, so I could see the school year out in Blackpool. Bratty me could only see that I'd ‘lost' the nice parent and had to live in this hellhole with the strict one!  

I was totally unaware that, instead of getting everything ready for our return, he was living with Nan and Granddad, visiting prostitutes and gambling away the little money that was salvaged from the business. So my dream of returning to our privately owned 3 bed semi turned into the nightmare of a 4th floor council flat, no garden, no friends, yeah I was a selfish brat! That flat continued my awakening to how cruel life can be. That’s where I witnessed my mum slide down a wall after a swift punch, it's where I saw my mum finally snap and almost break his shoulder blade with a steak tenderiser and it's where I discovered I was a Bastard!  

Fearful of anything legal or official, mum had stuck to oath she had sworn 9 years ago. She had been mortified when instead of the, ‘Father Unknown’ that should have been on my birth certificate, he had registered my birth alone and naming himself as my legal father. I can still hear her pleas as she begged him ‘not to’ as he uttered the words, ‘I'm not your dad.’ He had an impeccable sense of timing too, it was the same night I discovered my dear great aunt had died! He failed to tell me the full facts, leaving me to assume mum had been unfaithful. I was at the age where sex had something to do with boys having pencils and girls had pencil sharpeners, so simply I thought mum had sharpened someone else’s pencil! Bless her, I bet she never thought she would be having ‘that’ conversation, whilst explaining the science behind it, whilst nursing a dislocated jaw!  

Expecting me to take his side, with his half truth, he was floored at my reaction! I remember feeling so angrily empowered and grown up, telling him, at the age of 8, that he couldn’t tell ME what to do, he wasn’t my Dad! I was then floored, literally at his response, my cheek stung for an age! Oh and by the way, this was Christmas Eve! I suppose my under reaction to Christmas today, has a lot to do with that time! I don’t remember much about that Christmas Day, other than a deathly silence and an atmosphere thicker than the Cabinet Room at No10, after the last election! I do remember Boxing Day though! Mum wasn't there when I woke up, and me and him went to visit my cousin! I thought nothing of it, when he and my cousins went to the pub. I thought it was exciting because Tina, my cousins wife, was teaching me to knit! Kids are so fickle! I was unaware that instead of the pub, they had in fact been at the flat, changing the locks! We returned home later to an empty flat and Mum STILL wasn't home the next day either! He told me she had phoned to say she wasn’t coming back! Like a prat, I believed him!  

I dreaded going back to school, because the first thing we would have to do was write our ‘news'. I remember staring at the blank page, trying to make up some magical story to compete with the other kids! I didn’t want my real news shared! I’m not sure what happened next, but I do remember a tear spreading out on my blank page and being quietly lead away to the Head Mistresses’ office. Waiting patiently in there was MUM!!!! In between my sobs, she explained how she had gone out Boxing Day morning to ask a friend, if mum and I could move in with her, until something better could be organised and on her return, the locks had been changed. Long  story short, the school would not let me leave before home time. I had to then ‘chose’ if I would cross the road to my aunts house and wait for him, or leave through the office and out to Mum, waiting in Grandad’s car! How thoughtful of the school to put such an immense responsibility on an 8 year old child! That day was a blur! I couldn’t wait to leave with mum! We were off on an adventure! Blow you Famous Five, The Terrific Two had their own stories to discover.  

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Keeping The COVID Plague At Bay: How California Is Protecting Older Veterans

Dr. Vito Imbasciani has been at war with viruses since he was 5.

Growing up near the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York, he contracted polio in 1952 and couldn’t walk for two months. In medical school in Vermont 30 years later, he witnessed AIDS steal the lives of otherwise healthy gay men.

Now, Imbasciani, secretary of California’s Department of Veterans Affairs, and his staff are responsible for keeping the novel coronavirus away from the state’s eight veterans homes. California’s defenses are holding.

The explanation, many say, lies in CalVet’s intense preparation, quick response, attention to hygiene and leadership, starting with Imbasciani, a physician and retired colonel who not too many years ago could have been discharged from the military because he is gay.

“We created our own fortune,” Imbasciani said, looking to knock on wood.

Deaths are part of life in the state-run veterans homes. The homes are populated largely by frail men and women, some of them veterans of World War II and Korea, and many from the Vietnam War era. A quarter of the vets admitted to California’s homes in recent years had been living homeless.

COVID-19 has hastened the end for scores of retired soldiers in veterans homes in other states: More than 70 veterans have died of the disease at a “soldiers’ home” in Massachusetts; more than 125 have died in New Jersey’s three homes; more than 60 residents of an Alabama veterans home tested positive, and eight have died.

The California Department of Veteran Affairs, by contrast, is holding the beastly infection at bay. In its eight homes, where 2,100 veterans reside, three residents have contracted the disease, and two have died of it, one in his 90s and one in his late 80s.

“It’s all hands on deck,” state Sen. Bob Archuleta, a Los Angeles-area Democrat who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said of CalVet’s response. “It goes back to the staff. We have people who care about their veterans, and they will go the extra mile.”

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Like Archuleta, Imbasciani credits the work of the front-line staff of nurses, nursing assistants and doctors who provide direct care. But leadership matters, and Archuleta and others also point to Imbasciani.

CalVet’s leader is a 73-year-old urologic surgeon who speaks six languages and has a master’s degree in musicology and a doctorate in philosophy. The son of a World War II tail gunner and grandson of a World War I vet, Imbasciani served 27 years in the Army Medical Corps. He deployed to war zones four times before retiring as a colonel in 2014.

For most of those years, Imbasciani had to hide his personal life because of President Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that sought to keep LGBTQ service people serving in the closet.

