Banquet rooms near me
The Science of Deduction
2013.01.11 00:34 neowu The Science of Deduction
A place to practice your Sherlock like observation
2023.06.07 03:23 lutherwriteshorror My childhood dog showed back up to my house after 30 years [Part 2]
My mother thinks it’s a miracle.
Yesterday my childhood dog showed up at my house after having disappeared thirty years ago, and I’ve been trying to figure out what is happening and what it means.
To say I’m unsettled would be an understatement.
I’m not on the best terms with my mother. We never had the best relationship, but she’s been pushing boundaries really terribly ever since my son was born. She’ll show up out of the blue demanding to spend time with him, demanding “grandmother privileges” without giving us any heads up or letting us prepare ourselves for company, she’ll take things from the house without asking, she tried to bully us into letting her move in, that sort of thing. It doesn’t bug me terribly, maybe because I’m used to it, but my wife has been on the verge of blowing up and banning her from our house for months.
So when I called her up to tell her about this dog that I could swear was Shadow, I should have braced for the worst.
She practically broke down the door rushing over to our house in a matter of minutes.
I couldn’t think of any distinguishing characteristics other than his dichromatic eyes and the fact that I’d never seen a dog that looked quite like him, but my mother remembered that Shadow had a missing toe on his left front paw, and we were always curious as to what had happened.
Sure enough, this returned Shadow was missing the same toe.
On that note, my mother has never been the least bit religious, but I think Shadow turning up after all these years is triggering some sort of conversion.
"It must be a sign. God wants us to have another shot with him," she said.
"You're religious now?" I asked.
"This is proof of something, isn't it? Your childhood dog, your best friend has returned after thirty years to protect your son. That's incredible!"
For once, she and my wife finally agree on something: we’re keeping “Shadow.” I’m leery as all hell about it, and what scares me more than anything i just how comfortable he’s making everyone else around him. Last night my wife and mother were watching television and eating popcorn with Shadow curled up at their feet. I swear, I haven’t seen them more at peace together than in that moment, and even I have to admit it makes me feel bad that I’m trying to deprive them of that, but there is something unnatural about this whole ordeal. Something bad.
It's like nobody is listening to reason.
Those hairs on the back of your neck that stand up from some signal deep in the mammalian brain, that tell you something is very wrong — get out of this situation now — alarm bells are going off, it feels like I'm the only one who has them in this family.
Apparently he showed up at our door while I was at work yesterday and my wife brought him in to get him a snack and some water. She's a dog person, so seeing the majestic animal panting at our doorstep she naturally trusted him and let him in.
"You brought in a wild animal with our infant son in the house?" I asked, honestly flabbergasted.
"He's not some wild wolf or something. He's a dog and very obviously a good one at that. I could just tell."
I remembered back to childhood, that gruff voice that came from Shadow detailing each gory moment of the scene that would happen if he chose to rip out my sister's throat, the flesh torn open, the blood drenching the cartoon pillowcase, the splatter on her curtains as he shook her windpipe like a dead rat. I looked at him, and the way he looked at me was as if he knew.
"Every moment he's in this house I'm going to be afraid of what he'll do." I told her.
"He's a good dog. Your mom says you were inseparable from him when you were a kid. What's changed?"
"Why is nobody listening to me? He was possessive of me but I was always terrified of him. I don't want him in our house." I said.
"You're being so irrational about this," she said.
Irrational? I'm sorry, I'm not convinced a dog can be thirty-seven years old.
My brain's not some cabinet of horrors. I get that I have the reputation in my family as still being some sort of imaginative child even though all that stopped thirty years ago, but it feels to me that these red flags I'm seeing everywhere are pretty obvious.
Honestly the worst thing is that after never being civil to each other for six and a half years my wife and mother are abruptly best friends. My wife even invited my mother to come stay with us for a while.
My wife and I were in the kitchen after dinner when she brought the idea up. I had been drying a plate and it slip out of my hands and broke on the floor.
"An extra pair of hands around the house won't hurt."
"An extra pair of hands and a drooling maw," I said. The dog looked up at me and I felt like it grabbed my voice.
I cleaned up the broken plate, downcast. The moment she brought it up I knew I'd already lost that argument. I've been burning through overtime at work to pay for childcare, but that's left so much extra housework for my wife that it's really not fair to her for me to argue on this. We need the help.
So in addition to worrying about this demon dog or whatever Shadow is, I'm having to move everything out of my office to make my mother a guest room, and the emotional dynamic of my marriage has completely shifted overnight.
Most of the things in my office I don't really use. I carried the files downstairs and had started the laborious project of trying to disassemble my wire shelves when I heard my son babbling in the other room. He was never this talkative.
I came into my son's room as the sun was dipping below the window and bathing the room in golden light. Shadow was there, but this time he was standing on his hind legs, almost as if he was human. His hair puffed up and he looked powerful, regal, wise. He stood there gazing at my son.
“No,” I said, “go back to where you came from. I don’t want you here.”
When he turned to look at me his eyes burned into mine with an intense stare, the reached into me and grabbed hold of something they found inside me. I couldn't move. An unbelievable feeling of calm washed over me and I left the room as though my body was on marionette strings.
As soon as I closed the door my paternal instincts took back over and I was immediately terrified that something was happening to my son. I yanked the door back open dreading the worst — what if the beast had carried him off, had taken him to some dark hole we would never find to eat his tender body — what if he'd come back again from some rotten hell to take everything from me and there was nothing I could do to stop him. But when the door flew open Shadow was sitting there as a regular dog, wagging his tail while my son said nonsense syllables to him.
But that wasn’t real. Something was off. It was like the scene was only in my imagination. My eyes, they weren’t even open, how could what I was seeing be real if my eyes weren’t even open?
I focused with everything I had. My body felt like it was moving through wet concrete — if I didn’t shuck it off right now it would solidify and I wouldn’t be able to regain control again.
I focused, even as something pushed back. I pushed with all my will to open my eyes and see what was actually happening in front of me.
I dredged up every ounce of courage I had against that beast, every ounce of resentment for the things he did to me in childhood. I remembered how he made me, an innocent little boy, push my sister down the stairs — how I’d never recovered my relationship with her.
No, I thought. I am an adult now, not some little boy who is constantly afraid.
I will see. I will, I told myself.
My eyes snapped open. I saw Shadow standing upright, bipedal, his back long, and straight, and strong, and he was holding my son, the back of his onesie caught on that animal’s teether. He looked at me with golden eyes, stared into me, but I refused to budge — I refused to let him back into me even an inch.
I realized he was frozen too. For some reason he couldn’t move while he was trying to exert his will over me. My son wriggled and I knew he was destined to fall any moment.
I pushed through the room, every step heavy and exhausting. I grabbed my son out of “Shadow’s” mouth and wrenched him free, and I backed out of the room.
As soon as I was free of the room I regained full control of my body and dashed down the stairs holding my infant son. I was going to get us out of this, no matter what my wife and mother thought.
I heard my wife’s voice call out to me from the kitchen as I was nearly out the door. “You cannot leave with him. He is not your son anymore. Shadow will be a better father to him than you could ever be. Shadow can keep him safe.”
It was my wife’s voice, but those weren’t her words. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what, but even if she was deranged enough to claim Shadow was my son’s father, she wouldn’t have used those words.
“He’s done something to you. You have to resist. You have to break free.”
My mother came out of the kitchen carrying a pair of scissors as if they were knives, smiling.
“I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I’m sorry I’m leaving you to him, but I have to make sure our son is safe. I’ll be back for you. I promise.”
I slammed the door and leapt in the car. In my bedroom window I saw Shadow watching me. I didn’t even want to know what his next move would be.
I drove until I was tired of driving and pulled into a parking lot to think and type this up. My son is sleeping in the car seat. For the moment, we’re safe, but where we can go from here, I have no idea.
[Part 1] https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/140pc2my_childhood_dog_just_showed_up_at_my_house_afte?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
submitted by lutherwriteshorror to nosleep [link] [comments]
Yesterday my childhood dog showed up at my house after having disappeared thirty years ago, and I’ve been trying to figure out what is happening and what it means.
To say I’m unsettled would be an understatement.
I’m not on the best terms with my mother. We never had the best relationship, but she’s been pushing boundaries really terribly ever since my son was born. She’ll show up out of the blue demanding to spend time with him, demanding “grandmother privileges” without giving us any heads up or letting us prepare ourselves for company, she’ll take things from the house without asking, she tried to bully us into letting her move in, that sort of thing. It doesn’t bug me terribly, maybe because I’m used to it, but my wife has been on the verge of blowing up and banning her from our house for months.
So when I called her up to tell her about this dog that I could swear was Shadow, I should have braced for the worst.
She practically broke down the door rushing over to our house in a matter of minutes.
I couldn’t think of any distinguishing characteristics other than his dichromatic eyes and the fact that I’d never seen a dog that looked quite like him, but my mother remembered that Shadow had a missing toe on his left front paw, and we were always curious as to what had happened.
Sure enough, this returned Shadow was missing the same toe.
On that note, my mother has never been the least bit religious, but I think Shadow turning up after all these years is triggering some sort of conversion.
"It must be a sign. God wants us to have another shot with him," she said.
"You're religious now?" I asked.
"This is proof of something, isn't it? Your childhood dog, your best friend has returned after thirty years to protect your son. That's incredible!"
