High Schools vs Universities Essay

Entering a university is a very important and responsible step for every teenager, and frequently it is connected with definite psychological discomfort and fears. Many high school seniors are afraid of possible difficulties and problems, which can arise in a new environment of university. This work is an attempt to examine and compare the most important differences between studying in a high school and studying in a university. The first and the most significant difference is responsibility. In high schools, teachers or parents usually remind students of their responsibilities, do the entire scheduling job and give permissions to join special activities, as well as supervise and correct students’ behaviors. However, in universities, students are supposed to be grown enough to shoulder all the responsibilities for managing own time, behaving properly and making own decisions. Another difference is organization of classes and educational process. In high schools, classes are organized for students and usually include up to 35 students. In universities, students have personal schedules and classes can include up to 100 people. In high schools, students study 30 hours a week and are provided with the textbooks, however, in universities, students study about 16 hours a week and are not provided with the textbooks. Finally, outside preparation is one more crucial difference. Typically, high school students spend less than 2 hours a week for doing their homework, which usually includes short and quite easy assignments. In universities, it is necessary to study minimum 2 hours for every 1 hour of class work, and homework includes preparing term papers and serious researches, as well as regular revising of the material. Certainly, there are a great number of other differences between universities and high schools, which include the issues of tests, grades, teaching strategies, and so on. It is unquestionable that understanding and learning more about these principal differences can be very helpful for all high school seniors for managing their fears and achieving a smoother transition.

