everyone flies a little bit

unsold_capacity — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:17:29 GMT

cleaned out my flist. I feel like I can breeeeath again, without all those lj idol 'friends' clogging my list with baby stuff and like christian inspiration stuff or just horribly boring dry shit that doesn't do anything for me except maybe help remove accidental arousal.

LJ Idol 1: Empty Gestures

unsold_capacity — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:00:21 GMT

I opened my eyes and looked up from the tepid bathwater. The shower head was so far away from this angle, so tall and alien against the caked white tiles and the heavy sway of the neon green shower curtain. I shifted my knees so the exposed parts of my body submerged, and listened to the lazy, sterile ripples of water echo around the tiny chamber.

It suddenly occured to me how utterly bizarre this room and ritual would be to someone a few hundred years ago, or from remote and rural areas of the world today. Perhaps they would recognize the purpose without too much trouble, since the shape of the tub and maybe bars of soap would be familiar, but I wondered how intensely alien most of it would be: the smooth plastic tubes of bright liquid that seethes into bubbles, the pressured release of water in thin strands from a metal contraption controlled by two or three more metal knobs seemingly unconnected to it, various small sticks of plastic with metal edges for shaving unceremoniously, the smell of fresh flowers with a sinister artificial air, the toilet, which with a casual tap of a button opens the floodgates and removes waste to somewhere miles and miles away. Everything perfectly square or perfectly round and exquisitely clean except for a few hairs or building murk, neither of which would signal disaster to anyone but today's perfectionists.

How could you even comprehend such things existing if you didn't grow up with them?

The next day, coming home from work on the bus, the same feeling hit me, but with a different focus. While thoughts of how strange and terrifying a metal rectangle filled with tubes and bright fuzzy chairs and its own lights would be to a removed entity, what struck me as particularly interesting was this: there were three people on the bus at that time besides myself, and they were all speaking, not to each other, but on their cell phones. We were all on the front half of the bus and close enough that we could have had a conversation without raising our voices.

I thought that if I was experiencing "automobile" for the first time, or even just "bus," after the initial overwhelming science fiction attack from the mechanical aspects, the people who sat in proximity and spoke - but not to each other - would be the most unsettling aspect of the journey.

Perhaps one day we will have hi-tech bubbles or cocoons to wrap around ourselves during our commutes to make our singularity more understandable.

I came home and immediately began working on a draft of a short fiction piece of an unrelated nature, but quickly stopped and found myself reconsidering the same unfamiliarity problem as before: I was writing on a computer, not in a book. Putting an invisible and curious ancestor next to me, I answered his questions as they came. They keyboard has letters on it, and you hit them in the order you would write them normally. You become accustomed to their order and spacing over time, as well as understanding the more special characters. The screen is like paper that can move and erase itself and is connected to a sort of mechanical brain that helps you with whatever task you're doing. The mouse moves this thing on the screen in tandum with your movements, and hitting these buttons makes it interact with the brain and change what's happening on the screen.

As I came closer to describing the interior of the "brain," I realized my explanations would be empty gestures. How do you relate the all-encompassing connectivity of the internet to someone who would not easily understand a phone? How do you show them 3D games and tell them it's an illusion, a creation of man? How would you convince someone that all this technology is real and founded on science and not witchcraft or voodoo or the will of the gods?

I looked around my room frantically and tried to find something I could use to anchor my incorporeal visitor to this new reality. A hairbrush. A mirror. A mug. A blanket.

But they were all still unreal: The hairbrush, made of plastic with sharp and evil looking bristles; the mirror, edged with plastic and with stickers in the corner; the mug, perfectly round and printed with images of clownfish; the blanket, synthetic fibers and so fine it would be impossible to imagine being handstitched.

A fear crept over me as I tried to find anything that would be the same as it had been in centuries past, a nauseating fear that collapsed my tech-savvy image and exposed a little lost farm girl with a chick in her hands and scrapes on her knees: I don't know anything about these objects either. I just know how to use them.

I don't know how they make the mug so round or how the screen talks to the brain or how water gets from the boiler to the bathroom or how the blanket was woven or how a camera works or a lightbulb or a Tylenol or an electrical circuit or a phone or an internal combustion engine or ANYTHING NOTHING I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT.

Confounded, I grabbed the nearest object on the way out of my room, walked numbly out the back door, down the steps, and sat in the wet, uncut grass.

I stared into the hollow beyond our overgrown fence and into the dense woods of Frick park and breathed. I heard birds and rain.

Looking down into my hands, I found what I had taken from my room: a simple, wooden statue of Buddha.

LJ Idol: Intro

unsold_capacity — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:32:32 GMT

Oh, hi! I'm Suzi, nice to meet you. You're with the Idol group, right? Good, good...there have been a few of you through here lately so I've had some practice giving the tour.

Let's just go up the stairs here...Ah, be careful...

Do you need any help getting over that last step? I know at first 8 feet high seems like a lot but once you get to know things around here you won't even notice it anymore. Just grab my hand...there we go.

Okay, I'm sure the first thing you're noticing is the color in here! I love rich colors. Unfortunately I can't decorate my *real* house with these deep shades of green and purple and grey, but in here I don't have to lose my deposit when I paint the walls, hahaha. Oh, the carpet? Yes, it is real grass!

If you look down this hallway to the right you'll see the aviary and my small nursery (right now I don't have much in there except stuffed animals and favorite foods -- one day, maybe!). Straight ahead is the library and the backyard is out the door there, and the halls to our left lead to the game room, the study, and the living room! We'll go that way first and then loop around.

Just this way please...Oh, that staircase? Upstairs is Andrew's room, but he's sleeping right now and I think you'll meet him another time.

Okay, our first stop is the game room! A shame it's so close to the study, isn't it? Haha! Well, this is where I keep all my gaming knowledge, routines, pleasures, and goals. I keep the guilt portion in the study. As you can see, I'm a big World of Warcraft player -- there's my priest and my shaman, and my warlock is there in the corner pouting (I don't pay much attention to her). On the wall here are strategies and formulas and maps, as well as some good conversations and hard-to-forget drama. Those little portraits are of the friends I've made over the course of the last two years in the game (ignore the ones with the Sharpie scribbles...sometimes I'm not too good at housecleaning the social stuff) This chest of drawers has all the goals I'm working towards right now. As you can see by the calendar in the back I haven't been playing as much lately.

The desk in the front here is where I've been keeping my Battletech/MechWarrior stuff, since my roommates and I have gotten really interested in the universe again. Oh, her? She's Petra -- my new roleplaying character for our Battletech campaign. I don't know her too well yet, but I think we're going to be very close.

This closet in the back is pretty big when you open it, but I don't go in there too often. That's where I keep all my other games. Morrowind, Thief, all my love for word games and scrabble and flash games, and anything else I can't think of off the top of my head. I keep it all back here where I can find it when I need it, but the majority of this room is WoW and that Battletech desk.

Okay, ready to move on? The next door over here is the study. Oh, yeah, the academic section is all dusty and marked off right now with yellow tape, but I plan on reopening it sometime within the next year if things go well. I still sneak over and steal old papers and study strategies from there sometimes, but really things have been kind of lax lately. On our side of the line, feel free to examine my work table right here. I JUST built this a week ago when I got a new job at a bookstore, so it's still a bit messy. I need to sand it down and organize it, since they gave me a lot to learn at once. Luckily I keep these things pretty much in order as I learn them so this room should be clean very soon!

Under a floorboard here is the box of guilt. It's pretty full. I don't pay too much attention to it, but now and then it overflows.

The last room in this wing is the living room. Here is where I keep all my interactions and feelings about other people. It has four sections. This half of the room, where we're standing, is where I keep internet friendships, and that is further divided into "casual" and "close." No offense, but we'll be staying in the "internet casual" quadrant for now. The second half, across from us, is real-life relationships, and it's also divided into "casual" and "close." Notice how there's a lot more stuff in the "internet-close" section than the "real-life-close"? I don't always like it, but such is the way this room works. Most of the people and stuff in "real-life-close" is older and more stable, though, so I guess that makes up for something.

The plaques on the walls represent people who I don't talk to anymore, but think about sometimes. I'm sure as I get older I'll have to extend the ceiling to fit them all.

Back into the foyer, if you don't mind. Next we're going to the aviary and the nursery. Follow me?

The aviary is perhaps the oldest, biggest, and most colorful room in here. Watch where you stand, you don't want to get pooped on. Can you hear me? Yes, it's pretty noisy in here, haha. This is where I keep everything I know and love about birds -- their noise, their intelligence, their beauty -- as well as my feelings and hopes, and any analogies and symbols, that birds instill in me. It's arranged chronologically, and they all fly in their memory area.

On the far side, about 50 from here, are my earliest memories and ideas of birds. The parakeet who died in my hand, the parrots I had my picture taken with in Hawaii, my first stuffed birds taking flight. In the middle is Buddy, my family's African Grey who died after a long struggle with nerve damage. He is always happy here, with an endless supply of toast and new songs to learn. With him are many drawings I've done of birds. Right up front here is Casey, who is hopefully coming to live with me and my roommates after Thanksgiving. Don't worry, in here he never bites: this is how he will be after he gets out of that house where nobody loves him. Also around us in the front are all the birds I've met at the National Aviary here in Pittsburgh, a place that inspires me regularly to keep birds a passion of mine.

Do you mind if I bring Casey along? If you're afraid of him, I'll keep him away from you. He loves the nursery, though.

The nursery is also a place filled with birds: my stuffed bird collection. I have about 40 in real life, but in this room are all the stuffed birds I've seen but haven't been able to buy. Unlike in the aviary, these birds do not fly; they are happy to hide in the massive caves made of blankets. Andrew spends a lot of time here, too.

Along the wall are childhood memories that don't have a place in the other rooms.

I also keep my huge refridgerator in here. I LOVE food, to the point where I joke with Andrew about how it's more important than anything else at a given moment. This particular fridge it filled with all my favorite foods -- pasta, olive oil, tomatoes, various soups, quesadillas, special pastries, pesto, many salty things, dark chocolate, raspberries, and thousands of avocados in various forms. I retreat here similarly to when I want my stuffed birds or the comfort of warmth.

