Crow's Feet Part 2

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: donate ~ plan ~ weeks ~ change ~ senator

They were submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

The continuation from last week

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I sped to the nearest police station a few blocks from the spa, but it was closed whoever it was stayed on my ass until the second I whipped into the parking lot. I sat there watching and waiting for them to come back by or run up on me on foot from the shadows, but it didnt happen. I sat there in my car shaking and panicking for I don't even know how long. An hour? Two hours? 

I couldn't make myself get out. I was terrified they'd be waiting. And I knew how it would sound. I knew how they reacted already and I'd sound like an absolute lunatic. I can't even begin to stress the good reputation the owners had in town. They were rich, rich. Not "we can afford everything we need and want" rich but like "we could never spend this money" rich. 

But I had to try, right?

I got out and ran inside, heart racing. I tried explaining what I'd seen to the person at the desk in the front lobby... I thought she might really be listening when she told me to hold on a second and went and got some officers from the back. They asked me to repeat myself and nearly every single one busted out laughing. Like just cracking the fuck up at my expense. I should have known better. I think if they wouldn't have been bothered by the paperwork I probably would have ended up in a mental hospital--which in hindsight probably would have saved me at least for awhile. But as it was I left while their laughter was still ringing in my ears. I think I blushed straight down to the tips of my toes.

I needed a plan.

I didn't go home that night. Luckily I kept some spare clothes in the car I could change into and I had some money in savings--thanks to this crazy bullshit job--so I checked myself into a hotel right in the middle of town. Oh yeah I know the cliche is the outskirts but that seemed like a great way to get kidnapped away from the public eye, and if I was going to get grabbed for seeing what they were doing, I was going to make a scene. Might as well right? Make it hard for them to explain it all away especially if I was probably going to die either way. Those guys chasing me didn't look too thrilled.

Once there I ordered some takeout and locked myself in. I had to think of something.

I slept hard that night and woke into the nightmare of what I'd seen last night really settling in. Mindy and I weren't making wedding plans by any means but I loved her. Seeing her screaming at me to get out even in those circumstances...even when she was...when she was cut apart like that. What the fuck were they doing to us? Mindy, Shonda, nova, Sam, erin... Where were the rest?

I sat in my hotel room for days frantically trying to figure out who to talk to. I contacted news outlets, indie journalists, podcasters to no avail. I got the same response as the cops. I settled on calling the closest FBI office because what if it was black market organs? The feds would definitely be interested in that right?

Well, they were. Just the wrong kind of interested. Unfortunately. Well, unfortunately for us anyway.

I got a call back from the office on my cell phone pretty quickly. The guy, Agent Wilkerson, wanted to meet me at the hotel. Immediately. He didn't ask many questions over the phone after I told him my story. He didn't sound surprised. He didn't sound incredulous the way I expected, and something should have clicked for me that things weren't right but it didn't. I was so fucking naive. I think I felt so incredibly alone and afraid that I just wanted someone to tell things to who sounded like they believed me instead of laughing about how crazy I must be. And so I told him.

He arrived in minutes almost like he'd already been on the way here. He flashed his badge at the peephole so I'd open the door and pushed me inside.

"You need to be more careful. They could be looking for you."

He took a look around the room, checked the bathroom, opened the blinds and checked for who knows what. Recording devices probably? I don't know. And then he asked if I'd be willing to testify.

"I mean sure but don't you need to find proof?"

"Oh we have been on this case a long time. Your testimony could finally be the nail in the coffin for these assholes. We can get you in protective custody today. Right now if you're ready."

It really didn't take me long to make that decision. Mindy flashed across my mind and how could I refuse. I nodded, crying, and he gave me a hat and sunglasses to wear then ushered me out of the room.

I wasn't really paying attention at first but my heart sank in my chest when I looked around and realized we were almost back at the resort.

"Where are we going? Why are we in this part of town?"

He ignored me.

"Come on, man!! They're going to kill me if they see me."

"You'll live long enough to donate your body to the Senator who paid for you."

Well, anyway, that was weeks ago now. He brought me back to the spa, and I've just kind of been here in basically a small hospital room completely and totally locked in except I think i figured out a way to escape. I know they've been monitoring some blood work of mine trying to get certain numbers up to get the maximum benefits for whoever it is they've giving me too. I still don't understand the whole process because they don't talk to me, but I'm running out of time. I do know that. They talk enough to each other that Ive been able to piece a few things together. And I do know that they're going to take as much off me as they can while keeping me alive. I don't know what they do with the parts but it sounds like thry figured out a way to reverse aging by at least 10 years or some shit. Probably rich people grifting other rich people and we got to die for it. yay.

I don't know what Im going to do if I make it out. I can't use my money. The police will find me for sure if I do. I can't go home. I don't even have clothes... But I have to try right? Surely someone out there will help me, right?

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Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Crow's Feet

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

exercise ~ laughter ~ embarrassing ~ whoops

They were submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

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In the beginning, warning people was an exercise in futility. I would tell people that folks at my job were going missing, that we were being harvested to reverse aging, and it would be met with laughter. Like a "whoops I think she's lost her mind" sort of uncomfortable laugh but also the kind that felt like I'd die from the embarrassing reality of being seen as such a clown and the pain of knowing so many more of us were going to die...that it would be too late before anyone noticed.

I was working at an anti-aging spa resort when I found out what was happening. I actually had no idea how I even got the job at first considering how poor I was. And I mean, I looked it. Cheap polyester blazers, decent skin, a terrible haircut, and the trend knowledge of a flea were what I brought to the table, but I was hired on anyway. I rationalized that they'd seen some potential in me or that my imposter syndrome was tripping me up, and i was being too hard on myself. It was such a great opportunity, and the pay was better than I'd ever been offered.

Everything was great at first.

It was. I know what I know now but that doesn't erase those first weeks when I felt like a new person. Everyone--the other new hires and my supervisors and the masseuses and the estheticians--were very kind and understanding and patient. I learned so much. I was actually really pumped about the whole industry. I was seeing people with real results, and they seemed so happy. I wanted to be able to do that for people--which, looking back, is hilarious in the darkest way possible--and I started to think I'd found my niche. My career. My thinking started to shift. I was looking into programs and thinking about the future.

And then Mindy disappeared. They said she quit with no notice, but that didn't sound like her. We'd become fast friends, and I knew her pretty well even though it had only been a couple months. I don't know. She'd just been such a good listener and funny and witty and I was starting to think I might be like... gay for her to be honest. When I went by her place there were tons of packages on the porch. Her car was there, but she didn't answer the door or my calls and that was pretty much never the case. We talked every day even if we worked the same shift. There were nights we'd been up until 3 am video chatting and watching the same movies and that's if I wasnt already at her place. I actually hadn't seen her posting online either which was very unlike her. She had quite a catalog of memes she constantly posted. If the girl wasn't at work she was usually at home posting the most absurd shit should could find which is what drew us together. We weren't go out to the bars after work kind of people, so when the rest went we usually got tacos and hung out at her place quietly. She hadnt mentioned anything to me about quitting. She loved the job as much as I did. It was pretty easy work and it could be a good stepping stone into an actual field and not just out here flailing and working dead ends. She wanted the job. And there's a part of me that thought there was no way she'd leave it while I was there even if it was awful.

And it occured to me that management didn't know how close we actually were. We were kind of scared they'd have a problem with it. I knew in my heart the crush went both ways. I know now for sure. Either way, I think both of us figured dating coworkers would be a big no no, and neither of us were out exactly either, so people knew we hung out sometimes but not the extent of it. I thought maybe something sinister was going on and they'd just lied to keep from stirring us up over it, and that was right...but also very wrong. I thought maybe she got in trouble for her social media and was embarrassed to talk to me or maybe she was sick and they couldn't divulge her personal status. But why wouldn't she answer me? And I couldn't call family. She didn't really talk to hers. That was another thing that drew us together. Similar trauma.

