Fracture Hand Quotes

When we feel fractured, redundant and nonessential, only bouncing back from lowliness may brighten up the story of our life. In this endeavor, “otherness” might lend a helping hand in making the road less parching. (“He did not know that she knew”)

She yawned, and Rowan rubbed his eyes, his other hand still in hers. But he didn’t let go. And when she awoke before dawn, warm and safe and rested, Rowan was still holding her hand, clasped to his chest. Something molten rushed through her, pouring over every crack and fracture still left gaping and open. Not to hurt or mar—but to weld. To forge.

My father once said we are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose - just as a poor hand can win - but we must all play the cards fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.

Pleasure. This is what true pleasure feels like. It's not just the softness of a kiss. It's not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It's the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing wit h the devil

I looked at our hands, caked and coated in red, but entwined. The pristine moment when they were clasped like that earlier in the day seemed weeks ago. "Clean." Peter said. "Can I get a water bottle or something to clean his hands?" I scanned the crowd. He drew my attention back to him with a pull of my hand. "No," Peter said. "I'm...clean." I had missed who Peter was until that very moment. I had called him names and treated him callously. I had read every micro expression in a vacuum of how it related to Austin Glass. And in return Peter had cared for my wounds, treated me tenderly and assured me that he was HIV negative while bleeding out in a hallway of strangers. I broke. It wasn't a visible fracture. I didn't sob or explode into anguish. I didn't give in to my vomitus urge that came from the burst of self-loathing. But I shattered nonetheless.

The rage of the Beast Lord was a terrible thing to behold. Some people stormed, some punched things, but Curran slipped into this icy, bone-chilling calm. His face hardened into a flat mask, and his eyes turned into a molten inferno of pure gold. If you looked at it for longer than two seconds, your muscles locked, your knees shook, and you had to fight to keep from cringing. It was easier to look at the floor, but I didn’t. Besides, he wasn’t angry with me. He wasn’t even angry with Kate. He was angry with Anapa. I had no doubt that if he could’ve gotten a hold of the god at that moment, he would’ve broken him in half. “It’s only ribs,” Kate told him. “And they’re not even broken. They are fractured.” “And the hip,” Doolittle said. “And the knee.” There you go. Don’t expect mercy from a honeybadger. “How long do you need to keep her?” Curran looked to Doolittle. “She can go to her quarters, provided she doesn’t leave them,” Doolittle said. “I can’t do anything else with the magic down. She must stay down until I can patch her up.” “She will.” Curran reached for Kate. “Hey, baby. Ready?” She nodded. Curran slid his hands under her and picked her up, gently, as if she weighed nothing. “Good?” he asked. She put her arm around him. “Never better.

Maybe the universe doesn’t naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it’s only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.

I leaned against my door, struggling to catch my breath, and thought that maybe hell wasn't a place at all, but a thing. A contagious thing. A thing that could creep up the steps, seep through the crack under my door, grow horns and sprout fire - smelling faintly like sulfur. A thing that could sink its tendrils inside and take root, coloring everything gray and distorting a smile into a sneer. And while i got dressed for the play, swatted at my back and kept running my hands over my stomach because I could feel it, I swear, I could feel it reaching for me, trying to grab hold.

It was dark in the alcove, so dark that Jace was only an outline of shadows and gold. His body pinned Clary's to the wall. His hands slid down along her body and reached the end of her dress, drawing it up along her legs. "What are you doing?" She whispered. "Jace?" He looked at her. The peculiar light in the club turned his eyes an array of fractured colors. His smile was wicked. "You can tell me to stop whenever you want," he said. "But you won't.

In such a view of society, however greatly you might wish to benefit from an endless supply of cheap labour, a wider range of cuisine or the salving of a generation’s conscience, you still would not have a right to wholly transform your society. Because that which you inherited that is good should also be passed on. Even were you to decide that some of the views or lifestyles of your ancestors could be improved upon, it does not follow that you should hand over to the next generation a society that is chaotic, fractured and unrecognisable.

To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" he said. I placed my hands flat on the table and leaned across it. "Stay the hell away from him." "Who? Oh, you mean the guy who's gonna bite it soon?" "He's not. He's going to be fine." He reached a hand out and placed it over my own. I snatched my hand back. He shook his head at me and whispered, "You can't stop it." "Watch me.

This is what true pleasure feels like. It’s not just the softness of a kiss. It’s not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It’s the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing with the devil.

She lets me take her hand, our fingers interlocking the way she and the green-eyed boy have let their hearts interlock—separate but inseparable. In this moment I find I envy them their individuality, their uniqueness, the beauty of being able to touch like this. In this moment I envy the green-eyed boy that he will always be able to touch her like this.

Rhen puts his hands on my arms and leans in. When he speaks, his voice is very low, very quiet, just for me. "My father is dead, my lady. My whole family is dead." He pulls back, meeting my gaze, but his voice doesn't change. "That monster killed them all.

Clean," Peter said. "Can I get a water bottle or something to clean his hands?" I scanned the crowd. He drew my attention back to him with a pull of my hand. "No," Peter said. "I'm...clean." I had missed who Peter was until that very moment... I broke. It wasn't a visible fracture. I didn't sob or explode into anguish. I didn't give in to my vomitus urge that came from the burst of self-loathing. But I shattered nonetheless. "Well, you look filthy," I said, hitting redial on his phone and jamming it to my ear.

Go on," Kell told him without taking his eyes from Lila. " Get some rest." Hastra shifted. "I can't, sir," he said. "I'm to escort Miss Bard--" "I'll take that charge," cut in Kell. Hastra bit his lip and retreated several steps. Lila let her forehead come to rest against his, her face so close the features blurred. And yet, that fractured eye shone with frightening clarity. "You never told me," he whispered. "You never noticed," she answered. And then, "Alucard did." The blow landed, and Kell started to pull away when Lila's eyelids fluttered and she swayed dangerously. He braced her. "Come on," he said gently. "I have a room upstairs. Why don't we--" A sleepy flicker of amusement. "Trying to get me into bed?" Kell mustered a smile. "It's only fair. I've spent enough time in yours." "If I remember correctly," she said, her voice dreamy with fatigue, "you were on top of the bed the entire time." "And tied to it," observed Kell. Her words were soft at the edges. "Those were the days..." she said, right before she fell forward. It happened so fast Kell could do nothing but throw his arms around her. "Lila?" he asked, first gently, and then more urgently. "Lila?" She murmured against his front, something about sharp knives and soft corners, but didn't rouse, and Kell shot a glance at Hastra, who was still standing there, looking thoroughly embarrassed. "What have you done?" demanded Kell. "It was just a tonic, sir," he fumbled, "something for sleep." "You drugged her?" "It was Tieren's order," said Hastra, chastised. "He said she was mad and stubborn and no use to us dead." Hastra lowered his voice when he said this, mimicking Tieren's tone with startling accuracy. "And what do you plan to do when she wakes back up?" Hastra shrank back. "Apologize?" Kell made an exasperated sound as Lila nuzzled-- actually nuzzled-- his shoulder. "I suggest," he snapped at the young man, "you think of something better. Like an escape route." Hastra paled, and Kell swept Lila up into his arms, amazed at her lightness... Kell swept through the halls until he reached his room and lowered Lila onto the couch. Hastra handed him a blanket. "Shouldn't you take off her knives?" "There's not enough tonic in the world to risk it," said Kell.

As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face. More faeries wailed now-her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand-my hand, shining and coated with the blood of the first faerie. It would be more honorable to refuse-to die, rather than murder innocents. But... but... "Let me enter eternity," she repeated, lifting her chin. "Fear no evil," she whispered-just for me. "Feel no pain." I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart. She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn't move. I went somewhere far, far away from myself.

Take your life back from what broke you. The past is meant to etch lessons into our bones, yet we huddle ourselves within the warmth of its familiarity, we cradle our bodies within its weighted grips because we allow for what broke us to build us. Promise me that you will never again run back to what cracked you, what fractured your heart, your mind, your soul. Promise me that you will no longer hand yourself over to the man or the woman who loved you like poison, that you will no longer give life to the experiences that haunt you like ghosts. Promise me that you will find what it is that will grow within you like wildfire and plant it within the depths of your scars. You will mend. Allow yourself to.

In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.

I'm turning away when Prince Harold says, his voice thick and fleshy through his swollen nose, "I don't understand." His eyes are on Primrose and Charm, on the place where their hands are joined together so tightly they look like a single creature. "Well, Harold," I say gently. "They're lesbians.

Once, not long ago, in her life before the front lines, she would have thought this was ridiculous. She would have said no, I have other plans right now. But that was before, a time that was gilded by a different slant of light, and this present moment was now limned in the blue tinge of after. She had seen the fragility of life. How one could wake to a sunrise and die by sunset. She had run through the smoke and the fire and the agony with Roman, his hand in hers. They had both tasted Death, brushed shoulders with it. They had scars on their skin and on their souls from that fractured moment, and now Iris saw more than she had before. She saw the light, but she also saw the shadows.

