Continued from Part 1.
* * *
“You don’t have to come with me,” Travis said, starting the engine on the black sedan. Xiv smiled and buckled his seat belt. The dragon boy could look freakish to those who had not seen him before. His snow white skin had a sheen that made it look wet despite being dry. His face was dominated by massive eyes with tiny pupils. He had no overtly visible nose, his nostrils hiding behind tiny flaps of skin. His mouth sat low on his face, coming close to crowding out his chin. His smile exposed blunt conical canine teeth. Swept-back ivory horns framed his white hair. His arms were connected by a membrane to his sides, forming a simple wing. This wing continued along the last finger on the hand, which was much longer than any of the others, but folded back against his forearms. Buckled into a normal car seat, his long tail hung between his legs and coiled by his feet.
“Do you want me to stay behind?” Xiv asked.
Travis shook his head. “No, it’s all right. If you want to ride along, you can come. I’m not sure I’m going to find anything.”
“Then lets go,” Xiv said with a grin.
“You just want to get out of the base, don’t you?”
“…Maybe?”
Travis sighed and started driving. He didn’t start listening to the voice of the GPS until they got into the vicinity of Wellerby. Wellerby was only officially outside of New Port Arthur. The only sign that one had left the city and entered the suburb was the street sign declaring it so. It was largely residential and small retail, packed with detached houses of myriad ages. Nothing particularly stood out about the street the device directed him to. It was lined with older houses, some of which had been renovated more often and more recently than others. The most run-down example had a large white truck parked out front. It also turned out to be the address from the record. Travis parked across the street, and the two got out of the sedan. A quick glance showed no other traffic on the street, so they crossed and approached the building. The wood-frame Victorian house had once been stately and respectably middle class, but had sat abandoned for a long time. It looked more than a little sad, with faded, flaked paint, and sunbleached wooden shingles. The front door sat wide open.
Travis climbed the porch steps, Xiv a few steps behind him. The interior was unlit, and there was no sign of a light fixture to change that. There was plenty of sunlight spilling in and neither of them had difficulty seeing the staircase, or the open doorway to the back room. In the back room, the floor had been ripped up to the joists, and a woman in jeans and t-shirt was trying to finagle a sheet of plywood into place. Helping her was a lanky young man in similar, though looser fitting, attire. He was the first to glance up. At the sight of Travis and Xiv, he gave a start and stepped back. Being on a piece of plywood their laid earlier, he avoided sticking his foot between the exposed joists. The girl yelped as the plywood began to topple. Travis caught the edge of the board, keeping it from falling too far. Her green eyes moved to his hand, then up his arm to the mask on his face.
A scowl crossed her features.
“You can’t just barge in here,” she said.
“Your front door was open.”
“So what?”
“Are you Erin O’Shea?”
“Yes. What is this about?”
Travis gave an inquiring look towards the young man. Erin followed his gaze and got the message.
“David, would you be so kind as to give us a moment so I can get rid of this guy?” She beamed at him, and David gave a sheepish grin back.
“Uh, sure, I’ll be at my house.” David picked his way over the bare joists, and slipped past Travis, shrinking under his scrutiny. Xiv watched the young man hurry across the street and into the house their black car was parked in front of. A girl with mahogany hair stared out the front window of that house, meeting Xiv’s gaze with a look of utter fascination.
“I thought the Community Fund was supposed to be discreet,” Erin said. She jabbed a finger at Travis’ chest. “I miss one payment and you guys come goose-stepping in here to harass me?”
“I’m not here about Community Service,” Travis said.
Erin’s bluster deflated. “Um…”
“Have you lived here long?” Other than the work on the flooring, there was no sign the house had been touched in ages.
“No, I just started moving in today.”
“Where did you live before?”
“What’s with the personal questions?”
“There is an anomaly with your Fund membership records. There’s no sign they existed before today.”
“Don’t give me that, I’ve been a Fund member since I got my sidekick permit when I was fourteen,” Erin said.
“We’re trying to figure out what’s gone amiss,” Travis said. “Maybe your parents can help shed some light on the matter. What were their names?”
Erin glared at Travis, then her face slowly slackened. A moment later, a look of horrified realization built in her eyes. “I… can’t remember.” She met Travis’ gaze, her body starting to tremble. “I can’t even remember their faces… What sort of person forgets her own parents?” Pushing past Travis, Erin ran from the house and across the street. The door was unlocked, and she disappeared within.
“Huh,” Travis said. He took out his phone and dialed.
“Voiceprint Identify.”
“Identify Shadowdemon.”
“Confirmed,” Shiva said.
“What can you tell me about the parents of our Erin O’Shea?” Travis asked.
“Searching. No data found.”
“Elaborate.”
“The inserted record contains no information about parents or guardians.”
“If she had joined as a sidekick there would have to be.”
“We are not legally permitted to accept a minor without the permission of their legal guardian. The fields are simply blank. Expanding scope of public records search. Please wait.”
Travis rolled his eyes, but waited.
“There is another anomaly.”
“Elaborate.”
“All current records that should exist, do. BHA, DMV, Community Fund, all have the same Erin O’Shea on file. No past records exist. No records of birth or education which match with the individual in question.”
