#thinks he's a real felon for this and not the many murders and attacks he's done but just this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

angedemystere · 4 years

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From Bicetre to Toulon (Excerpt - Les Miserables Fic)

Title: From Bicetre to Toulon [excerpt from Homo Homini Lupus]

Fandom: Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)

Characters: Inspector Javert, original characters, minor Jean Valjean

Rating: T

Warnings: mentions of violence, implied sexual assault, racist slurs

Summary: A revised version of the first chapter of my werewolf!Javert fic Homo Homini Lupus, which I will continue revising and reuploading. We start in the early days of Javert’s career in the bagne.

The heat was murderous, as usual. In the starch-stiff collars of the Argousin uniforms, the temperature and Mediterranean humidity reached hellish ends, bypassing death straight into the lake of fire. The convicts chained to the carts were worse off. The warm wind ran over their faces like a tiger’s tongue, and the sun cooked them alive. Thank God they were now three miles from Toulon after thirty-five days of marching.

Whether in genuine high spirits or to mask despair, the recidivists chatted up other repeat offenders and first-time felons alike. The Argousin did the same among their own. They were all eager to drop off the fiends and return home or to their primary occupations. Most of the men were local peasants or former naval officers.

Alezais Javert was neither. His origins were bound to the men physically bound to one another in the cart. He minded his steps and minded his place on this side of the march from Bicetre to Toulon. He rarely spoke to the prisoners or the other Argousin.

The suffocating heat helped deter affability. So did the uniform collar. This was his fourth tour, and Alezais wanted to tug his collar as much as he did on his first. Each time the impulse came, his conscience gave it a reprimanding slap. No. Bad. While not a native of the Occitan provinces, he’d lived here many years, so a mere collar was no exceptional burden. If only it weren’t merely the collar or the heat. The entire uniform confined him. Instinct raged against the cage of linen and cotton, but he would not grumble even in the closed chamber of his mind. He had to grow used to it. He would. Naturally. Eventually.

A sigh punched out from his nose.

“What’s the matter?” Julien Favreau asked. Another Argousin, he marched with Alezais for two tours now. Julien had joined with other sailors evading service in the Atlantic skirmishes with the English. This acquaintance tallied to almost three months. Alezais had known other Argousin for longer who were at best tolerable peers. Julien, by contrast, often sought Alezais’ company to talk about anything and nothing. In their earliest conversations, Alezais shook him off, but like lichen, Julien knew how to stick to and grow on an abrasive surface.

Julien bumped his shoulder. “Still alive?”

Alezais cleared his throat. “I’m still walking.”

“I’ve heard of walking corpses. They drink the blood of their relatives.”

“I have no relations within fifty miles of here.”

“Good. I don’t think even Thierry would let a revenant in his command. We have enough returners to deal with. What’s troubling you?”

“Nothing important.”

Julien hummed. “Are you going to put in your application as a garde-chourme?”

Alezais peered past him to be sure they were out of earshot. The convicts couldn’t be helped, so he whispered. “I suppose I have nothing to lose.”

“Before you know it, you’ll be usurping old Legueneux.”

Alezais laughed low, doubtful. Pierre Legueneux was the assistant adjutant and a veteran of the bagne. The entire guard relied on his indelible memory of prisoners’ faces and physiques. In Alezais’s imagination, Legueneux was part eagle, part bloodhound, a chimera of vigilance.

Julien tapped his arm again. “Don’t snicker. It’s what you want.”

“Oh yes? Then it must be so. Julien the Oracle has spoken.”

Julien tilted back his hat to give his forehead some air. After a spell of silence, he said, “Maybe there’s a girl you want more.”

Alezais coughed a laugh. “No.”

Julien looked at him. “No?”

“No girl would want me.”

“I doubt that. Even if it were true, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t want a girl.”

“Why ask for disappointment?”

“Part of the fun is not knowing if you’ll get your quarry.” Julien showed off the gap between his front teeth. “Poor Alezais. You’ve no spirit of the hunter in you.”

Alezais stared ahead, very nearly smiling, too.

“Ah, buck up. You’re not half-bad-looking when you stop scowling.”

“I would prefer to be all bad-looking. It’s not the face but the man beneath it that drives women away.”

“I have good news, then: a personality is easier to change than a face.”

Poor man, Alezais thought. That’s not as true as you think.

He belatedly realized that he’d jutted his jaw from side to side, flexing against a cramp due to clenching the muscles all day. Wonderful.

“Tell that to Bouchard,” he said. Right away he wanted to take it back.

Julien glanced behind them, as much a reflex as Alezais’s jaw twitch. “I’ll give you that. How’s he been with you?”

“He’s finally getting bored. Called me gypsy-trash only twice the entire way. I think he’s mistaken it for my real name.”

Alezais barely differentiated the tone he used in earnest and jest. Julien usually understood the nuance or was tickled by his comments regardless. This time he stayed grave. Well, as grave as Julien could ever stand to be, which meant knitted brows arching like two offended cats that would soon calm down on their own. “If Bouchard gives you more trouble, let me know.”

Alezais shifted inside his clothes. If he melted out of the uniform, it might have remained standing without him. How it itched now. “Don’t worry.”

Julien should not have bothered whether Bouchard or any other guard snapped at him, made a tasteless joke, or demanded he handle one of the more unruly prisoners out of humiliation. Alezais found his own way to handle these tests. The first and most memorable incident involving a prisoner occurred with Chéron, a gorilla of a recidivist who had knocked down a new prisoner and menaced him with filthy threats. Alezais was close enough for Bouchard to justify barking him into action. He bounded in, almost stepping on the fallen convict’s leg. The old returner cracked a laugh when Alezais growled at him to step away.

Bouchard would’ve hit him; Nouel and Héroux would’ve thrown him to the ground together. Alezais wanted to grab his throat with his teeth. Instead he let his hand be the jaw that clamped around the back of Chéron’s neck, right above the iron collar, and squeezed muscle and tendon. He walked Chéron away from the trembling newcomer. The shocking ease in the action electrified him, until Chéron twisted away, only to twist back around and spit in Alezais’ eyes. A childish ploy, he thought two seconds before Chéron’s wooden skull collided with his nose.

In Chéron’s view, the attack had been worth the beating from the other guards and the spell of solitary confinement, all in a generous effort to educate the fledgling guard. To add further insult, Chéron tossed Alezais some pus-filled words of affection—“Morning, boy! How’s your head?”—“Your crooked nose looks especially lovely today.”—“Oh, dear boy, my neck’s aching something terrible today; mind giving it a rub?” Bouchard let the remarks go unpunished for about a week. After another beating, Chéron would whisper in the ear of a chain-mate whenever Alezais met them working somewhere in the Arsenal. The other prisoner had the sense to look away while grinning.

Alezais was at a loss until one afternoon when Chéron was (thankfully) occupied in a rope-making workshop away from other prisoners. Alezais had stepped inside, noticing the other guard posted there was drifting to sleep on his feet. Chéron saw him, grinned, and without another bagnard to whisper to, he addressed the young guard himself.

“I’m quite fond of your growl. I might not mind hearing it in my bunk one night.”

Alezais looked Chéron in the eye. He came over and crouched until their noses almost touched. Then he leaned past his face to speak in a low voice in the prisoner’s ear.

“If I ever came to your bunk, it would be to eat you.”

He pulled back so Chéron, and only Chéron, saw his face. Between a smile and a grimace, he parted his lips. The lower lip stretched down on the left, letting the canine above it grow in full view. It sharpened to a fang. Intrigued surprise fled Chéron and left choking horror in its place. Alezais closed his mouth and left the workshop without looking back.

He let slip a smile as he remembered the next time, and all subsequent times, that he passed Chéron and watched the prisoner shrink away. If Chéron muttered into another convict’s ear, the answer was stiffness and a glance that came and darted off like a minnow in the presence of a shark.

“Goodness,” Julien said. “You look much more cheerful. I’m worried now.”

“What can I say?” Alezais said when his mind came back to the present moment. “We’re nearly at Toulon. I’m always like this when we drop off new arrivals.”

“No, there’s definitely a girl on your mind.”

The last few hours rolled with the cart without incident or memorable comment. The walls of the Arsenal rose, white like the cliffs of Dover, as the troop cleared the last hill. The town itself stretched along the coastline, a colorless confusion of municipal buildings, shops and houses. The sea shimmered at the arrivals. The galley ship L’Amiral could have been the head of a sea monster, black even in the light. The Argousin descended the hill straight for the prison gates. Upon arrival, five guards moved the bolts and dragged the doors open. The cart’s wheels creaked, jolted on cobblestones. Handcuffs jangled and lethargic bodies swayed against wooden rails. The cart was brought to a stop inside the main courtyard before the registry office. It was time to unload. As he assisted each prisoner’s descent, Alezais sketched the faces on the canvas of his memory and compared their heights to each other and himself. Most men came short of his eyes, some his nose or chin; a few managed to outstretch him by half a head. Once everyone was lined up to meet the prison secretary, he turned his ears to the roster. Name, face; name, face. Jean Calvet. Georges Lafitte. Martin Matthieu. Michel Portier. Jean Renaudin. Pierre Toutain. Jean Valjean. Antoine Verdier.

Expressions provided no distinguishing features. Most of the men were portraits of bleak resignation. Now and then, a freshly condemned man pleaded or wept at the sight of the collar and ankle brace. Their choices had brought them here—Alezais would not waste energy on pity. And yet he remembered the whistles, the comments, and wondered how much of the same treatment the newcomers would endure. How much worse it would be.

No, he couldn’t wonder about it. The regulations were clear; abuse among the prisoners would be corralled. He would do so as incidents occurred and leave it there.

Every name was checked, and the new prisoners were handed their smocks and escorted into the changing hall to be fitted with collars. It was now that the weeper in the group announced his presence. He was close to thirty years old. Dark hair, middling height, broad build. Before he’d been somber and didn’t leave the impression of a delicate constitution. Quite out of nowhere, his sobs broke loose. His large hands shook. The chains sang a taunting countermelody to his watery, staccato exhalations. He bowed his head so low it pressed against his chest, a hinderance to the procedure of putting the collar on him. Any restraint was lost to hysterics and babbled pleas. All eyes and ears turned to the man at least once.

Alezais sighed. Disbelief grew as the balling and strange gesture of raising and lowering a hand, as though moving along an invisible staircase, refused to stop. Did the man have no dignity?

“Shut up!” hissed the prisoner behind him in line.

Baudin, a grey-haired guard charged with fitting the collar, grabbed him by the hair. “Silence, both of you!”

The weeper shouted but didn’t resist the iron now wrapped around his neck. He stumbled when forced to sit on the bench so Baudin could hammer the lock shut. Hair was sliced away. Another warden waited while the young man was made to strip before passing him the smock that many bagnards compared to the shade of bloody piss. The other warden took away the man’s civilian clothes.

One of the Jeans, Alezais recalled. His assigned number was stitched on the tunic and too far away for him to read. It was all recorded on the roster; he would study it. Numbers were easier to track than names, as Jean exemplified.

Even when the choked words and wails stopped, that wide frame shuddered with silent crying all the way through his ankle fitting and the departure to the rear of the Arsenal where, once everyone joined the chain, they boarded the dingy that transported the prisoners, new and old, to L’Amiral. Alezais saw them as far as the terrace looking out on the port without being required to descend with the new convicts.

“That was something,” Julien said. “They’re going to eat that teary fellow alive.”

“It will take some attention off you for a while, at least,” Bouchard said.

Alezais had heard his heavy steps and smelled the greasiness before the deputy warden spoke. He huffed as respectfully as possible. It seemed best not to respond.

Bouchard thought otherwise. He came around to Alezais. “Don’t you agree, cadet?”

“If you say so, sir.”

Bouchard must have been in a good mood; he glowered, then snapped at their group to return to the Arsenal for the remaining round of patrol duty for the day.

The sun remained unkind, but it was heading for the horizon. Close to dusk, the guards rounded up the bagnards in the Arsenal, marched them to the docks, then returned to their barracks to exchange the uniforms for their own clothes. Protocol demanded tidiness to spare the next guards the reminder that they were in contact with another man’s sweat. The uniforms were two weeks overdue for laundering. Shirts and buttons littered the stone floor. Alezais examined his uniform. No buttons missing. He folded it into a crisp-edged square and laid it on the mounted shelf.

Julien arrived just in time to see the perfect display. “Thank goodness, not a button out of place. Or are you finally letting the laundresses take care of that?”

“They’ve neglected a few in the past,” Alezais said. “No surprise when so many men are bent on losing as many buttons as possible.”

“It is bad form. But it’s not the same as being a sailor on a war ship—”

“It’s still a duty.”

“I know, I know. Was your father not in fact a general or admiral? You act as though he was.”

Alezais weighed what to say in answer. “My mother had strict ideals about how we treat our clothing.”

Ever amiable in his amusement, Julien patted his shoulder. “What do you say to drinks tonight?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Come now, you can’t coop yourself up every single night. Just one evening?”

“I don’t coop myself up.” He frowned at the tinny whine. He cleared his throat. “I take walks in the evenings sometimes.”

“You can always walk with me and my friends,” Julien said. Usually his offer was in a jocular spirit, but this time there was worry that left Alezais almost as uncomfortable as when he’d suffered through the new prisoner’s sobbing.

“Thank you. But a walk with friends leads to a bar, which leads to drinks, which leads to many other things I simply don’t have the time or inclination to enjoy. A simple walk is all I need.”

Julien shook his head. “How do you not bore yourself to death?”

“It’s not boring. It clears my head.”

Not from an overabundance of troubles. Julien might assume so, which tempted Alezais to give a reason closer to the truth. It was risky. He might bring too much to light. Ah, but that was the wrong way to think when he wanted to be utterly upright, impervious to scrutiny. As an ordinary man with criminal parents and born of the bohemes, he could have spoken of any concerns with a crystal-clear conscience. Well, he could be righteous, correct in decorum, and still have his secrets to protect his life. Yes, when it was necessary, all while conducting himself as the perfect dog. Man. Both, perhaps.

