(Read the post 'On a Summers Day' first. Then this one'll make ALOT more sense.)
The body was Andrew McPhearson, the child, one Julie Andrews, and enither were the same. One, obviously, went to the morgue to be identified by dental records-- that's all they could use -- the other went catatonic, in order to save itself the mind rejected the cruel world around it and created one of its own devising.
Outwardly she was a silent, simple girl, no interest in interaction of any sort, she ate when forced to and broke her mothers heart by refusing to look at her, but through, always through, fixed on some distant point where crimson-black blood pooled, where dark blow flies droned and the sickly sweet scent of decay filled the air, where all the noise in the world couldn't break the shattering silence of an unvoiced scream.
The media behaved as it is wont to do, flocking and fluttering, scavenging and prying, delving sticky fingers into badly healed -- barely begun to heal -- wounds and pulling the ugly, foul, tittilating bits to a harsh and unforgiving spotlight. As expected, the summers day, bright with life, was replayed, repeated, displayed in a thousand different ways until public opinion deemed the entire thing a hoax, just some family's craving to be on television.
Never mind the shattered family of the deceased, never mind the previous happy, healthy child driven to seek her own world. Neve rmind the anguish the fluttering, craving, prying, uncaring fingers -- and eyes -- of the media caused. It was all a hoax, a plot, a conspiracy, a trick.
The medias loss of interest was a blessing that came too late -- too late for Andrew's family to have the required privacy to mourn, too late for little Julie, who having to relive, and then witness it from a dramatised perspective, listen from a thousand different mouths -- why would anyone desire to remain in such a heartless world? So little Julie refused to make even the little progress she had out of her self-imposed prison, retreating in so far that she barely had any desire to eat, each mouthful swallowed was a hard won victory.
Life went on, as its wont to do, two months passed, three, and the media forgot about Julie Andrews and Andrew McPhearson. Summer changed to Autumn, dusky and brown from bright gold.
It was a crisp Autumn morning, the mist was clinging to the ground and every breath fogged in the air. The scent of winter was in the air, it was a taste on the back of the tongue, crisp, icy, chillingly close with the illusionary softness of snow. Rosy-cheeked from the cold, laughter and playing in the piles of fallen leaves, the child, a little boy, six or seven, ran behind a tree, out of his parents' concerned and watchfully indulgent gaze. All was well.
A peircing scream split the air. Followed by two more, then naught but helpless, hopeless sobbing.
Rushing to look, the mother added her screams to the shattered peace, before dropping to her knees to embrace and rock her sobbing son.
Strung out between two trees in a crude X, head lolled back in the limp, absolute relaxation of the dead and unconsious, was another body.
(Warning for those with tender stomaches, it gets graphic)
The skin, rather than removed completely, had been peeled back to expose the muscle and sinew beneath. Strung out, stretched thin by fish-hooks through the nearly transparant flesh, the light shining through, illuminating veins, capillaries, arteries, trails of brilliant red -- fire-engine red -- blood trailed down from the wounds, slowly seeping lower with each painful second.
The internal organs had been painstakingly, lovingly, removed and strung out, netted and woven among the branches of the two trees, the metres of intestine almost braided, intricate, lace, the stomach caught in the dark grey webbing. The lungs were pulled out of the chest cavity, the ribcage pulled open like some glistening, banded, red and white butterfly, the sternum cut clean through. The heart stretched out, the lungs likewise exposed, two pink sacks hanging, stretched in the air. In this mass was the body, the skin a backdrop for the macabre web, where the own internal organs were the bands that trapped the 'fly'.
It was too cold for the flies, so their droning swarm was absent, no moving black tide of hungry bodies swarming, moving, writhing over flesh and skin alike. The blood dripping, slowly seeping down the skin to plop ever so slowly onto the dry leaves was still wet, still fresh, still warm, still flowing. The strung out, web-captured body jerked and a helpless, hopeless whimper of pain sounded, silencing the sobbing into a gasp of horrified shock.
"Oh Dear God, it's still alive!"