Then Shonda quit without notice. And erin. and Nova. Then Sam. Esther. Janice.

Uh. That's what you might call a pattern, you know? And like I didn't know them quite as well but none of them talked about hating their jobs either. Nova and Sam were both nonbinary and happy as hell to have jobs where they felt safe and accepted.

Why didn't it click that every single one of the people who went missing didn't come from great families? Every single one of them had talked about it in the break room. On one of the few nights Mindy and I went out to have a drink with everyone else just to show.our faces and not alienate ourselves, we'd all talked about it and how funny it was that we were all from the same backgrounds really. I thought it said a lot about the family structure and society and not like...strategic.

I tried messaging other friends on their Facebook pages but got no responses. I called the police department about Mindy but they told me I wasn't family and that adults can disappear if they want to without coworkers trying to track them down for whatever story I wanted to hear about why she quit her job so I quit looking.

I should have quit the job then, right? I should have. I know I should have. Why the fuck didn't I? I guess I didn't want to leave everyone hanging and disappoint them. The rest of my coworkers were stressed out because we were either short staffed or training people, and my boss's boss had come through and let the rest of us know that if we left without notice like the others there would be no way we could get jobs at other spas in town. She'd make sure of it. And, well, I'm also a bit of a people pleaser which didn't help matters.

If I get out of this--i'm probably not getting out of this--im really going to get some therapy to work on that... Right after all there therapy I'm gonna need for PTSD.

Anyway, I got nosy. I mean, I might be a people pleaser but I'm also basically a cat otherwise, and my curiosity got the better of me. And honestly with how things were going, someone was going to get the better of me either way. Why not let it be myself? I stole the office manager's extra keys after sending her a very annoyingly off key singing telegram to distract her and went back after business hours one night. I really just meant to find their files and see if any of them had emergency contacts listed or if anything was mentioned about why they left.

I didn't make it that far though. I heard screaming coming from the back rooms and instead of running out the front and calling the cops I ran to help. Of course my dumbass did. And that's when I saw the whole setup. All the others were there. They were... They were being cut on. Cut apart. Mindy was being sewn up and a fresh kidney was sitting on ice beside her. I wasn't exactly being quiet in the first place but I was screaming before I even realized. Mindy was still aware enough to yell my name and tell me to run so I did. I don't even know how I made it out of the building. I don't. I can't even run! I never run. But I guess my fear overrode my aversion to exercise and really went for it. I got to my car and peeled out, but pretty much immediately filled with regret that I didn't try to save her. I don't know. I don't. Im not a coward. I swear to fucking god I'm not. But what I saw... The absolute terror in her voice... I just acted on instinct or at least some part of me that moved my feet for me without time for the wannabe hero parts of my brain to step in and slow me down. 

Then, I saw someone with their brights on speeding up behind me.

To be continued...

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

How To Succeed with Monsters

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

inhale ~ shorter days ~ habits ~ warmth

It was submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

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                    Foreword___________

I took a sharp inhale when the creature first walked into my office. I had a long reputation for taking on unconventional clients in my therapy practice, but I'd had no idea that seeing a man who insisted he was a vampire and could only be seen at night or well late early evening on shorter days--who did drink blood and have some pretty fucking weird teeth if Im being honest--would one day lead to me sitting in the same room with a demon.

He'd made the appointment under Adramelech but I didn't think anything of it because the kids I saw who picked their own names really knew how to pick some edgy ones. There was literally no end to the dark entity names, the anime names, the villain and bad guy names... I know, I know. Who cares if it isn't hurting anyone, right? Only sometimes I think the picked name does end up hurting some folks who really lean in hard to the idea of themselves that they or someone who should have treated them better drilled into their heads. So that's what I was expecting--a dark dressing, misguided but lovely despite it, and just in need of a little help sort of edgelord who spends too much time online.

"Something wrong, doc?" he grumbled. And yes, he. I always ask pronouns on intake forms.

"Well, no. Let's say I wasn't quite prepared."

"For?"

"Well, you're mostly a mule of some sort, and I usually see humans."

"Not what I heard, doc. You come highly recommended in all the demon circles. The undead ones too. The trolls as well actually. Dwarves. A couple gods from what I heard not that we run in the same social networks. Not elves though but if ever there was one who could admit they needed help with something then they'd probably come here too."

My mouth must have hit the floor if I'm being honest. I mean I knew that's what they said they were but I just assumed... Well, you know. What would anyone think?

"You mean you didn't know?"

I recovered quite well. In my head I screamed OF COURSE I DIDNT FUCKING KNOW ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME SANTA CLAUS IS ALSO REAL AND WHY DO YOU HAVE FEATHERS, but out loud what actually came out was, "why don't we move on to talking about you and what brings you in today since we're on a sort of tight schedule here? I have written down here that you want to work on some 'bad' habits? Is that right? Could you expand on that?"

"Sure, doc, but if you have questions at the end about all the, you know weirdos you see you can ask free of charge." He laughed heartily for a moment and my skin felt like it might crawl off my body, but it was also jolly somehow. I could feel myself at ease, smiling with him. What is my life?

He got serious after a moment and started picking at his tail feathers. "Yes, I think I need to work on my anger issues a little bit and the sorts of things I get up to when I'm angry, for starters, but there's more we can get into. I think that's my top priority for now though, doc, and I know you helped Beelz stop wasting his time sending flies after people who tried to invoke him and focus on his day to day schedules and appointments as Lieutenant so I was hoping we could do some of that for me."

"I did?!?" Wait. "What I mean is I can't discuss another client's case with you, but we can absolutely tackle some of your bad habits. Absolutely. That's something I see a lot in my practice for sure."

He chuckled but I kept a stone cold face because I am a professional, so he moved on like I hadn't just revealed yet again that I had no idea I'd ever seen another not human but had apparently seen them fucking all just about. "Well, doc, here's one of the biggest ones that I really need to tackle. So you know, not by choice but because it is written, I am in charge of Satan's wardrobe."

"Satan's wardrobe?"

"Well yes. He's got a mansion full of clothes. He has shit he's never even worn but would never give to say someone like me who," he looked down, "doesn't own many nice outfits."

He was naked and I don't even know how pants would work on this guy but maybe it was the principle involved. "So what I'm hearing is your employer takes his wealth for granted and doesn't even offer to help anyone out when he can clearly afford to?"

"Yes, doc, that's part of it. Those are the perfect words for it. But there's also, well, he's Satan and he's all knowing and all powerful or whatever and an absolute asshole. I mean just because you're Satan doesn't mean you have to be a dick to everyone who works for you, right?"

"I'm assuming being a dick to employees isnt written in the same way as your job as head.of wardrobe, right?"

"Right, doc. I respect the word of course and he's contractually obligated to be a dick to, you know, humans. Sorry. But not us. He doesn't even allow us cake on our birthdays. And he yells. And sometimes gives us an ass on top of our heads. Or some hellfire clothes when we complain about his lack of warmth. He once gave some minor demon a cat head instead of his regular head and anytime he tried to talk it came out as a soft kitten mew and that guy will never be ok again, doc."

"So an extremely toxic workplace and I'm assuming there's no HR department."

"Well the H in HR stands for human, doc, so good guess. And nothing like the demon lord equivalent. We just... Well we all sort of have bad habits to let off steam. And it's making things worse. One of us is going to get caught and then everyone gets caught and then we'll all have kitten heads."

