" "

I'm taking this down because I'm tired of dealing with the unreasonable crap that my blogging incites. This is my writing, and nobody has the right to censor it or suggest that I do so. And yes, I realize the irony; I'm taking down my blog b/c people keep complaining and giving me bullshit. But I don't want to deal with it, and since nobody is getting the clue that I shouldn't have to, I'm taking the steps to end it now.

I am irritated that friends couldn't just leave me alone, and read my writing for personal writing. I gave you all a chance to hear some of what I really have to say, and I got a lot of crap for it. I didn't read your blogs and then tell you that what you said was stupid, or that something in your life paralleled something in my life, and thus you shouldn't mention it. I respected your personal writing, and I enjoyed it for what it was, a chance to look into your hearts and souls and see something I can't see on a daily basis. I did not receive the same courtesy from some of you, and I think that was very poorly done on your part.

In short, I'm angry and disappointed. Once again my friendship has not been returned with the respect that I was expecting. So, if any of my friends want to talk to me, they can email me or call me. This will not be put back up, and you will not get this chance to know me this way again.

Triple Excellent

Some of you may not know Yair, in which case, I pity you. Yair is a regular (ie, daily) loiterer in our store. He's a young kid whose mom works in Chik-Fil-A, so everyday after school, he comes to hang out in the store. Normally, this sort of action would be discouraged. But Yair is totally awesome. Yair does such hilarious things as chatter to himself, talk to the demo units, and become morose over inconsequential things. The kid is a basket case, and he is inarguably the best loiterer ever.

So he comes in today...
Me: Yair, what's up?
Yair: I'm having a triple excellent week!
Me: Triple excellent, huh? what's so awesome?
Yair: And yesterday was the bestest day ever!
Me: What happened yesterday?
(we have Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in our demo)
Yair: Well, I was playing this game. And guess what? I'm the number one high score! It's so awesome!
Me: wow...
Yair: there's no memory card in it though, so I have to start over every day.
(Yair turns the demo unit on, and starts to play. This means there are no scores on there except for the preset computer ones. Yair plays it for a while, trash-talking the computer the entire time. 15 minutes later:)
Yair: O man! I'm number 6! AWESOME! (does a little dance)

I hope that, whoever you are, you're having a Triple Excellent week, too.

Denturistic.

So I have a recurring nightmare-theme of losing my teeth. For some reason, I have a terrifying reaction to the idea or suggestion of losing my teeth, and I'm not sure why. As a kid, I really hated going through that stage. I hated everything about it; the wiggling of loose teeth, the blood, and the gaping hole where something should be...it was so disgusting. And last night, again, I dreamed of losing my teeth. It was one of those regular dreams where I was walking around, talking to people, and all of a sudden teeth just started falling out, and I kept spitting them into my hand and trying to hide what was going on. It's so bizarre. I mean, granted, most of my dreams are bizarre, and are usually generically themed with loss of control, or imminent death, but this tooth thing is flat out weird.

So I'm interested...I know recurring nightmares are common...so what's your recurring nightmare? Mine is teeth, and the losing of. What's your demon that haunts your sleep?

The Fire Lord's Wife

Dream: I've been chosen to be the bride of the Fire Lord, our godlike lord and overseer. This is exciting, and as I am being led to his residence by his stern minions, I am both thrilled and terrified at the idea. Not for any normal reason, but because the Fire Lord is the font of technology. He's a technological deity, and as his wife I will have access to all his top-of-the-line computers and such. This is my passion, and no amount of hardwork or education could have given me what the position of Fire Lord's wife will.

His residence is the same dark, forboding building I remember it being from the glimpses in my youth. His minions push me through the door and then leave, bolting it behind them. I am left inside, alone, terrified. There are a thousand things vying for my attention. I'm a virgin still, and the idea of being anyone's wife is frightening. But even as scared as I am, I can see something is not right with my surroundings. The house is sterile, full of technological equipment and barely anything else, but that's to be expected. It seems, though, as if it is in a vast state of dissarray. There is dust and decay everywhere, and there are thick shadows in the corners. The place seems alive with malice, and my fear intensifies.