This is what true pleasure feels like. It’s not just the softness of a kiss. It’s not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It’s the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing with the devil. I come hard against Zeth’s mouth. He leans into it, growling and sucking and licking as I scream out my release, hands locked on my hips, pulling me into his face.  “Fuck, Zeth! Stop! Please stop!” His back hitches as he laughs, still teasing me with his tongue. My legs scrabble against the bed, desperately trying to escape the intense post-orgasm rushes. He gets up after that, raising one eyebrow at me.

Good. Put your hand down your pants for me, angry girl.

We may have been flawless then— but look at us now. Look how we shine. Look at the map we've made in these fractures— in all the places where the world got its hands on us.

You've done a thing you can't clean up, found a place you can't reach with mop or apology. The forever you've created branches like the hairline fracture in a pelvic bone, hides like a dirty Polaroid stored under a mattress, rises like hot blood to burn cheeks pretty with shame. Places you didn't even know you were signing your name will always be marked by your hand, but despite every new day's resolution to never do it again, you will. You'll look away from your own face in the mirror, pull the chain twice to hide from yourself in the dark, and when it's all over you won't say anything. You won't fucking say anything to anyone ever.

But he didn’t let go. And when she awoke before dawn, warm and safe and rested, Rowan was still holding her hand, clasped to his chest. Something molten rushed through her, pouring over every crack and fracture still left gaping and open. Not to hurt or mar—but to weld. To forge

Cauldron save me," she began whispering, her voice lovely and even-like music. "Mother hold me," she went on, reciting a prayer similar to one I'd heard once before, when Tamlin eased the passing of that lesser faerie who'd died in the foyer. Another of Amarantha's victims. "Guide me to you." I was unable to raise my dagger, unable to take the step that would close the distance between us. "Let me pass through the gates; let me smell that immortal land of milk and honey." Silent tears slide down my face and neck, where they dampened the filthy collar of my tunic. As she spoke, I knew I would be forever barred from that immortal land. I knew that whatever Mother she meant would never embrace me. In saving Tamlin, I was to damn myself. I couldn't do this-couldn't lift that dagger again. "Let me fear no evil," she breathed, staring at me-into me, into the soul that was cleaving itself apart."Let me feel no pain." A sob broke from my lips. "I'm sorry," I moaned. "Let me enter eternity," She breathed. I wept as I understood. Kill me now, she was saying. Do it fast. Don't make it hurt. Kill me now. Her bronze eyes were steady, if not sorrowful. Infinitely, infinitely worse than the pleading of the dead faerie beside her. I couldn't do it. But she held my gaze-held my gaze and nodded. As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face.” As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face. More faeries wailed now-her kinsmen and friends. The dagger was a weight in my hand-my hand, shining and coated with the blood of the first faerie. It would be more honorable to refuse-to die, rather than murder innocents. But... but... "Let me enter eternity," she repeated, lifting her chin. "Fear no evil," she whispered-just for me. "Feel no pain." I gripped her delicate, bony shoulder and drove the dagger into her heart. She gasped, and blood spilled onto the ground like a splattering of rain. Her eyes were closed when I looked at her face again. She slumped to the floor and didn't move. I went somewhere far, far away from myself.

But while you’re here, officer, why don’t you hold this railroad spike for me? Hold it in your hand and tell me how heavy it is. Tell me which one of us you’d use it on. See what happens if you try.

The world asks, as it asks daily: And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured? I count, this first day of another year, what remains. I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.

Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she, From water the color of sky except where Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver, Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips With fluent silver. The man, Some ten strokes out, but now hanging Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet Cold with the coldness of depth, all History dissolving from him, is Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees The body that is marked by his use, and Time's, Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air, Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is, And is the stab of, suddenly perceived grace, breasts bulge down in The pure curve of their weight and buttocks Moon up and, in swelling unity, Are silver and glimmer. Then The body is erect, she is herself, whatever Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand, Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but With face lifted toward the high sky, where The over-wash of rose color now fails. Fails, though no star Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten, Does not move now. The gaze Remains fixed on the sky. The body, Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light In the sky yet lingers or, from The metallic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body, With the towel now trailing loose from one hand, is A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high sky. This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits Of no definition, for it Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which Definition might be possible. The woman, Face yet raised, wraps, With a motion as though standing in sleep, The towel about her body, under her breasts, and, Holding it there hieratic as lost Egypt and erect, Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds Into the clamber and tangle of growth. Beyond The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man, Suspended in his darkling medium, stares Upward where, though not visible, he knows She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only He had such strength, he would put his hand forth And maintain it over her to guard, in all Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather Might ever be. In his heart he cries out. Above Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, he sees The first star pulse into being. It gleams there. I do not know what promise it makes him.

The next thing Juliana knew, he had her braced against the back wall of the shower, one hand under her bottom, the other tangled in the back of her wet hair, holding her in place as he took her mouth with what seemed to be an urgent, desperate craving, and claimed her body in the same way. His c#ck found her soft notch, his first thick thrust so hard and deep it shoved the air up out of her lungs, her thoughts fracturing beneath the violent surge of sensation.

I shake my head, tutting. “Loyalty is another word for stupidity, Andreas. Dogs are loyal. You kick a loyal dog and it cowers at your feet, dreaming of a way to get back into your good graces. Kick me and I’ll bite your fucking hand off.

He opened the door for me with an impassive expression. Oh, but he couldn’t fool me. I knew very well that he gloated inside. He had the right to. I’d be gloating aloud if I were him. I slid into the plush black leather seat and ran my hands over every surface I could touch after buckling my seatbelt. Awe, like a slow burning fuse, spread all over my body. My fingertips sizzled. It was one thing to hear Gramps talk and completely another to actually sit inside the fantasy. “Should I give you two some time alone?”
 “What?” 
His smile gave me unexpected quivers. “Stop molesting my car.

I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time. If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their torturous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But now, there is now use, now way of stopping time.

Lost in the wasteland, Ashbery was found by a light flickering up from between the fractured paving stones. Its beams were bitterly cold, and sticky in a way light had no right to be, adhering to his sleeve and hand before fading away. Intrigued, he tracked its source from one eruption to another, each point brighter than the one before.

This seemed to be how dads taught their boys to be men, but there had to be a point, maybe early on, when they were able to hold their hands. One tiny one engulfed by one big one.

How were we so lucky? Two people lost in a world only to find solace and companionship in someone just as fractured as they are. I think destiny has played a hand in our union.

To other cities, other machines, other forests of buildings of concrete where other men and women missed the stars at night and tended small plants on windowsills and kept tiny dogs and took them for walks along corridors in the endless procession of boxes and intersections and lights; where they rented space in other peoples's property so they had somewhere to sleep so they could get up and perform profit-related tasks they neither understood nor cared about, simply so they would be given the tokens of exchange they needed in order to rent the space in which they slept and snarled and watched television until finally some of them slipped out of the window and ran howling down the dark streeets, throwing off a numbness handed down from a society that was itself trapped in fracture and betrayal and despair; the lonely insane in a culture turning into a Christmas bauble, gaudy beauty wrapped around an emptiness coalescing faster and faster into parking lots and malls and waiting areas and virtual chat rooms--non places where nobody knew anything about anybody anymore.

If there was a single moment when the breach between us, which had been cracking and splintering for two decades, was at last too vast to be bridged, I believe it was that winter night, when I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, while, without my knowing it, my father grasped the phone in his knotted hands and dialed my brother. Diego, the knife. What followed was very dramatic. But the real drama had already played out in the bathroom. It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place. Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house. That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.

He strolled over to the refrigerator, opened the door with one paw, and delicately picked up a beer between his teeth. He waited until clothes had stopped arcing through the air and hand it to Barbara.

Even on Abigail’s wedding day, Beatrice had told her daughter to be careful, that men were selfish creatures at their core, and there were only a handful of them who managed to overcome that natural inclination.

Enough was enough. In this moment, Juliette decided she did not care. This was a war they had never asked to be a part of; this was a war that had dragged them in before they had the chance to leave. Roma and Juliette had been born into feuding families, into a feuding city, into a country already fractured beyond belief. She was washing her hands of it. She was not fighting for love. She was protecting her own, everyone else’s be damned.

I wanna slide my hands up those thighs, Sloane. I wanna tear your clothes from your body and make you tremble. I want to dig my fingers and my teeth into your skin and make you scream my name. You want that, too, huh?” he says.

