#we found dead people's rubbish at our dig last week!

[mischiefmakingmuses]

LD:AU {Ch1} - Spirits Awoken

Sherise watched the clock on the wall tick by slowly. One minute, thirty-five seconds. One minute, thirty-four seconds. Every time the second hand moved, she felt her excitement level rising. It was Halloween, and once school was out, she’d make preparations for that party she’d been waiting all month for.

“Sherrie, can you calm down a bit...? You look like you’ll bolt out the door the instant the bell rings...” Yenten, her best friend, sighed. “You’re making me a little anxious, not gonna lie.”

“I can’t help it, Ten, tonight’s gonna be absolutely stellar!” Sherise balled her fists. “I’m gonna get ready for the best night of the year, in forty-two seconds...forty-one seconds...”

“Cripes, don’t starting counting the seconds!” Yenten uttered.

The teacher continued to prattle on with her lesson as the countdown continued. And finally...three seconds...two seconds...one second...!

Brrrrriiiing!

“ALL RIGHT!” Sherise shot up from her chair like a rocket. Everyone just stared at her, even the teacher. After an awkward silence, she slowly picked up her bag and books. “...sorry.”

“Hmmph. Someone’s in a hurry,” local rich girl Gess huffed. Sherise just glared at her, which didn’t faze her in the slightest. In fact, she just got a shit-eating grin on her face. “Oh, by the way! Ms. Green! Didn’t you say there’s an assignment we have to do over the weekend?”

“Oh! Indeed there is! Thank you for reminding me, Gess!” Ms. Green clapped her hands together. The entire class groaned, especially Sherise who immediately sank back into her chair.

“You totally did that on purpose,” she hissed.

“Whatever do you mean?” Gess asked, trying to play dumb. “I just didn’t want Ms. Green to forget about our important assignment due on Monday!”

“Remember, class! Your assignment for this weekend is a five page essay on any myths or legends of Feridae of your choosing! That’ll be all! Dismissed!”

~*~★~♥~★~*~

“Y’know, I really hate Gess sometimes,” Sherise grumbled. “Who wants to write an essay on ghosts and myths? That stuff isn’t real!”

“Well...I mean...I guess you can’t really prove whether it’s real or not...” Yenten nervously quipped. “But...you don’t think it’s interesting at all? I think it’s pretty cool!”

“It just doesn’t feel logical to me! A lot of the legends don’t make se--oh, cripes, look who it is.”

Sherise and Yenten stopped walking as they were approached by Gess.

“What do you want, Gess?” Sherise asked bitterly. “You trying to ruin the rest of my day or something?”

“Oh, I just couldn’t help but overhear how someone like you, a total Halloween nut, can possibly not enjoy the rich lore of our world!” Gess did a noblewoman’s laugh. “Maybe instead of prepping for some dumb Halloween party...”

“Hey!!” Sherise interjected. Gess continued.

“...you should go check out that haunted mansion at the end of Drawn & Quarterly? Prove that the legends are such rubbish like you say they are...! Or are you too scared?!”

“I’m not scared!” Sherise cried out, throwing her hands up. “It’s just illogical to me!”

The two parties began to bicker, as a strange boy in a mask approached them.

“Oh...hello...sorry...did I hear...you talk about the mansion at Drawn & Quarterly...?” he interrupted.

“OK, two things. One, who the hell are you? Two, yeah, what of it?” Sherise placed her hands on her hips.

“Oh...hehehe...my name is Desley...and I’m just interested...you want to go to that mansion...? I hear...there’s a room with a singular burning candle...out of 100 total...it’s said that the previous visitors played a game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai...but got too scared and didn’t finish...they say that if you put the candle out...a monster will appear...” Desley slowly brought his hand up to the mouth on his mask and giggled softly. “Maybe it’s real...but maybe not...”

“Even better!” Gess cried out. She pointed at Sherise and Yenten. “Alright! If you go and put that candle out...I’ll do your homework for a week!”

“Deal!” Sherise wasted no time accepting the bet. She grabbed Yenten’s hand. “C’mon, Ten! We’re going!”

“W-wait, why am I getting involved in this?!” the boy called out as his friend dragged him behind her.

“Ah...there they go. Hehehe...” Desley slowly started shuffling in the direction the duo went off in. He turned to look at Gess. “I hope you’re ready...to uphold your promise. Hehehe...maybe you shouldn’t be so much of a bully...I could’ve easily given this offer to you...”

“Excuse me?!” Gess snapped. “What did you call me?! Get back here, you little masked gremlin!”

“...oh...you should be happy my friends...weren’t around to hear that...but...I feel like you won’t be able to evade their detection forever...hehehe...”

“Hey! Are you threatening me?! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

“Haaa... Auf Wiedersehen...” Desley continued on his route without looking at the girl screeching behind him.

~*~★~♥~★~*~

“I heard that the monster that shows up at the end of a game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai is called ‘aoandon’,” Yenten explained as he kicked a rock along the sidewalk. “But usually, people don’t finish the game because the atmosphere grips them with fear and they give up before telling the hundredth story.”

“But...aoandon can’t be real. Can they? So that means that they get so close to their goal and they just, stop? What a load of bunk,” Sherise scoffed.

“Maybe you should keep a lid on your skepticism until we’re done...”

They stopped in front of the old mansion at Drawn & Quarterly. As expected, it was dilapidated and looked like no one had even so much as opened the door for decades. Yenten gulped.

“Sherrie...are we really doing this?” he whimpered. Sherise harrumphed.

“Yeah, of course we are! Don’t you wanna stick it to Gess for once? Look, all we gotta do is go inside, find the candle, put it out, and bam! We’ll be done, Gess’ll do my homework for a week, and we can get to the party in time!” Sherise saw no issues with this plan.

“OK, OK...let’s just get this over with...”

The duo stepped onto the pathway towards the decrepit and rotted front door. There was a lock on it...Sherise gently held it up to inspect it, only for the lock to detach from the door completely. Startled, she yelped and dropped the lock, which fell to the floor and shattered into pieces. She glanced over at Yenten, who merely shrugged.

Going inside, the entire mansion was covered in dust and cobwebs, and the air was musty and hard to breathe. Sherise found herself lifting the collar of her shirt over her nose just to stop herself from getting a lungful of rotten wood particles.

“Yuck. This really is the funk of forty thousand years, isn’t it?” she groaned. Taking a step forward, the floorboards made a creak so loud it could wake the dead. The girl facepalmed. “I feel like the mansion is going to disintegrate if we so much as breathe.”

“You wanna stick it to the people who didn’t finish their games of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai or not, Sherrie?” Yenten muttered passive aggressively. “Don’t get cold feet now.”

“Alright, alright...sheesh...”

The floorboards continued to creak unceremoniously as the two students made their way through the mansion, the cacophony enough to drive even the most holy of saints crazy. And, unfortunately, their search lasted for a good half hour or so, seeing as there were many, many rooms to check and not a candle in sight.

“I’m getting really tired of this,” Sherise wheezed. “Where’s this room at?”

“I can help you with that.”

Sherise cried out in shock and ended up falling into Yenten in her panic, sending both of them to the floor. After regaining their composure, they noticed that the voice belonged to Desley, the strange boy from earlier.

“Desley? Where did you come from?” Yenten asked, coughing out dust that flew into his mouth. “And how didn’t we hear you coming?!”

“The floorboards were too loud...” Desley murmured. Waving his hands in front of him, he giggled. “It looks like you two are kinda, lost, though...so I decided to help. By any chance, did you think to check the basement...?”

“B...basement?” Sherise uttered.

“Yup...if you’ll get up and follow me, I’ll take you there...hehe...”

“OK, then...” Sherise picked herself up and dusted off her pants before offering Yenten her hand. “Sorry about that, Ten...”

“I-it’s OK...” the boy responded, blushing. He took her hand and Sherise yanked him up. The duo looked over at Desley, who nodded and began to walk off. Admittedly, his steps were meticulous and light, making much less noise than they had been earlier.

In only a matter of minutes, the masked boy led the two to a staircase leading down. At the very bottom of the stairs, a very faint, blue light could be seen.

“Watch your step...”

The trio carefully made their way down the stairs, taking care not to slip and fall in the dark. Upon reaching the ground, Desley walked off towards a room with its door slightly ajar; from here, the light was more visible. Sherise gently opened the door a bit more, letting herself into the room, with Yenten following behind her.