The Fire Lord appears, and he is a shock to me. He is not the god i imagined. He is a tall man, but he is old. His hair is white, and there are dark secrets in his eyes. He does not smile. He grabs me by arm and drags me into a hallway, where I cower beneath his dark gaze. He says things to me, things I do not understand at first. He tells me he is a prisoner here the same as I am, and that the house is not safe anymore. He tells me of dangers, and to stay hidden and quiet. He leaves me for a time, alone in the dark house. I can feel the malevolence of the place as if it were a tangible thing. Cold dark beasties hiss nasty things in my ears, and follow me from room to room. It is a long and panicked time I spend there, and I lose track of time.

The Fire Lord returns, with his compatriot who does not have a name. He is a serious looking man of slight build, but he radiates concern, and it's evident he is not one of the Fire Lord's (or my) imprisoners. They gather me up and we escape out a back entrance. And then, to my shocked horror, they get on motorcycles, and the Fire Lord sits me behind him. It's terrifying; there's so much wind, and the cycles are excruciatingly loud. All I can do is dig my fingers into his clothing and hold on, face pressed against his back as my hair is whipped around me.

When the cycles stop, we are in the middle of a forest. It's Fall apparently, the ground carpeted with brown and gold leaves. We are being followed already by a nameless evil, and the men abandon the cycles and rush into the woods, me in tow. There is a path there, and we follow it deep into the forest. Our footfalls are muffled by the leaves, and the forest is menacingly silent. I am wracked by bouts of terrible, bone-freezing fear. My entire life has fallen around me. And now these strange men are leading me away, making me a refugee in my own country, leading me deep into a foreign forest, and there's no end in sight. We walk through the woods for a long time, and it all looks the same to me. The path changes, but nothing else does, and my panic and despair are rising. Finally, I stop walking and burst into tears.

The Fire Lord and his companion begin to argue. The companion is angry; he wants them to abandon me here if I won't keep walking. He says they owe me nothing, and that I am only a burden. The Fire Lord disagrees, and sounds compassionate, but I am too scared to care. He comes to me and grips my elbow and looks into my face, and he tells me that there is an end to this journey. He knows it is frightening, and I will never have the life I used to, but he says at least it is a life free of captivity. A free life, to do with as I will. He tells me that if I want to take this chance, I have to come with them, but that I am free to stay if I wish.

His words calm me down, and when they start walking again, I follow. Slowly first, but then faster, until I am leading them down the path instead. I am increasingly urgent to get to our destination, to see this end, this amazing free place that I cannot comprehend. I would be running, but the leaves are slippery beneath my feet, and I am afraid of falling. The wind blows stiffly in our faces, and I open my arms and life my face to its touch. This is free wind, I tell myself. This is freedom. The Fire Lord's companion tells him that he thinks I'm insane, and the Fire Lord chuckles and shakes his head. I ignore them, and hurry onward.

The path ends in a sheer rock face. On closer inspection, there is a ladder of sorts carved into the stone, rough handholds and footholds scratched into a crease in the rock. The Fire Lord says it is the only way up. It looks dangerous. One lost grip, and a climber will fall straight down to the ground. There is no chance of not being injured should we fail. But I have already set my life on what lies over that cliff, so I leap at the wall and start up the ladder with a vengeance. I try not to think about what will happen if I fall. There's no point in thinking about that. If I fall, it's all over anyway. The climb is impossibly difficult, but I push onward. I can hear the men below me, inching forward. At last, amazing to behold, an end to the rock appears beneath my grasping hands, and I pull myself over the cliff onto the top of a mountain of leaf-blanketed earth. I am on a ridge, and below me, in the valley...my free life waits. The leaves are deeper here, and as I clamber down the steep slope, I am almost wading through them, pushing them away with my hands, swimming through an ocean of fallen leaves. Hope rises, warm and ebullient, in my chest. As I come closer to the Destination, I notice things in the leaves; books, all of them, my favorite books. Books from when I was a child, and an adolescent. All the written words that, when read, made up who I am, there in the leaves in this strange forest. The hope bubbles out of me in laughter, and it is the first free laughter I have ever felt, and I rush forward into a Free Life.

