#the double standard is there when people (rightfully) recognize that about them but close their eyes for their male counterparts but like

[viovio]

before anybody crucifies me does anybody else find it so so so so so so so so weird and fucked when people talk about celebrating evil and fucked up female characters and their top picks are the Racist and predator

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Emily's Awakening, Part Two

The memory of Julian tore Emily out of the here and now. Time stood still as their shared past flashed back to her.

Julian was the once in a lifetime kind of blend of genius, compassion, and peak physical perfection, all rolled into one incredible package.

Emily had known him from high school, though they were only loosely acquainted in those more innocent years. It wasn’t until much later, right when she had graduated from Berkeley, that she bumped into him again. Similar to how she remembered him from high school years—when he was basically the football jock who also happened to have his head screwed on right and was writing good grades as well—he was now a successful plastic surgeon in L.A. and had stayed in shape.

She was in the middle of getting her feet wet in the journalistic field, and drinking in a hotel bar to get over the rejection letter she had received from the Los Angeles Times. He exited from a doctor’s convention that he was attending there and instantly recognized her, even after all those years. They chatted, hit it off big time, and kicked off a turbulent phase of dating each other, filled with a lot of laughter and fiery passion.

Now he was dead. A ghost in her mind.

Julian was a generous guy, affluent due to both his work and his wealthy parents, well-connected—he had it all. His family didn’t like Emily, but it didn’t matter to either of them. He was a gentleman, vowed to have her back, and always lived up to his word.

Four months in, she decided that she wanted to surprise him by asking him to get engaged. But he didn’t show up for dinner. Or come home that night. Or arrive at work the next day. He had just vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody knew why, though worries grew amongst everybody close to Julian.

Even while she was worried sick, Emily was one of the prime suspects once enough time had passed and cops had gotten in on the case. She did her own part to find him, flexing her reporter muscles, but to no avail. Nothing added up and not a single clue pointed to his whereabouts.

Eventually, Julian’s body showed up. His parents and Emily identified his remains. Cops found the right culprit, too. A real whackjob D-list celebrity whom Julian had refused to operate any more on—she freaked out, murdered him, and kept him in her trunk for the whole week.

Even though the circumstances of his death were a major cogwheel in the chaos machine of what jaded Emily over the course of her life, she refused to let Julian’s horrible death ever overshadow the time they had shared together. She really loved Julian, because he was the only person who ever appreciated her—all edges and flaws and everything. He really got her—her strange sense of humor, how she only acted mean to keep people at an arm’s length—and they would laugh about inside jokes that nobody else in the world could ever even hope to understand.

She quit smoking for him. He always said that he didn’t like seeing her smoke because he thought the vice would make her leave this world sooner, and he couldn’t bear that thought. She started smoking again soon after he died, but she always refused to think about the why.

Julian was one of several people who shaped who she became—a driven woman, an unstoppable force of nature. One of the many undeserving, innocent victims mangled in the meat-grinder of a shitty, merciless world. But he was the one she cherished the most.

No partner before Julian was ever comparable, and she hadn’t been on the lookout ever since. Emily was convinced that it was the once in a lifetime thing. That she would never find such love ever again.

That bubble of time burst. Just popped back out of existence.

Here she was, still in front of that security guard whose frame reminded her of Julian.

Tall, broad-shouldered, probably worked out every day. Jawline that could cut glass. Definitely some eerily reminiscent facial features, too.

Part of it made her feel soft. It helped fuel that smile she flashed at the guard to the back entrance of the Estoria Pacific; helped conceal the things lurking underneath her facade—the darkness she harbored in her soul. Then she remembered what she was here to do.

The gears went off, grinding furiously behind her head, and she was grounded in reality once more. She pushed the memories back—both the pleasant and the unpleasant ones.

No more Julian. No more Vicky, Hal, Gloria. No more Tran—the hazy, drunken memory from the previous night returned to her in a flash. How many more times did she have to visit a morgue and ID a corpse? No more.

No more.

The guard gave no response to Emily’s query. He simply opened the door, stepped aside, and let her in. Another guard awaited her inside. Latino fellow; dressed similarly but shorter and much less handsome, equally silently—he nodded to her and motioned to follow him.

She caught a glimpse of a beautiful hall through kitchen corridors, being prepared for a party to come some time later. Exquisite meals were being prepared, crates loaded, waffles and cream made from scratch for cakes. Nobody here spat in the food, everyone wore a hair net and gloves. People paid well for the grub, and the patrons received quality service.