“Sometimes,” he started, then hesitated. For some reason Julien waited, still listening. “Sometimes I need to … to feel the ground, listen to the air and the nighttime sounds. Someday I will be in a profession where I’m wholly content and won’t need to stroll like … like a restless beast.”

“There’s nothing wrong with liking walks,” said Julien, smiling and endearingly puzzled. The expression emphasized his full lips and green-blue eyes. His confusion sat as a gentle crease between golden eyebrows that matched his long hair. He came from a family of sailors and craftsmen, respectable without distinction. Ordinary, respectable human blood in his veins.

Alezais let his mouth twitch in a fleeting smile. “If you say so. Enjoy yourself tonight.”

“That’s never a problem for me!” Julien laughed. “But Al—”

“Cadet Javert?”

They both looked at M. Morin, the chief warden’s secretary. He had the compact look of a clerk with the thin mustache of a man who once dreamed of a more distinguished rank. He informed Alezais that M. Thierry wanted to see him before he left. Alezais complied; Julien frowned in wonder, then joked that this must be Alezais’s inevitable promotion to assistant adjutant. Hell, maybe Thierry was retiring and had selected him as the new chief warden!

“Perhaps,” Alezais said. He could make some changes, such as assigning Bouchard latrine duties. Only a man who despised the filth around him could be trusted to banish it, armed with a brush instead of a truncheon. Julien sent him off with a guffaw and a slap on the back.

#les miserables #javert #inspector javert #werewolf au #sorry this isn't really a complete chapter #have to stay in the word limit for an application #will post the full chapter on ao3 probably #myfic

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marymosley · 4 years

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CNN Analysts Unleash Personal Attacks On RNC Speakers In Twitter Storm

We have previously discussed the case of former Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann who was repeatedly and falsely called a racist in an encounter with a Native American activist in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Various media organizations have apologized or settled cases with Sandmann for their unfair coverage, including CNN. However, when Sandmann spoke at the Republic National Convention, CNN’s political analyst Joe Lockhart again attacked him personally after he criticized how the media got the story wrong. CNN’s Jeff Yang also attacked the teenager and even suggested that his speech proved that he was not innocent. Fellow CNN analyst Asha Rangappa attacked former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley as yielding to a racist America for not using what Rangappa suggested was her real name as opposed to “Nikki.” It turns out that Nikki is her lawful middle name and the Hill’s Saagar Enjeti noted it is “a Punjabi name.” That however is an appeal to reason not rage which seems to have little place in our national discourse or media coverage.

The personal attacks on speakers were beyond the pale, but hardly unprecedented. What happened to Sandmann was a disgrace for the media and he had every right to speak publicly about his treatment by the media.

Sandmann is a pro-life kid who wanted to demonstrate against abortion. He sought to play a meaningful role in his political system, which is what we all have encouraged. Indeed, CNN has aired many such calls for young people to have their voices heard. He was in Washington as part of the annual “March for Life.” This is one of those voices. Sandmann spoke about his horrific experience in being labeled the aggressor in the confrontation when all he did was stand there as an activist pounded a drum in his face. Sandmann said this morning in an interview that he only learned at 3 am in the morning on the bus home that he was being labeled a racist who attacked or harassed this activist.

In addition to Lockhart, CNN opinion writer Jeff Yang said that the speech confirmed to him that he was guilty all along.

“Hey @N1ckSandmann, I watched your speech tonight at the #RNCConvention2020 with an open mind, thinking I might hear something that would convince me of your position that you were an innocent victim of a cruel media. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to hear otherwise.”

So Yang now believes Sandmann was the aggressor or the one who was at fault? Yang even criticized Sandmann for not extending a “branch of peace” to Nathan Phillip, the Native American elder in the confrontation. Sandmann did nothing wrong in front of Lincoln Memorial. He just stood there as Phillip pounded a drum in his face. Yet, Yang now believes that the media was not wrong or Sandmann innocent.

Yang previously personally attacked Pete Buttigieg for calling for a “vision shaped by the American Heartland rather than the ineffective Washington Politics.” Yang again viewed Buttigieg’s political statement as a license for personal insults: “Okay, gloves off: This is the bullshittiest quote of many bullshitty quotes from this man, whose vision was shaped by Harvard, Oxford, McKinsey & Company and a keenly honed sense of ambition. Dude, your dad was a lit professor and you went to a private prep school. Quit fronting.” Nothing on the content of Buttigieg’s point. Just a personal attack from the CNN commentator.

The Sandmann controversy arose because of the very bias that Yang reaffirmed this week. For many, the mere fact that he was wearing a MAGA hat was enough to declare him a racist. An example that we previously discussed is the interview of “Above the Law” writer Joe Patrice with Elie Mystal. In the interview, Mystal, the Executive Editor of “Above the Law”, attacked this 16 year old boy as a racist. Patrice agreed with Mystal’s objections to Sandmann wearing his “racist [MAGA] hat.” They also objected to Sandmann doing interviews trying to defend himself with Mystal deriding how this “17-year-old kid makes the George Zimmerman defense for why he was allowed to deny access to a person of color.” It was entirely false that Sandmann was denying “access to a person of color.” Yet, the interview is an example of the criticism (which continued with Lockhart) of Sandmann speaking publicly about his treatment. Mystal and Patrice compared this high school student to a man who was accused of murdering an unarmed African American kid and continued to slam him even after the true facts were disclosed.

After his remarks at the RNC (which is not an easy thing for most teenagers to do), Lockhart declared on Twitter “I’m watching tonight because it’s important. But i [sic] don’t have to watch this snot nose entitled kid from Kentucky.”

Why is this teenager “entitled”? Because he is discussing his role in a national controversy or his abuse by the media, including CNN? CNN settled with Sandmann. When did that become “entitled”? The message from these media personalities seems to be that Sandman is expected to simply stay silent and such interviews make him either a George Zimmerman wannabe or a textbook case of entitlement. Of course, media figures like Lockhart can continue to slam Sandmann, but he is . . . well . . . entitled to do so.

Nikki Haley gave one of the most polished speeches at the RNC. There is clearly much in the speech that many do not accept about racism in America. However, Haley lashed out that it is

“now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country. This is personal for me. I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small Southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a Brown girl in a Black and White world. We faced discrimination and hardship. But my parents never gave in to grievance and hate. My mom built a successful business. My dad taught 30 years at a historically black college. And the people of South Carolina chose me as their first minority and first female governor. America is a story that’s a work in progress. Now is the time to build on that progress, and make America even freer, fairer, and better for everyone.”

That speech led to an immediate personal attack from Rangappa that Haley bowed to racism by dropping her real name: “Right. Is that why you went from going by Nimrata to ‘Nikki’?” Rangappa asked.

The problem is that Haley birth name is Nimrata Nikki Randhawa. She is not the first politician to use her middle name like Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who goes by Boris. Then there is Willard Mitt Romney. Was Romney denying his roots by going with Mitt? Yet when a minority member uses her middle name, it is somehow evidence that she is a racist tool.

What is telling is that, rather than address the underlying argument on systemic racism in our society, analysts like Rangappa prefer to attack Haley personally and suggest that she is some type of shill for racism. Why? Rangappa teaches at Yale and in academia such ad hominem attacks are viewed as the very antithesis of reasoned debate. Likewise, in journalism, such attacks were once viewed as anathema, particularly when they are based on false assumptions.

There is much in these conventions to debate. In truth, I have never liked political conventions and view them all as virtually contentless. Nevertheless, there have been parts of the RNC that I have criticized, including the appearance last night of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a departure from past traditions of keeping such cabinet members out of political convention roles. Once again, such important lines of separation were obliterated by the Trump Administration. I also found reformed former felon John Ponder’s remarks to be powerful, but I agree with critics that the incorporation of a pardon signing into the events at a political convention to be wrong. I have also previously criticized the use of the White House for the political convention, including for the First Lady’s speech (which I also thought was a good speech).

Those are issue worthy of debate and people of good faith can disagree on the merits. That is a lot more productive than attacking an 18-year-old kid because he had the audacity to criticize the media and support President Trump. There is, of course, a troubling entitlement evident in these stories. It is the entitlement enjoyed by media figures who feel total license to personally attack anyone who challenges their narrative or supports Trump. It is not just permitted but popular. This is why Merriam-Webster defines “entitlement” as the “belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges.”

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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years

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Countless Roads - Chapter 6

Fic: Countless Roads - Chapter 6 - Ao3

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Gen, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, others

Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

A/N: The timing of this is completely coincidental, this whole fic having been written over the last year or so, but this chapter happens to be Halloween-themed. So happy Halloween, everyone!

———————————————————————————-

All things considered, Len's amazed that it takes Lisa until her junior year to think of it.

Perhaps the real reason is that that's the first year Len and Mick start going to the university area to visit her. It's noticeably more high class an area than the ones they usually frequent, and Len only gives the okay because the statutes of limitation have run out on all of their currently outstanding warrants, which means that even if the cops do finger them, they can't do anything about it.

The area's also got a lot more people with a lot more leisure time than the areas Len prefers.

That's probably why Lisa had her no-good, awful, terrible idea.

"No," Len tells her, but he already knows he's going to give in. He's never been able to deny Lisa anything she really wanted. Well, nothing but the ability to ruin her life by taking up crime the way he has. Her record is clean and it's staying that way as long as Len can manage it - probably not forever, he's acknowledging it now, but he's going to hold off until there's no way to avoid it.

This, though, this isn't crime.

This is just dumb.

"C'mon, Lenny! It'll be great!"

"No."

Len glances over at Mick in hopes of some back-up, but no, Mick's grinning his head off like the goddamn troll that he is.

"No!"

"He's giving in," Mick tells Lisa wisely. "You can hear it in the growing desperation in his voice."

"You sure can," she agrees.

"This is stupid," Len argues. "Too stupid for words!"

"It'll be fun."

"No, it won't."

"Give me one good reason why it won't be fun."

"Because I see actual ghosts!" Len exclaims. "I have no reason to go to a haunted house!"

"Lenny," Lisa says with a giant grin. "That's why it's gonna be so much fun. You've never been, have you?"

"Never saw the point," Len says grumpily.

"I can't believe you've been denying Mick the pleasure all these years," Lisa says. "He wants to go, doesn't he?"

"You bet I do," Mick agrees enthusiastically.

"He only wants to go so he can laugh at me," Len argues.

"You bet I do," Mick says, sweet as he can manage with a shit-eating grin on his face. "What's your point?"

Len groans.

Looks like they're going to a haunted house.

Which apparently has all sorts of bizarre preconditions Len would never have guessed.

"What do you mean I can't bring my gun?" he asks Lisa, scowling. "I paid money for this concealed carry license."

"Money that wasn't yours," Mick points out, which, yes, but it doesn't matter; Len actually spent it. It's damn hard to find a judge corrupt enough to sign off on a gun license for a felon.

Luckily, this is Central City, and damn hard doesn't mean impossible.

"You still can't bring it into a haunted house," Lisa says firmly, hands on hips. "You might shoot one of the performers."

Len scowls at her. Sure, he's been forced to up his game recently, thanks to the mob war between the Santinis and Darbyninans that just got started, and upping his game at this stage means higher end heists, higher end heists means more risk, more danger, and more ruthlessness – and yes, sometimes killing people, especially people that threatened to back out of major jobs in the middle, people that Len couldn't trust wouldn't go running to the cops to squeal in exchange for a cut-down sentence on something else. But just because he's gotten to the 'killing people' point in his career doesn't mean that he's going to shoot innocent performers. He doesn't shoot innocents, and he would've thought Lisa would've known that.

"Out of fright," Lisa clarifies.

That just makes Len scowl even more.

"Relax, will you? It'll be fine, boss," Mick says, laughing. Officially, that's just something he uses for jobs in public, but he's started calling Len that, off and on; says it helps him remember.

He also says he likes the way Len's cheeks flush sometimes when he calls him that, but whatever. Len does not blush. He's cool and cold, damnit.

...he's working on it, anyway.

Len's newly imposed rule – you're in, you're in; you're out, you're dead – has at least and at last started getting him some respect in criminal circles, which always appreciate seeing ruthlessness when it's accompanied by success.

And Len has been successful. Other than those first early convictions for burglary, he's gotten better and better at getting away clear. The most the cops have had on him recently are a few jobs they can't pin on him and one or two misdemeanor trespassing charges.

They're starting to remember his name.

Not as much as they remember Mick's, mind you. Mick's pyromania remains as strong as ever, and during the lean times when the criminal underworld has gone underground to avoid renewed police focus – usually during election years – and there's no easy targets that haven't already been hit by others, there's more call for arsonists than there is for thieves, even highly skilled thieves.

Not that the police could pin those on so-called 'notorious arsonist' Mick Rory.

It helps that, as a ghost, he doesn't leave any DNA evidence.

But either way, all this led to one conclusion: Len and Mick are mad, bad and dangerous to know. They're the sort of people who carry weapons and know how, and when, to use them.

They do not get scared at haunted houses.

"You're gonna scream like a little girl," Daniela cackles.

"I hate you all," Len says.

"Have fun!" she sings out.

"Just for that, you're coming with us," Len tells her.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Daniela says. "Or, well, anything other than another lead on that asshole who murdered me – " Len is still looking, damnit! Serial killers don't walk around with a goddamn sign on! "—but hell yes, I'm there with bells on."

"Where are we going?" Nora asks, emerging from the kitchen.

"Len's never been to a haunted house before," Daniela says gleefully. "Ever."

"I have my own actual dead people! I ain't gonna be scared of some assholes in sheets!"

"Oh, my, you're going to be in for a surprise," Nora laughs. "I'm definitely coming."

Len rolls his eyes.

"How's your baby boy?" Mick asks Nora politely.

"College applications," she says, mingled joy and sadness at it: joy, for her son's growth; sadness, that she's not there to help him through it. She consistently declines Len's offers to give her some life to go say goodbye, though; she says that just saying something to him wouldn't be enough for her to pass on and anyway she's afraid that seeing her would only make him relapse into the anxiety attacks he'd been having for years after her death. It's a tough situation she's stuck with, and Len feel pretty bad for her, but he can't bring himself to be too upset; she's great to have around, very level-headed but with a wicked sense of humor and, at times, a temper as fiery as Mick's. "He's starting to send them out."