Cypriot Banking Crysis Scr

CY ————————————————- [ ] ————————————————- CSR essay Kozhevnikova E. , Sadokhina A. , Yatisyshina P. [ ? . . ] The problem2 Time-line2 Reasons of crisis in Cypriot banking sector:4 Moral Dilemmas4 The problem The current crisis of banking system in Cyprus had raised difficult moral dilemmas for Cypriot government, members of Euro Union and other affiliated governments.Cypriot banks became unable to secure the deposits due to several reasons: the Greek crisis, crisis in real estate sector. It provided relatively high income on deposits, which is always associated with risky investments. The macroeconomic situation in the world only worsened the situation. To sum up, the some of the banks simply lost the money of the depositors. In this case, the problem o f allocation of losses appeared. Who should bear the losses for the mistakes made by Cypriot banks, which were aggravated by the multiple unfavorable circumstances?The depositors who brought their money to banks? All of them? Prosperous European countries? We should remember, that the ones who are in charge of this situation simply can’t cover that costs (banks have no liquid assets cover the losses). In this paper we discuss the impacts of different possible solutions of this problem from the point of ethics theories. We start we describing the background of the problem including time-line of facts, the reasons for crisis of Banking System, than we move on to reviewing different options of how to save Cypriot economy using theories of ethics.Time-line * 14-15 March – EU-summit as a result of which was reaching the deal between Cyprus Euro Zone and IMF (International Monetary Fund) for a 10 billion Euro bailout on condition that Cyprus imposes a one-off levy of 6,75% t o insured deposits (under 100 000 Euro) and 9,9% to uninsured deposits (over 100 000 Euro). So that Cyprus will provide 5,8 billion Euros to secure the 10-billion bailout. * March 16 – first day of Cyprus Bank closure after the government announced Bank holidays. The idea of imposing a tax on ordinary depositors resulted in mass protest-demonstration of Cypriots, citizens also protested against Germany dictating such hush conditions. It had also caused anxiety in other countries – for setting such an extraordinary and threatening precedent. * March 19 – the Cyprus Parliament rejects a 10 billion Euro bailout package (lawmakers voted 36 against 19 abstaining) arguing that it is unacceptable to take money from regular account holders.The chairmen of the Cyprus Investor Association said Parliaments’ rejection of the deal  «will buy us some time to see if we can come up with a better agreement » * The President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades proposed to mak e an exception for deposits with less that 20 000 Euros to calm the public, but that didn’t work out either * The failed vote intensified the relationship between Cypriot government and EU. Cypriots accused EU for pressing them to accept an unacceptable deal that heats ordinary savers and pensioners.In return, German officials and IMF stated that they didn’t force Cypriot government to impose the deposit on depositors but that one way or another the country must come up with the rest 5,8 billion Euros to secure the bailout. * The next step included testing to which extent Russia would be willing to assist Cyprus in this difficult situation. Investments of Russian depositors accounted for about 20 billion Euros in Cypriot banks, so Russia is for sure an affiliated party.Russian officials reacted furiously to the proposed tax deposit bank * March 22 – Cyprus adopted legislation that allows the government to split the Cypriot lenders into good banks and bad banks a nd creates resolution framework to wind down banks. * March 24 – a new bailout deal between Eurozone and Cyprus. Cyprus will get a 10 billion Euro bailout on condition that Laiki (Popular) Bank, the second largest bank in Cyprus will be wound down.The deposits under 100 000 Euros will be fully compensated by the government, the depositors with more than 100 000 Euros on their accounts will face extremely huge losses. In this case Cyprus successfully avoided being excluded from EU, which occurred to be highly probable. What is more, this solution pensioners and clients with small deposits (which mean with low income level) won’t be affected, so the anger of the public will be reduced. Finally, two biggest Banks will be restructured: Laiki Bank will be wind down, Bank of Cyprus will capitalize at the expense of it’s clients; insured deposits of Laiki Bank will be transferred to Bank of Cyprus, owners of uninsured deposits of Laiki Bank will lose up to 80% of their deposits; 37,5% of uninsured deposits of Bank of Cyprus are transferred into stocks of Bank of Cyprus which actually cost nothing, 22,5% will be frozen so clients have no right to use that sums of money.In this case the costs of bank mistakes lay down on clients with deposits over 100 000 Euros. By the way, most of such clients are Russian (Russian investments in Cypriot bank sector are estimated 26 bn Euro, they exceed Cypriot GDP which is around 18 bn Euro). Russians were happy to use Cyprus as an offshore – due to double taxation agreement. This was a place where nobody asked where that money came from. At the same time EU and Cyprus were happy to transfer the costs to Russian depositors by expropriating their depsits.Is it ethical? Not the easiest question to answer One more concerning fact: . ? 1 15 ( ) ? . , ? . , . ? ? . - - ? . - Reasons of crisis in Cypriot banking sector:The Greek financial crisis had put in danger the stabil ity of all Eurozone. But the greatest impact was imposed on Cyprus due to their strong economic and financial bonds. Cyprus's banking sector was affected the most. It became quite clear that banking system of Cyprus is in danger a couple of years ago. Stavrakis   -the Finance Minister of Cyprus said:  «We are a small country and most importantly, we have a banking system which has invested heavily in Greek bonds ». Nevertheless, the minister assured that Cypriot anking system was safe and sound, that it had a strong capital base and that there was a huge inflow of foreign deposits which helped to stabilize the situation. Anyway, the prime reason of crisis in Cypriot banking sector is cancellation of Greek bonds. It was not a secret that Cypriot banks invested heavily in long-term Greek bonds, so when a default in Greece was announced and it was stated that Greece is not going to fulfill its bonds obligations, and, as a result, the trust in Cypriot banks declined. As the trust in banks decline, depositors tend to take back their money.But this is a trap: something happens in the banking industry, depositors leave, at the same time a lot of bank assets are frozen in long-term obligations. Theoretically, the bank has or practically has enough assets to return everything to clients, but these assets are not liquid, so at the moment when clients start to panic and claim for their money, the bank is under threat of running out of liquid assets to pay to clients. This can happen to any bank, even the most reliable one. The moment panic begins – the bank is under great threat.This is why laws that don’t allow taking back deposits at any moment may be quite reasonable. Here is a breath summary of reason of Cypriot banking sector crisis: * Huge investments of Cypriot banking sector in Greek default economy =; sufficient losses and asset write-downs of Cypriot banks * A strong offshore orientation of Cypriot economy: total sum of deposits heavily exce ed GDP * As a result the government (does it have to? ) is not able to compensate the losses of depositors * Unfavorable macroeconomic situation in EU and world The fact that Cypriot banks haven’t revalued their assets for a long time, so the assets were overestimated * And many other reasons that we will understand 20 years after Moral Dilemmas Here is a list of moral dilemmas occur in such a complicated situation: 1) Who should bear the risk of bank bankruptcy? Government/all customers/the richest customers/other countries’ governments/†¦ 2) Can expropriation be ethical? 3) 4) ——————————————– [ 1 ]. http://online. wsj. com/article/SB10001424127887323605404578384331402208120. html [ 2 ]. http://www. nytimes. om/2013/03/20/business/global/cyprus-rejects-tax-on-bank-deposits. html? _r=0 [ 3 ]. http://www. bbc. co. uk/news/world-europe-21916102 [ 4 ]. http://lent a. ru/news/2013/03/25/threat/ [ 5 ]. http://somo. nl/dossiers-en/sectors/financial/eu-financial-reforms/newsletter-items/issue-17-march-2013/innovative-approach-in-cyprus-bailout [ 6 ]. http://www. cyprusnewsreport. com/? q=node/4239 [ 7 ]. http://www. mondaq. com/x/231362/Financial+Services/The+Latest+Developments+In+The+Cyprus+Banking+Sector [ 8 ]. http://www. reuters. com/article/2013/03/22/us-column-cyprus-investing-saft-idUSBRE92L0UV20130322