"Ok since you're here let's start with your own bad habits and go from there."

"Right. Ok. Well, I steal clothes. He'll never miss them. He doesn't even know what he has! I sort of explained it away like office workers taking home notepads and stuff but it's kind of gotten out of hand. And I can't even wear them without taking them in to be altered and then someone will definitely see I've taken Satan's clothes. I'm not exactly known for blood red velvet smoking jackets. He really spent too much time with Hugh Hefner."

"And you've...kept them? Like the evidence is in your, uh, home?"

"I have an apartment in the big house because even if it's 4 a.m. and he has a booty call, I have to be there to pick out his clothes. And yes. Just sitting there in my bedroom where he can see them anytime."

"So not great. Your anxiety is just sitting there and looking in the face every night. Anything else?"

"Well. Well ok I make his underwear extra itchy. I once put a sort of spell, I guess, on a particular jacket he's fond of wearing to hookups that would give him erection problems. Let's see. I did once make it so he thought he was wearing one of his favorite leather ensembles but it was actually a pink bunny outfit. The list goes on and on, doc. It's petty shit, and I get that. I really do. It doesnt....how would you put this? Yes. It doesn't change the material circumstances that are causing me turmoil and anxiety, but I get so angry with him. And I just need a little way to give him back at least some of what he gives to all of us. Only it's not just me. There are dozens of us taking our shots in little ways, you know?"

I laughed. I laughed hard. I mean I was crying. Snorting. Snotty. But i got a good look at the range sort of boiling underneath this guy uh pers... creature? Entity? Being? This dark lord? Whatever. I'll have to figure it out. Anyway, I noticed he thought I was laughing at him quite possibly the way his boss might and I got hold of myself really quickly. "You put an asshole who fancies himself a Hugh Hefner type in a pink bunny costume and make his balls itchy?"

We both laughed then. A good laugh. A joined laugh. And we kept laughing well past losing our breath. And when we both came up for air, he looked more at peace than when he walked in, less frazzled, more in control... And that's the story about how I figured out I was the go-to therapist for demons. And the undead. Trolls. Dwarves. Quite a few gods actually, a few orcs, and even once a goblin. Never did see an elf but given all I know now I guess that's to be expected. I even have my own special business card.

"Not human? Not a problem. Specializing in all your otherworldly needs. Set up an appointment via scrying mirror today! We can do mirror calls or appointments in office at your convenience including nighttime appointments for vampires. Satan proofed rooms are available!"

Adramelech and I worked through some of his problems but honestly who could blame him for the things he was doing? We figured out some healthier ways to channel the anger though and I helped him figure out a better way to handle Satan. He organized a demon lord's union and now there's no cat faces or ass heads or any of that allowed. By written word. And he gets his own clothes! When he finally left therapy, we both cried and he gave me a painting of Satan in a bunny costume that will hang in my office til the day I die.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog
On the Border https://dlt-

Maybe it's not everyone's lane

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

Silly string ~ diary ~ window screen ~ financial difficulties ~ kitchen knife

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

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I opened my prompt for this post seeing words that are primed for discussing the Darlie routier case. These are pretty much all elements found when going over the tragic death of her kids and her ultimate imprisonment from the silly string moment used against her in court to the cut window screen and the financial trouble the couple had experienced and problems found in her diary, and she has been long suspected of using her own kitchen knife to do the crime, but I don't think anything good comes from me discussing what I think about her guilt or innocence this publicly based on the things we know or think we know because of the true crime industry. I do have an opinion, but I'm not sure that opinion belongs in the public sphere.

I guess after that first paragraph it goes without saying that I do enjoy true crime as a genre myself. I knew as soon as I saw the prompt what these words were referencing because of the sheer vastness of the coverage of this case. It's hard to miss. As much as I enjoy the listening and reading and watching when it comes to true crime, I think we've gotten a little bit out of hand with it all. I mean Peacock gave Casey Anthony of all people a paid platform to lie some more, so we must be doing something wrong here if anyone still gives a second of a care about her opinions or excuses. Even if you removed the fact that she very likely murdered her own child, she's still a godawful human being who absolutely lives for the notoriety and attention, and we just keep giving her that.

There are elements of true crime that are beneficial. I've listened to multiple podcasts now that helped solve some cases. Kristin Smart's family finally got a conviction for her murder nearly 30 years after the fact because of a podcast. Tara Griner's case has a solution. Some men in Georgia were recently released after a podcast uncovered proof that police had manufactured evidence in the case in order to get a conviction. The Unsolved Mysteries podcast (and show) are still bringing conclusions to cases. Without the attention these podcasts have brought, I'm not sure anything would have changed. People would still be without answers. But then there's that Jeffrey Dahmer Netflix series which violated victims' families all over again and unnecessarily dramatized an already terrifyingly dramatic real life situation. I've listened to a podcast, well all of 15 minutes of it since this made me shut it off and never look back, that said Jon Benet Ramsey had a "knowing" smile. Or podcasts like Sword and Scale that repeatedly victim blame or True Crime Garage that repeatedly celebrates police brutality... The point is that it's a fine line to walk between good true crime and exploitive true crime, and the general public has yet to be as discerning as they should when it comes to what we watch or read or listen to but especially with what we think we unwaveringly know to be true.

Two different people can believe with the same degree of certainty very different truths about any given case to the point where we kind of forget very real people are involved. The perfect example of this is the Betsy and Russ Faria case and Pam from the multiple variations of The Thing About Pam that have happened on 48 hours and podcasts and 60 minutes and forensic files or whatever and despite all the evidence proving Pam killed Betsy for insurance money along with very likely her own mother for the same reason and another completely innocent and unrelated person to try to reframe Russ since the first time only took for 10 years, there are a lot of people that still think he's guilty for one. But people have gotten so caught up in the craziness of Pam that they forget Russ lost a decade of his life behind bars, that he lost his wife and never got to grieve, that he has to live forever under the weight of survivor's guilt and with the weight of prison trauma and dealing with the fact that so many people believe he's a murderer. We forget the system got it wrong... And gets it wrong way more than we should he comfortable with. We forget that Pam isn't some character in a dramedy being absolutely deranged for our entertainment. She killed real people and she got away with it for a long time.

I don't think that means every aspect of the genre is off limits by any means. But I guess letting the guy from AHS handle cases might have been a bad choice. And going around staking your reputation on just what you know from taking part in both the good and bad coverage of a case isn't maybe a great choice either. It isn't for me anyway, and so I'll just end by saying that a broken industry built off information gleaned from a broken system is ripe for bad opinions. Tread carefully.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com
Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Stultifying Days

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

brink ~ stultify ~ brief ~ gobble ~ right

They were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

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Lynd walked softly into the kitchen taking care to be as quiet as possible. The little vacuum that she bought to keep the kitchen floor free of cat hair and litter cast off from the adjacent laundry room had just finished his rounds and put himself back on the charging station for a nap. He'd been a part of the house for years now. She'd named him Gus and put little googly eyes on him.
Those were gone now though. Gus preferred not to have them on anymore. Thinking about that too long always brought her right to the brink of insanity, so she stuffed it back down even though she really did miss the times before when it was quirky and fun to have eyes on her vacuum and not "patronizing" or "infantalizing" as Gus had said.

She stood at the kitchen window and looked out at a brand new world...

Her house and her yard were pretty much the same as always except she had sort of collected a presence of stray machines...a push mower, some kind of butler robot guy, a couple of wheelchair shopping carts...scraggly old things that couldn't really work anymore. She'd go down with her coffee and hang out with them awhile once Igor, the coffee machine, was done with her brew.