"Graduating senior already?" Len asks, then shakes his head at her nod. "Wow. Your baby boy's only five years younger than Lisa."

"Closer to four," Nora says. "He's nearly nineteen; he had to repeat a year due to family trauma."

Due to her murder, that is.

"See, this is why going to a haunted house is dumb," Len says to Lisa, opting to lighten the mood back up. "We have two real life murder victims right here with us."

"I'll ask Serafina to join us," Daniela decides. "She's just a hit-and-run, but it still counts. Then we'll have three murder victims to go a-haunted housing with us!"

Serafina, a law school graduate of Korean descent and non-binary gender, turns out to be more than happy to join them.

Lisa can't stop cackling with glee, and that makes everyone smile.

"I'm outnumbered," Len grumbles, and picks up the brochure Lisa obtained to figure out where he'll be driving the lot of them. "Wait, hold it! This says it's at an abandoned cemetery! I ain't going to no abandoned cemetery! Do you know how many dead will be there?!"

"It's an exaggeration," Lisa says, rolling her eyes.

"If there are any unquiet dead there, we'll protect you," Mick reminds Len.

"Nice try," Nora says.

Damnit.

The drive there is relatively uneventful – Mick watches Len like a hawk, which is thoroughly unhelpful and kind of insulting, given that Len's the one who taught Mick how to drive in the first place – and then even once they arrive, it turns out there's a line.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Len grumbles. "Not only do we have to pay for the privilege, they make us wait for it, too?"

"Grow up, babykins," Daniela says, skipping away to go gawk. "Go stand in the line."

Len goes.

He wishes he had his gun.

He wishes he had his gun even more when one of the fake tombstones (rather amusing little poems on them) shoots open and someone – or something – leaps out at them from a trapdoor hidden underneath.

The only reason Len is certain that the apparition is part of the haunted house is because everyone else in the crowd shrieks and jumps as well.

"Lenny," Lisa says patiently. "Lenny. You're very nice, very brave, jumping in front of me and all that, but you're blocking my view."

Len sighs and returns to his place in line, watching as what is now obviously a (surprisingly detailed) zombie limps around the line, groaning at people.

Mick prods at Len's arm. Len looks at him.

"I leap in front of you," Mick says. "Not you in front of me."

"It was instinct."

"It was shitty instinct. You soccer-mom-armed me! And I'm the invulnerable one!"

No kidding. Len remembers very well how Mick's invulnerability had been the only thing that'd saved their hides when they'd been dumb enough to get involved in the stupid mob war with a job that wasn't as well-thought-out as Len had thought it was. It isn't just Len getting his stupid ass kidnapped because of payments anymore, oh no, now it's the Santinis and the Darbyinians, each with a grudge and a hell of a lot of firepower. Len and Mick had gotten the hell out of the war for now, making it clear they were purely freelancers, but the war was becoming more and more all-encompassing and they'd end up having to either side with a Family or making themselves respected and feared enough to be able to scare both sides off when the inevitable came calling.

Since neither Mick nor Len has any interest in working on Family lines, that meant that these days they're focusing on establishing their own reputations.

And part of that, yes, meant using things like Mick's invulnerability to its best advantage.

"I'll let you take the real threats," Len offers.

Mick rolls his eyes at him.

Len has only ever walked by the haunted houses they'd had in his neighborhood when he was younger, the ones in the poorer parts of town that even the slums looked down their noses at, and he hadn't been impressed by the quality.

Apparently, and no one had told him this, haunted houses have seriously upped their game in recent years.

"What the fuck?!" Len shouts.

Lisa is dying. "Oh man," she cackles. "Oh, man, Lenny, your face!"

"The fuck even was that?!"

"The half-spider mutated monster or the evil scientist with the rotting arm?"

"Neither! The other thing!"

"Really?" Daniela asks, eyebrows arched and shit-eating grin on her face. "Out of everything in the hallway of horrors, the cannibal is the thing that gets you?"

"He was eating someone's face off! That’s just wrong!"

Nora cackles behind him.

"I'm glad I'm amusing the lot of you," Len grumbles. He actually is glad, especially poor Nora's been sad recently about missing all of her baby boy's important milestones. But still. A man's got a reputation to uphold, and this stupid haunted house is doing nothing for it.

And then Len jumps half a foot into the air because some demonic squid shoots out its tentacles from the wall.

"Your face," Mick wheezes. "Oh God. Lisa. Lise. Tell me there will be photos."

"So many photos," Lisa says happily, leading the way into the next chamber.

Len's idly tracking the number (this is room ten – how big is this place, anyhow?) and mentally mapping the place, mostly to keep from strangling anybody – Lisa was right to take away his gun, sadly; he's reached for a weapon at least three times so far. Still, it’s fine. Not having it doesn't make him less dangerous.

Though it does make him think that assassinating someone at a haunted housed would be a great way to go about it – an audience already geared to assume that any screams or dying noises are fake, that any bloodied corpses are special effects, that any smell is clever chemicals...

The thought occupies him a bit (mostly through the cockroach room – Lord, why is there a cockroach room?!), enough that he only vaguely notices one of the haunted house attendees, face painted white and his clothing dusted with flour, coming forward to tap Lisa on the shoulder and explain that she should follow him for the next segment.

Some multipart horror involving Lisa spitted on a stake, Len can only assume, and that's what he does assume right up until Daniela turns to ask him something and sees the guy leading Lisa away.

"Len!" she shouts. "That's him!"

"What?" Len asks, bemused. No one else responds, of course; he doesn't have enough energy to make three people as strong as Mick, and at any rate being invisible means that Daniela, Nora and Serafina don't have to pay for a ticket. Mick turns with a frown.

"Him!" Daniela shrieks. "Him! The one! The one who beat in my face, Len!"

"Wait," Mick says. "The serial killer?"

"We've already seen the serial killer exhibit, guys," Lisa calls over her shoulder.

"No," Len says, eyes going wide as he puts it together. Daniela's been on his case to find the asshole who murdered her – and a number of other sex workers in the years since – since day one. "Lisa, the guy next to you is an actual serial killer!"

"What?" Lisa asks.

"Don't be crazy," the guy next to her scoffs, putting his hand on her arm. "Come this way or you won't be able to participate in the next room's haunt."

Nora dashes forward, through the wall, and shouts, "The next room's about killer robots! No audience participation!"

"You're lying," Mick growls, stepping forward.

"Get your hands off my sister," Len adds.

The guy takes one look at the two of them and turns to run.

His mistake is in trying to pull Lisa along with him.

She spins around and knees him in the balls. "Don't you ever grab me!" she shouts.

"He's the one who killed Daniela," Mick snarls.

"Get him!" Daniela shouts, lunging at him, but she's too weak; she passes straight through and all he does is shudder.

Mick and Len both step forward, but that's when the guy pulls out a gun.

"Who the fuck is Daniela?" he pants. "How'd you know?"

"Ooooh, if I could strangle you!" Daniela hisses.

"I told you to let me bring a gun," Len bitches to Lisa.

"There aren't normally actual serial killers in haunted houses, Lenny!"

"With your brother's luck, we shoulda known," Mick says, taking a half-step over until he's blocking Len.

Len scowls at him and nudges him in Lisa's direction. He can take care of himself.

Mick scowls back.

"Will you all stop talking?!" the guy shouts. "I've got a gun!"

"Yeah, and from the way you're waving it around like a kid's toy, I bet you know how to use it about as well as your undoubtedly limp dick," Lisa snaps.

Mick and Len share a glance – only Lisa – and Mick charges forward to get between the serial killer and Lisa just in time for the guy to pull the trigger.

Mick catches the bullet in his shoulder, of course. "See what you did?" he tells her, plucking it out and waving it at her. He doesn’t bother faking the bleeding. "No sense of self-preservation, you Snarts."

"How'd I get pulled in there?" Len protests. "I ain't the one that mouthed off to the serial killer with a gun!"

"Don't get me started on people you've mouthed off to, buster!"

"What the hell is wrong with you people?!" the guy shouts, but by this point the noise and the commotion and – Len would bet – the backed-up line has drawn over some actual haunted house employees. Volunteers? Len's not sure.

Their makeup's a lot better than the killer's, anyway.

"Excuse me – " a realistic skeleton starts.

"This man was trying to get me to go with him so I could be part of the haunt," Lisa announces, pointing at the killer. "He said he was an employee here, and when I refused, he aimed a gun at me!"

The guy looks down at his hand to confirm that yes, the gun's still there.

Not for long, though; Len plucks it out of his hand - way too easily because the guy barely had a grip on it by this point, too slack-jawed with disbelief - and offers it to the skeleton. "Careful with that," he says mildly. "It's got live ammo."

The skeleton looks at the gun in horror, then at the guy. "Uh, he's definitely not one of the volunteers –"

"Maybe you should call the cops," Mick suggests.

"Fuck no," the killer says, and tries to run.

None of them were really expecting it – it's a one-way haunted house starting to fill up with people on each side, where the hell does he think he's going to go? – which is probably why he gets as far into a hidden passage by the wall as he does.

Doesn't help, of course.

By that point, Daniela's run back to Len to wordlessly beg for some extra life, which he's given her, and she uses everything he gave her in a single burst of poltergeist power, snaking out the audio-visual cables that were threaded through the walls to wrap around him.

"Asshole," she says, not without some serious amount of satisfaction. "I'm gonna love watching your trial."

"What the fuck was that," the skeleton says, high pitched. "That wasn't part of the set up!"

"A ghost," Len says innocently. "Ain't this place supposedly haunted?"

Lisa elbows him in the ribs.

It's all terribly anticlimactic after that, of course. Someone calls the police and they all have to give statements, with one of the detectives (some guy named Joe West) commenting that this might very well be the only night he actually believes Leonard Snart to have an alibi.

Very funny.

They end up charging the guy on attempted kidnapping just to get him with something, but Len insists on the fact that he's a serial killer with enough emotive force that West reluctantly calls up a judge and gets a warrant for the guy's house, where they find two of the girls that have gone missing from the streets recently, one a prostitute and the other a college student with bad taste in makeup - apparently he targeted them based on that? Fucking people sometimes. It mostly resulted with Lisa getting incredibly insulted about the guy's inability to tell a classy traditional smokey eye from a trashy raccoon or something like that, anyway, since Len's honestly got no idea what the words coming out of her mouth meant after the first minute. But the two rescued girls agreed with her, so, okay.

West goes into hyper alert after that, which is all to the good, and Len even manages to get in there that the guy's responsible for killing Daniela, though he obviously can't provide proof. They find some evidence in the guy's house, though, which means he is definitely not long for this world – through the justice system's mercy, or through Len's. He's got enough friends in prison willing to shiv a particularly sick fuck if the justice system can't bring itself to do it for them.

And, of course, a few people caught blurry images of Daniela's trick with the cables, and the line to go to that particular haunted house the next year is five times as long.

Lisa insists on going again.

Len still thinks it's stupid.

Lisa says he's just scared.

Which is totally not true.

(But do they have to keep using that cannibal makeup?!)

"You got a problem, huh?" Mick growls in the other man's face, the fierceness of his glare not at all dimmed by the manic grin that shows how much he's enjoying himself.

"Mick," Len says, long-suffering. He’s reclining by the table, a position of power. “Let him go.”

"Nah, boss," Mick says, not turning away from the man he’s got pressed up against a wall. Not that Len actually intended him to – they’ve got a reputation to uphold now, after all. They have to show that they’re willing to put their hand in when someone is screwing with one of their jobs, no matter who it is. It's all according to plan; Mick's just freestyling a bit. “See, I think he's got a problem. I think he wants to say something. That right?"

"No! No, not at all, nothing to say," the man gibbers. Mick is very large and very intimidating, even to powerful mobsters' sons like Nicolas Santini, who are notably less confident when their bodyguards get beaten up and knocked out, and they're being held up three inches from the floor by their jacket lapels. Len and Mick had nabbed three targets before the Santinis could get to them, which pissed them off, and little Nicholas had been sent to “solve” the problem through the usual bull-headed Santini approach of threats and intimidation.

He hadn’t exactly gotten very far.

A blood family member of one of the most fearsome Families in Central City, technically even a Don by their standards, and yet here he is, quivering like a bowl of jello before a pair of freelance thieves.

Very good freelance thieves.

Nicholas Santini really should’ve listened to his cousin’s stories about how they’re not just thieves, they’re monsters that rise from the dead.

Len smirks.

They’ve gone a long way from the days when Len got kidnapped and Mick got shot trying to rescue him, and Len likes it this way much better.

Not that this solves the problem for good, of course. Sending a member of the actual Family against them meant that the Santinis were taking Len and Mick’s firm no-Family-affiliation freelance position a bit personally, which both wasn't a surprise but was still really annoying. Len’d have to make a point of hitting some Darbyinian targets in the next few months just to make clear that their neutrality was unaffected; that should be enough.

Personally, Len’s just happy that he was able to get Lisa to go out of town after she’d graduated. Now that’d been a fight for the ages – the way this one definitely wasn’t – because Lisa had been reluctant to leave Len even if she didn’t have the same attachment to Central City that he did.

An attachment that she referred to as “idiotic” and “unhealthy”, which it was not. A man can love the city he was raised in, even if that city was objectively a hellhole ripe with corruption, poverty and crime.

Huh, maybe that’s why Len likes it so much. He fits in so well here.

Okay, sure, there’s been the growing number of weird science laboratories getting settled here – Mercury, Star, the whole sheebang – but there’s an army base not far away to serve as clientele, cheap land with very low environmental regulations, and by this point Len’s honestly used to the idea of his slums being used as rich people’s dumping grounds.

He doesn’t like it when they do that, mind you, which is why he robs the rich assholes in charge of bringing toxic dumps to his city more often than he does anyone else, but there’s not much else he can do to express his displeasure.

At any rate, Lisa had managed to get a job offer at one of the most prestigious engineering firms in the country, all the way out in Boston, and that’d gotten her to go when none of Len’s other arguments had worked, if only because Len had refused to let her pass up the opportunity and she’d reluctantly agreed.