Who owned this place? That was one thing that eluded Emily’s investigation. Estoria Pacific never published any articles that would interview the club owners. It was common knowledge that there was a board of directors, a sort of a group of elite founders—likely wealthy investors. But they stayed out of newspapers and issued statements through the Club’s spokesman; some PR monkey who wasn’t in the savvy of anything.

Emily tensed up, and remembered one of her most valuable lessons: breathe. She let her eyes do the sweeping, not the head. The reporter found her steady rhythm in breathing, in a swaying stride filled with swagger.

She followed the second guard down corridor after corridor. She knew she was out of place. But she belonged here, now; more than anybody else.

She held her chin up high, burning inside—a cocktail of a hangover countered with pain medications and cheap booze, blending with excitement over the case finally going somewhere, anywhere—and the sweet, sweet cherry of impending victory sitting on top.

But something else, too. Something familiar, something she had to fight back. Something she hadn’t felt since the trafficking story. Something that made her think of Tran again. The pale corpse of Tran on the cold slab in the morgue.

That something she felt was fear.

The guard led Emily all the way down to storage warehouses, where she was handed off to yet another guard. This one took her under the mezzanine down into the freezers. Things looked less and less like a club and more and more like a cold and unforgiving facility. The doors started looking less polished, more metal, rustic, bulletproof—until eventually things became seedy enough to send a chill down her spine.

The guard was joined by another guard, deeper in the underbelly of the facility—a big bald giant of a man, this one without a club uniform suit, looking more like an actual gangster. His gun’s grip stood out from a chest holster in plain view. Just like the previous guys, he didn’t spare a single word for Emily, nor did he react to her in any way, merely doing his job of showing her to where she belonged.

They led her down another flight of stairs, and the gangster-looking fellow opened a double-lock and then removed a chain off of a steel cage door. This portal separated whatever this was where she was, from whatever lay hidden within. Likely an increased security facility.

A sinking suspicion filled Emily’s mind, giving her the impression that she had wound up somewhere completely different in the city—somewhere not even under the club anymore.

At one point, she registered a little sting of pain and found that she had dug her own fingernails deep enough into her palms to leave visible pink impressions.

She flashed a smile at the next guard as well. It was only honest—timid, clipped, and fading quickly from her lips—because she needed it more for herself. She needed it more to support her own confidence than she did to keep up any veneer of belonging.

Cages, cages, and cages of various sizes. Some were large enough to stand in, while others were obviously dog cages in which an adult human being could only be inside of them on all fours. Leashes with collars hung inside the cages. Dog bowls for food and water were set into every one of them. However, all cages were empty.

The whole place smelled of sweat and waste. A black man in a white wife beater was washing the floor, pushing murky mucky fluid down the many floor drains. There were hints of yellow and pink slop on the mop.

This was it.

The razor’s edge.

Just like when Emily walked into the trafficker dungeons. An icy cold gauntlet gripped her heart.

Like then, just like with the hit man in the Mancini mansion, she realized how she straddled the razor’s edge, balancing along that dangerously thin line between life and death.

Was the camera working? Would the government spooks be here in time to help her if and when anything went south? There was no telling and Emily felt more alone than ever before.

The lifeless body of Tran returned, creeping up on her in the back in her mind, haunting her through her inner eye. This time, however, it ignited something unfamiliar.

This was for her. This was for them. This was for all the victims, both the ones she knew and the ones she’d never know. This was bigger than herself. This was what she was meant to do; where she was meant to be.

Emily inhaled sharply but quietly and her nostrils flared.

A door on the other end of the room of cages was so thick that it could be rightfully called a vault door. It bore the makings of something made up to submarine standards. At least six inches thick, and looking heavy by the body language of another guard opening it with a grunt. He struggled to release the locks, and a familiar hiss of military grade machinery released the hydraulics.

The door was insulated, possibly pressurized. Small round window set into it, nautical in appearance. Through it, Emily perceived the silhouettes of people standing in near darkness. The door opened fully, and the big bald guard admitted her inside with a sweeping hand gesture.

She discovered a well decorated room, more in line with the poker rooms up in the club; centered around a wooden stage. Carpet floors, curtains, candles, tables. No foul smell here, which helped explain the unusual door.

