Acid Bath Quotes

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.

So this Zealot comes to my door, all glazed eyes and clean reproductive organs, asking me if I ever think about God. So I tell him I killed God. I tracked God down like a rabid dog, hacked off his legs with a hedge trimmer, raped him with a corncob, and boiled off his corpse in an acid bath. So he pulls an alternating-current taser on me and tells me that only the Official Serbian Church of Tesla can save my polyphase intrinsic electric field, known to non-engineers as "the soul." So I hit him. What would you do?

Words, the acid-bath of words.

I wanted to be queen as much as I wanted to bathe in a vat of acid.

His broken heart was unfeeling, like shattered glass in an acid bath.

but other people, as we get to know them, are like a metal dipped in an acid bath, and we see them gradually lose their good qualities (and their bad qualities too, at times).

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair.

A quick butchers shows up Old Bill three-handed, also a particularly nasty female grass–-and if looks were acid baths the two she collects from us would reduce her to gristle quicker than Mrs. Durand-Deacon.

You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerin.

Instructions for Dad. I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you. I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me. Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people. I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums. I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements. I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave. I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy). I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals. Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare. Music- "Blackbird" by the Beatles. "Plainsong" by The Cure. "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw. "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it). Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money. And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream. Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. OK. That's it. I love you. Tessa xxx

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years, had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed with iron rings; that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the ‘secret brand’); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, I understand all that,” with a precision and a tone of intelligence which for some time deceived me; but other people, as we get to know them, are like a metal dipped in an acid bath, and we see them gradually lose their good qualities (and their bad qualities too, at times

And since the exact form of her death had not been recorded, Mira kept dying a great number of deaths in one’s mind, and undergoing a great number of resurrections, only to die again and again, led away by a trained nurse, inoculated with filth, tetanus bacilli, broken glass, gassed in a sham shower-bath with prussic acid, burned alive in a pit on a gasoline-soaked pile of beechwood.

And you will spend the rest of your life wondering if I have disciples to avenge me. Hire your tasters, Burbesh. Until the Master of the Sleeps comes for you, you’ll never know a taste of anything that has not touched another’s lips first. You’ll never sleep in a bed that has not been first tossed for vipers. You’ll never sit in a chair that has not been tested for poisoned barbs in its cushions. You shall never see a bath drawn for you that you will not at first fear is acid. And you’ll never have another dream where my face is not grinning at you from the shadows.” -- From "Morality for Alchemists and Thieves

Classically, cosmetics companies will take highly theoretical, textbookish information about the way that cells work—the components at a molecular level or the behavior of cells in a glass dish—and then pretend it’s the same as the ultimate issue of whether something makes you look nice. “This molecular component,” they say, with a flourish, “is crucial for collagen formation.” And that will be perfectly true (along with many other amino acids which are used by your body to assemble protein in joints, skin, and everywhere else), but there is no reason to believe that anyone is deficient in it or that smearing it on your face will make any difference to your appearance. In general, you don’t absorb things very well through your skin, because its purpose is to be relatively impermeable. When you sit in a bath of baked beans for charity, you do not get fat, nor do you start farting.

In his 1973 “literary investigation,” The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn exposed the practices of the Soviet penal system: “If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the ‘secret brand’); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

Donkey milk abounds with vitamin C, proteins, and fatty acids, conferring a multitude of antiaging benefits for your skin. Cleopatra was known to bathe in donkey milk to maintain her renowned beauty and youthfulness, so if it’s good enough for the Queen of the Nile, isn’t it good enough for you?