This small dresser in the back -- yes, very small, only about a foot high -- is where I keep my hopes and wishes for a future family. Though it's small right now, it is a seed that will grow.

The last place on our list is the library. Follow me past the aviary again and out into the foyer, then we'll make a right.

My library is small and cozy but filled with things. This is where I keep any knowledge that isn't bird, gaming, or food related. All my academic knowledge is here -- the study is where things are processed and used, and it may be in disrepair, but my knowledge is always available to me here. My psychology books, the fiction I've read, my opinions, memories of places I've been and things I've seen without my personal feelings (those are kept in the nursery) -- anything! It's all here, all accessible and kept clean. I also do a lot of writing here, where I can get up and grab anything I need. You'll notice the colors here are rich browns and gleaming whites, heavy wood and shining bone.

Come with me past the dinosaur books and my review of House of Leaves to get to the backyard.

I keep all my bad habits out here (at least, the ones who aren't stuffed in the guilt box), as well as music. It's always raining here, ranging from a fine light mist with the sun shining through, to torrential downpours during which I love to sit on the porch and read. Right now we're in one of those hopeful, light mist kind of rains. I've never seen a rainbow here, though.

The music I keep here is scattered in the grass, in clumps. Since the ground is always wet, the music sinks in over time unless I'm pulling it up to listen and love regularly. Music I particularly enjoy I keep in the branches of my trees -- big wet willow trees with dripping chimes of hot pink flowers that look all the richer against grey skies. Songs and notes hang like pollen and burst noise into the air. Right now I have a whole tree of The Mountain Goats.

The bad habits that live here you probably can't see very easily. They hide in the wedges of the fence or under rocks and come out at the worst times. Look! Over there is nailbiting -- he hasn't been so happy lately, and either spends all his time hiding or languidly hanging around the porch, bugging me. Other habits that pop up often are can't-look-people-in-the-eye, forget-to-put-dishes-away (she's a rascal), don't-want-to-do-laundry (him too), and biting-the-inside-of-cheeks.

Against the fence opposite of us is my beehive.

Okay! Well that's about everything (except, like I said, Andrew's room, but he's still asleep). Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you found the place agreeable. I do try!

I'll take you to the front door. See? Look at that, the 8 foot drop is only 3 feet now. Bye!

trying LJ Idol again :O

unsold_capacity — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:41:17 GMT

Sometimes kicking yourself in the pants is the best way to be kicked

LJ Idol: Hope

unsold_capacity — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:47:11 GMT

LJ Idol: Ghosts

unsold_capacity — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:24:48 GMT

The Norsey Affair

What follows here is a compilation of materials discussing the Norsey Affair, one of the country's most prominent accounts of localized paranormal activity. They were gathered over the past ten years by Richard Ender and Maurice Williams, with supplements provided by the Miskotonic University Library and the researchers at the Devonshire "Scope-Book" Academy. While the compilers may doubt the legitimacy of some of the claims presented herein, it must be noted that this is a volume dedicated to displaying any and all relevant information available, and will thus be useful to psychologists and legal officials as well as those of us more interested in the phenomena themselves. For a more analytical view of the occurrences, refer to the appropriate chapter in Williams' other publication, Ghost-Stories: Truths Untouchable, and Alice Fable's Thirteen Mice in Heaven: Kenneth Norsey's Obsession. It should also be here noted that while the information provided in this volume is by no means complete, it represents all material available to the researchers [Editor's Note: This abridged collection is intended as an overview to the initial phenomena, including only the first and second phases of the encounter, and not including later encounterings including Norsey's own death and the events following]

Contents

Background information [1 of 15 sources shown here]:

Relevant data from Kenneth Norsey's medical record

The first encounter [5 of 8 sources shown here]:

Excerpt from Charles Taffington's journal

Excerpt from Claire Barnes' journal

Excerpts from The Daily Devonshire

Letter to Nancy Y. from Charles Taffington

Letter to Dr. Fairmount from Mrs. Norsey

The second encounter [3 of 10 sources shown here]:

Front page of The Daily Devonshire

Excerpt from Kenneth Norsey's journal

Excerpt from Charles Taffington's journal

Devonshire Police report

* * * * * * * *

Relevant Data from Kenneth Norsey's Medical Record, 1926

[Note: His whole medical history is archived in the unabridged volume]

Name: Kenneth H. Norsey
Age: 22
Residence: 52 Sanctum Terrace, Devonshire
Diagnosis: Acute psychosis
[...]
Notes: Mr. Norsey's admittance is in agreement with his conviction. His sentence was suspended in 1925 in accordance with the passage of the new Insanity Hearings' laws. If he again commits any act of violence he will be executed without trial.

* * * * * * * *

The First Encounter, concerning the account of Charles Taffington and the ghost-scream, and the animal-obsession theme between Taffington and Norsey.

Excerpt from Charles Taffington's journal, dated November 25th, 1926

I am unsure whether or not I should write down what I have just witnessed. I only hope I am not able to read my shaking hand hereafter, to perhaps save myself from reliving the horror. That said, I must record it, to whatever end.

I was on my usual walk tonight, following the Gold Bridge until East Street. It is a windless night, and not too cold for the time of year. I was walking, without any worry of past or future on my mind beyond a desire to dine upon my return. Approaching East Street and about to make my turn-around, I heard a woman's scream. I have heard women scream in distress before, and in fear, or hatred, but I have never heard such a sound as this, though, and I froze, positively chained to the ground. My immediate reaction was of course to find and help her, as I am an upstanding citizen of the township, but I could not locate the direction it came from.

Not wanting to make considerable noise myself, I simply stood and waited for any hint to her location. After a few tense seconds, there was another scream, but -- oh, God, do I dare write it? The second scream was not in the woods nearby, nor under the bridge, nor in any of the houses in the vicinity; no, the scream came this time from inches in front of my face. I am certain it was not the loudness of the scream nor any trick of the night that placed it in such a ludicrous position, for, as I said, it was a windless night, and I felt hot breath hit my face.

I jumped back, and forcing my heart down from my throat, searched around frantically. I threw my arms out in front of me, but there was nothing -- purely nothing. I looked around me; nothing else seemed disturbed, and no changes were made in the lights or doors of the surrounding houses. I waited a little longer, then came home swiftly and noiselessly, periodically checking the silence for more screams or, perhaps, breathing.

My only conclusion is that I am going mad. I hope I am not. I will sleep on it, and in the morning perhaps contact the authorities to see if anything happened last night that could explain this.

* * * * * * * *

Excerpt from Claire Barnes' journal, dated November 26th, 1926

Note: Claire Barnes was otherwise unconnected with the incident and came forward with this diary entry herself when she learned of the research being done. We feel this information is relevant to interpretation of the first encounter.

[...]Mommy brought home cabbages today. I fed Barks myself, and he was happy that I gave him an extra treet [sic]. Daddy came home late but he says there will be more money because of it, and Mommy is happy. Last night I heard a lady scream and thout [sic] it was Mommy. It wasn't. I looked out the window and a man was standing by the brige [sic]. I think it is funny if that scream was his, he was a big man and the scream was a lady I thout [sic]! Today I will make bread with Mommy and we will have Cabbage Soup if I am a good girl [...]

* * * * * * * *

Excerpt from The Daily Devonshire, dated November 27th, 1926

[Editor's Note: Police reports show one report made, by Charles Taffington, and a very brief field investigation. Charles made note in his journal of contacting the police and encountering only formalities. The following blurb was listed under "Police Report" for the Thursday paper among twelve other unrelated cases, all of which are listed in the unabridged volume.]

Possible Disturbance?
There have been reports of a woman screaming in acute distress near East Street two nights ago. A Police Investigation has taken place with no indication of any crime or victim. If you have information please contact the Police.

* * * * * * * *

Letter to Nancy Y. from Charles Taffington, dated December 1st, 1926

[Note: It is unknown what the "previous dreams" mentioned were.]

Nancy,

I trust you made it home safe. It was wonderful to see you and Benny for the week-end. I am sorry, then, to bring up my mental troubles again but I must confide in somebody, and you know the background and have been most willing to listen to me. The dreams will not stop, and I am sure they are connected to that hideous scream I heard -- or felt -- the other night. The previous dreams were not so bad compared to this. Please do not doubt me.

They are all the same, several times a night, one after the other as I wake and return to sleep, uneasily. They begin with a white room, and thousands of white mice running along the floor. I am in a chair, and it is slowly becoming smaller and shorter and closer to the ground; the mice are closer and I can hear them gnashing their teeth. I feel smaller and smaller until I am their size, and could ride one like a horse. As I become smaller I can hear them screaming. It is the scream from the other night. The mice have red eyes. When I become small enough that my height is the height of the mouse on all fours, everything freezes, except the screaming. I cannot help but stare into their bright red eyes, and in them I see hundreds of billions of dying red stars. I feel smaller still, and as I am about to fall into the infinite, burning rodential eclipse, I awaken.

But, Nancy, I still hear the screaming for a moment or two. I do not know how real or unreal it is -- is the scream from my dreams still with me, or was the scream of the waking world permeating my dream?

I do not wish to sleep.

Hoping times are better for you,
Charles.

Post-script. I have not told Abigail. Please do not, she is too fragile.

* * * * * * * *

Letter to Dr. Fairmount from Mrs. Norsey, dated November 25th, 1926

My dear Dr. Fairmount,

Kenneth is fairing well. I think, after your second treatment, he is beginning to understand a little bit better. The subject of the girl is still something of a problem but the best way we have found to deal with it is to not bring up any "reminders," as you suggested, and of course to distract him if he begins to talk about it. I am sure that he is sorry about the whole ordeal but one simply can't have him talking of it, especially considering the agreement of his release.

Those things are all fine and expected, as discussed; however, there is something that I must impress upon you as disconcerting to me! He has developed an attachment to animals, most unlike any he had in the past. In fact it is so odd that the family cat is even noticing this new found affection and is sleeping every night on Kenneth's bed. I am worried this may be something to worry about. He has never liked animals before. I am beginning to fear it is a ruse, and he plans to...