That changed when President Barack Obama signed legislation repealing the policy in 2010. Two years later, Imbasciani introduced Obama at a fundraiser hosted by LGBTQ community leaders in Beverly Hills.

“The price of my service was to live a lie,” Imbasciani told the crowd of 600 when introducing the president, as quoted by The Washington Post. “But not anymore.”

Imbasciani was director of government relations at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in September 2015 when Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs. Gov. Gavin Newsom reappointed him in January, even as the novel coronavirus was starting its global spread.

Over the years, Imbasciani has tracked SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), Ebola and Zika, among other viral threats. In January, when scientists in China sequenced the DNA of a mysterious new coronavirus that had emerged in Wuhan, Imbasciani thought, “Here we go again.”

He assumed the virus would storm the West Coast, as did CalVet’s director of long-term care, Thomas Bucci. Based on the devastating events unfolding in Wuhan, they quickly recognized COVID-19 as a disease far worse than the flu.

Bucci, an Air Force veteran, spent 38 years as a health care administrator before going to work for the state in 2015. Knowing that older and immunosuppressed people are particularly vulnerable, Bucci said: “We had a big bull’s-eye on ourselves.”

By mid-February, a month before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, Bucci was regularly communicating with directors of the eight homes about the threat, and, along with Imbasciani, implementing a 38-step plan.

The protocol began with the basics. Directors of each home updated their emergency operations plans. They ensured they had enough surgical and N95 masks, gloves and gowns for the staff, and even disposable dinnerware, to minimize the chance of spread.

As of Feb. 26, all visitors were directed to sanitize their hands before entry, and staff began disinfecting common surfaces every 30 minutes. On March 4, as the infection killed the first of dozens of residents at the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, Imbasciani discussed the coming onslaught at an executive team meeting. And by March 15 — four days before Newsom issued the statewide stay-at-home order — all visitors were barred, with the exception of family members paying respects to veterans in hospice.

The Veterans Home of California, on April 30, in Los Angeles. California has managed to keep COVID-19 at bay at its eight state-run homes for frail and older veterans, despite the virus’ persistent march through nursing homes around the country.(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

Now, all staffers have their temperatures taken when they arrive for work and are sent home if they show symptoms. At four of the homes, all workers are encouraged to take tests for the virus, and all residents are tested. At the other four, employees who have been exposed to a known or suspected COVID-19 case are being tested, as are any residents who show symptoms.

All staffers wear masks, as do residents when not in their rooms. Residents are required to social-distance, meaning no congregating closely for conversation or card games. Meals are delivered to residents’ rooms.

The Veterans Home of California-Yountville opened in Napa Valley in 1884. How it withstood the 1918-19 influenza pandemic is for the most part lost to history. A century later, however, not a single COVID-19 case has been recorded among its nearly 1,000 residents.

Muriel Zimmer, 85, a Korean War-era Air Force veteran, has been living at the Yountville home for nine years with her husband, Dick. He needs more care and lives in the skilled nursing section of the facility, limiting her ability to see him. They’re allowed only brief conversations, and from a safe distance.

“I miss him,” she said.

She also misses seeing friends in the dining hall. But she remembers rationing during World War II, and knows others have it much harder. She is able to walk across the Yountville grounds, with its sweeping views of the Napa vineyards below, and notices small things, like the monarch butterfly that flitted by the other day.

“I almost get teary-eyed when I think about the staff,” she said. “We are blessed.”

At the Redding Veterans Home in Shasta County, Michael Vancleemput, a Vietnam-era Army veteran, spoke by phone through a mask, as a worker walked past disinfecting surfaces. “They’re personally motivated to serve us. It’s not like they’re doing a job,” said Vancleemput, 79.

He has to socially distance from his friends, not that it’s a problem. He lived alone for years in the small town of McCloud at the base of Mount Shasta before moving to the veterans home five years ago. A ham radio operator, he said he keeps in touch with other members of the home’s amateur radio operators club.

“I would invite you to visit our institution,” Vancleemput said, then paused. “Not now.” No visitors allowed.

The bulwark that CalVet has erected against COVID-19 builds on a series of improvements. When Imbasciani and Bucci arrived, the state-run homes used paper records. Now, medical records are tracked electronically. Each home once operated independently. Now, they are part of a system with standardized procedures.

CalVet’s nurses, nursing assistants and physicians are state civil servants with union representation and paid sick leave. One nursing assistant might be responsible for six or eight residents. At a private nursing home, an aide more typically handles 10 or 12. CalVet also has staff physicians on-site every day.

For many years, the federal government, which rates nursing homes, gave CalVet’s homes dismal marks. Now, among the homes that have been rated, four have the highest designation of five stars, and one has four stars.

“It does show that when there is strong and visionary leadership, it can make a big difference,” said Charlene Harrington, an expert on nursing home care and professor emerita at the University of California-San Francisco.

In the military, superiors give what are known as challenge coins to soldiers as an attaboy. The coins have a hierarchy. One bestowed by a two-star general carries greater bragging rights than, say, one given by a one-star general.

Imbasciani’s challenge coin is one of his most prized possessions. It’s a little larger than a silver dollar and is stamped with the presidential seal and the name of the 44th president. Obama gave it to him, and no one outranks the commander in chief, Imbasciani noted.

At California’s eight veterans homes, the walls are holding, so far. But Imbasciani knows an asymptomatic carrier could cause a breach any day. He is, after all, someone who has been battling viruses since he was a boy. He can even imagine the epitaph on his tombstone:

“Here lies Vito. He hated viruses.”

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Keeping The COVID Plague At Bay: How California Is Protecting Older Veterans published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/