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- Never going home
- Never seeing my childhood family again
- Fleeing home and never seeing my adulthood family again
- Getting upset too easily
- Will my families even like each other?
- I am a mooch
- I don't know anything about science here
- ....so I have a less-than-highschool education.
- I'm kind of scared of meeting people
- I ate two pies today.
- Aaaaaaaaargh.
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<strong>Your Name is Red</strong>
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Your name tells people that you are powerful and intense. Your name makes people take you seriously.<br />
You stand out in a crowd and command attention. You can't blend in - and you would never try to or want to.<br />
<br />
People see you as a bit of a wild card. You're well known for being passionate, and you can be a bit dangerous at times.<br />
You inspire strong feelings in others. People either totally love you or totally despise you. There usually isn't much in between.
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Bull. Shit.
Metody had been determined to plan everything for the baby as perfectly as he could - he had no control over the poor thing's strange and unplanned background, but by golly, he could at least make sure care was being taken with the things that surrounded it. Or some of the things.
So he'd found and printed out the 2009 Consumer Product Safety guidelines for baby cribs and toys, then spent the morning feathering them with post-its. Some of the things in the guidelines came as a disappointment to him - he'd been imagining an elaborately carved wonderland of a crib for the child - but better safe than sorry. Especially with a baby.
When he was finished, he gathered the things he thought they'd need on the kitchen table: a pad of graph paper, his sketch book, a multitude of pencils and erasers, rulers, a calculator, his colored pencils and pastels, and a book of baby animals for reference, snagged at a used book store. He considered the pile, then looked to Hans.
"I...think that's everything..?"
"But once you get outside of towns and highways, there's a lot more stuff, and it's everywhere. Things just aren't so...barren. It's really nice, though, especially once you get into the deep woods." He smiles a bit dreamily. "At night, it all shimmers and there's colors in the darkness from the spirits rushing past. It's amazing and it's beautiful...." he trailed off, then shook his thoughts away, glancing back to Hans for a moment. "It - ah. It isn't that dangerous. The big things are hunted away, and there are massive wards placed to keep them back anyway. And the little things can be dangerous, but not any more than a - a angry cat. If you don't poke at things, they won't poke at you."
A touch nervous, Metody moved across the room to search for his hiking boots. He knew he'd brought them with him when he moved in, he was sure of it. He knelt and started sorting through the neatly stacked shoes, tapping them one by one. "I thought we'd sort of start out light - there's a nice little place I know where you can rent a little cabin by the river with a kitchenette. It'd be sort of a good first look at things but with all the trappings of civilization." By which he meant 'a stove and a real toilet, and possibly a radio.' No television. "And maybe after that we could head for the woods...?"
No. I'm a gardener.
I have my friends and my family, and they are my garden. I tend them as carefully as I can, pouring myself like water. I brush away the clinging weeds, uncoiling the vines as gently as I can. The only shelter I have is myself, and one person cannot possibly be enough, but I do what I can to protect them from the wind and the too-bright sun. The plants I grow are exceedingly strange, but I do the best I can. And the more they grow, the more beautiful they are.
I dreamed that I was made out of something impossibly dense. Floors bowed and bounced beneath me, wood and concrete bending like a trampoline. The sidewalk felt light and fluffy, and I had trouble keeping my balance as it roiled underneath my heavy footsteps. I became denser and I began to sink, wading through the streets of New York like they were some kind of thick, clinging liquid. I sank deeper, then deeper still, falling for an awful moment through a subway tunnel before slamming into the concrete below. I hit hard and sunk deep, but the thickness of the earth slowed me. I looked up, and I could see light from hole I'd made to the surface, but it was already closing as the concrete flowed back.
I sank and sank, down and down. Soon I reached the bedrock, which parted sluggishly under my feet. I dragged my fingers through it as I sank, trying to determine the grain size and composition, but each time I reached a new layer of stone, the old one was washed away from my hands. Down and down I went, until my feet broke through the thin and rubbery surface of the continental plate. It grew rougher as I fell, sinking to where the crystals grow huge in the hot darkness. But I didn't feel hot at all. I felt comforted by the stone around me, like a thick feather blanket. It was dark and I could not see.
