wepry

[wepry]

All I want is to feel safe. But it seems like I'm not allowed such a thing; I'm not deserving of it. I can never be free of the burden of prey, of running like deer in a forest so that I may not be torn open alive and watch my guts spill out for real. This much is intrinsic. I simply deserve to fight to live: there can be no innocence or reprieve for me.

Were other people to create a sanctuary where such things can exist, I would not be welcome. Not me. Not me.

[wepry]

Another somewhat fleshed out short story. CW graphic description of injury, death

Pregnant Woman

She used to watch lines of trees pass by the car window on long trips. It was quiet and her eight year old chin would press against the glass and plastic and find the dullness in the blur, the green speckle of woods dense with places she would never see. The small parking lots of home shops and decaying crushes of withered old barns, something she would always think of as once housing people just like her. She would imagine their brown dresses, their blonde hair flowing in the wind at sundown, and think of them. Think of them.

Now the rain falls slant, tiny shivering drops against the beat of the windshield motors. Her hands pressed to the fake leather steering wheel, her foot at an angle to the car bed just inches above the soaring road. Large pines echo in all directions, their towering branches hanging loose in a patchwork canopy cut into a single canyon for her to pass. The rust that lines the license plate. She presses down harder, feeling the gentle acceleration carry her faster and faster. The tepid anticipation felt as she leans forward and the rainwater slakes past the windows in streaming jets as the road signs approach faster and faster and she slows down. Empty streets. She sighs as she leans over to her purse to pick out uuu and place it over her lips. She savors the taste.

When she arrives she parks on the gravel patch and feels the car come to a halt grinding the specks of rock against the tires. In the grass lining she notices empty beer cans and plastic bags impaled upwards by the plantlife like beached fish. She turns the key lets it sit for a moment as the silent breeze muffled by the car’s windows echoes in her mind. She looks down and caresses her tummy, growing larger each day to her and the squeezing feel of her needing to pee. She tries to burp but can’t. A harrowing silence runs through her as she lifts her shirt, feels the swirl of her breasts and the budding nipples protruding outwards like polyps. She runs her hands down her torso squeezes an inch of fat from beneath her rib cage. A thought passes from her mind as she places her hand on the door handle and moves her arm to open it.

Outside from the warm breathless air of her cair emerges a coldness. Damp, full air not yet biting but long and protracted and bathing her in its vastness. An air that extends miles above her head and across in an immense volume. She looks back into her car and picks out a flashlight and a phone and the cloth bag of food she brought.

She begins walking with her things down along a mud path damp with the thick droplets of water falling from pine needles. Her head swivels to catch the view of layers of clouds awaiting above her head. Her knees feel weak and sore and the nausea takes a second to take hold several minutes into the walk further into the fern and plant matter growing sporadically across the forest bed. The boots she bought at the store in town sink down into the mud, growing like life up the high rubber soles. Her bag rides along swaying back and forth with each step, her stomach growing more restless and her wanting to sit down. UUU. She takes a stop at a rock and uuu.

Early on, her older brother tells her that she is going to die, and that at the end of things there is nothing. All throughout her life was a numbness, caught in the petrified rage of knowing this. In middle school she would watch the rust at the bottoms of seats while riding the bus home day after day after day. She recalls a boy she had a crush on at that time, one with short hair. He was popular with all the other boys, so she never said anything to him.

In college she went to a party. The people there stood around holding cups and she stood with them. They talked and they laughed and she laughed too. A boy would lean against her and kiss the corner of her mouth and she would watch his eyelids flutter closed. And so it went they stood out in the cold, her and the group she was with, her necked wrapped in a scarf she bought from the store.

The moment she steps on the blank it snaps and she falls forward. Lurching, her face grows heavy and she feels her stomach condense as time inexplicably slows. Blood rushes up and down her torso, the inevitability. On the way down a stray beam catches her stomach and it rips a hole in her belly. She twirls to the side collapses in a heap of the damp moss and soil. Her shoulder takes the brunt and one leg catches a bit as it twists backward. The heave compresses her bones and her wound intermingles with the floor. Blood rushes out as air rushes in and a pool of her coalesses at the bottom. A dull ache seems to beat faintly beneath the layers shock, knocking at her shoulder blade which is crushed. Silent, her mouths hangs open wide, her mind somewhere else. Suddenly she feels the urge to vomit and a bilesome slime emerges and oh my god its ooze taste so horrid. She screams out and then vomits some more. She takes a precarious breath and screams for more. The blood keeps pouring, forming a visible wave as it rushes to escape. She twists her body and can see the grayish yellow sacks inside her convulsing beneath the reddish slime. Oh my god. She vomits some more, and tries to lurch herself forward. Her left arm grapples the floorboard, pulling between the moss and she lifts her abdomen up to slide. Her forehead down achingly against the surface. Her knee glides against a ridge and it pops, her bone drifting down to poke about the sack of her skin. The pain is so great, all of a sudden shooting through waves that ignite her body into a panic and a horror she has never known before. Suddenly she feels so alive, more alive than she has ever felt. Never has every part of her screamed in such a screeching everence, that she threatens to explode from its weight. But she does not. The shambles of her body remain, each new agony announcing itself in a collective clamor of pains. Shock. Her moments have lasted only seconds. Maybe fifty seconds since she fell. Oh my god. She tries to grind her self, to use her good arm to lift and drag and lift and drag forward. She moans so deeply, a pain that tethers her soul to the center of the Earth beneath her. She gazes wearily into the patch of grass and tree damp ahead of her. If only she could make it there. She drags herself forward, her mind draining in a firey lightness loosing track of time.

She reaches her good hand across the slight confine of the uuu barrier. The feels the short grass. She grapples the jagged edge and pulls herself forward. Now her stomach is a cacophony of misplacement, ever organ to malaligned and within her, for the first time, she can truly feel the preformed life jostling about. A thick trail of blood drags for several feet behind her, this long eternity march forward to salvation. Her body collapses over sideways onto the ground, now facing upwards. She glances, her eyes straining so deftly, to see the dirt path from which she came. Slightly more dried now than what it was, it winds into the undergrowth. Her eyes begin to darken. Oh. So there is no way. She realizes this. Her head falls back down to the dirt. So there was never a way. Her ear presses into the soil and plantlife. So there was never a way. Suddenly, every moment from her flashes before her, every time of life and she begins to cry. She cries and she cries and she keeps crying. Soon the pain returns and oh my god she cries. Soon she whimpers, her lungs pressing frantically like disassembling machines to belch out these cries, these cries like a child’s one that feels apt to the tears that water the Earth and this deep wound sinking into her womb. She clutches her body fetal, the pain so great as to sing in a sharp destruction. Soon, all thought is displaced. The cry continues long into the abyss of her mind, her eyes closing, her blood still oozing. She feels primal need to vomit once more, but none comes, her bowels an irreparable wasteland. She slowly fades, noticing the loss of life draining every minute that could be a year or a micro second, and the drainage feels so unnatural yet she has no limbs to plug it. A vacuum displacing her very being, her brain slowly lies closer to the floor, its contents becoming matter. Her eyes shrivel while in their sockets. Her body begins to shake and convulse, a last energy spraying the blood that is still flowing. Her neck lurches up to the sky before she falls back down, unconscious.

When she drifted back to life the stars were out. She recognized that this was her second life, her second brief chance at the world. Mauled down there, the wound had a dry crust growing about the edges and in her mind was an ethereal bliss. She tilts her head and gazes upwards. So numerous were the stars there were shadows across the ground. The black silhouettes of branches backdrop the universe like dendrites growing in a dense, beautiful thicket. Distant, swirling galaxies and spheres of unfathomable substances consume her.

Frail historian speaks from a small mind into the rest of the world stories of reality

He sat cross legged on the carpet floor. Around him were white walls. Plaster, sharp edges shaping upwards. About the bubbling surface, blue light flickered into red, awash in gentle color the sound of static. He scrunched his toes together, froth of the frayed linens. Dirt beneath his toenails.

Years later when he hangs

[wepry]

The couple lost when their love broke.

[wepry]

Hanoi

CW torture, sexual violence

There was a crooked cross in the lawn.

His brown shoes pushed aside dust as he scraped down the

He sat cross-legged in front of a plate of chicken eating without passion. "The first night wasn't the worst," he said. "None of us thought that. We all stopped thinking things we were told back in the world once we had seen what we'd seen. Things could always be worse." Oil spills from his teeth and runs along his chin. "The first day they didn't interrogate me. They threw me in the cell and left me there for five days. In the cold you could hear people being tortured, how they screamed. I would track the distance between each scream and the smell." He scratched his chin. "I would have died if it hadn't rained. People did die that way, of thirst. I'd suck on the walls and the floors and'd dream of the roof collapsing, of all the dirt coming down on me and burying me in my sleep." He met her eyes. "When they pulled me out I was barely alive. They fed me spoonfuls of slop and let me drink. Then the torture started."

Her eyes were wide and unmoved. She stared at him in wanton neglect of this information, as if it meant nothing and had no relevance to her current predicament. The man continued regardless.

"First they tied me to the grill and ran electricity through it. It felt like my soul was being separated from my body, like pure sensation had been distilled and poured through me in ways I couldn't fathom. They'd leave me there and I'd think I was dying or going mad but I was uuu. I hardly recognized it at all." He trailed off, staring down at the floor and breathing. Her hands were laid flat palmwards on her knees.