Sure, she still visits regularly – Len visit her, too, but he can’t force her not to come to Central – but at least she’s out of the worst of the mob war.

“I swear!” Seriously, is the guy still whining? Honestly, Len’s ashamed of him; he’s born and raised Family, he ought to have a bit of a backbone. They’re not even torturing him! They’re not even threatening to torture him! The worst they’re threatening him with is a bit roughing up! They really don’t make them like they used to, and thank heaven for that. Len’d far rather put up with idiots like little Nicholas here than the big kahunas that his dad swam with when Len was a kid: Don Cesare, Don Giovanni, Don Tomio of the asshole-kid-smashed-up-Len’s-head fame... “I didn’t say anything! I didn’t mean anything!”

"That right?" Mick growls. "'cause I woulda sworn I heard you talking earlier, saying things about Snart here..."

"No!"

"Mick," Len says, finally managing to quash down his amusement enough to sound appropriately stern. "He's not worth wasting your energy on."

"Fine," Mick says, and releases the guy's jacket. "Looks like it's your lucky day. Now go."

The guy goes as quickly as he can manage.

Mick returns to Len's side, now grinning like a loon.

"Was that extra bit entirely necessary?" Len asks, trying not to smile. Mick does so enjoy himself when there are people to push around...

"You know it is," Mick says firmly. "We gotta make clear you’re the one in charge of me, so that your reputation’ll get even more fearsome than mine; that's the only way they'll respect you. Order of operations, boss."

Len shakes his head. It’s not that he isn’t convinced – Mick can be very convincing when he wants to be – but at the same time…

"You'll get in trouble one of these days," he warns, not really meaning it.

Mick snorts. "What's the worst that can happen?" he asks, rolling his eyes ostentatiously. "They gonna kill me?"

They end up shooting him.

Len groans in annoyance.

Not again.

You’d think they’d learn by now.

"I'm thinking of going back for my masters," Lisa says. "Maybe a PhD."

"Really?" Len asks, phone shoved between his shoulder and his ear. "I thought you said you were done with school. Straight into the workforce, you said."

"Things were said," she sniffs. “I’m not going to be held responsible for past-Lisa’s statements.”

Len chuckles and steps around the still-cooling corpse on the floor – an ex-associate who'd thought he was above such things as rules. Len squelches the feeling of guilt: the guy had thought he could get away with skimming off the top of the funds they'd collected for the job because he was buddies with Mick, even though Mick'd warned him he wouldn't get any special favors, and then to add insult to injury, when Len'd called him out on it, he'd had the arrogance to try to pull out of the job entirely.

Len's reputation makes it very clear what happens if you're out, and that reputation makes it impossible not to do what he did next.

Still, Len can't help feeling bad about it. He hates killing people – it only adds to the number of ghosts in the world, unless he's lucky, and ghosts of people he killed are always unquiet – but not killing's a luxury he can't afford if he wants to survive in the criminal underworld.

He has to be cold and heartless, just like dear old dad – may he rot in hell or a jail cell, wherever he is now – always said.

Plus, this means he needs to get someone new, and he hates mid-job recruiting.

"If it's what you want, Lise, you should go for it," Len tells her. "You know you don't need my permission."

"I know," she says. "But there's always the matter of money to think about."

"Ahhhh, I see," Len teases. "This is less of an FYI and more of a call to the big brother bank, huh?"

"Actually, I'd been hoping to earn my own way," Lisa replies. "Unfortunately, doing grunt work as a baby engineer in a big company that pays peanuts –" The market for bachelors-only engineers is a tough one, according to Lisa. "— and skating in some ice shows in my spare time only gets me so much."

Len has the sinking feeling he knows what her next comment is going to be. "Lise, I can just give you the money," he points out, trying to forestall the inevitable.

It doesn't help.

"I want in on one of your jobs," she says firmly. "Time for me to earn my own way."

"I've let you in on jobs before," Len protests.

"Sure, in baby jobs," Lisa says. "I know you're planning something big, and I want in."

"I've already collected a crew, Lise."

"Mick says you need a new ringer."

Len stops, affronted, and glares at Mick, who shrugs, clearly well aware of what's being discussed. Undoubtedly why he’s hiding behind a newspaper across the room.

That doesn't make it any less inappropriate. Len literally just shot the guy! How did Mick even find time to tell her?!

"Lise – "

"I can do the job, Lenny. Gimme a chance."

"I know you can do it – " Lisa's one of the natural grifters of this world; Len's always been impressed by her skills. That’s never been his problem. "—the question is, why would you risk a perfectly good, clean record when I can just get you the cash?"

"Oh, please," Lisa scoffs. "You haven't been caught in ages. And if you're feeling particularly paranoid about my record, you can plan me a nice getaway. Ghost-amplified, if necessary."

Len scowls. He still doesn't like it.

"I already owe you so much, Lenny," Lisa continues. "Let me actually help with this one. Please?"

"What's your real motive here?" Len asks, suddenly suspicious. "You like it when I give you gifts."

Lisa sighs.

Hah! Len knew there was another reason.

"I need it for my resume," she finally admits.

Which –

"What? How?"

"Not my work resume, you jerk," Lisa says, sounding amused. "In case I ever need to pull a job, really need to, and you're not around to vouch for me. The Snart name goes a fair way towards it, but nothing substitutes for actual experience – you've said so yourself."

Len grumbles. He has said so, damnit.

"I have the baby jobs you let me help out with," Lisa continues. "One or two big-name heists with notable takes that I can name-drop would let me skip the little leagues, go straight in with the guys that know what they're doing instead of the crappy ones that need to go back to con school –" Meaning prison. "— before they get their act together."

"But why do you need to do crime at all?" Len asks, aware that he's whining. "Lise -"

"Even with your talents, you might get caught one day," Lisa says, her voice suddenly hard. "And if that day comes, when that day comes, I want to be the person you call to help mastermind your escape. Me. I want to be second in line in your phone –"

"You're my first speed-dial, Lise; you know that."

"— second only to Mick."

Well, yes. Len's always going to go to Mick first, but he doesn't need a speed dial for him.

"You know what I meant," Lisa says warningly.

Len sighs. She's not wrong. It would be good to have another person he can rely on, someone he can really trust, especially if it comes to a question of needing to plan an exit route that relies on revealing the full extent of Mick's ghostly abilities. Going temporarily invisible and intangible is incredibly useful for a thief, but Len’s determined to make sure that no one else in the underworld ever figures out what they can do. He’s been threatened too many times to be comfortable with anyone knowing all of his tricks, and his tricks include Mick.

He’s done a good job of it so far, making sure that everyone thought the stories about Mick rising from the dead are just exaggerations, but there will undoubtedly be jobs, or at least prison breaks, where he’ll need to use Mick’s abilities and rely on a crew, and that crew had better be only made up of people he really, truly trusts.

But this is his baby sister.

“Lenny, please,” Lisa wheedles. “It’s important to me. I want you to be able to count on me the way I’ve always counted on you and Mick.”

Well, if she puts it that way, it’s hard to say no.

And, well, they do need a new ringer now that what’s-his-name is no longer going to be available on account of being dead and having passed on…

“Fine,” Len says, giving in with a sigh.

Lisa cheers.

“How long till you can get to Central City?”

“Couple of hours,” she says promptly. “I’m already on my way to the airport.”

Len rolls his eyes. Of course she is.

“Great, I’ll fill you in on the job when you get here,” he says. “You’ll need to be in tip-top grifting to do it, though; it’s going to be a tricky one.”

“A tricky one?” Lisa asks, sounding amused. “Is there something the great thief Leonard Snart, robber of ATMs and breaker of jewelry stores and museums, still considers tricky?”

Just for that, Len’s going to tell her now.

“We’re gonna rob a moving train.”

Lisa laughs.

Len doesn’t.

“…you’re joking, right?”

Len smirks.

“Lenny!”

“I was getting bored with the ATMs and the jewelry stores and the museums,” Len says innocently. “Wanted to up my game a bit. What’s wrong with that?”

“Are you insane? We don’t live in a Western!”

“Now, now, Lisa, you never know when you might need to be able to ride a horse or a fire a six-shooter,” Len says, starting to laugh, his straight face breaking at the tone in her voice.

“Just for that, we’re taking horseback riding lessons with some of the leftover money,” Lisa warns. “You, me, and Mick.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Len lies. How hard can riding a horse be, anyway?

Lisa is still mumbling curses on his name when Len hangs up the phone.

“It go well?” Mick asks, looking up from his newspaper hopefully.

“Yes, Lisa’s joining us for this one,” Len tells him, rolling his eyes again when Mick breaks out into a broad smile. “And afterwards, we’re all going horseback riding.”

The smile disappears.

“…what?” Len asks. “They can’t be that tough.” But he’s uncertain now. Mick’s expression of horror is really convincing.

“We had horses on my farm,” Mick says grimly. “You are not getting on one of those hell-beasts.”

“You know what,” Len says, “I’ll just – let you tell Lisa that when she arrives.”

And then he flees, laughing his head off, because now Mick’s shouting curses after him.

Serves him right, conspiring behind Len’s back like that.

#dccoldwave #mick rory #leonard snart #lisa snart #my fic #deadfic

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 7 years

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(“Despite the district court’s and our own repeated invitations to explain the urgent need for the Executive Order to be placed immediately into effect, the Government submitted no evidence to rebut the States’ argument that the district court’s order merely returned the nation temporarily to the position it has occupied for many previous years. … Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all.”) In a campaign, you don’t need facts; in court, you do. Waiting three weeks for a new order — and now postponing replacement so that it can have its “its own time to breathe” — should demonstrated conclusively that the ban is nothing more than a sop to Trump’s base, fulfillment of a xenophobic campaign promise that lacks national security justification. And if Iraq is now off the list, as has been reported, then we know that one-seventh of the list, at the very least, was unnecessary. (As for the other six countries — Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen — the White House, one would think, would no longer need the “temporary ban” and should have had time to come up with the so-called extreme vetting.) But here is the catch: There was no apparent rationale for singling out these seven countries. The Associated Press reports: Analysts at the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence arm found insufficient evidence that citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries included in President Donald Trump’s travel ban pose a terror threat to the United States. A draft document obtained by The Associated Press concludes that citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria’s civil war started in 2011. … The three-page report challenges Trump’s core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban. Today's Headlines newsletter The day's most important stories. Sign up And now Iraq is off the list. For Trump, national and personal security have routinely been excuses to play to his base’s bigotry and fears. His campaign promises to ban Muslims and create a Muslim registry stemmed from the same kind of animus and anxiety that gave rise to his claptrap that illegal immigrants are murderers putting our children at risk. (For the zillionth time, my colleagues Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee explain, “Extensive research shows noncitizens are not more prone to criminality than U.S.-born citizens. The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are not criminal aliens or aggravated felons.”) And contrary to his allegations, so-called sanctuary cities are not hotbeds of crime. Unlike campaign rhetoric in which false claims can be repeated over and over to the delight of his low-information voters, the president’s agenda cannot rely on made-up facts to fit his supporters’ biases. The result, as we saw with the 9th Circuit’s decision, can be legal defeat, and hence political embarrassment. The result can be political pushback from elected officials even within Trump’s party. The result can be a series of damaging news accounts that highlight the real victims (e.g. an infant from Iran, a murder victim who had been afraid to report abuse, a domestic abuse victim seeking a protective order, doctors coming to the United States) of policies designed to combat fictional dangers. And if, heaven forbid, a deadly incident occurs involving a more predictable terrorist — a radicalized American citizen, a European-born jihadist (as we saw in the Paris attacks), a white racist (“get out of my country,” the accused Kansas gunman screamed before allegedly shooting two Indian men) — Trump will have to explain why he was so focused on the wrong things. The answer will be what it has always been: His driving motivation is xenophobia, not security.

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theemichelleb · 5 years

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When They See Us (Netflix) - Miniseries Reflection

To be honest… I have no idea how to start this post.

A few weeks ago I watched Ava Duvernay’s interview on the Breakfast Club about this miniseries and how she came about taking on the challenge of telling this unbelievably difficult story. Our community is affected by these tragedies all too often and it makes it hard to want to have children that will have to grow up in a society that will never see them as children. Ultimately, I just want to put a thank you out there to Ava Duvernay for checking her DMs and responding to that message she got from one of the victims of this ridiculous justice system and running with the opportunity to shed light on this horrible part of their history.

“When They See Us” is the true account of what happened to Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., Kevin Richardson, and Korey Wise in 1989 when they were falsely accused, charged, and convicted of the tragic beating and rape of Trisha Meili, a white woman. This four-part miniseries walks us through the eyes of the boys from the night they were in Central Park until the day they are exonerated of all charges and released back into the world. Part 1 exposes the unjust tactics and tools used to interrogate and trap these boys in lies of committing a crime that they had no idea existed. Part 2 walks us through the trials of all 5 boys and how the justice system brings no justice to black people no matter how blatantly untrue a story being told against them can be. Part 3 shows us a snippet of what Antron, Yusef, Kevin, and Raymond endure during and after their release from prison; trying to integrate into a world that refuses to accept them because of these false allegations. Finally, part 4… we see the tragic circumstances and situations Korey Wise experienced for 14 years being moved from prison to prison trying to survive with a target on his back that NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE.

As a black woman I can never understand the tragedy of having that type of target on my back to the degree our men must live with it, but I can be angry for what they are doing to our men. This story is known… there are no spoilers to give or disclaimers to provide. If you don’t want to know my opinions on certain parts of this because you feel it may ruin the watch for you I understand, but please watch because this story NEEDED to be told. I don’t want this to be considered a review but more of a reflection because no matter the scale this affects us all, including myself. If you feel it’s “too hard” to watch or don’t know if you can “handle it,” they don’t deserve to have their story out there for you to not watch. Take your time, but watch… no excuses.

There were so many parts that hurt to watch and I’m often told I’m heartless because of my inability to cry at emotionally tear provoking movies or tv shows, but this broke me. I made it through the first 3 parts with anger and frustration but no tears, taking breaks and pauses in between watching. It’s going to take anywhere between 1-3 days to work through the series; approximately 5 hours altogether. For some, it may take longer. That’s how real it gets.