Thursday 22 May 2008
Monday 19 May 2008
On a Summers Day
It was the height of summer, the sky was a brilliant, breathtaking blue, the sort of blue that reaches up and DEMANDS your attention. The distant, merry laughter of children filtered through the air, mingled with the birdsong and the drone of busy bees. The world was bursting, overflowing with warmth, life, happiness.
And then the screams started.
Down a little way from the bees, just around the bend from the children, there was a droning. Not the almost musical buzz of the bees, no, this was the heavy, bloated droning of fat blowflies, their brilliant blue back sparkling in the sunlight like morbid jewels. The black with flashing blue tide crawled, buzzed, and swarmed over the ground and a single tree.
The first scream disturbed a few, not many, but enough for their meal to be seen.
A puddle of thick, black as tar blood on the bright green, rich, vibrant grass. More crimson black smears marred the smoothe wood of the tree, splatters and painted strips. But that wasn't what drew the scream, the second one, not of fright like the first, but of horror, of a deep abiding disgust.
Oddly enough, apart from that single, thick puddle, the grass is clean. And it is only the one tree, smeared, specked and caked with the sludgy, viscous, crimson black blood in the small thatch, the rest are clean, pristine, unmarked.
But the source of the blood, concealed beneath those heavy, hungry, shifting black bodies, the lone figure hanging from the branches, bloated in the heat, almost bursting, like some obscene fruit begging to be plucked, that is what drew the second horrified scream that shattered the shocked silence following the first.
For, it wasn't just hanging, covered with droning flies, bloated, tied by the ankles, no, that would be bad enough. But it -- not a man, not a woman, not a child but a dead, bloated buzzing thing -- had been skinned.
(Warning for those of tender stomaches, it gets graphic.)
The head was featureless, eyes gouged out, or rather, surgically removed from the orbits and yanked free. The nose removed, lips likewise, ears, scalp, then each slender strip of flesh carved from the face, leaving a morbid mockery of a skull, blood caked and writhing with flies. Oddly, morbidly, the tongue and throat were left intact, the skinning starting at the collarbones. The arms stripped of flesh as well as skin, bones visible, connected by gleaming sinew and tendon. The ribcage glittering, gleaming through the flies and the thick, black blood. The stomach retained the muscle, holding the bloating of swollen organs within, but the pelvis glimmered. A dark grey rope slithered out, wrapped painstakingly, almost lovingly, around the bones. The legs were simply skinned, simply used as they retained the meat, the flesh, but linked together with steel rods bent around the bones. Just the merest scrap of skin at the edges of the rods give the hint that maybe, just maybe, the victim wasn't dead when impaled ...or worse.
A third scream, high, wild, piteous came from the child, an innocent who went searching for the ball, the peircing, poignant scream of encroaching madness. Because dangling there, bloated, skinned, mutilated, the dead writhing with a mimicry of life, induced by the walking, crawling, buzzing black tide searching beneath the flesh, it seemed to reach for the child, reach with those skinned, fleshless arms.
A fourth scream came, hard on the heels of the third, ringing louder, higher, madness shattering. And as the child screamed, the body swinging, buzzing, bloated, flies taking their crimson black meal, the corpse screamed too.
And then the screams started.
Down a little way from the bees, just around the bend from the children, there was a droning. Not the almost musical buzz of the bees, no, this was the heavy, bloated droning of fat blowflies, their brilliant blue back sparkling in the sunlight like morbid jewels. The black with flashing blue tide crawled, buzzed, and swarmed over the ground and a single tree.
The first scream disturbed a few, not many, but enough for their meal to be seen.
A puddle of thick, black as tar blood on the bright green, rich, vibrant grass. More crimson black smears marred the smoothe wood of the tree, splatters and painted strips. But that wasn't what drew the scream, the second one, not of fright like the first, but of horror, of a deep abiding disgust.
Oddly enough, apart from that single, thick puddle, the grass is clean. And it is only the one tree, smeared, specked and caked with the sludgy, viscous, crimson black blood in the small thatch, the rest are clean, pristine, unmarked.