For once, she and my wife finally agree on something: we’re keeping “Shadow.” I’m leery as all hell about it, and what scares me more than anything i just how comfortable he’s making everyone else around him. Last night my wife and mother were watching television and eating popcorn with Shadow curled up at their feet. I swear, I haven’t seen them more at peace together than in that moment, and even I have to admit it makes me feel bad that I’m trying to deprive them of that, but there is something unnatural about this whole ordeal. Something bad.
It's like nobody is listening to reason.
Those hairs on the back of your neck that stand up from some signal deep in the mammalian brain, that tell you something is very wrong — get out of this situation now — alarm bells are going off, it feels like I'm the only one who has them in this family.
Apparently he showed up at our door while I was at work yesterday and my wife brought him in to get him a snack and some water. She's a dog person, so seeing the majestic animal panting at our doorstep she naturally trusted him and let him in.
"You brought in a wild animal with our infant son in the house?" I asked, honestly flabbergasted.
"He's not some wild wolf or something. He's a dog and very obviously a good one at that. I could just tell."
I remembered back to childhood, that gruff voice that came from Shadow detailing each gory moment of the scene that would happen if he chose to rip out my sister's throat, the flesh torn open, the blood drenching the cartoon pillowcase, the splatter on her curtains as he shook her windpipe like a dead rat. I looked at him, and the way he looked at me was as if he knew.
"Every moment he's in this house I'm going to be afraid of what he'll do." I told her.
"He's a good dog. Your mom says you were inseparable from him when you were a kid. What's changed?"
"Why is nobody listening to me? He was possessive of me but I was always terrified of him. I don't want him in our house." I said.
"You're being so irrational about this," she said.
Irrational? I'm sorry, I'm not convinced a dog can be thirty-seven years old.
My brain's not some cabinet of horrors. I get that I have the reputation in my family as still being some sort of imaginative child even though all that stopped thirty years ago, but it feels to me that these red flags I'm seeing everywhere are pretty obvious.
Honestly the worst thing is that after never being civil to each other for six and a half years my wife and mother are abruptly best friends. My wife even invited my mother to come stay with us for a while.
My wife and I were in the kitchen after dinner when she brought the idea up. I had been drying a plate and it slip out of my hands and broke on the floor.
"An extra pair of hands around the house won't hurt."
"An extra pair of hands and a drooling maw," I said. The dog looked up at me and I felt like it grabbed my voice.
I cleaned up the broken plate, downcast. The moment she brought it up I knew I'd already lost that argument. I've been burning through overtime at work to pay for childcare, but that's left so much extra housework for my wife that it's really not fair to her for me to argue on this. We need the help.
So in addition to worrying about this demon dog or whatever Shadow is, I'm having to move everything out of my office to make my mother a guest room, and the emotional dynamic of my marriage has completely shifted overnight.
Most of the things in my office I don't really use. I carried the files downstairs and had started the laborious project of trying to disassemble my wire shelves when I heard my son babbling in the other room. He was never this talkative.
I came into my son's room as the sun was dipping below the window and bathing the room in golden light. Shadow was there, but this time he was standing on his hind legs, almost as if he was human. His hair puffed up and he looked powerful, regal, wise. He stood there gazing at my son.
“No,” I said, “go back to where you came from. I don’t want you here.”
When he turned to look at me his eyes burned into mine with an intense stare, the reached into me and grabbed hold of something they found inside me. I couldn't move. An unbelievable feeling of calm washed over me and I left the room as though my body was on marionette strings.
As soon as I closed the door my paternal instincts took back over and I was immediately terrified that something was happening to my son. I yanked the door back open dreading the worst — what if the beast had carried him off, had taken him to some dark hole we would never find to eat his tender body — what if he'd come back again from some rotten hell to take everything from me and there was nothing I could do to stop him. But when the door flew open Shadow was sitting there as a regular dog, wagging his tail while my son said nonsense syllables to him.
But that wasn’t real. Something was off. It was like the scene was only in my imagination. My eyes, they weren’t even open, how could what I was seeing be real if my eyes weren’t even open?
I focused with everything I had. My body felt like it was moving through wet concrete — if I didn’t shuck it off right now it would solidify and I wouldn’t be able to regain control again.
I focused, even as something pushed back. I pushed with all my will to open my eyes and see what was actually happening in front of me.
I dredged up every ounce of courage I had against that beast, every ounce of resentment for the things he did to me in childhood. I remembered how he made me, an innocent little boy, push my sister down the stairs — how I’d never recovered my relationship with her.
No, I thought. I am an adult now, not some little boy who is constantly afraid.
I will see. I will, I told myself.
My eyes snapped open. I saw Shadow standing upright, bipedal, his back long, and straight, and strong, and he was holding my son, the back of his onesie caught on that animal’s teether. He looked at me with golden eyes, stared into me, but I refused to budge — I refused to let him back into me even an inch.
I realized he was frozen too. For some reason he couldn’t move while he was trying to exert his will over me. My son wriggled and I knew he was destined to fall any moment.
I pushed through the room, every step heavy and exhausting. I grabbed my son out of “Shadow’s” mouth and wrenched him free, and I backed out of the room.
As soon as I was free of the room I regained full control of my body and dashed down the stairs holding my infant son. I was going to get us out of this, no matter what my wife and mother thought.
I heard my wife’s voice call out to me from the kitchen as I was nearly out the door. “You cannot leave with him. He is not your son anymore. Shadow will be a better father to him than you could ever be. Shadow can keep him safe.”
It was my wife’s voice, but those weren’t her words. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what, but even if she was deranged enough to claim Shadow was my son’s father, she wouldn’t have used those words.
“He’s done something to you. You have to resist. You have to break free.”
My mother came out of the kitchen carrying a pair of scissors as if they were knives, smiling.
“I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I’m sorry I’m leaving you to him, but I have to make sure our son is safe. I’ll be back for you. I promise.”
I slammed the door and leapt in the car. In my bedroom window I saw Shadow watching me. I didn’t even want to know what his next move would be.
I drove until I was tired of driving and pulled into a parking lot to think and type this up. My son is sleeping in the car seat. For the moment, we’re safe, but where we can go from here, I have no idea.
[Part 1] https://www.reddit.com/nosleep/comments/140pc2my_childhood_dog_just_showed_up_at_my_house_afte?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
2023.06.07 03:23 AtmosphereStrider 23 [M4F] Tennessee - Tall nerdy guy looking for someone to laugh with
Night shift work is difficult. Not because of the hours for me, I love the nighttime but everyone is asleep during the day. I'm ultimately looking for someone to make my nights less lonely, though it would be nice if you were near me as I hope to make a real connection.
Now just some personal details. I'm 6'2, and I'd say I have a somewhat average build. I am mixed, with a white father and a black mother. I have very light skin but my hair is a very fluffy afro that everyone wants to touch. I definitely don't mind.
I am pretty nerdy, I love marvel and certain anime but I'm not a super fan. I write short stories and do other creative projects in my free time and I'm always looking for more. I'm also looking to start hiking and doing more outdoor activities as well. Chattanooga is a beautiful place for it.
If you saw something you liked, I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
submitted by AtmosphereStrider to r4r [link] [comments]
Now just some personal details. I'm 6'2, and I'd say I have a somewhat average build. I am mixed, with a white father and a black mother. I have very light skin but my hair is a very fluffy afro that everyone wants to touch. I definitely don't mind.
I am pretty nerdy, I love marvel and certain anime but I'm not a super fan. I write short stories and do other creative projects in my free time and I'm always looking for more. I'm also looking to start hiking and doing more outdoor activities as well. Chattanooga is a beautiful place for it.
If you saw something you liked, I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
2023.06.07 03:22 Unable_Quantity3753 Spider web or mold? It’s growing only on corners in my room and only near where leaks in the ceiling happened (most recent leak in February but also leak happened 1.5 years ago) 😩 there’s no bugs in my room
submitted by Unable_Quantity3753 to Mold [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:21 esteeffff UTC Dartmouth Court Summer Sublease (female)
Hello, I am looking for someone to sublease my room to in Dartmouth Court (also available for lease takeover until November).
-It’s a 2b/2b in a shared room and bathroom (NOT A PRIVATE ROOM)
-Right across from Target and Trader Joe’s
-About a 5 minute walk to UCI campus
-Rent is under $1100 (utilities included) and comes with a free parking spot in a garage
-Available starting mid-June. Feel free to message me for more details!
submitted by esteeffff to UCI [link] [comments]
-It’s a 2b/2b in a shared room and bathroom (NOT A PRIVATE ROOM)
-Right across from Target and Trader Joe’s
-About a 5 minute walk to UCI campus
-Rent is under $1100 (utilities included) and comes with a free parking spot in a garage
-Available starting mid-June. Feel free to message me for more details!
2023.06.07 03:20 Randomthoughts871 Advice to heal
Together 2 years, broken up 2 years (when it ended she was hopeful for a future so I stayed in contact and we ended up going and doing all the stuff we normally would at weekends/during the week) Within that time alot of toxicity arised and she said its a definate no to getting back, finds me really ugly and wouldnt go near me.. and i know she means that, but she still wanted the friendship even though i was madly in love still so never could be just friends nor would i want that when the intention was to be together so basically now i suspect her attentions elsewhere but she says its not until shes blue in the face (gut instinct) and i called it a day it hurt but i cant be around if someone else comes and gets her love i know its immature but it absolutely breaks me So im in love shes completely over me but misses me (for friendship) and will probably go off and get her happiest of endings and im left broken that i have zero chance and want to know how do i get over her? If there is a new guy then he will get the best of her because shes in a good place mentally… Will i when my feelings have remained for 4 years in total ?
submitted by Randomthoughts871 to ToxicRelationships [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:20 TheSmogmonsterZX The Daughter that Follows - Chapter 27 - Reunited - Part 5
Disclaimer: Registered trademarks and copyrights are properties of their rightful owners. As this series jumps realities very often it is hard to track that info.
