a_sporking_rat | KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 36

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KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 36

Thanks for all the well-wishes! I'm better now, but sadly Joram the mouse is sick. I think he has colic, so I'm nursing him with gripe water and belly rubs.

KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 36

Claudia and Domino come in. We are reminded that Domino has black and white curly hair. They ask what happened, she is "straddling Nicky's body, pumping on his chest, trying to get his heart to beat" and I know that's probably what she should be doing but the fact they're naked and it's Anita makes me think she's straddling him in a different way and the guards are going to have to get her off him like ANITA NOT NOW. She says she doesn't know, Claudia turns off the water and gets her cell out to call the doctor, Domino checks Nicky's neck for a pulse, Anita pounds on Nicky's chest while screaming "Breathe, damn you, breathe!" and I am just laughing so hard because I swear that's such a cliche that I've seen movies parodying it more than I've ever seen it played straight these days. It comes off as very NARM here.

She tells us that if he were anyone else that was metaphysically connected to her then she could share energy with him, but him being her Bride means that, unlike a Therian or Vampire Servant, it only goes one way. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" She's done a stream of fucks a few times in this book so far, and also in Hit List, and it's pretty NARM-y too, honestly. "I opened my link to Jean-Claude" and sees him and Asher having a post-coital cuddle in bed, she "opened myself wide and asked wordlessly, letting him feel what was happening, so there wasn't any need to use words." Yes, that's what 'wordlessly' means. Also the bit about her opening herself wide sounds, well,....like I said, it's Anita. "I asked for help, I asked for ideas, I screamed in my mind, "Nicky!" Maybe it's just my mood right now, but this ALL seems totally NARM-y. JC gets up, "leaving the bed and Asher", and says "Ma petite..." LEAVING ASHER NAH NAH NAH. Oh man, you know what, I bet Nicky collapsed because in the back of her mind Anita wanted something to happen to get JC's attention off Asher and back on her and Brides do what their Masters want...

Anita yells "help him!", Claudia says they're trying, Anita doesn't waste time telling her it's not her she's talking to but mentions Domino will know anyway because he's her tiger-to-call (THERIAN SERVANT PLZ) and thus will just feel it. JC gives Anita a memory of him and Asher watching Belle Morte killing one of her Brides through sex. She also knows they are coming this way but that it doesn't matter because JC doesn't know how to help Nicky. Medics arrive first, Domino lifts Anita off Nicky and then helps the medics move him out of the shower and on to the bench where they fucked earlier. A doctor has defilibrator paddles charged, a nurse starts putting the pads and leads on his chest, the doctor calls READY and everyone else yells back CLEAR, Nicky's body twitches from the pulse, the male doctor says to do it again, the female doctor hits him with a stronger jolt and Anita can smell "a little whiff of burning flesh." Holy shit do they actually do that? They call to do it again, Anita prays to God to please save him, and Nicky gives a huge gasping breath. Of course, right when Anita prays *eyeroll*

Nicky flails and knocks one of the doctors into the wall, Anita pushes her way to him through the crowd shouting his name, he starts to look less frantic and more like he knows what's going on, he tries to reach for her hand, she takes it, there is mention of how his hand is so big and hers is so little, she....puts his hand "against my chest, over my breasts." This could have seemed sweet if she hadn't had to mention her tits. The male doctor checks Nicky's heart with his stethoscope, says his heart is "slow, but steady" and asks what happened to him. My guess is that he played possum really well in hopes it would freak Anita so much she'd think it wasn't safe to fuck him ever again...but then, that would require her caring about the safety of someone else. Anita starts crying but "it was more like I was leaking than crying, as if it would happen totally without me" I have no idea what this means but basically Anita doesn't cry ok she's not a GIRL. She tells the doctor they were having sex and then he just collapsed. She doesn't mention the ardeur and I feel like she really should have, as well as telling him about the vision that JC just gave her. Sure, maybe the doctor won't know what to do, but it's still better to do so than not. The doctor asks how Nicky feels but Nicky doesn't answer, he "just kept looking at me as if I were the only real thing in the room." Ugh. Anita asks Nicky if he can hear her, he says yes, she says to tell the doctor how he feels, Nicky looks around and frowns "as if just now seeing the other people; again, as if I were the only solid thing in the room to him." So, like always, really. "He wasn't well yet; whatever had happened hadn't been instantly fixed." WOW, NO SHIT, REALLY? Cuz you know, I always figured when someone collapsed and their heart stopped, they were clearly fine the second they revived! *sarcasm*