Watching Korey’s story hit me the hardest; that was what finally made the tears fall. The depiction of his truth and struggle was the hardest to witness yet the easiest to relate to. Not many of can say we’ve been directly arrested and blamed for a crime we’ve had nothing to do with, but anybody can relate to the fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and having something like that happen. Korey Wise went to the police precinct to support his friend, Yusef, and was left there. Not too long after being left he was used as a scapegoat to make this absurd story make sense to any other white person that would listen. Considering these boys were already being treated as animals it’s hard to believe the scenario could get any worse but lets add in the fact that he’s sent directly to prison, not a juvenile detention center, and beaten countless times by grown men that are actual rapists, murderers, felons, and so much more. Korey’s story is going to hit the hardest… just be prepared.

Watch this with your kids, your younger siblings, your older siblings, mentees, whomever you hold dear to you because this is real, and EVERYBODY in America needs to see what really happens to our boys. This isn’t something that you can turn away from and pretend as though it’s not happening everyday from police shootings to racial profiling. We wouldn’t change our skin even if we could, but America does need to change it’s privilege…

These boys were interrogated for hours without their parents. Parents were suckered and punked into handing over their kids to the system. This outrageous individual that is often referred to as the President of the United States, current day, was on news channels, taking out ads to have the death penalty imposed on these children that didn’t even know what truant or rape meant. Let’s be realistic… who in their right mind believes any BLACK MAN would willingly admit to raping a white women if they knew exactly what that meant? No man… and you think these five 14-16 year old black and brown BOYS understood what they were admitting to, alone with no parental guidance? Sitting in a precinct hungry and wanting to go home?

One question here… when has a rape EVER been THIS important to police? Rape gets overlooked, forgotten, disregarded, and ignored more often than it should even now with more resources than were available in 1989. Don’t be fooled… had that woman in the park been black and the supposed assailant a white male, there wouldn’t have been this much traction to find the attacker, let alone to create 5 attackers out of a crime scene that clearly only had evidence of their being one. This was a clear racial attack targeted at minorities that couldn’t protect themselves… more specifically blacks in America that have ALWAYS been discounted and created into animals that couldn’t possibly be human beings.

Linda Fairstein was disgusting, right along with Elizabeth Lederer, Robert Morgenthau, all of the cops that were gathering up boys, and the detectives in the precinct that coerced false confessions out of 14 year olds. Disgusting doesn’t even give justice to the horrific things these five went through, and the worst part is the shock value is gone. We’re not surprised at how the justice system fails and frames our people, it’s what we expect and that’s disheartening. You may watch and wonder how can we protect our children against a system that’s centered around seeing them fail, and I don’t have the answer to that. Knowledge is power, however. This takes me back to “The Hate U Give” and how Starr’s father teaches his children the hard realities of dealing with law enforcement and being black. Give your kids as much knowledge as possible to protect themselves; tell them don’t say anything without having you present, don’t resist or struggle unnecessarily, and don’t admit to anything especially something they haven’t done or don’t have any knowledge of.

Points that struck a nerve and hit me the hardest while watching:

Nancy Ryan should have pushed harder to take the case or have somebody else work the case because Linda Fairstein had a personal vendetta she was trying to resolve. I don’t know if she was a victim of rape or knows somebody closely who was and that made her act the way she did, but somebody needed to put her on a leash. I truly believe Nancy Ryan should have been that person, but I am happy she was the one that handled the confession from the real attacker in 2003. I understand the attempt to try and set Linda straight after everything, but babygirl waited a little too long to try to check somebody that flew off the deep end 4 years prior.

The black cop that tried to keep the detectives from interrogating Kevin after his mother left not feeling well… sir you could have pushed harder. I understand the remorse you probably felt by stepping back and watching that happen, but I’m sure there’s plenty of things you could have said to somebody or done to address the fact that they knowingly interrogated him ignoring the fact that his mother was sick and was coming back after getting her medication.

The audacity to connect Kevin’s eye being swollen and scratched to the struggle the rape victim put up when in reality he had a black eye from being smacked in the head by a cop with a helmet while they were tackling and herding black boys up like they were cattle… and this is NEVER addressed during the trial.

Antron’s father, Bobby, disgusts me. This man knew how the system worked because he had been locked up, but instead of protecting his son he forced his son to admit to being involved with raping that woman to keep his job and lifestyle up. I understand he’s passed on and God rest is soul where he is, but that struck a serious nerve with me. Protect your children at all costs, because nobody else will.

Yusef’s mom, Sharon, was a lot for me. I understand she was trying to protect her son, but this entire situation was bigger than just her and Yusef, especially when Korey ended up in this trying to look out for her son. No disrespect to any mothers out there because I definitely understand wanting to protect your baby, but they were all babies and they all needed protecting.

Ray’s step mother needs something… a beat down is what comes to mind, but I’m a lover not a fighter.

And just overall, the evidence that was missing, the stories that didn’t match up, the DNA sample that matched NONE of the boys, but some how they were still convicted.

There were so many other moments other than just that that even make writing this and reflecting on it almost as hard as it was watching it.

There has been a lot of buzz around this miniseries and for good reason. Ava Duvernay took her time on sculpting this and telling their tragic story in a beautiful manner. The actors portraying every person involved did such an amazing job and I can’t even begin to imagine how it must have been stepping into the shoes of anybody in this plot line; especially one of the five men that stepped up to tell their story in hopes that it would be heard and they would be recognized. All five men are hard working and it appears they are thriving despite the tragedies they endured to get to where they are present day. Again, I charge anybody that has decided this is too much to watch to reconsider. It may be hard to watch, but this is our history as black people and these men deserve to be supported by our community no matter how painful it may be to witness. The hardest part was going through it and they handled that part long ago, now, we should stand behind them and their efforts to stop this from happening to anymore of our children.

I recently saw a video from Clint Coley with him in a rap battle against some white cops and one line stood out to me… “You can’t say all lives matter, cause the black ones don’t.” Nobody should be able to watch this and continue to think our justice system is fair and protects all citizens. The thing white people will never be able to relate to is the fear that they may get that call one day about their son and they won’t be able to do anything about it. White boys are coddled and treated as though there’s every cure in the book for anything wrong they do, but black boys are thrown into jails and treated as adults with no comfort, support, or benefit of doubt. All lives can’t matter when that’s the reality of the world we live in.

So, do your community a favor… do your future sons and daughters a favor… do yourself a favor and watch “When They See Us.” It will make you mad, it will make you afraid, it will make you cry, but it will throw more fuel to the fire inside you that should be anxious to make a change for the generations coming after us. They will watch what you did and move accordingly. They will appreciate how you supported our community and follow your lead. They will be stronger for it, because that’s what you’ll teach them to be.

Be D.O.P.E. Support our men.

Release Date: May 31, 2019 Where I watched: Netflix

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douglasacogan · 6 years

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A true insider's reaction to Senator Cotton's commentary about federal criminal justice reform efforts

In prior posts here and here and here, I noted the commentary from Senator Tom Cotton attacking the federal criminal justice reform bills moving through Congress and some responses it has engendered. Today I receive an email from the son of a federal prisoner who maintains this interesting blog with postings from his father. The blog is worth checking out and it is titled "Blue Collar Criminal: 60-something small business owner. Screwed by the DOJ. Now I'm in prison. These are my thoughts."

In addition to pointing me to this blog, the prisoner's son shared his father's response to the piece Senator Cotton wrote in the Wall Street Journal and gave me permission to reprint his father's writings here:

I write this response to Sen. Tom Cotton's editorial ("Reform the Prisons Without Going Soft on Crime") from within my 8 X 10' federal prison cell I share with another medicare-eligible inmate. We agree that Cotton's essay should have been entitled - Reform the Prisons Without Doing a Damn Thing.

Cotton bases a lot of his assertions on statistics. In lieu of rebutting them, which would be a bit hard given my current lack of access to the internet, I have to settle on "inferior" data, which is the actual experience of actual prisoners whom I know, and find every bit as credible as anyone I knew on the "outside". The specific ones I'm bouncing Cotton's preposterous claims off of, are guys with 10+ years of incarceration, and who have experienced a wide variety of federal prisons before working themselves down to the federal camp. Though I've only been "down" one year, I find my bullsh*t detector is pretty reliable, and comes in handy when evaluating prison stories and reading editorials such as Cotton's. Based on these findings, I not only doubt the factuality of the statistics he uses, I gravely mistrust the motives behind them.

I came here a big fan of Sen. Cotton's. I first knew of him when he was a soldier, serving in Iraq, who was thought for awhile to be fictitious, due to the cognitive dissonance produced by the idea of a Harvard Univ./Harvard Law School grad being an infantry officer. I was very attuned to him, since my son was also in Iraq at the same time. He also put his pen to good use in rebutting anti-war propaganda. I was shocked, when my "adventure" with the DOJ brought me here, to find that Cotton, along with another of my conservative heroes - Sen. Jeff Sessions - were regarded as the mortal enemies of federal inmates, at least those who followed the progress of issues related to prison reform. My move away from fanhood has been sealed by this editorial, which has impressed me that he's traded the tools of war for the tools of sophistry.

For starters, in Cotton's mind, we are all "criminals", a word he loves to repeat. One-size-fits-all. Excuse my sensitivity, and I leave it to friends and family to defend my name, but many of these guys are as fine individuals as any I know, and were "productive, law-abiding citizens" until the feds came after them. (If you find that hard to swallow, you might care to read Harvey Silverglate's 'Three Felonies A Day'.)

He calls the House bill "flawed", and to the extent that it tampers with mandatory minimum sentences, or gives judges more discretion, a prescription for a "jailbreak". Why is lengthening a sentence wise, but shortening some foolish? Why is Cotton incapable of recognizing that prison populations are comprised of both truly dangerous, bad-guy criminals, and nonviolent, non-dangerous law-transgressors (including some who are truly and factually innocent)? Many of the guys I know in here would probably only "endanger communities" by cutting their neighbors lawn while they're on vacation. (And I'm not here making a distinction between "white-collar" and "drug offenders". I've learned that 'drug offender' is also not a one-size-fits-all category).

In his paragraph on the current "drug epidemic", he cites a number of statistics to justify mandatory minimum sentencing, but ends by essentially admitting those statistics might not be significant or prove his point.

His statements about how very little of recidivism is attributable to parole violation, does not purport with what I've seen nor the experience of my "experts". Most of the guys in my unit who have prior convictions are here now because their parole officer caught them 'high'. One guy here, a farm boy, had a prior drug felony, and "caught" an 8 year sentence for a felony firearms crime. He was deer hunting in a tree stand, having lost his right to bear arms by virtue of being a drug felon. Cotton's statistic to prove that drug convictions lead to rearrests for murder and rape 77% of the time, strikes my fellow inmates as not only false, but weird, crazy scare tactics.

Cotton's cherry-picked example of a drug dealer, Wendell Callahan, who murdered his girlfriend and her daughters, is great for demagogic purposes, but irrelevant to the debate of shortening the eligible sentences of nonviolent felons. This has to be weighed in a context that looks objectively at good outcomes as well as negative. Keeping families apart, and depriving children of their fathers, when its not necessary for the public good, is a social evil; and this is what mandatory minimum sentences often do. It leads to and insures that the next generation will likely repeat the mistakes of their parents.

Cotton attacks even the term "mass incarceration" on the strange basis that it couldn't possibly be big, since it could be bigger. I would say simply, that whichever country incarcerates the highest percentage of it's citizenry deserves the title of "mass incarcerator". This would be the United States. One book I've read states that the U.S. incarcerates 6 to 12 times more than the following countries: Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Italy or Australia. Yet Cotton thinks we don't lock up enough.

But it gets worse. Cotton writes that "virtually no one goes to federal prison for "low-level, nonviolent" drug offenses. Even I, a relative newbie, know guys who are not only here for that, but have sentences exceeding 10 years. He says those that are here for just that have only pleaded to that, though they actually committed more serious offenses. Baloney. Here's how that goes - they commit a crime deserving 1 year (for example) and plead "down" to a 4 year sentence, because they're being threatened with a 12 year sentence. My friends here can't believe that Cotton doesn't know this.

It's not unusual for the feds to concoct 20 charges, and settle for 2. It happens to everyone. It happened to me. They are extremely creative in their use of enhancements. (If the real crime were so heinous, why would they settle for a much lighter sentence?)

And then this - "Presidential pardons are a much better instrument of justice than broad sentencing reductions." Puh-leeze! (I think this ridiculous statement was just a set-up for his snarky shot at Trump.)

Cotton dismisses fiscal conservatives who would hope to reduce the cost of the American prison system. "The costs," he says, "of crime ... far outweigh the downsides of putting serious criminals behind bars." That all depends on what you consider to be "serious" criminals, and how you calculate the "downsides". At my camp, the common consensus is that the average age here is 50+. That includes quite a few in their 70s, and about 3 or 4 in their 80s. Maybe a dozen use canes. The financial distress on families and the negative economic impact on communities would certainly be part of the calculation of the "downsides", as would unquantifiable costs such as the loss of adult children to care for aged and debilitated parents. Certainly also there's a tremendous cost to communities who have lost key employees and employers, volunteers to non-profits, etc. There's a 80 yr old oncologist/researcher who's here due to a financial transgression of a side company he was a partner to.

As to his closing assertion that "mandatory minimums .... work", there is a great body of research that would show otherwise. I, for one, would love to see a poll taken of federal judges as to the truth of that statement.

Sen. Cotton ends his diatribe against prison reform, the kind that might actually reduce the prison population, with an affirmation of "faith-based and other antirecidivism programs". I heartily concur, in fact, I wish everyone would embrace the teaching of the Bible. In it we read this great truth - "For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumph over judgment." (James 2.13)

If that is deemed as soft on crime, we need to deeply consider where we are heading.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2018/08/a-true-insiders-reaction-to-senator-cottons-commentary-about-federal-criminal-justice-reform-efforts.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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benrleeusa · 6 years

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A true insider's reaction to Senator Cotton's commentary about federal criminal justice reform efforts

If that is deemed as soft on crime, we need to deeply consider where we are heading.