We don’t open our hearts by being a tower of strength. We don’t open our hearts by glossing over things in our head. We open our hearts by feeling what we feel. We open our hearts by being vulnerable, honest, and gentle. We’ve become so strong, so self-sufficient. I can deal with that, we say. No big deal. I’ll keep moving on. Yet many circumstances we’ve been through, and some we’re going through now, cause break lines in our heart. Some of the fractures are small. Some are big. They really hurt. Maybe certain people in our lives weren’t there for us, aren’t there for us now in a way we’d like them to be. Maybe some deceived us unconsciously or betrayed us deliberately. I can deal with that, we say. I understand. They have their own issues. I forgive… Yes, people do have their own issues. And we do forgive. But now it may be time to learn gentleness, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness for ourselves as well. We don’t open our hearts by ignoring the break lines. We take our hand, knowing it’s held by God, and gently run our fingers across each crack. Yes, it’s there. Yes, I feel it. Yes, I’m ready to heal my heart.

The medical profession has seen quite a bit of me over the years. My case history would make any surgeon blink in disbelief. On the way to the Olympics, I’ve had broken arms, hands, fingers, feet, a fractured jaw and neck and even a broken back.

I will return to you, Seryozha. I will return to you in any way I can, even if that is only dust and atoms when my orbit decays and I fracture apart, my body burning through the sky as my soul tumbles free. I will gather my ashes and bring them down to you, wipe your tears and kiss your lips with what is left of me. And I will nestle in your hands and live there for the rest of your life. Until you are dust once more and we are together again, our particles conjoined until they are one.

My palm connected with the final looking-glass. A wave of brittle fractures rippled outward from the place my sanguine hand had struck. It shattered. I watched the pieces of my former life--the reflection of this monster I'd become—fall about my feet in a hailstorm of blood, tears, and broken mirrors. My attrition was complete. And now dissension boiled in my veins. I would find my penance. Even if God could not forgive me, even if she could not forgive me...maybe I could at least find the power to forgive myself.

The Green Rose by Stewart Stafford Through fractured eyes, I see the rose I once plucked, In another man's hands. And mistakes that cannot be unmade, Sins that must go unforgiven, A resigned reluctance to surrender all hope. Those fingers enwrapping, The slender stem, That only holds spiky thorns for me now. I watch and reminisce, So close and familiar, Yet so alien and barren. I turn and walk away, Leaving the green rose, In place on the grave of what once was. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

The stone wall was cold against her back, but Jace was kissing her shoulder, easing the strap of her dress down. She was hot and cold and shivering. The world had fractured into bits, like the bright pieces inside a kaleidoscope. She was going to come apart under his hands.

Clowns.” Clowns? “Really?” I tried to imagine a tiny Aiden crying over men and women with overly painted faces and red noses, but I couldn’t. The big guy was still facing me. His expression clear and even, as he dipped his chin. “Eh.” God help me, he’d gone Canadian on me. I had to will my face not to react at the fact he’d gone with the one word he usually used only when he was super relaxed around other people. “I thought they were going to eat me.” Now imagining that had me cracking a little smile. I slid my palm under my cheek. “How old were you? Nineteen?” Those big chocolate-colored eyes blinked, slow, slow, slow. His dark pink lips parted just slightly. “Are you making fun of me?” he drawled. “Yes.” The fractures of my grin cracked into bigger pieces. “Because I was scared of clowns?” It was like he couldn’t understand why that was amusing. But it was. “I just can’t imagine you scared of anything, much less clowns. Come on. Even I’ve never been scared of clowns.” “I was four.” I couldn’t help but snicker. “Four… fourteen, same difference.” Based on the mule-ish expression on his face, he wasn’t amused. “This is the last time that I come over to save you from the boogeyman.” Shocked out of my mind for a split second, I tried to pretend like I wasn’t, but… I was. He was joking with me. Aiden was in bed joking around. With me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I was just messing with you.” I scooted one more millimeter closer to him, drawing my knees up so that they hit his thighs. “Please don’t leave yet.” “I won’t,” he said, settling on his pillow with his hands under his cheek, his eyes already drifting to a close. I didn’t need to ask him to promise not to leave me; I knew he wouldn’t if he said so. That was just the kind of man he was. “Aiden?” I whispered. “Hmm?” he murmured. “Thank you for coming in here with me.” “Uh-huh.” That big body adjusted itself just slightly before he let out a long, deep exhale. Without turning around, I laid the flashlight down behind me and aimed the beam toward the wall. He didn’t ask if I was really going to leave the flashlight on all night—or at least however long the battery lasted—instead, I just smiled at him as I took my glasses off and set them on the unused nightstand behind me. Then I tucked my hands under my cheek and watched him. “Good night. Thank you again for staying with me.” Peeking one eye open, just a narrow slit, he hummed. “Shh.” That ‘shh’ was about as close to a ‘you’re welcome’ as I was going to get. I closed my eyes with a little grin on my face. Maybe five seconds later, Aiden’s spoke up. “Vanessa?” “Hmm?” “Why was I saved on your work phone as Miranda P.?” That had my eyes snapping open. I hadn’t deleted that entry off the contacts when I quit, had I? “It’s a long, boring story, and you should go to sleep. Okay?” The “uh-huh” out of him sounded as disbelieving as it should have. He knew I was full of shit, but somehow, knowing he knew, wasn’t enough to keep me from falling asleep soon after

You've got to find forgiveness, Florence," said Elsie. "You find it so easily in other people, why do you struggle so much to find it in yourself?" "I'm a bad person. I'm flawed. Damaged." "Of course you are." I looked at him. "We all are. Every one of us is damaged. We need the faults, the breaks, the fracture lines." "We do?" I said. 'Of course we do. However else would all the light get in?" I could see Elsie smiling at us. "You can't define yourself by a single moment." Jack held my hand very tightly. I could feel him shaking. "That moment doesn't make you who you are." "Then what does?" I said. "Oh, Florence. Everything else," he said. "Everything else.

It is precisely to prevent us from thinking too much that society pressurizes us all to get out of bed. In 1993, I went to interview the late radical philosopher and drugs researcher Terence McKenna. I asked him why society doesn’t allow us to be more idle. He replied: I think the reason we don’t organise society in that way can be summed up in the aphorism, “idle hands are the devil’s tool.” In other words, institutions fear idle populations because an Idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that’s almost a substitute word for idle, “malcontent.” Essentially, we are all kept very busy . . . under no circumstances are you to quietly inspect the contents of your own mind. Freud called introspection “morbid”—unhealthy, introverted, anti-social, possibly neurotic, potentially pathological. Introspection could lead to that terrible thing: a vision of the truth, a clear image of the horror of our fractured, dissonant world. The

I have spent most of my life outside, but for the last three years, I have been walking five miles a day, minimum, wherever I am, urban or rural, and can attest to the magnitude of the natural beauty that is left. Beauty worth seeing, worth singing, worth saving, whatever that word can mean now. There is beauty in a desert, even one that is expanding. There is beauty in the ocean, even one that is on the rise. And even if the jig is up, even if it is really game over, what better time to sing about the earth than when it is critically, even fatally wounded at our hands. Aren’t we more complex, more interesting, more multifaceted people if we do? What good has the hollow chuckle ever done anyone? Do we really keep ourselves from being hurt when we sneer instead of sob? If we pretend not to see the tenuous beauty that is still all around us, will it keep our hearts from breaking as we watch another mountain be clear-cut, as we watch North Dakota, as beautiful a state as there ever was, be poisoned for all time by hydraulic fracturing? If we abandon all hope right now, does that in some way protect us from some bigger pain later? If we never go for a walk in the beetle-killed forest, if we don’t take a swim in the algae-choked ocean, if we lock grandmother in a room for the last ten years of her life so we can practice and somehow accomplish the survival of her loss in advance, in what ways does it make our lives easier? In what ways does it impoverish us? We are all dying, and because of us, so is the earth. That’s the most terrible, the most painful in my entire repertoire of self-torturing thoughts. But it isn’t dead yet and neither are we. Are we going to drop the earth off at the vet, say goodbye at the door, and leave her to die in the hands of strangers? We can decide, even now, not to turn our backs on her in her illness. We can still decide not to let her die alone.

Oh, he’s riled. He’s hands on hips, tie yanked loose, so upset I can see his skin retracting as a shadow of stubble breaks through. His mouth is a slash of contempt. His eyes dip to the Steelers logo on my hoodie and he clenches his jaw so tight I know there’s a hairline fracture there with my name on it. An X-ray technician will be astounded to see the word Naomi etched into his bones one day.

Help me, Little Dog.” She pressed my hands to her chest. “Help me stay young, get this snow off of my life—get it all off my life.” I came to know, in those afternoons, that madness can sometimes lead to discovery, that the mind, fractured and short-wired, is not entirely wrong. The room filled and refilled with our voices as the snow fell from her head, the hardwood around my knees whitening as the past unfolded around us.