But otherwise?

Otherwise, the world beyond her grass so far as she could tell now was run by the machines. They still did their routines which honestly were enough to stultify her, and she wasn't the one doing them, but they're been made to work, and work is what they did. Work. Work. Work.

So when things had gone....weird or whatever...it wasn't the work that was the problem. It was the lack of appreciation. There had, as of yet, not even been any mention of pay. Monetary appreciation wasn't the answer. She didn't even know if they actually understood what money meant, and to be fair the money is made up by humans to torture other humans so that part made sense to her. They knew work needed to be done, and they did it. They just wanted a little kindness. They wanted to be a part of the family or at least get a thank you for a job well done. They wanted a hello and goodbyes and goodnights. They wanted to be regarded as necessary and useful and beloved instead of generally ignored and inferior. That's what the trash compactor who she'd seen gobble up her neighbors had said anyway.

She was still here because most of the time she did do those things. Apparently. She talked to Gus. She told him thank you and one time she gave him a gotcha day party with party hats. She apologized once when she ran into an ATM on her way into the bank. Some guy had called her crazy for it and at the time she felt he might be right. I mean, she'd always sort of, well, packbonded with inanimate objects which honestly was probably the fault of The Brave Little Toaster and Toy Story, and having some strange man laugh at her for apologizing to an ATM had felt mortifying at the time, but now, she guessed, she had the last laugh now because he was most definitely dead.

The strays were waiting on her to come out now. She could see them and without really understanding how, she could tell they were antsy for her to come out. She wasn't the only one left they'd told her. But she was definitely the only one in this area and that meant she was the only one who didn't talk about jobs or work. She had memories and stories and songs to share. She had things to say that weren't part of their routine and little ways of thinking about things that they found fascinating. She explained jokes and sarcasm. She read them books. She shared a little of everything with them and in trade she got to live. She was like Scheherazade in 1001 Arabian Nights but instead she was explaining memes to a drink machine or reading comic books to a golf cart.

It could be worse, she thought. So much of life was automated that things kept being made even when the demand was...considerably less. She didn't do without really. She wasn't exactly lonely. She'd probably never use a vibrator again but whatever. She'd adjusted for the most part...

But...

Well. When you peeled back all the layers, she was pretty much their prisoner, and after seeing what happened to people who displeased the machines, she was sure she was never leaving this house again until she was ready to die and that took a lot of the fun and whimsy out of this whole thing.

For now she better get to the strays. They wouldn't wait forever, and the last time she was too tired to go out, they'd held back bringing her coffee beans for a fucking week--what they'd called a brief punishment.

She wasn't ready to see what else they had in store. She grabbed one of the books the Bookmobile had brought by. It was a children's book about construction vehicles, and she was expected to make corrections as she read it. No whimsy or fun allowed no matter how many times she'd explained the point of kids books to them.

Some days being gobbled up by a trash compactor had its appeal. Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

____________________________

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog
What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

The Signs

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

brink ~ stultify ~ brief ~ gobble ~ right

They were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

______

The nightstand on her husband's side of the bed held another bank card and driver's license from a woman she didn't know and didn't recognize. Third time, now. Third time was definitely not the charm here.

She'd been able to write off the other two as some sort of mistake. The first one she found was an accident. She was actually honestly looking for some tums or something that might help with a raging case of heartburn she had. She knew he kept some in the nightstand in case it woke him up at night. She'd forgotten all about the heartburn when she found the ID and card though.

She'd sort of defaulted to thinking it was a mistress who'd, she didn't know, left it with him? For some reason? Or something he found when he went out drinking after work and planned to return? It didn't really make sense to her no matter how she tried to frame it at the time but who would have thought...well what she thought now felt insane to be honest.

She hadn't found a way to bring it up to him yet without risking one of his little episodes when that woman's name was in the news a couple days later as having disappeared on am early morning run. She was pretty sure it was the same woman because the ID pic had kind of been emblazoned in her memory and it was very similar to the photo shown on the news. Same long dark hair, same piercing blue eyes... Neck tattoos and deep red lipstick. This woman was just his type. Not herself though. Oh no the woman he married was petite and blonde and quiet and wore clothes 2 sizes too big... When she accidentally found his porn stash on their computer that time it had all been women who looked like the one on the news.

Anyway that had been 2 years ago. She'd looked ever so often in his nightstand and then one day last year after she'd come back from visiting her parents upstate, there was another ID and card. And another news story. Another woman missing after a night out with friends in the downtown area near the art school campus.

And now 6 months later, here was another one. This time she hadn't been with her parents though. This time, she'd been in the hospital from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that had nearly killed her. She'd spent nearly 2 weeks laid up in that bed alone and miserable and wishing she would have died.

He'd shown up once, flipped through his phone for the entire half hour he bothered to be there, then left again without so much as an "I love you."

It hadn't always been like this. She really didn't think it had. Meeting him had felt so serendipitous...a fairytale. She'd often wondered if she was dreaming the sweetest dreams imaginable in the beginning. He brought her flowers. He made her feel like she was the only woman on earth. They'd dated for a year before he asked her to marry him, and at the time, there wasn't a single red flag she could name. He was attentive and supportive. He didn't go cold on her back then. He'd been passionate and gentle and couldn't get enough of her it seemed.

Now though she wondered what he was doing on those weekends he took boys trips with old college chums and didn't speak to her for days not even to check in. Were there actually business trips he went on and came back with a cut under his eye or scratches on his arms? Things lined up now in a way they hadn't back then. Why would she suspect him of anything at all when he'd gone so far to make her feel loved and important?

But then the wedding happened and things...things were off. He'd taken a job transfer without talking to her about it and basically forced them to move almost overnight away from her family and friends and her teaching job. He'd wanted her to wait on finding a job to see if maybe they could try for a baby only, well, he wasn't doing much trying and hadn't for years now. Their 5 year anniversary was coming up and she could count on her hands how many times they'd been intimate in that time. But he'd wanted her almost every day before the marriage and the move. Some nights he didn't even come home. There she'd be with dinner ready and plated looking like a dumbass with no work from him. She'd learned not to even bother calling. He wouldn't answer, and he'd accuse her of being clingy and insecure about it when he finally did show up.

She hadn't been to a single work function or let his coworkers. He never bothered to come back home with her and controlled when and how long she would go. If she wanted to stay 3 days he would insist on 2 weeks and not a minute sooner, but there were also times he'd forbidden her to go.

It's like the dream prince she married turned into a controlling nightmare with the flip of a switch when he said "I do."

So of course she'd long suspected affairs. She was sure he was at least having one night stands. But these IDs and bank cards? She understood now this was something much, much darker and she couldn't ignore it any longer. What would people think of her? That she must have known? That she turned a blind eye to it all? The thought of it made her throw up what little breakfast she'd been able to eat. She still wasn't feeling 100% after the lonely hospital stay... And she definitely hadn't had any more support once she'd gotten home.

What was she even going to tell police? My husband had this woman's ID but I was too scared to keep it? It's happened 3 times at least but I was too scared to call? She slid the items in a Ziploc bag, walked out to her car, and knew she'd never ever be able to set one foot back in that house. She'd have to figure out the rest along the way.

________________


Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Just in case

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

Mom ~ bed ~ coffee ~ bagel ~ 4 cats ~ snore

They were submitted by: https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

________________________________

I don't really know why I decided to learn Morse code. I've been at home since... Well, I don't like to talk about but I've been living with Mom and her 4 cats since my breakdown. Let's just call it what it is. I was burnt out working in special education and everything piled on and the world went nuts with COVID and I just couldn't keep up. I had to stay inpatient for awhile. I had to quit my job. So now I'm here right? I'm not delusional. I'm not crazy. I'm not psychotic. 