On I went. The rock became slushy around me, the quartz in it melted by the heat of the pressure of the depth. Huge crystals of something bobbled away from my feet. There was a glow to the things around me now, so dim I wasn't quite sure it was there. The deeper I fell, the more liquid the rock and the faster I fell. The transition to the core was more gradual than I thought it would be - there was more and more liquid rock, and fewer and fewer crystals as the temperature rose. The crystals thinned out, and then I plummeted.
And I fell, and fell, and fell. The outer core is well over a thousand miles deep.
The magma became thicker as I fell, not from cooling, but from pressure. There is so much pressure at the center of the earth that it compresses the liquid rock, just like enough pressure will turn oxygen gas into a liquid. But I kept hurtling downwards, until the rock thickened around me. It tasted of metal.
I think I went right past the center of the earth. I don't know; distance was hard to say. But I fell and fell, and then I slowed until I stopped for a moment - then fell back the way I came. It happened again and again, the slowing and reversal, each time slower and over less distance, until I reached the center and gently rocked back and forth by my momentum.
I took a breath, inhaling iron and nickle, and it was soft and warm, like humid summer air. I finally curled up, my arms around my knees and my face buried against them. And then I slept.
Metody first noticed the little scratch on Monday. It was on his left calf by the ankle, on the side he thought of as the outside of his leg. It was a small scratch, maybe a half inch long, and sitting in the middle of a quarter sized bruise. He couldn't remember how he got it.
He'd stared at it for a moment, taken aback, and then scrubbed at it in case it was some inexplicably clinging smudge. No, no, it was certainly part of him. He braced his back against the wall and lifted his foot, twisting around in an awkwardly contorted pose to study it.
Then he'd picked up the brush he used on his nails, and scrubbed at it until the scab was gone and the edges were pink. Just in case. You had to clean these things out when you found them, so that you could be sure there was no infection.
Later, in bed, with Hans' arms around him, he'd touched at the spot with his foot, trying to feel if it had scabbed again.
* * *
( Graphic and long description here )The pull of skin on the wound made him limp a little. He sat down in the kitchen with the first aid kit, pondering the various cleaners. It hurt in a raw, awful sort of way, so he finally sprayed the antihistamine spray for mosquito bites into it, until it dripped pink. He dabbed that off with a handful of Kleenex, tucking them into his pocket. He’d learned his lesson about blood on the table. He was going to have to cover it from Hans – he’d worry if he saw it. At least keeping it covered meant he could keep a salve on it. He packed the shallow hole with Vaseline, and then laid a sparkly dinosaur band aid over it. It was too big for just one to cover, so he made a raft of them, sticking them to each other. He wrapped them all around his ankle, until he had a cuff of frolicking tyrannosaurs.
Metody threw away the Kleenex and the wrappers from the bandaids, stirring the trash to settle them towards the bottom. Best to keep those out of sight. He put away the first aid kit and pulled on his sock again, wiggling his toes into their holes, teeth clenched against the flexing of his skin. He’d just leave it alone until tonight. Maybe having all the infection cleaned out would be enough to fix it. Or maybe the stress of being picked at would weaken his skin enough for him to tell exactly where the infection was located, so he could clean that out as well.
One way or another, he'd get rid of the infection.
He could be patient when he had to be - besides, he had to hit like four different grocery stores for his supplies, taking them up into the apartment in several separate trips. Metody was under doctor's orders to not strain his fluttering heart, and bags of ice were heavy. One was his limit, and he needed a lot. He had to get other things as well - lots of plastic bags, lots of twist wraps, and six things of green Jell-O powder.
And then he had to coax Val into letting him take Ellis' shoes for a few hours.
Revenge was accomplished like this: He prepared the Jell-O, then left it in the fridge until it was lukewarm at best. And then he got Ellis' shoes. Each one was lined with a thick plastic bag. With the aid of a funnel, he filled the bag (and hence the shoe) with nascent Jell-o. A slip of etched plastic was dropped into each, and then he carefully closed the bags, folding them around and over and wrapping the twisty until he was positive they wouldn't leak.
