#698 words

[asheescribbles]

Looking through her purse, Gabrielle found her phone, which told her she was supposed to be home about twenty minutes ago.

Matia waited at home. And she could only tell the answering machine that mommy would be home soon, she promises!

Goddamn professors and their assumptions you have nothing else to do with your time.

She grabbed her pepper spray and kept it in her coat pocket, hand around it. With a huff, she turned to take the shortcut. It was not that late yet.

It never felt all that good to walk in those tight alleys. But it cut out a good half hour from the way back.

The echo of her footsteps did not feel good either. Too many movies had stories to offer.

Cats screeching, rats running past, garbage cans rattled. Sometimes, the regret to have moved to the city was great.

Some headphones without music brought a little more peace of mind.

But the streets were empty. That was… something.

Her heels might also help if they were less empty.

Gabe shook her head. Making up horror scenarios was not exactly helpful.

Paranoia just made one jumpy.

Fear was a bad outlook. Confidence.

Confidence helped.

She straightened her posture and walked on, nodding towards a man passing by.

And waving at a lady around the corner. A little bit of solidarity between women.

Then she stopped mid-step. There was a gurgling sound coming from there.

With a frown, she pulled at the headphones. It DID come from the alley.

And what followed was a THUD.

A man was on the floor. And the lady… turned around, dabbing her lips.

The man was very white. His eyes open. He didn’t move.

“Oh, how unfortunate,” the woman said, looking at her. Her feet not touching the floor.

Gabrielle took a step back, then another: “I… I didn’t see anything! I swear! I won’t tell anyone!”

The woman… smiled. There was blood on her teeth. Blood. She, too, was very white and said: “I am sure of it”

Something in her voice flipped a switch in Gabrielle’s mind. She ran.

Turns. Turns were important.

She took turns - one, two, three - running down the street ‘til the next opportunity arose.

Her heels were lost in between, the clacking silenced.

After the eighth turn, she ran into a curved street and-

A dead end.

Looking from right to left, there were no doors, nothing. Just walls.

Her feet hurt. Bled.

And when she turned around-

Gabe twitched when she saw her again.

She’d known, but seeing the woman float towards her-

“Please. I have a daughter at home. I’ve seen nothing. I won’t tell anyone! She’s waiting for me, please!”

“You don’t have to worry about that~” She was still coming closer, slowly.

Her blood ran cold. This couldn’t be. This was insane!

Nononono.

“I- I can be useful to you! I know a lot of people. Many students. I can lure them in, let you- They are alone here!”

A few teeth were showing. Amusement? “Sacrificing others. Heh” She still advanced.

Gabe took steps back, her feet cut up further.

“You… you could use me! I speak several languages! I can translate! I can help you get around! Get you things in the daylight! Phones exist!” It could work, it must work!

She threw the pepper spray at her. It didn’t hit. The grin grew wider. Teeth. Long teeth.

Gabrielle’s back hit the wall, thinking of Matia: “I’m a biologist! I’ve got a lab! We can see what this is! Look at your blood and figure things out, why blood and what this is and all of that - and get you more blood! We have lots of blood! Get more every day!”

The teeth came closer and Gabrielle could do nothing but stare and shake and wait for-

“Biologist”

Suddenly, her muscles gave in, she slumped to the floor, shaking. The rushing of blood in her ears subsided.

A hand grabbed her chin and tilted it up, two half lidded eyes and a perfectly normal smile looked at her.

“Well, you are rather cute”

There was a whistling in her ears. And everything became white.

[haknyeonrk]

⋆｡°✩ mga season four. ii. ⇢ audition. strongest skill : dancing.     trey songz –– foreign.

if you’d asked him weeks ago, he probably would’ve told you that he was a better rapper than he was a dancer. which, wouldn’t have been a lie. yet as he grew into himself and out of his shell, he’d realized something: there were things that couldn’t be said with words.

and he’d gone through moments in his life where he couldn’t find words to describe what he’d felt at that moment. words felt as though they held little weight when carried in his mouth, and dance, he thought, dance gave him an outlet that he needed.

admittedly, he’d started spending more time in the dance studio at school, danced to music that he felt helped him express himself. so when asked to showcase his strongest skill, it felt odd yet at the same right for him to decide to dance.

haknyeon, after all, has had his fair share of dance experience. he wasn’t completely new at this –– if anything it was different. he majored in dance in sopa, was in a dance crew with a few good friends and had joined random dance competitions before. yet this felt different; as though he had something to prove to himself instead of anyone else.

the moment his name is called out, he snaps out of his trance and his eyes follow the staff. he’d faced rejection twice, and those two times maybe he’d lacked fire in his eyes. maybe he lacked something. he wasn’t sure (nobody was willing to give him an answer). but he was desperate.