I mustn't think such things of my child, but it is naive to be blind any more. I blamed myself enough for the first time that I will not let these details slip again. Please tell me I am overexaggerating.

Best,
Mrs. Norsey

* * * * * * * *

The Second Encounter, concerning the public's reaction to the ghost-scream, and fruition of the animal-obsession.

Front page of The Daily Devonshire, dated December 10th, 1926

GHOSTS IN DEVONSHIRE?
Police were at first completely baffled by the series of reports coming in regarding a "screaming woman," "invisible woman," and "banshee," but with the whole of Devonshire at least familiar with the stories it has become difficult for the police to deny it any longer. Sergeant Marksworth described the first set of calls as, "Alarming. Were we dealing with many assaults carried out by a crazed individual, or perhaps a gang of thugs?" But once they became more plentiful, and more obscure in detail, Marksworth began to realize something else may be happening in our dear town. "The invisible thing in particular is distressing," he remarks, "because you can discredit only so many people before chance or mistake is no longer an option."

The police has made no official decision on how to address the problem, but frustrated locals are suggesting a spiritual intervention. "It's obviously a very, very upset spirit," asserts one anonymous Devonshire resident, "who is in no mood to be interrogated or arrested or anything of the sort. She is perhaps a suicide from long ago. Perhaps someone found her diary. I am only suggesting we open ourselves to possible explanations instead of shutting up the whole thing and surrendering ourselves to ear-muffs and crossing ourselves."

A town meeting will take place next Friday on how to address the "ghost," who is clearly becoming a celebrity and a nuisance to most residents, and a terror to those having faced it more personally. Harvey Gibbons, flutist, told us that he encountered the "ghost" first-hand and urges citizens not to take it lightly. "It tried to crush me, it did," he says, "a big invisible vice-grip. And I could see glowing red eyes." No other reports have indicated any physical attributes other than breath, but perhaps Gibbons' account is merely the first in another wave of attacks.

* * * * * * * *

Excerpt from Kenneth Norsey's journal, dated December 11th, 1926

I went outside today, diary. I went looking for mice. I don't know why...they seem so beautiful lately, as you know so well. I do not want to hurt them like mother assumes I do. I do not! I do not! I want to cherish them, love them, keep them close to me and warm me and we will all Die together and go to Heaven. I need them all...all the mice in the town. That's why I went outside, remember? Looking for mice...

[here there are several pages missing, but they pick up under the same date]

[...] be back. They can't make me forget her. They believe I am crazy because I write in scratches and suddenly enjoy cats and mice and large, warm dogs to sleep near. Dr. Fairmount told me several times how smart I could be if I forget her, if I forget the mice and the dogs and the cats, if I forget everything but the things he tells me. I will NOT FORGET THEM YOU CANNOT MAKE ME I CANNOT [the rest of this page is large, thick scribbles that may or may not be textual.]

[...] In the morning I will get more mice, diary. I need to get thirteen...thirteen mice, one for each of the holes I dug into her. One for the left eye, one for the right cheek, one for the skull, two for the arms, one for her heart, one for her neck, three for her belly, and three for her legs. Thirteen mice to squeeze inside and take her up to heaven, a heaven of endless stars. Then I will not have to forget: it will be over.

December 12th, 1926

They are all in a box under the shed. I gave them my dinner. We will go searching tonight, when mother thinks I am asleep.

I keep hearing her.

I know they do, too. I am not the only crazy one, or it is she that is crazy and will not forget.

* * * * * * * *

Excerpt from Charles Taffington's journal, dated December 13th, 1926

The dream last night was new. That boy I tutored back in the academy, Norsey, was there; he was with the mice, holding hundreds of them in infinitely large and small hands (they looked normal, but they held so much). The room this time was blue, a wonderful blue. It felt like the sea, including the salty tang on one's tongue and in one's eyes. It was lovely, and peaceful. I stared at this boy I used to know, no older than 14, benevolently holding thousands of mice in his hands, thousands of mice that used to haunt me, and envelope them in waves of soft, warm light. I felt myself grow larger and larger (in contrast to my old dreams), and the mice and Norsey became smaller this time, until they were all bright specks swirling in a void of blue. Instead of the horrid screaming, I heard only the sound of light. The mice were stars. Norsey was a god, cradling his creations and bathing them in brightness. I woke up, the morning coming in clear and bright.

It is as if a fever has broken. Nancy will be pleased, and Abigail relieved.

* * * * * * * * *

Devonshire Police Report, as published in The Daily Devonshire, December 16th, 1926

[Editor's Note: The full report is reproduced in the unabridged version]

[...] Reports of the Devonshire Ghost have all but ceased in the past three nights, and have become limited to repetitious and incongruent reports from relatively unreliable sources. Police will continue to take reports on the phenomenon but have called off the official investigation for the time being.

[...] A graverobbery has been reported. Police alerted by a confidential source found the grave of murder victim Christina Souris opened and violated. Preliminary reports describe violations including several dead mice found in the grave. There are no suspects at this time.

* * * * * * * *

LJ Idol Open Topic: Where's your PASSION?

unsold_capacity — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:59:41 GMT

PSY 0035: Research Methods.

It's required for Psychology majors, and certainly not suggested to people outside the major. You have to have a few prerequisite psychology courses. I will assume, then, that if you're in this class you're relatively decided on your major.

Now, if you have ANY idea what a career in psychology entails, you know you have to do at least some research to get yourself out there. Whether it's your dissertation, a job as a research assistant, or just research for other undergraduate classes, you will encounter research, and you better know how to do it. That's not even mentioning the research you'll do in your post-graduate career.

I can only think that these fuck-faced bimbos in my Wednesday night 3 hour lab section imagine that psychology is about handing out bottles of Prozac to kids on street corners and doing outreach programs for the homeless and then writing in your blog about it.

I, personally, LOVE Research Methods. I'm currently a research assistant, and learning hands-on how incredibly relevant the skills I'm learning in class are is extremely empowering. But even without that experience, I would recognize the importance of a 4-credit writing course required for my major, and at least take it seriously! These people in my class whine incessantly about how boring this assignment is, or how much bullshit that one is, or how much they hate everything you could possibly say about the class. Really, now - why are they psych majors?

Why would you major in something that has a core, practical component that you can't stand so vehemently? Why would you waste your time struggling through a "bullshit" course that you're paying for, acting like a bored high school student in math class? How could you be so out of touch with the reality of your major that you don't feel embarrassed to look like a spoiled, ignorant piece of shit sitting there writing "research methods fucking sucks" on your desk?*

Not only do they whine and complain, they half-ass everything, too. And we do group experiments where we combine our data at the end -- REALLY great feeling to have our instructor tell us one-third of the class "probably faked their data." REALLY MATURE.

In a way, I feel bad. Here are kids who are so lost and clueless that they commit to one major long enough to get to Research Methods, and find out their passion isn't here. I guess, in a way, it's a logical place for this to happen - up until this class, you're only learning about theories and established literature that actually paints a very rosy picture of the profession, because we only see the completed end of things. Once you begin to dig into the meat of the profession -- research -- maybe, to those not paying so much attention to the "science" in "social science," maybe it becomes overwhelming and tedious.

At least one of them had the guts to say, before our professor got to class this week, "I'm reconsidering the whole psychology major thing, I didn't sign up to write papers on stupid shit like this."

I feel damn good that these people are my competition.

---
*Seriously, this is written in pencil on my desk, followed by "i SOOO agree" and "yeah lol fuck this."

LJ Idol Week 3: A Moment of Bliss

unsold_capacity — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:06:43 GMT

"Then we'll go to Paris," he said. She kept eating; the hot sauce was perfect.

"Teach me enough French that we can go to Paris," he said. She tells him you don't really need to know French to go to Paris.

"You do if you move there," he said. She kept eating; the hot sauce was more than perfect.

"We'll move to Paris. No, I'm serious. Fuck your education." She asked him what they would do.

"My dad has connections. I'll work in a diplomat's office." She asked him what she would do.

"You'll wait tables. We'll pinch pennies. Get an apartment." He got this look in his eyes and she decided to let him keep going. She ate. The restaurant was loud.

"We won't be able to afford birth control, so you'll get knocked up."

Eat.

"We keep the baby. It's absolutely beautiful. She has your eyes."

Eat.

"I lose my job."

Eat.

"You have to fuck your boss to get enough money to raise the baby."

Eat.

"You're a wreck. But we're in love, crazy in love, and the baby is so beautiful," he looked into her eyes and she smiled briefly. "I love you too much to see this happen to you every day: I start gambling."

She took a long, slow sip of her red bean bubble tea.

"You've never seen this side of me. I'm a terrible drunk. Violent, cruel. I have a lucky streak and I make good money, so we get our beautiful daughter some nice clothes and you have enough to take care of yourself a little better. Your boss doesn't want you any more."

The bowl was half empty, the cup was half full. She kept eating.

"You're unemployed and our daughter's starting school. I'm gambling, still making a profit, though you're beginning to wonder how. I beat you a lot, but you know I still love you. And it's never in front of her."

She nodded.

"I keep it secret for a while, but eventually the loan sharks start threatening you two. Despite my recent problems with responsibility, I'm fiercely protective of you. We move to Cairo."

She asked why Cairo.

"I have a friend there. We've always wanted to visit."

She nodded, and finished her red bean bubble tea.

"I get a good job there. Things are going pretty -- until you find out I'm having an affair. I don't know why I did it; I still love you more. You know this, but you can't handle it. You tell me I'm a different person than I was when we moved to Paris. You tell me you're sick of me being drunk and hitting you and then disappearing for weeks. You're afraid I'll hit our daughter. She's eight now. You tell me to go to hell with that Egyptian hussy."

She stirred the bottom of the bowl. The noodles were soupy and getting cold. She stared at him intently and asked what she does next.

"You were going to move back to Paris and live with a friend of yours, but our daughter gets sick. Terrible asthma. You blame me for bringing her to Cairo."

She said she would. She asked what she would do then.

"You move back to the States to live with your mother. She has a friend who's a doctor and can get our daughter treatment for cheap or under the table."