“If you were going to create a fake identity, the first thing you’d do is secure a birth certificate.”
“And yet none exists.”
“Thank you, Shiva.” Travis hung up and turned to Xiv, who was still looking across the street. “We’re going to very obviously leave, then find a nice quiet spot to watch this house.”
Pale blue nictitating membranes wiped the dust of the old house from Xiv’s eyes as he crossed the street. Carol watched the two heroes climb into the black sedan and drive off. Being home to the headquarters of the Community Fund, New Port Arthur and its surrounding suburbs saw more activity by costumed heroes than most places, but she hadn’t seen any this close before. Having finally gotten a look at him in-person, Carol decided Xiv was actually kind of cute, even if he did look a little odd too. Behind her, David made softly cooing noises as he comforted a distressed Erin. The redhead had her face buried in David’s upper chest and her arms tight about him. He had one arm about her shoulders and reassuringly stroked her hair with the other hand. Carol walked past them, up the stairs, and back to her room. The spiral bound notebook was still sitting on the corner of her bed, open to a page of neat penmanship in red ink. Picking it up, Carol’s eyes snapped to the first instance of a name in the text.
“She was Skyline – Erin O’Shea.”
Carol flipped back a page and found the first words below the doodles.
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
It had rained last night, hadn’t it? Positively torrential as she recalled. But not before she’d written those words. Before she’d penned that line, Carol had been looking out the window at a clear night and the glimmering lights of the city. It had only started after she’d written that and gone to go to the bathroom. There was a simple way to test if she was right about what had happened. Carol flipped forward through the notebook until she found the end of the red text. Picking up the strange pen, she sat down and began writing.
“Xiv wanted to have a chance to speak to the girl he’d seen through the window, but decided to wait until dark to seek her out, so there would be less chance of being seen.” She paused and decided to add a bit more detail. “Carol’s parents had decided to go out, and stumbled on to a cozy and inexpensive bed and breakfast where they could spend time together without their children. With David on a date with Erin, Carol was alone in the house when Xiv arrived, determined to speak with her.” Carol re-read the short text and nodded in satisfaction. If it did work, she wanted everyone out of the house, but there was no reason they couldn’t be happy while out of the house. Now she just needed one thing she had a short supply of – patience.
* * *
It was boring watching people eat. Erin and the guy they’d first seen her with had parked themselves in a booth at a diner. The diner was only notable for being cheap and not too far away. So while the two had parked themselves in a booth, Xiv and Travis were parked a block away. Travis had filled a few of the past hours asking Shiva about the house Erin had fled to earlier. It was registered as owned by Floyd Hardtop, a sales rep for a local distillery with ambitions of national distribution. His wife was Joy, a retail clerk at a florist. They had two kids, David, seventeen, and Carol, fifteen. Absolutely nothing anomalous had turned up. Except, Erin had run into their house when distressed by Travis’ questioning.
So, they sat, watching Erin and David alternate between looking at menus and staring into each other’s eyes. When they’d left the old house, Xiv had hoped something might happen. But this was not what he’d expected, and certainly failed to hold his interest.
“I’m getting a bit of a crick in my tail,” Xiv said. “I’ve been sitting on it too long.”
“Why don’t you get out and stretch. Just don’t let them see you.”
Xiv took another look down the street. It seemed unlikely the two would notice anything in the diner with them, let alone a block down a dark street. The dragon boy climbed out of the car and stretched his spine, including down the length of his tail. In the process, he bent almost double backwards, tail reaching high above him. In this odd posture, he began to wonder about the third person he’d seen that day. She’d been watching their arrival. Had she seen something else? Straightening up, he glanced at Travis. He was seated quite stilly behind the wheel of the sedan, staring off into the distance. Anyone unfamiliar with him would think he was looking at nothing. Xiv knew he had an artificial eye which could zoom in on distant details.
Leaping into the air, Xiv flew back the way they’d come. His wings were not big enough to carry his weight through aerodynamic forces alone, but they gave him a great deal of control. Looping around a telephone pole, he appeared to glide, even when climbing. Since he did not flap his wings, his flight was silent as he passed over rooftops and trees. A single light was on in the house he was headed for. The glow emerged from a gable window overlooking the roof of an enclosed porch. Xiv landed quietly on the porch. The window was open, and Xiv could smell someone inside. Despite his almost nonexistent nose, Xiv had an abnormally acute sense of smell. No one else he knew of would have been able to smell anyone inside the room.
At the sight of movement at her window, Carol looked up. She fought the urge to squeal at Xiv’s arrival. She hopped up out of her chair and motioned Xiv inside. “Sit down.” Xiv looked at the chair. The slats that made up the back had enough space for his tail to hang out the back, so he wouldn’t end up sitting on it. It would make it hard to get back up quickly, so he decided against threading his tail between the slats and simply looped it under himself.
“I’m Carol,” she said.
“I’m Xiv.”
“I’ve always wondered, does that stand for something?”
Xiv paused, debating if he wanted to actually say, but he was aware that with his appearance, he didn’t have anything resembling a secret identity.
“It was originally ‘fourteen’. Now they’re my initials.”
“Really? So you have another name?”
“I don’t use it,” Xiv said.
“But what is it?”