How happily we explored our shiny new world! We lived like characters from the great books I curled up with in the big Draylon armchair. Like Jack Kerouak, like Gatsby, we created ourselves as we went along, a raggle-taggle of gypsies in old army overcoats and bell-bottoms, straggling through the fields that surrounded our granite farmhouse in search of firewood, which we dragged home and stacked in the living room. Ignorant and innocent, we acted as if the world belonged to us, as though we would ever have taken the time to hang the regency wallpaper we damaged so casually with half-rotten firewood, or would have known how to hang it straight, or smooth the seams. We broke logs against the massive tiled hearth and piled them against the sooty fire back, like the logs were tradition and we were burning it, like chimney fires could never happen, like the house didn't really belong to the poor divorcee who paid the rates and mortgage even as we sat around the flames like hunter gatherers, smoking Lebanese gold, chanting and playing the drums, dancing to the tortured music of Luke's guitar. Impelled by the rhythm, fortified by poorly digested scraps of Lao Tzu, we got up to dance, regardless of the coffee we knocked over onto the shag carpet. We sopped it up carelessly, or let it sit there as it would; later was time enough. We were committed to the moment. Everything was easy and beautiful if you looked at it right. If someone was angry, we walked down the other side of the street, sorry and amused at their loss of cool. We avoided newspapers and television. They were full of lies, and we knew all the stuff we needed. We spent our government grants on books, dope, acid, jug wine, and cheap food from the supermarket--variegated cheese scraps bundled roughly together, white cabbage and bacon ends, dented tins of tomatoes from the bargain bin. Everything was beautiful, the stars and the sunsets, the mold that someone discovered at the back of the fridge, the cows in the fields that kicked their giddy heels up in the air and fled as we ranged through the Yorkshire woods decked in daisy chains, necklaces made of melon seeds and tie-dye T-shirts whose colors stained the bath tub forever--an eternal reminder of the rainbow generation. [81-82]

I am. My eyes are filled with stars, my feet planted firmly on the ground. My fingertips are in the pond of destiny making ripples through life. I’ve been to hell and back, holding the scales of truth. I’m your conscience, and every haunting memory. I’ve seen the cruelty of love. I’ve bathed in the acid of deceit. I’ve felt the coldness of death. I’ve seen it all. I’m chaos. I’m revenge. I am Fate.

Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium—Y2K—when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living

Unfortunately, my mind was also in part formed by the apocalyptic, death-obsessed culture of the past several decades. Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium—Y2K—when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living in the End Times was exhausting. When you were assured that billions of people were on the brink of imminent death at every minute of the day, it was hard to get the necessary eight hours of sleep, even harder to limit yourself to only one or two alcoholic drinks each day, when your stress level said, I gotta get smashed.

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings;1 that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath;2 that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the “secret brand”); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. Yes, not only Chekhov’s heroes, but what normal Russian at the beginning of the century, including any member of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, could have believed, would have tolerated, such a slander against the bright future? What had been acceptable under Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in the seventeenth century, what had already been regarded as barbarism under Peter the Great, what might have been used against ten or twenty people in all during the time of Biron in the mid-eighteenth century, what had already become totally impossible under Catherine the Great, was all being practiced during the flowering of the glorious twentieth century—in a society based on socialist principles, and at a time when airplanes were flying and the radio and talking films had already appeared—not by one scoundrel alone in one secret place only, but by tens of thousands of specially trained human beasts standing over millions of defenseless victims. Was it only that explosion of atavism which is now evasively called “the cult of personality” that was so horrible?

Yossarian went to bed early for safety and soon dreamed that he was fleeing almost headlong down an endless wooden staircase, making a loud, staccato clatter with his heels. Then he woke up a little and realized someone was shooting at him with a machine gun. A tortured, terrified sob rose in his throat. His first thought was that Milo was attacking the squadron again, and he rolled off his cot to the floor and lay underneath in a trembling, praying ball, his heart thumping like a drop forge, his body bathed in a cold sweat. There was no noise of planes. A drunken, happy laugh sounded from afar. 'Happy New Year, Happy New Year!' a triumphant familiar voice shouted hilariously from high above between the short, sharp bursts of machine gun fire, and Yossarian understood that some men had gone as a prank to one of the sandbagged machine-gun emplacements Milo had installed in the hills after his raid on the squadron and staffed with his own men. Yossarian blazed with hatred and wrath when he saw he was the victim of an irresponsible joke that had destroyed his sleep and reduced him to a whimpering hulk. He wanted to kill, he wanted to murder. He was angrier than he had ever been before, angrier even than when he had slid his hands around McWatt's neck to strangle him. The gun opened fire again. Voices cried 'Happy New Year!' and gloating laughter rolled down from the hills through the darkness like a witch's glee. In moccasins and coveralls, Yossarian charged out of his tent for revenge with his .45, ramming a clip of cartridges up into the grip and slamming the bolt of the gun back to load it. He snapped off the safety catch and was ready to shoot. He heard Nately running after him to restrain him, calling his name. The machine gun opened fire once more from a black rise above the motor pool, and orange tracer bullets skimmed like low-gliding dashes over the tops of the shadowy tents, almost clipping the peaks. Roars of rough laughter rang out again between the short bursts. Yossarian felt resentment boil like acid inside him; they were endangering his life, the bastards!