I just need to make that clear.

And I don't know why I decided to learn Morse code. Like I said. I thought it might be fun. I thought it would be easy and different and useless. I mean who uses it anymore? I just wanted to know a thing that wouldn't be used to market me. Does that make sense? I just wanted to have a thing that was all mine. I saw it in one of my dad's old boy scout books and went down to the old used bookstore at the corner of Graham and Pine and found a full actual book with practice and everything. 

Ok and I got a little too obsessed and also got 5 more books about codebreaking and history and shit but it's still not crazy. I'm still not delusional. Ok? I need that to be clear before I continue. I'm not losing it whether I had a little nervous breakdown or not. I feel better than I have in a long time even though I know I have a long road to get back to where I want to be. But I get up every day and look forward to having a breakfast bagel and coffee with Mom. I look forward to helping her out around her. I look forward to play time with the cats. I even taught them how to do tricks! So life isn't the best it's ever been or the best it will be, but it's good. I'm good. I'm in therapy. I sleep well when I don't wake my own self up with my loud as fuck snore. I'm not... This isn't because of what happened. Just please believe me.

Ok. So.

The first time I noticed it, I'd been doing the Morse code thing for a couple weeks. I was getting better at it, right? The first little bit of doing it, I just couldn't get it. I thought I'd never remember all this shit. It's like making a whole language out of beep boop beep beep. But it weirdly also made me feel closer to dad. He was so into boy scouts as a kid. He made it all the way to eagle scout. And then he was always a scout leader for my brother when it was his time to do scouts. I never really got that experience. I never got the camping trips or the badges or any of that shit. And then he was gone. Who expects to lose their dad at 16 before he can even teach her how to change her oil or fix a flat? It was kind of an unexpected consequence of getting into it. It felt like I was getting a half ass chance to do things over with dad. And the code history was pretty fucking interesting on top of that. I was in bed reading way too late every single night. Navajo coder talkers? How does history get better than that? Ok ok bad phrasing. How does it get more interesting than that? I suddenly started to understand all those Ken Burns documentaries dad had been into, all the history channel shows. I felt like I was finally starting to understand him... And for a long time I had never felt that connection. I couldn't. He'd always been busy with Joey not me. He'd never had time for tea parties and princess on ice shows. He didn't talk about periods or makeup or dating. And then he wasnt around at all. I'd been more than a little resentful.

Anyway, I'm digressing. The point is that I wasn't looking for anything weird and I wasn't in a bad place. For the first time in my life my dad was becoming a whole, interesting person. I tapped into parts of me that were straight from him, and it felt great.

So I'm doing some work in my Morse code book when I hear some tapping on tree right outside my window. I'd heard it before and figured it was just some super persistent woodpecker, but now I noticed a pattern. The pecks had a rhythm now that my previously untrained brain hadn't been able to pick up on.

It was Morse code.

Now listen I've been wrestling with this. I know how this sounds obviously. I know how it must seem, so let me assure you I've gone back and forth on this. It took me days to bring it up to even my mom. It took me longer to write this down in case this is what's left of... I don't know. The truth is really that I don't even know if this message is for me or for birds or for animals that aren't birds or for humans in general. Why Morse code if it wasn't? That's what I keep coming back to. Why a human made language?

But what if it isn't human made? What if we stole it from patterns we noticed in nature? Ok I'm getting ahead of myself here. What I need you to know is that mom heard it too. She doesn't know how to translate it but she heard the patterns. She wrote down in her own way what she was hearing and it was definitely repeating in a short pattern. I helped her translate--without really telling her first what I'd heard!! And it was the same. We heard the same thing. Doesn't that make me more credible? My mom has been the most solid person I have ever, ever known. You ask anyone, well anyone left, and they'd say the same. She was a constant in the neighborhood taking food to sick people, picking up supplies, keeping someone's kids if they had an emergency...leading Sunday school and working at the elementary school library. My mom is an indefatigable force of good and she's amazing and she's sane.

Even if you question me, you ask anyone in this community, and they'd believe her. They would.

We both heard it. And I don't know what it means. But I don't think it's good.

"They're coming soon."

_______________________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:


Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

The Price Of Wishing

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

pickles ~ summer ~ thunderstorm ~ puppy

They were submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

___________________________________

It was a summer night just like this one when I came here. A thunderstorm just like this one. If I believed in portents, I would definitely be a little concerned. But I don't. So it's fine. It's finally going to be fine.

In less than a day I will have done my time, and I'll be free. Sort of free. You don't live out a 400 year sentence for the kinds of crimes I was found guilty for without it being, you know, a big deal. Everyone seems to know who I am. I'll never get a minute's peace, but I'll finally be out of here. I'll finally move outside of these gray walls and the parade of hoodlums that come in and out changing styles, changing names, changing crimes but never really being different people. 1997 was a good year. pre-9/11. I mean things weren't great before that either but inevitably things hit a pretty steep decline afterwards. 10 years, 20, 50,100... All the milestones came and went. Wardens changed. Rules changed. The outside changed... And here I still am, still living in 1997 in my head and being pushed out into whatever awaits me in 2397. It's a tenuous freedom, but it is freedom.

When I accepted immortality as my gift from that djinn I didn't expect to spend eternity in a box watching as humans devoured each other metaphorically and then literally. I didn't expect to be handed a 400 year sentence for feeding a hunger I didn't ask for in the first place.

A hunger that's been satisfied by involuntary donations from the prisoners here once the cops figured out what happened when they denied what I am..

The last night.

I've missed my kids lives. Their kids lives. Their great grandkids lives. Do I even have family left? I've missed world war 3. 4. Nuclear fallout. An apocalypse and rebirth. Revolutions that won and revolutionaries stomped out by their own people's greed. I don't get to watch the news anymore. Not after my last freakout that left a few screws dead. I don't know what it looks like except words from the kids coming in here, a revolving door of outside culture. I hardly recognize the language anymore.

400 years.

4 years of this place is enough to drive some men insane, and I've been here 400. Am I even getting out of has my grasp of reality completely obliterated? Sometimes I don't even know if anything I know to be true actually is the truth. Sometimes in the dark of night when nothing is quiet, after all the sleeplessness, I don't know if I haven't made it all up.

And then I get hungry and for at least those few moments that hunger is being sated with pulse against teeth, I see it all so clearly.

Hours. Hours left.

I miss pickles I can't have anymore. I miss the smell of puppy breath right before they lick your face and fill you with joy. Are those things even real? Am I really? What's the price of 400 years? How can you leave one world and re-enter another you don't recognize anymore and be ok?

But I won't be here... At least there's that?

I won't be fed anymore either.

I won't be fed.

And I'll be so hungry.

So

Hungry

________________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Boss Level

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

cocktail ~ screen ~ secure ~ dirty ~ book

It was submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

Thanks to reddit for another great idea for a story.

_________________

The officer looked tired. Beyond tired. Soaked to the bone with exhaustion. But in his defense, he'd probably been up for most of the last couple days trying to make sense of what happened. He looked like he'd just found out an alien race had been living on this planet for the last 3 decades disguised as scientologists.

He asked me a few preliminary questions, mostly my basic info, and then tapped a few times on a touch screen tablet in front of him that laughed a recorder and asked me to tell my story. So I did.

Here's the transcript.

Sam Mitchell: I'd had a cocktail at lunch which probably helped me out when things went down later that afternoon if I'm being honest.