“Xavier Isaac Vogel,” Xiv said.
“It’s not a bad name,” Carol said.
“It doesn’t feel like mine.”
“A lot of dragons showed up around the time you did.”
“Most of them were demi-dragons, people who can turn into dragons.”
“But you’re different.”
“Yes.”
When he didn’t elaborate, Carol asked, “In what way?”
“I’m a dragon with some human genes patched in.”
“So can you turn the rest of the way into a person? Or into a dragon?”
“No,” Xiv said.
“Why not? That doesn’t sound right.”
“I am just the way I am.”
As Carol picked up a pen and a notebook, Xiv tried to figure out how to steer the conversation away from himself and to the house across the street. She wrote something on the notebook.
“Earlier today,” Xiv started, his mind still churning through the potential conversational detour. A woozy feeling welled up inside him as Carol’s eyes went a bit wide. As the disorientation swept through Xiv, he screwed his eyes shut. He raised a hand to his face to steady his head. Something scrunched uncomfortably as the heel of his palm pressed against it. The disorientation was already starting to clear, but confusion was setting in. He opened the eye not covered by his hand and knew immediately something was wrong. There was no wing membrane blocking is view of Carol, and something pinkish was intruding on the corner of his vision.
Slowly drawing his hand away from his face, Xiv stared at it in horror. Instead of being the longest, his last finger was now the shortest, and the wing membrane was gone. The color had gone from snow white to slightly peach. Looking up, he caught sight of his reflection in the vanity mirror. The boy he saw had handsome, well defined features. His platinum blond hair nearly fell into his eerie blue eyes. His irises were the same pale blue as his nictitating membranes had been.
Xiv let out a horrified shriek and scrambled out the window.
Unable to get the grip he was accustomed to, he rolled down the shingles and thudded to the lawn. He scrambled to his feet and ran. Sticks, stones and other random debris bit the soles of his bare feet as he ran. Regaining a modicum of sense, Xiv made for where the car was parked. It was not far away. Travis had stepped out of the vehicle and was looking about. Running over to Travis, Xiv fought to catch his breath.
“Can I help you?”
“It’s me, Xiv.”
Travis got the look that came over him whenever his mind was churning through unexpected data. “You know I have to be sure of that,” he said.
“You haven’t been able to sleep since you lost your eye.”
Travis was quiet for a long moment. “So what happened?”
“I don’t know.” Wincing, Xiv leaned against the car and looked at the bottom of his foot. He prised a shard of glass from his sole, drawing a rivulet of cyan blood. He squeezed his foot to try to staunch the flow.
“That looks a little deep, we should probably get that checked out.”
Xiv nodded.
“I’ll tell Ixa to meet us at Vanguard. We can try to figure out what happened.”
* * *
Continued in Part 3…
How many parts will this be? I don’t have time to read it today, but I want to make sure I don’t miss it at the end to catch up.
Just three.
Part 3’s going to be busy since
-David’s got to get laid
-Xiv’s got to get detransitioned
-Carol has to recognize and repent of her hubris and
-Erin has to either be confirmed into existence or realize she Shouldn’t Really Be Here and auto-euthanize.
…
I’m sorry I have disappointed you.
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Part 3 is when it is revealed that Carol is in a simulation . . . and there’s this guy typing on a magic typewriter telling to write with her magic pen to make shit happen.
It’s a keyboard.
I’m voting on Travis vaporizing everyone…
After David gets laid.
Teenagers should not be given the power to rewrite reality.
Haven’t been on American College Campuses have you?
Proof that “Teenagers should not be given the power to rewrite reality.”
*smirk*
“How dare you!”
/Greta
OK boomer, first off your use of the word “rewrite” means that you think you are the only one that gets to write reality and you get to force your reality on us. I can’t even with this. Somebody do something.
Can we get some muscle over here?
“So can you turn the rest of the way into a person? Or into a dragon?”
“No,” Xiv said.
“Why not? That doesn’t sound right.”
“I am just the way I am.”
Nice. I like how you bring in the issues of the current day and really have characters struggle with them.
“Wellerby! Next stop Wellerby!”
A quick glance showed no other traffic on the street, so they crossed and approached the building.>/em>
Its nice that they look before crossing.
edit fairy?
Your html blunder may have just given me a clue as to why my italic tags consistently fail.
testing
it verksss!
Now just remember it’s
<strike>
strikethrough</strike><strong>strong</strong>
and
<em>em</em>
thanks for the
memoriesadviceOr download
monocleEyepiece and just highlight and push a button.push a button
For me, its more like place my cursor on a designated area of the screen and left-click my mouse.
/pedant OFF
The mouse buttons are still buttons.
?
pushclick on a buttonOutpedanted by UnCiv.
At least it wasn’t Hyperbole.
https://me.me/i/quick-sherman-hand-me-my-buffalo-rifle-those-are-american-fe3314f329b641ae853d2dba9ba48616
Now to invent a lever action mouse…
use i and not em?
I have been up to now. Obviously when it didn’t work the first couple of times I just kept doing the same thing because that’s just what crazy people cock-a-doodle-do.
What kind of black sedan is it? Who betrayed Shiva?
Well, in “Iron Conjurer” it was Syd and Hephaestus.