The doctor tells Anita to ask Nicky how he feels, she asks how he feels, he says "bad, weak", Anita kisses his fingers, the doctor asks what the last thing Nicky remembers is, Anita repeats the question to Nicky, Nicky says "Sex, amazing sex" with a wide and happy but still confused smile, Anita smiles back at him and says "It was a-fucking-mazing sex" and he grins. OH DEAR LORD I JUST CAN'T UGH. I know there's "black humor" during bad situations and all, but this doesn't come off like that, it just comes off as totally inappropriate for the situation, really juvenile, and just overall mood-ruining for any type of tense scene. Terrible delivery, terrible execution, sorry LKH. JC comes in, we are reminded that "his face was beautiful and unreadable" but Anita can tell by his shoulders (no, really) that "he knew something about what had happened to Nicky, and he was afraid I wouldn't like it" despite having her just realized from their mental connection a few minutes ago that he knows nothing?

The doctor asks if Nicky can stand, Nicky says he can but then Anita and Domino have to catch him because his knees buckle. Anita thinks if he had on a belt then it would be easier to grab on to, but he's still naked...you know, just in case you wondered if he'd miraculously grown clothes while unconscious. Ugh, I hate pointless little sentences like these. Domino has to take most of the weight because "I was just too damn short", whatever sense that's supposed to make, so Claudia takes Anita's place, and she and Domino start moving Nicky out of the locker room. Anita starts to follow but then she looks at JC, describes how his pajama bottoms almost match Asher's eyes, wonders if Asher is wearing the matching top, mentions he has sex-hair, and then says in an accusatory tone that "You know something" to him. He says yup, she tells him to talk, he says not here, she angrily asks where, he says their room or Asher's room, she asks why Asher's room (oh my gosh Anita this is so not the time) and then Asher comes out and says "Because I am a fool" and Anita talks for a paragraph about how she was so upset about Nicky she didn't even see him in the shadows. Anita says that "If you want an argument about the fool thing, I'm not in the mood." Oh my gosh Anita he didn't hint at all he wanted to argue, he's not YOU. "I crossed my arms under my breasts" CUZ THEY'RE TOO BIG FOR HER TO CROSS 'EM oh man I will never be over that ever.

Then she realizes she's still nude. I was expecting this, and expecting a bunch of inner talk about it, but she pleasantly surprises it by thinking "Screw it. Nicky had almost died, and the two vampires knew what had gone wrong with the ardeur". And then she thinks how she thought she had the ardeur under control but now she's almost accidentally killed Nicky. "Fuck." Asher steps closer to her and she talks about his hair, and about his robe, and her wondering "did you decorate the decoration" regarding the fur collar on it and this is so stupid that even she thinks it must be because even though she's physically healed but "mentally I was somewhere between angry, depressed, and lost" and she wonders what went wrong with her and Nicky. She says "Let me get my weapons and something to put on, then either room." LET HER GET SOME WEAPONS TO PUT ON. WHAT THE HELL. "I just want to know what is making you both act like little boys who go caught." So, what, you're gonna shoot 'em? What the hell do you need weapons here for? Can Anita just not face a problem, no matter what it is, without a gun on her? That...sounds like Lucille but that's because Lucille is FUCKED UP and it is meant to SHOW THAT. "Neither of them argued about me calling them little boys who had got caught" Maybe they're worried you'll shoot them "it was not a good sign. It meant there was something for at least one of them to feel guilty about." OR MAYBE THEY'RE WORRIED YOU'LL SHOOT THEM.