Shameless Solicitation

Hey there, bestest people in the whole wide world! *insert huge innocent grin here* You may remember me from such blogs as this one, and that other one. But that's not important. Tonight, I've come to talk to you about a subject close to my heart: cancer. Leukemia and Lymphoma, to be precise.

Some of you may know a certain "misplaced yankee" by the name of Jimmy Barnell (James Barrell to the uninitiated). Well, his esteemed and excellent girlfriend, Heather Elliott, is currently abusing her poor body with regular bouts of crazed marathon running. I know, she's crazy. But she's crazy in a good way. She's doing all this unnatural physical activity to prepare for a real, honest to gods, marathon on april 28th. This marathon is part of an effort to earn money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And to do this marathon, Heather needs money. In fact, she needs like $4500 worth of money.

I'm not rich. You're not rich. None of us go home at night and roll in mountains of money. But, I'll let you in on a secret: money adds up. Amazing, I know. So, I'm not asking you for money. That would be wrong. And if I were asking you to contribute money to this worthiest of worthy causes, I wouldn't be asking you to do it in copious amounts. Maybe like $10, maybe $20. It wouldn't be much, but it doesn't have to be. In the tried and true words of our annoying parents, "a little goes a long way".

To learn more about what you can do for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fundraiser (LLS for short), email Heather herself at jhelliot30@yahoo.com or donate money at http://www.active.com/donate/tntenc/tntencJElliot .

WOAAAAA

i dreamed that james was my fairy godfather, and he could grant me wishes O.O

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fungus

Do you ever feel like you're standing on the edge of a high cliff? Like, as long as you don't look down, you'll be fine. But as soon as you see it, you'll fall off it and never be able to get back.

I've been waiting for a yes or no from a job I applied to. My plan, if it can be called that, was either to get a yes, and turn in my 2 weeks here, or get a no, and look for another job. It's getting harder and harder to wait, though. I love my store very much. I feel like it's mine, and collectively ours (the group who works there). I take pride in how I run it, and how much I know about it. But my extreme loathing for the company that runs it is building up, and one day the dam is gonna explode, and there's nothing I can do about it.

I fairly blatantly have a "problem with authority". People telling me what to do gets under my skin, fast. So a certain amount of irritation is to be expected, and I work past it most of the time. But when my corporate bosses tell me that because I'm a girl I'm unfit to have managerial responsibilities, that whips me into a red hot fury, the kind that people don't escape from. I'm not exaggerating, by the way. A District Manager of a neighboring district told us that female employees who feel uncomfortable closing alone don't deserve to have the responsibilities of a management position. Nothing in any of our job descriptions say "willingly put yourself in obvious danger to make payroll costs cheaper for your bitchass company". And gender has nothing to do with whether someone deserves a position or not. But, that's the company I work for.

I do realize that there's a lot of bullshit that you simply have to swallow at any job. But there's a line, and they've crossed it. And there really is a point where I have to either leave and keep my dignity, or stay and hate myself for staying. And I think that point is nigh.

/sigh.

I could use more quality time with my loved ones, I think. It's so easy to lose track of time in relation to my....relationships. Worst sentence ever -.- Optimally, I'd like to hang out with my friends at least every other day. But there's always work, and it always gets pushed further and further...

I'm standing on that cliff, and I'm terrified to look down. I'm afraid of what waits at the bottom.

Epiphany

I am burning with fever. My body hurts in ways I've never imagined; I can bearly move outside for the pain inside my joints. My world has shrunk to my family's tiny apartment. I am lying in my bed, in neverending agony. I close my eyes, and behind my eyelids a vision unfolds.

I am walking up the stairs to the apartment above ours. I can feel the sun on my skin, and the rough wood beneath my bare feet. I look through their kitchen window, and it is uncharacteristically dark inside. It seems odd, but I can't stop myself from walking forward. I turn onto their porch, and the doors are flung wide. I step inside, and in that brief moment I see the rooms. They are shrouded in shadows. Everything is there, all the furniture and appliances, but they are still and dark and silent. There is a snow globe on the table in the living room; I can see the snow falling in it, but not what's inside it. Other than that, all the traces of personality are gone.