Aaaaaah. Maybe I should just read the other. Re the car, I’ll just tweet a photo to David Burge or something.
Crown Vic. It’s always a Crown Vic.
Nice work.
Thank you. I seem to have set Not Adahn’s expectations a bit high though.
And this is both “why we can’t have nice things” and why I can’t recommend this site to normals.
Okay, what is that?
Just the shared sense of the bizarre, randomness, and hilarity of this site.
If I told an on-the-fence libertarian that they should go check out this site, and this is the first thing they read, they’d back up into the bushes like that Homer Simpson gif.
I love it though!!
It’s not as bad as some of the content they might read first.
Link them Ozy’s work, or some of the philosophising, that’s a better starting point.
ctrl+F “cummies”
Whatever happened to Thicc Thursday?
I’m guessing the same thing that happened to Manly Mondays and Ass Wednesdays — interested peaked, and then the author was satisfied and went to sleep.
Tonio wrote a FAQ.
Oh, I think that’s Sugar Free’s sole domain.
More like soul domain.
Point n00bs here: https://www.glibertarians.com/2019/10/a-noob-guide-to-glibertarians-com/
Hey, Mojeaux, do you know when Part II of your series on self-publishing will be running? It is something I am considering for my own backlog of unpublished novels and am acutely interested in what you have to say on the subject.
Tomorrow at 11:00, but it probably won’t answer any questions. I’m still in backstory about how I got there. Email me. esb10 at b10mediaworx dot com
Thank you. I will do so later today after work.
A book of
sermonsthoughts?Whoa. Dear Carol: Stop that. Now. Or I will take your electronics away. [Insert mom rant here.]
Now, I think we missed a bit of time that Erin would feel comfortable running across the street to take comfort in David’s arms.
Actually, I know we haven’t lost time. That took me out of the story a bit as I don’t feel established enough in Erin and David’s rrlationship that she would do that.
Otherwise I can’t wait!!!
I was hoping to gloss over that with “We don’t know exactly what Carol wrote when creating her.”
I had to go back and read to see if I’d missed something.
Didn’t miss anything. It wasn’t there. I need to have some clue that something happened between “Cute girl!”, “Can I help you with your plywood?”, and “Comfort me!”, to believe the date part as written/decreed by Carol.
I found the line… it’s in Part 3.
Other people may not need a line explaining that much sooner, but I did.
The whole story is only about 9-10k words, though being serialized does make the exact timing of some of these details more impactful.
Meh, I wrote a story whose ending depended on the audience’s brain participation and quite a few people didn’t get it. One review said it was too showy and not telly enough.
That’s how I interpreted it — that Carol wrote Erin to be the perfect love-at-first-sight fantasy girlfriend.
You are quicker than I am.
Sounds like a call for more heaving bosoms and bodice ripping!
I know you’re kidding (*glances suspiciously*), but just a couple of explanation lines that Carol the marionettist had pulled their strings would do.
I am open to feedback, and I do get where you’re coming from. Do you think it would be better when she’s first thinking about what to write back in part 1, or when she realizes what the pen can do in this part? I don’t see any other natural place to talk about the content of her scribblings regarding Erin.
I assumed it was an artifact of being a character written into existence on a scribble pad of a teenage girl.
Still, it’s a detail that can be slipped in without hurting the story.
Also, this is not my genre and I am acutely aware that other genres have wildly different conventions so I’m not commenting on things that are different from mine.
Fun fact: I learned this when I was working on my publishing partner’s and my anthology of pulp fiction. There was an AWFUL story in it I hated. I hated everything about it from concept to execution and questioned the two editors. They assured me it was very good, according to the conventions of that genre. Ohhhhhkay.
One of the most highly praised stories of the collection.
One reality check I would like is whether or not Carol is a believable teenage girl throughout the story. It’s not a character type I’m experienced at writing for.
I just accepted that a girl, written into existence without parents, would run for comfort to the person she exists to please. But, yeah, it’s a logical leap.
#metoo. It was a leap I noticed, but I was comfortable with it.
#methree
That was the part of Unsong that never made sense — that a early-20s straight guy would be freaked out by a Sarah Michelle Gellar that was in love with him.
Then I will concede to the obvious fact I am slow.
UCS, disregard my advice and I will cease giving any and just enjoy it. Clearly this is not my genre or else I’m just used to being spoonfed.
I think it’s more that there’s a bunch of a certain personality profile running around this site.
I want feedback from alternate viewpoints, especially where something doesn’t work or seems off for them.
It’s not obvious. I had to think for a minute. But, then I decided that Carol created Erin to make David happy. Erin doesn’t have to know or understand why she runs for David.
But, I can also see Erin stopping at some point and thinking “what the fuck am I doing” which is why she kicks Carol’s ass, then steals her pen, then . . . . . .
…boom chicka bow.
I found David’s reaction much harder to understand than Erin’s. I half expected Carol’s jig to be up in that scene.
I like it.
Excellent! One more installment.
Now we play the waiting game…
Next thursday, same time slot according to SP.
I, for one, believe her.
As do I.
*wind chimes constructed of rusty can lids clang softly in the distance*
#believeallsiteadmins
Wait a minute. How did Carol know XIV’s name?