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healthandfitnessrecipes-blog · 6 years

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Can Bad Men Change? What It’s Like Inside Sex Offender Therapy

https://healthandfitnessrecipes.com/?p=1594

The men file in, a few wearing pressed button-down shirts, others jeans caked in mud from work on a construction site. They meet in the living room of an old taupe bungalow on a leafy street in a small Southern city.

Someone has shoved a workout bike into the corner to make room for a circle of overstuffed chairs dug up at the local Goodwill. The men jockey for a coveted recliner and settle in. They are complaining about co-workers and debating the relative merits of various trucks when a faint beeping interrupts the conversation. One man picks up a throw pillow and tries to muffle the sound of the battery running low on his ankle bracelet, a reminder of why they are all there.

Every one of the eight men in the room has been convicted of a sex crime and mandated by a court to see a therapist. Depending on the offense, their treatment can last several months or several years. (TIME has given both the men and the therapists pseudonyms in this story.)

Photograph by Mike Belleme for TIME

They sit in the circle, the man who exposed himself to at least 100 women, next to the man who molested his stepdaughter, across from the man who sexually assaulted his neighbor. The group includes Matt, whose online chats led to prison; Rob, who was arrested for statutory rape; and Kevin, who spent decades masturbating next to women in movie theaters.

Some of the men’s crimes aren’t all that different from the allegations against public figures such as Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore. Unlike the famous men, they cannot afford lawyers to draft nondisclosure agreements, or arrange hush-money payments, or appeal guilty verdicts, as Cosby’s attorneys are planning to do following his conviction on sexual assault in April. (Cosby could also be ordered to seek therapy.) Nor can they attempt to stage professional comebacks or publish mea culpa memoirs.

Instead, these men were all found guilty and had their names added to a state sex-offender registry. They will remain on that list for decades and, in some cases, the rest of their lives. Anyone can search online for the ugly details of their crimes, including employers, partners and their own children. A judge has limited where most of the men in this room can live, work and socialize–and whether they can access the Internet. Some are unemployed, and many live paycheck to paycheck, dependent on the few employers who are willing to tolerate their criminal history.

Mike Belleme for TIMECheryl, a clinical social worker, has been treating registered sex offenders for almost 20 years

The more than 800,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S. may feel that their parole restrictions are onerous, but the mere presence of a known offender in almost any community precipitates clashes of competing interests and legal battles that have only intensified in the wake of the #MeToo movement. In at least 10 recent lawsuits filed in states from Pennsylvania to Colorado, civil rights proponents argue that sex offenders face unconstitutional punishments that other criminals do not, and they note that there are no government registries for murderers or other violent felons in most states. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case challenging the limits of the registry in its October term.

But advocates for the millions of women, men and children who have experienced sexual violence are pushing back on any reforms, and 12 states have passed or proposed further restrictions on offenders in the past year. “What most of my clients want is their attacker gone,” says Lisa Anderson, a lawyer who represents survivors of rape. “If I could brand them with a scarlet letter on their forehead I would, because I don’t want any woman hurt like that again.”

Most people find it difficult to reconcile the hope that rehabilitation is possible with the impulse to push these men to the periphery of society forever. Punitive measures alone, however, have not been found to meaningfully increase community safety. Meanwhile, therapy–when paired with tough parole restrictions–can significantly reduce the chance of re-offending, according to the American Psychological Association. “It’s hard for me to believe that someone could violently ignore the will of another and then be taught not to cross that line,” says Anderson. “But if it’s possible to teach them empathy, then that should be mandatory.”

There are about 2,350 therapists across the nation who provide court-mandated treatment to sex offenders. (Counseling is also offered through prisons and other government institutions.) Judges refer the offenders to psychologists or clinical social workers who are authorized by states. In some cases, the government subsidizes the cost of treatment. Private therapists can refuse to see certain patients at their discretion.

Cheryl, a clinical social worker, and Jennifer, a licensed professional counselor, oversee the weekly meetings in the bungalow. They have worked with both victims and perpetrators for almost 20 years. They do not have to accept all referrals from the state—-and they say there are certain men they simply won’t treat, such as those who repeatedly prey on children, and seem unwilling to change. But they say that by the time most of their patients leave therapy, they are equipped to take responsibility for their actions, to understand what led them to commit their crimes and, finally, to empathize with their victims. “Working with these men and watching them change actually gives me hope for all men,” says Jennifer. “Because if people can’t change and grow, well, then what are we going to do with all these bad men in the news, with all the bad men who are still out there?”

Unable to silence the ankle bracelet, Cheryl and Jennifer decide to start the session despite the distraction. “The topic on the table today,” Cheryl says, “is how we failed ourselves and others and how we hold ourselves accountable for that failure.”

Matt, 30, grips a pillow on the couch as he recounts his story. He had always had trouble talking to girls. He would lose track of his words and fidget. In high school, he turned to chat rooms where nobody could see his awkward mannerisms. He started skipping class and parties to talk online. The conversations fueled his sexual fantasies.

“It led to a devaluation of whoever was on the other side,” he says. “They weren’t a person. They were a means to an end. I never actually hurt anyone physically. But I left an emotional holocaust.”

He met his fiancée not in a chat room but at college. He was studying political science in the hopes of becoming a lawyer and maybe, someday, a Senator. He aspired to higher office, he says, “’cause nobody is going to say: A United States Senator? What a f-cking loser.” He says doctors diagnosed him with everything from ADD to depression to borderline personality disorder. (Jennifer believes that Matt is somewhere on the autism spectrum.)

Even while in a relationship, Matt continued to linger in chat rooms. When he was 26, he met what he thought was a 14-year-old girl online. He had been arguing with his fiancée, but this girl laughed at his jokes and spent just as much time in front of the computer as he did. After the chats became sexual, she asked to see him in real life. Eventually he agreed to meet her at a Walmart across town from his job.

“I get there, and there’s nobody there. I’m excited. I’m just like, ‘Nothing bad can happen now. I can go back to work where I’m supposed to be,'” he says. “Not two seconds later I see these blue lights, and hear, ‘Police. Get on the ground.’ Turns out [the 14-year-old] was a police officer the whole time.”

The consequences were swift. Matt went to prison for 11 months. He lost his career and fiancée. He now works a job in construction that he says he hates.

As Matt recounts his story, Jennifer cuts in to ask him how he justified having a sexual conversation with a teenager in the first place. “I thought, At least I’m not touching her,” Matt says. “I didn’t think of a 14-year-old as a child. I thought of myself at that age being highly sexualized. I thought everyone was, or at least everyone was pretending to be.”

“O.K., S-T-O-P,” Jennifer interrupts. “That’s a cognitive distortion, right there.”

Mike Belleme for TIMEA registered sex offender attends a therapy session with Cheryl

A sex offender, Jennifer later explains, often commits a crime by rationalizing it in some way: she wanted it, or my needs mattered more than hers. They convince themselves that a false notion is true–a cognitive distortion. Therapists’ work often consists of challenging their clients’ false beliefs and encouraging them to develop a more realistic view of the world.

There isn’t one standard method for treating sex offenders. But many experts have come to agree that identifying motivations and thought patterns is essential. Still, some therapists favor a much more confrontational method. “I saw treatment providers shaming and demeaning people, and literally having people get on their knees and say, ‘I’m f-cked up. I’m f-cked up. I’m f-cked up,'” Cheryl says. “I would much rather reach out my hand and say, ‘Let’s talk about how f-cked up you are.'”

Recent research published by the American Public Health Association suggests that focusing on punishments rather than positive goals can actually increase the chance of recidivism. In 2006, the Department of Justice endorsed more progressive methods such as the Good Lives Model, which aims to teach people how to fulfill their emotional and physical needs without hurting others. That includes challenging sexist behaviors and skewed social views that lead them to hurt other people.

In one group session, Cheryl and Jennifer pose a scenario meant to do just that: a man walks into an office, and a female receptionist smiles at him. Should he ask her out on a date? Two 50-something men in the group say they’ve always assumed every time a woman smiles or wears a short skirt, she’s coming on to them. One of the men in his early 30s argues that the receptionist has to be friendly to do her job. Jennifer points out that the receptionist is in an impossible position: if a valued customer hits on her, she may fear that she’ll be fired if she rejects him.

After each weekly discussion, Cheryl and Jennifer give homework assignments, such as asking participants to fill in a timeline of high and low moments in their lives, or writing a statement from the perspective of their victims. Lately, they have asked their patients to discuss the dozens of men who are making headlines for alleged sex crimes.

Matt watched the trial of Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor who was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for molesting more than 160 women and girls. “The prosecutor was calling him a menace to society, and I’m like, Yeah, that guy is a menace to society,” says Matt. “But the lawyer in my case was using the same phrase about me. I’m not claiming I’m some great guy or whatever, but I didn’t use my power to hurt [hundreds of] people.”

The consensus in this group, which includes men who trafficked in child pornography and men who assaulted their stepdaughters, is that Nassar is a monster. “They don’t want to see themselves in those men,” says Cheryl. “The men in group sense that these famous men are entitled.”

While Matt sat on Jennifer and Cheryl’s worn-down couch, forced to take responsibility for his offense, Harvey Weinstein–who is under investigation for rape in New York–was in Arizona at a spa-like treatment facility that charges $58,000 for a 45-day stay and is known for treating “sex addiction,” a controversial diagnosis not found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Sex-addiction treatment is designed to help people with impulse-control issues and, like Alcoholics Anonymous, focuses on abstinence and avoiding triggers.

Experts emphasize that men who commit crimes like rape, assault and indecent exposure should receive sex-offender therapy, not sex-addiction therapy. Sexual behavior that is coercive or violent is a crime and very different from someone who compulsively cheats with a willing partner or misses work because he can’t stop watching porn. Psychologists who work with sex offenders say many men try to use the “sex addiction” label as a way to abdicate responsibility for actions that are illegal and abusive. The only way for them to get better and to lessen their risk to society, therapists say, is to confront what they have done, not excuse it.

People have been sharing their problems with Cheryl all her life, even before she was a therapist. During a session, she lets every emotion show, frowning in sympathy and rolling her eyes when patients try to fool her. She began her career working with children who had been abused. When first offered a chance to work with sex offenders, she refused. But she decided to go to a session out of curiosity. “I was like, ‘Oh, God, I’m walking into this group of disgusting, dirty, icky men,” Cheryl says. But when she arrived, the men looked like her neighbors and friends, and some genuinely wanted to change. She decided to take on the challenge, and later she and Jennifer started up a practice.

They both still work with survivors and know that the damage these men have wrought on their victims cannot be undone. But they have come to believe counseling can curtail most offenders’ impulses and allow them to function safely in society. “I hear the awfulest stories and even have to excuse myself to throw up,” Cheryl says. “Sometimes these guys come in here complaining about having to drive a little further to get groceries because they’re on the registry, and I’m like, ‘To hell with you. Think of how your victim feels.'”

Many patients don’t want to contend with what they’ve done to their victims–at least initially. Some therapists ask their patients to attend local sentencing hearings and listen to other victims’ testimonies. Others instruct their patients to role-play as their victims. Cheryl opts for a more personal approach.

When Rob was 20 years old, he partied a lot. He would stay out late, ignoring his mom’s texts and “drive home drunk, literally every night.” He met a 15-year-old girl at a party and had sex with her. Her parents pressed charges, and Rob didn’t tell his own mother until he had a court date set. He spent one year in prison for statutory rape and another two for parole violations. When he first met Cheryl, he told her, “Lady, I’ll sit here, but I don’t need therapy, and I don’t care about this.” Eventually, he became one of the most active members in the group.

He does electrical work now, thanks, he says, to the therapy he once dismissed. He got the job through a man who went through Cheryl’s program before him. Rob recently proposed to his fiancée and has since brought her to a few individual therapy sessions. She is older than him and has two daughters; he can’t attend their school plays or graduation.

Cheryl asks Rob how treatment has helped him to take responsibility for what he did. He speaks in vague terms about how he “f-cked up.” Cheryl stops him. “Define what ‘f-cked up’ means. Be specific.”

“I had a good job. I was working,” he says. “Instead of listening to my family and the people who cared about me, I just rebelled.”

“And then what happened?”

“I committed my offense.” He can’t bring himself to say what that offense was.

“What were the consequences of that?”

“I lost everything.”

“That’s still about you, honey,” Cheryl says. “What happened to your victim?”

“Her life was affected–I don’t know how. I haven’t had contact with her.”

Cheryl changes tact. “You’ve almost got two stepdaughters about [your victim’s age]. What do you think the impact would be on them, meeting someone like you when you were 20?”

“I mean, they’d be traumatized. They’d be–” he’s quiet for a minute. “I can’t think of the right word. I’m stuck.” He looks down into his lap.

“You’re getting ready to become a parent,” Cheryl says. “So I’m really challenging you. What kind of person were you then, the person you wouldn’t want your stepdaughters to meet now?”

“I didn’t care about anything. I was drinking, using drugs. I just wanted to get my rocks off. It didn’t matter with who or at what age. We try to talk to them, the kids, about that because, well, they’re like my kids.”

“I’ve seen you grow up,” says Cheryl. “You came to us with an eff you, eff me, eff whatever attitude. Now you’ve got these two girls and you get to tell them, ‘I was the 20-year-old boy who couldn’t wait to get with some sweet little 15-year-old.’ And you can tell them you didn’t give a rip about that girl as long as she was gonna like you. I mean, you didn’t force her, you didn’t trick her.'”

“Well, I didn’t trick her, and I did.”

Cheryl smiles. “Thank you for correcting me.”

“I tricked her because I had the nice car. I used what I had to my advantage when I wanted. Did I trick her into a dark alley? No. Was it mutual? Yes. But I had nice things. I was able to buy the drugs and alcohol. So yes, I did trick her. And I don’t want them to get tricked–even if it’s mutual. They’re too young to know.”

Later, she asks Rob if he would want to talk with his victim in person if he could.

“Honestly, no,” he said. “I’ve got a good thing going right now, and I feel like if I heard that I just f-cked her life up, it would send me in this spiral.”