The room was filled wall to wall with a hundred candles, some more melted than others, and all but one extinguished. The lone flame flickered in the middle of the dozens of candles, seeming a bit forlorn in a way.

“There really was a lit candle...” Sherise gasped. Slowly, carefully, she made her way to the candle. Nearby, there was a candle extinguisher. Sherise took it in her hand, and steadily moved forward to extinguish the candle. However, she felt her arm being grabbed from behind.

“Just a second, you two...” It was Desley. He looked at both Sherise and Yenten before digging around in his pocket and pulling something out. In his hand were two gemstones. They were clear and colorless. “Here. These are for you.”

“What are they?” Yenten asked. He gingerly took one of the gemstones, only to cry out a bit. He’d cut himself on it. “Oh, no, I’m bleeding!”

“I am, too!” Sherise whimpered. The two looked at their gemstones. Their blood was drawn into the middle of the stones, which then formed a heart inside. Upon further inspection, the edges had smoothed out, making another cut impossible. “What...just happened?”

“Those...are Reversal Shards. You’ll need to take care of them from now on...and they won’t work for anyone other than you...now...you can extinguish the candle...and end this game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai.” Desley gestured to the lit candle.

Sherise was still curious, but did as she was told. Taking a deep breath, she topped the candle with the extinguisher, the flame going out with a soft fizzling sound. The room became entirely dark, and all was silent.

“...that’s all?” Sherise asked, pouting. “All this build-up and nothing ha--”

Before she could finish, all the candles lit themselves with bright blue flames. The flames danced off their wicks and joined together in the middle, causing Sherise to back up hastily, nearly knocking down Desley in the process. The flames grew larger and larger, swirling in the middle of it all.

“W-what’s going on?!” Sherise shrieked.

“You just summoned the aoandon, that’s what!” Yenten yelled in response, voice shaking.

The flames began to contort in shape, forming a figure within. First, a moderately sized glass and metal lantern appeared, containing a small flame inside. The rest of the fire burned away, revealing a flat creature wearing blue clothes. It was mostly white, with many blue stripes running down its body. As the last of the flames went out, the creature’s tail tightly wrapped around the handle of the lantern. It floated in place, seemingly asleep.

“Is...is that...” Yenten stuttered.

“The aoandon?” Sherise questioned.

As if activated, the aoandon stretched itself out and yawned. It shook itself, small puffs of blue ash swirling around in the air in small clouds. Finally, it opened its eyes.

“Ahhh...that was such a nice nap!” The aoandon shook itself again and stretched itself out to full length, its tail never letting go of the lantern. “Hmm? Hiya! Who’re you guys?”

“U-uh...I-I’m Sherise...and this is Ten--I mean, Yenten.” Sherise said, gesturing to her friend. Yenten merely gave an awkward wave.

“I see, I see! A pleasure to meet you both! I’m Sunny!” The aoandon held out a hand for the kids to shake. Not wanting to leave him hanging, both Sherise and Yenten shook his hand once. “Sew, I’m guessin’ you’re the reason I got woken up?”

“I...I guess so...” Sherise nervously answered. She fiddled with her fingers before speaking up again. “Hey, Sunny...are you really an aoandon?”

“Yup! But only on my father’s side! My mother is an ittan-momen, don’chino? I think I really take after her!” Sunny did a little pose to accentuate the statement. Both Yenten and Sherise were sweating nervously.

“Yes, actually, about that, Sunny...” Desley spoke up. “Your parents were the ones who asked me to find you. They’d noticed you stopped writing letters for a while...and thought something happened to you.”

“Oh, is that sew? Thanks for updatin’ me on the stitch-uation!” Sunny flew up very close to Desley. So close, you’d expect the boy to flinch--but he remained completely unfazed. “Though, I don’t think I know ya. Who are you?”

“My name is Desley...and it’s true, you were gone long before I was even born...I guess you could say I’m a bit of an intermediary...between the Wayside and the Trueside.”

“Hey, Desley? This is great and all, but...why did you get us involved? A-and I thought...if aoandon were really real, wouldn’t they be a lot scarier? I mean, there has to be a reason why people don’t finish their games of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai! But look at Sunny! He’s positively adorable!” Sherise thrust her hand out, gesturing at Sunny.

“Aww, why thank ya!” Sunny chirped, blushing. “Buuuut, just the same as how not all humans are alike, not all monsters are alike, don’chino? Sure, there’s monsters and stuff who’re a real thread, but I’d like ta think a lot of us are lovely individuals.”

“In fact...it might be good for you to know that most of the figures in the myths and legends you find so illogical, Sherise...” Desley pushed up on his mask. “...are just trying to live their lives the same as humans are.

“But, they are quite often misunderstood...so most of them are invisible to humans as a means of defense...the only way to see them...is by forming a blood bond with a Reversal Shard...”

“Reversal Shard...like the ones you gave us?” Yenten asked. He’d already forgotten about the gemstones Desley had given them. He moved his fingers slightly to feel the Reversal Shard still in his hand.

“That’s right...” Desley leaned to the side and tapped his fingers. “As for why I got you involved...to tell you the truth...you just happened to be in the right place at the right time...I was already on my way to this mansion when I overheard your conversation. The thing is...aoandon are often spirited away from their homes in the Trueside when humans play Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai...but since they have a propensity to give up before telling the last story, the aoandon end up stuck between this world and the next...like Sunny here.”

“I see...but we put out the last candle, so he’s free now. So, job well done?” Sherise clapped her hands together. “Also...I guess we can just see ghosts now...?”

“Yup. Now then...it’s probably time I take Sunny home.” Desley gestured to Sunny to follow and he slowly began to walk off. However, he ended up turning around. “Although...since you two have formed blood bonds...and have Reversal Shards...you could help me escort Sunny home...and see the Trueside...what do you say?”

“Hmm...what do you think, Sherrie?” Yenten looked at his friend expectantly. She hummed and began to think, but was immediately interrupted by Sunny getting up in her face.

“Hey! Not ta influence yer decision, but I wooled really appreciate knit if ya came with us! Knit’s not often I make new friends...!” The ao-momen looked at her with pleading eyes, clasping his hands together. “Pleeeeease! Tonight’s also Halloween, wool all have a party! Knit’ll be a scrim!”

Sherise simply stared at the specter. Those big, sad eyes of his were absolutely adorable, but also, the cloth puns were getting a little out of hand. Part of her wanted to go solely to see how much longer Sunny could keep it up. She sighed and closed her eyes.

“There was a party I wanted to go to tonight...” Upon hearing that, Sunny’s expression fell. “But...I honestly think I’d have more fun seeing real monsters for once!”

“Yeeeeessss!” Sunny cheered. He flew about the room, zipping here and there with pure joy. He stopped in front of Sherise, positively beaming. “Then knit’s settled! We’re gonna have a party, all night long! With new friends! C’mon! I’ll race ya there!”

Sunny took off like a rocket out of the room, up the stairs, and outside of the mansion. Meanwhile, Gess had shown up with her posse, consisting of Emrit and Meryl.

“Hey, Gess...do you really think Sherise and Yenten went inside?” Meryl asked, looking exasperated. “It feels like we’ve been here forever, and I still don’t see them!”

“Oh, you know Sherise. She probably bit off more than she could chew, again,” Gess waved her hand dismissively. “Any second now, they’ll come out all wide-eyed because they saw a spider or something.”

Right at that second, Sunny came barreling out of the front door. However, since he was mostly invisible to Gess and the others, all that they could see was a ghostly blue flame charging out towards them.

“Wh-what is that?!” Emrit screamed. He jolted up from his spot and staggered backwards, nearly tripping and crashing back down to the ground.

“That’s it, I’m outta here!” Meryl squealed. Both she and Emrit dashed down out of the yard and into the street, leaving Gess all by herself.

“H-hey wait! Get back here, you cowards!” As the trio ran off screaming, Sherise and her friends just made it out the door.

“...was that Gess?” she asked.

“Looks like Sunny gave them a run for their money,” Yenten chuckled. Sherise grinned broadly and let out a triumphant laugh.

“Thanks, Sunny! Now I don’t gotta do my homework for a week!”

“Ehhh? What’s ‘homework’?” the ao-momen asked, flying over his new friends’ heads excitedly. “Aren’t we gonna party?”

“Yeah! Let’s get this show on the road!” Sherise cried out, pumping her fist in the air.

And so, Sherise and Yenten made their way to the Trueside. Of course, this was only the first adventure of many to come...