"They asked me things I didn't understand. I thought they already knew what they knew but it didn't seem like uuu. I remember the first gook I saw when I first got there, how his feet had turned black and his face wasn't moving. But he still breathed. It made sense then and it makes sense now." He chuckled.

"You don't know the beginning of this, do you?"

She was wasted and mute, hardly attentive by then but for the movement of his lips and the grunting sounds, not as the words they uuu. The silence hurt like stale air but that was all she had known. It would continue to hurt. He had nothing to offer her.

"Fuck…" he exhaled, tracing down along her thigh and watching her every movement. "It's all the same, baby."

He kissed her and her lips were dirty and her eyes did not close and . He pulled back and uuu, their breath intermingling. He put up his hands and pulled her eyelids down himself before continuing, feeling safe and comforted.

When they were done he left her a package of cookies and she grabbed them immediately and he walked out, his brown boots going thump thump against the staircase.

Chicken :(((((((((((

[wepry]

Untitled. Carson?

CW sexual violence

The kids were playing. They had all run outside and were bouncing around the grass. He watched them as the fireflies floated behind the bug screen. More flies pecked at his ankles. All the light was green and bounced off the tiles, and all of a sudden he cried. He stared at their small feet, pounding against the dirt. They would jump up. And the light grew blue and declined behind the concrete. Tenants from above were closing their doors. And he was happy.

I picked him up by the truck stop. The air was so cold that my hands stung at the steering wheel and his boots crunched against the dirt. He leaned his elbows against my open window and his shirt hung low a bag. There were specks of ice in his facial hair; it was uneven and I couldn’t tell if it was a beard or was called something else. His lips were blue. 

“Josh?”, he said.

“Carlon?”

“The same.”

“How was closing?”

“Went well.”

“You ready to go?”

“Yeap.”

The door wasn’t locked but he reached his arm over the window and opened it from inside. He stepped in and flakes of snow fell off his boot. I heard his weight collapse into the seat and the cushion sag. The door was closed.

“Let’s get going,” he said.

I didn’t protest and started the car again and drove back onto the highway. Ahead of us an endless column of salt and gray rode perpendicular to the horizon, perfectly flat and featureless in the way only winter can be. I saw dead bushes that the Markesons' must have kept alive during the summers beneath the metal plyings of the convenience store but I didn’t know if he paid any attention to them. He flicked open a cigarette. I didn’t see because I was focused on blue clouds ahead but felt the short burst of heat and he must have too. He held the flame a little longer in front of his chin, like the god of it.

“So what’s happening when the shit hits the end?” He spoke without breathing out. I turned to him. 

“When we get there it won’t be a problem.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” He finally exhaled and smoke filled the cabin. “Goddamn doesn’t this uuu work?” He reached out his hand and tried to feel the cool warm air. 

“It���s the highest it can go.”

“I’m sure,” he said. 

I looked off to the clouds again and felt the same pain I’d been feeling above by uuu for a while, leaning backward. He looked down at the uuu tray.

“I don’t know if you’ve been keeping track of the storm,” I said.

“Yeah,” he smirked. “I was listening to the radio before you got here.”

I was still the one driving and couldn’t think of anything to say that hadn’t already been said. He puffed at his cigarette and didn’t mind. Now that he had been here I felt something different than I did before. It was like a flavor I couldn’t explain. 

We reached the hotel and the uuu bright in the dark. I opened the door and felt the warm air blast out at me and a light that was left on in the bathroom. He followed behind and dropped his bag directly beside the doorframe. He turned on each lamp successively as I stared out at the snow blowing through the open crack. Beams of light were illuminating every flake as they passed by. I reached over and closed it.

When I saw him next he was in his underwear and I saw his full legs that had hair which wasn’t brown or gray but black somehow; uuu. He walked straight towards me and held the uuu I had given him and expected me to take it. I did and placed it on the table next to the television and went back to looking at my collar. He stretched his legs out on the bed and had his hands through his hair. 

I woke up at night and heard him rustling in the bathroom. The door stood wide open and in my slumber the white light washed over me like a message from another world. I saw the peak of his elbow stretch out and cast a shadow across the room. My limbs felt weak and empty; I would have moved. But instead I laid there and can’t describe how it felt, but something was compelling. I didn’t like it but I felt some reason to do it. I saw him walk out into the door frame completely naked and stand in front of the mirror. He admired his reflection and wiped a gum onto the white sink. Then I closed my eyes.

Before we left I went to check under the sink and the gum was brown. It looked like the light shown through it but I couldn’t tell and I heard him. I looked up and he was holding my suitcase and looked ready to go. The sun was shining behind him and the outside seemed warm all of a sudden in the way spring did. I left the bathroom and uuu.

“So when we get there it won’t take longer than afternoon to put it in?” The tarp across the uuu well when the gusts of wind picked up. 

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.” His heel was tapping against the carpet. “What do you have to do in the afternoon?”

“Install the boiler.”

“What after then?”

“I got a night to check.” 

I looked at him and couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I didn’t want to know but also felt nervous like someone was telling me something and I wasn’t listening. But it was hard to hear now that the trees were blowing and still couldn’t decide to give up their leaves. White houses lined either side with their clappards slanted down. This was the kind of place where I was used to but wasn't totally unfamiliar with the plains. But now that there were trees again I felt more comfortable. He seemed indifferent and still looked like he was thinking about something that wasn’t here. 

We parked on the side of the street and I felt heavy in my chest as I say the house again. It had been years and I didn't know the last time anyone had been inside. The lawn was still clear and there wasn't much… It looked like how I remembered it and what I thought it would. I was so caught in my head that it took me out when he uuu and I looked back down.

"We're here?"

"Yeah, we're here." I turn off the car and he doesn't move. Instead of unbuckling my seatbelt I sit there too and he doesn't move. I don't hear anything but feel and uuu. He's smiling as he sits there. Eventually I get up and move and he follows after me.

I unlock the door and step inside to see the gray reflections on the floor, streaming through the uuu curtains. All the furniture has dust uuu. The floorboards sound the same and the house smells like wood. He's behind me and I step forward so he can follow and soon he's uuu.

He gets out his toolbox that's rusted and has a single kids sticker on it that's faded to the paper uuu. He crouches down and uuu.

We sat in the back drinking beers on plastic lawn chairs looking at the line of evergreens against the blue. The yard was surrounded by chain link and there were puts of gravel in the short stiff grass. Our breath fogged up and the lights from behind us cast our shadows ahead. I lean back and let myself sigh, I know it's okay to. I feel warm.

"Well that's what it says, no warranty. They want you to

I went back home and fell asleep in the bed, with the dust under the covers. I stared up at the ceiling and contemplate the dullness, the corners of the room. The spit has a certain taste in my mouth, something not quite plain, that I used to always ponder as a kid. Those thoughts returned to me then, and I couldn't help but lick my lips, trying to find it.

(Find a way to better communicate the length of drive)

(Ends up driving him all the way home after conversation)

It is summer and I feel fear. I look out and watch the green fields sway yellow in the sunlight and it sickens me. Andy comes in from the back carrying a cardboard box of what I don’t know and doesn't acknowledge me. I stand staring and a customer walks the aisles and the openness of the outdoors does not comfort me. I step back to look for mother to ask if I can be in the warehouse. 

"Mom? I need a moment and there's someone there. Can you step in?"

"Yes dear." She sits up from the chair and her necklace rattles against her chin.

In the back I stare up at the ceiling and watch the dust conglomerated on a pipe above me. The fluorescents are on and the door is wide open, more green country. I sit and grab fistfuls of the hair on my head and breathe. I breathe. Andy notices me.

"What's wrong?"

I don't look up.

"Nothing."

He is wearing a gray shirt and cargo shorts and though I don't look up at him I can picture it in my mind. 

"Okay."

I open my eyes and compare the image I see with the one I had just imagined.

During night I sit alone in the living room my hands clenched into fists trying to breathe, like if I squeeze them hard enough then I can crush the blood and juice out the meaty, fleshy vestiges. My mother walks in carrying clothes and sits down beside me. I feel her presence, the warmth in her old body, and it comforts me. She puts her arm around me as she does, and I let out, and she is holding me.

"How are you Alex?"

"I'm fine," I say, intuitively, instinctually.

"Okay," she says, and comforts me more, wrapping her long slim arms around my body and hangs there, both protecting me and hosting me. I think back to the first nights, and first truly coming to know her. I hear my brother in the kitchen. 

When I wake there is sunlight and I prepare myself for the day. I put on clothes and stare in the mirror and catch my clavicle, the bone caressing my neck beneath the skin. I wash and I brush and I eat. Still there is so much time left and I sit trembling so frustrated with myself; why couldn't I let go, why am I still here? I command my hand to stop in a moment of dull authority and it does. Andy walks in and glances at me worriedly but doesn't say anything. I don't know what I look like at that time and I can't begin to guess. 

I drive him to the school that day as something to do and he rides with me. As usual I'm silent and he doesn't mind. His arm is against the window pain as I drive past the countryside from my childhood and pull into the circle lot. I promise to help him carry things but he doesn't seem worried. We step out and it is warm beneath the sun, clear and blue.