“But that is what empathy is,” Cheryl says. “Sitting across from your victim and listening to her and understanding how she feels.” She tells him a story of a client whose neighbor found him on the sex-offender registry and confronted him in a grocery store. “You hurt a child,” she yelled at him in the cereal aisle. This patient, Cheryl says, had a moment of self-realization. He dropped to his knees on the linoleum floor and said, “I used to be that man that did those awful things to the little girl and the amount of regret I have is sometimes unfathomable.”

That, she argues, is truly taking responsibility for your actions.

“I would meet with her if she wanted to,” Rob says. “I would just be scared. I just–it would be hard.”

Cheryl has observed these sorts of conversations between assailant and survivor before at the request of both parties and believes they have the potential to be healing. Some victim advocates are skeptical. “Every time I saw my rapist, I threw up,” says Anderson, who became a lawyer to defend victims of assault after a professor raped her in graduate school. “One of my clients was forced to talk to her attacker, and she became suicidal.”

Sex-offender therapists and victim advocates are often on opposite sides on questions of crime, punishment and rehabilitation, though both ultimately hope to reduce sexual violence. The data on treatment is limited, but what there is points toward the value of therapy. While there are no recent, official statistics on national sex-offender recidivism, an overview of studies looking at the numbers in Connecticut, Alaska, Delaware, Iowa and South Carolina found that the rate is about 3.5% for sex offenders. That figure takes into account all crimes, including parole violations, not just sex crimes.

In 2010, research published in the American Journal of Public Health suggested that strict laws about registration, surveillance and residency can create a feeling of hopelessness and isolation that can actually facilitate re-offense. Several studies show that rehabilitative therapy, when paired with legal measures, can give offenders a sense of hope and progress and reduce recidivism rates by as much as 22%.

To many survivors and advocates, the experience of sexual assault is so horrifying that any recidivism risk is too high. “The emotional toll on the victim when it does happen is immeasurable,” Anderson says. “Those nightmares last a lifetime.” There are also far more victims than perpetrators, which increases the potential consequences of any re-offense. There are fewer than 1 million men on the sex-offender registries; sexual-assault victims number in the millions, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, a survivor advocacy group.

Kevin, 68, one of the men in Cheryl and Jennifer’s therapy group, traumatized hundreds of women. For 45 years, he was a compulsive exhibitionist. He would visit movie theaters, sit next to a woman and masturbate once the lights dimmed. He fantasized that the women were aroused by his behavior, though he now says, “They never actually were.” He did this nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

Kevin spent time in jail and psychiatric treatment centers but never went to prison. He managed to hold down a job as a clerk at a home-improvement store. Eventually, he stopped exposing himself, but not because of therapy. “I got older, my sex drive got lower. I got on a drug that basically is designed, if you take in high doses, to reduce your testosterone level and reduce your sex drive,” he says. “I’m not sure that just therapy would have been able to break the cycle.”

But Kevin says the sessions have helped him understand the motivation for his behavior. He now believes that he exposed himself in the hopes of making a human connection, however irrational that may sound. “When I would do it, it was like I was in a trance. I’m just absorbed in what I’m doing, trying to get a positive response, which I very seldom got,” he says. “It took me a long time to figure out that women don’t want to see that. They find it disgusting.”

Whether you believe that therapy can redeem someone like Kevin may depend on whether you believe people can learn empathy. Researchers at the University of Cambridge published a study in March that suggests subjects’ ability to empathize with others had little to do with their genetic makeup and more to do with how they were raised. Empathetic people are made, not born.

Many of the men Cheryl and Jennifer counsel experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse themselves when they were young. As the therapists often say in group, “Hurt people hurt people.” At sentencing hearings, Cheryl testified to the likelihood that a sex offender can reform based on their history. But there are no guarantees.

In October, the Supreme Court will consider a complicated case challenging the federal laws that govern some sex offenders. The decision could allow hundreds of thousands of convicted offenders to move more easily across state lines and eventually remove their names from the sex-offender registry.

Even if that suit fails, civil rights proponents and victim advocates will likely confront each other again in the nation’s highest court. A Colorado federal judge recently ruled that the state’s sex-offender registry is unconstitutional. He said the list constitutes cruel and unusual punishment because it can subject these men to ostracism and violence at the hands of the public and that it fails to properly distinguish between different types of offenses.

The Colorado judge’s decision ignited outrage. In response, attorneys general from six states wrote a joint amicus brief to overturn the ruling on appeal. In their brief, the attorneys general quote a judge from a separate case regarding sex offenders in Wisconsin: “Parents of young children should ask themselves whether they should worry that there are people in their community who have ‘only’ a 16% or an 8% probability of molesting young children.”

In an attempt to resolve the tension between public safety and individual redemption, the law has settled on an imperfect compromise: sex offenders are inscribed on a registry, sometimes permanently. But they are also ordered to attend therapy to get better. The bad men are left in limbo.

Inside the small taupe house, Cheryl and Jennifer work to move through that limbo, one conversation at a time. As the bright winter sun sets and the office grows cold, a group therapy session comes to a close 45 minutes after it was supposed to. The men rise from the worn couch and pull on their coats and hats. One has to head home to meet his parole-mandated curfew. The man with the ankle bracelet needs to charge his battery. They file out slowly, loose floorboards creaking under their feet. Tomorrow, Cheryl and Jennifer might text some of these men to see how they’re doing. They might call their wives or bosses or parole officers. They’ll review the homework the men have turned in and prep for individual therapy sessions.

After those meetings end and the men leave the house for good, Cheryl and Jennifer may never know what becomes of them. Mostly, they hope they won’t read about them in the news.

This appears in the May 21, 2018 issue of TIME. http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/sex-offender-therapy-men-convicted-01.jpg?quality=85 Credits: Original Content Source

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succorcreek · 7 years

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When Men Think They are a "Savior God" (Mythomania pt 1) When Men Think They are a "Savior God" (Mythomania pt 1) and the occasional woman "Mythomania" is a thought/feeling/mind process that is not associated with the delusions of mental illness: psychotic images where one see's people not there or feels at the moment one is Christ at the moment or even often. For the psychotic person there may be a thought that they can walk on a lake of think ice without fail or feel they can drive into oncoming cars and just invisibly pass through. This always results in death. Psychosis is likely more common than most know but many of the psychotics including the schizophrenics are found en masse living homeless under bridges in all towns. I'm a retired clinical therapist and know that my practice was dotted with these two types: the mythomanics of narcissism and the delusional of psychosis which includes the schizophrenics psychosis from different brain disorders and damage and milder cases of post-partum psychotic depression and what if felt common to a small percentage of the population: auditory hallucinations. Having treated many women with post partum depression and psychosis this disorder passes with treatment though it is often not recognized leaving the mother with added shame and guilt: "Will I accidentally cut my baby with a knife" goes the intrusive fear and thought. Often I assured mothers who would read of an annual emblazened news story of "Mother drives into lake killing self and 5 of her children" that THOSE mothers had prior brain patterns and life histories of psychosis including childhood psychosis or other disorders. If you're a mother with an intrusive thought about harming your children that feels so real it takes multitude of assurances to believe it's a thought and not their character. "Mythomania" is two words: mythos: there is some fantastic story mania: it is "energized". Now some associate "mythomania" with bipolar mood disorder and "mania" in general. I've put forth the case in the books above on "mythomania" is most often not related to bipolar mood disorder because it occurs in other disorders or even in just the character or personality disorders we don't fully understand like narcissism and psychopathy (as in this blog Donald Trump Dutarte of the Phillipines Putin Kim Jong-Un and in history any leader of religious cleansings and genocides (check back or sign up for confidential emailings of our post as we flesh out the tab section above: Mythomanics and Genocides). Mythomania means in our non-bipolar disorder and "not necessarily in a manic state" definition: The person believes in their fantastical story......to a degree of belief on a scale of 1 to 10 1 representing least and 10 representing most (the person really really believes their mythomanic story). Where is mythomania most commonly found? This is the list and not the "scale of 1-10 ranking". 1. compulsive liars (lies to protect one's "self"). Most use rare lies to protect oneself from criticism or attack. Compulsive liars have a more constant flow of lies though. 2. pathological liars (continuous lies at most times not as a defense but possibly as a con a lifestyle or for the drama and adrenalin it generates). 3. narcissism self focused takers 4. con artists takers who know what they are doing believe in their just reason for taking for others though this likely includes a large percentage of those in prison or called "felons" 5. psychopaths and psychopathic politicians and leaders (takers without compassion of humanity of others or without compassion toward nature) 6. machiavellians called the glib psychopaths and part of the Dark Triad of Disorders: narcissism psychopathy and machiavellians 7. the sociopathic and psychotic psychopaths: including Hitler and the Serial Killers and Mass Murderers. I think Kim Jong-Un is one of the worst in the world now and could be a glib psychotic or #7 This is my own subjective rating of some persons. See "psychopathy" and tests in the topic cloud below to find how others in the US see Donald Trump and other psychopathic world leaders. scale 1-10 of 1. almost nil 7. The psychopathic politicians with all characteristics of psychopaths: Donald Trump with deaths of others by what is called "death by marginalization": that dangerous ignoring and putting lives of groups and cultures on the fringes of life public services and access to jobs and education. That is what this blog is about: Donald Trump is involved with "death by marginalization now" and "your're next". Even if there is no direct order for death there are more deaths in the long term as people die from illness suicide being vulnlerable to weather and crime more than those with $ or power and marginalization induced conflict and crime (if you're marginalized you may buy a gun to survive or may be forced to kill as initiation into a protection gang) 8. The psychopaths now matter how big the smiles where actual deaths are attributed to the political actions of a politician or president or it's known that some "crime" syndicate or political puppet killed for the president: Putin 9. Psychopath with directly known killings like Dutarte 10. Machavellian murderers or psychotic and deranged killers of our time and of the historical genocides often known in history as the "psychopaths" or megalomaniacs: Hitler Kim Jong-Un Now there can be many combinations of mythomania and disorders. I had many patients with schizophrenia who had both mythomania and schizophrenia: Gerald had an onset his psychotic schizophrenia when he was 20. Before that he was a football start and darling of the ladies. To this day Gerald has two mental worlds where one is his paranoid schizophrenia where the FBI is watching him at all times. But Gerald has another world that mythomanic world a harmless one where this 70 year old has a fantasy or Walter Mitty world he's a great football star ladies' man and a grandiose proud person in the world like a dapper James Bond. Here's the test that helped separate these two different worlds: his anti-psychotic medications lessened his FBI delusions and "story" over time. But his "mythomanic story" of James Bond is never influenced by an anti-psychotic medication and was actually increasing over time. (But with no medication just as with the Sandy Hook Mass Murderer Adam Lanza both the psychotic story and the mythomanic story increase over time erupting eventually as a volcano) In fact the fantastic story of mythomania does that as with Gerald: it increases over time. They believe the story more and more. It becomes more defined. What does this have then to do with us? What really does this have to do with Donald Trump? Here's how: MYTHOMANIA having a fantastical story and believing in it is a key component of the scale of 1-10 of psychopaths narcissists and machiellians Mythomania is also a way to rank or subjectively judge how much Trump Dutarte or others believe in the dangerous story. We have then one scale 1-10 ranking the degree of psychopathy We also have then another scale that could be separate but is it really the same as the psychopathy scale? Scale of the "lie" or the story told and how much a person really believes that. See the books on Mythomania to see how that "belief" is evaluated but briefly: Belief in one's lie or mythomanic story: 1-2: Believes the lie for a bit but then drops that belief 1. you or I rarely tell a lie to cover up a mistake 2. compuslive liar not getting in trouble with that 3-5 Increased belief in one's mythomanic story some here may be interrogated or questioned and will see some error in their belief though they return to lies and mythomanic stories. 3. lies but is the start of "mythomania" 5. pathological liar most is a lie but has compassion to others 6. the con artist criminal con artist felon most politicians 7. psychopathic politicians white supremacists 8. 9. 10. Full belief in story nothing will ever change that. (Ted Bundy thinks he's a good guy and also thinks young boys should be exploited and killed for fun). So where is the greatest harm? Psychopaths are the cause of 9 of 10 crimes and represent 60% of persons in jail. Psychopaths Pirates Vampires and more: Run flee tell others! 300 topics on this listed below in the Cloud Archive: Click Here: Catalog of 100 Books Kindle Hypnosis Binaural Subliminal CDs 15 lies con artist dark triad deceit donald trump machiavellian felons juggaloes mythomania psychopathy test psychpathy putin dutarte scale schizophrenia series tricksters trump hitler kim jong-un #trumpbully #stopbully #trumpmentalhealth http://bit.ly/2rZ1vSp

When Men Think They

#narcissist abuse #psychopath abuse #trump bully #abuse recovery #ptsd #ptsd recovery #ptsd hypnosis

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fragments-of-this · 7 years

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Responsibility to the Team - “When a wanted fugitive is your only hope for a fighting chance, it’s not a good situation.”

Since coming to Paris four years ago, Ruby has taken residence with the Moreaus, renting the empty flat above their pastry shop. In her adolescent vagrancy, they took her in--a stray girl who had no family or friends but was happy to help make the macaroons. In return for their good samaritan-ism, customers began to flock to the patisserie. Perhaps the girl was a good luck charm, perhaps it was karma, perhaps it was just a coincidence, but after her arrival their business took off and Ruby quickly became something of a daughter to them.

When she was seventeen, someone came from America that needed Ruby’s help--of course they were sad to see her go, but their Petite assured that she would be back eventually. And a year and a half later, she knocked on their door again, greeting her Granmeré with tears and a hug. They never asked what happened in America--just as they never asked what happened before they found her.

At eighteen, Granpapa insisted that a young woman should have her own space--they cleaned up the old apartment above their bakery and soon had her settled. Despite their protestations, Ruby even managed to pay them a monthly fee for her lodging. After a couple years, habit began to set in. Ruby traveled a lot, but when she wasn’t galavanting around Eurasia, she was working in the pastry shop, prowling around Shakespeare and Co., or writing in her flat.

Like so many other things, it became custom to update her journal every week. Ruby used her Book of Shadows to track everything--the mundane, the researched, and the developing. As she scrawled an entry on the effects of obsidian in correspondence to her powers, she listened to the sounds of the shop below her. The Moreaus always closed on Sunday, but she could hear Mimi preparing for the coming week, and could sense her soul through the floorboards. Unusually, the bell tined to indicate a customer entering. Ruby stiffened--she could sense a presence, but not a soul.

