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

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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/

No Ocean No Cry

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My “Secret Subject” is:

If you had a choice, would you rather live by the ocean or in the mountains? Why?

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

Uh so...I guess this is my answer hahaha

_______________________________________

I think I'm the only one left now.

The sun was just starting to stretch its tendrils of light above the horizon which should have been a comfort all things considered but that thought, that she was the only one left, created a startlingly deep well of emotions. No one expected to be the final girl. Real life didn't work like that. Thinking on it now, those girls always seemed more than slightly relieved even while traumatized and full of fear and grief and confusion but how could she be relieved? She should be dead right along with the rest of them. Wouldnt that be the kindest thing? To face an eternity of nothing so she wouldn't be haunted by what she'd seen? So she wouldn't have to face the fact that there was a whole world of darkness and shadow and death and tentacles that she hadn't known about? How would she ever sleep again?

In movies the final girl is always some badass who faced down whatever monster or demon that some guy with no trauma (probably) had imagined up to be a metaphor for depression or whatever but apparently real life didn't work that way. She had run. The moment she could, she ran without looking back and she hid. She hid while all her old college friends were screaming and begging and dying, torn apart by that...that thing that had crawled out of the waves and grew legs right in front of them, its beak gnashing, tentacles burning and pulling and ripping... None of them even thought it was real.

Ha. She'd pissed herself. That's what she'd done. Where were all the final girls in the movies who did that? Her face was crusty with sweat and tears and snot. Why did they never look like this?

She'd seen too many bad horror movies.

Not a single one prepared her for the real thing.

They'd all come to this little beach to celebrate Jenny's wedding. A wedding that would never happen now. Jenny was somewhere down the beach in 4 pieces if that thing hadn't eaten her yet. It was supposed to be a 4 day girls trip. They were going to some clubs, to wine tastings, snorkeling... This was just the first fucking night. It was supposed to be a chill smoke and drink session by the waves as the night wore on. They were laughing and reminiscing and catching up. It had felt so goddamn good to be back with the people who'd held her when she cried over what happened with Mason, who had her back when she'd pressed charges on him...they felt like home in a way she'd never had with anyone anywhere and now...they were all gone. It would be kinder if the writers of her life just let her die now.

The screams had stopped a long time ago. The creature or whatever it was hadn't bothered to look very hard for her. She'd only gotten a few yards down the beach between two small changing huts. It hadn't even really looked in her direction...maybe it understood that nothing it could do to her would be as painful as being the only one left. She'd watched it walk back into the waves and crawl under them but didn't dare come out because death might be a blessing but she couldn't will her legs to get her there.

The sun rose higher. Seagulls and crabs were feasting. And she knew if she could somehow explain the truth to anyone and be believed or come up with some sort of believable lie...she would never ever be able to face a beach again.

Humans should fear the ocean.

She crawled inside one of the huts finally able to let her guard down enough to move and slept.

_________________________

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.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/

All My Rowdy Memories

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: Hank ~ obstreperous ~ gin ~ regret ~ helpful

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

__________________________________________

Hank Williams Jr spun round the old record player. She didnt much care for the man, but it was one of her father's records. Hearing some ol' Bocephus took her back to a time when things were both simpler and more difficult all at once. His raucous outlaw style was perhaps the most helpful vehicle for surrounding herself with her dad.

She could see him, drunk and obstreperous belting out "tell me, Hank, why do ya drink? Why do you roll smoke? Whyyy must you love out the songs that you wrote?" Family tradition was a pretty good answer to why she was stretched out on the couch down to the last of a cheap bottle of Canadian whisky and high enough to know she had hours to go before she'd be able to go to sleep without the room spinning.

And that was ok. There would be plenty of time for regret tomorrow when the hangover inevitably hit. She wasn't 19 and fresh faced and anymore. The drink would hit her like a mack truck come morning. And a shot of gin first thing, a little hair of the dog so to speak, would work some magic too.

But for now, she had hank and a buzzing body and all the emotions she finally let herself feel after all this time to keep her company.