Amazon Case study Essay

As seen from 2014, Amazon.com is a no brainer of a business proposition. Today you can buy most things from Amazon.com – books, movies, health and beauty products, appliances, sporting goods†¦..online and the company will ship these purchases to your home the same day and often at little or no cost to you. The typical 2014 university student has grown up with the World Wide Web and eCommerce and takes these services for granted. For its part Amazon recorded revenues of $17.09 billion dollars in 2013 but for all that activity, the company did not yield a profit. According to its founder and CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon strives to be the retailer of choice for all things and for all people globally. To this end, Amazon’s profit margins on most products are razor thin and its business practices regarding free shipping and generous return policies erode earnings. Still there is no question that Amazon.com is one of the darlings of the new millennium’s Internet e conomy and a trend-setting retailer in the era of online retailing. In contrast, Amazon’s early history was marked by startling losses and lots of red ink. Why was this so? To understand Amazon’s origins, we must go back to 1994 when Bezos worked for the Shaw grocery store chain and read a study that predicted the Internet would explode in popularity. He figured that before long people would be making money selling over the Web. After considering any number of products to sell online, he settled on books, a standardized product already electronically cataloged, that could be easily managed through an automated supply chain system. Most notably, the typical book store typically managed an inventory of two to three thousand books whereas his imagined online service that would carry them all. In Bezo’s business model, he would disintermediate the retail process, eliminating stores and warehouses. Instead his customers would purchase their books from catalogs on his company’s Web site. Orders would be filled from a new kind of facility, a fulfillment center. In implementing this business model, Bezos quickly discovered that the only way to ensure a positive customer experience was for Amazon to operate their own fulfillment centers, controlling the transaction from start to finish. All of this may sound quite straightforward today but Bezo and his backers were treading in totally unchartered waters in 1995. To compete in this space, Amazon.com required a huge infusion of capital. Those fulfillment centers cost about $50 million apiece. The first of these in Fernley Nevada housed three  million books, CDs, toys, and housewares in a building a quarter-mile long by 200 yards wide. What distinguished this facility from the typical retail warehouse was that it was completely computerized. The associated business processes were largely automated and information intensive. Once customer orders were placed via Amazon.com’s Web site, the company’s information systems would send these orders to fulfillment center â€Å"pickers† who would in turn roam the shelves in a systematic manner assembling customer orders. Along the way, these information systems would capture detailed information on the time and steps involved in filling individual orders, w orker error rates, the flow and turnover of inventory and of course associated cost of operations data. Amazon managers employ this information to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of their processes. For example, as reported by Fred Vogelstein: †¦. by redesigning a bottleneck where workers transfer orders arriving in green plastic bins to a conveyor belt that automatically drops them into the appropriate chutes, Amazon has been able to increase the capacity of the Fernley warehouse by 40%. [In 2003], Amazon’s warehouses handle three times the volume they could in 1999, and in the past three years the cost of operating them has fallen from nearly 20% of Amazon’s revenues to less than 10% percent. The company doesn’t believe it will even have to think about building a new warehouse for another year. The warehouses are so efficient that Amazon turns over its inventory 20 times a year. Virtually every other retailer’s turnover rate is under 15. Indeed, one of the fastest-growing and most profitable parts of Amazon’s business today is its use of its supply chain management processes to service the eCommerce business needs of other retailers, suc h as Toys â€Å"R† Us and Target. All of this helps explain Bezos’s larger point, one he’s been making since he started Amazon but that people are only now starting to believe: â€Å"In the physical world it’s the old saw: location, location, location,† †¦.. â€Å"The three most important things for us are technology, technology, technology.† [But technology is actually the means by which Amazon manages its most valuable asset, its data. Data about products, data about customers, data about supply chain management, data about suppliers†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.] â€Å"There just aren’t other companies that let a consumer order two out of what are millions of products in a warehouse and then quickly and efficiently, at low cost, get those two things into a single box.†. But success was not a  forgone conclusion. Amazon faced a lot of red ink in its first five years. Ultimately its devotion to data paid off. As its competitors disappeared from the scene, Amazon leveraged its data management capabilities to drive error out of operations, personalize the Web experience for its customers, and add value to its relations with suppliers by providing them with deep business intelligence concerning the public’s interest in their various products. To achieve these results, Amazon developed its own methods and built its own Web-enabled information systems from scratch. Fortunately, the company could take advantage of established supply-chain management (SCM) systems for the backend of the business. In the final analysis, it was Am azon’s dedication to collecting and using information to run its business, an effort spearheaded by the company’s Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels and his MIS team that turned the enterprise profitable. Now that Amazon has mastered both the fulfillment side of eCommerce and the data and information management side of global business management, two major profit centers at Amazon that help feed its bottom line include: back-end fulfillment services for other global retailers and cloud computing services for the likes of iTunes and Netflix.

Book Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Book Review - Essay Example Even in today's market, every term of economy is more or less associated with the value of gold. Lewis also discusses the role of governments and banks in controlling the market with the help of gold price. The way Lewis says everything in Gold is fascinating and his use of language is quite comprehensible to a layman. The writer is quite well known in the world of major economic journals and here in this book, too, he leaves a mark of his writing dexterity and crystal clear understanding of the subject. "Good Money is Stable Money" is the title of the first chapter of this book. Gold begins with very interesting lines where Nathan Lewis explains why human beings are actually the weakest creatures on the earth. Creating tools, discovering techniques and establishing organizations are all that the human beings can do. Human beings do not have efficiency like the animals to hunt for food, but they are very good at calculations. Calculating the effort and productivity, they have gone to the top of the world and ruling over all the other species alive on earth. Then Lewis turns to the subject of capital investment, which is one of the main sources that have been used for the development of individual economy and productivity. Taking risk is undoubtedly a part of this investment and this cannot be avoided by any means. Lewis compares the risk factor with the endangerment that is involved in the act of hunting. The risk factor present a constant threat and the human beings have always fou ght with that. The author explains how the human beings have always searched for a method to develop their productivity. This characteristic, according to him, is quite natural for the most rational creature on this planet. He draws the reference of Charles Darwin in order to prove his theory. Hardship is an integral part of any financial establishment in a human being's life. To draw a comparison Nathan Lewis beautifully draws the picture of a pregnant mother who suffers from pain during feeding herself. Then he also draws the reference of a family structure to show how the whole system operates. Food and shelter of the family are the elements that are ensured by the husband, while, on the other hand, the wife nurtures the new-born baby and takes preparations for the upcoming future days. Through a series of examples Lewis wants to establish an idea in the readers' mind that some of the very basic steps are required for human beings' existence, whether be at the level of families o r in business. These steps include building knowledge (which, in case of business, can be taken as capital investment), specializing in some subject, productive efforts (or in commercial terms, 'equity investment'), and maintaining promises as well as other bonds. The relationship between children and their parents is also drawn into observation regarding this topic. Lewis says that in business, too, the children or the establishment should look after their parents or founders at some point of time. (Page: 5-6) Explaining the market economy, Lewis contradicts the theory of competition in the market. According to him, the system involves more of a cooperation rather than competition among the companies. This cooperation has expanded with the spread of the market horizon and dependability on people of different strata. As