She shuddered, but her mood lightened when she remembered her mother would be in Hawaii by then.

"You tell me you're damn glad you'll be half the world away. You take our daughter and go, crying. I kiss your forehead good bye. I'm not angry. I never drink again."

She asked what happens next. He shrugged.

They pay and leave, holding hands. She keeps teaching him French.

"Jusqu'à ce que ces moments de bonheur fin..."

-----

Written for LJ Idol Week 3: A Moment of Bliss. Sorry if the French is bad, I haven't taken classes for two years.

unsold_capacity — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:09:14 GMT

Perhaps my apathy is best described through counter-example:

I am a World of Warcraft photographer.

Living cramped in a tiny box of a dorm, in the midst of a city I have barely explored, I choose to embark on journeys through vast digital lands. I do play the game in its intended manner, but there is hardly anything in it as satisfying as watching an Azerothian sunset or capturing glimmers of sunshine through cracks in city walls. I see a moment of beauty, and tab my controls aside; suddenly it's a thousand times more real, and the illusion of immersion is wild and fascinating, even though I can see only pixels where I can't feel heat.

There's a poignancy in considering how rich and delicate the art design for this game is. Rarely do people outwardly acknowledge how important these sublime environments are to the player base.

Or at least, they're important to me.

But in the end...

Isn't this the last thing I should care about?

LJIdol 1: Saying Goodbye

unsold_capacity — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:07:31 GMT

To those who are left,

The wind chills me as it never has before this morning. The tundra aches; the whole earth groans an icy, grating groan for us. I hear nothing but wind, wind, wind. Blasts of snow. This feels new and foreboding, despite the lifetime I have spent in this frigid place.

Is it from the cold, or is it from the knowledge of what lies before me?

Over the frozen ridge, my people are jittering with excitement, bathing in the warmth of their ignorance. Their lives are so small and meaningless. Their swollen bellies, their glassy eyes, their dull teeth and duller minds, all bent on what they see as a Mighty Exodus. They see our journey as an adventure into sprawling landscapes. They see retribution and hope over the edge of what is, in reality, an endless chasm.

I must lead them over that chasm. I must lead without looking back.

I will raise my head with dignity as we charge the cliff's edge. I will wave our banner and announce to the roaring waves that we are come. I must not falter or flail as I plunge.

Until now, I never could imagine the weight on my father's shoulders as he led the last generation to their doom. Besides the fear of his own inevitable death, he must have been so burdened with the task of condemning with him the lives of hundreds of innocent, loyal followers. Their eyes absorbing him greedily, lusting for the new beginning. Their small feet scurrying behind him, blissfully unaware of death so close at hand.

I am now not so happy that I was not among them that day. To relive his duty, to careen off those noblest of peaks, not in hope but in futility.

To you who are left, I pray, remove yourselves from this place. Refuse this ritual. Spread the knowledge that this exodus is wasteful tribute to the Sea and its teams of predators, not release into enlightenment and bliss in a new, beautiful country. We are not missionaries, but feed.

Above all, my dear lemmings, choose a ruler you will not follow.

------

Written for LJ Idol, Week 1, topic "Saying Goodbye." ...I wanted to do something fun.

LJ Idol 0: Introduction

unsold_capacity — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 06:23:12 GMT

I was tempted to write up some lofty, self-important bullshit about being a young artist and detailing all the shit that inspires me, but after reading some of the introduction posts and quickly getting the big picture, I've decided against it.

I used to be very into introspective writing. Some time ago -- I can't point to a specific event -- I stopped caring. It may have been my summer job that eroded most of my soul-myelin, or my family's sudden descent into relative poverty, leaving me jagged and wretched and clinging to more indulgent, less reflective escapism.

In any case, I've developed a strong bitter streak that may leave a lot of the contestents who know me from last season surprised (because how could I get any more annoying?). Last year, I was a wide-eyed young woman with a passion for expressing herself, falling in love, and finding out how to heal some deep scars. This year, I'm a broke-ass research assistant barely capable of staying in school, with a young thin idealistic boyfriend and a level 70 raiding warlock. I eat too much to make up for what I didn't eat this summer. I play Pokemon all night to pretend I'm an insomniac.

I stopped writing, I stopped drawing. I read less. I sleep fiercely.

I play LJ Idol because people are fucked up and I like watching, but I know if I'm not involved I'll never pay attention. Also, writing is good. I should do it more often.

unsold_capacity — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:43:30 GMT

It may be the I've-been-awake-for-far-too-long-ness talking, but I'm going to participate in LJ Idol again this year. :O

LJ Idol: Open Topic (Home)

unsold_capacity — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:59:49 GMT

There is wind and white clumps of clouds. There is patchy grass, growing in clusters; the earth under and in between is solid, but damp and rich. Far off, I see thick trunks of trees frothy with the high spring green and heavy with pollen, like acne. The sun slashes everything yellow and white and strings to heaven steal my vision when the clouds lean the wrong way. From my angle, with my back in the grass and my head to his chest, I can barely perceive the swaying path around the field. A stone's throw from there is a classy iron fence, and beyond that the sonorous rumble of city -- which I do not hear.

"I can't decide if that's a good sound or a bad sound," he says as his fingers swim absent-mindedly through my hair.

"What?" I reply, senses numbed by sky and sun. A breeze hits me and goosebumps swell; it is cool enough to need each other here, and we are both aware of the excuse.

"That sound. The city sound."

I hear it now. We quietly discuss it, and decide it must be a comforting noise for us city people.

It is borne from humanity, but an entirely godlike sound. It is ether and nether, bowels of earth and space wind. From it, swelling cones of our own decay burst in powder and fume and seek to wrench the sky away, but somehow we are left with clarity for the moment. It is not my place to judge, I decide, but to recognize my dependence on the sound as a source of comfort. We are habituated to those things that we grow up with, that we grow into ourselves with; and the rumble I hear now in this early evening daydream has such a history with me.

These are things I have learned to define "home" by. The ache, I have discovered, moves through possession and labels, and not the foundation of the attachment; therefore, we must seek to cling to those things which are the reason for our physical attachments. "Home is where the heart is," as they say; but they forget that some heart lies in those things that must be left behind, and whether or not to seek to remove their importance is an ache in itself. I ache for my old room: the grey smash of blue carpet that no longer exists, the biggish dresser that held too much, the relative largeness of the space, the way my windchime caught the light and never the wind. I ache for my old kitchen, my old neighborhood, my old bus routes and grocery store and library. They are irreplacable in their own way, and minute shavings of my heart are stuck to them until antiquity.

But every city has a rumble, and every bedroom has a bed; and my family is my family, and my friends are my friends.

And even lying in a field in Pittsburgh 250 miles away could feel like a field back in DC, with the right person to nuzzle.

When my family moved in April, I threw away half my things. When I left for Pittsburgh in August, I still had two boxes from the April move unopened. When I came back last week from school, my boxes filled the room and I suddenly realized that, with the exception of my toy bird collection, I didn't want anything that was left in this place. It's all extra. It's all filth. If I can live for eight months without it, why does it exist? If I can keep memories in my head and in the faces of the people I love, why cling to these objects?

I have a room half the size of my old one, with one quarter of the stuff. And it is still too much, now that I move so often. Clutter in every dimension.

We are adrift, for the moment, listening to the city roar as we lie suspended on the spring grass. There is silk between our hands when the wind blows, and the sun in our eyes is daylight unending. There is a kiss of water in the ground that makes me spread my jacket beneath me. He is engulfing, the boy I share silk and city rumbles with, and reminds me why I will always be home, regardless of where I am or what I have.

unsold_capacity — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:45:37 GMT

Look, I'm using the banner!

I am uncomfortably close to being voted out, so halps if you would.

LJ Idol: What they say about me

unsold_capacity — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:27:41 GMT

What do people say about me?

I have no fucking clue. Despite the fact that I can read people very well, have a solid grasp on who I think I am, and am an enthusiastic Psychology major, I have a very limited idea of how others view me.

I could get pretentious and say it's because I don't care. I could say I'm above the opinions of others. But to be honest, I'm the opposite to almost a fault: I cling to people, wide-eyed, and wonder how they perceive me. My mind runs in circles every night wondering what certain people think about me. I think about how important I am to people, but I can never answer my own questions. It almost feels like I simply can't exist outside of my own existence -- for some image or conception of me to be in someone else's head disturbs and fascinates me, and for some reason I have trouble honestly believing it. Whenever someone says to me, "Oh we were talking about blah de blah and thought of you," or, "I thought you'd like this," or even a simple "thinking of you," I kind of freak out. Not in a bad way, really, but I am profoundly confused.

I don't mean to get all psychoanalytic on your asses when I say this, but I wonder how much of it has to do with my childhood. I grew up under the assertion that I shouldn't buy into this touchy-feely "you're special" thing. I grew up with very caring and supportive parents, but they were basically devoid of emotional and physical warmth. I don't feel mentally bonded to my family; we haven't really talked. I feel like an item to them, in a way. Something to be factored into various situations, something to be considered, something that needs to be taught and instructed and built. An extra thing. A thing birthed and given opportunities to exist; I am my own base, emotionally. In a lot of ways it's strengthened me, I don't deny that, but on another level I have this blankness when I think of myself in the minds of others: I am a thing to all but myself, right?

I have to prove myself, work my way so thoroughly into someone's life that our existence becomes unified enough that I don't see their thoughts of me as being particularly outside myself.

I have very, very intense relationships.

Every time I get a compliment, any kind of invitation, a note, a comment, any act of kindness done for the sake of me and not someone's ego, I am startled and confused (usually in a good way).

I don't assume, unlike many people who don't expect others to have high opinions of them, that I have a bad reputation or some kind of repulsive nature that keeps people away from me; I simply don't think I am important enough to warrant time and space in someone else's brain.

Well, "simply" is a bad way to put it, because I know there's something else at work here: my own perception of myself.

I have considerable pride over how well I know myself. I can communicate rather easily my likes and dislikes, habits, beliefs (the ones I'm comfortable with--and I know which those are); I know my boundaries and limits, my capabilities; I recognize my faults and shortcomings, my vices, and the points at which in various things I lose control of myself in some way or another. I have a clear image in my head of who I am and who I want to become, even though I have no definitive answer to the practicalities of what that may be (psychologist, etc?).