He's stocking shelves as I bring in boxes and each time I leave out to the cargo by uuu is leering at me, his jeans new and his beard uuu. I can feel the sting of his glare when I pass through the sightline, regardless of whether or not he is actually looking as I stop turning my head to check, but I feel it and do nothing about it. When I reach the room at last I have to stop to breathe and he quickly comes to me and asks if I'm alright and I say that I am and he sits me down on a box and holds my shoulder. He apologizes for bringing me here and I get angry at him and he backs off. He gets back to stocking and I sit staring out the hallway I used to walk in as a teen and try to remember myself from then. It seems a different, alien person, one gangly and only clumsily coupled to life not yet irreparably fused to it as I am. I feel both sympathy and disgust for her and both make my head hurt. I place my head in my hands again and breathe, as I have been instructed. 

I get back home and my life feels a routine, a cycle, and I am horrified by the people that care for me and all that I have. It is growing dark and though the living room has faded blue the outside has orange on the horizon and it glows simmering. I wander the floors and find my mother asleep in her chair, her arm hairs and skin illuminated. She has taken so much for me, so much, that I almost wish to smother her for it. A sleeping person. How could a person do that to themselves? A body so easy to hurt, an untenable potential for harm just waiting to burst. Her fingernails are long, her hair is gray. 

When I find my brother he is at the kitchen table in the lamplight drinking a beer, and at first he seems guilty but I sit down beside him and he continues while looking down. I contemplate him and he seems to return the motion, but I wonder if when he does it it's because he thinks he ought to, not because it is in his nature. He looks at me.

"You're doing worse." The comment surprises me as usually he's isn't blunt and then I wonder if he has a point to make.

"How do you know?"

"I can see it on you."

"No you can't."

"You do less. I can see when you're not uuu." 

This must be what he's like when uuu sober.

"What did it feel like?"

"What?" I look at him not even just disgusted but astonished, amazed.

"I can't imagine what it felt like." He turns his head down and starts crying and all of a sudden my astonishment and disgust turns to hate and I cannot fathom how much I despise him. I see him sobbing there, so quickly from temperance, that I cannot help but uuu him for being so innocent, so good. I do not know the look on my face but my body is still, burning, and my jaw has fire in it and my eyes shrivel in their sockets. I sit up and leave him there, that feeling like the worst I can do, and stagger to my room. I close the door and look at my childhood belongings, the special shelter my mother had created just for me and obligatorily I hate all of it. I grab a pink childhood pillow and bite into it, screaming, slobbering, trying to chew it and fill my mouth with the stuffing, with the threads, to choke on it. I grab with all four limbs and my teeth seem to do nothing and when I open my eyes it has not been punctured, but my marks are all over it and the spit has stained it gray and I cast it aside, now crying myself. 

When I get back to the school on Sundays my brother does not come with me; he has stayed home. I bring all the boxes and do all the packing myself, one item at a time without concern and I feel no better or worse than I have in all this time. Kids walk past, none paying attention, and I am invisible to their world uuu. I keep uuu my work, my hands getting sore close to the end of the day, and I've done far too much, and the school does not need this much, but I feel content with my work and no desire to change it. As I leave I feel the urge to wander the halls, to see if I can conjure any memories of when I was here or if that might help. As I exit the man is by the wall, his new jeans, his beard, and I notice him instantly like a bolt of clarity against all that was before. He says my name.

"Alex?" 

My brother probably knows him and I don't respond.

"You're around the loading dock by the Camp Bay," he says. "That's downtown uuu."

"You call it downtown," I uuu, trying to look busy.

"Carson." He extends out his hand, which is old and calloused and reminds me of my mother in a sick way. "It was the name of my father's uncle." 

I reach out and shake his hand and feel afraid. "Cool." 

"I like your mom's shop. That's where I get uuu." 

"Yeah," I say, betraying my own indifference. "I think I've seen you in the store before."

"You have." He looks right at me.

I feel uneasy and don't know what to say.

"Well, it was good catching up with you Alex," he says, placing his hands on his hips. "Glad to know you're around."

"Yeah, you too." I say autonomically, cursing myself and wishing I could do something.

He stays for a moment smiling then turns around and walks around the corner. 

When I'm carrying my uuu to the truck it's cool out and the sun is going down, purple and beautiful all around me. I set inside and turn the key uuu. As I pull out I hear a uuu and look up. He's in the car beside me with the window rolled down leaning over. I stop and uuu. 

"Hey, what'd you know we parked together."

"Yeah," I say, shouting over our engines.

"How about we go get drinks? You've looked like you needed to get shit faced all day and I'd be happy to listen."

I stare at him in disbelief and the shock takes longer than I expected in which he doesn't move but awaits my response. I sit in my white, raised pickup and look down at him, my hands still on the wheel. Something within me, some rebellious part that yearns for my destruction calls out to see all that there is to see, and feel all that there is to feel. I feel no better regardless and I accept. 

In the bar he buys the first round and carries them back to me, it being nine months since I last took a drink but not that I'd been stopping myself. He lets me sip before speaking and I miss the cool numbness passing down my throat and into my bowels, the sweetness. 

"Damn you sip that cheap stuff like it's fucking laqour."

My eyes are closed and I forget that he's even there and I quickly pull it from my mouth. 

"Oh yeah, sorry." I'm wiping my lips and spit is dripping.

"No matter, no matter. That's why I'm here." He sits down in the booth.

I notice he has a gold watch that isn't real and that his knuckles are hairy and whited over. His veins are protruded. 

"So how's the store going?"

"It's going fine," I say softly, still feeling uuu has been uuu this entire time.

"I know your mother. She sold me on the deal that I still buy compressors from."

"Yeah, sounds right." I drink more than I talk and soon I want another.

"Kind of a hard lady sort of thing," he asks?

I scoff and am almost done with the first. "I just don't think she cares that much."

"Well that probably is a good way to live your life."

"Maybe," I say, done.

I'm already calling over for more and he just watches me.

"Your college experience paying for itself?"

I almost wince unremittingly and nod. "It's not a competition. People that think it is usually don't last long."

"Last long for what?"

"I don't know."

"I like how you think. Where'd you go to school."

"Canisius." He nods and looks at me. "I'm home for the semester though." I marvel at how I've changed and the honesty the drinks have given me.

"Oh really, how's that? It seems like you'd be a great student." I swear I catch him smirking.

"I didn't like it there." I look back at him.

"Why not?" I can sense he's feigning concern but I'm not sure why.

I look back in my mind and try to decide what to bring forward. Somehow nothing seems of interest, nothing seems worthwhile. Trying to explain why I left only reveals how weak I am, my incapacity to sustain life against adversity. But certain things are apparent, that I know logically but not as emotion, because my memories are severed from before and after.

"I didn't do well at the end of the semester."

"Tell me more."

I'm so caught in my own thoughts that I don't even register the notion of stopping.

"Some things happened and it wasn't gonna work out," I say, drinking more. "There wasn't anything I could have done, I know, but at the time I couldn't tell."

"That sounds really rough." He puts his two hands together and clasps his knuckles. "It must have been something really really bad."

I look at him and can't make out his face, like the unimportant details have been lost to make room for my contemplation and my brain sees fit to remove me from the present. I'm frustrated by this and he keeps staring at me.

"It was bad," I fire back. "I couldn't finish the semester at all.

He might have had a warm face as he smiles. 

"Why don't you tell me about it if it was so bad?" He doesn't change.

That's the one thing going through my head. It's happening again.

I didn’t know why I was crying but she seemed to. 

"You won't be afraid of anyone else hating you when you hate yourself."

He strikes me and it feels cold and sharp.

Marie

I have failed. I stare at him and I see nothing. Tears uuu. His hair is matted down with sweat. His body is bruised and raw and his eyes are wide beyond wide. He stands limp. 

Lurie

He throws me to the gravel and rapes me. At first he is fast and hard and I go away and my mind is able to drift among the stars. But then he goes slow, long and sustained, and my life is drawn back to the present as if siphoned out and conjured through his hands, which are on my shoulders. Then I can feel my body, and it hurts, and I hate it, and I try to return to where I was but cannot. I hear his breath seething through his teeth. I try to bite, to bite my tongue and assault my own body in retaliation but he puts his hand on my jaw and starts shaking it between the lips as my face is slid up and there is blood.

At the end of it he passes me down two hundred dollars and spits on it. I don’t know why he does but I take it, staggering, and feel my hands fail to clasp around it like brittle leaves or I’m only dreaming those hands. I hear the flick of a lighter and him standing beside the road, as if now waiting for something he knows will happen next. I continue slithering and try to crawl somewhere, where I do not know. All of a sudden noise returns to me and I am struck by the sound of each stone shard falling against the other, of my skin finding the dirt. As if knowing this, I hear him say “Your name Lurie. Where is it from?”

I gasp out and try to understand what has just been said, on many levels, of my mind coming back to order and being restructured about that which has been created for me. I don’t hear anything else not even wind and he seems patient. I don't know why but I can just tell that he is not looking at me. His gaze is fixated on the sunset, on the purple that wafts from before us and he reaches out the end of his butt as if to touch it. He stays silent and I hear the wind rushing, cars in the distance.

"It was my mother's." I barely whisper, my voice in my throat, and he somehow hears. 