DM, the Digitalman, the Scion of Variable is a creation of my good friend who does not use Reddit and is used with permission.
The Pokémon Lucario is © The Pokemon Company.
“When you're in your darkest place, you give yourself hope and that's inner strength.”
― Uncle Iroh
The Daughter that Follows
Chapter 27
Reunited
Part 5
“So, are we all ready?” Darius asked as he rolled out a second grill in his backyard. He had decided to host the mini-reunion for Alan and his friend.
“We are so friggin’ ready.” Kenji grinned. “I can almost taste the meat...”
“Why is he acting like he hasn’t had meat in forever?” Alan asked Brooklynn while pointing to her husband.
“I wish I knew, he has his own grill.” Brooklyn shook her head. “Cooks good corn.”
“Speaking of, I got these for you.” Alan held up several cobs. “Won’t be a competition because Vegeta thinks vegetables are a sin.”
Brooklyn rolled her eyes, “I know the type.”
“So...” Sammie pointed into Darius’ house. “Is your other guest okay?”
“He’s fine, he just doesn’t like the sun that much.” Alan grinned.
“He’s a vampire.” Yaz said.
“Don’t say that.” Sammie chided her wife.
“Technically he’s a nosferatu.” Alan wavered his hand. “But also be quiet, I want Anna surprised, and Salem surprised.”
“Why is he getting surprised?” Kenji asked.
Yaz smiled, “You didn’t pay attention to his shirt, did you?”
“I think he might be a fan of Alan’s friend.” Sammie said.
Not a moment after that a hole opened above Darius’ driveway. They heard Ben shout in surprise as he fell out with Anna and Vegeta.
“You know, you’re brave...” Vegeta said, “But you need to have more spatial awareness if you’re not gonna fly.”
“We can’t fly here.” Ben said as he was flown over Darius’ roof and sat down.
“Where’s Anna?” Alan asked.
“She saw someone attacking Spider-Men.” Vegeta shrugged.”Dropped us off and ran off.”
“Oh.” Alan blinked.
“Yeah, it looked like some wasp thingy.” Vegeta flew back and returned with a huge slab of meat. “Wagusaurus.”
Alan stopped to think for a moment before another hole in reality opened and Anna walked through covered in orange and green gunk.
“Hose?” She asked grumpily.
Darius pointed to the side of his house.
“So I take it, it squished good?” Salem snickered from the sliding door.
Anna froze and looked up. Then she looked at her father.
“Surprise.” Alan smirked.
Anna ran up and hugged her father. “That’s for surprising me.”
Alan nodded. “I kinda figured.”
Salem was laughing like mad as Anna went to hose herself off. Then he froze as he saw Vegeta cutting up the meat.
“Surprise.” Alan smiled and tapped Vegeta on the shoulder. “You gotta fan here, man.”
“Huh?” Vegeta turned to see the fanged nosferatu staring and pointing. “Hey, you want to help? This stuff is heavy.”
Salem just nodded and helped the saiyan prince separate out the meat.
Anna came walking back around the corner, she had used her aura to squeeze the water from her clothes and skin, though her hair was still wet. She giggled as her father simply eradicated the gunk that was on his clothes.
“Thank you.” Anna smiled up at Alan.
“Yeah, well he’ll be going with you.” Alan smiled. “Plus this needed to happen outside of a battle zone.”
“Oh yeah.” Anna nodded emphatically. “Completely.”
Alan smiled as he clapped his hands. “All right! Everyone get ready for a taste test sensation! Except Brooklynn, I’ll have your corn done not long after.”
“What is she vegetarian?” Vegeta snapped.
“Vegan.” Brooklyn said as she crossed her arms.
“I make meat.” Vegeta crossed his arms as if to challenge her.
“Good for you, my husband is who you want to impress.” She nodded to Kenji.
“Huh, fair.” Vegeta nodded. “Why is he staring at the grills?”
“He grills too, but for fun.” Brooklynn smiled.
“Hey, amateur!” Vegeta stomped forward.
Kenji flinched. “Yes?”
“You’re my second.” Vegeta grinned.
Kenji smiled and saluted, “Yes sir!”
“Ben, you got my stuff?” Alan asked.
“Stuff?” Vegeta asked as Ben walked out with a wheeled tray filled with cooking paraphernalia.
“Oh, now we’re getting serious!” Vegeta grinned. “Anna, you got my stuff?”
Anna nodded and tossed out a pink and blue capsule that turned into another wheeled tray with similar cooking tools on it.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m recusing myself.” Anna smiled.
“Clever girl.” Vegeta stared at her with a vicious smile..
“Man if you knew the history of that phrase here.” Alan shook his head. “All right folks, quarter of a steak each for the taste testing. Be honest, put your fork on the plate you like most.”
“Do we get ketchup?” Anna asked with a devious grin.
Both men stopped and glared.
“I found the heckler.” Alan said through gritted teeth.
“Considering her parentage, I’m not surprised.” Vegeta nodded.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Darkseid paced on Apokalips.
He had been shunted back to his planet and reality with ease by the ghostly reaper. He had been embarrassed for the last time by the Scions. He would not tolerate it anymore.
“Kalibak!” He shouted for his son.
Kalibak came forward and kneeled. “Father.”
“Prepare all to attack Earth. If I cannot go to them I will draw them to me. We will slaughter Superman's adopted homeworld.” Darkseid grinned.
The sound of chains echoed through the halls.
“Alice?” Hare lifted his head.
“She’s coming...” March Hare’s vocalizer on the back of the warbeast he was attached to, sang to life.
Soon a woman in white with red on a half mask walked into view.
“And who are you?” Darkseid asked.
“I am called Kyton. I come from Alan Quain’s home reality.” She said as the chains holding Hare released him. “I am the Revenant of Heroes, element of metal.” March Hare’s brain case released itself and fell to the ground.
“FREEDOM!” The brains’ final thoughts shouted from the vocalizer.
“You will keep them no longer!” Kyton’s chains flew from openings and snagged the ragged body of Hare into a swirling portal.
“So it is war!” Darkseid grinned as lanced out a punch, but a wall of crystal rose up from the ground.
“I’m here to asshole.” Stephen Quain walked in as the air around all of Darkseid’s forces turned to solid crystalline bindings. “And we brought an old friend.”
A scream of rage tore through the air as a clown mask landed at Darkseid’s feet.
Darkseid looked down and was caught by a powerful uppercut, but it was nothing to him. He did recognize his opponent, they had taken him form Quain’s home reality and tormented him. They had tried to shatter the mask he wore only to find it resisted them at all attempts. He wore a new mask now, but Darkseid felt the same hidden power inside it. He grinned and grabbed the human’s fist and tossed him back.
“Dammnit!” SideEffect shouted. “If I could feel those bones I’d be even more pissed!”
“And now I am...” Darkseid looked outside his window to see a series of explosions ripple across Apokalips.
A man flew down to his window, a billowing red cape.
“I’m afraid not, Darkseid, this is the Scion’s war.” Superman smiled. “We’re just helping.” He flew in and slammed the leader of Apokalips through the walls.
Kyton looked at Stephen Quain, “Don’t kill the sapient ones.”
Stephne rolled his eyes. “Just because I have a history with the hairball doesn’t mean I’m trigger happy.”
Kalibak looked around in confusion. The crystal bindings were all too familiar and he looked at the human in fear. “Can you please not turn me into crystal again? It really hurts.”
Stephen rolled his eyes.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
In the black space above Apokalips, a green form looked down upon the world. A scythe and sword were by his side, as was a young pale skinned woman. She shook her head but did not oppose the Scion.
“You started this early.” Death of the Endless sighed. “Why?”
“Because it’s the one thing no one would expect me to actually do.” Wraith drew his daggers from his side and looked them over. His black blade still had a knick in it from when a piece broke off in Atropos. “So I’ll make sure this entire war is off balance.”
Death of the Endless shook her head. “I think she got under your skin. So to speak.”
“She did.” Wraith acknowledged. “For this I am not Death. For this I am the endless rage of the murdered and unavenged. She wants this fight, I’ll give it to her, but on my terms.”
“What are your friends doing?” Death of the Endless looked down.
One half of Apokolips was now thoroughly exploded with mechanical animals running rampant over it. The other half was now a flower covered paradise that had strange trees restraining the parademons and other forces.
“What they do best.” Wraith smiled. “Chaos and Imbalance.”
“And what can we do?” The voice of Astral, Scion of Order asked as he appeared.
“Cage of this reality, separate it from itself.” Wraith leaned on his scythe.
“Shadow reality?” Astral asked.
Wraith nodded.
“I’m gonna need my buddy down there.” Astral nodded.
“I’m your buddy?!” Perfection cooed as he appeared. “Hiya D.o.E.! How’s Delirium?”
“Delerious.” Death of the Endless smiled with a nod.
“All right!” Perfection cheered. “One shadow realm coming up!” He snapped his fingers and a wig very similar to a popular card game anime character’s hair appeared on his head and his clothes shifted to a similar style.