[not-a-statement]

Chasing ghosts. Chapter 2

So for some reason I can’t edit my masterlist for this story. On of us - me or tumblr - is definitely a clumsy fool. 

Anyway, it’s been a long time but here I post again. This chapter introduces original characters and focuses on them exclusively.

Critics and opinions are always appreciated.

Baton Rouge,LA, January 23, 2035

The general office of the State Police Department was filled with sounds and people typical for Monday morning. Investigators, detectives, even a couple of court clerks were moving slowly between the work tables. Phones ringing, Maggie's coffee machine softly grumbling, detective Nate Parker rants about his little rendez vous with a couple of girls past weekend, which caused an occasional bursts of laughter from a small group of listeners. Someone’s complaining about son, who’s got yet another detention at school. That scallywag was caught smoking in the school closet during lunch break. “I mean, come on! What’s the school’s backyard is for? What’s wrong with these children?”

All this leaving no chances at all for detective Robert Brooks to focus on completing the report. Frankly, if there was anything consistent to write then probably no excuses could take place. The missing was found the week prior in the Pine Prairie area - one of the tourists called the police and said that near the shore of Lake Millers lied a body of a dead girl dressed in a white light dress. By the time detectives and the team of medical experts arrived, a decent crowd of onlookers gathered around the corpse, hence searching for traces at the crime scene wouldn’t be for big avail.

What else?

There’s no doubt that the victim was killed - even though the lungs were full of liquid and the fact that clothes and skin of the deceased were pretty much hinting that she’s spent plenty of time in the water, a rope trace was found on her neck. So, the drowning was staged.

By whom?

Well, here’s where interesting questions start.

No wonder why the crime scene was so crowded - case after case were quaking the whole country. People kept disappearing in a daylight - single men and women of different ages, usually without family and friends - those who wouldn’t be immediately claimed missing. Generally the search would last for about a week or two only to let detectives stand before such corpses (and it could’ve been worse, if one believed Nate the Chatter Box) or find victims alive but absolutely insane. Wearing rags, disoriented, and with no memory at all, no one even remembered their names.

People were frightened. And no one had even a small clue, even a hint, about this maniac’s whereabouts or appearance. His work was flawless - every time a new case appeared in press, this bastard’s already in another state. Probably.

At least everything looked like that  - no one had accurate information. And, which was a very bad thing to say, such cases were a nightmare for any detective - perfect addition to the record. There were adventurers, of course, who wanted to catch their own Zodiac, but most people were genuinely concerned about their careers.

And so it happened that careerist Brooks was not only brought to a partner of the adventurer Tam Bennett, and more so, he was appointed to investigate such a case.

Robert sighed, once again glancing over the printed report page on the computer screen.

Elizabeth Arthrisha Marlowe, born in 2019, blah blah blah ... Numerous abrasions on the arms in the forearm, blah blah ... The time of death was determined between 9 pm and midnight on January 17 of this year ... and more rubbish. Seriously, what else to write?

When he and Tam just started the investigation about two weeks prior Robert was saving hope that that time would be a fluke. Children and adolescents haven’t figured in such cases so far, and a sixteen-year-old girl could go to carouse with friends, or with some guy - anything. But the fact was bulletproof  - the corpse of Lake Millers was identified, parents were heartbroken, Captain Hernandez was constantly inspecting for progress on the case, and Bennett was obsessed with all sorts of theories. Or women.

Where is, by the way, that boy this time? Monday, ten in the morning! Wasn’t it Tam who kept calling me all Sunday while I tried to spend the day off with family, and reminded of all the chores to do on Monday? That’s not even funny.

Okay...This won’t work. Perhaps the morning coffee-tobacco ritual will help clear the thoughts? Yes, sounds good. A cup of Colombian black with cream, a spoon of cane Mexican sugar and a pinch of cinnamon in a compartment with a cigarette and fresh morning air. The first good idea for today, Brooks.

Robert got up from his desk stretched and headed for the dispatcher's counter. After receiving his equivalent of the Holy Grail from  Maggie, he passed the doors leading to the office, a corridor filled with civilians who were brought here or who came by their own will, then the hall and finally went into the parking lot in front of the department building. The weather was pleasing, here and there, however, small flocks of clouds were gathering, but the sun was shining warmly. The city, long awakened, performed a symphony of the weekday - passing pickup trucks and small cars, ordinary townspeople and important birds like lawyers and real estate agents scurrying around here and there. You could even hear a heavy truck driving in the distance.

Someday all this will be rewarded, Brooks thought, releasing cigarette smoke and slowly sipping from a mug with the inscription "Best Daddy in the World". Another five years, and I’ll be in higher position, and five more - and here comes the retirement. A small house in California somewhere in Palo Alto, a neat little garden for my Mary and a home winery for both of us. Our Aaron and Lucy would come over for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter ... imagine - a festive table with the family and you are sitting at the head of the table. What else can you dream about? Life will be like this cup of coffee - warm, reliable and with a very long aftertaste, if sipping small ...

“Aaaaaah!!!!”

Mother of…!!!

Brooks threw up his hands in surprise, spilling half the contents of the mug on the sidewalk. Thank God not on a work shirt.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack at thirty-seven?" he yelled into Bennett's laughing face, sticking out of the silver Volkswagen’s window. Tam's hand was still on the honk.

"Seriously," he panted through his laughter, "you would see your face, Bob! Standing there, caught up in a daydream, and then this - Aaaaah!”

He mocked Robert’s grimace of horror.

That laughing blond face was so tempting to throw the rest of coffee at it! First he’s late for work, and now he decided to mock me!

All right, calm down, Robert, calm down. It would be disrespectful on your part to respond to the pranks of this toddler overgrown.

"Not funny, Tam," he said, trying to sound dignified, "what took you so long, by the way?"

“Oh, oh, oh! " Tam started fidgeting in the seat, shaking his arms around him.

"Wait ... where was it ..."

He began to search for something, bending in all imaginable and unthinkable directions. The front passenger seat, glove compartment, pockets on the doors, even under his feet. As Tam reached there, his head fell on the steering wheel with a swing, causing one more honk.

"Just find a spot and park already" Brooks said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers, pain in his voice. Seriously, not a partner, but a complete disappointment.

After Bennett parked his car in the far corner of the parking lot, and Brooks reached the porch of the building, finishing his coffee (great, the sugar at the bottom did not dissolve completely, and now the last sips are too sweet, splendid), they exchanged a handshake and went inside.

"I'm still waiting for the answer, young man" Robert said as strictly as he could as they crossed the hall.

"First, I'm not your son," replied Tam, smiling. "And second, I decided that I’d make you a surprise."

"What surprise for God’s sake? What are you up to again?”

"Don’t worry, Bobby, you'll like it! Very much!”

"Can you at least pretend sometimes that you're a professional?”  Robert didn’t like all those glances from people around, attracted by Tam's enthusiastic exclamations.

"Nah, I'm gorgeous just as I am" Bennett shrugged as they approached the door leading to the general office.

"Take the keys and wait for me at your car. Mine is... umm ... not in the purest condition today. I need to go to Sam, I'll be back in a moment”.

“Oh for love of...”

"Maggie! My doll!” - Bennett exclaimed, pressing his lips to the hand of the dispatcher, who immediately blushed and playfully giggled. The white blouse, she was wearing, obviously lacked buttons in certain places, which caused a lot of discomfort to Brooks. Bennett, apparently, didn’t mind this kind of view.

"How was the weekend, my sugar? Had many men kneeled?”

"I think you'd know better, detective," Maggie purred innocently  "or am I wrong?"

Really? In front of the whole office, these two would exchange so unconcealed expressions of passion and lust? Where’s the ethics committee when you need one?

"I'd love to know more ... dig a little deeper if you let me put it this way ..."

Wow! Okay, not listening to this! Gross and obnoxious!

"All in good time, detective. But next time you shouldn’t forget your promises about ... special equipment.”

The phone rang at the dispatcher's desk, putting an end to this vulgar scene much to Robert's relief. While Maggie, still crimson and still with a half-detached blouse, were answering the call, Tam winked at his partner and pronounced "handcuffs" with his lips, pointing his finger in the direction of that spicy’s lover. Just like a student at a dorm party.

"Don’t forget the keys!" he added, quickly moving away from the counter in the direction of Captain Hernandez office “I'll be in a sec!”

Brooks stayed where he stood, setting the mug on the counter. 