I turn to look at my hosts, for there are hosts: a woman and a man stand in the apartment. The woman is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is short, shorter even than I am, and I am only 11. She is wearing some sort of antiquated dress with lace and ribbons, and she has the most beautiful golden curls that fall down her back. She smiles, and opens her arms to me, and says "We've been waiting for you." I go to her and embrace her; I can feel her arms as she hugs me, and the smoothness of her curls on my fingers. She feels good, like home and love and belonging. I step back, and look at the man that stands behind her. He has no eyes, but if he had them, we would have been locking gazes. He is very tall, and dark; in fact, his form is made entirely of dark things, shadows and death. But he protects her, and they belong together, and I can see all that in an instant. I have no battle with him; we nod to each other, and they both step back.

Ahead of me is the short hallway that is in the apartment. There are 3 doors, 1 directly in front of me and 1 to either side. In the real apartment, these doors lead to a bathroom and 2 bedrooms. I know in this shadow place that is not the case. I also know, without being told, that I am meant to choose one of these doors. When I look to the left door I feel heavy malevolence; behind that door lies Death. When I look at the right door I feel something utterly mundane; an even and uneventful existence. Neither of these particularly appeal to me, although they would both me easy enough choices. The center door though...the center door is almost indescribable in its appeal. It feels like happiness, and other things, all together...it feels like wonder and magic and amazement. As soon as I know this, I am being pushed towards it, and light begins to glow around the door's seams. The light grows and grows until the door is pushed open, and I fall into it. Everything is white light...

I open my eyes, and my body still hurts and the fever is pounding its way through my body.

Itinerant

Do you ever feel like you wanna strap on some boots, get a wide-brimmed hat, grab a walking stick, and strike off across the moors/plains/hills/whatever? Just travel and see the world, nothing but the clothes on your back and your trusty stick.

El Mar Caribe

2 Dreams: In the first dream, all my friends who are parts of couples have children. I am the lone childless spinster, but I have the joy of babysitting my friends' offspring. The dream shows me all of them, and tells me their names, and shows me the beautiful person inside each tiny being.
In the second dream, I travel once again to St. John, the island I was raised on and will always be my home. I stay with my pseudo-brother Jesse, and it is like old times. We play together, and go swimming, and exploring in the wilderness. The weather speeds by; sunlit days, violent storms, monsoon rain that brings short-lived rivers and waterfalls. Nothing monumentous happens. It is just a dream of a life I used to live. I wake up, and am happy.

A Worthy Cause

http://www.shaqfu.com

Spring in small towns

I went to visit my grandmother today, in the Halifax hospital in Roanoke Rapids. It was a beautiful day for a drive, the beginning of another wonderful warm season. My grandmother seems to be doing better, which is good. While I was around, I decided to visit my great uncle as well, who was in Jackson itself, the family seat, a horrendously small town in the middle of nowhere. I lived in Jackson for about 8 months in my adolescence and it was a terrible experience. I don't like it very much, primarily for the residents who seem so adamant about not evolving with the times. However, there is a lot of joy to be found there, provided nobody actually tries to engage me in conversation, which, since I'm a stranger there, isn't likely anyway. While I was never able to appreciate the people who lived there, the land itself is beautiful. And in eastern america, beautiful untouched land is harder to come by than you might think. And because it's a small town untouched by the advances of time, spring there now is exactly like spring there was 10 years ago. 10 years here, in chapel hill, is a long time. A lot has happened in those years, and every passing year brings huge changes. In Jackson, every undeveloped and unfarmed piece of earth is covered in wildflowers; buttercups, violets, daisies, jonquils, even forest lilies. I walk through the town now and can pick a bouquet identical to the ones I made so long ago. The graves I visited have not been crowded further or overgrown; my bouquets decorate their stones just as they did before. I went to my great uncle's mill, and sat in the rickety interior with the old men, listening to the idle gossip and feeling the breeze blow through the door. The mill doesn't actually grind corn anymore, as it once did when I was younger. Other than that, it hasn't changed.