“Does that mean I have to be Kaiba?” Astral sighed.
“Would you?” Perfection asked with a pleading look.
“Okay, fine. This once.” Astral sighed and his trench coat shifted to that of another coat similar to the other one’s rival.
“I’m not watching this.” Wraith sighed as he vanished.
“Man, what a party pooper.” Perfection sighed. “Well it’s time to get twisted!”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna sat watching her friends and her father. Everyone was relaxed and the party was winding to a close. Vegeta was busy going over a speech with her dad and Salem was busy trying to understand how Ben survived a Carnotaurus as a teenager with no powers.
“We will go to our final battle soon.” Rio sat beside her enjoying some of the last steak.
“Well not our last.” Anna smiled.
Rio shook her head. “I cannot go with you beyond this.”
Anna looked at Rio. “Did I say something, do something?”
Rio shook her head. “I have a responsibility I too will be stepping into, at Arceus’ last request.”
Anna hugged Rio. “You could have said something.”
“I was conflicted.” Rio admitted, “But it was Arlina that made me realize I had to do it.”
Anna nodded. “You’ll always be my sister.”
“You will always be welcome in my world.” Rio smiled and gave a happy yip.
Anna smiled. “Bonds beyond life and death.”
“Bonds beyond time and space.” Rio said as a compliment to it. “I will cherish the time we have had together.”
Anna smiled and held up the pokeball.
“Oh no,we still need that, I don’t want to travel the multiverse exposed to it!” Rio barked nervously.
Anna laughed. “Okay, One last big adventure.”
“Once more unto the breach, my friends.” Alan said as he sat next to them.
“What?” Anna asked.
“The Bard himself.” Alan smiled. “Henry the Fifth.”
Anna nodded. “I’m scared.”
Alan nodded. “So am I. I could lose the most important people to me. But it has to stop, she has to be stopped, he has to be stopped. No more.”
Anna nodded.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.” Yaz said. “Act Three, Scene One.”
“Indeed.” Alan smiled and nodded. “I better pick up Teal’c and the other’s too.”
Anna looked at her father quizzically.
“He sounds a lot like Kratos. But he enjoys breaking False gods, so...” He paused. “Disturbingly coincidental hobbies.”
Anna giggled.
“How many of my friends have that hobby?” Alan pondered aloud.
Vegeta jumped up and waved his hand.
“No, Vegeta. Frieza was not a false god.” Alan sighed.
“Fair.” Vegeta harrumphed.
“Well I have to get this all cleaned up tomorrow.” Darius sighed.
Alan gave a baring laugh.
“What?” Darius asked.
“Darius.” Anna scoffed, “We aren’t trashy guests...” She focused and Hong Long came out from her aura and quickly began to pick up trash.
Alan simply focused on various small bits that flew to the trash cans. Within minutes the backyard and the grills were sparkling.
“Kami, do I miss the easy cleanups...” Vegeta sighed. “You know the stars here are bit different, but I like’em.”
Anna smiled and began to point out the constellations. Soon though Alan, Anna and their guests returned to the Camp for one more night of rest.
When they got back Anna and Alan crashed within minutes, Vegeta and Salem were still up staring out at the stars.
“You feel it?” Vegeta asked.
“Like a cat with its hackles up.” Salem nodded.
“What do you do, to keep her safe?” Vegeta asked.
“Got some magic, but mostly I use big guns.” Salem said. “I can hack, but it’s a tertiary skill nowadays. If I get pissed I can jack my bodies’ power up, but not anywhere near as powerful as you.”
Vegeta nodded. “Willing to die?”
“For them?” Salem just nodded.
“Good.” Vegeta nodded. “He wants me up front with Darkseid. How do you think I’ll fair?”
“Depends.” Salem shrugged, “What’s your newest technique?”
“Well I developed a bit of an Ego, if you will.” Vegeta grinned.
“No, not with Darkseid.” Salem shook his head. “Definitely poor on the aggression, but you do not want to take a hit. Especially the Omega Beams, you can’t dodge them, you can only put others in front of them.”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
“He wasn’t there.” Consumption hissed. “Not even a trace of him.”
Atropos blinked in shock. She felt for certain Wraith would retreat to the Gates of Hell in their home reality. That he wasn’t there was a shock.
“That’s because he’s off picking a fight with Darkseid.” Odin shook his head. “Your plans aren’t coming together, Norn.”
“Don’t call me that.” Atropos said in an off-sweet tone. “I write fates, they make a show of them.”
Odin grunted. He was starting to regret working with this woman.
“As I said it doesn’t matter.” Atropos shoved her hand into her leg, golden ichor rolled out as she pulled an obsidian black shard from her leg. “A piece of his Sin left to remember him by.”
“I can use that.” Sindri shot up, “That will work” He walked over and held out his hands.
Atropos smiled and dropped it in his open palms. The sharp piece struck into the dwarf’s hand and his grief flashed before his eyes and he clutched his hand around the piece as he roared in pain. He forced himself over to his work table and pried it out of his own hand.
Atropos watched in shock.
“It wants you to suffer under your own guilt.” Sindri winced. “Vicious piece, but it has a piece of him, more than enough.”
“Then let Undeath Echo through the multiverse.” Atropos roared with laughter.
Odin watched the woman and slowly tilted his head towards her, then to Sindri. He nodded slowly as he realized what was happening. He had to get out of this mad house and fast.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna stretched as Hong Long coiled about in the sky, doing his own version of warming up. Alan yawned as he said his goodbyes to his co-workers and bosses.
Dr. Grant handed him a book, an old one signed by another Paleontologist. Quain grinned as he put the book signed by Tim Murphy into his bag. Dr. Ellie Sattler just gave him a hug. Dr. Wu who had the hardest time saying goodbye, despite the few words the two ever exchanged they had become good friends and trusted each other.
“Don’t go bad or I’ll be back.” Alan smiled.
“I don’t think I can anymore.” Wu smiled.
“He’s got the heart!” Anna shouted. “He took a while to grow into it though!”
Dr. Wu smiled and waved. “Take care of her, she still needs her father.”
Alan nodded and stood next to his daughter.
“What do you think, two holes?” Anna asked.
Alan blew a raspberry. “Why waste the energy?”
Anna nodded. “So who is going to make it?”
Alan stroked his chin. “Rock paper scissors?”
Anna rolled her eyes and Hong Long roared and tore into reality leaving an extra large whole gaping open.
“See you in a week!” Anna laughed as she ran and jumped through. Salem came screaming after her shouting about not being ready.
“That’s CHEATING!” Alan shouted as he raced after his daughter. Vegeta sighed and ran after his friend, grumbling about losing the steak-off once more.
As he breached into the multiverse he felt the power of his new nature course through him. He held it back, but just barely. He wanted to show Darkseid exactly how bad he had messed up.
Anna also felt the power crest in her and she looked back and smiled at her father while Salem tumbled in the rear of Hong Long’s frame. She waved as her father and Vegeta skewed off in a different direction.
“I think I’m gonna puke!” Salem groaned as he spun around.
\\\\
First
Previous
End of the Daughter that Follows
SPOTIFY LIST!
////
All the Scions: OH!
S: Yup.
Astral: Fuck.
Maven: With extra cheddar.
Perfection: What?
Maven: It’s a saying from my home reality.
Perfection: But why Cheddar?
DM: How does he even have Cheddar, that’s from England.
Perfection: My head hurts.
S: So that’s her plan folks.
Mosious: That’s not good.
Theten: But there’s no need for Undeath. It’s antithetical to the universe!
Karma: Maybe it’s about exactly that. Like we’re concepts. What if she’s going for Extra material power.
S: Smart woman wins the prize.
Wraith: SHE... ANger... RAGE...
Karma: Oh no, he’s sputtering.
Astral: (steps back)
S: And now folks I work on outlining the final battle. I’ll know more about it’s length in a week or two. In the meantime I will continue to work on GSD.
submitted by TheSmogmonsterZX to HFY [link] [comments]
DM, the Digitalman, the Scion of Variable is a creation of my good friend who does not use Reddit and is used with permission.
The Pokémon Lucario is © The Pokemon Company.
“When you're in your darkest place, you give yourself hope and that's inner strength.”
― Uncle Iroh
The Daughter that Follows
Chapter 27
Reunited
Part 5
“So, are we all ready?” Darius asked as he rolled out a second grill in his backyard. He had decided to host the mini-reunion for Alan and his friend.
“We are so friggin’ ready.” Kenji grinned. “I can almost taste the meat...”
“Why is he acting like he hasn’t had meat in forever?” Alan asked Brooklynn while pointing to her husband.
“I wish I knew, he has his own grill.” Brooklyn shook her head. “Cooks good corn.”
“Speaking of, I got these for you.” Alan held up several cobs. “Won’t be a competition because Vegeta thinks vegetables are a sin.”
Brooklyn rolled her eyes, “I know the type.”
“So...” Sammie pointed into Darius’ house. “Is your other guest okay?”
“He’s fine, he just doesn’t like the sun that much.” Alan grinned.
“He’s a vampire.” Yaz said.
“Don’t say that.” Sammie chided her wife.
“Technically he’s a nosferatu.” Alan wavered his hand. “But also be quiet, I want Anna surprised, and Salem surprised.”
“Why is he getting surprised?” Kenji asked.
Yaz smiled, “You didn’t pay attention to his shirt, did you?”