Here we go. Got nothing else to do but to stand here and wonder what this scoundrel has in mind. Every time. Every goddamn time. Easy to wound up with a half-turn, and everybody better run away within a radius of a couple of miles around. Cars soar into the air, tiles fly from the houses’ roofs, women in  panic, children crying. A real hurricane. Safe for the name - Tam, not Andrew.

"It's not even the first month that he works here. Sam lectures him constantly, I give instructions, and look at him. Always jumping ahead, as if his head’s made of stone and will demolish any wall”  Robert thought out loud “what's even going on in his brain? ..”

"Dunno much about the head, Bob," Maggie said in a caramel voice reappearing at the counter, dreamily slapping her eyelashes, "but trust me, what's going on in his pants ..."

"You know what, I already regret saying it out loud!" Jesus Christ, would this vulgarity scene come to an end already?!

Brooks got to his desk and sat down in the armchair. The plan for today, which could hardly be called consistent as it was, began to become completely insane. First the report, which he had nothing to write in, then spilled coffee, all sorts of bedtime insinuations - yes, Robert knew what sex was and where the children came from, he himself was a father, but that's too much - and now it's time to arm with a trowel and a little plastic bag to walk this boy. We ought to find a leash. Maggie probably would have one ...

No, no, that's a bad joke. Very bad.

Okay, probably the report can be a time killer, while Tam’s chatting with the captain. It’s not like time killers are always pleasing but what you gonna do, right?

At least there were some people who’d probably be happy with whatever Brooks wrote for a report of an adolescent girl’s horrifying murder. Newspaper editors.

It looked like they’re making it a competition to draw more attention to their source of information compared to competitors. "The Oregon maniac visits Louisiana." "Yet another reason to use the door chain." "Mysterious kids killer at large".

Blah blah blah. Scribblers.

Of course the case is serious and everybody mourns for the girl and prays for her parents to smother their misery, but is it really necessary to play with people's hearts like that? Add in the photo plastered on the front page - a police tape in the foreground and a bunch of people crowding behind it. Fresh stuff, just from the crime scene.

On Friday evening, when Brooks was about to leave home, anticipating a delicious chicken breast with Parmesan and eggplant for dinner, he found Nate and Tam in the interrogation room, staring intently at that exact photo from the newspaper. Enthusiasts. They say that the criminal always returns to the crime scene. So both decided to play bloodhounds. Also Robert could smell some booze in the room too, so...

On the other hand, if one took a sober look at things, then there wasn’t anything consistent either. No traces, no clues, even the smallest. Absolute zero. Robert had already suggested Hernandez to hand over the case to the special squad to take that burden of a case off his shoulders, but every time that question popped up Sam would just grin and pat Brooks on the shoulder.

"Bob, what are talking about? You have such an experience, such record! And what a chance to be a mentor to the young one!"

Sounds easier than it is...

“Surprise!” a folder fell sharply on the table in front of Brooks.

Oh my God…

“Cheer up, partner!" Tam said, plopping down in the armchair opposite to Brooks. "We have a case!"

"Um, I know," Robert raised an eyebrow, "and you always find an excuse to slick away"

"No, you don’t understand, Bobby." Bennett majestically placed his palm on the folder, touching it with his fingertips, and slowly moved it towards Brooks. "We have a case."

Robert, still looking suspiciously at the youngster, took the folder and opened it, going into reading. Photo, name, surname, lots and lots of text. With every line he read, the hope to at least somehow bring the present day to an acceptable level, was slipping away. It seemed that having a leash wasn’t a joking idea, but a very real necessity.

Brooks gave his partner a glance full of fatigue and disappointment.

“Well, am I good at making surprises or am I the best?” Bennett's brows creased conspiratorially.

"Please tell me this is a joke ..."

“Why?”

“Tam, I’m begging you.”

"What's wrong, Bob?"

Brooks heaved a deep sigh and began to read aloud.

“Mabel Jessica Pines, born in 1999, Piedmont, California. According to her landlords arrived on January 18 of this year from the city of New York. According to Smiths couple - owners of the apartment at 881 West Roosevelt Street Miss Pines rented - she came across as a modest, quiet woman, not particularly talkative and constantly thoughtful. Her interests were the surroundings, especially the University of Louisiana and Manchac swamps. Mr and Mrs. Smith also noted that she preferred not to answer questions about family and relatives. Only said that she was married, but got divorced a few years ago. Wasn’t seen participating in any phone calls. On the 20th of January she left the rented apartment and never came back. Was dressed in a gray coat and a long skirt, carrying a medium-sized travel bag and a mobile phone, which she stopped responding around 7 pm. Left a laptop and a notebook in the apartment”.

Brooks put down the folder and brought his hands to the bridge of his nose, resting his elbows on the countertop.

"Great, isn’t it?" exclaimed Tam. “Full set - you’ve got clues and description! All we need to do is restore her route, trace each her step, find her perso... What?”

Brooks, still holding his hands on the bridge of his nose, pointed to his partner with his finger, as if asking him to plug his fountain of enthusiasm.

"What's bothering, Bobby?"

Calm down, Robert, calm down. You are reasonable, smart man. You’ve had many of such conversations with your young son Aaron. It's the same, no differences.

"Bob, you're straining me."

Easy, easy. I'm straining him, you see. Well, well, let it be, a little bit of tension didn’t kill anyone so far. I'm still alive.

"Listen, you're breathing as if you've gone too far with pepper in the soup, Bobby.”

All right, that's enough.

Robert slowly raised his head, holding his hands together at the tip of his nose. He was breathing really deep and quite noisy.

"First," he began softly, clearing his throat, "call me Bobby one more time and you'll be riding in the back seat. And second, we have no new case. Foot down”.

Tam whistled.

“Hmm, mate, you're …”

"Let me ask you something" interrupted Robert, "when you accepted this case, which part of your organism was functioning as a thinking part?"

“What does it have to do with it? It's such an opportunity!”

“What opportunity? Tell me" Brooks asked, still keeping his coolness.

Tam looked at him with an expression of complete perplexity a second or two, then leaned forward and began:

“Listen. What’s the main problem we had with the Marlowe’s case?”

“The case itself.”

“I'm serious.”

“You don’t say! You know how to be serious?”

"Look, this isn’t funny” Tam frowned. "Our main problem was time which we’re lacking of. What did we initially know about the Marlowe girl? Almost nothing, neither where most likely she could go, nor her full circle of acquaintances. So no one expected that her loss could be just such a case.”

“What case?”

"Such a case" Bennett pointed to the folder, "clear as day."

Brooks raised his eyebrows.

"Give me at least a hint because I don’t really understand ..."

“There’s nothing to understand here. A lonely woman, from another city. Comes to nowhere and almost immediately disappears!” Bennett could barely restrain himself from being excited. "This is our Oregon maniac, I'm telling you."

Well, here you go.

When it comes to do paperwork, he has plan for the evening. And when it comes to burden me with additional stress, so he's first in line. It’s already becoming unbearable. How do I explain him?

"Ok, Tam," Robert said, restrainedly. "Here’s what we’ll do. You’ll take this muck to where you took it, wash your hands with soap and then we'll go to your piano tutor.”

Bennett made an uncomprehending face.

“Seriously. We are not taking this case and that’s final. We've had enough trouble with that Marlowe girl" Tam started to protest, but Brooks stopped him, lifting both his hands “No, I'm saying that’s enough. Get yourself a notebook, call it "My hasty conclusions that have nothing to do with reality" and write down all your speculation there.”

Robert got up from the table and began to pull on his jacket.

“Now you and I will get in the car, go for a coffee and do some work.”

With these words, Brooks took his car keys from the table, checked once more whether the token that hung on his belt of trousers was there and was ready to the exit the office when Bennett found something to say:

"So you'll go to Sam yourself?"

“For what?” Brooks froze half a turn, looking back at his partner.

Bennett just shrugged.

“Well, to tell him personally that you refuse to take the case, which he himself commissioned, for example?”

Sam did what?

“Come again.”

"The captain of the state police department assigns us a case, and you stand against the decision of your superiors." Bennett smiled ingenuously.  “Pretty brave of you, I must say.”

Oh no. No no no.

So it’s not Tam? Can this day get any worse?

Brooks sighed noisily and lowered his head, staring at his polished black boots. How many thresholds were overstepped by these guys, how many pursuits for criminals and capture operations they saw. How many times did Brooks polish them to shine, to look neat, while receiving a new title or listening a praise for a successfully disclosed case. How long have they gone and for what? In order to soon go to the dump together with the Robert’s career.