Enterprice system Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Enterprice system - Essay Example Therefore, client-server systems can definitely help them in making effective use of client-server technology. However, increased dependence on the centralized server is a disadvantage of such models because if the server goes down, the entire network of computers becomes unable to work. b) Thin-Client Model The thin client technology also provides server-based computing facility to companies (Kumar 2007). There is a browser terminal or a central server from which all other computers can access required information, as well as can do required work through sharing. Companies can use either standalone or wireless thin clients to run their business processes. The purpose of the technology is to facilitate businesses through reducing the total cost of ownership and providing easy and efficient usage. The main advantages of using think clients are security, efficient use of resources, and low cost (Kumar 2007). The main disadvantage of this technology is that not is not designed for heavy tasks. Answer No. 2 a) Risks to Data Integrity of Distributed Databases â€Å"A distributed database is a database that is split over multiple hardware devices but managed by a central database controller† (Holmes n.d.). A distributed database means division of a database into different physical units separated by business or geographical regions. Some of the main advantages of using distributed databases in business include better control of resources and improved business performances. However, the risks associated with data integrity of distributed databases include accuracy of stored data and the risk of unauthorized access to spoil or alter the stored data. b) Strategies to Overcome Risks The first strategy that can be used to overcome such risks include double checking the database for database integrity, domain integrity, and referential integrity before and after making changes to the data. The second strategy is using authentication of the people trying to log on to the network. Using this feature, only officials are provided with passwords and biometrics that they can use to prove their identity, as well as to make secure use of the distributed network. Authentication is done to make the network safe by stopping and preventing unauthorized attempts to the network. Answer No. 3 Groupware is a term that refers to specialized software applications that help members of a group in sharing and synchronizing business information, as well as in communicating with each other in an effective manner. â€Å"Groupware can allow both geographically dispersed team members and a company's on-site workers to collaborate with each other through the use of computer networking technologies† (Pinola, n.d.). Some of the main groupware technologies that are widely used in companies include shared Microsoft Office applications, email systems, video conferencing, electronic whiteboard, and instant messaging through messengers. All of these techniologies help e mployees in communicating with eah other regardig every business matter. These technologies also increase business efficency, as well as employee productivity. Therefore, the statement that helps in icnreasing on-going coordination between people is true. Answer No. 4 ICT, Information and Communication Technology, refers to every such technology that deals with electronic transfer of information from one point to another (Singleton 2010). The information exchange

Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 14

Marketing - Essay Example The essay elaborates the marketing mix of Tide along with the target market. Tide has adopted many marketing strategies in order to keep their market share. Few of the strategies are discussed in the essay. Not only in US the brand has captured other market too by its products and has been successfully penetrating more areas which are not yet tapped by the brand. Tide has tapped foreign market like India (Loudon, 2002). Tide has targeted their customers and positioned the products in such a way that they have made their products a unique one among the mass. Tide has also faced with environmental issues in foreign markets which have been discussed in the section. Product Overview Tide detergent powder is a well known brand in the detergent industry which was first introduced in 1946. It is the market leader in 23 countries worldwide. Tide is regarded as P & G’s flagship brand. It was first introduced in US market as the synthetic detergent for heavy-duty and machine cleaning. T ide has initially started with white powdered bead but later it has included orange tinged liquid form in 1984. Today both the non-ultra and ultra products are dark blue in color with an exception of the product Tide Free which is clear in color. Tide had introduced a large array of products such as Tide Liquid, Tide with Febreze Freshness, Tide Powder, Tide Coldwater and many more. All the products that fall under the brand umbrella â€Å"Tide† has the four main utilities such as: 1. Convenient to use and have reasonable price to target the lower income class. 2. Washing at normal temperature (both hand and machine wash). 3. It saves water and also time. 4. Removes stubborn strains, protects color and leaves fresh smell even after the cloth is dry. Target market of Tide in US and India Tide brand first test marketed its products in the US market to see the reaction among the users of the product (Kotler, 2012).When the result came positive they were encouraged to make the pr oduct more aware among the mass so that they start using their new brand. Through many marketing strategies they penetrated the market and made a significant in the laundry market. The company has made extensive consumer research and then they have come to the following conclusions: 1. Women take the main decision of choosing any brand of home products. 2. The lower income group use bars of detergent to wash their utensils. 3. Women want their family’s well being and thus they want the maximum value out of the brand. 4. Women are quite price sensitive customers. They want products which are reasonable in price and also give satisfaction after using it. 5. Every household want to use such detergents which are long lasting and does not erode away in few uses. They even want detergent bars which are tough so that they not melt fast and are wasted. Thus from the above conclusions it can be said that Tide’s main target customers are the women group. Tide has always tried to contribute to the households to its maximum by providing them with the detergent powders which will make their cloths smooth and clean. Tide in US has targeted the women group as well as the lower income group. Women in US are basically working and thus they prefer to use a detergent which will be quickly effecting and is free from hassle. They do not have much time to wash the same cloth a many times if the dirt is not cleaned in first wash. Thus they require a reliable detergent powder which will do its work perfectly. Tide fulfills the need of these women by