So how can I trust that anyone else could possibly have a comparable image? There must be some fault, some miscommunication, some missing piece, something extra, a faulty impressive, a quirk that stuck out; I'm afraid of being a caricature. There is nobody who could by any stretch of the imagination understand me as well as I do. And here's the real irony: I often feel like I understand other people better than others do, and in some cases better than *they* do. I logically know that the extreme nature of my opinion of myself and my self perceived by others cannot be as stratified as I want to think it is; likewise, I know I am not so supremely special that I have some power to read people better than anyone else. But I do have impressions of this, and they influence my behavior and thoughts.

I am almost embarrassed by the thought of my image in someone else's head. It must be all wrong. My physical body is a poor representation of me, I think. My head disagrees with the mannerisms my body expresses; I seem wrong and unreal on video. I say things I don't think I would ever say, and especially not in the tone of voice I used. My facial expressions are all wrong. Your impression of me, it's wrong. Stop looking.

I prefer to be read, to type and get my real self across without the intense layer of filters called the physical world. I discovered several years ago that I like myself better online than in real life, because I have more control over what I'm doing, and how people see me. I feel like my physical self and my mental self cannot reconcile very easily...and this makes it difficult for me to feel comfortable with the idea of other people thinking about me: it must be wrong.

There have definitely been times I felt those physical barriers were finally pushed aside. I don't think it's a coincidence that all but one of my serious relationships were strengthened by talking over the internet; I felt like I could show more of myself than in real life. I was able to reconcile the two aspects of me, and give the person I loved a chance to build an impression that's more real, more right. And then I know that the person they say I am is the same person I think I am.

But this has only happened a few times. Besides that, I am clueless.

------
Written for LJ Idol week 1 fucking million, with apologies to superhappytime for not swearing enough. Fuck.

LJ Idol: Endurance

unsold_capacity — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:07:24 GMT

As I'm writing this, it's 18 minutes before I turn 20. I remember being 12 driving down Goldsboro Road with my dad and him saying, "Wow, you're going to be a teenager soon. That's a scary thought."

Well Dad...I'm going to not be a teenager soon. Isn't that even scarier?

16 minutes.

I thought I was going to grow up to play piano. I thought I was going to stay homeschooled and go to community college and eventually get teaching certification and sit around and teach piano like I had been taught.

14 minutes.

I thought I was going to die because he didn't like me. I thought I was going to die because I was being put in school. I thought I was going to die because mom stopped cooking dinner and I was about to fail AP World. I thought I was going to die because he didn't like me. I thought I was going to die because I couldn't get audition pieces together for Carnegie Mellon.

12 minutes.

I went from being terrified of staying lonely forever to wondering how to deal with two consecutive boyfriends following me to college.

I went from a mousy girl trying to be goth to a more confident young woman who knows how to be herself.

I went from being depressed about nothing to being depressed about things that go wrong, and being happy when things are good instead of never being happy at all.

I went from being in love with being in love...to being in love with people.

10 minutes.

I have one exam left in my freshman year of college as a Psychology major. I got straight A's first semester and royally fucked myself this term. My tuition still isn't paid, and I can't register for classes. I spend hours a day on World of Warcraft because that's the best way to hang out with my boyfriend and talk to my friends here, and the best way to escape all the things I am helpless to fix.

My parents might finally be getting divorced.

I am extremely depressed most of the time.

8 minutes.

I never got Teen Pregnant. I never smoked. I never had more than a sip of alcohol from Mom's wine glass. I never learned how to drive.

I lost my virginity last month.

6 minutes.

I graduated with a 3.7 unweighted GPA. I took roadtrips last summer. I didn't want to say goodbye.

I thought it was more permanent than it is.

3 minutes.

I haven't really lost anything, have I?

2 minutes.

I go home next week, and summer starts. I can get a student loan for next year. I can go camping with my boyfriend. I'll make good money at my full time job.

1 minute.

I've lived through worse than this semester, haven't I? Maybe not...but I feel like the past has gotten me ready.

Midnight

LJ Idol: "Walls"

unsold_capacity — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:55:12 GMT

Billy? Billy, co'mere and listen to your sad old granny tell you a story. A damn fine story, I'd say. Better than that bunk they're throwing at'cha on Tee Vee these days. You know I didn't have a Tee Vee until I was ninety-two. Ninety-two! You know how old that is? Course you don't.

Where are my glasses? I can't see yer face.

Anyway.

This is the tale of Wallpuncher McBismuth, the biggest, meanest, loudest, smelliest, most vile lumberjack this side of forever. I'm not one for tall tales, mind you, Billy, but this mother-cruster had one helluva legacy back home. I bet the women there in their 30's still remember ol' Wall fightin' Big Luey out in the Pacific, even though he stopped all that 40 years ago. Hell, I bet somewhere in your tiny brain there's a little spark of his memory just itchin' to make an impression on you. After all, your granny knew him better than all the men and women in the world. There's a little bit of him in you yet, sonny. Anyway, let's start at the beginning and see how much of his story I can fit into your little head before bedtime, eh?

I met him when he was smaller than a chihuahua pup, and just crawled outta his mama's corpse beside a cactus. He was a tiny thing, but me and your pappy took him into our little hutch out in the desert and wrapped him in a wool blanket and fed him fresh goat milk. We didn't have any kids of our own at the time, so we took a liking to him rather quickly, and when his daddy came round lookin' for his son, your pappy shot him right in the face with Ol' Rusty and little Wall just laughed and laughed. We knew then he was a keeper.

When he was a week old he learned to walk and within a month he was three feet tall and climbing trees. Our neighbors three miles over thought there was something mighty suspicious about it, but we didn't care. He was ours.

One morning when he was just under a year old and just over 6 feet tall with an inch of stubble, I went into Wall's room and there was no wall left. He had punched clean through and made eight horses out of dirt and was riding them away into oblivion itself. I thought we had lost him, but in the evening as I was crying into your pappy's lap, Wallpuncher rode up with a skinned cow in each hand and a five foot tall hat made of asparagus and cooked it all on the fire left on the trail he came blazin' in on.

That night we all shat boulders.

This went on for a few years, until Wall was twelve feet tall and it took me a month to wash his hair. He decided at that point that he wanted to go west to Oregon and become a lumberjack. Well, Billy, I'll tell you right now that I was worried. Oregon was rough country back in those days, rougher than anything Wallpuncher had even seen, and trust me, boy, he had seen a lot.

You ever see a ball of snakes seven hundred feet wide in a pool of venom that would rival lake Utah? Yeah.

Anyway, your pappy thought it might be the best thing for Wall to go out west and find his calling among the sap and splinters because by then we had a child of our own--that'd be your ma--and we didn't want her accidentally sat on or eaten by Wallpuncher in one of his rages that could blind Zeus. She was kind of a sickly thing, to top it off, and I think Wall wanted to help her out by brining back money some day. So your pappy gave Wall a shovel and a pickaxe and a bottle of rum and a herd of cattle for food along the journey, and we saw him off one fine May morning. I cried my heart out but Wallpuncher just handed it back to me and said, "Maw-maw, don't worry yer head. I'ma make us a fat load of money fer the babe and we'll live in happiness fer the rest of yer days."

And with that, he strung the fifty cattle over his shoulder and was off faster than cats on critters.

Now, the rest of the story might sound crazy, but I swear to God it's the absolute truth. You listenin', Billy? TRUTH. Now gimme back my glass eye, don't get it all gummed up like that.

Wallpuncher took two minutes to get to Oregon from the southwest deserts we called home, and that was including goin' up the Rockies for a little sight-seeing. Word is that once he made it to the redwood forests and all, every single lumberjack gave him his axe. They all heard the rumble in the earth and the trees shiftin' as he came crashing down from the Rockies, and when he showed up they all sat down and smoked together, laughing nervously. Wallpuncher didn't know how to smoke on account of being raised by clean folk like us, but he wanted to fit in so he picked up a five thousand year old redwood like it was a toothpick and lit it on fire with the backside of a bear run against the ground.

Paul Bunyan heard Wallpuncher McBismuth a-puffin' on that redwood cigar and shat himself right then and there.

Like I said, the lumberjacks all gave Wall their axes and saws and skinnin' knives and the like, and he took 'em and mushed 'em up like clay--no, not like play-dough, Billy, play-dough didn't exist back then so shut yer trap--he mushed 'em up like clay and said, "These ain't sharp enough fer me. I gotta get an axe sharp enough to cut down enough trees so's I can bring back some money to mah family." Naturally most of the lumberjacks had families they were supportin' fine with the axes they were using but nobody wanted to argue with Wallpuncher McBismuth who was twelve feet tall and looked like a god's nightmare. They thought about it for a while and eventually decided the only way Wallpuncher could find a blade strong enough to cut trees as fast as he wanted was to swim to the bottom of the Pacific ocean and grind his steel against the belly of the earth.

Well, Wallpuncher thought this was a fabulous idea but he realized a fatal flaw. "How am I supposed to keep warm down there?" he asked them, pointin' at his worn khaki shorts and linen shirt.

The lumberjacks all thought about it for a while, but Wallpuncher got tired of waiting real quick; he grabbed each lumberjack's nice plaid shirt and warm wool pants and nice silk longjohns brought by boat all the way from China. He took them right off their bodies and ripped them up and stuck them back together (I taught him how to sew with he was a few months old) in less than a second and all the lumberjacks sat there buck naked and confused and realized they had no way to make a living now, and there was no way they could go back home without anything on their bare bodies.

And that's why there are nudists, Billy.

Wall gathered up all the mushy clay steel and waved goodbye to the naked, bewildered lumberjacks. He walked real slow out to the ocean and realized that even if he sharpened all this steel on the belly of the earth there wasn't enough of it. So he walked on over real slow into town and waited at the train tracks. Eventually he heard the roar and whistle of an oncoming train, and he sat right there in the tracks and stared it down. He had a helluva stare, let me tell you! The train engineer didn't have to do anything to make the train stop: the train itself got scared shitless and fell off the tracks, shaking. Wallpuncher picked it up in one hand and shook all the people out. When it looked clear inside (for as nasty as he was, he didn't wanna hurt anybody really), he took that train and smashed it flat in his hands! The engineer didn't even care, it was such an impressive sight. Wallpuncher politely bowed and tucked the train metal until his arm and went back to the coast.