Then there’s the superstition about spilling salt. One night midway through the Tour of Italy, my CSC teammate Michael Sandstød decided to risk breaking the rule. He purposely knocked over the salt shaker, then poured out the salt in his hand and tossed it all around, laughing, saying, “It’s just salt!” We laughed too, but more nervously. The next day, Michael crashed on a steep downhill, breaking eight ribs, fracturing his shoulder, and puncturing a lung; he nearly died.

however greatly you might wish to benefit from an endless supply of cheap labour, a wider range of cuisine or the salving of a generation’s conscience, you still would not have the right to wholly transform your society. Because that which you inherited that is good should also be passed on. Even were you to decide that some of the views or lifestyles of your ancestors could be improved upon, it does not follow that you should hand over to the next generation a society that is chaotic, fractured and unrecognisable.

A spill of blue hair made my gut clench and I gazed in at her curled up in bed between the paws of a white Wolf. My heart fractured and my body deflated as I watched them together. My eyes tracked over her face, her expression taut like she was trapped in a painful nightmare, but then Seth nuzzled into her in his sleep and the tension in her features eased. “Blue…” I rasped, inching forward, pressing my hand to the glass as I prepared to smash my way in there and make the Wolf bleed and hurt and beg for a mercy I was never going to give.

If you try anything, and I mean anything with Gemma while I’m gone.” He jabs a finger against Nicholas’s chest. “You’ll have to deal with two very powerful Witches and a Vampire who will do anything to protect her.” “Whatever.” Nicholas rolls his eyes, though he looks a little worried. Alex doesn’t say anything else as he places his hand on the glowing crystal ball. There’s a loud swoosh, then a blink of light and they’re gone, along with the electricity. I miss him the second he disappears. I miss him so much it hurts. I’ve never missed anyone before and I’m not fully sure that I like it.

I opened the curtain and entered the confessional, a dark wooden booth built into the side wall of the church. As I knelt on the small worn bench, I could hear a boy's halting confession through the wall, his prescribed penance inaudible as the panel slid open on my side and the priest directed his attention to me. "Yes, my child," he inquired softly. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my First Confession." "Yes, my child, and what sins have you committed?" .... "I talked in church twenty times, I disobeyed my mother five times, I wished harm to others several times, I told a fib three times, I talked back to my teacher twice." I held my breath. "And to whom did you wish harm?" My scheme had failed. He had picked out the one group of sins that most troubled me. Speaking as softly as I could, I made my admission. "I wished harm to Allie Reynolds." "The Yankee pitcher?" he asked, surprise and concern in his voice. "And how did you wish to harm him?" "I wanted him to break his arm." "And how often did you make this wish?" "Every night," I admitted, "before going to bed, in my prayers." "And were there others?" "Oh, yes," I admitted. "I wished that Robin Roberts of the Phillies would fall down the steps of his stoop, and that Richie Ashburn would break his hand." "Is there anything else?" "Yes, I wished that Enos Slaughter of the Cards would break his ankle, that Phil Rizzuto of the Yanks would fracture a rib, and that Alvin Dark of the Giants would hurt his knee." But, I hastened to add, "I wished that all these injuries would go away once the baseball season ended." ... "Are there any other sins, my child?" "No, Father." "For your penance, say two Hail Mary's, three Our Fathers, and," he added with a chuckle, "say a special prayer for the Dodgers. ...

morning, someone had smashed them into chunks and dust. Boot Hill released its boys one by one. Jody was excited when she hosed down some artifacts from one of the trenches and came across her first remains. Professor Carmine told her that the little flute of bone in her hand most likely belonged to a raccoon or other small animal. The secret graveyard redeemed her. Jody found it while wandering the grounds in search of a cell signal. Her professor backed up her hunch, on account of the irregularities at the Boot Hill site: all those fractures and cratered skulls, the rib cages riddled with buckshot. If the remains from the

Gregori was as still as a statue, his face a blank mask, his silver eyes as empty as death, yet Shea gave him a wide berth. There was something dangerous in his utter stillness. Shea felt she had no way to sorting out the complexity of the Carpathian male’s nature. Gregori was watching Raven through narrowed, restless eyes, eyes that saw far too much. Suddenly he cursed, low and vicious, startling from someone of his stature and power. “She should not put herself at risk. She is with child.” His eyes met Jacques’, silver lightning and black ice. Total understanding between the two men. Shea merged her mind with Jacues’ quickly to try to understand the hidden currents. Raven’s pregnancy, if she was pregnant, changed everything as far as the men were concerned. Shea could see no evidence of a child—Raven appeared as slim as ever—but she couldn’t believe the healer would be wrong. He seemed so infallible, so completely invincible. The child was everything, all-important to the men. It surprised, even shocked her, the way they regarded the pregnancy. It was a miracle to both of them. The baby was more important than their lives. Shea was confused. Despite Jacques’ fractured memories, his protective streak was extremely strong. “He’s aware of his surroundings, but he can’t move. Even his mind is locked and still. He is paralyzed somehow.” Raven’s voice startled Shea, brought her back to the stormy weather and their rescue mission. Raven was clearly speaking of Byron. “He can’t move or call out, not ever mentally. It is dark and damp, and he knows he will suffer greatly before they are done with him.” Raven swayed, her hands protectively covering her stomach. The healer moved, a blur of speed, catching her arm and wrenching her out into the driving rain. Gregori snagged Mikhail’s shirt, too, and yanked him into the fury of the storm. “Break off now, Raven,” Gregori commanded. He shook her, shook Mikhail. “Let go of him now!

Then, as though she held a dandelion blowball in her hand, she simply blew away the nightmare that dominated her life for so many long years. She released each painful memory to dance on the wind, to soar high with each tiny propeller from the seed head. With the last puff of breath, she found a measure of forgiveness for her father. With that act, the cell imprisoning her mind fractured. The walls split and fell apart, the roof slid to one side, and the terrified girl was freed. As bricks and timber disintegrated into dust, she stood in a meadow surrounded by tall trees. One half bathed in sunlight, the other wrapped in shadows and dark. "You are free to walk whatever path you chose,

Coming up behind me, Jack touched my shoulders with his palms and let them coast down my upper arms, the warmth of his hands making the cool skin prickle pleasantly. He took one of my hands in his. Folding my icy fingers more tightly in his, Jack lowered his mouth to the vulnerable curve of my neck. There was a sensual promise in the way his lips grazed my skin. He continued to kiss me there, searching for the most acute place, and when he found it, I backed up against him reflexively. “Jack . . . You’re not still mad because Dane slept over, are you?” His hand wandered along my front, charting every curve and plane, pausing at every flicker of response. My body caught a tense, pleasured arch. Dimly I realized he was gathering information, softly winnowing out the pulses and twitches from all the places I was most vulnerable. “Actually, Ella . . . every time I think about it, I want to bend a crowbar in half.” “But nothing happened,” I protested. “That’s the only reason I haven’t hunted him down and dropped him.” I couldn’t tell how much of the macho bravado was for show, or how much Jack actually meant. I strove for a reasonable, ironic tone, which was difficult as I felt his fingers slip beneath the edge of my neckline. “You’re not going to take it out on me, are you?” “Afraid so.” His breath fractured as he discovered I wasn’t wearing a bra. “Tonight you’re in for it, blue eyes.

The other half, Lost Tokyo-1, has not been located yet, although presumably it exists out there somewhere in the universe, a mega-demi-city of eighty-five million people, a city fractured, cracker in half, torn, ripped not cleanly, but shredded, ragged, ripped along living rome, plans, meetings, dates, conjugal beds in prisons, family dinner tables, secrets being whispered into ears, couples holding hands, separated in an instant without warning or explanation, leaving two halves, bewildered, speaking Japanese to instant neighbours from the other side of the world, unable to understand what has happened, or if things will ever go back to the way they were, hoping its other half might someday find its way back.