Spring, and summer, and the warmth and return to life that they bring, fill me with a pure and utter sense of happiness. If there is sunlight, warmth, flowers and green things, I'm at peace. It's what I imagine a religious experience is like; the sensation of being filled to the edges with a power other than yourself, being so happy you could disintegrate and STILL be happy. I smell of sunshine, sweat, and fresh air, and it's the best feeling in the world. I am still warm from the sun on my skin.

But just because I feel happy doesn't mean I'm not me; I am still full of dark thoughts. And being in a place like Jackson and the surrounding countryside makes me wickedly happy. Rural areas are filled with desolation. Decrepit buildings being devoured by time and nature. Cars rusting away to nothing. The remnants of past human development being conquered by the inevitable force of nature fills me with joy. One day, far far in the future, the streets we drive upon and the houses we live in will be broken and destroyed the same way. Trees will push through the asphalt, storms will melt the buildings, and everything will fade back into trees, and sunshine, and flowers.

Somehow knowing that makes the thought of living so much easier to bear. The mistakes we make will be erased by time and earth. It's as if nature/god/goddess/whatever has forgiven us in advance for what we will do. "Go ahead and fuck up. I'm just gonna destroy it eventually."

And by the way, if you haven't already, watch the "ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny" video from Newgrounds. It's so awesome!

fyi

I am mad at you, now. Now, when it doesn't matter, and it changes nothing.

O RLY

This is an artist's rendition of my family tree. Assuming the artist can't draw or use MS paint at all. Ahem.

So, it's story time again. Many years ago, when I returned to the mainland US and got aquainted with my extended family, it happened that my mother's cousin did a genealogy thing of their family tree. (It's worth mentioning that my mother's name is Price, and my father's is Gray.) Well, there amongst the Price ancestors was a bunch of Grays. Interesting, but hardly proof of anything, since they are both popular names. About 5 years later, I went to Nebraska to lay to rest my father's father. While going through his belongings, I discovered an old black-and-white photograph of a family reunion. This was amazing, since my father and his siblings claim to know nothing about their extended family or the origins there of. All the people in the photograph were named, and amongst all the Grays was a family of, you guessed it, Prices. Well, that was too coincidental for me. So when I returned home I told my mother we were inbred. She shrugged it off.

Two days ago, my brother got a phone call from a woman named Linda who claimed to be a family member and was looking for my dad. There's no Linda in either of our families that we know of. Later, he checked his messages, and there was one from Linda for my father, asking if he'd gotten the DNA test done yet. My brother freaked out, thinking maybe he had an illegitamate sibling or something, and called my dad for explanations. Here's the deal: Linda, a complete stranger, decided to do a genealogy of her family. Well, turns out she IS a distant relative. Her family and my dad's family are branches of the same bloodline. She also uncovered a scandal that we had been unaware of: my father's parents were COUSINS. Not 1st cousins, but cousins nonetheless. And, to make it worse, they were from Raleigh, North Carolina! So. We ARE inbred. And possibly in more ways than one.

Interesting....

You think I'd be more freaked out, but meh.

In other news, my grandmother is in the hospital. If things go south, I'm probably gonna end up out of town for a few days. I really don't want things to go south. >.<

42

So, what's the meaning of life? What's our purpose, what are we supposed to do in that space between being conceived and dying? Why are we alive in the first place?

I do not believe in the christian God, and I do not subscribe to their purported ideas of creation and a greater plan. To my humble and surely sacrilegious self, every animal and plant on our planet has a base life purpose: to propogate their species. Everything else revolves around that one goal, that one meaning. The species must be kept alive, which means that one must eat and find shelter and fight enemies, and one must produce young. To be sure, the human species started out that way as well. We fought tooth and nail, we adapted, and we reproduced. Now, fast forward through the centuries to modern times. We have built, through millenia, a System, a way of life, that enables us to survive from Day 1. There are standards of life, yes. There are levels of qualities of life, yes. But in "modern" countries, the fate of our species as a whole is no longer a huge issue. It's a given that we'll survive. To be honest, at this point in time, we'd be better off if people would stop reproducing so damn much. We've made it so easy to live that it has actually become a problem.