But the source of the blood, concealed beneath those heavy, hungry, shifting black bodies, the lone figure hanging from the branches, bloated in the heat, almost bursting, like some obscene fruit begging to be plucked, that is what drew the second horrified scream that shattered the shocked silence following the first.
For, it wasn't just hanging, covered with droning flies, bloated, tied by the ankles, no, that would be bad enough. But it -- not a man, not a woman, not a child but a dead, bloated buzzing thing -- had been skinned.
(Warning for those of tender stomaches, it gets graphic.)
The head was featureless, eyes gouged out, or rather, surgically removed from the orbits and yanked free. The nose removed, lips likewise, ears, scalp, then each slender strip of flesh carved from the face, leaving a morbid mockery of a skull, blood caked and writhing with flies. Oddly, morbidly, the tongue and throat were left intact, the skinning starting at the collarbones. The arms stripped of flesh as well as skin, bones visible, connected by gleaming sinew and tendon. The ribcage glittering, gleaming through the flies and the thick, black blood. The stomach retained the muscle, holding the bloating of swollen organs within, but the pelvis glimmered. A dark grey rope slithered out, wrapped painstakingly, almost lovingly, around the bones. The legs were simply skinned, simply used as they retained the meat, the flesh, but linked together with steel rods bent around the bones. Just the merest scrap of skin at the edges of the rods give the hint that maybe, just maybe, the victim wasn't dead when impaled ...or worse.
A third scream, high, wild, piteous came from the child, an innocent who went searching for the ball, the peircing, poignant scream of encroaching madness. Because dangling there, bloated, skinned, mutilated, the dead writhing with a mimicry of life, induced by the walking, crawling, buzzing black tide searching beneath the flesh, it seemed to reach for the child, reach with those skinned, fleshless arms.
A fourth scream came, hard on the heels of the third, ringing louder, higher, madness shattering. And as the child screamed, the body swinging, buzzing, bloated, flies taking their crimson black meal, the corpse screamed too.
Saturday 17 May 2008
How to say 'farewell' to $300+ in 30 seconds flat.
That's $10 a second. Steal.
I have realised, discovered really I suppose, that I am a very very bad impulse buyer. Most impulse buyers buy -little- things, on whim. Like chocolates while standing at the counter, stuff like that. Not me, nooooo, I behave myself, I limit myself to $50 a week for food and drinks and stuff, for MONTHS and painstakingly save, build up my bank account and everything aand... for what? For my account to hit the $400 mark and I go ooooh, I'm rich! So I go and buy stuff.
Like today. I took out $100, bought three books ($60), and, what I lament the most in buying on whim, is a PSP and a game. Because you see, it doesn't stop there! Oh no! I have to buy a memory stick and a cover as well, since my PSP will spend the majority of time in my backpack -- on the theory that I'll spend less on books if I've got a new toy to play with. And shame on you that thought I should buy naughty toys to play with! Yes, I mean -you-.
So alas, I am broke. For a week. Then I'll be rich with $200 of pay...and broke. To pay bills. Then a bit richer....then more broke. It'll take me a little while of doing sweet stuff all to build my bank account up to comfortable levels. Meaning that I can impulse buy expensive things that the majority of people would save up for months to purchase and pet and drool over.
I'm the worst kind of impulse buyer -- the rich kind. :(
I have realised, discovered really I suppose, that I am a very very bad impulse buyer. Most impulse buyers buy -little- things, on whim. Like chocolates while standing at the counter, stuff like that. Not me, nooooo, I behave myself, I limit myself to $50 a week for food and drinks and stuff, for MONTHS and painstakingly save, build up my bank account and everything aand... for what? For my account to hit the $400 mark and I go ooooh, I'm rich! So I go and buy stuff.
Like today. I took out $100, bought three books ($60), and, what I lament the most in buying on whim, is a PSP and a game. Because you see, it doesn't stop there! Oh no! I have to buy a memory stick and a cover as well, since my PSP will spend the majority of time in my backpack -- on the theory that I'll spend less on books if I've got a new toy to play with. And shame on you that thought I should buy naughty toys to play with! Yes, I mean -you-.