Currently the best educated and the brightest minds of any nation are not among its elected, but among its public, and in much greater numbers. But even having a great number of the best and the brightest amongst us does not make us capable of installing a working version of direct democracy right away. People who claim that it does, may be there to voluntarily or involuntarily damage the credibility of direct democracy. Direct democracy needs a yet inexistent infrastructure to support the new mechanism that will render the public capable of constituting the experience necessary to domesticate direct democracy, without destabilizing our societies with needless haste, emotions and fractures. One way of doing it may be the constitution of a nation-wide, internet reliant hence fluid, non-political organism parallel but totally hermetic to our representative democracies, with a unique objective: creating the means, platforms and protocols necessary for the public and all the specialists it contains, to communicate horizontally. The public may decide to keep for the moment our representative democracies, but in parallel create an experimental version of direct democracy until we all acquire the necessary perspective and invent new working mechanisms of self-governance. Later the public may decide to have both representative and direct democracies sharing governance for a time, and experience first-hand the advantages and disadvantages of both systems before deciding where to go from there.

this reaction. This was on college campuses, exactly the kind of environment where I had expected curiosity, lively debate, and, yes, the thrill and energy of like-minded activists. Instead almost every campus audience I encountered bristled with anger and protest. I was accustomed to radical Muslim students from my experience as an activist and a politician in Holland. Any time I made a public speech, they would swarm to it in order to shout at me and rant in broken Dutch, in sentences so fractured you wondered how they qualified as students at all. On college campuses in the United States and Canada, by contrast, young and highly articulate people from the Muslim student associations would simply take over the debate. They would send e-mails of protest to the organizers beforehand, such as one (sent by a divinity student at Harvard) that protested that I did not “address anything of substance that actually affects Muslim women’s lives” and that I merely wanted to “trash” Islam. They would stick up posters and hand out pamphlets at the auditorium. Before I’d even stopped speaking they’d be lining up for the microphone, elbowing away all non-Muslims. They spoke in perfect English; they were mostly very well-mannered; and they appeared far better assimilated than their European immigrant counterparts. There were far fewer bearded young men in robes short enough to show their ankles, aping the tradition that says the Prophet’s companions dressed this way out of humility, and fewer girls in hideous black veils. In the United States a radical Muslim student might have a little goatee; a girl may wear a light, attractive headscarf. Their whole demeanor was far less threatening, but they were omnipresent. Some of them would begin by saying how sorry they were for all my terrible suffering, but they would then add that these so-called traumas of mine were aberrant, a “cultural thing,” nothing to do with Islam. In blaming Islam for the oppression of women, they said, I was vilifying them personally, as Muslims. I had failed to understand that Islam is a religion of peace, that the Prophet treated women very well. Several times I was informed that attacking Islam only serves the purpose of something called “colonial feminism,” which in itself was allegedly a pretext for the war on terror and the evil designs of the U.S. government. I was invited to one college to speak as part of a series of

The second project is in the field of metaphysics: with the aim of showing that, in the words of Professor H. M. Tooten, “evolution is a hoax”, Olivier Gratiolet has undertaken an exhaustive inventory of all the imperfections and inadequacies to which the human organism is heir: vertical posture, for example, gives man only a precarious balance: muscular tension alone keeps him upright, thus causing constant fatigue and discomfort in the spinal column, which, although sixteen times stronger than it would have been were it straight, does not allow man to carry a meaningful weight on his back; feet ought to be broader, more spread out, more specifically suited to locomotion, whereas what he has are only atrophied hands deprived of prehensile ability; legs are not sturdy enough to bear the body’s weight, which makes them bend, and moreover they are a strain on the heart, which has to pump blood about three feet up, whence come swollen feet, varicose veins, etc.; hip joints are fragile and constantly prone to arthrosis or serious fractures; arms are atrophied and too slender; hands are frail, especially the little finger, which has no use, the stomach has no protection whatsoever, no more than the genitals do; the neck is rigid and limits rotation of the head, the teeth do not allow food to be grasped from the sides, the sense of smell is virtually nil, night vision is less than mediocre, hearing is very inadequate; man’s hairless and unfurred body affords no protection against cold, and, in sum, of all the animals of creation, man, who is generally considered the ultimate fruit of evolution, is the most naked of all.

This conditioning of children to fear nonconformity and blindly obey ensures continued obedience as adults. The difficult task of learning how to make moral choices, how to accept personal responsibility, how to deal with the chaos of human life is handed over to God-like authority figures. The process makes possible a perpetuation of childhood. It allows the adult to bask in the warm glow and magic of divine protection. It masks from them and from others the array of human weaknesses, including our deepest dreads, our fear of irrelevance and death, our vulnerability and uncertainty. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to build mature, loving relationships, for the believer is told it is all about them, about their needs, their desires, and above all, their protection and advancement. Relationships, even within families, splinter and fracture. Those who adopt the belief system, who find in the dictates of the church and its male leaders a binary world of right and wrong, build an exclusive and intolerant comradeship that subtly or overtly shuns and condemns the “unsaved.” People are no longer judged by their intrinsic qualities, by their actions or capacity for self-sacrifice and compassion, but by the rigidity of their obedience. This defines the good and the bad, the Christian and the infidel. And this obedience is a blunt and effective weapon against the possibility of a love that could overpower the dictates of the hierarchy. In many ways it is love the leaders fear most, for it is love that unleashes passions and bonds that defy the carefully constructed edifices that keep followers trapped and enclosed. And while they speak often about love, as they do about family, it is the cohesive bonds created by family and love they war against.

The boy stuck his hand out politely and shook hers, then extended it to Fergus, his eyes bright as stars in the night sky. "That's cool," he said, looking down at Fergus's hand and turning it sideways so he could get a better look. "You have little webs between your fingers. Does that hep you swim?" Marcus cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. "Tito, dude, it's not polite to comment on people's, um, oddities." He shrugged an apology at Fergus, who just laughed. "I do not mind," Fergus said, grinning at the dark-skinned boy. He leaned down and whispered. "Can you keep a secret? I am actually a Merman from an undersea kingdom; that is why I have webs between my fingers." He held up one bare foot and said in a more normal tone, "Toes, too, see?" Tito's face was a study in conflicting awe and disbelief. "I never heard of a Merman," he said, dubiously. "I thought there were only Mermaids. And they're made up." Fergus snorted. "If you do not have any Mermen, how would get more Mermaids, eh?

Keith’s fractures came at the hand of such savage instruments that he steps on shards nearly every step he takes. He told me once, “Lizabeth, life is harder for some people than others.” I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to say how everyone had the same opportunity to be happy in Jesus. I wanted to ask him why the blessings of the present couldn’t make up for the curses of the past. I wanted to ask him why I wasn’t enough to make him too glad to be sad, but I knew I’d be talking like a fool. Life is harder for some people than others. Shadows follow me often enough, but not incessantly. Not everywhere I go. I’ve not spent a single night’s sleep in a burning garage. I deal with bouts of anxiety and depression, but they don’t chase me down constantly like ravenous wolves after a bleating sheep. I wondered sometimes, as most kids do, if my parents really loved me, but never once was I faced with circumstances wooing me to wonder if my parents wished their other child had been the one to survive.

You look at the history of any sentient species and what do you find but tableaux of violence and slaughter. It’s finger-painted on the ceilings of caves and engraved into the walls of temples. Dig a hole deep enough on any world and you’ll find the skulls and bones of adults and children fractured by crude weapons. All of us were fighting long before we were farming and raising livestock.” He held up a hand before anyone could voice an objection. “All of you are exceedingly well educated, and you’re going to start rattling off the names of species and societies where that isn’t the case. And my answer is that those aren’t the beings or the star systems we need to worry about. It’s the rest of them. Violence is hardwired into most of us and there’s no eliminating the impulse—not with an army of stormtroopers or a fleet of Star Destroyers. That’s why we’ve embarked on a path to a different solution. We have a chance to forge a peace that will endure for longer than the Republic was in existence.” “Peace through fear,” Reeva said. “Yes,” Krennic told her, and let it go at that.

Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me - 1953- The world asks, as it asks daily: And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured? I count, this first day of another year, what remains. I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands. Can admire with two eyes the mountain, actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles. Can make black-eyed peas and collards. Can make, from last year's late-ripening persimmons, a pudding. Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light. For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain, then to the question. The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old, and still they surprised. I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea, brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something. Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace. Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder. Today, I woke without answer. The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend don't despair of this falling world, not yet didn't it give you the asking

Heart racing, Nesta lifted the lantern in one hand and gazed at the darkness, untouched by the light from the library high, high above. The heart of the world, of existence. Of self. The heart of the House. 'This...' Her fingers tightened on the lantern. 'This darkness is your heart.' As if in answer, the House laid a little evergreen sprig at her feet. 'A Winter Solstice present. For me. She could have sworn warm hands brushed her neck in answer. 'But your darkness...' Wonder softened her voice. 'You were trying to show me. Show others. Who you are, down deep. What haunts you. You were trying to show them all those dark, broken pieces because the priestesses, and Emerie, and I... We're the same as you.' Her throat constricted at what the House had gifted her. This knowledge. She lifted the lantern higher and blew out its flame. Let the darkness sweep in. Embraced it. 'I'm not afraid,' she whispered into it. 'You are my friend, and my home. Thank you for sharing this with me.' Again, Nesta could have sworn that phantom touch caressed her neck, her cheek, her brow. 'Happy Solstice,' she said into the beautiful, fractured darkness.