“I think he might be a fan of Alan’s friend.” Sammie said.
Not a moment after that a hole opened above Darius’ driveway. They heard Ben shout in surprise as he fell out with Anna and Vegeta.
“You know, you’re brave...” Vegeta said, “But you need to have more spatial awareness if you’re not gonna fly.”
“We can’t fly here.” Ben said as he was flown over Darius’ roof and sat down.
“Where’s Anna?” Alan asked.
“She saw someone attacking Spider-Men.” Vegeta shrugged.”Dropped us off and ran off.”
“Oh.” Alan blinked.
“Yeah, it looked like some wasp thingy.” Vegeta flew back and returned with a huge slab of meat. “Wagusaurus.”
Alan stopped to think for a moment before another hole in reality opened and Anna walked through covered in orange and green gunk.
“Hose?” She asked grumpily.
Darius pointed to the side of his house.
“So I take it, it squished good?” Salem snickered from the sliding door.
Anna froze and looked up. Then she looked at her father.
“Surprise.” Alan smirked.
Anna ran up and hugged her father. “That’s for surprising me.”
Alan nodded. “I kinda figured.”
Salem was laughing like mad as Anna went to hose herself off. Then he froze as he saw Vegeta cutting up the meat.
“Surprise.” Alan smiled and tapped Vegeta on the shoulder. “You gotta fan here, man.”
“Huh?” Vegeta turned to see the fanged nosferatu staring and pointing. “Hey, you want to help? This stuff is heavy.”
Salem just nodded and helped the saiyan prince separate out the meat.
Anna came walking back around the corner, she had used her aura to squeeze the water from her clothes and skin, though her hair was still wet. She giggled as her father simply eradicated the gunk that was on his clothes.
“Thank you.” Anna smiled up at Alan.
“Yeah, well he’ll be going with you.” Alan smiled. “Plus this needed to happen outside of a battle zone.”
“Oh yeah.” Anna nodded emphatically. “Completely.”
Alan smiled as he clapped his hands. “All right! Everyone get ready for a taste test sensation! Except Brooklynn, I’ll have your corn done not long after.”
“What is she vegetarian?” Vegeta snapped.
“Vegan.” Brooklyn said as she crossed her arms.
“I make meat.” Vegeta crossed his arms as if to challenge her.
“Good for you, my husband is who you want to impress.” She nodded to Kenji.
“Huh, fair.” Vegeta nodded. “Why is he staring at the grills?”
“He grills too, but for fun.” Brooklynn smiled.
“Hey, amateur!” Vegeta stomped forward.
Kenji flinched. “Yes?”
“You’re my second.” Vegeta grinned.
Kenji smiled and saluted, “Yes sir!”
“Ben, you got my stuff?” Alan asked.
“Stuff?” Vegeta asked as Ben walked out with a wheeled tray filled with cooking paraphernalia.
“Oh, now we’re getting serious!” Vegeta grinned. “Anna, you got my stuff?”
Anna nodded and tossed out a pink and blue capsule that turned into another wheeled tray with similar cooking tools on it.
“Just so we’re clear, I’m recusing myself.” Anna smiled.
“Clever girl.” Vegeta stared at her with a vicious smile..
“Man if you knew the history of that phrase here.” Alan shook his head. “All right folks, quarter of a steak each for the taste testing. Be honest, put your fork on the plate you like most.”
“Do we get ketchup?” Anna asked with a devious grin.
Both men stopped and glared.
“I found the heckler.” Alan said through gritted teeth.
“Considering her parentage, I’m not surprised.” Vegeta nodded.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Darkseid paced on Apokalips.
He had been shunted back to his planet and reality with ease by the ghostly reaper. He had been embarrassed for the last time by the Scions. He would not tolerate it anymore.
“Kalibak!” He shouted for his son.
Kalibak came forward and kneeled. “Father.”
“Prepare all to attack Earth. If I cannot go to them I will draw them to me. We will slaughter Superman's adopted homeworld.” Darkseid grinned.
The sound of chains echoed through the halls.
“Alice?” Hare lifted his head.
“She’s coming...” March Hare’s vocalizer on the back of the warbeast he was attached to, sang to life.
Soon a woman in white with red on a half mask walked into view.
“And who are you?” Darkseid asked.
“I am called Kyton. I come from Alan Quain’s home reality.” She said as the chains holding Hare released him. “I am the Revenant of Heroes, element of metal.” March Hare’s brain case released itself and fell to the ground.
“FREEDOM!” The brains’ final thoughts shouted from the vocalizer.
“You will keep them no longer!” Kyton’s chains flew from openings and snagged the ragged body of Hare into a swirling portal.
“So it is war!” Darkseid grinned as lanced out a punch, but a wall of crystal rose up from the ground.
“I’m here to asshole.” Stephen Quain walked in as the air around all of Darkseid’s forces turned to solid crystalline bindings. “And we brought an old friend.”
A scream of rage tore through the air as a clown mask landed at Darkseid’s feet.
Darkseid looked down and was caught by a powerful uppercut, but it was nothing to him. He did recognize his opponent, they had taken him form Quain’s home reality and tormented him. They had tried to shatter the mask he wore only to find it resisted them at all attempts. He wore a new mask now, but Darkseid felt the same hidden power inside it. He grinned and grabbed the human’s fist and tossed him back.
“Dammnit!” SideEffect shouted. “If I could feel those bones I’d be even more pissed!”
“And now I am...” Darkseid looked outside his window to see a series of explosions ripple across Apokalips.
A man flew down to his window, a billowing red cape.
“I’m afraid not, Darkseid, this is the Scion’s war.” Superman smiled. “We’re just helping.” He flew in and slammed the leader of Apokalips through the walls.
Kyton looked at Stephen Quain, “Don’t kill the sapient ones.”
Stephne rolled his eyes. “Just because I have a history with the hairball doesn’t mean I’m trigger happy.”
Kalibak looked around in confusion. The crystal bindings were all too familiar and he looked at the human in fear. “Can you please not turn me into crystal again? It really hurts.”
Stephen rolled his eyes.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
In the black space above Apokalips, a green form looked down upon the world. A scythe and sword were by his side, as was a young pale skinned woman. She shook her head but did not oppose the Scion.
“You started this early.” Death of the Endless sighed. “Why?”
“Because it’s the one thing no one would expect me to actually do.” Wraith drew his daggers from his side and looked them over. His black blade still had a knick in it from when a piece broke off in Atropos. “So I’ll make sure this entire war is off balance.”
Death of the Endless shook her head. “I think she got under your skin. So to speak.”
“She did.” Wraith acknowledged. “For this I am not Death. For this I am the endless rage of the murdered and unavenged. She wants this fight, I’ll give it to her, but on my terms.”
“What are your friends doing?” Death of the Endless looked down.
One half of Apokolips was now thoroughly exploded with mechanical animals running rampant over it. The other half was now a flower covered paradise that had strange trees restraining the parademons and other forces.
“What they do best.” Wraith smiled. “Chaos and Imbalance.”
“And what can we do?” The voice of Astral, Scion of Order asked as he appeared.
“Cage of this reality, separate it from itself.” Wraith leaned on his scythe.
“Shadow reality?” Astral asked.
Wraith nodded.
“I’m gonna need my buddy down there.” Astral nodded.
“I’m your buddy?!” Perfection cooed as he appeared. “Hiya D.o.E.! How’s Delirium?”
“Delerious.” Death of the Endless smiled with a nod.
“All right!” Perfection cheered. “One shadow realm coming up!” He snapped his fingers and a wig very similar to a popular card game anime character’s hair appeared on his head and his clothes shifted to a similar style.
“Does that mean I have to be Kaiba?” Astral sighed.
“Would you?” Perfection asked with a pleading look.
“Okay, fine. This once.” Astral sighed and his trench coat shifted to that of another coat similar to the other one’s rival.
“I’m not watching this.” Wraith sighed as he vanished.
“Man, what a party pooper.” Perfection sighed. “Well it’s time to get twisted!”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna sat watching her friends and her father. Everyone was relaxed and the party was winding to a close. Vegeta was busy going over a speech with her dad and Salem was busy trying to understand how Ben survived a Carnotaurus as a teenager with no powers.
“We will go to our final battle soon.” Rio sat beside her enjoying some of the last steak.
“Well not our last.” Anna smiled.
Rio shook her head. “I cannot go with you beyond this.”
Anna looked at Rio. “Did I say something, do something?”
Rio shook her head. “I have a responsibility I too will be stepping into, at Arceus’ last request.”
Anna hugged Rio. “You could have said something.”
“I was conflicted.” Rio admitted, “But it was Arlina that made me realize I had to do it.”
Anna nodded. “You’ll always be my sister.”
“You will always be welcome in my world.” Rio smiled and gave a happy yip.
Anna smiled. “Bonds beyond life and death.”
“Bonds beyond time and space.” Rio said as a compliment to it. “I will cherish the time we have had together.”
Anna smiled and held up the pokeball.
“Oh no,we still need that, I don’t want to travel the multiverse exposed to it!” Rio barked nervously.
Anna laughed. “Okay, One last big adventure.”
“Once more unto the breach, my friends.” Alan said as he sat next to them.
“What?” Anna asked.
“The Bard himself.” Alan smiled. “Henry the Fifth.”
Anna nodded. “I’m scared.”
Alan nodded. “So am I. I could lose the most important people to me. But it has to stop, she has to be stopped, he has to be stopped. No more.”