Education As The Cornerstone Of Success Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 8

Education As The Cornerstone Of Success - Essay Example Many opportunities come because of acquiring education. From the basic standards of formal education, it ensures that individuals acquire life skills from the starting point. A person develops knowing the basic requirements of him from society. It is interesting to note that the definition of success in life depends on what the society believes in. Therefore, by learning what society requires exposes people to the path of fulfilling their destiny resulting in success. The curriculum then provides all the skills available to the individual as it awaits him to develop an interest in his own areas. By providing all the skills, education gives the individual an opportunity to choose what he is interested in partaking. The curriculum defines each an every skill and puts measures to see them grow into success. By so doing, it helps to shape the individuals’ interests without influencing them into taking something else. Its basic role is to shape their interests and nurture them. Education plays a role in enlightening people. As noted earlier, education involves the acquisition of knowledge and skills. This knowledge improves the mode in which the brain works. The brain receives a lot of information, after which it sorts and arranges them in a way that an individual is conversant with many things that occur daily. This knowledge broadens the way of thought and arguments. An argument entails a manner in which a person is capable of reasoning with the issues and being able to separate facts from mere propaganda. It is only because of acquired knowledge that someone is able to reason out consciously. In addition to this, a person with an average education is able to think in a higher level as compared to another average uneducated person.

Marketing concept and marketing orientation Essay

Marketing concept and marketing orientation - Essay Example Marketing orientation centres on the target market. Marketing orientation also means organisations will most likely practice globalisation since flexibility is paramount in a more and more competitive environment. With marketing orientation, an organisation can sway customer demand by making goods and services that are appealing, affordable, and easily accessible. Essentially, marketing orientation means an organisation has to adopt the marketing concept. Marketing orientation means an organisation has competitive edge over rival firms (Almquist, 2014). Rival organisations always find it hard to emulate marketing orientation when used as an internal strong point. This is because organisations always find marketing orientation hard to maintain. Maintaining marketing orientation means an organisation will have to stop being transparent about its promotion and communication strategies. The lack of transparency creates competitive advantage for an organisation and makes marketing orientation non-transferable. Market-oriented organisations view these characteristics of marketing orientation as a resource for competitive advantage. To acquire this advantage, the organisation will also have to pour more resources into research, promotion, retailing, and sales. Target markets always follow certain trends that a market-oriented organisation has to know and abide by to gain the sector’s competitive edge. Abiding by these trends means th e organisation has to come up with commodity strategies that address customer needs and wants. The four Ps of marketing, market plans, behaviour, and research are factors an organisation can consider when seeking market orientation. A stipulated example is GrameenPhone, Bangladesh’s top telecoms firm. In 2012, GrameenPhone had a market share of 62%, which represents 8.5 million subscribers. This market share seems impressive but is

ASPECTS OF COUNSELING Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

ASPECTS OF COUNSELING - Research Paper Example The cognitive aspect of counseling looks into how an individual reasons and processes information. In behavioral aspect the counselor looks into a person’s overt behavior and how learning has and can affect it. In affective aspect the counselor looks into what an individual is experiencing inside themselves. The spiritual aspect deals with a person’s religious affiliations or beliefs that affect their social life, emotions and physical well-being. A counselor therefore needs to know a client’s cognitive, behavioral, affective, and spiritual aspects before taking a specific counseling approach. Spiritual, Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Aspects of Counseling Introduction Counseling has been in existence for thousands of years, but it is one of the most misunderstood concepts in psychology. In the past, counseling was performed by wise elders in the communities with the family unit at its core. These elders counseled people on the various norms that existed an d how to follow them. This trend has continued to grow, but now it is parents and other community members such as teachers, coaches, and religious leaders that find themselves in the counseling field. These community leaders have the role of counseling inherently embedded in their duties. As time passed, counseling took new approaches that were more scientific although the ancient ones also depicted some level of science and ethics. The transformation of counseling has primarily been based on the need for it to suit different people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and lifestyles. Ironically, as the world has become more informed and technologically savvy, the breakdown of the family unit is on the rise. This brings about a generation of people who have not developed the emotional, mental, behavioral, and spiritual skills needed in our complex and changing society. This and more reasons have contributed to the development and spread of modern techniques and theories in counseling . The misunderstanding gap in relation to counseling in the past has been also reduced with more people seeking formal counseling services. In addition, counseling today does not have the stigma it once held in the past. In actuality, many theories used today consider counseling as a process where the client and the counselor come up with solutions or plans together. Today’s counseling has taken an integrative approach with the incorporation of spiritual, affective, behavioral and cognitive aspects in treating the client through individual or group counseling. Cognitive Aspect of Counseling: Rational Emotive Behavior Theory (REBT) The cognitive domain is basically a domain that focuses on how an individual thinks and reasons. Every individual has mental processes which include knowledge, comprehension, problem solving, and critical thinking or analysis. It is crucial for the counselor to understand how the client can process information. To elaborate this, a client may have t heir reasoning blurred by emotions rendering them incompetent to develop conclusive, decisive or sound solutions. Clients can be illogical and can exhibit irrationality in their judgment and attitudes (Hollon, Stewart and Strunk, 2006). The counselor should in turn replace these by logic and rationality in the client’s ideas and attitudes. The client through cognitive aspect is able to gain self-actualization, thereby attaining some level of happiness (Kenardy, 2011). If a client can identify the element(s) in their environment that they struggle with, self- awareness and self-discovery may commence. Eric Berne for example developed Transactional Analysis that aimed