The vision of the house in California again appeared before him and immediately melted in a light haze. Nothing of the sort will happen if the captain continues to charge Robert with such hopeless cases and companions.

“So what?” Tam behind Brooks pointedly looked at his watch. “What did you say about coffee? Can we grab a cup for Sam? Well, you know, as a sign of respect and …”

"Come on ..." Robert muttered softly.

“Sorry, what?”

Brooks raised his eyes to the ceiling and repeated a little more distinctly:

“Come. On”

Bennett, grinning in a broad smile, instantly jumped from his seat, grabbed a folder from the table and flew past a still motionless partner, slapping him along the shoulder.

“That’s more like it!” he proclaimed joyfully. “New case, baby!”

Would you just shut up already an unfortunate thought flew through Robert's head as he sadly followed Tam out of the office.

***

“And she had very kind eyes. Hazel” Brooks looked into his notebook. Yes, this phrase has sounded for the third or fourth time for those half an hour from the time that detectives arrived to the landlords of the missing.

“Kind, but very sad eyes …”

"Yes, Mrs. Smith, I think I wrote it down," Robert said, holding out his hand to his cup of tea on the coffee table in front of him. Mr. Smith tumbled in the room noisily puffing, holding an ashtray in one hand while the second was already groping for his pocket.

“Anna really liked the girl” Mr. Smith perched in a chair next to his wife. The ashtray was placed on a table next to the cup of Brooks, and in the pocket finally found the coveted pack of cigarettes. A mischievous smile played on Mr. Smith's lips.

"Henry, for heaven's sake!" His wife threw up her hands. "How many times have I asked you not to smoke in the house! You know, my back does not welcome airing so often.”

"You can bear it once a week honey" Henry brought his lit-up match to a cigarette with trembling fingers then inhaled and immediately fell into a ruthless throaty cough.

Anna Smith shook her head worriedly, looking at her husband, and turned to the detective:

"I told him that forty years of smoking would make some consequences. Imagine - he wasn’t listening to me until he laid down on the surgery table! Who knew that you can get a tumor like that, right?”

"Benign," Henry finally cleared his throat, "it was benign, my dear. And the main thing I’m still in one piece. Head, hands, legs” he winked at the detective and folded his old mouth into a grin like a little mischievous schoolboy.

“And what’s betw…”

"When you, ahem ..." Robert hastily intervened to stop the phrase, which beginning wasn’t biding anything good "when you applied, you mentioned that Mabel reluctantly talked about herself. I believe that you’ve learned at least something about her?”

"Yes detective but very, very little." Mrs. Smith clasped her fingers and put them to her forehead, concentrating on something.

"She said she came from New York," her husband said, releasing a cloud of blue smoke, "god knows what called her to our backwoods ..."

"Oh shush, Henry." Mrs. Smith shook her finger in vexation. "I'm sure detective knows already where the girl came from."

“Can I clarify the question?” Brooks put the notebook aside on the table. “The bartender from the diner near the bus station mentioned that in a conversation with him Mabel said that she came in search for someone. Didn’t she tell you the same thing? Maybe mentioned who it was?”

"Ah, poor thing! Did she have to eat breakfast there?” Mrs. Smith shook her head in frustration. "If she came at once, I would feed her with a decent breakfast. What kind of muck could she be offered there?”

"They used to have good burgers," Henry shook the ashes, "at least five years ago, when I last had them ..."

“Nonsense! Burger for breakfast?”

“Ahem. Mrs. Smith …”

"Yes, sorry" Anna turned her attention to Brooks. "No, she didn’t say anything like that to us. She was married, that's all I know about her life. But her husband didn’t interest her very much, as far as I can tell. I did not see a ring as a lock, so he’s probably still alive. Maybe he was quite a scoundrel”

"And what’s her husband's name?"

Anna just shook her head.

"Forgive me, detective, but I never heard it from her."

From above came the sound of the door being opened, followed by hasty steps down the stairs. Found something a thought rushed through Robert's head. A moment later, Tam appeared in the room. His face was ... disappointed?

"Mrs. Smith, you wrote in a application that Mabel had a laptop and a notebook."

"That's right, young man, she left them in her room."

Brooks stared at his partner's face, puzzled. Tam only shook his head briefly.

"Is something wrong, gentlemen?"

"Have you left your house in the last couple of days?"

"Just to do shopping yesterday afternoon ... what happened?"

Brooks rose abruptly, and they both hastily rushed to the stairs to the second floor. Mabel's room was nothing particularly noteworthy - a bed, a desk, a window and four walls. Things were lying neatly, the bed was made. It seemed that the guest had left a minute ago.

“Checked the window sill?”

“Yes, it’s dusty as if no one touched it for several years”

“A lock on the door?”

“Just a latch, any fool would open without a trace ..”.

Brooks slowly walked to the table, on which was a layer of dust accumulated over the past few days. All the items seemed to be in their places, but two square spots were barely noticeable near the edge, in which dust seemed to sink.The distance between the spots was about 9 inches, as between the pads of a small laptop.

"I think we're done here" Robert muttered.

***

"So someone broke into the house at night, or when the hosts were not there," Robert and Tam were driving away from the Smiths' house toward the police department, "I think we both understand that it was our client."

“Here you go, drawing conclusions again!” Brooks briefly honked the driver who was still standing on the green traffic light signal.

"Maybe it's our client, or maybe just a burglar."

“Burglar who took only a laptop?”

"Did you have time to inspect the rest of the house? Found anything valuable?”

“No, but …”

“Exactly. Maybe he was in a hurry”

“Come on, you're just looking for an excuse not to solve for 2 and 2”

“I'm looking for an excuse to conduct an investigation of a case imposed on me correctly”

"Come on, Bobby, this is an adventure! Now we write a request to New York, find her family ... hey, need to have a leak?”

Robert pulled over and stopped abruptly. After that, he turned his head staring at his partner intensely.

“What?”

Brooks slowly moved his head toward the back seat.

"What’s that?" Bennett looked back “I can’t see anyth…”

Coming to a realization he slowly turned and gave his partner an incredulous look.

"Are you kidding me?"

Robert shook his head sarcastically.

"You're not serious."

"Very serious, Tam." Brooks looked at his watch briefly. "Hurry up, we're running late."

Rolling his eyes Bennett leaned back in his seat looking up above while groping for the handle. Twenty seconds later, when he got into the back seat and slammed the door behind him, Robert said with satisfaction:

"You have to bear responsibility for your words and deeds, dear Tam. Welcome to the world of adults”

He heard a loud raspberry being blown from behind and noticed in the rearview mirror that Bennett was now staring out of the window with his arms folded.

“Who I'm talking to though…”  Robert tiredly complained without addressing anyone “Seriously, my eight-year-old son behaves more adequately”

He accelerated and detectives continued their way to the department building.

[technicalschoolsnearme365]

On Being Ill in a Room of One's Own

On Being Ill in a Room of One's Own Marakana and Lonmin are all over the news.

When I was six feet under Johannesburg I felt as if I was moving through the world and the world was a dream. I could explore the surface valiantly but my thoughts were no longer precise. I was cut off from people even though thought traffic and crowds surrounded me. In the city I found a barren wilderness, fierce people, breathed it all in, and compared myself to others. It filled me with the bitter seeds of sorrow and I felt like a skinny bird again, a child in time considering all the spiritual in nature. It is cold and I hope that soon this cold will go underground. I loved appliances houston the smoke. I loved the raw, electric smell of pollution in the air, the rubbish in the streets, the wretched poor. One way for survival in the city is to grow old (you will grow old quickly and weary, tired and hurt from what you experience). Wisdom will fill you from your head down to your toes as you observe everything around you; the weight of life and suddenly what seems familiar will no longer feel familiar to you in the way it once did. For survival lots of things will have to happen to you. You will have to lose that pure innocence about you. You will not age gracefully. You will forget and there are sometimes things that you won't forget.

For some people another car dealerships in houston person's misery is their ministry, and they believe that that is their journey and mission that they have been called up to act upon for the rest of their lives. Family should be close and a brother and sister closer. From there I always wondered where the dead go when they die. Is it enough to remember them in passing, lay flowers on their grave, or to let go of the thread of how simple life is when compared to the complex nature of physics, biology and mathematics.