Similarly, when you see a character jumping from a 100 story building and landing without hurting a bone, then believe that this is an example of special effects.   Special effects are provided by a few companies that use specialized software to add these effects. Many of these companies are located in India, in Bangalore and Mumbai. Movies like Avatar, Jurassic Park, and many others were sent to India for providing special effects.   Similarly, in Thor, when the main character rotates his hammer and generates a tornado, be rest assured that this is only an example of special effects. In reality, nothing like this happens.   And if you are able to do it, you are a superhuman, like Superman. You have got super-powers to do whatever you want and you can generate such a tornado by rotating your hand, even without a hammer.   So, my sincere advice to you is not to even attempt this. You will end up with a torn muscle, or a fractured hand, or maybe you may even suffer a heart malfunction and eventual death.   Let me not get into the science behind how this happens, but if you are educated enough, you will heed my advice and not attempt this anytime in your life.

a brief history of art Cave paintings. Clay then bronze statues. Then for about 1,400 years, people painted nothing except bold but rudimentary pictures of either the Virgin Mary and Child or the Crucifixion. Some bright spark realised that things in the distance looked smaller and the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion improved hugely. Suddenly everyone was good at hands and facial expression and now the statues were in marble. Fat cherubs started appearing, while elsewhere there was a craze for domestic interiors and women standing by windows doing needlework. Dead pheasants and bunches of grapes and lots of detail. Cherubs disappeared and instead there were fanciful, idealised landscapes, then portraits of aristocrats on horseback, then huge canvasses of battles and shipwrecks. Then it was back to women lying on sofas or getting out of the bath, murkier this time, less detailed then a great many wine bottles and apples, then ballet dancers. Paintings developed a certain splodginess - critical term - so that they barely resembled what they were meant to be. Someone signed a urinal, and it all went mad. Neat squares of primary colour were followed by great blocks of emulsion, then soup cans, then someone picked up a video camera, someone else poured concrete, and the whole thing became hopelessly fractured into a kind of confusing, anything-goes free for all.

When you get right down to the nuts and bolts of understanding what the brain is doing and the relationship between conscious experience and the brain,” Dr. Schwartz said, “the data do not support the commonly held principle that you can just will yourself into one mental state or another. “It’s a subtle thing, freedom. It takes effort; it takes attention and focus to not act something like an automaton. Although we do have freedom, we exercise it only when we strive for awareness, when we are conscious not just of the content of the mind but also of the mind itself as a process.” When not governed by conscious awareness, our mind tends to run on automatic pilot. It is scarcely more “free” than a computer that performs preprogrammed tasks in response to a button being pushed. The distinction between automatic mechanism and conscious free will may be illustrated by the difference between punching a wall with your fist in a fit of reactive rage and mindfully saying to yourself, “I have so much anger in me, I really want to punch this wall right now”—or even more consciously, “My mind tells me I should punch the wall.” The latter mind-states give you the option of not striking the wall, without which there is no choice and no freedom—just a fractured hand and a head full of regret. “Choice,” Eckhart Tolle points out, “implies consciousness—a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice.

Seriously? You told him that?” Sophie bit her lip. “He sort of…pried it out of me. And then he wanted to go after Burke. I made him promise to stay away—well, not to kill him, but Sylvan went after him anyway.” “Really?” Olivia stared at her. “You mean he tracked down Burke after all these years and beat him up? That doesn’t sound like Sylvan to me.” “It’s not like him. At least, not as far as I can tell.” Sophie sighed unhappily. “I saw everything he did—he didn’t just beat Burke up—he broke his arm. A bad break. I could see the…the bones coming out of his skin all jagged and bloody…” The memory made her sick to her stomach and she shook her head, unable to continue. “A compound fracture, huh?” Olivia nodded thoughtfully. “That is bad.” “But that’s not all,” Sophie went on. “He also, uh, castrated him.” “He what?” Liv and Kat said together. “He did.” Sophie nodded. “With this little silver thingy. It was really small—it fit in the palm of his hand. But it burned Burke’s, uh, equipment right off. There was nothing left but a…but a scar.” She swallowed hard, willing her stomach to be steady. Considering the fact that she hadn’t eaten in well over twenty-four hours, she felt remarkably un-hungry. “I think I know what you’re talking about,” Liv said. “It’s mostly used for dermatological cases—when somebody needs a wart burned off or something. I never thought of burning off anything, uh, bigger.” “Well I guess Burke’s out of business.” There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Kat’s tone. “Permanently from the sound of it.” Liv laughed. “Good for Sylvan! I wish I could have seen it.” “I

She squirmed with delight, making him groan. Her wriggling must test him. Some devil made her move again. "Jesus, Grace," he gritted out. "You try my limits." "I hope so," she purred. He felt so wonderful inside her. As if he supplied part of her that she only realized now she'd lacked. She bent her knees and tilted her hips so he went deeper. She ran her hands down the tense muscles of his back. He flexed under her touch. "That felt good," she said breathlessly. "Do it again." "If I start, I won't stop." his voice was rough. "Start." She shifted again and felt him shudder. "Grace," he grated out. He withdrew, then plunged into her. Her nails sank into his back and her womb clenched in welcome. With deliberate slowness, he set the familiar rhythm. Except none of this was familiar. Every time he settled in her body, he forged an emotional connection that nothing could sever. On and on he went. Possession. Release. Possession. Release. Every thrust another link in the chain that bound her to him. Eventually his inhuman control fractured and he drove into her faster, more wildly. With every thrust, her excitement built. It echoed how she'd felt when he kissed her between the legs. That had been wonderful, astounding.But this was more powerful. Because he was with her. He pounded into her as though he meant to crush her. She didn't care. She never wanted this spiraling feeling to end. The storm swirled her higher and higher. Ecstasy poised her on a knife edge. She cried out and rose to meet him. He changed the angle of his penetration and went even deeper. The pleasure edged close to pain. She tensed as he pressed hard inside her. Then her womb opened and she took all of him. Her inner muscles convulsed into spasms of delight and she screamed. Violent rapture flung her against the doors of heaven itself. She was lost in a hot, dark world where nothing existed except Matthew. All she could do was hold him and prayed she survived. Through the tempest that blasted her, he reached his climax. He groaned and convulsed in her arms. For this moment, he was unequivocally hers and she reveled in the possession.

Glaring, I snarled, “Kiss me. Give me one fracture of human company, and I’ll never say another word to you again. I’ll be whatever you want. Just kiss me!” His eyes narrowed. “You’re an idiot.” “So you keep telling me.” “You’re wasting your time.” “So you keep telling me.” “I don’t want to kiss you!” I lashed out. My arms came up. I opened my palm. And I slapped the self-righteous, egotistical arsehole on the cheek. The moment went from lust-heavy to stagnant with violence. We stared, caught dead centre in war. “You’re a fucking nightmare,” he snapped. “Kiss me.” “You’re ruining my life.” “Kiss me.” “You’re—” “Kiss me, Jethro. Kiss me. Just fucking kiss me and give me—” His body crashed against mine. His hands flew up, grabbing my cheeks and holding me firm. His lips, oh his lips, they bruised mine as his head tilted, and with pure anger, he gave me what I’d wanted for weeks. He kissed me. My lungs were empty—he’d stolen all my air, but I no longer survived on oxygen. I survived on his mouth, his taste, his unbridled energy pouring down my throat. His tongue tore past my lips, taking me savage and hungry. There was nothing sweet or gentle. This was a punishment. A reminder that I hadn’t won. He wasn’t kissing me. He was fighting me in every underhanded way. His hands dropped from my cheeks, cupping my breasts. The violence in his touch throbbed instantly. I arched my back, opening my mouth wider to scream, but he swallowed my cries, kissing me deeper, harder, stealing every inch of sanity I had left. I thought a kiss would put me on even ground—show him that he did care. That he was human—just like me. I hadn’t gambled on being detonated into a billion tiny pieces that had no notion of who I’d been before he’d stolen my soul. He backed me up, faster and faster to the bed. His breath saturated my lungs. His touch skated from my cheeks, to my breasts, to my waist, to my arse. Jerking me hard against the huge length of arousal in his jeans. The bed stopped our motion, tumbling us onto the sheets, but nothing, absolutely nothing could unweld our lips. We were joined, kissing, frantic, desperate. He groaned as I slid my hands beneath his t-shirt, needing to feel his skin against mine. He was blood and fire and heat. So different to the glacier he pretended to be. “Fuck,” he grunted

After loud overtures from his daughters, Anthony finally left the house and went up the winding path to the “museum,” to the mobile home where he and his parents had lived from 1949 to 1958. It has been left untouched. The furniture, tables, the paint on the walls, the ’50s cabinets, the dressers, the closets, are all unchanged, remaining as they once were. And in her closet in the bedroom, past the nurse’s uniform, far away in the right-hand corner on the top shelf, lies the black backpack that contains Tatiana’s soul. Every once in a while when she can stand it—or when she can’t stand it—she looks through it. Alexander never looks through it. Tatiana knows what Anthony is about to see. Two cans of Spam in the pack. A bottle of vodka. The nurse’s uniform she escaped from the Soviet Union in that hangs in plastic in the museum closet, next to the PMH nurse’s uniform she nearly lost her marriage in. The Hero of the Soviet Union medal in the pack, in a hidden pocket. The letters she received from Alexander—including the last one from Kontum, which, when she heard about his injuries, she thought would be the last one. That plane ride to Saigon in December 1970 was the longest twelve hours of Tatiana’s life. Francesca and her daughter Emily took care of Tatiana’s kids. Vikki, her good and forgiven friend, came with her, to bring back the body of Tom Richter, to bring back Anthony. In the backpack lies an old yellowed book, The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. The pages are so old, they splinter if you turn them. You cannot leaf, you can only lift. And between the fracturing pages, photographs are slotted like fragile parchment leaves. Anthony is supposed to find two of these photographs and bring them back. It should take him only a few minutes. Cracked leaves of Tania before she was Alexander’s. Here she is at a few months old, held by her mother, Tania in one arm, Pasha in the other. Here she is, a toddler in the River Luga, bobbing with Pasha. And here a few years older, lying in the hammock with Dasha. A beaming, pretty, dark-haired Dasha is about fourteen. Here is Tania, around ten, with two dangling little braids, doing a fantastic one-armed handstand on top of a tree stump. Here are Tania and Pasha in the boat together, Pasha threateningly raising the oar over her head. Here is the whole family. The parents, side by side, unsmiling, Deda holding Tania’s hand. Babushka holding Pasha’s, Dasha smiling merrily in front.