An American novelist Essay Example for Free

An American novelist Essay An American novelist, historian, and literary historian-that was Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. Having shown an excellent writing style and due to his love of Montana he went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his fiction The Way West in 1959. This book mainly talks about Dick Summer’s return to the Wild West to guide some settlers on the hard journey to Oregon through a dangerous trail (Joseph, Guthrie, Peter, 1959, 18). A. B. Guthrie wrote with a unique sense of style, skill, artful simplicity and eloquent sentiment and these are all apparent in the opening, the discovering, the settling, the emergent and the exploiting of the American West. At the point in his life when he was merely a university graduate in journalism, he pioneered the hard knowledge that has helped young novelists ascend to greater heights. Guthrie gave much of himself and his time to advise young writers just as Professor Theodore Morrison, his mentor, did for him. Guthrie’s ability to pay attention to historical accuracy, his love of nature, an unfailing ear for dialect and realistic dialogue and the skill to create unforgettable characters that readers easily adapt to care about are the traits that set him aside from other writers. The distinctiveness of his ability to frame vivid, tightly compressed scenes in which those characters intermingle is pure intellect (Joseph, Guthrie, Peter, 1959, p. 31). In defining the American experience, Guthrie’s The Big Sky is a big aid in attempting to understand the conflict during this time. It provides descriptive evidence of the attitude of pioneers, the readiness of the pioneers, the empathy for the land that fur-trappers and backwoodsmen had during that time and how all the diverse people merged to form a nation. Guthrie’s most outstanding accomplishment is demonstrated in his ability to affirm the range, complexity, and the intensity of the colonization of the Missouri and Columbia drainage basins by real people which was his large subject (Joseph, Guthrie, Peter, 1959, p. 45) . Work Cited Joseph Howard, A. B. Guthrie Peter Hurd. Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome. Yale University Press, 1959, 18, 31, 45