So our original life purpose has been destroyed, by ourselves. The civilizations, the societies, the religions, the schools...all the things that were created to better our odds of survival, what purpose do they serve if survival is no longer our primary directive?

Rewind again. Of all the animals that walked the earth, mankind rose to the top, so to speak. Somewhere along the evolutionary chain, we stood up, we got opposable thumbs, and we got some massive brainage. Somewhere along the evolutionary chain, we became sentient. With our sentience, with our new sense of self-awareness (and by that i mean not simply awareness of self, but awareness of self in relation to the Whole), we CREATED. We thought, and we applied our thoughts to reality, and we thought some more. We created philosophy, and medicine, and science. We took the natural world and filed it and ordered it into a zillion separate folders. We labeled notions and molded them to our wills. We literally bent the world beneath our will. And with this power of human creation, we wrote ourselves out of natural law.

Now, our most primitive and base concerns are superfluous. Medicine saves our offspring, the government feeds us, and the land is one huge superstructure of shelters. The unity that was created from the need to survive is no longer necessary. So the question is, what is life's purpose when the world we are born into is meaningless?

I would say we have made great progress since our days as hunters and gatherers, but I am not sure that is true. What constitutes "progress"? If, back then in the distant past, a man was asked "what is your purpose in life?" and he had been able to actually answer, are we truly more advanced now? Ask the average person today what their life purpose is, and they would be lost for an answer. Even the life goals of the modern world serve no real purpose. With no immediate concern for our future as a species, we've become self-absorbed, to the point where none of our "achievements" have any bearing on the future after our death. Unfortunately, a side effect of being sentient is realizing that there IS a future after our death. But, should we be concerned with the future at all at this point? Other than the fact that we're killing our planet, none of it has any bearing on US at all. WE'll all die before our inaction has any effect. So what does it matter?

So then, we're back at the beginning. What's the point? Why get married and have children when the arhaic concept of "marriage" is no longer necessary, and children are a dime a dozen? The world is overpopulated. And for that matter, we can raise a child on our own, or with a dozen partners, or with our immediate families. The need for a protector has expired, the reason for families gone. Why do we live in cities? The only threats to our safety are other humans, and really those are all problems we started anyway. Why go to school, get a degree, and go into a field? Name me a field that's useful in the future. Name me one professional field that isn't contributing to the destruction of our home and our species. Even medicine is killing us off, in the long run. Eventually we'll inadvertantly create a supervirus that will be unstoppable. But there's no way to stop it, either. It's like being on a train and knowing that the tracks end over a cliff. There're no brakes. So if we're all doomed, and our achievements are paltry and useless, what could possibly be the meaning of life?

And here sits our society. On the brink of International Existentialism. We've all come to this realization, whether we've admitted it or not. Humanity has thought itself into a corner. The value of an individual life has decreased vastly. Really, what is 1 in billions? The people who face this question, in one form or another, come to the conclusion that nothing matters, so why not just do whatever makes you happy? That's a good reason for living. To be happy. To love. To be loved. Whatever.

But even then, that's apathy. And isn't apathy and selfisness contributing to the problem? Thousands, millions, billions of human souls lose the unity that made us the power we are on earth. And if we aren't part of a greater whole, what are we? Individuals, lost and without purpose, devoid of meaning, and in the end, forced to create our own.

After all, creating is what humanity does best.

unbalanced

For an entire year of highschool, every pen I had exploded. And not the normal, out-the-tip, ink explosion. My pens exploded out the back end. Without fail, for the entire year. I must have gone through a record number of pens. I have assumed that this sort of ritual bizarre happenstance means I'm out of balance with something; my chi or whatever isn't jiving with the...technology? pens? I don't know. But it can't be pure "chance" when it is so systematic. After that year, the pen problem ceased, and now me and writing instruments get along swimmingly.

As I've expressed previously, my apartment is having an aquatic issue. The ceiling continually leaks. I'm starting to get accustomed to seeing that tell-tale water stain in the plaster. And it really has gotten out of control. It's sort of slipped into it's own terrible realm of surrealness. And tonight...tonight, as I'm leaving work, I see a group of guys staring at the mall ceiling. (It's been raining all day here) And there it is: the tell-tale water stain. The mall ceiling is leaking! Drip, drip, drip. The all-too-familiar nightmare sound of water where it isn't supposed to be.