They pop in the mouth, just like salmon roe! But inside... ... is the savory saltiness of seaweed!" "Those pearls are seaweed?!" But how?!" "Delicious! Not only is the pop of the pearl a fun texture, the salty, savory flavor of the seaweed melts seamlessly with the rice! I can barely stop myself! It's an addicting combination!" "Wait... how do you know that technique? Those pearls are seaweed extract gelled into a spherical shape. The only way to do that is by using a calcium-chloride bath and an alginic-acid gelling agent!" "What the heck?!" "That's food science!" "Yukihira pulled a page from Alice Nakiri's own book!" "I've experimented with this stuff before, y'know. When I was a little kid, anyway." "Wha-?! But that's-" "Convenience store Dagashi Candy?!" "Dagashi?! What's that?" Both chemicals are on the ingredients list! "It's what's called an educational candy. Kids play with that to learn how to make their own jelly pearls. I had a blast with it when I was little. I made lots of different stuff." "Dad, look! I made miso pearls!" "Aha ha ha! That's great! Now don't let any of the customers see that." "You can get both alginic acid and calcium chloride at any pharmacy. I used those, along with some seasoned seaweed extract and a little bit of ingenuity... ... to make these savory seaweed bombs- my own spin on the traditional seaweed bento!" "That's right! There were some educational candies in that pile of sweets he got from the kids yesterday!" "The transfer student used a food-science trick?" "And it was one he got off of a package of children's dagashi candy?!" "Hmm? What's this? I see something that looks like okaka minced tuna hiding inside the rice..." Mmmm! It's dried tunatsukudani! This, too, earns full marks for flavor! And its smooth, juicy texture is a wonderful contrast to the pop of the seaweed pearls!

The ingredients you will need are: 1 cup of baking soda, ½ cup of corn starch, ½ cup of citric acid, 2 ½ tablespoon of sunflower oil or you may use almond oil, ½ to 2 teaspoons of essential oils, ¼ teaspoon of borax, ¼ teaspoon of Vitamin E oil (this is optional but still recommended — this is an antioxidant, thus, this helps in the preservation of the other oil ingredients), vegetable or other natural colorant (however if these are not available, a few drops of food coloring will work as well), witch hazel in a spray bottle, and the very important ingredient — ¾ tablespoon of water.

Thucydides reflected that human beings are subject to certain behavioral patterns. Again and again they repeat the same actions, unable to stop themselves. Society is slowly built up, then wars come and put all to ruin. Those who promise a solution to this are charlatans, only adding to the destruction, because the only solution to man is the eradication of man. In the final analysis the philanthropist and the misanthrope are two sides of the same coin. While man exists he follows his nature. Thucydides taught this truth, and went to his grave. His history was written, as he said, "for all time." And it is a kind of law of history that the generations most like his own are bound to ignore the significance of what he wrote; for otherwise they would not re-enact the history of Thucydides. But as they become ignorant of his teaching, they fall into disaster spontaneously and without thinking. It is no use arguing with the fools who cannot see the game. Whatever the faults of the United States, the tragic decadence of American liberty is not to be compared with the genocidal machinery of the Eastern Bloc. Dip your sorry head, as you may, in the acid bath of anti-American half-truth and note (if you can) the sorry pips and squeaks of derangement that invariable bubble upward and outward. Major wars are between major powers. This preoccupation with the small, insignificant dictators, terrorists and mullahs will prove fatal. J.R.Nyquist