Substance Abuse Among Healthcare Professionals

Substance Abuse Among Healthcare Professionals â€Å"Statistically, about 10-15 of you have or will develop a substance use disorder† (Welsh 2002). This quote is stated by Christopher J. Welsh, M.D. to a group of healthcare providers during a substance abuse lecture. He is reinforcing the fact of how likely a healthcare worker can get into the habit. Substance abuse can include, but is not limited to, alcohol, narcotics, benzodiazepines and illegal drugs. It is not officially known why the abuse is so common in this specific group but it can be easily assumed that knowledge, access, and psychological issues would play a huge part. According to Dr. Welsh, the reasoning behind not knowing why substance abuse is so prevalent is because the majority of healthcare workers strongly object to the idea that they are addicted. In other words, they are in denial. There are two specific levels that drug users can divide themselves into: Abuse, which is the milder of the two, and dependence, which takes a more intense intervention and effort to cut the person of the habit. Since the focus of this paper is substance abuse that is the category that will be discussed. What exactly is considered abuse and how is it distinguished between an actual medical need? In Dr. Welshs lecture he mentioned four factors that are included. According to him at least one of these four factors must be accurate in order to be considered official abuse. These factors are: (1) A person is unable to complete social tasks in his or her life, (2) The consistent use of the drug in unsafe situations, (3) repeated drug affiliated legal offenses and (4) use of drugs even though it may cause social or interpersonal problems (Welsh 2002). For example, if a person is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder you may be prescribed Alprazolam. It is not considered abuse if you take your prescribed dose for oncoming anxiety while following the doctors instructions. When having an anxiety attack, or other symptoms of anxiety, Alprazolam helps to relax the person and help them feel ‘normal. When using Alprazolam without anxiety it can give a ‘drugged feeling with symptoms such as severe drowsiness to the point of impairment (Epocrates). Therefore if you use the drug without anxiety in unsafe situations, such as driving, it is considered abuse. When a person uses a drug they do so with the intention of trying to make themselves feel better. This could be a major cause for the denial that they actually have a problem. Not every person realizes how it affects friends, family, and peers. Even more so, they do not realize how it affects their job. It would take most people a serious intervention in order to help them break the habit. In the topic of drug use in the Health care workforce three questions come to mind: Why is it so prevalent among this specific profession? What are the signs to show if/when you should involve yourself with the suspected abuser? And where is help provided for the substance abusers? These three ques tions will be discussed in the following paragraphs. Why is substance abuse so prevalent in health care professionals? As mentioned above there are no precise facts as to why it is, because of the large percentage of people denying that what they do is considered abuse. Also mentioned above is that it can be assumed the reason can fall into at least one of the three categories: knowledge, access, and psychological factors. When a person works in healthcare they are exposed to a lot of basic information not commonly known outside of the healthcare facility, even if it is unintentional. An employee may hear and/or see how a patient is reacting to certain medications, such as morphine, see it is relaxing for the patient, then gain the knowledge that it is a medication that makes you ‘feel good. On an even higher level, many healthcare workers are required, for their job, to know what a drug does, why it is being given to the patient, and what common and serious complications to monitor for. When a nurse is ‘hands on with the p atient they become even more acquainted with the effects of the drugs. This can contribute to any future situation where the nurse may want to experiment. With this information at hand healthcare workers feel more comfortable using drugs and feel as if they can manage them better than the average person because of their knowledge. The access of drugs is a contributing factor as well. A nurse who works full time works at least 36 hours per week, giving him or her plenty of access to drugs. Although the new technology is making it harder to steal medications, it is still done. In addition to stealing nurses often time befriend doctors and could have doctors write prescriptions which allows even more access to drugs. Being a nurse, as mentioned above, requires knowledge of drugs and what they are used for. Because of this a nurse could make an appointment with her doctor, name specific symptoms, and know they will get a drug that they are seeking. Lastly, psychological factors contribu te to substance abuse being so prevalent. Nurses and Physicians have extremely stressful jobs, and they may seek to alleviate their stress in drug form. According to a study done by Cicala (2003) 8-12% of physicians abused or became substance abusers and Trinkoff and Storr (1998) did a study only to find that 32% of the 4,438 nurses being studied had some form of abuse. With all things considered, these are only including the healthcare individuals who admitted to having an abuse problem. Most of the drugs found to be used among the physicians were opioids and benzodiazepines while nurses had a wider variety and included illegal substances such as cocaine (Cicala 2003). What are the signs to show if/when you should involve yourself with the suspected abuser? According to a study done by Samuel D. Uretsky, PharmD (2008), it is difficult to determine a drug abuser in the healthcare field because it is generally found the job is the last thing to be affected. He goes on to explain that families and social lives are first to be torn apart versus in the average non healthcare worker there are the early signs to look for: being consistently late or absent, slacking off on the job, etc. He also goes on to make a valid point of coworkers not noticing, or turning their shoulder away from signs of abuse because they may be friends or they just dont want to get involved. In an online government brochure it sets certain guidelines to determine if the suspected individual is an abuser. These guidelines include: change in attitude and appearance, â€Å"heavy wasting of drugs†, relationships start to decline, more time than necessary spent near the drug sup ply, â€Å"insisting† on handling all injected narcotics, etc (Department of Justice). As a nurse we learn to follow the chain of commands. With this in mind it puts anyone at the predicament of being ‘the rat. No one wants to be the person who puts another persons license and career on the line. However, many patients are in the hands of drug abusers. When it doubt, or if making excuses for the potential drug abuser it, think if you would let a person of great importance to you be in the care of that specific healthcare worker. When suspecting a coworker of drug abuse you must, again, follow the chain of commands. Go to the charge nurse, or if it happened to be the charge nurse then go to the nurse manager. Most of the time, the employee will be approached by their superior and talked to about the obvious concerns. Many times this wakes them up to realize they actually have a problem and immediate improvements are shown, however sometimes it takes more serious interven tion (Department of Justice). Where is help provided for the substance abusers? There are a range of different rehabilitation programs available all over the country and some specific to health care workers. In fact, there are some affiliations aimed at preventing substance abuse among healthcare workers. The Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest has started to develop programs to help prevent the abuse. The method of prevention is to send messages out in different forms and educate the prevalence. They are trying to influence this by making it a part of their health and wellness program. â€Å"Included in our campaign are messages delivered in educational videos and newsletters, health risk appraisals, and personal health coaching† (BHRCS 2007). This is all taking place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but this is just the start of prevention. They hope to expand to health care workers around the country. The Interventional Project for Nurses, or IPN, has been created to assist nurses whose jobs m ay have been impaired or started to be impaired by drug use, alcohol use, or mental disorders. A nurse can place their own self in the program or can be placed in the program by their superior, or employer (IPN). Depending on where the individual works is the determining factor of what happens to the nurse, if caught being a substance abuser. The nurse could get as little as probation to as much as being fired in addition to losing their license. Either way, the program is there to help Nurses get back on their feet and get over their addiction. As a recap, drug abuse is prevalent in healthcare although there is no factual information to determine why, it can only be assumed. There are many abusers all around you as you work in the healthcare field and most go unnoticed. Their signs and symptoms are not the same as the average drug abuser and their work tends to be the last thing severely affected, making it more difficult to determine the abusers. If drug abuse is suspected it is an obligation as a licensed nurse to report it in the chain of commands, which in the long run will benefit the bigger picture. Being a drug abuser is a hard situation which may seem to have a dead end, however there are many rehabilitation programs focused on health care workers and at least one large affiliation focusing specifically on Nurses. Although it seems common sense that abusing drugs is wrong, it does not happen overnight. A person may find relief with a drug and start to use it without it thinking of long term effects. They may casuall y use it once and a while, and then increase it to more often, and then very frequently. Being educated on drug abuse, before stepping foot into the real world of nursing, helps to be prepared through primary prevention. Drug abuse, though hard to determine has a huge impact on our health care system as a whole and needs to be remedied. It is progressively improving, however only baby steps. This isnt a perfect world and not everyone can be helped, however, every person you help is one step in the right direction for our future. References Uretsky, Samuel D. (2004). Addicts in the OR? Retrieved July 17, 2008, from  www.medhunters.com No Author (2007). Substance Abuse Among Healthcare Professionals. Retrieved  July 17, 2008, from www.addictionsearch.com Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest (2007). Substance Abuse  Intervention for Healthcare Workers. Retrieved July 17, 2008, from  http://www.bhrcs.org Welsh, Christopher J. (2002). Substance Use Disorders in Physicians [Powerpoint  Slides]. Retrieved from www.alcoholmedicalscholars.org/physician-out.htm Department of Justice (n.d.) Drug Addiction in Healthcare Professionals. Retrieved  from www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/brochures/drug_hc.htm Intervention Project for Nurses (2008). Retrieved from http://www.ipnfl.org Alprazolam (n.d.). Epocrates Online. Retrieved on July 17, 2008, from  www.epocrates.com