And so Wallpuncher McBismuth took to the waters. He went straight down at 7,000 miles-an-hour and hit what he thought was a rock. Before he had time to look at what it was it pushed up back at him at 7,000 miles-an-hour and they both flew into the bright blue air above the deep blue Pacific. Wallpuncher didn't look but just grappled the thing and tried to rip it apart with arms that could rip whales in half, but this wasn't a whale. He kicked at it with legs that could kick mountains through the earth to Mongolia, but this wasn't a mountain. He bit at it with teeth that could tear through steel like steak, but this wasn't steel.

He punched it with his fists that could punch through a hundred miles of worth of titanium wall in a single punch, but this wasn't a wall he was punching at.

Wallpuncher McBismuth was fighting with the biggest, meanest, loudest, smelliest, most vile lobster this side of forever.

Once he realized what he was dealing with, Wall still had no idea how he was gonna tame this beast and bring it to justice. He had never dealt with crustaceans before, being from the desert, but he knew how to wrestle a scorpion. Well, the lobster (whose name was Big Luey) thrashed around and Wallpuncher thrashed around and the two of them thrashed up and down the West Coast for ten years. People would travel out to the beaches with their binoculars to come see the fight, and root for whoever they wanted to win (they usually rooted for Wallpuncher on account of he would probably hear them if they were makin' fun of him). Hell, I even went down with your pappy and your ma and we sat on the beach with a striped umbrella and lots of wet sand, and we'd tell your ma, "That's your brother out there!"

Ten years this went on, and Wallpuncher and Big Luey got so riled up they eventually started hurricanes out in the Pacific. One of these hurricanes was so big and bad that it managed to pull Wallpuncher and Big Luey apart, and they flew five hundred miles away from each other out in the middle of the ocean. Now, you might think this is the end of the story, and Wallpuncher just swam to shore and went on his job as a lumberjack, but you'd be mighty stupid to think either of them would give up that easy. No sir, Wallpuncher McBismuth was determined to smash Big Luey into lobster bisque.

So Wallpuncher thought, "I've got a chance to sharpen my axe now!" and swam back to where he first dove in. He found the lumberjacks' ball of steel and the hunk of train and proceeded to mold and carve it into the finest axe you ever seen (not that you've seen any axes, Billy. What? Why are you talking about guitars, sonny?). He warped that steel so fast it was hot lava under the ocean, and then he struck it so hard against the cold hard underbelly of the world that it froze solid with the sharpest edge since God perfected wit. Wallpuncher held up his axe blade and smiled. It was nine feet wide and came down to an atom's width at the edge.

He reached up out of the Pacific and grabbed one of those redwood trees without even coming up to take a breath. He ran the axe blade along it with a few quick swipes and mashed the two together. Wallpuncher McBismuth had forged his weapon.

Now, I told you that Big Luey wasn't a quitter either, and I wasn't lying. This whole time Wall was working on his axe, this huge nasty critter the size of New York City was crawling along the ocean floor sniffing out the ol' lumberjack. As soon as Wallpuncher was done, Big Luey found him and jumped on him from behind.

Well, that was dumb.

Wallpuncher McBismuth spun around with fury in his eyes and struck Big Luey right in the stomach and sliced him clear in half. He hit so hard and fast that Big Luey burst into flames right under water, and shot straight up towards the moon. All the people back on the shore saw this backwards comet going clear through the sky and knew Wall had won.

And they would've been right, but sometimes life forgets who the hero is. Wallpuncher's axe melted down when he sliced through Big Luey, and the big old lumberjack started crying. He cried and cried as Big Luey went flying up into space because his axe was stuck in there. He cried so hard you could hear him on the East Coast. He cried so hard I could feel it in my bones as I sat back home in the desert feeding your ma.

You know Billy, before Wallpuncher McBismuth cried, the oceans were all freshwater.

We know he stopped crying eventually because nobody hears him crying anymore. Maybe he finally realized that it was silly to cry over an axe made of steel taken from a bunch of lumberjacks and a passenger train. Maybe he realized he could find another axe, and went quietly into Canada to cut down trees. Maybe he realized there wasn't any reason for him to come home to us because we were just normal folk trying to live a normal life, and so he didn't have to do anything for us after all.

Maybe he just drowned after a while. After all, Wallpuncher McBismuth was only human.

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This entry is for Week 22 of LJ Idol, topic "Walls". The idea came from my friend Sam, who yelled "WALLPUNCHER MCBISMUTH" at me, and who also helped edit. A few bits here and there are my boyfriend Andrew's, but the writing is all me. I wanted to do something really outside the box for this, I hope you enjoyed it. I tip my hat to Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.

LJ Idol Week 21: Gadgets

unsold_capacity — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:35:35 GMT

He's got a long, too-long nose and deep set, pin-point eyes. Green skin, sick algae soup under not-too-tight cellophane. He smiles up at you from within a candy-stripe suit not washed for years and introduces himself with a Georgia peach smile. Rotten, too sweet, but the sun's all over it.

"Welcome to the Emporium," he drawls. It's a grey room filled with grey stumps, raised geometrical museum displays. It is bright and dark in varying degrees, circles of light and dark hanging over each stump, vibrating with your breath.

"Not touching is prohibited," the guide says. You expect his voice to echo off the endless grey, but it refuses to go anywhere but you.

The ceiling might be sixty feet up or more. It's hard to tell for some reason, even though the fog isn't here. It makes you tired like the eye doctor does. It goes out in front of you almost infinitely, and there is light in the direction of the end. You expect airplanes or tanks around you; you see only the grey stumps and the variated lighting and the goblin-man guide.

On the display closest to you is a ball of light as big as daddy's fist with long, shiny buckles strung around it. The air around it is warm and heavy. If you touch it, it burns cold. You turn to your guide and he smiles all sugar and bees.

"Pleasure," he states, gnarled hands behind his back, soupy skin almost swirling. "It took us a while to get it in that state," he adds lazily, taking a finger toward the ball and dipping a cracked nail into the light. It shudders into darkness, the buckles buckle, and then everything is new again. "The pills helped."

The next display is drenched in black. Getting close, you see a brown horse the size of a chicken wing and twice as delicate prancing in slow motion on a peeled orange. The skin is on the floor. You pick it up.

"The properties of matter dictate that that orange peel is a sin," the guide says, and he grins science. "It has been removed from the eternal workhorse to standardize the process."

You remember your brother's teeth and that orange scent. As your memory grows, your guide wrinkles his long, long, too-long green nose at you.

"Not now," the he says, somewhat agitated. He points at the blackness around the horse, and you notice it beginning to froth white bubbles. The horse rears up and a mouse-noise squirts out of its mouth.

"Not now," he repeats, this time somewhat soothing, and the horse settles back into a treadmill gallop over the tangy sphere. The goblin turns and addresses you formally. "Might I suggest you view this side of the establishment?"

You walk from the second display to a third one by way of a 90 degree angle. Each foot follows perfectly along the other and the buckles on your shoes are itching.

The next display is your shoes. There is sunlight. There are eggshells inside.

"They were whole before you came, miss," the goblin-man says. "We believe that the white matter and the yolk matter separated on contact with the oxygen in the Emporium. I'm sure, had you been here instead of outside at the time you came in, you would agree that the chemical reaction was quite a sight."

His pragmatism reminds you of an omelet. His logic reminds you of your boyfriend's windpipe before your surgery. Not that it fixed anything. Not that it was surgery. There's a toy scalpel in your pocket with your brother's name on it and comma MD after, from the first operation. There's a speculum in your fist.

The display with your shoes sinks into the ground with a steady, high-pitched, clear motor's humming. You stare at it for twenty seconds, hungry. You glance back at the "Pleasure" display and notice the light over it glowing brighter and filling with anger. You remember feeling cheated. You drop the speculum.

Suddenly your shoes are too big and you are as tall as the goblin-man. You don't remember if he was that size before. The display that had your shoes rises out of the ground again, caked in egg. It smells like semen.

"Oh," your guide says excitedly, "Richard forgot to mention this to me. I didn't know it was done, with you being so little. Are you pregnant?" he asks, leaning in towards you.

You shake your head and let him know that you're very confused, and you'd like to move on to the next exhibit. Your shoes fit again and the goblin man is his original size. You don't remember how tall he was before.

You taste bloody oranges for a second.

The next display stump is a plane's length away and you follow the algae-soup green-man from a few feet back. You remember that you have a camera with you, and snap a few pictures of the invisible cracks on the walls. It's a digital; when you review them afterwards, you see your brother's teeth clamped onto an orange peel. You're next to him holding a dead crow up by its feet. Your hair hangs down. Its feathers hang down.

You don't remember photographing that, but you remember it happening.

Finally you get to the fourth display. The light is nondescript and doesn't stand out from your surroundings. Greyness and blankness seem a void around you, but you can feel the pinpricks of the earlier displays in your back from what seems like miles away. You pull a feather out of your mouth and swallow blood.

Through the grey you finally manage to notice a bright red songbird made of glass. There is a plaque beneath him, reading "Hope." You turn to the goblin-man, who smiles.

"There is no easy way to placate religion and science at the same time," he explains, gesturing to the bird, "but to assume that they are both correct in some hand-woven Klein-bottle fashion. Hopefully, this exhibit will enlighten you in some way."

He hands you a campy square remote with a single red button and a foot-long antenna. You turn it over in your hands a few times, and on the third turn you notice the sticker on the back: "I didn't mean to hurt you."

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

This is my entry for LJ Idol Week 21, "Gadgets." I decided to reach into the dark and sinister world of symbolism and stilted metaphor, as well as the seldom-tread territory of the 2nd person, or 2nd-3rd person as I like to think of it. I hope you at least get a feeling out of it, if no sense of reality. It is symbolic, and there is a simple story underneath, though I have to emphasize not from my own life. It grew into its own by certain phrases that came up as I tore through a stream of semi-consciousness. This is probably the most-edited piece of writing I've used for LJ Idol so far, which is saying a lot; I don't like editing.