So alas, I am broke. For a week. Then I'll be rich with $200 of pay...and broke. To pay bills. Then a bit richer....then more broke. It'll take me a little while of doing sweet stuff all to build my bank account up to comfortable levels. Meaning that I can impulse buy expensive things that the majority of people would save up for months to purchase and pet and drool over.
I'm the worst kind of impulse buyer -- the rich kind. :(
Monday 12 May 2008
Pause
Pause. Take a deep breath and just pause.
Wait. Take the time to centre yourself.
Close your eyes, listen to the sound of your inner voice.
Silence it.
Be surrounded by the sound of your breath.
In...and...out....
and in....and...out...
Calm. Breathe. Listen. Remember.
Remember the sound of the wind through the trees on a gentle, sleepy, summers day.
Remember that soothing, peaceful feeling you got, or get, in falling asleep on one of your parents'. So safe, and warm, and contented. The gentle stroking of a loving hand through your hair, how it soothed you, made you smile in your sleep, made you drift off even if you were wide awake.
Now pause.
Take that feeling, that moment, that serenity and envelope yourself with it, snuggle into it like a soft, warm blanket on a cold winters night.
Remember.
Hold it with you, always. So that when the world intrudes with its stresses and anxiety and demands for attention, NOW, you can shunt it off to one side and be wrapped in that muffling, soft, warm serenity of peace.
Wait. Take the time to centre yourself.
Close your eyes, listen to the sound of your inner voice.
Silence it.
Be surrounded by the sound of your breath.
In...and...out....
and in....and...out...
Calm. Breathe. Listen. Remember.
Remember the sound of the wind through the trees on a gentle, sleepy, summers day.
Remember that soothing, peaceful feeling you got, or get, in falling asleep on one of your parents'. So safe, and warm, and contented. The gentle stroking of a loving hand through your hair, how it soothed you, made you smile in your sleep, made you drift off even if you were wide awake.
Now pause.
Take that feeling, that moment, that serenity and envelope yourself with it, snuggle into it like a soft, warm blanket on a cold winters night.
Remember.
Hold it with you, always. So that when the world intrudes with its stresses and anxiety and demands for attention, NOW, you can shunt it off to one side and be wrapped in that muffling, soft, warm serenity of peace.
Saturday 10 May 2008
Don't you just looooove...
The way that bookstores have the BEGINNING of a series, and the END of that same series, but y'know, it's missing the MIDDLE of said series? By say, four books?
Yeah, its wonderful.
Another thing that's absolutely wonderful is the way people at work tend to expect -one- person to -always- do something, say for example, serve customers in the dead end of the night with no help, and, then consequently, yell at said person for not getting their jobs done. Isn't it just darling and wonderful?
No matter where I am rostered during the shift, out front, on drive pack, in the drive box, at the end of the night, guranteed, I will be the SOLE PERSON serving customers. So I'll run from one end of the store to the other to serve customers, and then get yelled at when I yell for someone to take lobby. I get "can't you do it?!" and I'm like ...um no, I have a few CARS TO SERVE. And they get all huffy but serve. Or, if they don't, I dart between two people, packing two things at once, and then when the customers complain, and the boss starts chewing my ass out, I retort and say YOU get someone else to help! I have to do my stuffing jobs, and it's a bit hard when you've gotta be in TWO PLACES AT ONCE.
Or it'd be a classic, someone calls "ANGELA, customers!" and I'd yell back "I can't, I was meant to go home an hour ago and I've still got MY JOBS TO DO." then there's the whole 'customers come first' ..yeah. Why do they only come first for ME and not anyone else? Argh!