"You have a mother," he says wistfully, as if satisfied.

I struggle to understand what that means and put my hands on the ground. I'm slowly rising and he turns around to tower over me. 

"Look at you," he smirks. "Look at you."

Suddenly I feel fear and can do nothing but recoil and he knows. His body looms at sundown, tall and uneven, as uuu as a uuu.

His boots kick up gravel as he turns around and walks off. His car starts, and turning my head I see exhaust rise parallel to the road and the sky grow blue. He's driving away and I'm alone. Suddenly I feel an endless shame and begin to cry. 

It's growing cold and I'm crying. I think of lying there until I'm dead, until I become one with the ground and rot. But I know that this will not happen, and that the earth would not accept me so.

When the frogs are chirping in a gulch, and the sky is barely visible in the blackness, I rise, and my feet are sore and my legs are bruised. Everything is sore, my whole body aches in mud. I stagger forward, and my bare feet touch the highway and I grip the money in my palm like it is all I will ever have. I uuu, one leg uneven, each following another ahead. I see only blackness but for the stars, and I know where I am going. All around me is still and thick, and I feel no peace. 

I consider how to enter the gas station with my appearance. I have no shoes, I am covered in cuts and bruises. I can find nothing to conceal myself, and hide in the shadows watching people come and go. A part of me wants to run into a truck and beg for help, to be taken away and cared for. Warranted the thought is destroyed, and I think only to water first and my departure second. But first come the clothes, and I am distraught. I want to hide in the back. I want to stagger out front and wail and cry until my uuu body is taken away. I have nothing and nothing to protect myself. I

Final- Carson as baby being cared for by mother

I have failed. The guilt is insurmountable, and soon there will be nothing left. I stared at his eyes and I saw nothing. I couldn't see anything. What was left? What was left? I screamed many times over in my mind but my voice produced nothing, only a shrillness, like the scattering dust in a vast concrete plain. There was nothing. There was nothing. There were no words, no material thoughts, no lexicon to articulate this reality. 

[wepry]

She Spits In People’s Drinks

“The doctor had warned me that it would be bad. That there would be over seventy children, of which the ones who were most severely and profoundly retarted, most of whom couldn't move, could expect only three nurses between them all to be watched over. They would sit in the same beds day after day, eating the same meals, contracting the same diseases, not being talked to, not being stimulated, being cleaned once in what may be a whole day…” He paused. “Left to sit in their own feces, sometimes.” He trailed off. “He told me the story of Johnny. Johnny was brought in the spring of 1959 and assigned to Q2 under the condition of having been deemed severely and profoundly retarded. Like many others, he could not move or speak and was presumes to have a very limited cognitive function. Over the Christmas of 1960 there were only three nurses, not just for that ward, but for the entire facility. Though it is unclear whether or not this directly caused his passing, he was found the next morning choked to death on his own vomit. A patient two beds over, one of the ones who could talk, responded ‘no’ when asked if he had heard or noticed anything out of the ordinary. There was little investigation after that. He was buried in the cemetery on the southern end of the hospital grounds, the new one. He seemed to be intent on showing me Johnny’s grave as some part of the presentation, but I had declined by the end of the day.”

The men shifted about in the chairs awkwardly. His face was lit uuu. There was silence and smoke.

“

That’s all I need to know?

It should be enough.

What if I don’t know where to go from here?

You’ll figure it out.

The green glass windows, all tall and looming. Some mirroring refractions across the floor which form a flat, planar matrix, switching across from red tile to green tile, extending outwards along the curves of his vision. His head was sideways. The drool was slowly creeping up to his nose, or down, inching along moment by moment, uuu. Blood filled his brain and uuu and dust floated about the sunlight and collected on his smooth pale head. He stares at where the wall meets the floor, where blackness grows up from the crease and white nurses walk past, back and forth, back and forth. His eyes widen, getting lost in the bedframes and descending inward towards the wall, shriveling against his sockets. The spit arrives at his nose. It all runs in and it is heavy and cold. As he remains there gargling his snot a massive horsefly lands at the brink of his crib and presides above him, twitching and stuttering. Clouds roll in. Just then a curtain of rain passes above the hall, and some people cry, and some people laugh, and the noises to him are rich like butter. Some deep tension presides in this moment. Some forwardness, some progression. Something is going to happen.

Later that day the lady picks him up and swaddles his diaper. The shit all falls out into a metal garbage bin while he lays dumb and limp over the edge of the bed. She’s wiping at his ass and her hands are raw splayed over his skin. With each movement he grunts, lurching forward in reply to each gesture and letting his bowels be cleansed. This is the way of things. She rotates him onto one side of the bed and flips up the sheet, red light streaming through the stains and he’s rolled onto the rubber mattress as she turns the sheet over. She places it back down and rests him in it, drawing out his limbs and tucking him beneath the blanket. His head is laid on its side. It is not the side different from this morning, and so his neck will be spent on the pillow and he frowns in disappointment. So this is the way of things. He’s learned grim acceptance, dull harshness. To be is to wait.

During the night birds call, their sounds cawing and distant, tree branches stretching with the moonlight. A cough in the cold. Goosebumps all over his legs, shivering, shaking, something between temperature and the spine. He drifts back into sleep, falling in the dark and blue.

Some time later in a busking market there will be a sea of hats and hair, each bobbing up and down to the rhythm of their own pace and the color will be everywhere. The sounds will be deafening and the smells will be alien, carnés frying and water trickling through the fountains and children playing. It will be like another world, not where things are new but where they have no register, where the mind cannot pierce. He will then live with leaves and with ice and with many things, each presented to him like offerings for a beleaguered god. What a joke, he thinks. That things would be this way.

Clarice stood proud, heel to toe and with the self contained assurance in her eyes that this was the way of things. Her parents fiddled with paperwork and she felt the room was hers, every bit of it from the potted plant to the water cooler. Every bit of it was part of her kingdom and she could do with it what she will and what amazing things she would do. Then she was being taken by the shoulder and her parents were on the other side of the room. Her eyes are innocent and curious and joyful and they uuu

Being led into a wide open room all around were children and adults of all sizes running and standing and bustling, a million elbows and knees before her. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and soon she would be all of them. She bounded down the steps and reached the floor and jumped in ambitious surprise and was then dragged back by the collar of her shirt. She looked up and saw the hands of a man pulling her down. So she let herself fall and he caught her by the neck and now they’ve caught up with her and she’s being shoved elsewhere, smushed between bodies in the warm and smelly mass. They escort her to a room with damp floors and water dripping from silver faucets and they take off her clothes and a woman with manly hands sets to washing her, roughly bruising her and sloshing soap all around. Water gets in her face and she playfully spits it out in a stream, joyfully. They cover her with lye and pat her down and tell her something new.

"This is your new home."

She did not understand at the time what all this would mean but uuu. She knew no one and knew nothing and uuu. Her favorite words did keep her company at night, and she'd sit knees bent reciting them over and over, a beautiful incantation. Food was given to her in metal trays divided into segments and she would marvel at it with a disgusted wonder. She wouldn't eat. It must be fed past her lips or she would spit it out. Pitching and screaming orderlies came in and held her small feet down while her head was nestled into an elbow and spoonfuls were passed through her lips and she cried. They held their hands to her chin until she swallowed and they'd swear at her. Sometimes she'd pee herself in sadness and they kept spooning. They'd leave her there like that, throat swollen and piss soaking her pants as a lesson she couldn't learn.

The other girls did not know her name and she wouldn't tell it. She kept it in her fist close to her chest like a secret. Sometimes she'd go up to the boys and try and hand it to them but they'd kick at her and throw rocks and she left. Her cot was in the middle, surrounded by beds and bodies all sleeping and breathing at once. It would drive her mad sometimes, the moisture and the sound of all their mouths sticking, plucking, inhaling, heaving. She'd hold her hands tight to her ears and drown it out and sit knees-to-chest biding her time. She would sit like that on the toilet too. She couldn't stand their legs, their limbs, all gangly and wild. She wanted to feel safe and close and calm and now not even shoving the blankets over her head could offer her that.

In the corner there was a small library of two shelves that stood perpendicular leaving a dark square of dust in-between. The items were all worn and moldy and some had been chatted by a fire from years ago. She'd trace down along each spine one by one, collecting it. She could memorize the bumps and ridges and the order in which they appeared. Sometimes they would move around and she'd be angry and rage at the air until they were fixed. She didn't dare to try and read for she knew she wasn't meant for things like that. Inside each were words that were not meant for someone like her, all those big ideas well beyond her purview. This she knew. This was certain.

Big ideas. This world was so small. She wasn't right for this. She needed to be big and tall and strong and they kept her here. They couldn't understand why she needed to leave and do things beyond what they could imagine. She tried to explain and they couldn't understand. What cruelty. What a joke. Things weren't meant to be like this.

She remembered where she had come from and why she was here. She missed running through the weeds at her grandma’s, not the tall gymnasium with fenced in sad wilting plants she wanted no part in. Things came and went and she felt herself falling apart inside, being eaten up raw and losing track of all she had wanted to do. It was leaving her. All she would be was gone. She set on stopping this, on changing this world and conquering it to become uuu. She would bide her time being fed and being bathed and plot in hidden ambition for what was in store.