This was an auction stage, clear as day. Around it, men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses were assembled in the dark. Everybody wore masks befitting a crowd at a Venetian carnival party or a certain movie by Stanley Kubrick.

A live classical band performed in the auction hall, humming away with their cello, bass, and two violins; orchestrating this odd event with quiet and non-intrusive live music. A few of the masked figures nearby looked back at Emily and the guards with her—more reactively, because the sound of the door’s hiss had distracted them from their subdued conversations.

The auctioneer, dressed in a red tux with a grinning devil’s mask on his face, addressed the crowd in a ceremonial festive voice.

Emily knew the type: this one sure mowed his lawn and had three kids, a dog, and a trophy wife. Probably donated often to charity.

“That certainly was an entertaining bid,” he almost sung. “Now, for our next prize. A beautiful exotic—I would say, extravagant item. Ladies and gentlemen, I guarantee it, whatever your taste, whatever your preference—this is not one to pass up. It will force you to fall in love. Coming to us from far away across the seas is—oh, welcome, we have newcomers. Welcome, welcome. Step right in, you’re right on time for the show.”

Regardless, Emily walked deeper inside. Her digits tingled; her nerves turned into iron strings so taut that you could play tense music on them, rising to a crescendo. Her mouth ran dry with a cottony feeling and she heard the blood rushing in her ears.

She hoped the camera was working. This was one of those things that nobody would believe if they only heard about it. You had to see it with your own eyes, and even then people would dispute the grainy recordings that accompany such scandalous discoveries.

She observed some of the masked guests, looking out for clues that might let her recognize familiar features and famous faces.

This was also the kind of crowd who had ways to silence you if you wanted to testify in court.

Accordingly, Emily knew she needed something concrete.

A waiter served her a mask on a platter with a glass of sparkling white wine. The mask depicted the stylized face of a gray rat, complete with long whiskers—Emily felt a pang of guilt when she got the sense that its mean expression and a crooked smile matched her common demeanor towards the world.

Slipping the mask on to shrug off that sinking feeling, she looked through the crowd some more and finally recognized a woman standing among the high society bidders, near the higher elevated seats, VIP row. This lady wore a black mask in the shape of a happy theatrical face, dressed the same way as Agent Laura Davidson, from the meeting on the bench in the plaza before.

Out of earshot of anybody, all the while glaring at “Agent Davidson,” Emily hissed under her breath, “Motherfucker.”

Every fiber in her body screamed at once—she knew things were about to end badly. But she had to see this through. She always had to.

She fought the urge to curse more and pretended to mingle, blending her way through the small crowd and raising her glass to her lips. But she didn’t take a sip, only tipping it lightly, feigning to drink from her glass.

The scent hit her nostrils with tantalizing sweetness, but she knew better. She was not drinking any of this shit.

The crowd parted around her and a spotlight transfixed itself on Emily.

“As I said gentlemen, a rat,” said the black-masked woman.

The crowd started chanting, “Rat, rat, rat, rat.”

“No matter your taste, no matter your preference, it is hard to pass up a good rat. Bring her up!”

The rat-masked Emily struggled against the plethora of strong hands and arms that suddenly seized her. She quickly found herself more easily shoved and carried onto the auction stage than she could kick and buck against them to stop this from happening.

The mountains of meat that were the guards holding her then bent her arms behind her back and forced her down onto her knees. With the flash of light bouncing off a knife, followed by the cutting sound of fabric, one of the goons harshly cut the front of her clothing open to expose her breasts.

Despite the chaos engulfing her, Emily spotted him in the crowd. He hadn’t been there all this time, but now he was. In the shadow, escaping the flood light. Invisible to the world around him.

The mysterious old homeless man from the night before.

His lips did not move but his words entered her mind, “When the world is a prison, there are those who are the prisoners, cursed with unknowing; and the jailers who hold the keys to their unseen cells. But what the jailers don’t know is that they themselves are also inmates. A prison built by inmates for inmates, happy to stay within the prison as they build it around themselves and cherish it. And they will do anything they can to maintain and stay on their thrones of shit within it.”

The old Wise Man watched Emily from the crowd. His presence and the voluminous words in her mind drowned out the auctioneer’s festive descriptions of her hair, face, body, and temper.

Bid flags flew up—almost everyone bid on Emily like she was some piece of meat.

From behind the two muscle-packed men forcing Emily into her kneeling position, a third one approached. He brought a glass of champagne to her lips and roughly forced it under the mask. He breathed into her left ear, “Drink.”