Is he a celebrity or something?
Oh, and great installment, UCS!
Thanks. I hope part 3 lives up to all the buildup serialization causes.
If it doesn’t, I will be demanding my money back in a strongly worded letter to the editor.
Which one? The site admins or the guy I had edit this story?
Which one is more likely to pay up?
Well, Evan is broke, and SP doesn’t handle Glib finances.
Yes.
He’s a sidekick with a distinctive appearance operating in the metropolitan area she lives in. Local celebrity is still celebrity.
Gotcha.
Yes. Yes they are.
*pages through collection of autographs from local TV weathermen*
That just brought up a weird memory. I was 12 or 13 and happened upon some meet-‘n-greet with the team from local (Ft. Myers, FL) CBS affiliate, WINK, that was going on at the shopping center mom dragged me to. I caught a candid moment where two of the news presenters were commiserating about the weather guy making so much more than them. I pointed the scene out to mom and she explained that the weather guy actually learned a skill in college, justifying his higher rate. And that the two newsmen were drunk.
the weather guy actually learned a skill in college, justifying his higher rate
I was friends with a guy who is now a TV weatherman. I helped him through pre-calc and calculus. Maybe not the smartest guy in the group (of mostly engineers) when it came to general knolwege and skills, but he was very sharp in the subject matter areas he cared about. Great guy… I feel bad having lost touch with him.
In chapter 3, Erin steals Carol’s pen, then writes her out of existence. Erin takes Carol’s place and starts an incestuous relationship with David. On weekends, XIV makes it a threesome.
Uhh… no.
So, I should stick to engineering then?
Or, read less SugarFree.
too late
“Carol began her job as editrix with a manuscript entitled ‘The
Hat and the Hair.’ ‘Now where did I put my red pen?’ Carol wondered… “
IS XIV a robot or cyborg? He is named after an IBM storage system.
No. If you go back to the dialog, he says exactly what he is.
I understand and did read that. I was just making a smarty pants random observation about the name.
I really like the story. great job creating a world as well.
But then he gets rewritten, so…
I have a tendency to treat everything I’ve written in a setting as if it was canonical, even if not published, so that everything stays consistant should the draft work ever be brought to the light of day.
I’m trying to figure out how to reference the events of this story in future books with such a limited distribution. I mean, it won’t be able to see print without a new anthology.
Though, if I keep to pattern, I only need one more book before the next anthology can be printed, since it’s been two Travis-narrated books, one anthology, one Travis-narrated book, one partially written Travis-narrated book.
::glances at clock so as not to punch back in late::
Little time to comment, but I wanted to tell you that I’m thoroughly enjoying this. I’d missed part 1 while traveling last week, so I had to catch up. I’ll be looking forward to the denouement. In the meantime, I’ll try to comment belatedly on parts 1 & 2 this evening.
I’ve finished Shadowboy, and I’m about a quarter of the way through Shadowdemon, so I was tickled to see familiar characters.
Hurry up and finish shadowdemon by next week… I don’t want to cause spoilers.
Will do.
I kinda realized something about this story happening later could cause spoilers for that book. Less so for other volumes. If you don’t have the time to read all that, I will leave it to you if you want to risk it.
*flash forward thirty years to ShadowCon*
“A little known fact is that Erin’s origin story originally premiered in the online magazine Glibertarians a liberation-oriented “website” destroyed by the Federal Overlord Government in the early 2020s.”
So in my suddenly somewhat chichi ‘burb up here in the NE corner of the KC metro area (Libertesian might disagree about chichi, I don’t know), there was an incident this morning at a sporting goods store wherein the police were called for what sounded like (according to the news) an active shooter situation, but one who hadn’t shot anyone yet. Or something.
Store was locked down. Employees and customers huddled in the back. Police doing their police thing.
Now, remember, Missouri is a Constitutional Carry state. I do not know if this store had a no-weapons sign on its doors.
So it turns out:
1) It wasn’t an almost-active-shooter. Then
2) It was likely just someone carrying a gun. Legally. Then
3) The person has not been found or identified. Then
4) There was nobody with a gun at all.
SMDH.
Is this the kind of sporting goods store where one could buy a gun?
“OHMYGOSH, There’s a whole WALL of them!”
*curls into safe space*
/snowflake.
Sporting goods store? Does it sell guns? If so, I’d bet some snowflake had a meltdown when a customer picked up a firearm they were thinking about buying.
SMOD, hear my prayer . . .
Academy Sports, so no. If I overthought it, I would suspect a disgruntled employee punking the place.
The important thing, though, is that our Heroes in Blue got to clock some hazard pay time, and possibly some overtime.
Again I come to my conundrum of a) never having had a sour interaction with a policeman, even while being pulled over versus b) the existence of awful cops and that I was raised with the expectation that cops would do something to my dad, who had it out for him.
The cops and deputies in my ‘burb are very nice. They don’t do stupid shit. They went, they saw, they said, “NBD. Carry on.” I have no doubt that if they had found a person with a gun, they would’ve stood there with the person, shot the breeze a little to make it look good, then gone about their merry business. If there is a no-weapons sign on the door, they may have said, “Dude, respect the proprietor” or maybe subtly me tioned that he didn’t have to carry openly.