The last few years she'd really let herself lean into the complicated picture she held of her dad, reveling in the tendency towards loud chaos when he was drinking shine, the music, the outlaw shit, the hardworking blue collar man who was, in all honesty, probably doing his fucking best all things considered and softening towards the aggression and temper and hurt. He didn't break the cycle of hurt and abuse he'd endured. Couldn't, she guessed. She knew how hard it was herself being a mother now with a loud and opinionated kid that had taken on her stubbornness and smartass mouth. It was difficult beyond measure to shed the anger and quick temper like an exoskeleton that didn't fit her anymore. It took effort every single day of her life. It took putting down the alcohol for the most part a lot time ago. It took a lot of forgiving. Had he been able to forgive? Probably not. It took him dying and the distance that comes after years of that loss to forgive. Death broke his cycle. Finally. Death made room for a softened heart where none could have existed before it, and he hadn't had that luxury with his own parents.

"Play me the songs about a ramblin' man put old Jim Beam in my hand
Cause you know I still love to get drunk and hear country sounds"

Here she was belting out the old tunes herself, teary eyed, loving the memory of the man she couldn't understand when he was still living. Life is strange that way. And music too. She had no doubts that the music they'd shared is what started her down this road. Spinning his records, finding a copy of the Cyndi lauper album she'd loved so much as a kid still among his collection she'd inherited, allowing herself to embrace songs she'd hated just because her father had loved them...She couldn't listen to country now without thinking of him. She'd even made playlists for tunes she knew he'd love and played them on nights she felt like she needed a dad she could still send a song suggestion to, who'd send one back... A dad she could buy vinyl for who wasn't buried at the church he hated at her age. Those playlists felt almost like a hug.

But tonight was about old times and letting herself cry for the both of them.

"Hank let's talk about your daddy tell me how your mama loved that man
Well just break out a bottle hoss I'll tell you bout the driftin' cowboy band
We won't talk about the habits just the music and the man"

__________________________

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/

The Deal

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 4 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My “Secret Subject” is: If you could be taught any instrument, take (free) lessons, really learn to understand the instrument and how to play it, which instrument would you choose?

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

_________________________

***A piece of fiction but I think or hope it still counts as an answer. The devil wears a suit and tie to hear Colter wall tell it, and I might be willing to make the deal. I don't have time for lessons. ***

The man appeared before her seemingly out of nowhere. He sort of loomed over her as she sat on the front porch of her granny's old house, fog circling behind him.
He didn't belong here. That much was obvious.

She shivered as the coyotes howled all around. Normal for this place at this time of day but still unsettling as the stranger's glare seemed to stare into every part of her.

He was well dressed. A deeply purple crushed velvet jacket, black shirt and pants... A tie with a design she couldn't quite make out unless she got a little closer--she did need a new glasses prescription after all--and she damn sure wasn't getting closer.

As her mouth opened to call for granny, he put a finger to his lips and handed her (where did it even come from?) a curly maple open back banjo with a black walnut peg head, gold pick-ups, and a bat themed inlay. She sat with her mouth open. She'd dreamed of this very banjo so often sitting on this porch on hot summer nights and barely cool winter ones wishing like hell she could play right along with the crickets and frogs and all the noises coming from the woods behind the house or the swamp off to the left that she knew better than to check out. No, sir, she wanted to live these days.

Reality snapped back like a rubber band stretched almost too far nearly knocking the breath out of her. Her stomach dropped as she handed it back.

"It's mighty pretty, but you ain't tricking me with just a banjo."

His eyes burned brighter for a moment before a smile appeared on his face as suddenly as he'd appeared in the yard then he threw his head back laughter. Not a single hair fell out of place, and the fog seemed to dance on the sound.

"Perhaps not. But I could possibly offer you the skills to pull you out of this...shanty. all of you."

"Keep talking."

"In essence, my child, if you sign your eternal soul over to me, I will then empower you with abilities on this instrument--and only this one unless you want to barter further--that no other mortal possesses. What you do with that talent is then up to you."

She pushed her hair out of her face. It was long and a bit more than tangled. Dirty blonde. A fashionable sort of mullet. A queer sort of mullet. Her jeans were disintegrating and her bare feet were covered in dust and dirt. Gnats hovered around her face. It was hot. Beyond hot. They barely had running water and electricity regularly so ac was a luxury she hadn't known. It was a good day when rain hit and cooled off the tin roof.

Heavy clouds rushed in from the horizon like they'd been able to read her mind.