Each shoe went into it's own plastic bag, and then another for good measure. And then he poured all that ice into a trash bag in the bath tub, and nestled the bagged shoes in there. And locked the door, and settled on the bathroom floor to read.
A few hours later, he quietly returned the shoes to Val's room, just as he'd promised. They were just as he'd taken them, except each was now full of Jell-O.
The little tags were positioned just as he wanted. When Ellis peered into the foot holes, he'd see the words YOU, TOTALLY, DESERVE and THIS.
Because he did. He so did.
2. I wish I'd never gotten into that damn car. I wish I'd thrown the keys into the woods instead of getting in. That's all it would have took.
3. I wish I hadn't moved in with John. That's what started all the stupid.
4. I wish I'd set John's clothes on fire. I wish I'd poured two jars of honey into his computer. And I wish I'd had something more obnoxious than flour to mix into all his paints. I wish I was crass enough to pee into the heating vent.
5. I wish I hadn't made Hans take care of me when I was sick. That was terribly unfair to him.
But if I could change anything, anything at all, I'd make it so that Hans could really sleep.
It had come as an outright joy to see the first advertisement for an egg dyeing kit during his Saturday morning cartoons. He'd bought that one, and then every other one he'd found in the intervening days. Thursday found him patiently blowing out egg after egg, until he had done two dozen of them and his cheeks ached. Friday found him hard boiling another two dozen.
When it finally came time for dyeing the eggs, he covered the kitchen table with a flowered plastic tablecloth and layers upon layers of newspapers. He carefully assembled each kit according to the directions, bending the little wire egg-holders at precise angles, carefully mixing little cups of vinegar and water and dye tablets. And when he was all done, at last, off he went to gather his family.
The sun was setting when he went to make the cupcakes - like heck he was going to serve bloody cake to human friends. Or himself. Ugh. And this was when he discovered that what he'd thought was a bag of sugar was actually a bag of whole-wheat flour.
He groaned, and ten minutes later, he was scooting into the Loft to look for shopping help.
"Spike! Come help me shop - I'm not allowed to lift things. I'll give you candy."
1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll challenge you to try something.
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you.
4. I'll tell you something I like about you.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours.
Twilight Test from Dumb Spot!
I...think I've been insulted.
I think I'd be insulted no matter what, really. Holy cow, these books.
Nature is glorious and strange.
Dinosaurs roamed the earth from the late Triassic to the early Cretaceous periods, meaning that the world was completely kickass awesome for around 160 million years before going into that boring period between dinosaurs and freaky mammals. They ranged incredibly in size, diet and ecological niche. Among the coolest of the dinosaurs were the ocean going plieosaurs, creatures sometimes described as looking like giant snakes rammed through giant turtles. The Liopleurodon (Chaaaaaaaaaaarlie) was among the greatest of the plieosaurs, being freaking huge and ravenous. The Ankylosaurus, a fearsome beast roughly the shape of an armadillo and the size of a car, was also cool - its skin was studded with armored bone plates as big as a dinnerplate with a fringe of spikes around the midline of its bod (where the back becomes the belly) and it had a knot of bone at the end of its tail, thought to be for clubbing.
Completely. Awesome.
Boneyards are something I've never seen. If I ever find one, I'm going to gorge, then walk out with everything left following me. There really isn't much more I can say on the topic.
Cupcakes are a lot of fun to make and Val loves them. I'd make them every day if my metabolism weren't slowing down. I found a recipe for a cupcake with bacon in it and I think he'd love that. I'll have to make it for him someday.
Sparkly things are an irresistable lure sometimes. I don't get how people can't look at them - they're so pretty and distracting. Hans gave me a very nice sparkly thing for Christmas, and I don't ever take it off. Maybe someday I'll wear it like it ought to be worn, and then he and I can be sparkly together.