“The inmates and the wardens are the same—they know each other only by the rules they accept, out of fear of losing the prison and the illusion of power they hold within its confines,” the Wise Man’s words cut like knives through the void, reaching only Emily’s mind.

The blood rushing in her ears turned into the pounding of drums. It was the first time she had ever sensed what embers lay beneath, blistering with malicious heat. What slept there, crackling like a dying fire, hidden underneath the canvas of fear, was what lay deep at the heart of her deepest self.

A burning rage.

The fire roared into flames within, and it was not fear that paralyzed her, but the power of those forcing her down. Those who forced everybody down, making them small, treating them like objects.

Emily took a sip, then spat it right out; right into the face of the nearest goon who had forced her to drink. She thrashed and flailed and tried to wrestle free in the ensuing split seconds of confusion, but to no avail.

If she was to die here, what would become of her cats?

Is she was to die here, then everything here would burn with her. It was the oath she swore unspoken. Instead, through a string of profanities she spewed out, she sneered at her captors through gritted teeth, clenching her jaws until her gums bled, “You shit-heads are going to pay.”

A hard slap on the face made her ears and head ring—an indicator that her spitting the drink into someone’s face was successful and had gotten to that sack of shit. It was hard to see because the damned mask had slid up into a crooked position with the eye holes somewhere over her forehead. Who did she get?

Didn’t matter. Fuck him. Fuck ‘em all.

The rage inside of her drowned out whatever the announcer was saying and the crowd of this sick perverts murmured in response.

Then the crowd whistled and applauded, in what almost sounded like a polite and timid manner. Not like a football crowd—not a roar—but a calm, timid, amused applause. Bearing the gentlest “ooohs” and “aaahs,” as if her painful outburst was a nice touch of surprise to this whole deranged show.

“Ten thousand! Eleven! Eleven and a half! Twelve—thirteen thousand—fourteen anyone? Fourteen! I see fifteen, sixteen—really? Alright alright, let’s go straight to twenty? Twenty anyone? Twenty! Twenty one—twenty two,” the bids kept rising.

“Quell the rage. Its fire will consume you. Stay calm and you will not die,” Wise Man recited in her head, mirroring ancient mantras, blending them with her current situation.

With her nostrils flaring and her whole body trembling—with liquid fury pulsing through her veins—she listened to Wise Man. Emily focused. Wild thrashing wouldn’t cut it. It was all about the timing now. Finding the right opportunity and seizing it.

She refused to end up as the next pale lifeless body on the metal slab in some dark morgue. She owed it to everybody she had lost, and everybody who might be saved, no matter how little she may accomplish in this life.

Emily whispered to herself, finding an uncanny and almost foreign clarity deep within. It became a mantra as she repeated it, “Rat finds the way off the sinking ship.”

The men continued to strip her and then strap her hands together behind her back with cable ties. People came up on stage to enjoy her various aspects—in the way only psychopaths torturing animals would regard the creatures with a fascination detached from any semblance of empathy.

Focusing on Wise Man and her mantra, she tuned it all out. She detached from this reality. Her meditative mind—a mind steeled in cigarette smoke, drowned in bottomless whiskey glasses, subdued by numerous nightly joints—that jaded mind, that lack of innocence. This mental state protected her and kept her sane now.

She was okay with this. She was surviving.

Mirroring the immovable object that she had become, the Wise Man stood motionless, like a mirage in the crowd, the singular only figure standing still in the midst of a hurricane of animated beasts, in the middle of a pile of demented animals passing as humans.

He heard her whispers, her mantra. Only he.

Someone ripped her mask off. It tore her from the bubble, peeled away a layer of protection, but instead of the grim reality outside, Emily glimpsed something else.

She found herself entirely elsewhere: on a burning pentagram, in the depths of an ancient, evil cave. The audience and her captors—her tormentors—not human, but all devils of various shapes and sizes. Their tongues twisted and split as they drowned out each other’s cacophony of blasphemies in hideous laughter. They lashed each other and themselves with barbed whips, rent their own flesh with horrifically jagged blades. They ate human body parts from trays made of bleached bone.

In a bright flash of orange flame, Emily landed naked. And free from her captors, unbound.

In the middle of her own apartment? Had she done this somehow? Winked her way out of that impossible situation, just by willing it so?