"So let me get this straight. I give my soul for eternity and I get this banjo and the skills to play only this banjo which I'm assuming ISN'T indestructible with no guarantee anyone might ever discover me..."

"Surely you have heard of one of my greatest inventions TikTok, child."

"We look like we get much internet out here, sir?"

"The offer stands. What you do with the gift after we make our deal is your own responsibility."

"Well, I reckon I might be interested but here's the thing... You might have to fight for it."

"...I... what do you mean fight for it? Fight what exactly?"

"Oh I sold it to some gator god in the swamp the other day for a good day of fishin'. We ain't had nothing to eat for 2 days by that point. So I made the deal and we had a mess of fish to last until the food stamps came in at least."

"You... You sold your soul for a...what is a mess of fish?"

"You know a good catch. A whole mess of fish. I thought you knew everything."

"And to who?"

"Oh I don't know. it was some half gator man that I saw while I was fishin.' Cajun accent? Straw hat? Gator head and big muscly body? He had to be some kind of god cuz ain't no regular folk walking around barefoot out there in just a little, she motioned around her waist, "skirt thing."

"Did you get paperwork that I may look at?"

"Mister, you think I got paperwork from a gator man barefoot in the swamp? Which one of us looks like we might be carryin' a pen?"

His face flamed red. His eyes turned darker with the clouds above. Thunder crashed so loudly the porch rattled. She knew if lightening hit she'd probably see that gatorman and all his teeth standing on the edge of the swamp, but something must have been looking out for her right then because the sky stayed dark.

"Listen, mister, you ain't got to get all mad at me because someone beat you to the punch here. If'n you want to still do the deal you're gonna have to take it up with that guy."

He snatched the banjo back from her, but she wasn't reacting the way he'd hope. Life had been too hard. Having a dream snatched from her hands was a regular occurence. Why would she ever care about a banjo as much as the other hurts. He began to fade and she heard in her own head, "I'll be back. Have a pen."

________________________________

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:


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

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

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

The Janitor

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:

detour ~ cygnet ~ Poké Bowl ~ cascading ~ golf club

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

__________________________________

The cygnet swam behind its mother across the pond that bordered the old golf club. The two of them were in their own little world while Sadie ate her Poké bowl from the little Asian fusion place a couple blocks down the street from work and a half block shortcut from the pond. She often found herself drawn to this place like it was a santuary from the business of the city behind her and the mindlessness of her job. The golf club had long closed down so there weren't any rich assholes bloviating about stocks or politics to ruin the mood as they played around hole 8, the closest to the pond. And it was far enough from the street that traffic was muffled and people were scarce. It was just her, the quiet, and the birds.

Something was different about today though, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it. The undercurrent was different. She felt...

She felt like she was being watched.

And not by the swans.

Sure enough she looked around and saw some "gentlemen" standing on the unkempt green looking her way. They looked completely out of place in their track suits and black tinted sunglasses, but that didn't mean they were definitely here to mess with her. Maybe they just needed to get out of her line of sight so they could take a leak. Whatever. It must be nice to just stand around and relieve yourself wherever.

She wasn't going to give up her spot quite that easy and tried waiting them out. But they stood there. Staring quietly. And then one of them, the larger of the two, pointed his finger towards her and pantomimed shooting her before both of them erupted into laughter.

She tried to stay calm and finish her food, every bite feeling like a lead weight. The safety she normally felt here had been completely obliterated, and now she had to figure out an alternate path back to work, a detour of sorts, since the shortcut took her down a pretty isolated woody path between the old club and the street. She'd never once seen anyone on it unless you count Stevie, the albino squirrel she sometimes left a few peanuts and almonds for if she saw him around. She was on high alert and not taking any chances. One of the men could easily catch up to her there and very likely no one would even hear her scream.

So she walked around the pond to the gates of the park situated on the opposite bank to her lunch spot to put her on the street and in public for her return. She could be a few minutes late. It's not like she had anything too pressing waiting on her.

One block from the parking lot, she realized the two men were behind her. Walking briskly. With intent. She sped up a little thinking she could make it inside before they caught up with her and took off running as she neared the door. She tugged it open and made a leap for the elevator that would take her up to the 3rd floor where she knew people would be waiting. Of all the days for the lobby to be empty. Not even Stanley, the security guard, was in...

Wait.

Where was Stanley?

