hex queen

Man wearing, “Make America Great Again” hat murders 2 strangers for no reason.

A Trump supporter murders 2 police officers because they told him he couldn’t wave a Confederate flag at a high school football game.

Two men beat a homeless man with a metal bar and urinate on him screaming, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” When asked for a comment about the incident Trump defends them saying, “My supporters are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again.”

Trump supporter attacks a Hispanic man and a Muslim student at a gas station while yelling, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

Trump supporter stabs a black man unprovoked because he was holding hands with a white woman, tells police they need to release him so he can attend a Trump rally that night.

Trump supporter attacks Muslim woman at airport.

A Trump supporter punches a 70 year old protester in the face.

Trump supporter arrested for brutally beating protester.

3 Trump supporters arrested planning terrorist attack to kill Muslims.

Trump supporter confuses an Indian man for a Muslim at restaurant and says, “Things are different now, I don’t want you sand n*ggers sitting next to me.” Before attacking the man.

“We got a new President you fucking f*ggots.” Men yell as they attack gay man.

Trump supporters track down and brutally beat an artist because she made a painting of Trump with a small penis.

Trump supporter who sucker punched protester: “Next time, we might have to kill them.”

Trump is asked to comment on his supporters brutally beating a black man, he responds with, “Maybe he should have been roughed up,”

“You fucking gorillas and baby monkeys, We voted for Trump. Trump’s building a wall, beaners, and you’ll be going back to where you belong.” Man yells at black elementary school children unprovoked before he swerves his car at them attempting to hit them.

Trump supporters beat black man so badly he’s hospitalized for concussion and call him the n-word.

Trump supporter pepper sprays a 15-year-old girl point-blank in the face after another Trump supporter groped her breasts, shouting “n*gger lover” as she attempted to run away.

Trump supporter walks up to a black man in the middle of a downtown area and says, “Donald Trump will deport you.” Before punching the black man.

“Trump is going to win and if you don’t like it I’m going to beat your ass,” Trump supporter yells at random black woman outside of convenient store.

Man attacks and kicks Muslim airport employee shouting, “Trump is here now, he will get rid of all of you.”

In 8 months Trump supporters attacked protesters at 20 different rallies.

Trump supporter tracks down a local Latino Democratic political candidate and tries to run him and his elderly mother over with a car. (The Latino candidate is also a former marine.)

“This is for Donald Trump!” man yells as he runs up a Latino person and punches them in the head.

Trump supporter goes to Hillary Clinton rally to disrupt the event, ends up punching someone when asked to leave.

Trump supporter punches, chokes and slaps protesters on video during rally.

An angry mob of Trump supporters brutally beat and grab a mans genitals because he held up a, “Republicans Against Trump” sign.

A Trump supporter yells, “Get your black kids out of here. Do you even have a job? Do you know what a job is, n*gger?” Before physically attacking a black man who had come to the hospital to get help for his sick 2 week old daughter.

Local Republican Politician sexually assaults a woman by, “grabbing her pussy.” and then says he is allowed to do it because now that Trump is president he doesn’t have to be politically correct.

Canadian man who was a vocal Trump supporter both online and in person goes into a mosque and murders 6 people.

Trump supporter physically assaults Comedian on stage for making Anti-Trump Joke.

Man yells, “Trump” while beating African immigrant cab driver.

A Trump supporter is arrested for burning a Mosque down.

A Trump supporter sees a car has pro-gay bumper stickers on it and then follows the car, waiting for the 75 year old driver to get out before brutally attacking him while screaming, “My new president says we can kill all you f*ggots now.”

A Trump supporter is arrested after brutally attacking gay men outside a McDonald’s. Witnesses describe the aftermath as, “There was blood everywhere.”

A Muslim refugee gay rights activist is kidnapped and raped by two men in retaliation for, “Trump being mocked.”

A Trump supporter is arrested on terrorism charges for building bombs he was going to use to kill Muslims.

Person spray-paints a transgender veterans car with the word “Trump” then sets it on fire.

A Trump supporter attacks two Muslim women and tries to push over a stroller with a baby in it while screaming, “Get the fuck out of America”

A Trump supporter tells a random Muslim woman he sees on the street, “I’m voting for Trump because he said he would send all of you terrorists out of this country.” Before attacking her.

I’m gonna start by revealing the well-kept secret that I live in Ohio… in case all the buckeye references flew by you. And Ohio… is obsessed with space travel. I mean- it makes sense. We’ve got a couple astronauts in our history, there’s the National Aeronautics and Space Museum in Dayton, and on those quiet summer nights, where the sky is clear and the stars are twinkling in the distance, it is hard to not look up at the darkness and wonder if there is intelligent life out there. (Not here.)

Anyhow, all the fourth graders have a big space-related project around this time of year and this means that we, as craft retailers, have to be problem solvers. The number one problem is ‘oh gods, please tell me that you’re going to put a primer down on that styrofoam before you spray paint it.’

Because- you guessed it- everyone is making a damn solar system model. 

That is to say… their parents are making the solar system model. 

I was just finishing up explaining the use of a styrofoam primer and which spray paints are safe to use with styro to the mother of one ten-year-old when the mother of another ten-year-old rounds the corner looking desperate. 

“Is this a good paint for cardboard?”

It’s not. So I round her back to where her son and daughter are waiting and explain them what will work. She needs green, and there are three different kinds of greens. The mom holds them up and has her daughter choose. 

“Which one do you want for your face?”

I freeze because putting acrylic on your skin is a great way to get a rash. “Hold on, you’re not putting this on your skin, are you?”

“No, gosh no. We’re painting a box and putting the box on her head.”

…

Okay, I’m curious. “Can you explain what you’re making?”

The daughter chimes in. “We have to do a project for school and I’m gonna dress up like a alien!”

Instantly, I love this child. Not just because she considers dressing up as an alien to be an acceptable school project, but because she’s not leaving it to her mom to do all the work. 

So we talk for a minute about project stuff and she tells me that her brother is going to be the first man on Mars. Her brother is five. Her brother concurs- he is going to be the first man on Mars. Their mom tells me about the Neil Armstrong museum nearby. Like… this is a family of people excited about the future of space travel.

“Did you hear about those new planets,” I asked. 

The little girl starts jumping up and down. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Mom: “Can you remember what they said about the new planets?”

“They said…. they said that they can… uhhh… sustain life! There might be aliens!”

Mom: “Now, they said they can sustain life, but I think they also said that it isn’t very advanced life.”

The little girl looks off into space- contemplating this new information. She is formulating a very important thought. 

Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.

This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.

Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.

I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.

And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.

You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.

So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)

Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.

They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.

Don’t go near big trees in the night

If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night

I have broken all these rules.

I’ve seen some shit.

If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.

One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.

You think it’s the neighbor kids.

It’s not the neighbor kids.

Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.

So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.

If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.

Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.

Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.

We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you). 

But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.

I just…yes. This. All of this. And then some.

You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to believe in it.