Her day came when a man in a white coat stalked from bed to bed peering over and inspecting each of the inhabitants like his uuu cultures. She watched his steps and the procession of nurses and doctors that followed after him, his bald scarred head and long legs like a lynx. To her right a kid blabbered on about the same song they had been singing for hours and seemed to be directing it at the man as if in greeting. But she was silent, because this was something new and something she could be her opportunity.

"Mister Knowles?" the woman said, all squeaky and chipper. "Mister Knowles?" He continued his marching and didn't respond.

"Sir," a doctor came forward to interject, "might you care to listen to the program the uuu team has created? They've all worked very hard and…"

"Nonsense," the man said. "All of it. There is nothing here that is not here." He stopped.

A mute child gazed up at him in dull ponderance and he looked back down without expression. "Like here," he said. "Like here. There is nothing in this child's mind that is not in his bed with him." The child made no response. "There is nothing in the brain that is not in the head," he proclaimed, while still making eye contact with the boy. None of the people knew what this meant and kept silent.

"All is good boy," he says, smiling. "All is good my boy." He parts the child's hair and still there was no response. The man was not perturbed and continued on in his uuu mission and the girl stared in wonder.

She stood an office filled with faded books, spines decaying in their misuse and sagging wooden shelves. Above her damp tiles seemed to hold in them the earth and the nature that surrounded the facility, somewhere out in the woods. The sunshine streamed through the window sill, flickering and tinting with the full tree branches. There was a green tint about the room. The doctor said her name.

"You can talk, Clarice?"

"Yeah," she said, bringing the man to her attention.

"Can you see anything in this room that I can't?"

She looked around pondering the question but didn't answer; she bit at her tongue.

"How old are you, Clarice?"

"Ten," she said.

"And you've been here for only so long." The man's skin was dry and wrinkled and yet he had a fruitful, self passionate life in him. "Do you want to get out of here?" He was tempting her with something and she knew it.

"Yes" she said.

"Okay," he proclaimed in an instant and her name was going down on a sheet of paper.

Candice

“Well,” the nurse said. “You seem happy today.”

Her eyes were vacant and gone. Something had fallen upon her, something had become of her, that what was once her mission became nullified. It was insignificant now. In its place there stood something tall and looming, a dark thing of stone and cold truth. It seemed to be present in her vision, right before her on the tile floor, living with her and breathing the same air. It was without sense and she could not touch it but it was there.

“Come on,” the nurse said, preparing to lift up her head and spoon slops down her throat. The girl sat thoughtless, drooling, consumed by the presence of this dark thing and dully emoting at it without words as if in response. It seemed more powerful than her, more knowing. Pleading with the thing, though how pathetic it may be, seemed necessary somehow to an end she cannot foresee but for the aching need simmering in her bones. Maybe that was the need. To know what this thing was and why it had come to her today. To know…

Without pause the nurse puts it through her teeth and in her distant state she cannot muster the effort or the knowhow to swallow. The nurse tilts her head back like a fish hook-hung from a length of twine and it mechanically enters her belly and she reluctantly begins the work of consumption. She has no feelings toward this and no reply. She can still see the thing there, black and at the corner of her vision, staring into her with piercing clarity. She does not know why it has come. She does not know why it is here. But she knows that it has come for her.

Ceiling days. That is what she calls them. It is a ceiling day, high above her, orbiting like a flying saucer. Some quiet ambient hum pierces across the room in bits and scatters, just enough to tickle her eyelids but just beyond direct capture. Above her it is there, the dark thing she has come to call Henry is all its oppressive bleakness. Some heavy weight upon her soul, a physical chain keeping her suspended to her perception of it never allowing any release. She has come to hate it, to want to be free and clear from its presence. But it has been there for so long and she has come to live with it so well that she fears it will never abandon her. She cries at the thought of this, seeing her future irreparably bound to the thing and unable to be rid of its shadow. Or of its stain.

Clam days. Around her is the smell of sea water, piss and bleach and human mingling to form a single, uniform noise that fills her body and which she will drown in. This has become her fate now, she recognizes, and she will never be free again. She is like a barnacle stuck to a rock battered by the waves. She remembers all the hope and love she used to have: fishing poles, sunshine, her tanned legs. It was all gone now. It was all gone now.

She would move if she could. She would scream if she could. She would run if she could, but she was being brought to the firelight, and this was destined now, and nothing could save her now.

These days are silent. There is nothing to say.

Help. Help, they all cry. Something something.

Oh, she clearly hears

What a way to go

Some people have the best days of their lives.

She looked at the back wall and saw a poster that advertised a communion Missing and Mutilated Native Girls.

She called herself Alice now and she was a real woman, flesh and bone and hair.

“KONO CHAINED TO BED IN AFRICA,” it read and she laughs at how big the letters are.

A million spleens and livers before her.

She idly pieces through the ivy struck with broomrape. The bricks are all warm and red and her skin bakes in the sun. She looks up and sees Todd standing at the phone, passing back and forth

“Latrines latrines latrines latrines,” she says to herself repeatedly, a really smile and uuu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orobanche_hederae

Those pleasant inches of air beneath her gray curling toes.

She nurses his forehead as wind batters the tarp, the sweat beads glisten beautiful in the candle light.

ojijijij

she

[wepry]

Pain

Pain reduces all of life into that which hurts and that which can be remembered. Anything else ceases to exist. Pain, it seemed, was all he knew. Good things were in distant memories, gold and blurred by a poor vision. He felt that this degradation could not be redeemed, and that even if it were it could not but pull on the longing and accentuate the clarity that the present moment hurt.

"The dumb shits all die." He slapped down a pile of pissed stained blankets and watched the dust fly upwards. "Dumb fucks." Everything came to this and it was his job to fix it. Always him, he thought. "Dumb fucks," he muttered to himself, dumping out the rest of the linens and kicking them all into a pile on the concrete floor. He grabbed the cart with both hands and walked out in disgust at it all. His ugly face bore no better which he hated just the same. "Dumb bitches, too," he remarked. Nurses stood conversing by the boiler and he subconsciously took them apart and studied their insides to know what made them tick and what he could make from just his hands and his wits. Surely he knew better. They leer at him with distaste and contempt and he dreams of the day when he can make things right. No, right won't do it. He will see it all to its conclusion.

That evening he sits in his stinking chair and watches bullshit on the television and eats like he uuu his gut and something broods in him. He farts and feels that if he has no one's standards to uphold but his own then he may as well live so that the world abides by his standards and nature will not be contradicted. Lovely images flicker by, all bright and cheery and colorful. Kids know no better. Nothing is right, he thinks. Nothing will be right, he continues, until all has been made plain and the weak separate from the strong and we stop denying ourselves our dignity. What a joke, he thinks. What a joke.

Life has no purpose anymore. He drinks coffee huddled together with a dozen patrons beneath a tin roof and it is tasteless. The smoke and the rain smell all bite at his nostrils rather than having any character or flavor, just that they are there and they are a nuisance. Someone brushes past to dash into the rain and their wet, slick coat washes him in cold water. He would strike the man if he willed it; but he doesn't. While sipping he idly thinks of his shift today and it has no meaning to him, like a filtered mess. This angers him in the usual way he knows, a spite to

A girl sat beside him, flirting with him. Her cuticles marched down his shoulders, tracing his broken figure in a beggar's call for want and sustenance. He did not meet her eyes but stayed silent, alone. All about him were the advertisements for things not meant for him, designs and worlds inhabited by other people not so tuned or crippled. She loses interest and leaves him, back slumped and crooked. His plain, drab, tweed suit loosely fit about his body highlights his sorrieness, dangling heavily off his limbs pitifully. Everyone around laughs and pays him no attention. Smoke fills the room. The smell of beer, oil, wood rot. They play in hope of retaining their youth but know it is a sorry affair. He feels no less deluded because they all know and he knows they all know.

At night it is silent, shadows images of the blinds cast by headlights, scanning across the room in a cranimg, irregular fashion, like a dizen heartbeats. The radiator vibrates soundlessly. His wrinkled hands are splayed across the blankets and his back is propped in form. What a miracle he has this. All of these things do not ease the pain, but do ease the passage from each moment to the next, inching along in some elusive, ever changing interval he cannot acclimate to. Presence hurts, and if he could just extend a little further then maybe he could free himself from this uuu. But he knows he won't. Hope has passed beyond belief. He falls into sleep, counting the cars and the cool air that blows over his face.

There are no words for pain but there are for fear. He dreads the day; though his mind has learned to forgive it his stomach has grown no sterner and that itself seems to leave him trapped in madness. And when it comes as he knows it will it will leave him blinded and wasted and raw, passing by and threatening to return again like the eye of an unfeeling, unpredictable storm, one of sand. He forgets food and he forgets intentions and his mind is fixed on the IV, piercing his skin and cool and hot. Nurses call to him from a garbled, distant mode and he drearily responds as he can. There is no hate or love here. All has been reduced.

He knows that were you to find yourself in such a place that you would fair no better, and he has a bland, flavorless compulsion to warn people from this but it has no real power over him; and when present his want for empathy cries only for his burden to be shared as if it would be relieved. Someone else must feel his pain too. This is the true, flavorful drive in him. It has to be shared. It has to be. It just can't stay in him forever.