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years, had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed with iron rings; that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the ‘secret brand’); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

on the road, I take stock. Despite the setbacks, I did stumble on what looked to be a secret terrorist meeting spot. Saw some additional suspects. And learned a whole lot. I’m just not sure what. Chapter 24 ARRIVING HOME, I open my front door and practically collapse right there in the entryway. With the adrenaline surge from the fight long over, the full agony of its aftermath is starting to hit me, hard. I stumble into my bathroom and peel off my torn, bloody T-shirt. My chest and arms are a patchwork of cuts and bruises. That includes a long but shallow scrape across my shoulder. Must have been from the attacker’s knife. In the heat of battle, I guess I didn’t even notice it. I douse the wound with disinfectant, which feels like I’m bathing in acid, and it makes me groan. But the real doozy is the welt on my temple from that crowbar. I inspect the plump, crimson mound in

Here is how you make a sheet of parchment: Soak a pelt in a scouring bath until it softens. Scrape the hair off. Treat the skin with astringent tannic acids. Rack and torture until tight. And here’s how you make a story: Soak a life in mortality. Scrape the soul. Librarian Gregor Henry, 1899 CE

The Mafia Taught Me {Couplet} Don't stash the dead in a trunk at the foot of the bed; dispose of the body of your wrath in an acid bath.

I had worked just as hard as I knew how to be the new and squeaky-clean straight-arrow family man I was supposed to be, and at each attempt I had been slapped down, sneered at, and utterly crushed. Irritation grew inside me and morphed into anger, and then that started to change, too, as I felt a cold and acid bath of contempt burble up inside: contempt for Brian, and Rita, and Deborah, and Cody and Astor, for all the dribbling idiots in the whole stumble-footed world— —and most of all, contempt for me, Dexter the Dummkopf, who wanted to walk in the sunlight, smelling the flowers and watching rainbows curl across the rose-tinted sky. But I had forgotten that the sun is nearly always hidden by clouds, flowers have thorns, and rainbows are always out of reach. You could dream the impossible dream all you wanted to, but it was always gone when you woke up. I was finding that out the hard way, each new reminder grinding my nose further and further into the dirt, and now all I really wanted was to grab something by the throat and squeeze— The

The boy from that morning stood idly in the doorframe, once again wearing that maddening smirk. “Mort doesn’t really believe in cooking,” he said, swinging into the room. He opened the freezer door and nimbly transferred a pie from the box to the microwave. “He calls it a waste of time and sulfuric acid.” Lex attempted to disguise the mangled expression of intrigue and annoyance that had involuntarily appeared on her face. “And you would know because you’re his . . .” “Pool boy.” “There is no pool!” She turned to Uncle Mort, the ire rising once again. “What is he doing here?” Uncle Mort heaved an overdramatic shrug. “What are any of us doing here, really?” he said, waving his hands philosophically. “Jesus. You’re both evil.” “That’s no way to talk about your uncle,” her uncle said. “Or your partner,” Driggs added. “What?” Lex squawked, a whole new stew of emotions bubbling over. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed the salt shaker and hurled it at him, followed by the pepper. “You’re my partner?” Driggs caught both items and began to juggle. “Yes, he is,” said Uncle Mort. “And in case you’ve forgotten, you still have a full week of training left—training that I can easily cancel and turn into a one-way ticket back home if you keep acting like a troglodyte.” Lex frowned, but lowered the sugar bowl she had readied. “So you two better find a way to get along. Now hug it out.” “No way.” She eyed Driggs. “I’m not hugging that.” “Oh yes you are.” Uncle Mort was enjoying this little show. “Befriend or else.” She had no choice. Careful to avoid Driggs’s gaze, Lex reluctantly entered into the frosty embrace. “You have no intention of befriending, do you?” Driggs whispered. “I’d rather take a bath with a toaster.

Justin Schmidt, an entomologist who studies venomous stings, created the Schmidt Sting Pain Index to quantify the pain inflicted by ants and other stinging creatures. His surprisingly poetic descriptions give some order to the hierarchy of ant stings as compared to those of bees and wasps: 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm. 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch. 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek. 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door. 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on tongue. 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin. 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail. 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut. 4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath. 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