he bows towards the panel of judges and smiles. “i’m joo haknyeon. and i’m excited to show you what i’ve got.”

he takes in a deep breath, rolls his neck just slightly before the music starts and the haziness in his eyes is immediately wiped away.

that foreign

a quick smirk falls across his face before he gets into the rhythm of the song, moves as how he’d practiced before. his limbs snap into place, arms lifting in the air as they move.

colombiano yeah i love that

his movements are sharp. he’d decided to go with a style of dancing he knew he was the best at and he’s quite honestly glad that he’d gotten all the practice before this and for the first time, thankful that his school made him learn how to control his movements. school wasn’t so bad after all.

i love her when she speak another language 

he bites at his bottom lip and he feels in rhythm; in sync with the song as he dances. 

she be doing things i never seen i think i might hit it in my dreams

his body is an instrument and his head a part of it. he tries his best to utilize all parts of his body as he moves before the sharp movements change into a slightly more fluid one as he waves his hand and glides his feet across the floor.

she drop it, then she throw it, yeah she work it i seen your Instagram but you look better up in person i think her booty fake she say its real though she back it up and let me get my feel on

there’s a lot of movement across the floor. he dips onto the floor as part of the choreography before he gets back up, and there’s a playful smile on his face (despite not knowing a lot of english haknyeon thinks he gets the gist of this song. it’s about a really hot girl and... something like that), he’s enjoying himself and he’s enjoying this performance. 

as the song reaches the hook, haknyeon continues dancing, his body’s listening to him, it’s moving the way he’d practiced.

the way she twerk it i just might pull out my visa

and at this he does some popping and locking. he continues dancing, giving a quick wink before the song and minute comes to an end. 

when he’s done he collects himself quickly and stands straight before bowing towards the panel of judges. “thank you for your time!” he smiles, bright.

though he knows this isn’t the end yet. to his knowledge, the interviews come next.

[stapledpapers]

The Liver as the Individual Mindset that Sets a Nation

After an event like 9/11 during which a plethora of individuals lost their lives via a terrorist attack on the world trade center, a fear emerges over the preservation of life. For 9/11 specifically this fear was amplified by mass media to the point that the resulting paranoia, and cautionary ideals spread well beyond mass media, to our mail, sidewalks and dinner tables predominantly through the medium of television, and the images on screen. With the same real live events being presented to us through the same framed, detached, medium, a question is allowed to emerge on how much we can take to face value, and how liable even that information is. From there a final question forms of how real is our perception of life, or living, which we've found it such a necessity to defend?

 In Claudia Rankine’s poem “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” Rankin examines what seems to be the failure of us all to filter the images and information given, and near robotically accept all of the things we are fed by the media regardless of its effect on our ability differentiate fact, fiction, and truth from reality. Rankine’s poem further goes to suggest the more concrete liability of proximity and real physical experience that can never be properly portrayed through disembodied images, while in her style of mixed media fuses multiple pictures labels and visual icons into the poem that act as agents of the poem rather than illustrations for the poem, along with the varying anecdotes of events that make up the poem. I’d like to argue that the image of the human body containing a liver over the image of the United States, is an important key image in the poem not only because of its repeated appearance in the piece, but because it serves as a metaphor to the overall message of how individual filtration of the images seen in the media are as heavily vital to the function of a nation, as a liver is to the function of the human body.

“Why do I care about the liver?...” Rankine writes, in parallel creating the rhetorical question why do I, as in any one individual, care about how the knowledge of life events are taken into the body and mind. The remaining stanza or in this case paragraph of the poem goes on to explain that it is important to care about such things because the level of self-filtration, is the first step in determining specifically what messages we receive from the world around us and how we will from there internalize it, and externally regard ourselves and others around us deriving self-meaning, which then evolves into group, meaning and eventually cultural meaning as we converse and socialize as human beings. Similarly to how neglect of the liver or extended absence of one is potentially fatal to the body, neglecting your ability to choose carefully how information is perceived can be fatal to one’s culture, especially since the vital organ in this case is self-maintained.

Using the liver at all, along with its representation in the human body, and its function for the human body, reflects a human nature of society, human in that like the human being it can die or in society’s case fall apart. Rankine’s use of the liver image commands recognition that the individual directly affects the whole.  “Why are we here if not for each other?” is one of the self-dialogues that Rankine uses in the poem that amplifies the point that our lives are not affecting just ourselves alone. She says death is second to loneliness, and in the same one page stanza this appears says it’s attained by not feeling, which the poem overall suggest cannot happen until we go beyond the given. By not caring about the info we are fed by the media used to determine our realities, and not taking the step to actively engage in the events around us to filter the factual and staged, and determine for ourselves as a working liver what’s good for the body or society as a whole, the muddled toxins of misinformation will slip through, possibly killing what we call civilization.