Calling it now, this was either somehow Asher's fault, or it turns out that the ardeur is indeed not wholly under Anita's control and thus any hope of agency or responsibility goes out the window just as we start seeing signs of it becoming a possible thing in the series.

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I'm glad that you're feeling better, and even have blogwanks to greet your return!

oh my god that was the most tense near death scene I have ever read I don't know how Anita is going to cope with this oh my god

ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT!

Ooh, blogwanks! I must go see!

I loathe, loathe, loathe the Nicky situation from start to finish. It's disgusting and the fact that Laurell and her fans can't understand why it's disgusting just makes me unbearably angry.

Of all the awful things in this series that they don't realize are awful, this is one of my big ones on the "how do you not see this" list.

As is true of many things LKH writes, I would be angrier about it if I didn't find it so hilarious. She killed him through fucking. HOW DO YOU WRITE THAT

The saddest thing is that this is the closest any of the main harem members have come to death in several books.

I guess it makes sense that LKH finds it so traumatic to harm any of the penii, since the only way she can think for anything to happen is through sex. I'd find writing my main character fucking a guy to death pretty disturbing as well. If I could stop laughing.

You know, it would be an interesting twist if there IS no such thing as a Bride and Anita actually fucked Nicky to death the FIRST time - and all the while, he's been one of her special no-decomposition zombies. Jean-Claude just hasn't bothered to tell her on the grounds that letting people think that she can turn them into mind-wiped drones is much more frightening than letting them know that she can screw them to death and use their corpses as sock-puppets to enact her bizarre (and boring) sexual fantasies. Heck, since Anita apparently doesn't have the best reputation outside of St. Louis (for damned good reason), half the Masters of the City probably think she does that to her hotter enemies anyway.

All she did this time was accidentally turn the power off.

But, alas, that would be far too original for LKH...

THAT WOULD BE SO COOL!

...so yeah, won't happen

I mean, it would make an enormous amount of sense. He has a background tailor-made for her sociopath-worshipping, scarred-woobie-male, and sexual-abuse-backstory fetishes because "his personality" literally is the avatar of her subconscious mind. Hey, it even might explain the five-foot-wide shoulders! Necromancers can reshape dead flesh, right? With enough metaphysical nourishment, Nicky's body reshaped itself into the perfect image of her bizarre physical ideal!

Hell, maybe Richard's finally given into "therapy" because he took one look at Nicky and saw his I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream future if he didn't put on an act of compliance. Anita "accidentally" fucks him to death through the triumvirate, resurrects his corpse, and totes it around as her funhouse-mirror version of how she wanted him to be. Better to fake submission and retain SOME of his mind than be forced into the real thing, right?

...This would make for a legitimately interesting subplot in the story of a degenerated necromancer given over to utter sociopathy and abuse of his/her powers over those who refused him/her in the past. Alas, definitely not the route LKH's going to go.

(deleted comment)

I cracked up too!

it's Anita makes me think she's straddling him in a different way and the guards are going to have to get her off him like ANITA NOT NOW

Nah, Anita would have to be on top then.

Oh man, you know what, I bet Nicky collapsed because in the back of her mind Anita wanted something to happen to get JC's attention off Asher and back on her and Brides do what their Masters want...

I agree.

I have no idea what this means but basically Anita doesn't cry ok she's not a GIRL.

Also it's not within her control. Nothing can ever be within her control.

Nah, Anita would have to be on top then.
LOLLLL!

They ask what happened, she is "straddling Nicky's body, pumping on his chest, trying to get his heart to beat" and I know that's probably what she should be doing but the fact they're naked and it's Anita makes me think she's straddling him in a different way and the guards are going to have to get her off him like ANITA NOT NOW.
Since corpses may 'get erections' for various reasons, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if she humped a corpse one of these days and never noticed.