Maybe that’s what I’d like to think.
My son was out on his bike on a very hot day and was stopped by a cop who only wanted to make sure he had water and would he like an air-conditioned ride home. “Plenty of water. Mom will freak if I come home in a cop car. I’m not ready to go home yet.”
This is a big-gish municipality, but it’s still a bit country and laid back.
The cops and deputies in my ‘burb are very nice. They don’t do stupid shit. They went, they saw, they said, “NBD. Carry on.” I
I’m sorry Moj, but you’re wrong. The cops in your burb are just like cops everywhere. They will do stupid shit, and brag about how the totally wrecked this one guy once because he did X.
Yep. At checkpoints, the cops call my wife “Ma’am” and tell her not to worry about showing identification because she’s not the type of person they’re looking for. Friendly and caring as any other LEO you’d find in Mayberry. To her and me.
They’ve really hurt many of my neighbors who don’t present themselves as well. Things like arresting the wife because the husband’s prescription meds were being carried in her purse… while he was in the car sitting next to her. Another neighbor ran over and begged me to drive his car the 50 feet from the checkpoint into his driveway before the tow truck showed. He had a suspended license and the cops wouldn’t let him drive it the 50 feet home or just show some humanity and drive it themselves.
or as Leap said below.
Yup. I rolled a stop sign on the edge of town at 1:00 am in the morning. The cop camping out on the intersection pulled me over and saw me in my clean FJ Cruiser wearing a tie and my hospital ID. We chatted about the late night hospital holiday party (with cookies!) I was heading home from.
Put me in a battered pickup with landscaping tools in the back, jeans and a t-shirt, and I have no doubt it would have been “touch your nose with your eyes closed, and wait here for the drug dog”.
IME, cops are nature’s most effective social-class identification machine. If you are low class, they treat you like shit. If you are upper-class, they doff their cap and pull their forelock.
I’ve been low-class in the sticks. I’ve been upper-class in the city. I take the bus with many low class folks through very low class areas. Its not an urban/rural thing. Its not a skin color thing. Its a class thing.
The change in interest cops have in me since I last upgraded cars was palpable. Went from a 13 year old beater to a new car and stopped getting pulled over.
Cops are people; they are a mixed bag. We can argue about the kinds of people likely to be attracted to being a cop, and the kind of people that will accumulate in various departments.
That said, my beef with the profession is what appears to be a near-universal refusal to police their own ranks, the us v. the world tribalism, the spread of the paramilitary mindset.
You may have a pretty good bunch, but I bet they’ve got their bad apples, and I bet they cover for them. I say no good cop covers for bad cops, and just about every cop covers for bad cops. You do the math on how many good cops there are.
That said, my beef with the profession is what appears to be a near-universal refusal to police their own ranks,
This, So Much! They want to be a profession but refuse to police their ranks. The most effective policing of any profession is through civil litigation, and the threat of it. As it stands it is not possible to do this to individual members of the “profession”.
But i will stand by the fact that if you want to find the worst people in any town, look for the cops.
I wouldn’t go that far. We’ve got cartel in town; I think they are likely worse than the cops (although this is complicated by cops who have been bought by the cartel).
Hmmm. I’m on the fence. I’ll say I’ll make an exception for those that get into extortion and protection rackets, cause then they are just self proclaimed cops.
Put good people into a system that train and incentives bad behavior, and you wind up with fewer good people – either by attrition or by transmogrification. Not all of them, but too many.
And this is coming from someone admitted to the bar, where Brady violations are AOK but improper advertising can get you bounced.
*checks monthly state bar magazine*
I see pages of suspensions and revocations of law licenses. Not enough, no doubt, but not zero, either.
Have they disbarred Avenatti yet? He’s charged with defrauding his own clients.
That’s my point. If we could get the FoP or whatever to bounce “not enough but not zero” that’s be an improvement.
Well, maybe a temporary suspension pending trial. Have to stick to the innocent until prooven guilty principle,
evenespecially withCreepy Porn Lawyers.people we don’t like.How many are DAs though?
DAs? I don’t recall any.
Most of the serious penalties seem to be for mishandling client money, which DAs don’t really do.
Mike Nifong?
My dad was a deputy for twenty years and he hated it. He’d just gotten out of the USAF where he was an MP and he was desperate for work, so he marched over to the PG County Sheriff’s Department for an interview. The story he told is that he saw a suspect being held by his shirt out a third-floor window during “interrogation” and started to think he’d maybe made the wrong choice. By his account, it was a job, but it just happened to be a job that frequently turned violent or potentially violent. He worked the Maryland side of SE DC in the 80s and 90s, so basically the height of the crack epidemic in a shitty part of the world. In fact, he did a couple of Rayful Edmond’s extraditions after he was arrested. For most of his time there the majority of the people he interacted with were not happy to see him, to say the least, and often up to some variety of no good, generally either gang members or affiliated with gangs, and not terribly cooperative. On top of that, they’d regularly get into brawls with DC cops, actually firing on each other on more than one occasion. I met a few of his co-workers; nice guys, but definitely thugs/rednecks with guns, cuffs, and badges. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of concern for things like civil liberties or rights. There was a general sense that if a cop was interested in you it was because you were doing something bad whether they could prove it or not. So, there was sometimes lip-service paid to the idea that you shouldn’t kick the shit out of someone because they’re “resisting” arrest, but it was generally accepted that if someone spit on you or called you a pig or something it was understandable if you put the cuffs on a little tighter than normal or maybe accidentally bumped their head getting them into the car.