The cemetery is paved with the flame of memory. I was always the girl, the woman who stood alone in the rain with a bunch of flowers in her hands. I can say this now. I am no longer opposed to it. In fact it makes me feel emancipated. I've turned the pressure washer dryer clearance on its head and called it something else, vitality. All my life I have felt connected to nature, the fog, and fields, the farms that belonged to my family. There were always faces of aunts and uncles at funerals that disoriented me because I could not place them. And I would say like a mantra as I stood at a grave or while I attended a wedding, 'To all the ghosts dead or living from my past in the spirit of writing this I best shapewear let go of you all.'

As a child my brother retreated into sports and it was a luxurious time for him, being an Maternity Shapewear athlete with his limbs taking on a life of their own. But for me that period in time glittered with falsehoods, formidable isolation and neglect. Writing had not become my religion yet.

Sometimes I could touch the silence that I held inside of my heart. It didn't have an ego (this shell made of glass) and it didn't tell me to go to hell. It didn't damn the precocious child in me.

It was from him that I learnt how not to compare myself to other people and to question whether or not it (raising comparisons) was an experimental construct from youth or the life and death of miracles taking place in front of me. Or was it the natural coexistence of human nature next to an animal one? There is something poetic, something about the futility, the loneliness of the latitudes and longitudes of shore life. I longed so much for it that I began to write about the ocean that I had come to know as a child. I would spend a day on the beach with the warmth of the sun sucked inside of myself. Port Elizabeth is not Athol Fugard's Port Elizabeth anymore. It's become a moral dilemma. The youth have their own song, ambiguity, and their own fired up intensity about politics and the police. We are still digging for bodies that went missing years ago during apartheid. We are still digging for bodies that went missing last week. Life and death and always the heartache of it and the genuine moving sensation of pain that comes with suffering has become as natural as breath. In my shadow stood lone Brother Wolf and in my head I found the source of therapy in his song. When he sang the blues (of course he was just playing his radio in his bedroom but that was just his subconscious talking, driven to face reality, the truth, all the letters in l-o-v-e, all the words, the sticky fingers of 'I love you') it reminded me of the ocean. How tranquil it was just to stand there in front of all its majesty, to observe the color of it, how it just seemed to go on and on and flow into infinity. It was magical and transparent all at the same time. The people seemed to be all patchwork and one-dimensional. When I took off my glasses they didn't seem to be defined anymore by their limbs. They just seemed smudged and blurry effigies. Children bent on building castles, standing precariously in and around rock pools while fishing in them. I haven't had an organic idea for a long time and by that I mean a fresh and new idea that had a sensibility of place and size. Everything happens in the city. People happen upon each other there. I did not see how I could love like our mama had loved us with her maternal instincts. Her love would come as a feast served up on plates instead of a therapist. Mama was formidable, a thinker and a doer. Her flesh felt like a hook, line and sinker, something brutal, otherworldly. I became a bird without wings, without a cage, without vital seed. In the light of the day was Mama's garden and the extraordinary work she put into it. Mama liked to kill every thought of the hard work that I put into anything, every collective thread that I wanted people to remember me by, my cultural manifesto, and the legacy of my creative gifts. But Brother Wolf taught me that perfection comes with hard work and separation anxiety. He never spoke in so many words. I had to watch and learn from his fixed and focused psychosomatic drive to achieve, to be brave, to see phenomena and vision indiscriminately where others could not. I have come to this beach today to remember, to see, to think, not to wallow even, not to drown as I once did with my head inside the development of a manuscript, divided siblings with their hearts raw, anguish bleeding figuratively into the contact they had with other people. In Port Elizabeth I learned to battle, sometimes weeping about the state of the nation and its upheaval and then came Marakana and Lonmin, the gold and platinum mines, workers striking for more pay. It had to affect me like any poet, writer, teacher or intellectual.

I tried to help. I put the potatoes in the bag as quickly as I possibly could before anyone in the house could see me. It could be a meal. The first and last meal the family could have for the day, the week. Bless them. I hoped they would bless this food to their bodies. So many people came today to the door. Hungry and tired, their feet sore and covered in blisters from walking so far. Where did they all come from I wondered? How did they live? Oh, I always wondered that. What were the dismal circumstances they found themselves in and why couldn't they tear themselves away from poverty and need, want, desire? Why were they treated as if they belonged in a leper colony and not society? I could feel the sun's rays penetrating my fingers as I held them up and studied them meticulously. These were my mother's hands. I could see the bright halo of the sun. I felt warm and bright as if a tidal force of energy was moving through me in a rush. It spun through me as effortless as a wheel, constant and I was buoyed with hope.

Mama knitting, always knitting, and at the end of the storm in this house this is the crucial debate. She is the spectator left to drown in what her son, (my anchor and shield) Brother Wolf does not say. The only proof of all our worldly possessions lies in the material, as the soul hovers between earth and the eternal feeling, the intense call of paradise beckoning, on the threshold of a heavenly home. For all of my life my brother was home to me with his brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin in his clean blue jeans and white shirt. The two of us were a family coming together in a deep soulful exercise, of restoring peace in the home.

The jungle is out there somewhere but there are no monkeys hanging on trees only vast green fields. Everything around Wren was art. Every day felt like summer and when it rained it felt like summer rain. There was even a poetic energy and beauty about the hail when it fell. But it was only a year and when the year was over she went home with her tail between her legs.

Home. The first thing that she knew was wrong was when she could not sleep. She was drained. She felt exhausted, tossing and turning trying to rest, frustrated yet she could not sleep. She would be up all hours of the night. Insomnia made her feel as if she was living in a glass house.

The television was on in the family room. My brother liked having the television on in the afternoon even though nobody was watching it. He was eating a packet of crisps and wiping his salty fingers on his jeans after licking them one by one. Wren stood in the doorway sipping a cup of lukewarm black coffee.

Do you want to see my scars? When and where I've come undone. Nobody wants to see the scars, only how I've been anchored.

Here I come. Just another visit from the drowned girl. She sits at the end of my bed while I read. She wants to give my comic books to orphans and street children but they do not know what the word 'Marvel' means in my life. Sometimes I wish she would leave me alone with her sad, soft eyes. I know when she's been crying and it's usually about something that happened in the past. Melancholia shudders through me. I can feel the ripple pass through my body like a current or an inelegant spasm.

What Africa must learn from wars is you must let the clouds see you. You must let the skin of the tightrope of the blue-sky sink into you. The world is not my home. It is only borrowed temporarily. I remember a burst of radiance and how nature must then have seemed like a green acre on the farms we passed when going to visit my father's family from every mile. And so I come to Vietnam. Some have said that war has a purpose. It pours maturity into a boy's heart. But they forget what will happen to his soul. And so the world moved swiftly towards morality with a knot at the base of my throat. And on the battlefields lies depression. A picture of power and survival where hunger is just a bomb made from chaos and absurdity. I am glad war was not my fight, my purpose. Whoever does it bring meaning and value to?

Iraq was a sky bright with stars. A burning voyage into the land of saboteurs and destruction, an ancient one built on flames. All this talk of war would just reduce Wren to tears.

In a most far off northern city my sister's come undone (women and hysteria).

So what if I come undone again.

This time I've the one who has come undone but nobody really cared.