It was very instructive: Manchineel, apparently, had been used by the Aboriginal Peoples of the Caribbean for poison, torture, and several other worthwhile purposes. Even sitting under the tree during a rainstorm could be deadly. In fact, the Carib Indians had actually tied their prisoners to the trunk of the tree when it rained, because the water dripping off the leaves made an acid bath strong enough to eat through human flesh. And arrows dipped in the sap could cause painful death; clearly it was wonderful stuff. But Frank’s main point—avoid the manchineel!—was very plain long before he wound up his lecture with a few halfhearted warnings about poison oak. And then, just when I thought we could make our getaway, one of the boys said, “What about snakes?” Frank smiled happily; on to lethal animals! He took a deep breath, and he was off again. “Oh, it’s not just snakes,” he said. “I mean, we talked about the rattlesnakes—diamondback and pygmy—and coral snakes! They are Absolute Killers! Don’t confuse them with the corn snake— Remember? ‘Red touches yellow’?” He

We’re here to help Jesus cleanse your soul a little more. I think a hot bath of sulfuric acid should do the trick. Don’t you, Frank?

So this zealot comes to my door, all glazed eyes and clean reproductive organs, asking me if I ever think about God. So I tell him I killed God. I tracked God down like a rabid dog, hacked off his legs with a hedge trimmer, raped him with a corncob and boiled off his corpse in an acid bath.

I would rather bathe in acid than marry him.

Schwieger ordered the submarine to the bottom so his crew could dine in peace. “And now,” said Zentner, “there was fresh fish, fried in butter, grilled in butter, sautéed in butter, all that we could eat.” These fish and their residual odors, however, could only have worsened the single most unpleasant aspect of U-boat life: the air within the boat. First there was the basal reek of three dozen men who never bathed, wore leather clothes that did not breathe, and shared one small lavatory. The toilet from time to time imparted to the boat the scent of a cholera hospital and could be flushed only when the U-boat was on the surface or at shallow depths, lest the undersea pressure blow material back into the vessel. This tended to happen to novice officers and crew, and was called a “U-boat baptism.” The odor of diesel fuel infiltrated all corners of the boat, ensuring that every cup of cocoa and piece of bread tasted of oil. Then came the fragrances that emanated from the kitchen long after meals were cooked, most notably that close cousin to male body odor, day-old fried onions. All this was made worse by a phenomenon unique to submarines that occurred while they were submerged. U-boats carried only limited amounts of oxygen, in cylinders, which injected air into the boat in a ratio that varied depending on the number of men aboard. Expended air was circulated over a potassium compound to cleanse it of carbonic acid, then reinjected into the boat’s atmosphere. Off-duty crew were encouraged to sleep because sleeping men consumed less oxygen. When deep underwater, the boat developed an interior atmosphere akin to that of a tropical swamp. The air became humid and dense to an unpleasant degree, this caused by the fact that heat generated by the men and by the still-hot diesel engines and the boat’s electrical apparatus warmed the hull. As the boat descended through ever colder waters, the contrast between the warm interior and cold exterior caused condensation, which soaked clothing and bred colonies of mold. Submarine crews called it “U-boat sweat.” It drew oil from the atmosphere and deposited it in coffee and soup, leaving a miniature oil slick. The longer the boat stayed submerged, the worse conditions became. Temperatures within could rise to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “You can have no conception of the atmosphere that is evolved by degrees under these circumstances,” wrote one commander, Paul Koenig, “nor of the hellish temperature which brews within the shell of steel.

You should come to the gym with me after class,” he drawled lowly. There it was. The reason my guts were in knots. I had known it was coming by his expression, but it still landed like an acid bath. “Your hints are more like Shakespearean soliloquies. I get it. I do. But the answer is no.” His mouth fell open. “What—?” I spun on my toe, waving over my shoulder. “Goodbye, Astor.

Unfortunately, my mind was also in part formed by the apocalyptic, death-obsessed culture of the past several decades. Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium—Y2K—when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living in the End Times was exhausting. When you were assured that billions of people were on the brink of imminent death at every minute of the day, it was hard to get the necessary eight hours of sleep, even harder to limit yourself to only one or two alcoholic drinks each day, when your stress level said, I gotta get smashed. As

Kashmir Willow-Aspirin (Acetylsalicylic Acid):** Originally derived from the willow tree’s bark, aspirin is one of the most widely used medications globally.