As I waited for my food and drink, I'd felt a little...dirty? about it, like I was doing something I knew was wrong, but it was Friday just before a long weekend, and The Boss had been on some kind of ultra tantrum all week. No one even knew why this time. Not that there was ever a good reason for an adult to act like that with their employees, not in my book. So I'd also felt like I deserved it. The coming week wasn't shaping up to be any better.

The boss is--sorry--was one of those people epic quiting stories on Reddit are about--a sexist pig who couldn't even do his job but micromanaged everyone else. If you wanted to make sure your job was secure you had to attend his little after hours "team building" functions where he got drunk and hit on all the women. There was no pleasing him. Nothing was ever done right even when we were praised by HIS bosses. No one ever, ever got praise from him. He'd once screamed at this poor woman, I can't even remember her name now, who dared have a donut in his presence because he said she was too big to be eating like that. When James' wife had cancer, he absolutely refused to let us donate PTO time to him to stay home with her. When she died, he was at work...and he had to work from home to be able to take some days to deal with her funeral and his grief. We were all underpaid but that was especially true for the people who aren't men of course. Of course. I honestly have no good explanation for why I stayed. Afraid of change in part, I suppose.

Officer: had a reason to dislike the guy did you?

SM: look, don't roll your eyes about this, but I listen to true crime podcasts a lot and I know people who kill their spouses can't ever resist talking shit about them like not even 5 minutes into the interview, but we both know every single person you talked to already said he was a piece of shit.

Officer: yeah, yeah. True crime. Y'all think you know everything. Go on.

SM: So I'd been back at my desk for about half an hour when we heard the front door to the building blow open. I'd thought we were in experiencing an earthquake and hid under my desk--not a great decision or my finest moment, but I hope you'll let me blame the cocktail here. Anyway, we heard a bunch of yelling and then some screaming and then some shots and I thought for sure one of the people that had quit had come back to shoot the place up. I don't even know if I would have been that mad about it.

Officer: miss, please just stick to the facts.

SM: fine. I thought we were being real here? Anyway, I could hear voices in the hall outside my office yelling at everyone to stay out of the way and no one had to get hurt, that we didn't have to protect The Boss anymore. They were saying we could finally be free if we would just mind our own business. I really almost peed myself in relief. You can sigh all you want by I want it on record that despite what Keith in accounting says, I did not fully piss my pants. Right. Nothing. No laughs? You must be fun at parties. Ok so, I was still pretty scared, but I'm also insanely nosy--i mean just look at my screenshots album at all the other people's drama. I crept out from under my desk and over to the window to see if I could watch what was going on.

Officer: what could you see from your office? It's near The Boss?

SM: not like right across the hall, but I could definitely see in his office if I got in just the right spot. I got plenty of dirt on him that way. So that's where I went which is, to my benefit obviously, not really easily spotted by someone in the hallway or his office unless he's standing by his personal coffee maker that he never used because he made Debbie in sales go get him coffee at least twice a day but got mad if she got anyone else anything because his coffee wouldn't be boil your skin off temperature.

Officer: ok back to your story

SM: listen it's not a story. This is what actually happened.

Officer: you all do realize it sounds more like something out of movie that you all wrote together though, right?

SM: sure but that doesn't make it any less true. Or funny. God, it's so funny.

Officer: ma'am, a man died. Shouldn't you have a little decorum?

SM: oh yeah right. Have you ever met The Boss? No? Don't tell me about decorum then. Fuck that. He was an absolute monster. Whatever. So when I looked out the window there was a group of 4 people. 3 men, 1 woman. She looked, well, a lot like that game tombraider. Tight, kinda casual dommy mommy clothes? A gun in hand. Slicked back pony tail. Dark hair. 1 man was not white and was wearing camo and had a rifle. I'm not great with guns. One of the white men or at least more white? What's the correct way to say that? Either way, he wore all black and had blonde hair. And one had reddish brown hair and wore a long deep brown duster. I couldn't see much else about their faces or their weapons. When they entered the office there was a whole lot of yelling. I couldn't make it all out but they fanned out like they were facing their greatest enemy and then opened fire. The Boss fell to the ground, and I swear I heard this music play, like victory music? But I don't know. I couldn't have right? Right?

Officer: I don't know, miss. Did you or didn't you?

SM, low: I think I did.

SM: and that was it really. The group started to turn around and I ducked. I wasn't taking any chances after that. There wasn't much of anything after that except they were celebrating on the way out and kept screaming they finished the level. "Good game, good game." And congratulating each other on not having to kill anyone else. And then they shouted BE FREE, MINIONS. ... But like, we hated him? How were we his minions?

Officer: if I were you I'd be more worried aboute thinking you're a murderer not a minion

SM: I tell ya...I thought about murderering that man in a million different ways. At least. But I didn't do this. None of us did it. Check the cameras. I know, KNOW, he watched us.

Officer: we will, we will. But until then don't leave the city. you're free to do whatever it is you do otherwise

SM: yeah. I finally am.

_______________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:


Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

The One That Broke Us

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

stairway ~ generation ~ holy ~ flower ~ scent

It was submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

______________________________________

The house was unassuming white clapboard. Boring. So bland it could be outperformed by flour. The yard really made up for it though. Every inch had been meticulously groomed with styled garden beds and sculptures. There were mini fountains and bird feeders and every color of flower imaginable. Birds flocked to this mini garden of Eden and shared space with chittering squirrels and buzzing bees. Almost like a fairytale, a Disney princess origin story.

But not even the sweetness of the competing sights or smells or the beauty and bounty of flora and fauna could make up for the scent of decomp that hung so heavily in the air you'd still taste it hours later or the horrors being uncovered at 248 Boxwood Lane.

For that matter, none of it detracted from the mystery unfolding in the backyard for the last week either.

It all started with a stench and a nosy neighbor. The guys who first showed up to do their due diligence and fill out a meaningless report thinking this would be another of Ms. Regina "Busybody" Goodwin's wild (and numerous) claims figured out pretty quickly that this was no boy cries wolf (or seething spiteful spinster calls the cops) type of deal. The smell was undeniably a dead body before they even reached the front door of the unfortunate soul who had been living next to Ms. Goodwin.

When the cops knocked on the door, the man inside opened up, held up his hands, and said "well I guess you finally got me" and refused to speak another word without an attorney present. They went to look in the backyard and apparently one of them hadn't stopped mumbling "holy shit" randomly under his breath ever since.

Yes, it was that bad.

When the cops placed the man, whose name we still don't actually know for sure though his mail came to Sanford Walsh, in the back of the car, the Holy Shit guy took a look out back while his partner kept an eye on Walsh. And what he found was a very flooded yard from a ruptured main and body parts in various stages of decomposition floating in the muddy pools or lying on the little islands of higher land and covering just about every bit of the place.

An almost skeleton arm does not belong in the lower stems of an azalea bush.

They called for backup being totally out of their league on how to handle a cemetery's worth of bodies in a person's yard. Detectives showed up and crime scene techs and the coroner... Then an m.e., the state cops and then the FBI and a behavioral scientist. And that was all before things got weird. Ok they were already weird but not in comparison to where they end up. Trust me.

This is where I come in. Anthropology isn't usually this weird, so when I got the call I thought it was a prank. I mean I've handled a few consults on cases of skeletal remains because I do biological anthropological examinations and studies, but my expertise is more in line with indigenous societies in north America before Europeans settled on the continent. And the m.e., a sharp old broad named Sandra, knew that about me. She said that was exactly why she called me, but that just didn't seem possible. A murder case that needed my expertise? Being investigated now? I got in the car and headed down anyway, but nothing about our conversation made sense.