Anna nodded.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.” Yaz said. “Act Three, Scene One.”
“Indeed.” Alan smiled and nodded. “I better pick up Teal’c and the other’s too.”
Anna looked at her father quizzically.
“He sounds a lot like Kratos. But he enjoys breaking False gods, so...” He paused. “Disturbingly coincidental hobbies.”
Anna giggled.
“How many of my friends have that hobby?” Alan pondered aloud.
Vegeta jumped up and waved his hand.
“No, Vegeta. Frieza was not a false god.” Alan sighed.
“Fair.” Vegeta harrumphed.
“Well I have to get this all cleaned up tomorrow.” Darius sighed.
Alan gave a baring laugh.
“What?” Darius asked.
“Darius.” Anna scoffed, “We aren’t trashy guests...” She focused and Hong Long came out from her aura and quickly began to pick up trash.
Alan simply focused on various small bits that flew to the trash cans. Within minutes the backyard and the grills were sparkling.
“Kami, do I miss the easy cleanups...” Vegeta sighed. “You know the stars here are bit different, but I like’em.”
Anna smiled and began to point out the constellations. Soon though Alan, Anna and their guests returned to the Camp for one more night of rest.
When they got back Anna and Alan crashed within minutes, Vegeta and Salem were still up staring out at the stars.
“You feel it?” Vegeta asked.
“Like a cat with its hackles up.” Salem nodded.
“What do you do, to keep her safe?” Vegeta asked.
“Got some magic, but mostly I use big guns.” Salem said. “I can hack, but it’s a tertiary skill nowadays. If I get pissed I can jack my bodies’ power up, but not anywhere near as powerful as you.”
Vegeta nodded. “Willing to die?”
“For them?” Salem just nodded.
“Good.” Vegeta nodded. “He wants me up front with Darkseid. How do you think I’ll fair?”
“Depends.” Salem shrugged, “What’s your newest technique?”
“Well I developed a bit of an Ego, if you will.” Vegeta grinned.
“No, not with Darkseid.” Salem shook his head. “Definitely poor on the aggression, but you do not want to take a hit. Especially the Omega Beams, you can’t dodge them, you can only put others in front of them.”
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
“He wasn’t there.” Consumption hissed. “Not even a trace of him.”
Atropos blinked in shock. She felt for certain Wraith would retreat to the Gates of Hell in their home reality. That he wasn’t there was a shock.
“That’s because he’s off picking a fight with Darkseid.” Odin shook his head. “Your plans aren’t coming together, Norn.”
“Don’t call me that.” Atropos said in an off-sweet tone. “I write fates, they make a show of them.”
Odin grunted. He was starting to regret working with this woman.
“As I said it doesn’t matter.” Atropos shoved her hand into her leg, golden ichor rolled out as she pulled an obsidian black shard from her leg. “A piece of his Sin left to remember him by.”
“I can use that.” Sindri shot up, “That will work” He walked over and held out his hands.
Atropos smiled and dropped it in his open palms. The sharp piece struck into the dwarf’s hand and his grief flashed before his eyes and he clutched his hand around the piece as he roared in pain. He forced himself over to his work table and pried it out of his own hand.
Atropos watched in shock.
“It wants you to suffer under your own guilt.” Sindri winced. “Vicious piece, but it has a piece of him, more than enough.”
“Then let Undeath Echo through the multiverse.” Atropos roared with laughter.
Odin watched the woman and slowly tilted his head towards her, then to Sindri. He nodded slowly as he realized what was happening. He had to get out of this mad house and fast.
(T)(D)(T)(F)---(T)(F)(T)(W)
Anna stretched as Hong Long coiled about in the sky, doing his own version of warming up. Alan yawned as he said his goodbyes to his co-workers and bosses.
Dr. Grant handed him a book, an old one signed by another Paleontologist. Quain grinned as he put the book signed by Tim Murphy into his bag. Dr. Ellie Sattler just gave him a hug. Dr. Wu who had the hardest time saying goodbye, despite the few words the two ever exchanged they had become good friends and trusted each other.
“Don’t go bad or I’ll be back.” Alan smiled.
“I don’t think I can anymore.” Wu smiled.
“He’s got the heart!” Anna shouted. “He took a while to grow into it though!”
Dr. Wu smiled and waved. “Take care of her, she still needs her father.”
Alan nodded and stood next to his daughter.
“What do you think, two holes?” Anna asked.
Alan blew a raspberry. “Why waste the energy?”
Anna nodded. “So who is going to make it?”
Alan stroked his chin. “Rock paper scissors?”
Anna rolled her eyes and Hong Long roared and tore into reality leaving an extra large whole gaping open.
“See you in a week!” Anna laughed as she ran and jumped through. Salem came screaming after her shouting about not being ready.
“That’s CHEATING!” Alan shouted as he raced after his daughter. Vegeta sighed and ran after his friend, grumbling about losing the steak-off once more.
As he breached into the multiverse he felt the power of his new nature course through him. He held it back, but just barely. He wanted to show Darkseid exactly how bad he had messed up.
Anna also felt the power crest in her and she looked back and smiled at her father while Salem tumbled in the rear of Hong Long’s frame. She waved as her father and Vegeta skewed off in a different direction.
“I think I’m gonna puke!” Salem groaned as he spun around.
\\\\
First
Previous
End of the Daughter that Follows
SPOTIFY LIST!
////
All the Scions: OH!
S: Yup.
Astral: Fuck.
Maven: With extra cheddar.
Perfection: What?
Maven: It’s a saying from my home reality.
Perfection: But why Cheddar?
DM: How does he even have Cheddar, that’s from England.
Perfection: My head hurts.
S: So that’s her plan folks.
Mosious: That’s not good.
Theten: But there’s no need for Undeath. It’s antithetical to the universe!
Karma: Maybe it’s about exactly that. Like we’re concepts. What if she’s going for Extra material power.
S: Smart woman wins the prize.
Wraith: SHE... ANger... RAGE...
Karma: Oh no, he’s sputtering.
Astral: (steps back)
S: And now folks I work on outlining the final battle. I’ll know more about it’s length in a week or two. In the meantime I will continue to work on GSD.
2023.06.07 03:20 Personal_Hippo1277 Clio Token Size As Text Size By Tier Comparison [Mega Text Wall For Enjoyers of Scrolling]
When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
------------------------
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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2023.06.07 03:19 Randomthoughts871 Advice on moving on
Together 2 years, broken up 2 years (when it ended she was hopeful for a future so I stayed in contact and we ended up going and doing all the stuff we normally would at weekends/during the week) Within that time alot of toxicity arised and she said its a definate no to getting back, finds me really ugly and wouldnt go near me.. and i know she means that, but she still wanted the friendship even though i was madly in love still so never could be just friends nor would i want that when the intention was to be together so basically now i suspect her attentions elsewhere but she says its not until shes blue in the face (gut instinct) and i called it a day it hurt but i cant be around if someone else comes and gets her love i know its immature but it absolutely breaks me So im in love shes completely over me but misses me (for friendship) and will probably go off and get her happiest of endings and im left broken that i have zero chance and want to know how do i get over her? If there is a new guy then he will get the best of her because shes in a good place mentally… Will i when my feelings have remained for 4 years in total ?
submitted by Randomthoughts871 to u/Randomthoughts871 [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:19 Tytheguy11 Purchased element lord, then instantly losses it
I have been saving for a while and finally had enough to buy Element Lord ship. So I buy it, upgrade it a few times, then switch over to another ship to upgrade that one, then come back to Element Lord to find that it wants me to unlock it again. The 500 crystals, and nearly 70 legendary pieces (buying the ship + upgrades) are gone.
This is the second time in the last 5 months that I have lost over 500 crystals and 70 legendary pieces. I f*cking hate this app and if the issue isn't resolved by the "support" team (which I almost know it won't be), then unfortunately, I think it is time to say goodbye to the game because this is getting ridiculous.
submitted by Tytheguy11 to Shooteralien [link] [comments]
This is the second time in the last 5 months that I have lost over 500 crystals and 70 legendary pieces. I f*cking hate this app and if the issue isn't resolved by the "support" team (which I almost know it won't be), then unfortunately, I think it is time to say goodbye to the game because this is getting ridiculous.
2023.06.07 03:19 Useful-History-1182 Buying a gun complication!