Anita pounds on Nicky's chest while screaming "Breathe, damn you, breathe!" and I am just laughing so hard because I swear that's such a cliche that I've seen movies parodying it more than I've ever seen it played straight these days. It comes off as very NARM here.
Are we sure he doesn't keep his vital organs in his shoulders? Perhaps she should try pounding there.

She's done a stream of fucks a few times in this book so far, and also in Hit List, and it's pretty NARM-y too, honestly.
Sadly, I now realize from lliira's commentary that, for all that these books are notorious for the sex, there really isn't that much porn. The stream of fucks is the most fucking she's done so far in this book that A) didn't involve Herr Loofah-Dick and B) didn't kill anyone.

I bet Nicky collapsed because in the back of her mind Anita wanted something to happen to get JC's attention off Asher and back on her and Brides do what their Masters want...
New fanon. Because that is horribly plausible.

They call to do it again, Anita prays to God to please save him, and Nicky gives a huge gasping breath. Of course, right when Anita prays *eyeroll*
WAIT I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING. Anita is a necromancer, right? Can't she just revive him?

Sure, she might revive him as a zombie, but would anyone notice the difference? I mean, zombie!Nicky might not even have a soul to control, so there would be one major plus over the current situation.

This could have seemed sweet if she hadn't had to mention her tits.
Maybe her tits are the seat of the ardeur. That would explain both why they've gotten progressively bigger over the course of the books and why they're given such utter importance. 'Yes, you nearly died because I fucked you to death, but have I mentioned my awesome tits?'

Terrible delivery, terrible execution, sorry LKH.
Hey, I didn't realize this sporking came with a six-word summary of the book. :P ;)

Calling it now, this was either somehow Asher's fault, or it turns out that the ardeur is indeed not wholly under Anita's control and thus any hope of agency or responsibility goes out the window just as we start seeing signs of it becoming a possible thing in the series.
"Either-or"? Both. Isn't it something fucking ridiculous like Anita's wounded mouth making her accidentally screw Nicky to death?

Since corpses may 'get erections' for various reasons, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if she humped a corpse one of these days and never noticed.
PFFFAHAHAH me either! They've got about as much personality as her sweeties anyway!

"He's DEAD, Anita," Richard said, a faint tinge of revulsion in his voice. He still hadn't gotten over all his jealous hater prude tendencies yet. I'd have to talk to his therapist.

"He was dead to the world until he met ME," I said, vigorously bouncing up and down on his stiff body.

"No, I mean he is DEAD. As in - he's kicked the bucket! He's shuffled off the mortal coil! He's -"

"BLARRRGLARRRRGH!" John Doe shouted, sticking his arms in the air as he brought me screaming. "BRAAAAINS!"

In the squelchy afterglow of our sex, he poked my head several times, seeming oddly confused. "Brrraaains?" he asked, the tears from his tragic past welling up in his eyes as he gazed deep into my soul. "Braaains?"

At last, he shook his head sadly and slipped out of my arms, shambling off the morgue table. "Noooo braiiins."

Then he caught sight of Richard, and an unholy light gleamed in his eyes. "BRAAAAAAINS!"

Richard screamed like a girl, so totally not like me, and ran for dear life as John Doe shuffled after him.

"WHAT?" I roared, swinging my legs off the table. "Oh no you don't! You don't get to abandon me for a man, no matter how hot he is! Didn't you hear what happened to Asher for doing just that?!"

"BRAAINS! Only one with BRAAAAAINS!"

OH MY GOSH YOU ARE A TREASURE

NEVER CHANGE

That was beautiful.