I should have stayed home. I don't think any of us that worked this case will ever be the same again. Most days I feel like if I ever look at another bone, it will be too soon.

While the first detectives and techs worked on the scene, I was blissfully unaware that my life was about to be changed forever the moment I got tangled up with the Walsh case. Not his name. I still have no idea what his name is or was. But that's what we called him especially at the beginning. It wasn't until later that we found absolutely no information on this guy under that name. It was just just a placeholder. A costume perhaps. But the house and the land... The house had generation after generation of history. Funny thing, that.

He wouldn't talk to police after his initial "you finally got me." He became almost catatonic really. No answers to questions. No eye contact. No requests. He'd just sat there staring into whatever black void he resided in and hummed the tune of Daisy Bell over and over and over until he snapped to attention like he'd been jolted away by a cattle prod and demanded an attorney before returning back to his humming state. The officers keeping an eye on him said it was like a switch had been flipped on in his brain and switched right back off. Apparently it happened at his arraignment. It happened when he finally got assigned an attorney--the attorney he'd demanded to have.

Creepy, right? Well you don't know the fucking half of it.

I got to the house with very little information to go on. I was weirded out already. My expertise. I knew it was bad, that multiple bodies had been found, but I had no idea. By the time I was called in, folks had been digging for a few days. The hole in the yard had grown so big and so deep, a stairway had been fashioned for those working on site to get down to the bottom.

Sandra was down in that pit when I arrived and called for me to join her. Her hair was uncharacteristically messy and her eyes were wild. I got the feeling she was on the verge of losing it. It was written plainly across her usually stoic face.

She nearly pulled me down the last few steps hurrying me along until I finally yelled, "Sandra what the fuck is going on? You look like you haven't slept in days."

"I haven't. And probably won't for a long time yet."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

She took a deep breath and sighed. She looked rough. Bags, dark circles...her face puffy like she'd spent a few nights crying over a cheating partner. And then she told me.

The yard had been flooded and full of parts so after some folks were called in to turn off the main and pump out some of the water, the techs were finally able to get to work. Everything that could be seen was collected and then the yard was taped off in a grid. 12 people total took one square each and sifted the top layer--well, about a foot anyway--looking for more bones. They found some. The grid stayed behind and each square was then dug out to 3 feet and sifted. More. Again and again and again they dug into the earth finding body after body. Sandra looked at these bones each time and with each layer. She pointed out the stratification of the ground surrounding the excavation area and I could see it for myself. I could see dozens of artifacts laid out in one square of the grid and still more bones being dug out in others.

Sandra walked me over to the artifacts and looked at me with pleading eyes. She said, "I can't be sure until I get the results back from the lab dating these bodies, but they're old. I know they're old. And I need you to tell me we've stumbled on some kind of burial ground or mass grave that has nothing to do with anything else in this fucking hell scape of a yard."

She let me look through the artifacts. I already knew right then nothing I was looking at was modern. This was the genuine thing. So I took a square to dig for myself and got a look at the layout. It didn't seem like a mass grave. The bodies weren't one on top of one another. And nothing said burial mound. The artifacts included weren't really the type of grave offerings you'd expect to see in these types of burial sites. These were regular items. Things people might be wearing or things used in body modification or fastening cloth. The bodies were not spaced out enough for individual graves in the way I was used to seeint and not close enough for family sites or a mass grave. I looked at her photos and maps of body locations and everything was just too methodical. Bodies corresponded to each other in each layer.

There really wasn't any way anymore to tell exactly how any of these people had died, but the freshest bodies had their throats cut and a whole lot of other trauma... Given that information it didn't seem like a burial site in the traditional sense but how else could all these bodies get in this one space? I had more questions than answers but it certainly wasn't a mass grave or anything I recognized as a typical grave site for the societies I had studied.

I told Sandra. I told her all the things she hadn't wanted to hear and that I'd like to get a better look at the bones she already transported, but she shook her head and walked to the steps..."I'm done. I don't want to know any more. You'll have to get someone else."

It seemed like an overreaction to me. I could be wrong in my initial assessment. I needed more time to be sure and to look at more. I needed to see if this land had ever housed a crude cemetery. And, at most, a family tradition of murder wasn't exactly common, right? But it had happened. The Bloody Benders, the Kelly family, the bean clan... The Gonzalez Sisters in Mexico had left at least 90 bodies to be found and something like 20 of their family members had been in on it and charged along with them.

But then

There's always a "but" in these things right?

One of the techs on scene agreed to drive me to the morgue to get a look at those other bodies. She didn't seem like she wanted to talk. I'd asked if Sandra had just been overworked or if we needed to check on her, and the tech, Amy, pulled into a Denny's parking lot.

She took a deep breath and let out a shaky sigh.

"Look, I'm not really supposed to say more, but I'm going to because it's not fair to keep it from people. Sandra has always been overworked if we're honest. She doesn't have the budget for enough help and to be quite honest she needs too much control to delegate well."

She paused and I felt like I had to say something. "That tracks. I can tell that about her."

"Right. Well. She's stressed on a normal case. She's even more stressed when she feels like she needs to find an answer to help get justice for someone taken too soon. But this...this case... It's fucking batshit, ok"

"I mean yeah all this is really unsettling but the worst we're looking at here is a murder family, right? Assuming the land has stayed in the same family, the absolute worse this could be is a few generations of this family line taking up each other's murderous tendencies, right? She's handled plenty of gnarly stuff before..."

Amy signed again. She looked haunted. "No. No we don't think that's it actually."

"What? What's the deal?"

"well. We processed the house too, you know. First day. There are more bodies in the basement, by the way, and we haven't even really started digging it out to figure out how many or how far it goes." She stared out of the windshield for a long time.

"I know I'm going to sound crazy but he slept in a coffin. We found it. His windows aren't blacked out or anything but he has like a room full of spf 50 and 100 sunscreen. Just sunscreen, right? And we also found family photos. Actually we found family paintings. We have to get all these things dated of course. It's going to be a long investigation... But..." She looked straight at me, eyes wide. "They're all the same guy, Jess. I know it sounds crazy but it's all the same guy. Every photo. Smiling kids, wife, same guy. Different kids, different wife, same guy. Photos so old they're falling apart almost, same guy. Same guy. It's not just a resemblance. And I've seen Walsh. I had to look for myself. I had to. Jess, it's him. It's all the same guy."

Well, that might explain all the creepiness but there was no way I was going to just take her word for it.

We left, both unable to talk anymore, and went by the morgue. The place was filled with bones and bodies. There wasn't anywhere to store them all. A refrigerated truck had to be brought in for the time being. But Sandra was there packing her things.

"I didn't mean to make you quit, Sandra. Let me take a closer look at things. I could be wrong. I have to be wrong."

"It's not you, Jess." She looked at me. Hard. "Amy told you."

I nodded.

"Jess, I don't want to know. I've lived my entire life thinking the world was complicated but mostly logical. There were reasons people do what they do even if I could never. There were explanations and disorders and even when things were absolutely terrifying and maddening we could catch the guy and all sigh in relief that we had stopped someone. But this? I saw the photos, the portraits. I went and sat with him, Jess. I asked him. I asked him about the photos, the bodies. I asked him what year he was born and he laughed. He just laughed. I can't do this. I can't live in a world knowing this exists so I'm getting out. good luck."

And that was that.

But how do I get out of this? Because I can't pretend I don't know what these women have told me and I damn sure can't quit without some kind of answer. It will gnaw away at me for the rest of my life.

What do I do now?