On the other hand, they weren’t dealing with stuff like people running lights or that sort of thing. Generally, by the time he or his immediate colleagues were involved it was some sort of court thing being enforced, or maybe a warrant, or an extradition, that sort of thing. Although they do patrols, he and his peers weren’t generally patrol guys, so they weren’t necessarily just stopping people out of nowhere to question them or whatever. So this colored their perceptions, I’d imagine.
Oh, and he always told me if he found out I so much as applied to become a cop he’d break my legs and put me in a wheelchair. I have a cousin who is a city cop, and if my dad was still alive he’d have lost his mind.
I’m not going to argue either side of this issue. I believe both sides are correct (conditionally).
I’m going to offer an anecdote.
Somewhere ~1997 the gf and I went to the DZ. I spent the day making a couple jumps. Then after sunset, it was drinking time. I had way too many drinks to drive. She had a fraction of what I did. So, she drove us home in my car. We got pulled over, probably a half mile from our apartment.
After being presented her license and my registration, it was explained that she was driving because I had too much to drink. Cops mull this over for a second and sweep their flashlights cross the backseat.
Cop on my side of the car (there was a pair of them) asks “what’s that in the back seat?”
I told him “that’s my parachute.”
Without skipping a beat he asked “is her driving that bad?”
They cracked up and let us go telling us to go directly home and be safe about it.
Given the circumstances they could have pulled her from the car and hassled her. They didn’t.
If cops are actually part of a community, they tend to act differently than when they are not. That’s why abuses happen at a much higher rate in cities.
Ferguson (STL county) was a perfect example. None of their police force was from Ferguson, they mostly lived in middle-class bedroom communities like Town and Country or St. Charles and commute to that down-scale poor community where they treat their ‘customers’ as the enemy.
Ferguson is a different beast entirely.
Between Ferguson and StL proper, there are a bunch of teeny tiny municipalities that all derive their income from violations. They’re the kind of municipalities that have to hire a cop, the kind where you can go from Ferguson to StL proper and get 14 different tickets in 14 different jurisdictions.
Then you have the fact that StL City and StL County have some fucked-up we-don’t-have-any-truck-with-you arrangement. There is effectively little county or state oversight over all these little fiefdoms.
So the unrest was already seething because of all these little fiefdoms.
Kansas City, Missouri is exactly the opposite. It is huge and sprawling, encompassing nine counties. As KC wanted to hire people, but a condition of hiring is that you live in the city limits, but the people they wanted to hire wouldn’t move, KCMO would just annex land. The KCPD is responsible for all of it except for the municipalities, who are few, and big-gish, and proper bedroom communities. You have school districts that have property in Kansas City, but that populace is not in the KC school district.
Ferguson was a pressure cooker about to blow already.
Or what you said.
You know what? I’m going back to bed. I can’t read/comprehend for shit today.
I feel bacd whenever I see you beat yourself up. It just reads like it’s serious.
Well, it is.
I hate looking/feeling stupid more than anything else in the world, and today I feel very stupid.
Mr. Mojeaux has spent the last 17 years trying to mitigate that.
I don’t want to lose the feedback from a different perspective. Too many of these guys think the same way I do, which means they’re going to see the same words the same way I did.
Update via the FB grapevine:
Academy Sports DOES sell guns. I assumed they didn’t because I have heard no one screaming at them for it.
Person went to Academy Sports, stole a gun and ammunition, loaded it, drove down to a ‘burb south of here, shot someone at a car dealership, and person has been apprehended way north of here.
https://www.kctv5.com/news/local_news/suspect-in-liberty-armed-robbery-independence-shooting-dead-after-officer/article_d6f27a82-2d93-11ea-b246-d3b31d0ef5f2.html
Also, SMDH
I can’t recall the last store I went to where the guns weren’t locked behind the counter. Did he ask to look at one then bolt once it was in his hands?
OMG never mind. There’s little reliable news coming, all contradictory, but it’s coming quickly.
+ 1 48 hour rule
48 hour rule. Wait for the rush of rumor to die down and see what’s been confirmed a few days from now.
Wait for the
rush of rumornarrative-pushing “journalism” to die down on the off chance any factual stories are ever written about it.+1 stand up philosophy routine
Holy shit, yeah Academy is probably one of the largest vendors of firearms in the country.
When Dick’s stepped on their dick, Academy stepped forward.
Ink and infatuation.
https://tinyurl.com/u2avyy3
I knew you wouldn’t miss the opportunity, Q!
And why is it that although I have ink, and one of my daughters even has a few tats, I still find them to be an irreversible turn off.
I can’t explain it. It’s not that I don’t like them, but anything beyond a couple of small ones and I’m just…bleh. It’s like worse than thinking of Pelosi for killing my ardor for a woman.
Is this one of those “why is the incarceration rate going up if crime is going down” kind of questions?
Good ink – not a negative at all, maybe even a positive.