The scope of things threw her off and made her stomach knot. Everything around her was far too big. The couch and coffee table were huge, like dark towers supporting a glass sky. Behind her loomed something the size of a building, of black shiny substance with a soothing green window up on top, ocean blue numbers projecting inside of it. They displayed time, but that clock was frozen solid. Time stood still.

The craziest part of it—Emily wasn’t freaking out.

This was not real in the common sense, but also not unreal. A more apt description would be to explain it as a different reality intersecting with the one she had grown accustomed to.

Everything made perfect sense, which also meant that the current situation caught back up to her in a bright white flash, of cold and unforgiving colors like that of fluorescent lamps in a hospital flickering on. Or the lights in a morgue.

The savagery of nearly being turned into a sex slave by some crazy rich assholes, and the gruesome images of the devils in the dark cave washed over Emily, and she wept. Tears of release, tears of despair, acting out their passion play to go with a whole chorus of emotions bubbling up. Every other little thing she had pushed deep down in her life to function, every last ounce of dust from the edges that had been sanded down by the darkness of this world—it all boiled over and spilled out, streaming forth through rivers of tears.

Through the blurry haze of it all, she took in her surroundings, hugging herself while remaining on her knees, just seconds of despair away from giving up and curling up into a fetal position. She wondered if this was just some elaborate fantasy to detach herself from the horrible reality of people doing things to her while she was helpless.

Maybe none of this freaked her out because nothing ever made any sense to begin with.

As she rose to her feet—wobbly, trembling, and wiping away the tears—the clarity returned.

No guilt. No regret.

No worries came from a world made of glass and shadows.

“Oh no, you don’t. Get back in here. You’ve always been a rat on the inside and now you’re one on the outside,” Jones spoke in his raspy voice. His words did not arrive through the tinny speakers of a phone. They droned like the deep bass of a colossus.

His titanic form towered above the monolith that was the suitcase, a man in a black business suit, garbed in a fancy white overcoat. A cruel grin marked his stubbled face while he attempted to step on Emily. Before he could bring that giant shoe crashing down, three gargantuan tigers leapt in front of her to shield her. With growls and snarls, they clawed at him and got in his way, causing him to recoil and topple backwards.

Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte—unmistakably, Emily knew it was them—now saber-toothed tigers, hailing from another era. From another world.

He kicked them away as they rent and ripped at the ends of his trousers. Giants fighting giants.

“Oh no—no! Don’t try to fight this with your compassion. With your little friends. You were warned. You’re all in now. Shoulda taken the deal, silly girl,” Jones droned on as he swung at the tigers to keep them at bay.

The black building—the doomed suitcase—exploded. Jones, the world, Emily herself—flames engulfed everything.

“What?” Jones cried out, his tone rising into the fever pitch of surprise. “No!”

The three tigers, with manes of fire, jumped to Emily. Miranda snatched her in her mouth and they took off. The beasts ran through a hellish landscape where fire consumed all; where everything solid flaked into the ashes of oblivion.

No—Emily knew better—the realities crossed again—these were the industrial underworld hidden underneath the Estoria Pacific. The tigers had crossed over as well and carried her off the auction stage.

The devilish audience stared in shock, stunned and incapable of reacting. Their masks had become their faces: pigs, lizards, devils, hounds. Those masks had turned flesh, gaining a full facial reality. Masks no more, the onlookers were these abominations now.

Emily looked around, struggling to regain her bearings. Just like none of it freaked her out before, finding that calm center in the eye of the storm, her eyes now darted back and forth, weighing every option within the window of a split-second.

What could she grab hold of? Where could she go?

How could she make these fuck-pigs pay?

As soon as she asked herself these things without uttering them loud, a deafening cacophony flooded into her head, drowning out all her own thoughts.

“I need to pay my mortgage today.”

“Should mow the lawn this Tuesday.”

“I hope Theresa is okay with this when she finds out. Maybe I can get her into it. Maybe get her a nice Vietnamese boy.”

“What if Mark knows? Jesus, what if Mark knows?”

“Okay, two hours tops, gonna cum real quick, fly over to Boston, change tickets, check the stock market, meet with the execs tomorrow morning, be ready for dinner with Ehnske, and still make my way back for the merger talks. Get a nice hooker in between.”

“Tonight—I’ll do it tonight. Everything’s written off. Gonna do it with my .38, the .22 might not do it and leave me crippled. Put tarp in the garage, put my head in the bucket, so the blood pools, I don’t want Ellie to have to clean up, to call the police.”