His body is too meager, too small. It cannot hold a pain like this. Something so great isn't meant to weigh down a thing as sad as him. That is just cruel. The fullness of it is lost.

Some days are better. Some days end in sweat. There is no decency or autonomy in a life like this, and few understand his struggles. He sometimes unexpectedly counts the days until death: finally a solid, indivisible unit which he knows cannot be uuu by retrospect. It is as good a thing to count as any as its implications gain on him until he finds himself blissfully dreaming of a sweet, assured peace which he has long banned himself from doing. Fantasy will not save him, and death has no place in him. But still he feels small again, knowing that of all things this sinful premise was certain, and that he has no idea of the fullness of it all.

Shame. Shame and hate. He could be so much less and live with the pain, be soothed by the tides of its nullities and be monk-like, at peace. But all these thoughts and these ideas keep him chained here, and he strains desperately to draw then out or to stomp them systematically but he has become a part of them and cannot decouple himself. He cannot get out and his fate is sealed; this is his hell, imprisoned in the trying. He has deserved all of this.

The pain cannot be alleviated but it can be changed. He can will it from one part of his body to another, from limb to limb, as if passing a metal tumor through bags of viscous fluid. Each movement makes the pain no more tolerable, makes the net value no better, but does act as some independent evidence that he exists and has a will in spite of the pain. Yet still, somehow, he wonders if there is some way, some precise combination of these movements that will lead him through this labyrinth and cause the pain to stop. A divine, ultimate formula which is the center of this universe and the last gateway towards relief. A sad, crippled truth deep inside him knows that this cannot be, and that his pain is a burden he must carry forever. But still, he wonders. He wonders.

Behind every good thing is

There’s a difference between pain and tragedy

He died sad and alone.

[wepry]

I watched Game of Thrones and started reading ASOIAF wiki in addition to my Tolkien habits. I love the wikis much more than the books themselves. That to me is the most satisfying form of world building, like an abstract painting. I did my best, despite having no experience or originality in high fantasy.

The Dark City lies nested beneath the Southwards facing gulf of Ulros, named so

Empty lands with empty peoples, they say. In them the wanderers walk as shells, tough durable ceramic that bends and smoothes effortlessly along the curves of their form, so that one sees black figures as if shadows, yet harsh and brittle to the touch. They react only seconds late, and can transmit a surprising amount of force onto their surroundings. Inside their shells, two centimeters, there appears to be only a thin floating dust that coalesces into the inner walls that make the shell. It may appear to be simply powdered debris formed in the act of piercing or striking them, but in fact it is known that the dust simply appears, in a region roughly corresponding to the diaphragm, and forms the actual body of the shell itself. This material, which was initially called S'uultha Garam, or Shadow Belongings by the mages that accompanied the first explorers, has since come to be known as simply Black Power by the traders that encounter it. It is distinct from the ash which costs the ground of Moired City, as it naturally and assuredly will separate itself when mixed with any other substance, and can be made no finer or coarser than the cakey, diffuse powder it is. When left on a plain surface, it can be easily seen coalescing into its shapes and wantonly clinging to itself, movement just slow enough to escape the passing moment but visible only under meditative observation throughout the course of a day. These shapes, though amorphous in mimicry of the full forms seen in shadow, are never the less undoubtedly lifefull, and do come to resemble the curves of the human form. If packed into a solid vessel, these shapes will slowly coerce the other granuals around them, and each form parts that may, speculatively, be assembled into a human shape, but which curiously seem to have a sense about them in knowing what to take and when new grains ought to be. This is the most frustrating part of studying the Black Powder. Trying to classify why (under what conditions), or goodness forbid how these motes come into being has been relentlessly fruitless. Observation indicates that only within the interior of a collection of grains large enough to form a sufficiently thick shell (it is unknown precisely how thick), new grains will begin to bolster and harden this shell even as it grows. Perhaps by the same mechanism that the Powder has the capacity to respond to stimuli, it's shapes can gradually elongate, densify, or dilute themselves to avoid exposing the process by which uuu. And yet surely, their weight over time grows, sometimes only by the faintest farthing in the absent corner of a scholars room, only when attention has been drawn elsewhere or frustration has reached its peak. Some claim to have observed scales dip or water levels rise under their direct watch, but such claims, as with all others, exist only in proposition. And, if a single grain is carefully extracted and placed assuredly in a place where it may have no contact with any other, it will wait in complete silence and contemplation before, much beyond our own capacities, those circumstances inevitably change. Collectively, the scholarship on Black Powder remains a curiosity. It has taken either months or years for eventual full shapes to form, at which point they seem as imortal and impervious as statues. They do not move or react other than to repair outer damage. It is only when in the precise location of the Dark City (how precise has not been tested), that such statues will begin to animate themselves, and return to life among their brethren echoing the vapid and empty motions of a people and a city whose place has been long forgotten.

Much of the readerch on Black Powder comes from the work of a single Coluquar, who sought to make his scientific apprenticeship on the material to an unknown degree of success, as none of his later work involves the Black Powder at all. Perhaps this is indicative. Though it is not uncommon to find a jar or vial or preserved form of the stuff in a magic scholar's study, it is now mostly perceived as a pointless curiosity, perhaps given by its resistance to the steady rigours of science. Traders have also found little enamorement over it. As a parlor trick, it is far too slow and far too confounding to invoke much amusement, since it requires the minds consideration over a placid and menial time, in which a person is brought into a dark and gloomy introspection found in its abyssal hue. It is hydrophobic, almost completely, and will form its shapes in water as assuradely as in air. It is for this exact reason it struggles to find any practical use. It resists containment and control like the roots of a tree will resist stone, and so completely voids any usage in the likes of craft or shiplining or the arts. Its will is its own, and it appears to have much more patience and persistence, and as such a kind of belligerence, than any human activity. Thus, the religions that despise things despise it, and protect themselves most of all by especially proclaiming it dull and useless. Better that no one should know there are forces beyond and indifferent to us, and that none should take an interest in the long slow drip of time when the exigency of the gods warrants all momentary attention. The sphere in which it has found the most affection is the small one around which it originates. The few inhabitants of the lands surrounding the cities site, first settled by those mages, treat it like gardens. Though some have taken it into their homes and procured it places of veneration, the common people see it and leave it to the cobblestone confines from which it came. A street sweeper will gather it off across the barrier, a child will clean their hands of it only onto the spot it came from and return to their mother's comfort. They interact with it everyday, as an ambient extension of nature, as so do we inevitably and intractably exist with it as parts of the same world; and the people go about their days walking by and bending over and reaching for nothing there. It is unknown and unwritten among any professors what will come of it before the decays of time, though to me I would think that it extends past it, as the continuation of uuu resists the finite.

The Canals of Barthyos

Among the many ruins of the lost Cathyrans, most notable may be the great canals which span almost the entirety of lower Ulros. Beneath the dense network of cragged soil and lush greenery, their remnants have been extensively mapped in the later years after Cathyran's departure, and this in itself has revealed numerous secrets of their construction. Primarily, and puzzlingly, it appears that the Canals held something beside an economic interest. Though trade undoubtedly occured along them, and their navigation became integral to trade, some have gone as far to speculate that their origins did not involved the transportation of goods at all. Their routes when viewed from above show a natural, organic shape growing resembling the blood vessels found within a living thing. On the micro scale, each individual tunnel can be seen flourishing off into distinct, almost elegant patterns winding and weaving through the stone and trees. These, more often than not, do not correlate to any known settlements or the beaten trade routes used by contemporary travels. Many believe the Canals hold a religious significance The relationship with the geographic features of Ulros is highly indicative of the place of the land itself. There seems to be an effortless relationship between the canal's pathways and the land, seamlessly blending into one other such that no boulder or tree is intercepted and yet the designs in all their intrececies remain unaffected. This fact alone appears to many as proof that Ulros, or perhaps much beyond it was designed by Gods of the South. No architectural endeavor by man can exist on such a scale without leaving it's indelible mark on the environment. Indeed, this can be seen in the cities of Ulros; quarries of stone and riverbeds made uuu with slag.

The Southern Gods

Life began in the south, and the south was all that was known to harbor the Gods, save the northernmost reaches and the famous central kingdom. Life instead migrated to the north gradually, in seeming accordance with the Gods' will as they slowly departed from the world and left it to its own devices. As such, the early days of the North were inextricably barren. The two vast continents existed as formations of rock and ore, a kind of purity. All the winds of the south in their execution, though not in their design, gradually blew forms of plant matter across the Straight to first inhabit the barren lands. Still along the Southern coasts, the oldest traces of the original lichen can be found clinging to ancient rocks. The creatures of the sea similarly began to swim in these cold, barren, featureless waters. There is evidence of Cranches having reached even as far as the highest North even before the foundation of Ilmar. Such an endeavor would entail traversal through hundreds of miles of empty, lifeless water, and the skeletal remains nume

[wepry]

One of my only short stories that's neared completion. This was born out of a fear and a contempt I had for college frat guys, the kind that would harass me and commit rape. I imagine what its like not being at the top of the food chain, but being situated in a place of no social consequence. Like Roman soldiers sacking and pillaging as they please. Innocence has no relevance in a world like this.