My grandfather (Joseph William George) a war veteran. Posted off to Kenya at the start of the Second World War and when he came back he was never the same again (no hero's welcome). He w luxury cars houston as given a bicycle and a jacket for the Coloured soldier. I did not live to see any of that (I was not born yet) but my father did and I guess my grandfather carried that humiliation for the rest of his life. Men are changed by war as are the women and children they leave behind. We stopped throwing birthday parties for Wren when she turned twenty. Only my friends came over and we hung out in my room sucking beer out of bottles and left the empties stacked high in the kitchen. I could sense Wren's disapproval. It was acute. She was fragile. She always was. Her nerves on edge, raw, sharp, fierce. Our love was like a sonnet. Our fear and trepidation for a future we would go out into the world on our own a haiku. Life and death is very succinct in a haiku. Most nights we'd stay in, and watch the news and eat spaghetti (proper family stuff). When I was in that almost fatal car accident (that nobody in the family ever spoke about) and I could sense the face of the road's blackness coming out to meet me head on before I could see it, I was not afraid. The car was a complete write-off but I walked away from the crash with minor injuries, scratches. The car had wrapped itself around a tree. It is madness to drink before you get into a car but I did it all the time way back then. Not because I thought it was cool but because I could get away with it. Wren if she had her way would want me to be a Buddhist monk. And if her world were perfect she would brave the New World around her as a nun. She would remain in a pure state, the one she had carried with her from childhood. Wren would be charged with innocence. She wasn't always a poet. Houston SEO Expert And she wasn't always very nice to me. Issues, issues, issues, burning ones, diaries and notebooks filled with scribble from top to bottom, pictures she painted, photographs she took revealed her genuine person. And so she became something much more authentic that I could relate to and I could love her again. I did not know about the love affairs she had. She never exposed that side of her. At home she was a killer Monopoly and Scrabble player. Maybe that's all we knew of each other, that we were killers when it came to playing board games and little else. I know nothing of the much older men she fell in love with. How lost she felt sometimes, that she created boxes in her mind's eye where she put their lone shadows at rest, her suffering in silence, storing tiny details about their beauty and strength that she accumulated across weeks and months of going from one relationship to the next. The sister I know helped me cook the Christmas lunch with velocity and there were plenty of smiles when the chicken came out perfectly. The roast potatoes, the pan glistening with fat and runny juices it was not just something for the two of us to do, to pass the time like any other family would on a special holiday, we spoke but not in so many words. She would watch me carefully with her eyes catching every move I made but that she was sometimes slow to react to. I think most of all she wanted to be seen as serene and graceful, a lady who had sky-high standards but sometimes she failed at that. We all became really good at composing ourselves and to project what the outside world wanted to see of us, which was a modern family. A family of productive thinkers, doers, intellectuals, connected to the SEO Company Toronto culture of creativity and linked to charm, and charisma. Every year our holidays would turn into pilgrimages and those times were when the core, the heart of our family system was the strongest. When things changed for the worse, for the better, it happened like a swinging pendulum. Wren was at the centre of it, always at the centre of it. And there was nothing that anybody could do about it. If I do not write home about its adversity from my unique perspective then who will, that sweet, poetic stagnation of bipolar. Wren and illness, her illness, all the sorrowful angles staring up at the face of the sun but could she even feel it, that sensation of electrifying warmth on cool skin when you've just come outdoors to feed the dogs or throw a ball around. The word 'suicide' was strictly outlawed in our home.

I was always mor what career is right for me e at home at the end of the sky, the outdoors and by outdoors I mean stepping out into our mother's garden that smelled like jasmine and lavender and incense burning. It was years before we found out that not everyone lived, looked, thought the way we did. And by 'the end of the sky' I mean the world of her imagination. I think my sister Wren has always wanted to touch people's lives in a meaningful way and that even though our childhood was brutal in some ways we had to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind if we ever got lost on the trail in that dark forest at night.

Now I am a changed person, a changed woman. No longer a stranger or estranged from readying herself to take up her place in the world. There it was. What more could be said about the end of the damned affair. Love me. Choose me. But I did not speak those words, nor could I find it in my heart to bring myself to say them. I had enough of being left behind, being told what to do, think and feel. I was tired  early childhood development of being engaged in that useless interaction.

Our clothes had grass stains on it. The sun shone in our eyes while we blinked madly (maybe they were tears). There we were. Wolf and Wren playing together, laughing, talking, watching, observing the other 'patients'. What was wrong with them? They seemed to be perfectly all right. Daddy is smiling and he kisses mummy on the lips and we all say, 'Ooh, daddy and mummy is in love.' If mummy is sad she doesn't show it. It is me who is left to wonder at the complexities of grown up behaviour, human nature. It's Wolf who is perfectly normal here. We lay on our backs business analyst certification but there weren't any clouds. We played at making a fire. The rock, paper, scissors game. We had come to visit daddy. On the way to the clinic mummy didn't play the radio. The ride there was quiet. Wolf looked out the window and I sat up front like a grown up next to mummy. I don't want this for my brother's children and I don't want this for my own. Daddy says he is well. He is painting. He even finds time to read. I wish I could run away. I wished I could hold onto my brother's hand forever, that he could never, ever read my mind, and that I could protect him forever. Mummy wants another baby. She said that once. Daddy cannot see us waving. It's so heart-breaking. I don't want to be me. I turn around and look at my mother's profile. It hurts to breathe, to think, to mutter, or even to whisper anything. I do not know yet that grown up I will mostly have views of fertility and family, psychiatry and psychology in the world I live in. My sister will live faraway in another city, work hard in a bank and only come home once a year for Christmas or never.

All I see when I close my eyes is the flowers of night-time.

Their shade is black. Their eyes are black. Their shape is black. They're hideous with their claws clawing at me. They seem to want to drown. It is their livelihood. They've received our freedom and so must we. These have not been my best years so far. They seem all shriveled up as if they have died. I feel dried up inside up. I feel thirsty, let down, I need to feel the sun on my back, I need to learn how to cope, stand on my own and not feel let down by life, love, family, aunts and a sister all the time. I need to see you. How convenient for you that I have simply vanished into thin air. Your little doll, your plaything, your pretty baby doll. I have now some sizing up to do. I am marked for life or is it death. Hey, wait a minute now. There is more to this tale of loss and of love. There is no point in shortcuts babe, hey? (This is taken from a diary entry from that scene in Johannesburg where I caused many scenes).

After you left me (or is it the other  technical schools near me way around) how do I justify misbehaving so badly? I was so savagely torn from what I believed in. I stood by my values.

Your cowardice up, no longer fastened on me, fascinated me. I wish I could say that I could love something. Stick to it.

Your words have always been a chicken soup for my spirit, my harvest, my shield, my river, my border, and the boundaries of the four walls keeping the good parts of my consciousness in. You have taught me to look the world in the eye. Your hands were the hands that were in the fire. And you were the one who pulled me from the wreckage (from the weight of a heavy burden of illness).

Now this city, Port Elizabeth is haunting. I miss Johannesburg. I seemed more at home there (curiously), more at ease, more myself, less exposed to the elements, the human   A+ certification training elements and others. Swaziland is even further away. Now it just a memory. And I can't remember the pent-up desire to leave my childhood home. All this time I've been haunted by the past and while history surrounds us you move forward.

All my life I have imagined m brother lucid, intent on not struggling with your own identity. All my life I have imagined you as a luminous quiet treasure. The good toy soldier with war wounds a-plenty. Your dark hair that smelled of rain when you were a little boy eating fudge ice cream or a tuna fish sandwich with a serious and determined expression on your tiny curious face. And then there was still the architecture of the waterfall, the carnival, the splendid circus of my departed sadness, and that became my inheritance to you.

It came in a box, dry ingredients for the Red Velvet cake all the way from America from a cousin who was staying there now. A cousin who had two boisterous children under the age of five and an American husband, and it also came with a tub of frosting that did not have to be refrigerated. There had been a lot of cakes made, bought, and decorated in that house as well as memories that burned, that would send you to an early grave (I'll never forget the mass graves discovered in Herzegovina-Bosnia that I watched on television when I was in high school). But eating birthday cake you'd soon forget all about that. You'd lick the icing off the spoon, drink tea like a grown up out of teacups decorated with flowers and pink blooms. Kiss and greet family at your birthday tea party like you haven't seen them in years. Life gets heavy if you don't have them around you to protect, to keep you safe from harm. Why would I want to go to Alaska? It's cold for one. To be near something, some place that doesn't remind me of the sun but at the end of the day it isn't the destination that becomes important. It's who you are with the people you're with, the significant and important people you love. This feels like a distant and remote thing for me, love, and the art of loving. And the art of loving one genius in a family is never enough even if it is done from faraway. The ones left in the shadows they too have their roles to play even if it takes their entire lifetimes to realise it. Poetry is such a comfort and if I had a scarcity of it in my life I think there is a part of me that would not feel entirely whole. I would be the half-hearted experiment making an attempt to live an exemplary life like Ingrid Jonker, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton and Norma Jean Baker. Not just names and faces but also icons in their field. Women ahead of the times they were born into and who would lead the next generation. And I would be a poet, that poet with the seasons all a flutter inside her head while butterflies danced, nerves whirling into algorithms until both could not be discriminated. These  would be all my rituals. To eat, to meditate, to feast, to remember ch plus size shapewear ildhood anxieties, what I anticipated around every corner, the fudge my mother used to make, how my grandmother's, the matriarch of the family cheek felt like porcelain, smelt like powder after I kissed her. I knew I had inherited some of that from her, cold, calculating recipes and the baking of bread that would turn into disasters in my hands. She taught me to realise self, selfhood and what would challenge me later in life and if it was going to be illness that I was going to live with it for a very long time my life had to be a wonderfully epic one. I had to make it a legend of flirting with falls, of standing up and of letting go of the world. Instead of wondering why half the time mental illness was so unquiet.