Throwaway for obvious reasons. About 8 months ago I enlisted into the army at 17. Not gonna get into details but at one point was going through a tough time and spoke to a doctor about bad thoughts I was having, and she asked if I wanted to speak to someone to which I said yes. I went to the community mental health services, talked with them and after they told me to come back in a week to see progress (until then I wasn’t allowed near to handle a weapon) to which in a week I came back and then they cleared me. I was not given any further appointments and was told I’m ok to continue training, never went back. Flash forward now, tomorrow is my 18th birthday and I’ve always had an interest in guns and was looking to buy one but I’m confused on the law! It says anyone that was committed to a mental institution is prohibited unless it was by a federal department and they deemed you to no longer suffer (as per ATF form 4473). I figured I would fit into that category but to be safe I called my local PD and they said that’s a federal issue and told me to call the ATF and the ATF said to Call the clinic I went to in the army and see if they deemed me mentally defective. Can anyone help me please! I’m in NH if it helps
submitted by Useful-History-1182 to legaladvice [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:19 calcuslut If taking locker room pics is a crime, lock me up
 | submitted by calcuslut to gaybrosgonemild [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 03:18 thatsactuallybananas ESL Demo Lesson Help
I have a demo lesson coming up for an ESL high school position and have no clue what to teach. I've taught for nearly 6 years, but mostly just ELA. This school's ESL department reached out to me after seeing my resume when I applied for the school's ELA position. I've only taught ESL abroad and have little knowledge of WIDA standards. They're basically giving me free rein for the lesson. It'll be a 15-20 minute lesson for 20-25 10th grade Level 1-2 students. Students have Chromebooks, and I'll have a Smart board. Does anyone have ideas for a demo lesson? Thank you!
submitted by thatsactuallybananas to Teachers [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:18 Green_Felidae Black Briar-Lodge (there is more to read ⬇️)
 | I don’t know if it’s just me, but I Like the design and position of this building, like having The Rift house design and a nice high spot, such as the backyard. If there is a suitable mod for adding building stuffs like chairs, tables, walls, beds, etc… . Or a mod that allows you to own it as your house, it could be awesome. However, you can do some changes using the Cheat Room mod like making the mercenaries friendly, or just sending them to the dark room without killing them for preventing them to respawn there again, then bringing your family. Share your thoughts. submitted by Green_Felidae to skyrim [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 03:18 BadassRockets Aafter 125 minutes, I could not get the cop to leave the room to electrocute the guy.
What do I have to do to get the cop to not be in the room with the obj at the end of Outlast Trials Police Station finale? He just stays in the room the whole time, or he kills me just as I would get into safety.
submitted by BadassRockets to outlast [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:17 flightofwonder Can we expect prices for the Subtract theatre shows to drop near the date?
Hey everybody, hope you all are doing well!
I am very sorry if this is a common knowledge post, but this is my first time trying to see Ed Sheeran live so I was curious if you all who have been going to his concerts for longer happened to know if you didn't mind me asking. I was wondering if we can we expect the ticket prices to his concerts to fall as the date gets closer? I really wanna go to the Subtract Boston show on June 29 as it is accessible for me by public transportation, and from where I work this summer, I wouldn't be able to get back home after the Foxborough show. I initially saw tickets on Seatgeek and Stubhub for around $100-200 and didn't go for it thinking it'd drop, but now they're at least $700 if not mostly over 1000, so I was just curious. I noticed for a lot of other musicians prices drop near showtime.
Thanks everybody for your help and advice! I really appreciate it and hope you all have a good one.
submitted by flightofwonder to EdSheeran [link] [comments]
I am very sorry if this is a common knowledge post, but this is my first time trying to see Ed Sheeran live so I was curious if you all who have been going to his concerts for longer happened to know if you didn't mind me asking. I was wondering if we can we expect the ticket prices to his concerts to fall as the date gets closer? I really wanna go to the Subtract Boston show on June 29 as it is accessible for me by public transportation, and from where I work this summer, I wouldn't be able to get back home after the Foxborough show. I initially saw tickets on Seatgeek and Stubhub for around $100-200 and didn't go for it thinking it'd drop, but now they're at least $700 if not mostly over 1000, so I was just curious. I noticed for a lot of other musicians prices drop near showtime.
Thanks everybody for your help and advice! I really appreciate it and hope you all have a good one.
2023.06.07 03:17 Spoon_Artillery Rule
 | submitted by Spoon_Artillery to 196 [link] [comments] |
2023.06.07 03:17 Muslimahadvice Should My Fiancé Inform Me?
Should my fiancé inform me?
Assalamu’alaykum Reddit Community!
Today, my fiancé helped a sister of one of his male friends. Is it unreasonable of me to expect him to inform me beforehand, so I'm not caught off guard or unaware? I tend to be possessive of him, and I don’t think he understands how girls can behave around guys. He mentioned that they weren't alone after I expressed my surprise by saying, "You didn't inform me about this." If I were in a similar situation, helping someone of the opposite gender, I would inform him first right away, and ensure we won’t be alone who’s going to be there the entire time etc, as I know he wouldn't appreciate it if I did this and didn’t inform him or ask. Just to clarify, I'm not accusing him of being alone with her, so idk because I didn't want to know the details after hearing that. I'm sure his friend, the girl's brother, wasn't just sitting there the whole time. He had to be busy playing video games as usual or something else or hanging out in another room with the other roommates. Ultimately, only Allah knows the truth. Just some advice is something I need. JazakAllah
submitted by Muslimahadvice to u/Muslimahadvice [link] [comments]
Assalamu’alaykum Reddit Community!
Today, my fiancé helped a sister of one of his male friends. Is it unreasonable of me to expect him to inform me beforehand, so I'm not caught off guard or unaware? I tend to be possessive of him, and I don’t think he understands how girls can behave around guys. He mentioned that they weren't alone after I expressed my surprise by saying, "You didn't inform me about this." If I were in a similar situation, helping someone of the opposite gender, I would inform him first right away, and ensure we won’t be alone who’s going to be there the entire time etc, as I know he wouldn't appreciate it if I did this and didn’t inform him or ask. Just to clarify, I'm not accusing him of being alone with her, so idk because I didn't want to know the details after hearing that. I'm sure his friend, the girl's brother, wasn't just sitting there the whole time. He had to be busy playing video games as usual or something else or hanging out in another room with the other roommates. Ultimately, only Allah knows the truth. Just some advice is something I need. JazakAllah
2023.06.07 03:17 LostMyTakis Louis CK reminded me of a valuable Stoic lesson: Don't be angry at the ignorant, be angry at yourself for expecting the ignorant to behave intelligently.
I don't expect you to read all that I'm surely about to write down. But if you do, well...thank you. I have few people to talk to, and even fewer who will listen.
Last week, I went to get a new set of tires for my car. On my way home from the tire shop, I was nearly involved in a collision due to another driver's inconsideration. I won't get into the details of what led to that near-wreck other than to state that the driver of the other vehicle was operating his vehicle in an extremely dangerous manner that put both myself and others at risk.
When we approached the stop light side-by-side (the aggressive driver to my left), I looked over and saw the him with his middle finger in the air directed at me. So, I rolled down my window and asked what the hell his problem was, and told him that he nearly caused a multi-car accident because of his reckless driving. Instead of admitting his error, he tried to turn it around on me and others, claiming that we were too slow and were in his way (despite that all the other drivers were driving in accordance with the law and posted speed limit). I argued with him and told him that he was the one in error, he was the one speeding, he was the one cutting people off, and he was the one who made several people veer off the road. Then he said, "It's not my fault you f**ers are too slow. Maybe learn to drive faster, fa*ot.
Now, it was at this point that I made a choice. I chose to tell the guy to go f**** himself and I drove away when the light turned green.
It should have stopped there. Well, honestly, it should have stopped before it even started - before I said a single word. I should have let it go. But I didn't. I was ENRAGED. And I stayed angry all day, and all evening.
I realized my problem. Instead of 1) engaging with him, and 2) carrying that anger with me for so long, I had another option. What I realize now that I should have done is to not hold other people to my expectations. Because I had these expectations that everyone should drive safely and considerately, and because I have expectations that people should be intellectually and emotionally honest enough to admit their faults and apologize to others, I was severely discouraged and angry when neither of my expectations were met. Not only were they not met, but the guy decided to do quite the opposite of everything I (and most people) would expect in that situation. And this led to a snowball effect that pulled in to the front of my mind everything I see wrong with this country and humanity, and of course this just made me even angrier.
Then, the next day, I had an interesting moment where I understood that the better course of action would have been to treat the gentlemen like the moron he was so insistent on behaving like. I don't mean that I should be rude to him or anything, but rather that I should have treated him the same I would a child who insists that he's right in his belief that unicorns exist.
This whole ordeal reminded me of a Louis CK skit about arguing with his 3-year-old child about how to pronounce Fig Newtons, and the child insisted they were right and that they were called "Pig Newtons". But really, Louis CK has an excellent point!
"Any time you're like this with a 3-year-old, 'DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!?' then you're the problem."
"No, dad. No, I haven't I haven't developed enough. You're just going to have to wait."
I've learned that you really have to just lower your standards when interacting with other people. At some point, you're going to find that they do, say, or believe in something that is either misinformed, hurtful, offensive, or selfish. I chose to get angry, but I had another choice.
I should have stopped and realized that this guy who nearly ran multiple people off the road or into oncoming traffic and who was then flipping me off is, for all intents and purposes, a moron. Clearly he's uneducated and inexperienced to the point that he has little knowledge of the workings of the world around him, or of the feelings of the people around him.
He was no different than a 3-year-old insisting that unicorns exist and that anyone who doesn't believe in unicorns is stupid.
I should have said (to myself) "Oh, I see now. He's an idiot in the literal sense of the word. I figured maybe he knew better and would just apologize, but nope....I see that my judgment was incorrect. This man indeed knows no better." I should have smiled at him and said "Have a great day!"
That one realization would have instantly prevented me from boiling over. Going along with that analogy of boiling over, it's like watching a boiling pot of pasta with the gas turned on high. The pot of pasta is my reaction to the situation. With enough heat, the starches of the pasta will form bubbles at the top and will eventually overflow onto the stove, creating even bigger messes. To prevent that from happening, you have two options: 1) Turn down the heat, or 2) Put a lid on the pot. Either option will almost instantly stop the pot from boiling over. Since I had no control over the heat (the reckless actions and behavior of the other driver), that left me with one option - to take control of the situation myself by putting a lid on it. That lid is the realization that there are forces actively trying to elicit a response from me by applying heat, and that I have a responsibility to myself to not make a bigger mess of the situation than it needs to be, and - moreover, I have the authority over my reactions, not him.