I'm renowned within the ton as being cool under fire- around you, I'm never cool. I'm heated- I seethe- I burn with desire. If I'm in the same room, all I can think about is heat- your heat- and how you'll feel around me." Patience felt the heat rise, a real force between them. "I've gained the reputation of being the soul of discretion- now look at me. I've seduced my godmother's niece- and been seduced by her. I share her bed openly, even under my godmother's roof." His lips twisted wryly. "So much for discretion." He drew a deep breath; his chest brushed her breasts. "And as for my vaunted, up-until-you 'legendary' control- the instant I'm inside you that evaporates like water on hot steel." What prompted her Patience never knew. His lips were so close- with her teeth, she nipped the lower. "I told you to let go- I won't break." The tension, pouring off him in waves, eased, just a little. He sighed, and rested his forehead on hers. "I don't like losing control- it's like losing myself- in you." She felt him gather himself, felt the tension swell and coalesce about them. "It's giving myself to you- so that I'm in your keeping." The words, low and gravelly, rolled through her; closing her eyes, she drew in a shallow breath. "And you don't like doing that." "I don't like it- but I crave it. I don't approve of it, yet I yearn for it." His words feathered her cheek, then his lips touched hers. "Do you understand? I haven't any choice." Patience felt his chest swell as he drew a deep breath. "I love you." She shivered, eyes shut tight, and felt the world shift about her. "Losing myself in you- giving my heart and soul into your keeping- is part of that." His lips brushed hers in an inexpressibly tender caress. "Trusting you is part of that. Telling you I love you is part of that." His lips touched hers; Patience didn't wait for more. She kissed him. Letting go of the post, she slid her hands up, framing his face, so she could let him know- let him feel- her response to all he'd said. He felt it, sensed it- and reacted; his arms locked tight about her. She couldn't breathe, but she didn't care. All she cared about was the emotion that held them, that flowed so effortlessly between them. Silver and gold, it wound about them, investing each touch with its magic. Silver and gold, it shimmered about them, and quivered in their fractured breaths. It was immediate compulsion and future promise, heavenly delight and earthly pleasure. It was here and now- and forever.

Driscoll preached a sermon called “Sex: A Study of the Good Bits of Song of Solomon,” which he followed up with a sermon series and an e-book, Porn-again Christian (2008). For Driscoll, the “good bits” amounted to a veritable sex manual. Translating from the Hebrew, he discovered that the woman in the passage was asking for manual stimulation of her clitoris. He assured women that if they thought they were “being dirty,” chances are their husbands were pretty happy. He issued the pronouncement that “all men are breast men. . . . It’s biblical,” as was a wife performing oral sex on her husband. Hearing an “Amen” from the men in his audience, he urged the ladies present to serve their husbands, to “love them well,” with oral sex. He advised one woman to go home and perform oral sex on her husband in Jesus’ name to get him to come to church. Handing out religious tracts was one thing, but there was a better way to bring about Christian revival. 13 Driscoll reveled in his ability to shock people, but it was a series of anonymous blog posts on his church’s online discussion board that laid bare the extent of his misogyny. In 2006, inspired by Braveheart, Driscoll adopted the pseudonym “William Wallace II” to express his unfiltered views. “I love to fight. It’s good to fight. Fighting is what we used to do before we all became pussified,” before America became a “pussified nation.” In that vein, he offered a scathing critique of the earlier iteration of the evangelical men’s movement, of the “pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship . . .” where men hugged and cried “like damn junior high girls watching Dawson’s Creek.” Real men should steer clear. 14 For Driscoll, the problem went all the way back to the biblical Adam, a man who plunged humanity headlong into “hell/ feminism” by listening to his wife, “who thought Satan was a good theologian.” Failing to exercise “his delegated authority as king of the planet,” Adam was cursed, and “every man since has been pussified.” The result was a nation of men raised “by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers who make sure that Johnny grows up to be a very nice woman who sits down to pee.” Women served certain purposes, and not others. In one of his more infamous missives, Driscoll talked of God creating women to serve as penis “homes” for lonely penises. When a woman posted on the church’s discussion board, his response was swift: “I . . . do not answer to women. So, your questions will be ignored.” 15

He held her down in the cushioning billows of the bed, kissed her, fondled and provocatively caressed until she arched, with her body begged; breaking from the kiss, he trailed hot, wet, openmouthed kisses down the taut line of her throat, over the creamy upper swell of her breast, and gave her the first course of what she'd asked for. He feasted on her breasts without quarter, licked, suckled, and laved as she writhed and gasped beneath him, as her hands gripped and tightened on his skull as he drew every last gasp and moan he could from her, then moved on. Over her midriff, down over her waist, pausing to pay homage to the sensitive indentation of her navel, then he shifted still lower. Trapping one of her long legs beneath him, lifting and draping the other over his shoulder, he held it there, held her steady as he pressed an ardent kiss to the curls shielding her mons. He heard her breath hitch, felt her body tremble, then tense and coil. Glancing at her face, he caught a glimpse of intense cornflower blue burning beneath her heavy lids, saw her lips slick and swollen from his kisses, parted in shocked disbelief. Deliberately he slid lower, bent and set his lips to the slick, swollen flesh between her thighs. She jerked, moaned. He licked and she screamed. She reached for him, but could only touch his head. Her fingers twined in his hair, tightened; she tensed to tug, but he licked again, then slowly, expertly probed, and she didn't move. Panting, eyes shut, she waited. Inwardly smug, he settled to worship her in that way, too, to taste her, to fill his senses with her, and hers with him. She let him have his way, let him taste her as he wished, let him try her with his tongue and drive her mindless. He asked, and she surrendered; he took, and she gave. In return, he pleasured her with unwavering devotion until she sobbed and cried out his name. Rising, he rolled her firmly onto her back, trailed kisses like fire up her belly and breasts as he loomed over her, spreading her thighs wide, settling between. He held himself over her, arms braced as he kissed her, tasted her desperation on her lips. Then with one, single powerful thrust he joined them. She closed about him like a glove, and he gasped; like the goddess he'd named her she welcomed her servant into her temple and embraced him. He moved, and she moved with him, fluidly meeting him as they gave themselves up to the now familiar dance. His thoughts fractured, ripped from him as a whirlpool of sensation rose up, drenched, then drowned him.

He ran long at the White House, and arrived late to his next meeting with Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Frank Ruggiero—their first major strategy session on Taliban talks after the secret meeting with A-Rod. She was waiting in her outer office, a spacious room paneled in white and gilt wood, with tasseled blue and pink curtains and an array of colorfully upholstered chairs and couches. In my time reporting to her later, I only ever saw Clinton take the couch, with guests of honor in the large chair kitty-corner to her. She’d left it open for him that day. “He came rushing in. . . . ” Clinton later said. “And, you know, he was saying ‘oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ ” He sat down heavily and shrugged off his coat, rattling off a litany of his latest meetings, including his stop-in at the White House. “That was typical Richard. It was, like, ‘I’m doing a million things and I’m trying to keep all the balls in the air,’ ” she remembered. As he was talking, a “scarlet red” flush went up his face, according to Clinton. He pressed his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving. “Richard, what’s the matter?” Clinton asked. “Something horrible is happening,” he said. A few minutes later, Holbrooke was in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, headed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Clinton had told her own internist to prepare the emergency room. In his typically brash style, he’d demanded that the ambulance take him to the more distant Sibley Memorial Hospital. Clinton overruled him. One of our deputies on the SRAP team, Dan Feldman, rode with him and held his hand. Feldman didn’t have his BlackBerry, so he scrawled notes on a State Department expense form for a dinner at Meiwah Restaurant as Holbrooke dictated messages and a doctor assessed him. The notes are a nonlinear stream of Holbrooke’s indomitable personality, slashed through with medical realities. “Call Eric in Axelrod’s office,” the first read. Nearby: “aortic dissection—type A . . . operation risk @ > 50 percent”—that would be chance of death. A series of messages for people in his life, again interrupted by his deteriorating condition: “S”—Secretary Clinton—“why always together for medical crises?” (The year before, he’d been with Clinton when she fell to the concrete floor of the State Department garage, fracturing her elbow.) “Kids—how much love them + stepkids” . . . “best staff ever” . . . “don’t let him die here” . . . “vascular surgery” . . . “no flow, no feeling legs” . . . “clot” . . . and then, again: “don’t let him die here want to die at home w/ his fam.” The seriousness of the situation fully dawning on him, Holbrooke turned to job succession: “Tell Frank”—Ruggiero—“he’s acting.” And finally: “I love so many people . . . I have a lot left to do . . . my career in public service is over.” Holbrooke cracked wise until they put him under for surgery. “Get me anything you need,” he demanded. “A pig’s heart. Dan’s heart.