The elevator doors opened just as the two men reached the front. She ran inside. Finding Stanley took a backseat to running from these two clowns. She pounded the 3 and watched as the doors closed. The men seemed remarkably calm for two dudes who seemed so intent on catching up to her, and then it dawned on her they knew now exactly what floor she would be on or at least what floor she would stop on. She never got a good enough signal in this building to dial out but she could still do her s.o.s. function. The notification would go straight to her mom, and knowing her mom, she would immediately worry and call 911 when she heard Sadie saying "HELP."

The doors opened on her floor just as the message recorded. She half expected a cascading wave of blood a la Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining given the way the day had already gone, but nothing looked amiss. She shoved the phone back in her pocket, and took a chance and left the elevator hoping her coworkers would know what to do next when she noticed how quiet it was. No typing. No one fielding calls. Milton's fucking speaker wasn't even blasting his stupid sports podcasts, and he usually had it one notch above the level of human decency for an office.

She walked down through the hallway. She peered into the first office to the left, no one. The right, no one. Each office, same story. Until the last. There she found them. Jenelle, Filipè, Larry, Madison, Ashlyn, Sid... Even Sid's dad Tony was there. Tony ran the whole building. He was dead. They were all dead or nearly there.

She was frozen. She'd never seen anything...the goriest of movies could never compare to the scene in front of her. She'd never get it clean. As the scream welled up ready to erupt out of her, a rather large hand clamped over her mouth. She hadn't even heard the elevator doors open. They must have taken the stairs.

"Listen, toots, you're going to tell us everything we need to know and you're going to do it quietly or I'm going to put you in pain you've never felt before."

He lowered his hand, and she couldn't help herself. "Worse than kidney stones?"

"What?"

"Worse pain than kidney stones?" she nearly whispered.

"Much worse."

Shit. This is seriously fucked up, she thought. Kidney stones fucking hurt.

They took her into the office next door and sat her in a chair then sat on the desk in front of her gun pointing directly at her face.

"You move, doll, and you die."

She nodded not trusting her voice enough to speak. Her mom better get the message.

They'd pulled the glasses off and were giving her quite the death stare when one finally said, "so what's your job here, sweetheart?" A lot of pet names for men who were threatening to kill her...

"I'm the janitor."

They both shook their heads. "You expect us," one said as he pointed his thumb at himself then the other one, "to believe they let a broad like you scrub the toilets on one floor of a building during business hours? What do you take us for?"

She tilted her head to the side out of confusion. "Well, no... I do the whole building, but my locker and storage closet are here on the 3rd floor. I only really know the people here. Most of the other floors aren't occupied during the day much."

"You got some real nice nails for a lady who mops floors."

"I mean, I do wear gloves. Wouldn't you?"

"You don't smell like cleaner."

"Because before lunch I sweep and vacuum the empty floors and take out trash. I don't use cleaning stuff until after lunch. What's the point?"

"But you're... Tiny. Like a child."

"Ok and? I make $12 an hour. What do you expect me to be? Mr. Universe?"

The big one leaned over and whispered to the not as big one. She couldn't quite make our what was being said but they seemed to come to some kind of agreement.

"What can you tell us about your boss?"

"Sid?"

The smaller one massaged his forehead a little bit. He looked tired.

"No, honey, Tony. You know fat tony? The guy that runs this building?"

"Well how was I supposed to know? Hes never really here. And calling him fat tony is kind of mean. He's just stocky."

"You want we should believe you don't even know who runs this place?"

"I'm just the goddamn janitor."

"You don't know Fat Tony of the Don Bilotti crew? Fat Tony the *second* most powerful don in this state? Fat Tony, your boss, who stole from my boss,The Bull Gravano, the most powerful don in this state. Maybe all the states. You don't know that Fat Tony?"

"Am I on like some new kind of candid camera show? What the fuck are you fat shaming Tony for? I don't know anything about Tony except he's Sid's dad and he technically owns this place. Ive only even met the guy 3 times and if you had asked him before you...before he uh died then he wouldn't have even known my name and then you wouldn't be asking me all these questions."

"Ok girlie do you have any idea what they do in this building?"

"Uh...phone stuff?"

"Phone stuff. How long you been working here? 2 years?"

"How'd you know?"

"Because we know. And there ain't no way Fat Tony hired an actual janitor to work in a front business laundering money. He ain't capable of that sort of irony."