“Damn, she has nice tits. I love a redhead with nice tits. I wanna eat that ass.”

“They let us kill the last rat at the end of the session, I’m seriously going to outbid Lanston this time. That motherfucker got to drug the Chinese chick to death. My god, it was so hot—he kept fucking her as he kept the injection going until she passed out.”

“Man, what am I doing here? I’ll quit, next week, I promise. God, forgive me. I’ll turn in my VIP card this Sunday. Please, God forgive me.”

“God, if this is wrong, why don’t you strike me down? Strike us all down?”

“God, is this wrong?”

“I’m scared.”

“This is kind of scary.”

“What if someone finds out?”

“What if the kids find out?”

“What if this was my kid?”

Voices. The voices of the audience flowed into Emily’s consciousness, like searing red-hot lava.

The rage swelled again; a candlelight flickering and then flaring into a flame with a sinister roar. But this time, it was not all-consuming, devouring, or controlling. It was a ghostly blue fire. Burning with dark purpose, and cold as the iciest circles of hell that Emily could imagine.

Oblivious and uncaring about her torn attire, she looked down and cupped her hand in front of her breasts, as if to cradle something invisible. Something like that blue flame, encroaching from the edges of her thoughts, eating away at the fringe of the alien minds that hers was touching, keeping those foreign thoughts distinct.

She stared into her empty palm. That fury was something she could grasp.

Something she wanted to grasp.

She felt an aspect of her will manifest in her head. That icy gauntlet that gripped her earlier. The will itself became a gauntlet. But the ice cracked and melted in the flames. As it sloughed off, the gauntlet revealed itself to be forged of iron.

Her will was not made of ice, fickle and prone to hysteria when the flame of anger torches it. Her will was of iron—it could take the heat.

As soon as that aspect took shape in her mind, she comprehended it. And as soon as she comprehended it, her rat paws become human hands again.

Miranda threw her over herself somehow, allowing Emily to land on the mighty tiger’s back. Emily rode, a nude Valkyrie wreathed in furious fire, holding onto the giant beast’s fur, in control of her deadly mount.

She wanted to make the fuck-pigs pay. So much so that their heads burst into flames and exploded. Samantha and Charlotte ripped people’s bodies apart with claw and fang, but there wasn’t enough time. Miranda led the charge and wordlessly urged them to escape. Time was short and Emily felt it, too. All-engulfing flames raged behind them, consuming the stage.

The ancient cave retained the vault door. The tigers approached it.

Emily only blinked and they had teleported beyond it by merit of mere thought, then the tigers raced on. No question as to why, or how that made sense. It happened, therefore it became reality.

Cages, cages, cages—now filled with tormented victims, packed like sardines. Grasping hands that reached out from between the bars, desperate for rescue. The captives cried out. But it was not their cries that Emily heard.

“I want to go home.”

“My baby!”

“I want to die.”

“Save me.”

“My babies.”

“I want to go home.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This is the end.”

“I want to go home.”

“My poor boy.”

“I want to die.”

“Save me.”

“My baby.”

“I want to go back.”

“What will happen to us now?”

“This is the end.”

“I want to go home.”

“Where are my children?”

“I want to die.”

“Save me!”

“What did they do to my sisters?”

“I want to go back home.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This is the end.”

How oddly similar all these internal pleas were, though they coalesced and clashed through different minds, different voices. All different. All the same. All at the same time.

It was time to open those cages. To rip them open. The liberation would hurt. Ripping the band-aid off always did.

Emily blinked again to clear her vision, sensing how different realities intersected and clashed. The voices in her head echoed and screamed, to the point of becoming unbearable. The rage turned righteous. The gauntlet gripped those bars and wrenched them apart with that furious wrath.

The gauntlet transcended the existence of mere imagination and fantasy—it covered her hand. Bleeding into one reality from the next, she wore it like a second skin. Its iron thrummed with unspeakable might.

All the cages flew open at once and a firestorm swept through the world, swallowing everything in a cleansing heat. The whole damned place turned into an inferno.

The three monstrous tigers charged forth and Emily clung to Miranda’s back. All around them, the dimensions changed and twisted and distorted. They escaped through clusters of winding corridors tangled into a labyrinthine, hellish knot.