That could only mean one thing.

She had a visitor.

Sure enough, Mimi, her light footsteps and swishy skirts heard on the stairway, knocked on Ruby’s door. “Bonjour ma petite, cette fille dit qu'elle est votre amie?” Her thin face was deeply lined and smiling. Behind her a young woman with red hair and freckles smiled patiently. Ruby felt her stomach turn to ice. She spoke quickly, arranging her face into a bright grin. “Oui, oui, Megan. Merci, Madame Moreau!” Mimi nodded and left the two women alone.

Megan--M’gann--stepped into the small flat. There wasn’t much to it, but it was clean and well lit. Ruby closed the door with a snap, and before M’gann was even seated at the kitchen table she posed a careful question. “Why are you here?”

M’gann did not react. The smile was gone, and her face--and soul--was unreadable. “You know that she knows something is wrong, right?”

“Whom?”

“Madam Moreau. She is worried, because you addressed her as Madam, instead of Mimi. She thinks that we are not friends, nor were you expecting me. Correct on both accounts, I assume.”

Ruby focused on mentally reciting John Donne, whose words she knew by rote, over and over again--an old trick she learned from Isa, to screen her thoughts from a mind reader. M’gann was not supposed to be here, in Paris, and certainly not in the company of Ruby Whit. So what happened to force her presence? “Not necessarily. Our friendship is circumstantial, and I always expected the League to hunt me down one day.” Ruby took a seat opposite her guest, back straight, hands folded. “So you will have to inform me...is this a social call, or should I prepare to flee the country?”

M’gann did nothing but search her face. “Despite what you may think, I haven’t come here to threaten you, Ruby.” She leaned forward, eyes averted, elbows on the table. “We need your help.” Ruby's eyes narrowed, but she did not interrupt.

“You know of the Team.” Of course Ruby knew of the Team--the JLA’s covert ops force that doubled as overflow management. Ruby had had her own Team as well, before The Mission and consequential disbandment of her section.

“Obviously.” M’gann’s mouth tightened at her petulance.

“Yes. The force is comprised primarily of young adults, who don’t yet know themselves. While significant forces of crimefighting, justice, and peace, they are wide open to attack. As growing individuals, they are easily influenced, and easily riled.” M’gann paused to look again at Ruby's face. “This is where you come in. Your power.”

“What about it?”

“The ability to make visible a soul--to understand the self.” M’gann took a manilla folder from her bag, and slid it across the table to Ruby. As she flicked through it, M’gann continued to speak. “As the Reach’s technology is incorporated into the black market, propaganda weaponry begins to form. The next wave of villains seem to be turning more and more to manipulation of the mind--attacks on the psyche. Subverting values, creating impossible moral situations, et cetera.” “And you want me to counter this?” It made sense--most people hardly know themselves. That’s why they’re so easy for Ruby to manipulate; if you’re not a psychic, constantly probing the minds of yourself and others, it is unlikely you actually understand what makes up your soul.

“Yes. It would be an intensive and individualized practice; you would take a month period to teach two members of the team, both mental training and combat training. The trainees rotate monthly. There is a JLA base already built to house the operation, should you choose to accept.”

Ruby cocked an eyebrow. “Should I choose? You mean the Justice League is giving me an actual, honest to God choice about my fate?”

“Well,” M’gann scowled, “they are titled the Justice League.”

Ruby barked a laugh. “Hell if that means anything. In case you forgot, M’gann, I’m a wanted felon. I’m charged with murder, arson, attempted robbery, aggravated assault, and a slew of other awful crimes that I didn’t commit because the pristine Justice League needed a scapegoat to take the heat of a mission gone terribly wrong.” She stood, hands on the table, fire in her eyes. “I’m sorry if I don’t entirely trust the validity of my choice. Nor am I entirely unsure I’ll be able to remain a free woman once inside the United States borders. I still have six years to wait until I can’t be tried for my crimes.” The anger in Ruby’s voice drilled into M’gann’s composure. Ruby saw her soul seeping through the cracks of her armor, roiling with emotion--anger, pride, shame. But M’gann was good; she clamped down on the escaping tendrils and ripped them back to her, mending the holes in breastplate and becoming, once again, unreadable.

“The JLA is working to expunge you.”

“The JLA is the reason I’m convicted in the first place.”

“And that means nothing when you're up against a threat like this!” M’gann was on her feet so quickly that the chair beneath her clattered to the floor. “Do you understand the stakes of this operation? The Team is doomed, if you don’t help us. We will be exterminated if we cannot defend ourselves.”

Ruby scoffed. “Yeah, sounds like a real choice. When the fate of humanity rests squarely on your shoulders, you hardly have a choice but to be Atlas.” She made no mention of John Galt. Despite it all, Ruby did understand the gravity of an ultimatum, and the gravity of this meeting.

With a cold glare, M’gann pulled out another file. “Here is all the information on the operation. It includes location of the base, living conditions, training goals, trainee schedule, and your instruction partner. They have already accepted the post, so this operation is entirely contingent on your decision.” Ruby accepted it. “I plan to leave Paris in forty-eight hours. Make a decision by then."

Ruby listened, feeling the Martian’s soul float further and further away. When she was finally out of range, exhaled a deep breath. This was serious, and not at all what she was jockeying for in this new stage of life.

The research, when she glanced through the debriefing, was incontrovertible--psychic attacks were becoming more and more prevalent in crime syndicates and the traditional superhero is magnificently ill-equipped to handle them, particularly in a covert setting, particularly when the mission requires absolute trust in yourself and your teammates. Ruby felt the adrenaline in her system and tried to focus her energy. She saw her soul, indigo and glowing, around her. It was flickering like candle flames in her agitation, tiny, bruise colored lights whipping in a nonexistent wind.

Deep. Breath. in. Our Father... Out. Thou art in Heaven... In. Hallow’d be Thy name... Out.

The flames smoothed into metal, encasing her body like armor, and melted away. Now calmer, Ruby took a seat on the couch, file in one hand and her Book in the other, and she began to read about her new assignment. She had already made up her mind to accept; after all, it wasn’t a question, but a plea. The League was scared--and so they should be. It was her responsibility to help her Team, even though they abandoned her--especially because they abandoned her. But, responsibility or not, this wasn’t going to be easy. She had a feeling in her gut--she wasn't doing this training alone. M’gann mentioned a partner, but to have a counterpart in this endeavor requires an absolute trust and understanding. Ruby only knew of one person who fit that description, and he was a person she never planned on seeing again.

Before she went further on the file, she retrieved her tarot from the coffee table. Shuffling quickly, she spread them out in front of her, and selected a single card.

The Knight of Wands. She scoffed, and rolled her eyes at her increased heartbeat. She was probably just being paranoid. She drew another card.

The Five of Wands. Ok, less funny. She drew a final card.

The Three of Swords. Oh Hell.

Ruby snatched the file from its place on the couch beside her and flicked through the pages until she came to the section entitled INSTRUCTORS. Ignoring her own credentials she scanned the page until she came to her partner.

OLIVER LAFLAIR, aka VELOCITY.

She glared at her cards.

She was right. It certainly was going to be an impossible task, with an impossible rival.

“Well,” Ruby mumbled to herself, “it’s never stopped me before.”

#mine #superheroes and powers #ruby whit #m'gann m'orzz #the team #oliver laflair #series #this has been in my brain for forever #tarot #long post yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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succorcreek · 7 years

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When Men Think They are a "Savior God" (Mythomania pt 1)

When Men Think They are a "Savior God" (Mythomania pt 1)* *and, the occasional woman "Mythomania" is a thought/feeling/mind process that is not associated with the delusions of mental illness: psychotic images where one see's people not there or feels at the moment one is Christ at the moment or even often. For the psychotic person, there may be a thought that they can walk on a lake of think ice without fail or feel they can drive into oncoming cars and just invisibly pass through. This always results in death. Psychosis is likely more common than most know, but many of the psychotics, including the schizophrenics are found en masse living homeless under bridges in all towns. I'm a retired clinical therapist and know that my practice was dotted with these two types: *the mythomanics of narcissism *and the delusional of psychosis which includes the schizophrenics, psychosis from different brain disorders and damage, and milder cases of post-partum psychotic depression and what if felt common to a small percentage of the population: auditory hallucinations. Having treated many women with post partum depression and psychosis, this disorder passes with treatment, though it is often not recognized, leaving the mother with added shame and guilt: "Will I accidentally cut my baby with a knife" goes the intrusive fear and thought. Often, I assured mothers who would read of an annual emblazened news story of "Mother drives into lake killing self and 5 of her children" that THOSE mothers had prior brain patterns and life histories of psychosis, including childhood psychosis or other disorders. If you're a mother with an intrusive thought about harming your children that feels so real, it takes multitude of assurances to believe it's a thought and not their character. "Mythomania" is two words: mythos: there is some fantastic story mania: it is "energized". Now, some associate "mythomania" with bipolar mood disorder and "mania" in general. I've put forth the case in the books above on "mythomania" is most often not related to bipolar mood disorder because it occurs in other disorders or even in just the character or personality disorders we don't fully understand, like narcissism and psychopathy (as in this blog, Donald Trump, Dutarte of the Phillipines, Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and in history, any leader of religious cleansings and genocides (check back or sign up for confidential emailings of our post, as we flesh out the tab section above: Mythomanics and Genocides). Mythomania means in our non-bipolar disorder and "not necessarily in a manic state" definition: The person believes in their fantastical story......to a degree of belief on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 representing least and 10 representing most (the person really really believes their mythomanic story). Where is mythomania most commonly found? This is the list and not the "scale of 1-10 ranking". 1. compulsive liars (lies to protect one's "self"). Most use rare lies to protect oneself from criticism or attack. Compulsive liars have a more constant flow of lies, though. 2. pathological liars (continuous lies, at most times, not as a defense, but possibly as a con, a lifestyle, or for the drama and adrenalin it generates). 3. narcissism, self focused takers 4. con artists, takers who know what they are doing, believe in their just reason for taking for others though, this likely includes a large percentage of those in prison or called "felons" 5. psychopaths and psychopathic politicians and leaders (takers without compassion of humanity of others or without compassion toward nature) 6. machiavellians, called the glib psychopaths, and part of the Dark Triad of Disorders: narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellians 7. the sociopathic and psychotic psychopaths: including Hitler and the Serial Killers and Mass Murderers. I think Kim Jong-Un is one of the worst in the world now, and could be a glib psychotic or #7 This is my own subjective rating of some persons. See "psychopathy" and tests in the topic cloud below to find how others in the US see Donald Trump and other psychopathic world leaders. scale 1-10 of 1. almost nil 7. The psychopathic politicians with all characteristics of psychopaths: Donald Trump, with deaths of others by what is called "death by marginalization": that dangerous ignoring and putting lives of groups and cultures on the fringes of life, public services, and access to jobs and education. That is what this blog is about: Donald Trump is involved with "death by marginalization now", and "your're next". Even if there is no direct order for death, there are more deaths in the long term as people die from illness, suicide, being vulnlerable to weather and crime more than those with $ or power, and marginalization induced conflict and crime (if you're marginalized, you may buy a gun to survive, or may be forced to kill as initiation into a protection gang) 8. The psychopaths, now matter how big the smiles, where actual deaths are attributed to the political actions of a politician or president, or it's known that some "crime" syndicate or political puppet killed for the president: Putin 9. Psychopath with directly known killings, like Dutarte 10. Machavellian murderers or psychotic and deranged killers of our time and of the historical genocides, often known in history as the "psychopaths" or megalomaniacs: Hitler Kim Jong-Un Now, there can be many combinations of mythomania and disorders. I had many patients with schizophrenia, who had both mythomania and schizophrenia: Gerald had an onset his psychotic schizophrenia when he was 20. Before that he was a football start and darling of the ladies. To this day, Gerald has two mental worlds where one is his paranoid schizophrenia where the FBI is watching him at all times. But, Gerald has another world, that mythomanic world, a harmless one, where this 70 year old has a fantasy or Walter Mitty world he's a great football star, ladies' man, and a grandiose proud person in the world like a dapper James Bond. Here's the test that helped separate these two different worlds: his anti-psychotic medications lessened his FBI delusions and "story" over time. But, his "mythomanic story" of James Bond is never influenced by an anti-psychotic medication, and was actually increasing over time. (But, with no medication, just as with the Sandy Hook Mass Murderer, Adam Lanza, both the psychotic story and the mythomanic story increase over time, erupting eventually as a volcano) In fact, the fantastic story of mythomania does that, as with Gerald: it increases over time. They believe the story more and more. It becomes more defined. What does this have then to do with us? What really does this have to do with Donald Trump? Here's how: MYTHOMANIA, having a fantastical story and believing in it is a key component of the scale of 1-10 of psychopaths, narcissists, and machiellians Mythomania is also a way to rank or subjectively judge how much Trump, Dutarte or others believe in the dangerous story. We have then, one scale, 1-10 ranking the degree of psychopathy We also have then another scale that could be separate, but is it really the same as the psychopathy scale? Scale of the "lie" or the story told, and how much a person really believes that. See the books on Mythomania to see how that "belief" is evaluated, but briefly: Belief in one's lie or mythomanic story: 1-2: Believes the lie for a bit, but then drops that belief 1. you or I rarely tell a lie to cover up a mistake 2. compuslive liar, not getting in trouble with that 3-5 Increased belief in one's mythomanic story, some here may be interrogated or questioned and will see some error in their belief, though they return to lies and mythomanic stories. 3. lies, but is the start of "mythomania" 5. pathological liar, most is a lie, but has compassion to others 6. the con artist, criminal con artist felon, most politicians 7. psychopathic politicians, white supremacists 8. 9. 10. Full belief in story, nothing will ever change that. (Ted Bundy thinks he's a good guy, and also thinks young boys should be exploited and killed for fun). So, where is the greatest harm? Psychopaths are the cause of 9 of 10 crimes, and represent 60% of persons in jail.

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