I'm just a little ticked off, in case you can't tell. Seriously, I think I'll get a new job. Doing something simple, and easy, and friendly, like ...5 star waitressing or something. Y'know what's really funny though? I'm one of the ONLY people that does, and knows, our policy and actively does it, as well as our promos and whatnot, I know the menus BETTER than the managers, and yet, yet, I am the sole exemption from this prize doohicky we're doing, because I supposedly, once, just ONCE, gave a customer 'attitude' and was 'rude' to her, when y'know, it was the middle of the dinner rush and I was doing bloody six things at once, running lobby and two trainees at the same time. Isn't it wonderful, that I'm currently, supposedly, on the bottom of the bloody ladder in this rank thingy, and I'm one of the BEST PEOPLE THEY HAVE.
So yeah. It's just wonderful. Fan-bloody-tastic.
Oh, I've also completely dumped my boyfriend. I took him back for a whole two days because I felt horrid, as the last post tells, and this time I felt much better about it and all. So now he hates me, or wants to or something, but I'm good. I'm a bit too stressed out over uni (six things due over two weeks, lovely, now I've got an extension, so one due this week, another due next) to be worrying overmuch about my private life. Its no big after all.
I'm seriously considering quitting and finding another job. Like, seriously. Even though I'm lazy and it involves writing, updating my resume, which is a pain. But hey, it's all good. I might even get paid more, y'never know, what with working in fast food and all.
Yeah, I think that about covers the majority of things, and I'm gonna go ...do something... before I get more irate and punch the wall. I kinda need both of my hands in working order.
Yeah, its wonderful.
Another thing that's absolutely wonderful is the way people at work tend to expect -one- person to -always- do something, say for example, serve customers in the dead end of the night with no help, and, then consequently, yell at said person for not getting their jobs done. Isn't it just darling and wonderful?
No matter where I am rostered during the shift, out front, on drive pack, in the drive box, at the end of the night, guranteed, I will be the SOLE PERSON serving customers. So I'll run from one end of the store to the other to serve customers, and then get yelled at when I yell for someone to take lobby. I get "can't you do it?!" and I'm like ...um no, I have a few CARS TO SERVE. And they get all huffy but serve. Or, if they don't, I dart between two people, packing two things at once, and then when the customers complain, and the boss starts chewing my ass out, I retort and say YOU get someone else to help! I have to do my stuffing jobs, and it's a bit hard when you've gotta be in TWO PLACES AT ONCE.
Or it'd be a classic, someone calls "ANGELA, customers!" and I'd yell back "I can't, I was meant to go home an hour ago and I've still got MY JOBS TO DO." then there's the whole 'customers come first' ..yeah. Why do they only come first for ME and not anyone else? Argh!
I'm just a little ticked off, in case you can't tell. Seriously, I think I'll get a new job. Doing something simple, and easy, and friendly, like ...5 star waitressing or something. Y'know what's really funny though? I'm one of the ONLY people that does, and knows, our policy and actively does it, as well as our promos and whatnot, I know the menus BETTER than the managers, and yet, yet, I am the sole exemption from this prize doohicky we're doing, because I supposedly, once, just ONCE, gave a customer 'attitude' and was 'rude' to her, when y'know, it was the middle of the dinner rush and I was doing bloody six things at once, running lobby and two trainees at the same time. Isn't it wonderful, that I'm currently, supposedly, on the bottom of the bloody ladder in this rank thingy, and I'm one of the BEST PEOPLE THEY HAVE.
So yeah. It's just wonderful. Fan-bloody-tastic.
Oh, I've also completely dumped my boyfriend. I took him back for a whole two days because I felt horrid, as the last post tells, and this time I felt much better about it and all. So now he hates me, or wants to or something, but I'm good. I'm a bit too stressed out over uni (six things due over two weeks, lovely, now I've got an extension, so one due this week, another due next) to be worrying overmuch about my private life. Its no big after all.
I'm seriously considering quitting and finding another job. Like, seriously. Even though I'm lazy and it involves writing, updating my resume, which is a pain. But hey, it's all good. I might even get paid more, y'never know, what with working in fast food and all.
Yeah, I think that about covers the majority of things, and I'm gonna go ...do something... before I get more irate and punch the wall. I kinda need both of my hands in working order.
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