1. I feel bad for Asher. But on the other hand, even he isn't so selfish as to keep JC from helping Nick.

2. I have this feeling that if you put a defib on a wet chest it wouldn't end well...

3. I usually use terms of leaking for period blood, so now I'm either imagining tears leaking from her vagina, or menstrual blood leaking from her eyes. EITHER WAY DO NOT WANT DDDD:

4. I'm calling it that JC and Asher fucking pulled the ardeur from Anita so she was trying to feed hers while at the same time being drained and she drained Nick. Y'know, so JC and Asher could have a heightened goodbye sex.

Aww glad you're feeling better! Give Joram an extra belly rub from me. I hope he gets well soon too.

A doctor has defilibrator paddles charged, a nurse starts putting the pads and leads on his chest, the doctor calls READY and everyone else yells back CLEAR,

NO. Look, if Nicky's heart has stopped beating...this is going to do exactly nothing to help the situation. The whole point of the defib is to basically reset the pacemaker/nerves in the heart. It's used for abnormal heartbeats -- too fast, too slow, irregular -- to jolt things back into working how they should. Ms Biology Degree I-Do-More-Research-Than-Nonfiction missed a prime opportunity to sneer about how movies and tv constantly get this wrong (which they actually do) but I guess doctors/nurses/medics aren't as cool as cops and soldiers to talk to about stuff.

I was wondering about that, but I didn't know anything about it other than that movies and etc. always get it wrong, not what "right" would be. What would they do to get the heart beating again, do you know? Does the pounding on the chest thing actually work? (I write stories in which magic is used for this stuff, so I get around my ignorance that way :P.)

You can't restart a heart with CPR. If a heart restarts during that, it was probably healthy and something happened to interfere with its working. Or maybe you missed the heartbeat during your initial evaluation of the situation. But either way, that's very, very rare.

CPR is just a stopgap that allows oxygen to be introduced and circulated through the body by a foreign, outside source - namely, the first responder - until more skilled or equipped responders can arrive. You're working to protect the organs and future brain function. It's physically demanding and hard to do in the sense that you're jumped up on adrenalin. Also, you're probably going to break someone's ribs. Also, you use different breath/beat rhythms depending on the size/approximate age of the victim and whether or not you have a partner and, if you do have a partner, how you divide up the work.

And you never 'straddle' someone whose heart you're acting as the beat for. Firstly, you can't breathe into their mouth properly from that position. Secondly, that position is used to expel things trapped in the throat of unconscious people. It is also used to force vomiting, although more often than not, that's not what you're going for when the vomiting happens. (There are a surprisingly large number of ways to make someone puke when you're doing rescue breathing for them.)

What

subtle_shades said -- CPR is generally just to keep oxygen flowing, but it's only a temporary measure. Ditto with manually massaging the heart. You can also try drugs -- adrenaline/epinephrine -- to try to 'jump start' things again that way.

Yhe defibrillator is to shock the heart into asystole -- which is flatline -- so it's...very much like going CTRL ALT DEL!!! on the body and hoping things will reset. So, like, if a heart's not beating and you're shocking your heart into not beating to reboot, it may not be very effective. But

subtle_shades also mentions that some people can be treated so long as they're healthy. Admittedly, my experience with this stuff has mostly been in a study situation rather than a practical one -- I'm more into the lab side of sciencey things.

In retrospect, I really should've been more specific about the 'healthy' business by maybe adding 'and their heart was most likely stopped by outside forces.' Because while I've certainly never seen it, I definitely remember doing the scenarios during my teenage years. And almost all of them had an event like "Lightening bolt on a clear day comes out of nowhere and strikes a patron, who then falls into the pool. What do you do now?" Or "weird thing X happens while they are swimming and their heart instantly stops. Oh noes! Their enormous, muscular body has sunk to the bottom of the pool, much smaller female lifeguard! WHAT NOW, LIFEGUARD ON DUTY?"