Furious shouts followed them from the inferno behind them—Jones’ voice overshadowing the bedlam, “No! Kill her! Kill her now! Don’t let it happen! Don’t let her go! Mine, she’s mine! This worthless sack of shit belongs to us!”

Emily raised her hand and splayed her fingers. The gauntlet forced the maze to unfold. She rode Miranda onto cages, jumped from one set of bars to another, inside and through two ends of cages, dashing down a tunnel of narrow cells, up a spiral of bars—these catacombs ever-changing around them whenever she blinked away the tears that the sheer velocity drove into her eyes.

She rode upward against gravity. Right became left, up turned into down. Then they fell, going backwards upon these iron bars, until the world consisted of nothing but iron and fire.

A tremendous invisible force knocked Miranda over, sending her and her dauntless rider into a spiraling fall.

“I can’t take you further. Only you can go there, mom,” said a voice in Emily’s head. Was it her cat? Or Tran’s daughter? Why did they sound the same now?

—Submitted by Wratts

[universeinform-blog]

Americans traveling to North Korea face serious risk of arrest, detention

New Post has been published on https://universeinform.com/2017/03/29/americans-traveling-to-north-korea-face-serious-risk-of-arrest-detention/

Americans traveling to North Korea face serious risk of arrest, detention

Journey warnings for American tourists keen on North Korea have continually been dire with admonitions from the U.S. Nation Branch approximately the danger of arrest, long-time period detention, coerced public statements and public trials.

This week a new alert was added 

Something sounding an awful lot like becoming a prisoner of warfare: “North Korea’s device of law enforcement … Threaten(s) U.S. Citizen detainees with being dealt with according with ‘wartime regulation,’ ” a revised Country Branch Journey warning stated.

The up to date language follows the ultra-modern heightening of tensions among the U.S. And North Korea in July when the Obama management for the primary time imposed personal sanctions in opposition to North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses.

North Korea replied with the aid of calling the circulate an “act of warfare” and severed one of the closing ultimate conversation channels among the two countries via North Korea’s United countries mission in NY.

North Korea: U.S. Declared war with sanctions

North Korea also said it might start detaining Individuals “under the wartime law of the DPRK,” the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The revised Tour warning from the State Branch become the outcome.

“This replace adds facts associated with North Korea’s posted threats about how it will treat U.S. residents in the DPRK,” Kevin Brosnahan, spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs on the Kingdom Department, said Friday.

Andrea Lee, the CEO and founding father of one of the few U.S.-primarily based Journey companies running in North Korea, said the fierce warnings have validated to be a “double-edged sword” for tourism.

“On the one hand, sure, it is no longer high quality. However alternatively,

It makes Human beings curious and that they want to head and spot it for themselves,” Lee stated.

Similarly to websites within the capital of Pyongyang, the USA features scenic mountains or even browsing and snowboarding possibilities. There may be additionally a sense of exhilaration about touring to a country few outsiders have seen, Lee stated.

“I really suppose it’s the type of this sense of journey. Human beings are tired of going to the same vintage places. People want to peer the world and they want to go to places no one else has been to before,” Lee stated.

What Made Native American Peoples Vulnerable to Conquest by European Adventurers?

What made Native American peoples liable to conquest by using Ecu adventurers?

There were numerous tendencies which made the Native American’s prone to conquest through Eu adventurers. First, the humans themselves had been sick geared up to deal with the ECU invaders. Their numbers were speedily reduced as a result of famine, compelled hard work, epidemics concerning contact with European illnesses and wars.

They had been unaccustomed to the financial, political and military elements related to the Europeans.

They lacked the corporation and political cohesion to withstand the conquering humans. The diverse tribes had been often in battle with one and other as they went about their everyday lives competing with every different for land and meals. For instance, over time the Aztecs accumulated many enemies, especially within their own tribe. This battle resulted from competition for territorial rights, acquisition of wealth and the exercise of the usage of their captive enemies as religious sacrifices. Cortés exploited this trait by way of forming alliances with the opposing tribes. In comparison to the Aztecs loss of team spirit the Spanish explorers have been a pretty unified society.

The Local Americans possessed the important abilities to work with copper but did

Not develop the ones had to smelt iron hence they lacked enough technology to salary war upon the invaders. Whilst the Europeans arrived in the New World they had been welcomed with the aid of the Native Individuals. The Indians regarded their site visitors as first-rate warriors with their get dressed, beards, and their ships but more so for the era, they added with them.