A burned hand did it. The fractured levee of their resolve having collapsed under the floodwater of their passion, Dominika grasped Nate’s wrist as if she feared he would escape, and led him up the marble staircase to one of the peacock-blue bedrooms. She stood stock-still, her eyes closed, and felt him undress her. Dominika gently pushed Nate onto the bed and showed him No. 47, “Ships passing in the night.” Her breath was hot onto his thigh as she finally quivered and whispered da, and rolled off him, groaning. Nate lost count of how many times Dominika stuttered da, da, da that golden afternoon, her wild hair spread on the pillow, her breasts heaving, her arms hugging herself to stop the convulsions.

Ramius kicked Putin’s feet out from under him just as he was stepping away from the table. Putin fell backwards while Ramius sprang to his feet and grasped the political officer’s head in his strong fisherman’s hands. The captain drove his neck downward to the sharp, metal-edged corner of the wardroom table. It struck the point. In the same instant Ramius pushed down on the man’s chest. An unnecessary gesture—with the sickening crackle of bones Ivan Putin’s neck broke, his spine severed at the level of the second cervical vertebra, a perfect hangman’s fracture.

When they reached the house, Wally took a box of crackers up to his room and sat on the floor to eat them, his back against his bed. He still couldn’t believe that he was the one who had officially declared war on the Malloys. How had it happened? Only a week before he was lying on his back in the grass, and now here he was: Number One on their Most-Wanted list. He was on bad terms already with his teacher, had almost broken Caroline’s nose, and had made everything worse by calling her sisters stupid. Well, they were stupid. And deep down, seven layers beneath his skin, Wally knew he was glad that he had thrust his head back and bumped Caroline. He’d just wanted her to stop bugging him, that’s all. But her nose sure looked peculiar by the end of the day—a lot redder and fatter than it had looked that morning. Then he had another thought: What if it really was broken, she had to have an operation, and he had to pay for it? His hands began to sweat, and he swallowed the piece of cracker in his mouth without chewing. Was there such a thing as just a sprained nose? A bruised nose? A slightly but not completely fractured nose? A bent nose, maybe?

But he was drawn to the men—a smoldering of dim feeling behind their eyes, a heaviness to their hands when they gave him a pat or a swat. He curried their favor, refilling their glasses, lingering at their tables when his father wasn’t watching. They took notice of him gradually, with a mute animal awareness. Later, when men who’d fought the Great War returned, Dexter recognized, in their fractured gazes and somnolent movements, something of what he’d first admired in Mr. Q.’s men. By then he knew what it meant: intimacy with violence.

Natalie skimmed the left side of the book, then the right. Her eyes caught sight of a doodle she’d drawn in the margins; a heart with ND + JR written inside. Hell in a kettle, Goddess’s bloomers, and damn it all to hell. She casually covered the initials with her hand, shifted in her seat, and returned her eyes to the content of the page as if her life depended on it.

Save perhaps for the inventing and scriptwriting of Armitage, for the comics publication Judge Dredd the Megazine, in which he delineated and developed the city of London in that futuristic and somewhat casually violent shared world. And possibly his novels in the Judge Dredd line from Virgin Books, being Deathmasques, The Medusa Seed and Wetworks. And possibly any amount of other comics-related material to boot. And his work for Virgin Books’ New Adventure and Missing Adventure lines, come to think of it, including Sky Pirates!, Death and Diplomacy, Burning Heart, and for their continuation (starring one-time companion Bernice Summerfield), Ship of Fools, Oblivion, The Mary-Sue Extrusion and Return to the Fractured Planet. Each and every one a fine and puissant piece of literature, so all in all it is a bit unfortunate that at least half of them are no longer in print. For the BBC he has written the novel Heart of TARDIS, the short story Moon Graffiti, subsequently released as one half of a BBC Radio Collection audio disc, and the very volume you currently hold, quite lovingly, in your hands. His work on Bernice, incidentally, continues more-or-less simultaneously with the release of the Big Finish novel The Infernal Nexus. Mr.

She pulls upright, wiping her face 'But that’s another one of those clichés I don’t get. The light. I feel it sometimes. It makes sense that you have to beat back the darkness, but I just don’t understand why there’s darkness in the first place. Sometimes I feel like the world has fractured into a million pieces and they’re closing in on me, and I have to push each piece back with my hands and my feet and my head to keep it from squeezing me to death.

oh, lookie there, hyoid’s fractured. Strong hands to do that. Anyway,

In the great urban centers, the pulse of the factory served as a kind of metronome for the city at large. In the urban workplace, where wages were paid by the hour, efficiency was a measure of success. Factory hands demonstrated their worth by completing the maximum number of standardized motions in a given period. After the factory whistle blew, their time was their own. But even at leisure, city dwellers saw time as a resource, like coal or copper. The fear that time might run out, as every resource will, left them with the dread of time wasted. On the farm, meanwhile, time was not something you stockpiled like firewood. Farm chores took as long as they took—there was no rushing an ear of corn—and the workday stretched to accommodate the tasks at hand. Time was elastic. The minutes and hours that mattered so much to city folk were irrelevant to the drawn-out biological processes on which the farmer depended. In place of the clock, the farmer’s yardstick for measuring time was the progress of the seasons. As a result, his view of time was expansive, focused on the sweeping cycles of the natural world. For city people, time was fractured into finite segments like boxes on a conveyer belt. On the farm, time was continuous, like a string around a tree, one season flowing inevitably into the next. For

I want to spit into The Warden’s smug, fat face and watch my spittle run down his chin. Yet even if he’s been told by my father to keep me alive, even if he fears making me a symbol of rebellion, such an action might not stay his hand. Pride can only be diminished so much in a man before he breaks.

Before continuing further, it is important to gain an understanding of how democracy is perceived by the ordinary people of the Middle East. Democracy, as a secular entity, is unlikely t be favorably received by the vast majority of Middle Easterners who are devout followers of the Islamic faith. Traditionally, there is tension among the Muslim countries with respect to the establishment of a democratic form of government. On the one hand, there are those who believe that democratic rule can co-exist with the religious nature of the Middle Easter societies; however, on the other hand there are those who believe that the tribal structure of the Middle Eastern countries may not be suitable for democratic rule as too many factions will emerge. The result will be a "fractured" society that cannot effectively unite and there is also the risk that this could impact the cohesion produced by the Muslim faith. Although concerns exist, for the most part, the spirit of democracy, or self rule, is viewed as a positive endeavor so long as it builds up the country and sustains the religious base versus devaluing religion and creating instability. Creating this balance will be the challenge as most Western democracies have attempted to maintain a separation of church and state. What this suggests is that as democracy grows in the Middle East, it is not necessarily going to evolve upon a Western template—it will have its own shape or form coupled with stronger religious ties.

Jasper’s hand snaps to my neck. He squeezes, staring me down. I expect him to give me some kind of comeback, but he remains silent, allowing his body to do the talking.

The carefree joy melts from his features, heat blazing in his eyes. His free hand slips around my neck and fists the hair at my nape, pulling my hair, so my head tilts back as his face hovers over mine. His lips brush against mine with every word. “If you keep teasing me, I’ll tie your hands behind your back, put you on your knees, and shove my cock down your throat. You better hope you can handle it, because I won’t pull out until I’m coming

It’s going to be rough the first time he gets his hands on you. He’s been holding back his desire for way longer than you realize. He’s been waiting for you to find yourself, and now that you have, you’ve finally noticed him back…

It means everything that you let me stay here. I’ll never forget it. I know I can’t repay you--” I took her hand in mine, weaving our fingers together. Her breath hitched, and I saw her pulse quicken. “I like having you here. I think I needed it just as much as you did.” The truth of those words hit somewhere deep in my chest, burning. But it was a beautiful kind of pain. One I welcomed. One that belonged only to Shiloh.