That's okay! And now I'm laughing so hard at the idea of Nicky's scenario making it into textbooks and First Aid guides -- a giant therianthrope's heart stopped due to mystical interference mid-coitus, you're the first medic on the scene WHAT DO YOU DO? And then all the exasperated tutors all "whoever wrote 'check to see if he died with a smile' can GTFO."

We should write that book. It would be hilarious!

I was a lifeguard and I had to be certified on defibrillator use.

(A lot of pools and public buildings have them where I am. They're really not that hard to use.)

Yeah, they're good for abnormal heartbeats but they can restart a heart... provided that there was nothing wrong with it to begin with. It's not a fix so much as a jump start after something weird has happened.

Admittedly, I have no idea where sexed-to-death comes on the scale of Things That Stop Hearts, but, assuming that it works like a sudden, foreign jolt of electricity, it might be okay. (I have difficulty looking directly into the face of so much technical fail - especially since the Red Cross first aid book is only about a hundred pages, maaaybe a hundred and twenty pages, and has a ton of pictures/diagrams - but glancing through the text again, it seems to be like draining a battery of its life force. So, uh, it would probably make more sense if they just used a magical 'electrical' jolt to fix him.)

What really steamed me was the order of paddle use. (You don't charge the mobile ones before use. You do the paddle placement first because you absolutely, positively don't want to be jolted... which is also why you move the victim out of the puddle of pool water and do the charged/clear thing. It's not a rote. You say it so that everyone knows not to touch the guy who's gonna get electrocuted.)

Also, the 'straddling' to do CPR was a big, horrible no, because that position is good for forcing stuff out of people's trachea after they've lost consciousness, making them vomit, or cough up water. (Although there are other, potentially better positions for the water thing, depending on the circumstances.) And the moving him without a backboard and then again dragging him around after a major cardiac episode was just too much.

I'm sure that there are other ginormous, obvious fails in there but I couldn't make it through on less then a glancing skim. And even then I had an overly technical complaint that LJ ate.

Edited 2014-03-13 00:33 (UTC)

Oh this is handy to know. I mentioned in the comment above that most of my experience is more about study than practical; I studied to be a lab scientist so I'm more at home with slides and petri dishes. (Do not get me started about CSI.)

But...yeah, I would have thought that they'd go through more before leaping to the pads, like moving him out of the shower and doing proper CPR, just because Anita was pounding on his chest yelling for him to breathe doesn't mean she was doing it correctly and given that she was still straddling him...yeah, I'm inclined to believe that she has no idea how. (Which is another fail on LKH's part, because surely First Aid is part of police training, so it wouldn't be out of line for the Marshal Service to have it part of their courses too. Except oh Anita's so cool that she got a badge by passing the firearms test and that's all.) The more I think about it, the worse it gets.

I'm honestly surprised that LKH didn't think to do a magical solution to this problem, given all her ties to Nicky and everyone else, she probably could just visualise his heart and will it to begin beating again. After all, Brides have to do what their masters command them to do.

I wanted to be a lab scientist when I was a kid! I still have the kiddie microscope and slides to prove it!

Oh geez, they were still in the shower? Someone really should've been zapped via water-conducting-happens.

Plus, if someone's not breathing, it doesn't necessarily follow that their heart's not beating. The two aren't necessarily connected which is why you check airways, breathing, then heartbeat. So they hooked a guy up to a (lesser) car battery with no actual, much less independent, verification that he needed to be hooked up to it.

The legal liabilities. They call out to me.

I admit that I know nothing about police training, except that it's usually the fire department who shows up first where I am, but, that said, I totally agree with you. It only makes sense for someone working in law enforcement to know basic first aid, if only in case they get someone's bodily fluids on themselves, end up as someone's first responder or, in the AB verse, get bitten by something. (The firearms thing should only be an exemption in a dystopia where the state fully intends to murder their dissenting/non-knuckling-under citizens... and then, only if you're sure of the hitman's loyalties/priorities. Except we're meant to take the AB-verse as the happy sunshine 'verse...)