It starts with me first. The angel's tongue, volcano, fireflies, philosophy singeing my dopamine and me asking myself, 'Where are you going to,' and later, much later, 'How on earth did you get here?'

And then I met Julian and the origins of the universe tasted sweeter. Life can be sweet, bittersweet, taste like American fudge, caramel, butterscotch, or liquid vanilla. (He was beautiful). He had dark hair, long dark hair (and I can remember threads of it lying across his back), wearing blue jeans, a denim shirt and him carrying a guitar. For now he is my Saviour because we talk all the time for what seems like hours with the brushstrokes of quality not quantity. Our conversations, our heated debates about the food served in the canteen, even our silences take us both on a Zen-like spiritual expedition. I think we were both at a point in our lives where we wanted answers, elegant solutions as to why this had to happen to us. And then he opens up. Another passage, rite and pilgrimage for me. He decides to talk about his schizophrenia. He is my first friend in this hospital of both fun and hell and I want to protect him from the world around him, the world at large and me (some of me, the internal struggle that has no coherent voice, cohesive exterior). I want to shelter him from society that extracts and distils the intelligence of a child, man or a woman that has mental illness and calls it 'madness'.

I wanted to travel when I was younger but now there seems to be no time for that. I've read Tolstoy and Nabokov and now want to read Pasternak (all Russian writers). I wanted to study in Europe and America but what's the point when you really can't time or pinpoint when you're going to be 'flying off the rails', hallucinate disco beats in Technicolor, when you've imagined that you are not 'you'. 'You' are just wasting away in a room not far away from where people actually live. In a bedroom that your mother made pretty by putting flowers, actually roses now that you used appliances houston come to think of it, in a vase to make the 'sadness' pretty. After all you're still a girl and girls love pink and pretty, dresses and shoes, flowers, anything beautiful. It is your mother that comes to your room in the morning first thing and opens up your curtains. Who will tell you to clean your room when you're thirty something, that she's doing the laundry, 'where are your dirty clothes and I need those sheets too'. It is your mother who will want to lift your spirits, the same way you wanted to lift hers when she listened to the dialogue on the television when you were little. When you were thinking that she was tired and resting on the sofa, with her eyes closed while you watched the curve of her bottom lip and her mouth slightly open while she breathed in and out.

[alanafsmith]

Oxford academic who lost her 18-year-old son while he was under NHS care shares tragic fight for justice

She was represented at son’s inquest by legal dream team she met on Twitter

Baroness Helena Kennedy, a silk at Doughty Street Chambers, is not someone I’ve ever claimed to have anything in common with. But now, having read in her foreword to Justice for Laughing Boy that she “wept when [she] read this powerful book”, I can say that I do.

The story of a young man, Connor Sparrowhawk, found dead while under the care of an NHS trust, this 2018 title is beyond your typical read-by-the-beach weepy. For starters, it’s true. And, particularly poignantly, it’s written by Sparrowhawk’s mother, Sara Ryan, who is an academic at the University of Oxford.

Justice for Laughing Boy is many things. Particularly in the first half of the book, much reads like an extended eulogy to Sparrowhawk — “a strong defender of human rights” whose passion for buses, N-Dubz, The Inbetweeners and mermaids demonstrates his quirky loveableness.

But, sadly, Justice for Laughing Boy is also a public record of Ryan’s herculean battle against the authorities following her son’s autism diagnosis.

Banned from a local primary school and faced with paediatricians’ “relentless focus on deficit”, as Sparrowhawk approached adulthood he became “uncharacteristically unhappy and anxious”, even turning violent on occasion.

Ryan tried desperately to seek effective support for her son, but grew increasingly frustrated at learning-disabled persons’ place “very much near the bottom of, or at the bottom of, the support pile”. She was faced, recurrently, with “mother-blame” as a response to her concerns; calls to crisis lines, GPs and more saw Ryan “almost gnawing on the phone in despair”. She began documenting her struggles on her blog, My Daft Life, where she was met with similar stories from the parents of other learning-disabled children.

Pondering a question posed on my blog this week: 'Why didn't you just take him home?' The blame stain is a persistent one. #JusticeforLB

— Sara (@sarasiobhan) January 21, 2018

In spring 2013, Sparrowhawk was moved to a short-term assessment and treatment unit run by Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, where he would be observed and assessed over a few weeks “to work out why he was so distressed and unpredictable”. While there, Sparrowhawk lunged at a support worker, was pinned face down to the floor by four staff, and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. More than 100 days later, in July 2013, Sparrowhawk suffered an epileptic seizure while taking a bath. He had been born in a bath and had died, aged 18, in a bath, too.

Ryan was staggered by the level of negligence demonstrated by the trust, not least because her son, a diagnosed epileptic, was left unsupervised and locked in a room while bathing. It even came to the fore that a 57-year-old man had previously died in the same bath as Sparrowhawk and in the presence of some of the same staff members — and that a nurse on shift while Sparrowhawk was in the bath had being doing an online shop. “A death by indifference,” Ryan says.

A photo of Helena Kennedy, Sara Ryan, Deborah Coles (INQUEST) and Caoilfhionn Gallagher at the Justice for Laughing Boy book launch, hosted by Doughty Street Chambers. Image credit: Twitter Angela__Patrick

Since Sparrowhawk’s death, Ryan, her family and supporters have spent years fighting their #JusticeForLB campaign, which has won Liberty’s ‘Close to Home’ award. Utilising the law effectively is perhaps one of the most vital components to Ryan and co’s mission. Yet, as Kennedy says in her foreword, Justice for Laughing Boy is a story that “lays bare the deep inequities within our legal system”.

This is perhaps most striking at the inquest into Sparrowhawk’s death. Facing seven separate legal teams on the other side, Ryan rubbishes the then Minister for Justice and Civil Liberties’ claim that inquests “are specifically designed so people without legal knowledge can easily participate” as “utter bollocks”. She continues:

“There were no wigs and gowns… but the context, the setting, the process and the enormity of the whole thing was overwhelming.”

Fortunately, and vitally, Sparrowhawk “had the very best fighting in his corner”, in the form of: Bindmans’ Charlotte Haworth Hird, Brick Court Chambers‘ Paul Bowen QC, Doughty Street’s Caoilfhionn Gallagher (now QC) and her new pupil, Keina Yoshida. (The Sparrowhawk inquest took part in the first two weeks of Yoshida’s pupillage, what an interesting case to start off with.)

Speaking to Legal Cheek, Bowen explains how this legal dream team was assembled:

“I’ve done a number of high-profile cases involving the rights of disabled people and I’d been following Sara’s blog and also on Twitter; it was through Twitter I found out Connor had died.”

Bowen, who has acted for right-to-die campaigners Debbie Purdy and Tony Nicklinson, continues:

“Given my legal background, I felt I’d be able to help so I reached out to Sara on Twitter, and Caoilfhionn did the same. It was Caoilfhionn who put the family onto INQUEST [a charity providing advice on state-related deaths], who then put them onto Bindmans. It wouldn’t have happened without Twitter.”

Ryan couldn’t speak more highly of her legal team, who “led the proceedings from start to finish with expertise and an apparently instinctive grasp of what battles were important to fight and what to leave”. Gallagher and Haworth Hird “demonstrated speed, skill and expertise in digging through tomes of case law to provide additional evidence”, while Ryan commends Bowen’s “polite, missile-like points”.

But, even with a stellar legal team, navigating the two-week jury inquest was far from easy. “From the moment Connor died, it felt like a well-oiled machine, involving the Southern Health in-house and external legal representatives, was cementing a wall of denials,” Ryan reflects. “In our two years of interactions with our legal team… they had always been brutally open about what a mountain climb we were facing in this process.”

Ryan continues to climb that mountain. Justice for Laughing Boy, which is soon to be made into a film, ends:

“I hope this much-needed conversation has started. We all have a responsibility to drag the UK out of a learning disability ‘care’ space that seems to remain aligned closer to the eugenic practices of the last century than a so-called advanced, civilised society.”

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from All About Law https://www.legalcheek.com/2018/02/oxford-academic-who-lost-her-18-year-old-son-while-he-was-under-nhs-care-shares-heartbreaking-fight-for-justice-in-candid-new-novel/