CW for sexual violence, slurs, torture

No Safety

The kid had just moved in and the town was all new. He went to school and he lived with his parents and he was silent. Things were not normal in the hallways when others walked past, not speaking when prompted to or when his betters called out to him. They wondered what was behind his eyes, if he felt above or detached or even enjoyed watching the daily goings of the normal people. It was a small town and no one could understand the likes like him. People saw him as something curious, something sick.

One day someone threw a paper ball at him to see what would happen. Just to see what sort of reaction would be conjured up. He flinched and let it fall off. And then, like children poking at a worm dying on the blacktop, everyone felt they had to know why he did what he did. This feeling was intractable; they simply had to know.

He walked home every day. When it rained he brought his coat in his bag, and on sunny days he would watch squirrels run through the trees, the leaves all green and swaying over the street. And his home was dark, the blinds always shut beneath a dense canopy on the corner of the edge of town, the poorer people. Yellow lights from lamps lit the interior, wires strewn across the floor in a dense thicket like the house had been lived in for years. His parents resided in dark corners, crouched and stooped on the sofas and the chairs.

On the way home he passed through a better neighborhood, with little kids bouncing on trampolines and the smells from all the houses. Further on the older kids would stand by the street corner they went to after school to smoke and laugh at the Mexican kids. They saw him every day like clockwork, his dense matted hair and eyes looking somewhere else. They called out to him and he didn’t respond. They tossed a rock in his direction and his shoes kicked it between themselves, almost wantonly. They felt some kind of disrespect at this, that he was kicking the offering of themselves and felt himself better off without them. That day it was cloudy and each of them were tired and the gossip of his silence had gotten old and they were frustrated. The oldest kid there got up and walked towards him.

"What's your problem, man? We're trying to holler at you!"

He looks at them with a kind of longing, an expression at once kind and distant, above and unmatched with the present moment. He feels it's not the sort of thing he can say anything in response to. He knew that there were people watching from the stoop of the convenience store and that if they did anything to him everyone would see it. So they can't really hurt him.

"What," he says, feigning ignorance? He knows how these sorts of things go and doesn't know how far they're willing to take it.

"You heard me. How come you ignore us all the time? It's no respect."

"I'm sorry," he says, with genuine apology in his voice and a warmth. He tries to smile and though it seems fake the effort seems genuine. The other kids feel uneasy. They push at his shoulders and stand closer.

"Don't think we can't see through this shit."

"Fucking faggot," one of them says.

The word weighs heavy and he looks at them and then smirks, feeling like he's in a movie standing there and waiting for these insults with the anticipation of an audience detached.

"Say something," another one declares. They step forward until their heel is on the toes of his shoe and looking down.

The oldest one looks down, suddenly serious. "Bitches like you are the ones that get fucked, faggot. Don't get fucked."

Silence.

They start out by grabbing his jeans and he grabs the guy's wrist and he flinches and they punch him in the face knocking him over. The hit isn't hard but it shocks, like ice water, and he feels a crunch in his jaw when his palms press the pavement. He can still feel the stares of the people anove, so he's not worried, and smiles with the blood in his mouth.

"Don't you touch me!" The one whose hand he grabbed kicks him on the side, closer towards his back, and he buckles forward falling and stumbling.

"You can't just sit there man," the kid implores as he stands up. His hands go on his knees and he lifts up his body feeling the humor and the absurdity of this situation and smirks at them. Everyone can see it as plain as day exactly what is happening. He stands silent as if daring them to hit him again. So they do. This one is to his belly, a real jab that the kid learned from the cousin who taught him how to fight, and it actually knocks the wind out of him, choking and stumbling backwards. They see his wide and open face and decide they've won enough from him, and leave him there heaving from his very first blows, knees scrunched to his chest.

Word spread quickly and everyone did see it, and saw how he refused to fight back and smirked at them in a way that seemed taunting, cruel even. People were more confused, more scared. And so when he approached the brick facade that set the school a different group was waiting for him and kicked him into the wall before jamming down on his shin as his body crumpled like branches. His hair scrapes into the dirt and he's laughing, clutching his beaten knees and laughing at that he's just been beaten.

"Is that really the best you have to do?" He shouts out, them all confused and shocked. They don't know what to do and walk away.

He sits in the middle of class and knows that this is his shield, that they cannot hurt him here and that the glares of other students will be deflected by his still world. People will shout at him and mock him but here he can be safe in the silence. People file in and one slips a cup of hot oil down the back of his shirt and he screams. He leaps up from his desk and everyone is scared and he's grappling at his back and tears of his shirt head-wise. The bullies watch like dazed onlookers of a forest fire and no one knows what's happening. The skin is left marbled and blistered, a sickly yellow and it hurts. It is tended to at the clinic and he is silent. He feels there is something inside of him, a pride or a dignity that keeps him from resisting the conditions he has come under. If they will hurt me, then let them hurt me, if that is truly their will.

He walks the same route in terrifying indignance, every day being followed by the onlookers who watch his torment like spectacle. Their girlfriends come; they watch him suffer. Sometimes they go shoulder to shoulder, him and the bullies, and they kick at his knees or pour syrup into his hair and he puts one foot in front of the other. They show up with rocks and staples and tear off bits of his clothes. How much can he tolerate? When will he break? Why does he do such a thing?

One day it is cloudy and they are so tired of it, frustrated. Seeing his pain has grown exhausting, and a belligerent stubbornness to match his own has developed amongst the bullies, like an animal gorging to dying. One day they just kick him down, hard behind his knees, and his body is covered with bruises and swollen so he walks everywhere with a limp now and he still gets back up. Now all of them are silent and he walks a few more steps before the same one kicks him down again, and he gets up. It is infuriating, insufferable. They kick him down harder, this time stomping on his ankle so he can't stand up right. His breaths are beleaguered and in a distant way they can all sense his pain; it wafts like a stench. Still he gets back up, raw hands to the gravel, and keeps shuffling, one foot bent and wrong and whispers, "is that all you've got?"

Now they lose it and all start kicking him and he's on the ground between them, grasping at shoes and his limbs are almost crushed beneath the foot-blows and they spit on him. They pull down his pants and comment on how white, how untouched his ass is and force a stick into it. People long have since shut their blinds; they tire to see all of it.

Now he's at unawares, twitching, not fully conscious or aware of his plight. The world spins around his head in three dimensions, the atmosphere and the leagues of magma beneath him vast and uncountable.

He tries to walk until he can't and then he crawls. He feels utter despair and regret, that he should not have made the choices that lead him here and that this is not the way to be. His body keeps moving despite this until he collapses to the side of town where he lives, the trees more dense and the road struck with weeds between the cracks. He wonders if he'll have the strength to get up, or if this is where he dies.

A young girl about ten stands over him in pink, watching his crippled form like a beached whale. She has seen them torment him and sees his limp body stagger past every day. She wonders what she would do, what she would use to hit him with or watch with the other girls when she grew big. But now he's just a sack of blood and skin. She notices how calm he seems, how his face bears no shock and that this is the world he has accepted. She crouches down and tries to lift him, to pull his body off the road but he's heavy. He stirs in response and looks up to her, her face backdropped against the sky. For a moment they watch each other there like aliens of a different race. She yanks on him once more and this time he accepts, stumbling forward and letting himself be drawn towards her home.

He's lying on the dusty wooden floor and the house is silent. She starts touching him. She touches his arms, fingers through the cold black bruises and over the scar tissue. She eagerly traces down his back where he was hit with a shovel, the gash still long and taught. The home smells sickly sweet like beer and he feels the same, that because he is there he may not die today and there might still be more in store for him. She pieces through his hair, feeling the burnt bits where they had slapped down a rag with gasoline and he instinctively flinches. Her fingers are small, tiny, slender, with a kind of roughness that kids without parents have and it's not unpleasant. Pleasure and joy has become so distant from him these past months. It has been so benal, so monastic. He thinks of the day's tasks left to be done, and all that has left to do staring up at the ceiling fan. Suddenly she grabs at his dick, reaching through the torn jeans buckled loosely about his waist and he startles, head lifted up and their eyes interlocked. He sees only a distance, like gazing at the reflection in one's eye in a mirror, a regression. The details of her life are not known to him, but between them there is an unstated acknowledgement. So she climbs onto him, laying her small stomach on his and spreads her body out, arms mirroring each other and legs intertwined. She breathes out and lets herself go limp. He feels her warmth, the softness of this other-body and accepts it, both of them silent and complete.

This strange offering from the world does help him, and he does feel better and more alive now that there is some communion to be had in the suffering. And so he makes it home and cleans himself up as he does: beat body in the shower, bacitracin on the wounds, his own stitches to where he can, water falling off his shoulders. He looks in the mirror and forsees a new feeling, a sadness, one which persists beyond the tears he sheds and makes him think of the girl, not having the power to wish to be with her but only the form of her, her ideal. He staggers to his mattress and falls, joining in with his parents in the reclusive stagnance of outerness.

He wakes up and tries to prepare for school, which grows harder each day. Now he barely has the strength to slip food past his swollen lips or raise the ragged book bag that carries his belongings. But he does so anyway, driven by the almost masochistic, almost yearning need to know what will happen to him that day, what more cruelties other people are really capable of. He steps out the door and walks through the morning, the quiet mornings when no one touches him and in the serenity he can feign a place in this town where he is not exorcized. Arriving at school the sky is brumous and blue, dark in the cold weather of early fall and rolling with a towering might that dwarfs even the cars and the trees. A storm is coming, and the silence envelopes him, and no one touches him that day even as the electric tension melts through the downpour that turns the sky clear. The sun is shining and the ground is moist. The world has been eerily distant, and no one has touched him. He prepares to walk home feeling this tension, a kind of torpor he anticipates ending in annihilation.