Bad ink – stupid. Stupid is always a turnoff.
Tattoos follow Sturgeon’s law – 80% of them are bad.
They also follow real estate’s iron law: location, location, location.
“Love me!”
This!
I am increasingly tired of seeing pretty girls with tats that will not age well and in places that will be difficult to hide. Subtle ones, otoh, can be extremely attractive.
https://www.pinterest.com/tattoocrazy123/butt-tattoos/
I didn’t see any that did it for me.
Prolly NSFW-ish.
Loooong backstory, but bottom line: A friend of ours from awhile back became a real fitness buff, had an absolutely smokin’ bod, and also acquired a serious tattoo habit. She found an excellent Japanese-style artist, and has a very extensive collection of top-shelf Japanese-style tattoos (as in, there’s not much real estate left). She’s a Millenial, so of course she also has a Facebook page*. Based on the pix on that page of her wearing sports bras and workout shorts (you know the ones), she is probably one of the hottest women I have met. In a long time.
*Sorry, can’t recall her name, so I can’t direct you to her page. Wish I could; I’d like to check in.
That said, my beef with the profession is what appears to be a near-universal refusal to police their own ranks, the us v. the world tribalism, the spread of the paramilitary mindset.
You may have a pretty good bunch, but I bet they’ve got their bad apples, and I bet they cover for them. I say no good cop covers for bad cops, and just about every cop covers for bad cops. You do the math on how many good cops there are.
Absolutely.
Until the”good” cops step up, there are none.
The problem is that your (and my, and probably everyone else here’s) definition of “good cop” is not the same as the one used by, say, Trump, or Clinton for that matter, and certainly not the unions or most of the “thin blue line” types.
Yup. Good Cops are the ones that get the perp!
Sure maybe the perp was innocent, but “That’s not my job” and all.
Just because they might be innocent of this thing doesn’t mean they’re not guilty of something else.
Speaking of cops… the passive voice is getting even more passively..
https://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/2020/01/hillsboro-police-shooting-under-investigation.html
and an officer-involved shooting ensued
I hate this. Everything about modern day policing is just jacked up to ensure the people don’t get the right idea about what is happening.
Here’s a thought. Maybe, If cops didn’t have immunity, they would exercise more restraint when shooting. And Maybe then, when you shot someone you could be more confident and say “We shot one today, didn’t want to but we had to.” and then Maybe people would be likely to say “You know what it looks like it was a good shoot”.
But no you know that it has a high probability of being a bad shoot and so does the populace. So you have to hide it, cleanse it.
This applies up and down the criminal justice process. Sovereign immunity should only extend as far as reasonable behavior given the circumstances and available info at the time. If you stray from that limited protection (whether it’s busting down grandma’s door at 4am, committing a Brady violation, etc), you’re on your own.
When a cop gets shot, I now find myself thinking of it as a “civilian-involved shooting” (yes, I know the cops are civilians too).
I sometimes find myself cheering for the criminals in the Cop Procedurals. Especially if they are looking for someone for a non-crime.
I hate this.
#metoo. Passive voice and euphemisms really push my buttons, and this is one of the worst.
Just tell us ‘oo shot ‘oo, already.
There was a particularly enraging incident around here a couple of summers ago where a cop was driving way to fast and ran off the road, hitting an innocent septuagenarian who was mowing his lawn. In the original report on the TV news, they said the police car “made its way onto the lawn”.
Your car doesn’t just mosey around sometimes?
The armed man eventually came out of the condo, police said, “and an officer-involved shooting ensued.” Police didn’t detail the specific circumstances of the encounter.
Shoots were good.
If I may go back on topic after all this time: After the rest of my work day, an exercise class, a late dinner, and a reread of both Parts 1 and 2, I’m finally back to give a more specific reaction than I did during my lunch break. Sorry it took me so long.
First of all, I love this premise – I love the idea of a teenage girl who writes love stories “trying to give people the happily ever after they deserved.” To answer one of your expressed concerns above, I do find Carol’s character quite believable and sympathetic. (Personally, I’m glad you didn’t give her too much of an “attitude.”) Setting her up with the tragic hair coloring accident is a perfect teenage girl predicament. (For the record, I never experienced this personally as a teen because my hair color was already perfect…until recently.) Collecting pens is likewise a natural teen girl thing. Going from that to the magic of the pen in question – in her hands – is fraught with possibilities, and the progression you’ve presented so far – first sympathetically creating her brother’s dream girl, then transforming this strange, fascinating creature into her own dream boy – hints that things are going to escalate.
Since I’ve been reading the early books set in this world, I’m sure that helped me feel comfortable with the conventions and the superhero characters, so I don’t have the perspective of a “newby.” I think you included enough back story that a reader unfamiliar with the earlier stories wouldn’t be confused, but I can’t be the best judge of that. And by the way, I do think I’ll have finished Shadowdemon before Part 3 posts – especially now that I have that incentive to avoid spoilers without having to delay reading this story’s conclusion.
Bravo!
P.S. Almost forgot: For no other reason than the fact that everything reminds me of a song, have a song about a girl with mahogany hair. (Not as good as red hair, but nobody’s perfect.)
Thank you for the feedback.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the stories.