"Excuse me, Mr, uh, sir, but I don't think that actually counts as irony."

"OH SO WE'RE LYING TODAY AND CORRECTING MY USE OF A LITERARY TERM?"

She heard the sirens the same time they did. Mom came through! She was so predictably neurotic and it finally paid off.

The bigger one pulled the hammer back on his gun and pointed it at her, but the other one pulled him away. "Leave her. We can come back for her" before they took off.

That was fiveish hours ago? And she'd been trying to explain the whole thing to the police but apparently no one was ready to believe she was a just the fucking janitor today.

She sighed as yet another cop sat in front of her in the interrogation room. This one was playing good cop. He'd brought a sandwich and a coffee at least.

"Now what can you tell me about Fat Tony, Sadie?"

He wasn't even Fat, she thought. And repeated the whole thing once again. If she ever got out of this, she would never, ever take another cleaning job for the rest of her life.

____________________

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/

Molotovs > Fireworks

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 4 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My “Secret Subject” is:

How do you celebrate the 4th of July?

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

_________________

I've answered this question before in a way, but that time I made it more or less about hating fireworks and having trauma related to my dad getting drunk and my parents fighting every holiday and especially the 4th because it's my mom's birthday. And that still remains true. Im not really big on the holiday at the best of times..

But I'll be honest here, what the fuck is there to celebrate anyway? Fascism? Loss of rights? Being terrified to be an out queer person for the first time in a fucking long time? No healthcare? Ignoring a pandemic? Essentially sending people to work in a pandemic to keep the capitalism train moving and then also removing access to free tests and vaccines? A president who won't even say the word abortion or at least didn't for his first 2 years in office much less have a real plan to address it? A president who, on the way roe was overturned and knowing it was coming like we all did, had plans to appoint a lifetime federal judge position to an extreme antiabortion Republican? A country that will make Juneteenth a federal holiday but won't let people talk about the implications of racism on this country's foundation and its presence in our system to children in history classes? A country who will give more rights to guns than people? A country that cares about the lives of babies unless they're shot to death in school classrooms? A country that will make every excuse possible for a police to kill an unarmed person especially ESPECIALLY if they're a person of color?

I guess it would be a lot easier to celebrate the birth of this nation if it wasnt so hard for those of us who live here and have been othered in it. If it didn't carry a risk of discrimination and death just for looking or being different. If it didn't mean old fucking losers with too much power didn't feel entitled to keep the poor begging for scraps and the othered to die with nothing. It would be so much easier to pop off some fireworks if Democrats didn't somehow hinge their 50 years of failures on Bernie once again or Susan Sarandon or those of us who ever vocally criticize one of their politicians....you know the same party that paid for ads for an NRA A-rated, pro life democrat in Texas in no danger of losing their seat the day after children were gunned down in a school while the police (which Democrats gladly keep over funding) stood by in the same fucking state.

Fuck this country. There's nothing here to celebrate.

Whenever this country slides further into fascism, so many people always share that quote that says "don't fall into despair. Let this radicalize you." But somehow that means vote for the same people who never gave a shit about you to begin with and share bullshit meaningless memes. I'm sorry but in an oligarchy, voting is never a radical act. It's the very least you could possibly do.

Celebrate what?

A country still deeply in the throws of Satanic Panic and antisemitism? That still falls for conspiracies build on the foundation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which we know was made up entirely to excuse antisemitism? A country so caught up in fear, exploitation, and the art of the grift that a man could spiral so far down the rabbit whole in a couple months that he became willing to kill his own children with a spearfishing gun? That could look his 10 month old in the face and think that was the best he could do for that child? 

A leftist spectrum that thinks making a Facebook profile named Lenin Bussy Marx and sharing low quality memes is praxis? The ones who have 392 comment threads on Twitter arguing about what a 200 years dead white dude would think about a grifting YouTuber who made millions passing off propaganda about the Syrian civil war? The same leftists who think any country that isn't the U.S. is fine and good no matter what they're doing to their own people?

And the worst thing of all is that we aren't actively attempting to address ANY of it. 

Will I celebrate? Do I?

No thanks. I'll be sleeping in and watching Scooby Doo and everything else can go fuck itself.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

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

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

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/

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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

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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.html/

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

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

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