Unfortunately, I failed to put a lid on the pot that day, and I burned myself. Not only was I angry for the remainder of the day, but I also my spouse uncomfortable because I wouldn't let it go.
Anyway, that's all. Here's a link to the Louis CK skit in question.
TL;DR: Louis CK yadda yadda yadda anger yadda yadda yadda oopsie I forgot they were an idiot yadda yadda yadda.
submitted by LostMyTakis to Stoicism [link] [comments]
Last week, I went to get a new set of tires for my car. On my way home from the tire shop, I was nearly involved in a collision due to another driver's inconsideration. I won't get into the details of what led to that near-wreck other than to state that the driver of the other vehicle was operating his vehicle in an extremely dangerous manner that put both myself and others at risk.
When we approached the stop light side-by-side (the aggressive driver to my left), I looked over and saw the him with his middle finger in the air directed at me. So, I rolled down my window and asked what the hell his problem was, and told him that he nearly caused a multi-car accident because of his reckless driving. Instead of admitting his error, he tried to turn it around on me and others, claiming that we were too slow and were in his way (despite that all the other drivers were driving in accordance with the law and posted speed limit). I argued with him and told him that he was the one in error, he was the one speeding, he was the one cutting people off, and he was the one who made several people veer off the road. Then he said, "It's not my fault you f**ers are too slow. Maybe learn to drive faster, fa*ot.
Now, it was at this point that I made a choice. I chose to tell the guy to go f**** himself and I drove away when the light turned green.
It should have stopped there. Well, honestly, it should have stopped before it even started - before I said a single word. I should have let it go. But I didn't. I was ENRAGED. And I stayed angry all day, and all evening.
I realized my problem. Instead of 1) engaging with him, and 2) carrying that anger with me for so long, I had another option. What I realize now that I should have done is to not hold other people to my expectations. Because I had these expectations that everyone should drive safely and considerately, and because I have expectations that people should be intellectually and emotionally honest enough to admit their faults and apologize to others, I was severely discouraged and angry when neither of my expectations were met. Not only were they not met, but the guy decided to do quite the opposite of everything I (and most people) would expect in that situation. And this led to a snowball effect that pulled in to the front of my mind everything I see wrong with this country and humanity, and of course this just made me even angrier.
Then, the next day, I had an interesting moment where I understood that the better course of action would have been to treat the gentlemen like the moron he was so insistent on behaving like. I don't mean that I should be rude to him or anything, but rather that I should have treated him the same I would a child who insists that he's right in his belief that unicorns exist.
This whole ordeal reminded me of a Louis CK skit about arguing with his 3-year-old child about how to pronounce Fig Newtons, and the child insisted they were right and that they were called "Pig Newtons". But really, Louis CK has an excellent point!
"Any time you're like this with a 3-year-old, 'DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!?' then you're the problem."
"No, dad. No, I haven't I haven't developed enough. You're just going to have to wait."
I've learned that you really have to just lower your standards when interacting with other people. At some point, you're going to find that they do, say, or believe in something that is either misinformed, hurtful, offensive, or selfish. I chose to get angry, but I had another choice.
I should have stopped and realized that this guy who nearly ran multiple people off the road or into oncoming traffic and who was then flipping me off is, for all intents and purposes, a moron. Clearly he's uneducated and inexperienced to the point that he has little knowledge of the workings of the world around him, or of the feelings of the people around him.
He was no different than a 3-year-old insisting that unicorns exist and that anyone who doesn't believe in unicorns is stupid.
I should have said (to myself) "Oh, I see now. He's an idiot in the literal sense of the word. I figured maybe he knew better and would just apologize, but nope....I see that my judgment was incorrect. This man indeed knows no better." I should have smiled at him and said "Have a great day!"
That one realization would have instantly prevented me from boiling over. Going along with that analogy of boiling over, it's like watching a boiling pot of pasta with the gas turned on high. The pot of pasta is my reaction to the situation. With enough heat, the starches of the pasta will form bubbles at the top and will eventually overflow onto the stove, creating even bigger messes. To prevent that from happening, you have two options: 1) Turn down the heat, or 2) Put a lid on the pot. Either option will almost instantly stop the pot from boiling over. Since I had no control over the heat (the reckless actions and behavior of the other driver), that left me with one option - to take control of the situation myself by putting a lid on it. That lid is the realization that there are forces actively trying to elicit a response from me by applying heat, and that I have a responsibility to myself to not make a bigger mess of the situation than it needs to be, and - moreover, I have the authority over my reactions, not him.
Unfortunately, I failed to put a lid on the pot that day, and I burned myself. Not only was I angry for the remainder of the day, but I also my spouse uncomfortable because I wouldn't let it go.
Anyway, that's all. Here's a link to the Louis CK skit in question.
TL;DR: Louis CK yadda yadda yadda anger yadda yadda yadda oopsie I forgot they were an idiot yadda yadda yadda.
2023.06.07 03:16 twohoundtown Need advice on domestic assault and PFA
So a week ago my now ex BF hit me, broke my phone, strangled me, then boke some objects around the house. I couldn't leave then because he would have killed my dogs and trashed my house. I went to work the next morning, he decided to stay home at the last minute. He acted perfectly normal and joked about breaking the phone. I called the state police from work and they agreed to meet me down the road from my house after work. I told them what happened, one officer said my cheek was a little puffy and red. Otherwise no marks, and he asked me if I wanted him to kill me instead of telling me he was going to kill me while strangling me. They cited him for harassment and escorted him off my property and waited for a friend to pick him up. I filed a PFA the next day. His friend said he was taking him to a homeless shelter, so I used that address for the PFA. Yesterday a week later I'm still feeling sore so my therapist advised me to go to the ER and talk to a forensic nurse. My attorney never recommended this, nor the police or advocate. I spent 8 hrs in the ER to find out my jaw is fractured. Last night the hospital made the state police aware of my injury. This morning I called and left a message for the officer that wrote the citation. He called me back around 1. He hadn't heard anything about the injury, he calls the magistrate to change the charges and my ex had called in literally an hour before and plead guilty to harassment. I also found out the PFA got returned because he never checked into the shelter. How totally screwed am I on this? The incident happened in PA and he went to his friends in MD and he's still working in MD and on FB looking for a room to rent.
submitted by twohoundtown to legaladvice [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:16 Confused-blob My friend came out as trans merely to jump back in the closet after bullying and parents intervening
I’ve been looking for some advice. I’m ftm and am part of a friend group with mainly just guys and last year one of my friends came out as mtf. I guess because we had this “trans stuff” in common we became really close. She was getting bullied verbally quite a lot, especially by one person in particular. (She was out to a lot more people than me which is why I didn’t get bullied as much.)
She came out to her mom at some point and was told that “one day you’re a he the next you’re a they and now a she, you can’t pick and choose what you are”. Either way she was getting picked on more now and had practically no support at home.
Around September she requested that no one would use her pronouns or name, so that teachers wouldn’t contact her mom. She also left our friend group to avoid the one particular bully. We don’t talk as much now but near winter I texted to make sure she was okay and she just told me that it wasn’t safe for her to be out and that she was just going to have to live like this until she graduates.
I’ve been keeping an eye on her just to make sure she’s doing okay, but today when I got to school I saw that she had buzzed her hair, which had previously been down to her waist. I assumed it was her mother, but she said it was of her own volition.
At this point I’m just seeking advice. What can I do to support her? And is she in denial or did she cut her hair to fit in?
Oh and if ur reading this Juni, I hope you’re doing okay.
submitted by Confused-blob to MtF [link] [comments]
She came out to her mom at some point and was told that “one day you’re a he the next you’re a they and now a she, you can’t pick and choose what you are”. Either way she was getting picked on more now and had practically no support at home.
Around September she requested that no one would use her pronouns or name, so that teachers wouldn’t contact her mom. She also left our friend group to avoid the one particular bully. We don’t talk as much now but near winter I texted to make sure she was okay and she just told me that it wasn’t safe for her to be out and that she was just going to have to live like this until she graduates.
I’ve been keeping an eye on her just to make sure she’s doing okay, but today when I got to school I saw that she had buzzed her hair, which had previously been down to her waist. I assumed it was her mother, but she said it was of her own volition.
At this point I’m just seeking advice. What can I do to support her? And is she in denial or did she cut her hair to fit in?
Oh and if ur reading this Juni, I hope you’re doing okay.
2023.06.07 03:16 Successful_Pilot5759 Chart location
I use TradingView on my iPad and everything works fine. However when I select charts I puts me on the chart nowhere near the price candles. I always have too find where the activity is. Not a big deal but if someone has a solution for this I would appreciate it.
submitted by Successful_Pilot5759 to TradingView [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 03:16 CynicalSeahorse Going swimming is frustrating
Me and my friend went swimming today and I took my shirt off because I had trans tape on and a few minutes after I got in the pool the life guard said I had to either put on a shirt or leave like it’s so frustrating especially with the amount of transtape I have on like its covering up more then your average bikini top would. I couldn’t go to the locker room after either because I was afraid to be kicked out so I had to drive home in my soaked trunks, I feel upset dysphoric and kinda embarrassed and that I’m not masc enough I just want to have enough money for top surgery already
submitted by CynicalSeahorse to trans [link] [comments]