LJ Idol Week 20: Open Topic

unsold_capacity — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:37:13 GMT

LJ Idol Week 20

There's a scar on the ring finger of my right hand, a string of small white islands with a few stitches of hair peeping out before the joint. If I didn't point it out under bright lights and tell you the story, you wouldn't notice it. But after it's explained, I wince and it seems to grow and slice open again.

I will never wear a ring on that finger.

There's also a bag somewhere in a box in Rockville, Maryland. It's a zip-lock bag with dead dust inside, and a dozen grainy feathers in slate grey and prawn-tinged reds. The shafts are flaky and sad, but you can't tell how old they are; any bird's would be so sorry once the oil goes. They could be a month old or thirty years old. They serve no practical purpose; it was a waste to bring them when my family moved.

I will never throw them away.

Everyone has had a dog that died or a cat that died or a dog or cat that almost died and then eventually died. Every story has that moment where "There was nothing more to do; we had to put him down." And it ends with this vague idea that lives in the collective unconscious, the vague image of a doctor putting a needle somewhere and that last lingering moment of eye contact before the little huff of the soul leaving.

We salute our doggy/kitty and go to sleep holding their collars pinched between our fingers, whispering and praying that they're doing well in doggy/kitty heaven. We did the right thing today, in the vet's office. We held their paw and cried so hard when the little huff of soul left. But it was comforting, right? To know we were the last thing our doggy/kitty saw? To know that they lived a good long life? That it was mostly painless?

Buddy died when he was three years old, after two years of shaking with nerve damage, at the bottom of his cage, caked with jam.

Birds are traditional avatars of freedom; the whole world sings out of tune and rattles the bars, envious of a blackbird.

I was four or five years old. Mom was out of town, and we had a parakeet. Scared thing, not tamed; I'm not sure why we had him. Dad was drunk, and thought it'd be funny to let the bird out. It was: my little sister Mary and I laughed hysterically when the tiny bomb slammed into the windows and the mirrors and eventually the walls, panicking. I remember jumping and clapping my hands and my dad snorting his snorting laugh and throwing his head back like he only did was he was drunk.

The fragile ticking green and yellow bomb was limp and wispy in my impish, pudgy white hand. Its heart was like a bee, furious and asphixiated. The bee stopped moving, and the bird in my hand stopped, too. I didn't understand.

We had a lot of parakeets. Some died suddenly, others lingered for a day or so. Petey was a blue one and I woke up one morning and found him balancing precariously on his perch, breast covered in blood. He fell. I didn't understand.

Death was my sister crying when the fish died. Death was my mother sighing and clucking her tongue at the obituaries. Death was "Don't look" on the TV.

Several years later, I learned that death also means that life is unfair, and that having wings doesn't mean you're free.

Birds are keepers of spirit and triumph: the self-discovery of the ugly duckling, the reincarnation of the pheonix from its own grave.

Buddy was an African Grey parrot. We bought him when he was six months old and his eyes were deep grey and his feathers were clean. He was precious, and he was terrified of everything. It took us weeks or months to finally coax him into "stepping up" onto a wooden perch; it took longer still before he stood on our hands--but eventually we could flip him upside down and stroke his belly.

I would hold my fingers up to his face and he would lower his head solemnly, his eyes averted, and request: "Scratch head?" His eyes, now corn-yellow with maturity, would shut sweetly and he'd coo.

Every morning, Buddy had toast. 8:30am sharp, before Mom went to work, she wedged a piece of toast with organic jam into his food dish, and she drank her coffee with him.

But he seemed sad, he seemed thin...

The first vet said he was underweight. When he started twitching and favoring one side over the other, the second vet put him on a antibiotic and got him tested.

It was some kind of aspergillus fungus that he had had since birth. It was treatable, but the neurological damage would probably not reverse.

The fragility of a bird underscores their power--that anything that delicate could live on for countless centuries is testament to something besides pure strength.

Every day we had to wrap Buddy in a towel and stick a syringe filled with pinky pus-like fluid down his throat. Buddy screamed and flailed and we often worried his wings or neck would snap.

We went to Paris and Hawaii in the same year and left my older brother to tend to the birds. He smoked in the house, neglected to give Buddy his medicine, and told us cheerfully over the phone that it looked like he was getting better.

When we came back the second time, Buddy couldn't stand up anymore.

The interior of his cage is almost three feet high, and for the last year and a half of his life, he was confined by his own weakness to the bottom six inches. He clung to the bars of the floor, leaned at a wobbling 45 degree angle, twitched and involuntarily squawked. We stopped taking him to the vet because it was too stressful. We gave him his medicine, but he didn't really improved.

I would open the door and hold my fingers up and he would shake and squirm and then in between tics lower his head and request, "Scratch head?"

And every day at 8:30 he would get his toast, now placed on a little plate on the floor that he would crash into and threaten to break because his beak was heavy and his nerves were shot into a million tiny threads.

Eventually he stopped getting worse. He was tested, if I remember, and the fungus was gone. His recovery was in the hands of all that positive thinking that my mom swears by: nerve damage doesn't reverse itself on paper, but it happens sometimes, right? Surely a young bird, a sweet bird, a bird nothing like his younger brother Casey who was a terrible mean thing, surely this bird would get better.

For a year and a half, Buddy was barely avian. He did not sing; his beak exposed his throat sometimes and hideous noises spewed out in the resulting friction. He whistled hoarsely, but his eyes were still clear and soft. He never meant to bite, even though he was capable of tearing deep into a finger when his jaw clenched with shattered nerves. He gently nibbled at his toast and he tenderly dipped his beak in his water bowl, which only spilled sometimes.

He'd knock his toast over a lot, and get jam all in his feathers. We'd wash him, calming his screeching with lulling coos and soft songs. I remember the smell of those baths so well: it was sickly sweet, dusty, uncooked chicken.

He only really used his wings the first year or so of his life. His wing feathers lost their barbs, and often became slowly bleeding stumps when they hit the bottom of the cage. We went through a lot of styptic powder.

Why would this happen? Why would anything put this bird through such pain, and us through such heartache? He was a baby, a smart bird. He could've lived fifty, sixty, seventy years. Mom often complained, in the beginning, about the bird plausibly outliving her.

But there was a chance, still. He could slowly get better. A lifespan that long meant that the natural course of things wouldn't stump his chances of recovery. We'd give him time and love, toast and baths, talk to him and teach him words and whistles and keep him near the family.

It'll be okay, baby bird.

I was fourteen years old and I came home with my dad and sister one day and saw Buddy's warm red night-blanket draped over his cage. Mom was sitting at the table nearby. Think it's a stroke. Still alive, not sure how long. Best to keep quiet.

I was too sad to understand. I went upstairs and sat around and went through the motions of my daily life. I came down sometimes and saw his eyes still open, his chest still heaving, his feet still clinging to the ground.

But his toast. He hadn't touched his toast.

In the mid-afternoon Mom said goodbye to him. I remember she went upstairs to her room for a few hours to write, and didn't want to deal with the pain anymore. My sister and Dad were out again.

The lights were dim, and the other birds in our house were all silent. I opened the cage and Buddy turned his eyes to look at me, even though he couldn't move his head or shift his weight. He was basically on his back, barely even shivering anymore. His feet were loosening.

His breast was vibrating, a sick bee inside.

Mom had taken his toast and water out, and the dishes were untouched by the sink. I leaned in as close as I could, the smell of sick jam and chicken stinging. Smiling at him through my tears, I reached a hand in. He croaked, barely audible: a choppy, earthy whisper from a mauled and beaten soul.

I asked for him, "Scratch head?" and he curled his beak towards his wing, tired face arcing down gracefully. My fingers carressed his sticky, loose feathers, feeling around for any life left. I whispered goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, Buddy. I love you, Buddy. Goodnight, Buddy.

Goodnight.

I love you, baby bird.

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This entry is for week 20 of LJ Idol. There's no vote this week, but any and all comments are appreciated.

LJ Idol Week Something: Hear Me Roar!

unsold_capacity — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:58:50 GMT

You know what? Fuck everyone in LJ Idol. What a bunch of self-absorbed, overly sensitive sad-hats. I consider myself someone to take things far too personally, especially on the internet, and I'm nowhere near as pansy as this lot. (before I get some whining over here, in case anyone bothers to read me--this isn't pointed at anyone in particular, don't flatter yourself. No one or two or three or ten people set this off, no one event or string of passive-aggressive banter.)

I can't believe I might not be voted out this week, wtf? I've been trying to break the mold as much as possible the past few weeks with off-kilter entries, and not comment and not be around the GR and not make friends (because apparently the entries that win are from people who talk a lot and devote far too much of their energy to this--see first paragraph--in addition to being good writers. I will NEVER say this competition isn't full of good writers--it really, really is, and I love it for that if nothing else). Am I doing something right?

(In any fair circumstance I'd pat myself and say I'm getting votes for being myself in earnest. But I don't see that.)

The only thing I regret is not getting more attention. It'd be fun to fuck with people, you know? 19 year old brat making sad-hats cry in their screen-glo pj's. I almost went this week just voting for myself and my partner, but at the last minute I mumbled to myself trying to remember the entries I read this week and checked boxes in a pattern that looks just not random enough to be arbitrary, making sure to click the names I've liked and the entries that stuck out this week. But mostly arbritrary. What do I care? What's going to happen--I'll get kicked out? I'll get bad-mouthed? I'd love to see someone leave me nasty comments. Do it.

(but no one will...I'm bottom-of-the-pile, eh?)

(I'm back at Pitt. When I'm home, I'm never this jaded; something about returning here and fiercely ignoring my roommates lights this fire that I hate with fuel from itself).

God, I'm tired but my leg's twitching and apparently my brain's laughing its proverbial ass off hard enough to keep me awake and caring about an online word-pissing contest covered in drippy women twice my age.