His feet are sore and itch terribly, a lameness in the blisters from where he was stomped that has turned swollen and festers in the shoe. The fall weather is blue and coloured, crisp and damp, slaked over all the surfaces. He walks, reaching the place where he was first assaulted and sees a bully standing there, and almost feels relief. The bully turns around and stares, a kind of remorse in his eyes as the kid shuffles along, perversely eager. The bully raises his hand and a van pulls around the corner, that one of the kid's fathers owned and before he can react they pull him inside and shove him down. Duct tape goes over his mouth and all the familiar faces are around him struggling with a deadly seriousness and one kid he hadn't seen before in the corner.

"This is the last of it," one of them says. "It won't go on after this."

They reach the boathouse by the river one of their fathers owns and pull him out, struggling as he can against the tape and dragging him through the gravel. The wooden door swings open and like a team they're placing him down on a chair and taping him up all over, arms and torso and legs. They shine a light in his face and the truth of him is as plain as day. Even now, his beaten, sullied face cannot muster a contempt towards them, cannot bear to retaliate, and so he must be set right to put a stop to this madness. "Remember," the oldest one says. "You've done all of this to yourself." The kids shuffle around nervously, until one brave one steps forward and rips off his fingernail with electrical pliers.

They had agreed that they couldn't let it continue, that they all felt tired and unhappy and were scared they might kill him or be put away. All of the town had been down looking at them and it didn't feel right anymore, not like it used to. Something had to change and this kid had to be dealt with. Clearly he couldn't fend for himself and didn't know what was good for him, so they had to leave him somewhere so he wouldn't hurt himself no more and he'd have his place at the bottom of the pile. This is what they agreed upon. And this is what they would do.

The policeman was breathing, filled with his squad car and feeling the same way he always did: normal. He got a tip this morning about something, a good kid, so he felt it was only right to check it out. He felt pride in his work, that he was serving his community and that he knew the cost of keeping things in line. He knew he was a decent man, that he valued the love of his kids and respected his wife and was judicious in his work. Deviances and imperfections could be admitted, as he reflected, since his job was tougher than most and he had once seen a man's head blown off. The gore flew onto his jacket and they all opened fire, and he still was a policeman in spite of it. If he ever took a woman for himself, it could be said to be okay, and that was enough for him.

The pain had been going on for an hour, and it hung thick to the air like sweat and mingled with the dirt at their feet. His face was bloodied, his eyes had been swollen over and all his nails were gone. They tried to tell him to stop, but each time they beat his face he would smile, and so they would pull off another nail and he would always scream. They took turns going in and out, stepping outside to breathe and to vomit before going back in. They tried something and then would look at his face to see it, but they couldn't see his contempt so they tried something more. The slid hot copper wires through his toes, sticking out of him like thatch and making the cabin reek with burning flesh. They stuck a pair of pliers up to his septum and twisted until the blood burst inside and he choked backwards. They put dirt in his mouth and made him swallow. They hooked up the end of a lantern battery to a metal prod, and stuck it under the folds of his fat until it smoked. He was crying. They couldn't see it but he was crying. Tears were on his face and had they taken the courage to recognizes them maybe they would have stopped. But all they perceived was the stoicness, the indignance that made them beat him in the first place. And so they persisted.

The policeman drove through the town, looking up at the fall leaves flutter by and the kids playing in the puddles of rain. He stopped to gaze at the squirrels rushing about in the tree branches, as he always did in a calm moment, and felt he had become friends with them in that time, that they were the tulpas of his innocence and their dances were a tiny replica of the life around him.

They were scraping his balls with sandpaper and had placed a thin, even cut down the length of his dick and watched it split open. All of them were exhausted. All of them had gone to another place in that time, felt they were in some uncharted territory of human experience where he was the means of their discovery and all the concerns of their previous life had been forgotten. The oldest one regretted being there. In the thick of it he felt only the flow, the now, until stepping away brought about things like guilt and shame and confusion. He thought of his mother cooking dinner and how much he wished to be there. He thought of his siblings and his teachers and wished to separate himself from the present moment, to be free from the burdens of all its sensations and to be in a better place. He looked back down to the beaten kid. There were no words for what he saw.

He reflected on all this until the moment he shut the car door, where he got into the zone and prepared to do what he did. He walked along the gravel path listenung the crunch against his black boots and began to hear noises coming from the woods. He saw a van and a cabin and blood.

The kid regretted being there. All the choices that had lead to this moment, all the things he tried to do right meant nothing now. Nothing could help him now; nothing could save him now. All he asked for was that it would end. It was long past the point that he cried, that he pleaded for his fellow humans to stop torturing him. But they continued, and all his wants and tears could do nothing. They had cut off his tongue and sat it on his lap, and he used all the strength he had left to throw his head back in despair, knowing he would never talk again, knowing he would never see again, knowing that this was the end of all things. Everything meant nothing, and had he known his body could hurt so much he felt he would never have dared to live. Through the blood what he heard was garbled nonsense, like he was sunk to the bottom of a rusty spigot. He saw nothing, and felt parts of his body at random. Yet somehow he knew he was still in there, that his mind was still there, and that all he wanted was for the pain to stop.

When the policeman opened the door the room stood at attention. They were all sick, vomit and piss and shit everywhere, that the gaze of another human in that moment felt like salvation and judgment. They wanted to throw themselves at his feet to save them from their plight, but the room was still, and everything was silent.

"What are you doing," the policeman said, as innocent as a child?

The bullies stood motionless in a tableaux, their hands perfectly still and pitching shadows in the cabin light. The policeman scanned the room and saw his son, staring back at him with what looked to be a terrible mirror. He was wearing kitchen gloves.

The terror of this moment could not get through to the policeman's heart, and so he shifted his gaze back to the kid, in the chair dying. His face was swollen black. His phalanges were all charred and his breath was ragged. He knew even upon opening the door who it was, as the kid’s identity and self meant nothing. He knew it all as clear as day.

The kid sensed that it was done, that the light pouring over him was not heaven but the white evening, the sunshine. A tall presence loomed in the center of his vision, casting a shadow on his decrepit corpse. All the room was so still for so long, all the torture had ceased, that he sat in anticipation of this stillness until he realized it was waiting for him. And so, autonomically, he opened his eyes, an effort as great as any that had ever been known. Through meager, callous slits he saw the vague figures of his tormentors. He knew the truth as bare as the cracked soil, that everything had been decided from the start and that this was the want of his innocence. And he knew he wasn't alone. And so in that moment he smiled, a weak form of the smile he had once given them, and smiled.

The horror was level with the disgust, and all of them felt a kind of categorical defeat that comes only at the end of one's life, of the futility. The policeman had heard of this but only now could see it, the fullness of that futility and how little could be done for it. Nothing stirred in him. Nothing came forward to muster the courage to confront it. And he saw the kid smiling, far off and wild.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/shocking-video-shows-moment-russian-teenager-was-wrapped-in-cling-film-and-suffocated-on-classroom-floor-9951151.html%3famp

kick him down to the ground and he stands back up, silent. They kick him down again

A patch on his shirt read, “THE SILENT WOLF”

Third person kid new in town goes around getting himself beat up by local gangs of highschool kids

Public infuriating knowledge

Eventually is kidnapped and tortured by said kids in retaliation before being found by ones father who is a police officer that is disgusted and then joins in the torture

One uuu, who knew of the plans and was invited felt a consious part of him urge to do something, and so simply called his friend's dad who was a policeman and told him to go to the friends boathouse.

There are no girls here.

"He had been crying the whole time and tears ran down his face. He had the pathetic look in him, the one shared by thousands of orphaned animals before him that, if uuu. And yet something inside of him in that moment compelled him to look upwards. Through the tears and the pain, he smiled, and flashed the same familiar look that everyone in the room had seen before and beaten back with wanton violence. The emotions in that police dad rolled away, like being shuttered behind a steel door. He was confused then, angry, his sympathy for his son and for the orphaned child unable to coexist. And so in that moment, as the teens cowered in the corner, he grabbed the pair of electrical pliers and pulled out the kids front right incisor."

Absent, shape moving like parents in the dark corners of his house

A young girl that helps him in a strange, age-based confusion

"Was it that he wore the scars like one would a uuu?

"I will kill you! What are you gonna do? Bash my skull in and throw my bloated body into the river until it's all decaying and uuuu? You want to be a murderer?"

Police dad is respected by community and feared, maybe once raped a woman

Torture off puts even the teens, they take turns to be sick and vomit, sadistic one has a detached, monk like dedication to the torment

He lets the little girl care for him

He knew that he was a decent man that had a tough job uuu. He has once taken a woman for himself and it felt good, it felt relieving.

He felt he was friends with the squirrels that he would watch run in the trees. The police dad also feels he has a certain connection to the squirrels.

They got a uuu, a kid who was known to drown uuu with a garden hose and collect pelts from the uuu store.