A magical solution that leads to a "happily ever after" moment? In the gritty ~~pile of poop~~ realism that is AB? It would be too jarring against all the heart-wrenching realness!

I firmly believe that the sporking_rat and some of the others are right and that Nicky was willed into heart failure because Anita didn't want JC and Asher to have a private boning party, refused to admit it, and passive-agressively willed poor old Nicky to die and interrupt JC's orgasms again. But, of course, it's not her fault which is why Nicky has to be zapped alive again. If he'd been magically fixable or gotten up when JC and Asher were called to deal with a situation that, frankly, shouldn't have been their business or even reported to them, that might've implied some form of culpability on Anita's part.

Honestly, I bet the first aid tent at the circus was probably all, "Oh geez, She shot someone again, didn't she?" when they got the call. And maybe "I'm going to get my medical degree soon. And then I'll work in an ER where it's so much less stressful/deranged than here. So, happy thoughts."

LAB WORK IS COOL. I wish I were working in my field but it wasn't hiring back then. Still, I have the biology degree and I can wage war on LKH's bullshit when I see it.

no no going back to reread, they're still in the shower when the medics arrive and then Nicky carried away to a bench. So there's that. But there's mention of having to turn the water off, so she's there pounding on his chest and trying to get him to breathe while there's water bucketing down on both of them? That's...no.

Now that you mention the bodily fluids thing, for ABverse, you'd think it'd be a priority in training since fluids can mean contagions or spells. Or at the very least, with zombies on the loose, you'd need to know how to clean an open wound to get rid of dead tissue to prevent infection. Zombie may not be a contagious condition, but the undead are basically walking bacteria farms. (though imagine if someone raised a zombie from the Spanish Influenza outbreak and it managed to kickstart a new epidemic? WHAT ABOUT SMALLPOX OR VARIOUS PLAGUES?)

And yeah I agree totally that it was a passive-aggressive thing on Anita's part that she needed the attention and this is what happened. This...may also explain why she never bothers to fully grasp control about the ardeur because then she can keep having sex with random/new people and keep binding them to herself and keep claiming that it's not her fault.

I hope the medics at the first aid tent have a betting pool going on what's happening below ground. And that JC pays their student loans. It's the least he can do for the stuff they go through.

As of Danse Macabre, it is canon that the only "perk" anyone gets who works for a Belle Morte line vamp, including JC, is sex.

Wow. At least now we know how he can afford the ludicrous glam goth wardrobe and private jet.

...I wonder if LKH realizes how Stuff/Work/Money in exchange for Sex = Prostitution?

Either way, that is the crappiest benefits package I have ever heard of, real or imagined. I'm flabbergasted.

I feel you on the wishing that you were working within your field thing.

....the bench strikes me as a terrible idea. And the sheer idiocy of attempting "CPR" while the victim is effectively drowning (especially since I remember there being something about there being lots of extra shower heads in that bathroom)...

Yeah, no.

Your bit on bodily fluids is genius as is your bit on zombies = fire ships.

I definitely believe that she chooses not to learn how to control the lust!magic for that exact reason (well, that and because lack of control someone equates to being a karma houdini in her author's mind), especially since JC offered to teach her not only how to control it but also how to feed without banging anyone and how to feed from a distance without touching anyone back in NiC and she just brushed it aside in favor of banging.

Yeah, they definitely deserve student loan repayments, hazard pay, and hush money for all the crap that they have to deal with and/or cover up.

I'm sorry that Joram's ill!

I had a huge, overly technical complaint about all the ENORMOUS FAIL of research here, but LJ ate it. (To be honest, it had to be read in a glancing skim. It was so painful to read.) The Red Cross' CPR/AED manual is short (maybe 100-120 pages long) with a lot of pictures. The course is also fairly cheap to take and open to everyone.

On the bright side, all of this Asher hate is helping me power through my wishlist fics. So that's good for me!

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KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 36

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