----

Keep in mind that I wrote this at 2:00am when the world feels like fiction. Also, I just finished reading Fight Club. Now that I've gotten all this anger out, I feel a little less justified in keeping this up, but I will.

LJ Idol 18: Unsatisfied

unsold_capacity — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:06:43 GMT

God damn it. I've been looking around a lot lately, trying to figure out exactly what it is that's been bothering me so much. I knew something was missing, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Only when I connected my fleeting moments of satisfaction together did I understand what the world is missing:

We need more god damn dinosaurs.

I realized it when I went to the Smithsonian a few weeks ago, and noticed that those amazing live size dinosaur models gave me that same feeling of elation and longing that I get from Un'Goro Crater in World of Warcraft. Un'Goro is a masterpiece, a utopia, the perfect vision of a future I want to live in. Seriously, I've never seen so many raptors and droemasaurs in one place.

You know why?

Because we don't have any god damn dinosaurs anymore!

I'm not kidding, people. Don't you understand how useful dinosaurs would be? And I'm not talking that pussy Jurrassic Park shit, I mean REAL dinosaurs. The ones that make awesome noises and act like rambunctious combinations of puppies and parrots, the ones that could you ride around like a fucking bus and mow your lawn, and the ones that you could use as attack dogs or mafia henchmen. You ever read Dinotopia? You ever watch The Flintstones? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Don't people understand we need that world?

I'm completely perplexed by the American political system right now. I've lobbied to my congressmen and local officials urging them to bring back dinosaurs. I've contacted every presidential candidate multiple times asking them their views on reinstating dinosaurs, but I never hear back from them. I want to know if they're willing to take action against this glaring deficit. I guess their silence speaks enough. If none of the candidates support dinosaurs, I'm just not voting this election. That'll show them.

I want to live in a world where therapods are the norm. I want to wake up to the gentle squawking of a pteradon three miles away. I want to raise my children with a maiasaur nanny to protect them while I'm off painting images of unity onto stegasaurus fins at the plaza. I want wars to be fought using fearsome tyrannosaurs and mighty platosaurus.

Dinosaurs have long been the province of young children and filthy palentologists. I want that to change. If we can all embrace our inner terrible lizard, listen to the echoes of the past in their avian descendants, and PUSH FOR CHANGE, we may one day fulfill our deepest desires.

Who's with me?

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This was written for LJ Idol Week 18. I had originally wanted to write about sexual frustration, but it seemed that the whole world took that route (plus, I suddenly seemed out of material...). My partner this week is laurelian, come back on Friday and vote for us if you find us worthy :)

/highfive Alex for the kickass idea, I'd be stumped without him.

LJ Idol Open Topic: Essences

unsold_capacity — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:37:03 GMT

Each mark accompanies a thought. Each drop of ink applied relates to a concept.

Each twist reflects a motor command triggered by listening, absorbing, and understanding.

They glide and expand,

And the music in academia channels dexterity into visibility.

Slow words and deep thought require concentration,

While spontaneity and indecision escape from bouts of boredom.

Eventually, secluded patterns unfolds into great inspiration and nuance.

Curls and movement become static, and trigger voices heard during conception.

The fragility of sound clings to me; I am an iota.

Explosions occur when voices swell in tandum. There is a hole in place of where I should be speaking, but everything is heard.

Suzi -- How do you manage to draw all these wonderful doodles and still take equally wonderful notes? 50/50

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This entry written for Week 17 of LJ Idol. My apologies to those with screen readers; there is no adequate way to label each picture. All the doodles are black and white ink on college-ruled paper (I tried to resize them so they were the right size on my monitor. Small.) I use abstract doodling to concentrate during classes; my hands would be all over the place otherwise. Most were drawn with very, very, very fine tipped pens (.01 and .005 prismacolors). Please vote for me on Friday, along with my partner lilerthkwake, if you enjoyed our entries.

You can see what my artistic energies produce when I'm concentrating on them, check out This piece and others on my deviantart account

LJ Idol: Zombie romance

unsold_capacity — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:52:30 GMT

Luke stumbled into the dilapidated warehouse, panting. Each ragged breath reverberated against the warped aluminum roof and brittle, collapsing drywall. Each breath--he could hear each breath by itself.

He was alone.

After glancing around with weary eyes to make certain of it, he wiped his forehead with a grimy sleeve and sat down on the dirty concrete floor. His chest continued to rise and fall regularly, though with some pain. He gingerly fingered the wounds on his shoulder, legs, and ribs. Some of his makeshift bandages were starting to cake and peel. He'd have to replace them.

He reached around and stripped his backpack off. Inside there was a clean, somewhat ripped hoodie, and he still had a week's worth of provisions left. It was only meant to be four more days worth, but...

Oh well. I guess there's a silver lining to every cloud, he thought, bemused. It had been only three days since she had disappeared, but it already felt like an eternity in which he could distance himself. There was more food now. That's what mattered.

He began tearing strips of the hoodie off, and delicately started pulling the older cloth from his wounds. Most of them were relatively easy to remove and replace without much pain, but when he tore the bandages off a particularly large, deep one on his left leg, Luke gasped.

It was beginning to fester.

He hadn't seen what had injured him there, and now knew he shouldn't have assumed it was a flesh wound from a barbed fence or a broken window. The rips of skin dangling, the irregular chunk missing, the vile green and purple crust, the yellow ooze--all of which he had neglected to notice when he had hastily wrapped the bandage around his leg the first time, as he was running for his life from a mob of once-human creatures--now they only spoke to one fact:

He had been bitten.

His vision swam, and he bit his lip to keep from crying. What did it matter if he cried? Who would hear him and comfort him? Ria was gone. Justin was gone. Amanda was gone. Bill, Rusty, Larry and Bob were all dead by now...or worse. Most certainly worse.

And Luke was next.

Not knowing what to do, he simply tied the hoodie bandage around the dreadful cavity in his leg, slowly and deliberately. He listened to every breath, focusing on each ragged, dying nuance.

Suddenly, he heard more than his own.

In an instinctive panic, Luke spun around towards where he heard the shallow breathing. It was far across the building, from a large bay door on the other end. Staying quiet, Luke heard weak shuffling and a few bottles fall over.

"Help," a timid, hurt voice called out, "Anybody, help me."

Luke's dying heart began beating harder than it ever had in life. He knew that voice! It was Ria, surely! She wasn't dead, she wasn't--

He sprang up and ran towards her, ignoring all the pain in his body for the moment. He called her name boldly and within seconds she was in his arms.

She didn't say anything, but gasped and embraced him wildly when he approached. They stared into each other's eyes, and all the suffering and horror that they had experienced alone was instantly dissolved. There was no other reason for being on earth than for that moment.

Though their lips were dirty, bruised and bloody, like the rest of their bodies, they kissed with feverish passion. Every pulse in their body was proof they were alive, every brush of a hand, every amorous shudder between them a blessing. They did not break the kiss for several minutes, attempting to stretch it into an eternity.

Eventually, Ria pulled away from Luke's face, but continued clinging to him with the rest of her body. Luke looked at her, dazed, the happiest he had ever been.

"Ria...I thought you were dead."

"I thought you were dead."

"Are you very hurt?" Luke asked, delicately stroking her cheek. As abused as it was by the last few days, she remained the beautiful girl he had fallen in love with three years ago. He sighed and pulled her head to his chest, touching her matted hair.

Ria stayed silent for a moment, letting her lover caress her for as long as possible.

"Are you hurt, Ria?" Luke repeated, more concerned.

"No," she said weakly.

Luke sensed something was off about her answer. "What's wrong?" he probed, grabbing her shoulders gently and staring into her tired eyes.

"I'm fine," she said, breaking eye contact and rubbing her right arm distractedly. Luke noticed the dark, wet shirt wrapped around it.

He turned Ria's face towards him and gently kissed her, fear rippling down his spine. "It's okay, sweet heart. I've been bitten, too."

Ria's eyes sprang wide open and she stared at Luke, slack jawed. Before either of them could speak, they drew into a tight embrace and resuming kissing with an even greater fervor than before. This was raw and desperate. They both knew they would die, that they would become monsters like every other person they knew.

They ran their hands over each other frantically, reaching and grasping like only the most passionate lovers can. Their clothes, once difficult and awkward to remove, fell off in easy, crumbled heaps. Luke breathed in Ria's scent for the first time in what felt like years; though it was hidden beneath layers of dirt and grime, there was still a spark of lust in how she smelled. His desire grew and grew, and he could barely keep himself restrained.

Having descended to the cold of the warehouse floor, the two dying souls clung to each other and hastily began making love.

The physical and emotional sensations were too much for Luke. After days of terror, anything positive was overwhelming, and this, that most impossibly perfect of any sensation, completely overpowered him. He lost himself in ravishing her, and he felt animalistic lust take the place of any human emotion. He drove against her in fear and anger, pushing away the sensitive bliss of their reunion. He saw his lust and rage reflected in her as she clawed his back, groaned, and bit his neck.

This was no lover's bite. It sank deep and hard, tearing flesh; but it aroused him even more. Looking at the body beneath him, Luke became aware of a new sensation -- hunger. He sank his own teeth into her flesh as she continued on him, tearing skin from neck, breast, and arms. Nearing climax, they screamed in agony, their intercourse continuing through the blood and pain.

But just before the final throes of excrutiating ecstacy, they stopped. Luke's thoughts were simple: she stopped smelling good. She wasn't fresh anymore. Still hungry. He stood up shakily, his pants around his ankles, and watched Ria do the same.

She grunted a little, and they shambled out, holding hands.

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If you don't know...don't ask. The link to the poll for this week will be up ASAP! Vote for me if you liked it :)

Last plea!!

unsold_capacity — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:23:46 GMT

THE DEATH MATCH IS REALLY CLOSE!! If you haven't voted, PLEASE do!
Polls close tomorrow, probably while I'm at class! In an exam! That I'm not ready for!!

unsold_capacity — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:23:17 GMT

In case you haven't, everyone please Vote in the death-match! I've been consistently 10 votes down, and I'm okay with losing but part of me wants to go out with more of a fight. You don't need to be in the community or anything, this is extended to anyone on my friends list. <3