So what am I to surmise from this? That, by some odd coincidence, the mall is leaking after years of never having that problem? But if it isn't some sort of coincidence, then what is it? Some sort of cosmic force fucking with me, just for the hell of it? Am i out of balance with WATER, or something? Maybe buildings? Honestly, I'd try hard to fix it if I only knew what the hell was wrong with me.

Maybe it's some sort of sign that I need to change something in my life. Make a new decision, turn a new course. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention to the cosmic directions.

F'ing Mornings

My bathroom ceiling is leaking again. This is beyond stupid. we've gone into the realm of ethereal stupidity. The apartment complex is making this up to me, somehow. -.-

The Dying Place

Dream: In an underground city, a monster hunts. It is killing the residents systematically. The killings become more frequent, until the city dwellers have no safe place to go. The death is spreading uncontrollably. The monster's movements become more purposeful, more focused.

The dream drops me into my body. I am in the underground city, and I am afraid. My family is with me, my mother and my brother. There is a way out, a portal to the Outside that has recently opened, and my mother is telling me how to get there. She is telling me how to avoid the portal guards, where to go once outside, and how to keep from getting separated from my brother. I am panicked, so it takes me longer than it should to realize that she is not coming with us. I confront her about it, and she tells me only she can defeat the monster. It seems as though she may die doing so, but there is no other way.

There is a confused montage of city streets, alleys, and corpses. My mother is pale with fear, but she soldiers on. We reach the edge of the city, and there are living people here. Pale and frightened, but alive. They are making sporadic dashes at a hole in the rock, a portal of light and muffled sound. The luck ones slip through; the rest are grabbed by giant men in armored suits, and hauled offstage screaming and weeping.

This is it, this is the way Out. My brother and I crouch hidden in the wreckage of a building, daring glances outside when we can. My mother's whispered good-byes are cut short by a shiver of fear, and the monster crests the horizon. I am surprised beneath my terror, for it is only a man. A giant evil man with hands staned with the blood of city dwellers. He is coming towards us, and we cower in terror, sure these are our last moments. My mother leaps into action, leading him away on a chase through the city. I hope she defeats him, although I can't imagine how.

The portal is still, everyone hiding from the monstrosity. We rush towards it, clambering over the stones. My brother enters first, and I push through after him...

The light is blinding, and the noise overwhelming. I am pushed aside by desparate hands, but I barely notice. My vision clears, and I am in a large room full of windows. There are lines of desks and a border of turnstyles, and a large door on the other side. I spot my brother talking to one of the people at the desks. They are taking readings from his hands with instruments. I follow the line of refugees to a desk. A man asks me questions, while plying my hands with cold instruments and needles. My brother is getting a pass, and heading out the door. He spares me one glance before leaving. The man with the instruments is frowning at a screen. There's something wrong with me; they aren't going to let me go. They will drag me off with the rejected people, and I will never be free. I'll die here, the same as I would have died underground. I pull away. There's a desk between me and the man; he grabs at me, but I take off running. I push through a turnstyle, through frightened people, and out the door, into a wide world with a wide sky. I am lost as soon as I step outside the building. I find myself across a road, and I lay down in the ditch, breathing heavily, clinging to the belief that my brother will find me here.

I am free. There are no more monsters or armored men. Yet I am still afraid, and lost, and alone. I listen to the cars pass, and feel the sunshine on my skin.

Just shoot me now.

*ring ring*
Me: "Thank you for calling Gamestop, this is Sarah, how may I help you?"
Caller: "Do you have any Wiis?"
Me: "No."
Caller: "Bitch!"
*hangs up*

ZOMG

(For those of you who can't read on account of my shitty picture-taking skillz , it says "ZOMG HAPPY BIRTHDAY")

Happy birthday Nicolai von Quante, Esquire the III.

(Unicorn courtesy of yours truly and Mattholomew Shetleezy, artiste.)