The sanitarium employed several questionable methods to dispel patrons of these two scourges. Chewing thirty-two times before swallowing (known as fletcherizing), sinusoidal current (yup, electrocuting people), forty-six different kinds of baths, fifteen-gallon enemas, and vibrating chairs were among the more conventional. But some were a bit more Gothic. To break young boys of the habit, Kellogg suggested procedures such as tying their hands, bandaging the offending organ, or putting a cage over it. If that didn’t work, he recommended circumcision without anesthetic—“As the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind,” he wrote in Plain Facts for Old and Young. Kellogg had an even more gruesome set of treatments for girls, including the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris or, in more extreme cases, surgical removal.

Let’s walk this out step by step. Let’s say you have a problem with a disease by the label of “acid reflux.” You experience stress. Stress decreases muscle tone around the lower esophagus, because that requires blood and energy, which we are using to fight or flee. Now the acid in the stomach washes back up into the esophagus, damaging the lining of the esophagus. These cells get repeatedly damaged, causing pain and eventually ulcers or cancer. But they only do that because they’re not in growth and healing and repair mode, or they could protect themselves from the acid bath. So you manifest the disease “acid reflux.” The medical solution is to give a purple pill to stop the acid. This works quite effectively for reducing the acid, but the problem is that the acid is needed to digest food. Acid also functions to kill bacteria that we have ingested with the food. In masking our symptom, we’ve created two new problems. The extra bacterial load burdens the immune system. The food remains in the stomach longer until the stomach finally produces enough acid to digest it, but now there’s a longer exposure period of the acid to the esophagus. It becomes a vicious cycle. So, do we want to mask the symptom or heal the source?

Bath time, blood, acid, or formaldehyde?

Wake her, Gregori,” Mikhail demanded, dragging Raven into his arms. Very gently he cradled her to his chest, rocking her with his body. Gregori complied as his form shimmered translucent, and then took shape beside Mikhail. For the first time there was a hint of anxiety in Gregori’s pale eyes, although there was hard arrogance stamped on his harshly handsome features. Raven blinked, and took a moment to focus. Her breath caught in her throat, and fear leapt into her enormous, expressive eyes. That look stabbed through Mikhail as nothing else might had done. “Csitri--little one.” He breathed the endearment softly, his breath warm against her ear. “Do not ever fear me.” She pressed away from him. “I don’t know you,” she whispered, her voice strangled and raw, her eyes on his bloodstained hands. Mikhail frowned and looked down at his hands. There was no blood there; he had bathed his body in the cleansing energy of the white-hot heat. No blood could remain on him. Vampire blood burned like acid--yet she still saw the scenes from the battle. He glanced at Gregori with a small frown of inquiry. Gregori shook his head in puzzlement. Raven seemed light and insubstantial in Mikhail’s arms, as if she might fade away to nothing. She needed nourishment and care. Very carefully Mikhail touched her mind. His skull exploded with pain. Her mind was a maze of fragments, desperately holding on to her sanity. She feared him, but even more, she was afraid to trust her own judgment. Fragments of the battle, of Mikhail standing in front of Andre, haunted her mind. Her blue-violet gaze, so confused, so frantic and bewildered, sought and found Monique. She gave a small inarticulate cry and strained toward her. Mikhail’s body went rigid. He turned his head slowly in the direction of her pleading gaze. Monique huddled beside her husband, her horrified eyes on Mikhail and the men crowding beside him. Mikhail forced down the wildness of his nature and his resentment of the humans that Raven would turn to for comfort rather than him. For one long moment his black gaze rested on the male who had dared to put his hands around Raven’s throat and tried to end her life. Power pulsed in the room. Tension stretched into terror. You are not helping, Gregori pointed out. And I must say, this is strange to be the one cautioning you against violence. Very funny. But the exchange eased some of the ferocious need to retaliate in him.

It does wonders for a soul. I only let the swamp woman survive because her hate was invigorating. I do like being hated, you know. And you do know. It’s a kind of respect. It shows you’re having an effect. It’s like a cold bath on a hot day. When stupid people find themselves powerless, when they fume in their futility, when they’re beaten and they’ve got nothing but that yawning in the acid pit of their stomachs—well, to be honest, it’s like a prayer. And the stories . . . to ride on stories . . . to borrow the strength of them . . . the comfort of them . . . to be in the hidden center of them . . . Can you understand that? The sheer pleasure of seeing the patterns repeat themselves? I’ve always loved a pattern.