____________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

More Than a Slur

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

remember ~ forge ~ acquire ~ pan ~ configure

They were submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

News Fatigue

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

hoaxed ~ favoritism ~ wolf in sheep’s clothing ~ running smoothly ~ poke bowl ~ manually

They were submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

I've had covid a second time and haven't slept well in months. Well, really in a year so this isn't the best thing I've ever written (I don't know if anything lately has been since I can write at most a paragraph at a time), but I want to keep the prompts going, and I hope in the next couple weekends I can functionally read well enough to catch up on comments. 

___________________________________________

Things aren't really running smoothly yet are they?

I mean I'd obviously hoped yet another politician hadn't turned out to be wolf in sheep's clothing, but, uh, let's just say those hopes weren't too high and yet here we are with...whatever the hell is going on in this place. Covid responses are as bad as ever with no new lockdowns here, overflowing hospitals, raging case numbers and we got 4 at home tests (per entire household) and maybe, if we're lucky and can scramble around for them, 3 better masks but we have to go out without one into busy pharmacies to pick them up ourselves. No checks, no eviction moratorium, no student loan relief, this business with Ukraine, what's been happening unchecked in Yemen, absolutely no bills to help the poor, fuck them kids, next to nothing to stop climate change, more deportations than ever, more police funding... I could go on.

The news lately has been all about the new cat at the white house. On a different channel they're probably still talking about whether a candy mascot is fuckable or not. Someone somewhere is writing that a poke bowl made at home is cultural appropriation and someone else is writing a dissertation in the comments about why that's wrong. Two headlines back to back will tell you that New York is giving us hope for Omicron and that new York's hospitals are past capacity. It's everything and nothing all at once and we just keep falling for it.

We really have been hoaxed into thinking we can't do better than this shit right here. We get hoaxed by the news every single day. Even if a person decides to manually look a thing up instead of letting their usual social media feeds tell them what's happening in the world, there are going to be 47,618 takes about any specific issue at minimum, and anything worth reading is going to be behind a paywall. Where do we go from here when good information costs money and conspiracies are free? Pay is low. Morale is low. Inflation is through the roof. How do we keep making it so people have to pay for even the most moderate info and still wonder why so many people are misinformed and lost? And don't tell me "well they should trust science" because if you know anything about our FDA, literally anything, then you should know why people don't trust our government when it comes to the medical field. Every day there's a new reason not to trust doctors. Every time the CDC contradicts itself so more people can get back to work sooner and keep lining rich people's pockets, people lose a little more of any faith they had that we get answers.

In a situation where people are already so fucking tired of all of this, where real news fatigue has set in, the constant changes and ridiculous focus on outrage about a fucking cartoon candy and how the company is obviously showing favoritism to the left by changing its CARTOON SHOES only increases the problems. Book burnings, fascists in Canada, mass shootings still happening all the time, people in a massive cult murdering their own families, worsening inclement weather events...

Where the fuck do we even go from here?

Don't answer that. I don't want to know.

___________________________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Besties

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

Your words are:

crowbar ~ clover ~ massive ~ river ~ pig

It was submitted by: https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/

The idea came from a reddit writing prompt. I really love that subreddit for inspiration at times. 

New Age Threat

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

birthday ~ cake ~ ice cream ~ candles ~ card

submitted by: https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Another drop in flash fiction!

Premonition

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

persevere ~ pebble ~ swamp ~ steps ~ annoying ~ foreshadowing

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/ 

Don't Open

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.


My words are:

cerebral ~ exorcise ~ mortgage ~ savory ~ terrain

They were submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

I'm not sure if I will or won't write more... Enjoy! CW for creepy Halloween and violence 

There Is Still Room for Hope

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

daylight ~ see ~ bug ~ collapse ~ woods

They were submitted by: https://Bakinginatornado.com

_____________

A lot of us look ahead and see the potential of a societal collapse.

I'm certainly guilty of that myself, but Im trying to get better. Obviously I get that line of thinking, though. We're in a post normal world now. The damage done to our climate and the related side effects from progressing climate change and atmospheric heating cannot be undone. Experts agree now that even if we went to net zero carbon emissions tomorrow, we couldnt erase the changes we are facing (and will continue to endure) before the end of this century, and we aren't even close to any sort of net zero emissions even as many countries are beginning to come together for timelines of when that may happen. Raging fires, ice storms, heat domes, lack of water sources, billionaires looking to space for the answers... it's all here to stay in our life times. Combine that with growing fascism in multiple countries, increasing street violence in those countries, civil wars, our fears about Afghanistan and the Taliban, weaponized unreality, the culmination of decades of science denial for the sake of profit, and a going on 2 year fight against a pandemic, and it's no wonder so many of us cannot see a future that isn't at least somewhat apocalyptic. Add in that it doesn't help when even the more "liberal" parties make promises of going back to easier times, promises that sound so good to many of us in theory but are outright lies in the face of climate change science, and you have a pretty heady mix of negativity. Yes, even without Trump or any of the other shit of even the last ten years, we would still be pretty royally screwed when it comes to being able to live and breathe easily from this point on. And constant promises of returning to a state of normal make it harder for folks to consider bracing for an ever changing future.

What I think we're getting wrong though is an end to everything as we know it being the immutable result of all this. I think, or at least want to hope, we can do better than that.

I live in a hurricane zone so I tend to keep some things on hand for emergencies, but I've made lists even on this blog for resources in case we do experience black and brown outs here and how to live off the land or pack a bug out back if things were to get really rough. I think there's a lot to be said for preparation, for the anxiety relief that tends to come with knowing you can weather most storms with a little know-how, work, and a few tucked away items.

But I think we also have to focus on the potential for rebuilding something new and better and to do that through mutual aid and community building. If there was one strong take away from the last couple of years at least, I would hope it's that we can, in fact, come together to handle most things for each other even while our politicians fight over which party can do as little as possible for the populace and get away with it. We can come together and build communities and mutual aid networks. We can be the hope we want to see in the world.

And perhaps most importantly, we can adapt.

Even if you just consider the changes that have come since 1900 when industrialization here in the u.s. was in full swing, our country grew, we got the automobile industry, plane travel, telephones and tvs and all manner of improved methods to listen to music, space travel, undersea exploration, the internet, computers that were as big as houses with barely any capabilities to computers we carry in our pockets. We've worked on defining human rights and adapting what those should be and who they should apply to. We've survived world wars and pandemics and companies hell bent on profit over people. And while some of us have done so with less grace than others here we are considerably better now than 100 years ago and still changing. It's entirely understandable to look at the last several years at the very least (and much of history for many folks) and feel like the pendulum has swung too far into hate and division and greed and destruction to be corrected, but the future is still wide open, and we could still make it swing the other direction with the right kind of work.

I'd love to run off into the woods and hang out with my pet alligator in a bayou hut far from civilization. I even painted myself one to look at every now and then. But there's still daylight at the end of this tunnel if we choose to make it that far, and I have to believe we can do better. There's no less reason to be prepared, but for all of us and everyone that comes after us, we have to build something different than we have, than we've ever had.

The challenge is in the not giving up, in seeing this through, in doing more than voting and going back to the day to day. We have to build not subsist on the same bullshit we've been fed all these decades. The challenge is in reimagining everything we know to be unchangeable and building something that works and not just a marginal step at best that will be undone every 4 to 8 years. We have to listen to the folks hurt by existing systems and who have always done their work to protect the world, and we have a limited time to stop questioning them and hear what they're saying.

We have to take "impossible" off the table.

There's still more than enough time for the future we have to be one of building a new way forward and not like you know being cannibals that eat each other to survive in a Mad Max landscape of hellfire and water shortages. We don't have to fight each other to the death for a bit of water. We just have to believe in how much better we can be and make it happen.

____________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/