Cuddly soft knitted shoggoths are something outside of my realm of knowledge, at least so far as shoggoths go. I do know that they're a mound with lots of tentacles, like the toy I made for Val. That one I made by crocheting a disc until it seemed wide enough, and that was the foot, and then I stopped increasing a while, and that started the sides. Then I decreased a bit every ten stitches, and then after a while, every nine, and then more and more, and that's how you make a round topped shape. If you want it to be pointier, decrease slower. I made the tentacles by picking a spot and working a chain in a circle around it, then I just crocheted for a very long time without any change. I had to stop now and then to stuff the tentacle. At the end, I decreased very quickly. I used a lot of different yarns so the arms had all different textures and colors.
From Ellis
Phalanges The phalanges are the bones of the fingers and toes of the body. They are the most distal bones of the body, meaning they are the farthest from the trunk. They got their name because they are lined up in rows, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers. The individual phalanges don't have their own names. Instead their named by location, i.e, the proximal phalange of the third digit, which is the bone closest to the palm of the middle finger of the right hand. Given that just about every branch of a blood vessel has it's own name, I find this to be a cop out.
What to say about the phalanges themselves? They're charming bits of engineering. They're very cute, being the smallest of the long bones. Once you stretch them a little, they make for awesome spider legs. Of all the bones, I think they're the ones that move the most in the body, especially now that people type so much.
Rings I have twenty-one rings that I wear. A lot of people never notice them, or if they do, they don't think to say anything. People are funny.
One is from Hans. I keep that one under my shirt on a chain, most of the time. I don't take it off.
Twenty are from me. I wear them two to a finger and one to a thumb, and one on each big toe. These are from my own bone, as are many of my things. I put them on to attend the ball at Spike's home, and I haven't seen a reason to remove them. It is comforting to have some small part of me properly covered, and they may be used someday.
Bright clothin' I like to dress in bright, happy colors. They make me feel better. Hawaiian shirts are the best thing to dress in. It's a pity I can't wear them when I work.
Piercings My former boyfriend convinced me to get the piercings as an aspect of his art. He was very proud of how I looked, right up until I realized what sort of person he was and walked off with his masterwork on my skin. They're my damn piercings now.
And I like how they look.
Advice. I am too eager to give this out, I know. And I am too eager to receive it. On the whole, I find it a very helpful thing to get. Even if you don't take it, it provides a new direction from which to consider a problem.
"Val! Time to get up!" He paused and there was a bit of thumping on the floor. This was Metody bouncing around. "I have a cupcake for you!"
He was so very proud of it, too; he'd decorated it with supplies left over from making and painting Val's cake. Most of the top of it was an eye, the scarlet iris made from a slice of strawberry. Sugary teeth ringed the eye as if it peered from a fangy mouth, and he had carefully made a couple of tentacles to coil around the edges of the cupcake, the undersides gleaming with little silver dragees.
» I committed suicide:
» I said I liked you:
» I kissed you:
» I lived next door to you:
» I started smoking:
» I started drinking:
» I stole something:
» I was hospitalized:
» I ran away from home:
» I got into a fight and you weren't there:
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MY:
» Personality:
» Eyes:
» Face:
» Movie preferences:
» Hair:
» Clothes:
» Mannerisms:
» Musical preferences:
[1] Who are you?
[2] Are we friends?
[3] When and how did we meet?
[4] Have I affected you? How?
[5] What do you think of me?
[6] What's the fondest memory you have of me?
[7] How long do you think we will be friends or enemies?
[8] Do you love me?
[9] Have I ever hurt you?
[10] Would you hug me?
[11] Would you kiss me?
[12] Are we close?
[13] Emotionally, what stands out?
[14] Do you wish I was cooler?
[15] On a scale of 1-10, how nice am I?
[16] Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
[17] Am I lovable?
[18] How long have you known me?
[19] Describe me in one word.
[20] What was your first impression?
[21] Do you still think that way about me now?
[22] What do you think my weakness is?
[23] Do you think I'll get married?
[24] What about me makes you happy?
[25] What about me makes you sad?
[26] What reminds you of me?
[27] What's something you would change about me?
[29] How well do you know me?
[29] Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
[30] Do you think I would ever kill someone?
[31] Are you going to put this on your journal and see what I say about you?