The Native populace was surprised at this generation along with their metal knives and swords, the arquebus that’s a type of muzzle loader, the cannon, copper and brass kettles, mirrors, hawk bells and jewelry which had been used as buying and selling items, together with other gadgets which were unusual to their manner of life. This becomes rightfully so since the natives lacked the potential to create these extremely good inventions used by the Europeans. Lamentably the ECU visitors used their guns of conflict inflicting terrific quantities of harm to the natives.

It did not take lengthy before severe troubles started out to broaden.

Upon the advent of the Europeans, there were 7 million Local People in North us. Most lived in hunter-collect or agricultural kinds of communities. The biggest trouble encountered via the Local Americans was their lack of immunity in the direction of Eu diseases. This loss of immunity in these communities towards the ECU diseases took their toll many of the Indian tribes. Smallpox becomes a commonplace chance frequently reduced in size by the Indians from the Au humans.American flag memorial day.

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How to Use Cloth Diaper While Traveling

Contrary to not unusual perception, journeying with cloth diapers isn’t always that complicated. In fact, there are many benefits of selecting the fabric way.

• The trade in surroundings can aggravate your toddler and by way of selecting disposables, something which she isn’t comfortable in, can without a doubt irk the toddler’s temper (and result in not-so-lots outstanding trip)

• Plus, in case your toddler is used to material diapers from the beginning, the sudden change can reason irritation and rashes.

• Most of us mother and father pick out reusable diapers for its affordability. And at the same time as traveling, the cost of buying disposables can get exorbitant. So, in case you need to stick with cheaper options, p.C. your reusable diapers with you.traveling vs traveling

Choosing cloth will soothe your eco-conscious thoughts, although it’s a piece of labor.

The usage of fabric diapers while on a holiday may be a simple, clean process. Right here are some useful recommendations to help you sail thru your material diapering adventure while at the pass.

Recognize your traveling Plan

Before you start considering reusable diapers, you want to Understand the state of affairs you’ll be in. How many days is the trip for? Are you journeying by means of automobile or aircraft? Will you have laundering alternatives or you want to apply your lodge toilet? in case you are staying at a chum’s vicinity, are they k with you washing the material diapers of their device?

What to percent

Fabric Diapers & Diaper covers

First matters first, determine out How many reusable diapers does your infant need in a day. Subsequent, reflect consideration on how frequently you would wash the cloth diapers and for What number of days you would be long gone. it is pleasant to scrub them as soon as in 3 days. Relying on this calculation, p.C. your reusable diapers.

Pocket diapers are very relaxed at the same time as touring, all with their breathable fibers. Also, if you use disposable liners, it’s very clean to smooth dirty diapers without staining them. AIOs and Hybrid diapers are also top notch choices.

However if washing your material diapers appears to be a touch elaborate, then residences and pre-fold are your satisfactory guess. You could easily wash them in your lavatory bathtub or sink.

Problems With Juvenile Detention Centers

Juvenile detention facilities, normally shortened to “jury,” have long been visible as a technique of criminal punishment for youngsters offenders, much like jail for adults. However, latest studies have discovered that teenagers prisons, instead of teaching kids the variations among wrong and right, can genuinely make a teenager more likely to devote crimes as a person.

A 20-yr observe in Montreal followed adolescents offenders age 10-17 through numerous levels of the juvenile criminal device.

Psychologists analyzed the children’ interactions with every other and tracked their crime fees through adulthood. Standard, young adults concerned with any a part of the children offender gadget have been much more likely to commit crimes in maturity.

First, network carrier is a punishment allotted to many different crimes, consisting of riding at the same time as drunk or minor in possession. You may think that network punishment is a wonderful way to advantage the community, in addition, to train kids approximately obligation. But, even teens with this small contact with juvenile corrections were twice as likely to be arrested as adults.

Those chances increase even greater relying on the level of involvement.

For afflicted youngsters who are placed on probation, the kids are fourteen times more likely to dedicate crimes as adults than children who do no longer get concerned in juvenile corrections and probation. Lastly, or even more horrifying, the Montreal examine determined that teenagers who are despatched to juvenile detention centers are an awesome 37 instances more likely to be concerned in criminal activity as adults.j Reuben long detention center.Charles march portland me.Leben benjamin and march

Psychologists trust that touch with different troubled young people makes a youngster much more likely to devote future crimes due to the want to “impress” the other children offenders. This often consists of worse and worse legal infractions.