Culture Essay -- Sociology, Hofstede

Hofstede (1997) defined culture as the â€Å"collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others† (p. 6). He referred to mental programming in order to explain patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. Cultural manifestation is identified as symbols, heroes, rituals, and values as a learned programming that is dependent on a social environment. Values represented the deepest manifestations of culture and are considered culture’s building blocks (Hofstede, 1980). One well-known paradigm Hofstede introduced is called cultural dimensions that include four independent cultural dimensions: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, and uncertainty avoidance. After further research, he developed the fifth dimension known as long-term/short-term orientation (Hofstede, 2001). The following section will discuss five of the dimensions to identify the cultural differences between the United States, India, and Thailand. Power Distance The power distance index â€Å"is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally† (Itim International, 2009). It is a fundamental structure endorsed by the societies’ followers and leaders in areas such as social status, wealth, and sources of power. A high power distance society embraces people with power. Powerful people are expected to have privileges, openly show their status and wealth, and are perceived to be good. On the other hand, a low power distance society embraces uniformity and minimizes inequalities. Those who hold more power in these societies attempt to look less powerful than they are (Albers-Miller & Gelb, 1996). Hofstede’... ...tinuous, ANOVA is the most appropriate method of analysis. Research Question The research question proposed there would be differences in levels of organizational dissent between India, Thailand, and the U.S. The ANOVA revealed significant differences in levels of dissent between the three groups. The means and standard deviations are displayed in Table 2. Overall, Americans are the most likely to express articulated dissent, with Thais being the less least likely: F(4, 1446) = 5.10, ï  ¨2 = .01, p Discussion The results revealed significant differences between Americans, Indians and Thais regarding the expression of dissent.

LSD :: essays research papers

On October 27, 1906, a child by the name of Albert Hofmann was born(Albert, 1). This child would grow up to change the world forever. His research would create of subcultures of both the 1970’s and 1990’s. His discoveries would cause both grief and delight. His work in pharmacology brought the world one of the most terrifying discoveries of the 20th century, LSD   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It was a prosaic day in July, 1938 when Swiss chemist, Albert Hofmann, first discovered Lysergic Acid Diethylamide(LSD). He was hoping to discover a new circulatory and respiratory stimulant, when he stumbled upon one of the world’s most horrifying man-made substances; however, when this phenomenon was first tested it had no effects on the lab animals, therefore its study was discontinued.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  LSD’s study was revived in 1943, when research indicated it could potentially be used as treatment for schizophrenia, due to its similarity in structure to Nicatamide, a chemical found in the human brain, which directly affects the experiences of a Schizophrenic (DEA,1). On April 16, 1943, while Dr. Hofmann was measuring a fresh quantity of LSD, he accidentally dosed himself and was overcome with confusion. He was then obligated to leave work due to “a sensation of mild dizziness'; and “extreme activity of imagination.';(Discovery, 2) On April 19, 1943, at exactly 4:20 pm, Dr. Albert Hofmann ingested 0.25 mg. of liquid LSD and journeyed on the first intentional “acid trip.';   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1947, Dr. Hofmann’s employers, Sandoz Laboratories, began marketing LSD in Europe. It was introduced into the United States a year later. They advertised it “as a cure for everything from schizophrenia to criminal behavior, ‘sexual perversions,’ and alcoholism.';(Henderson/Glass, 40) Sandoz Laboratories urged many doctors to experiment with LSD to gain further knowledge of experiences which may occur to a Schizophrenic.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The effects of LSD are completely unpredictable. The user usually experiences wild mood swings and the sensation of feeling multiple emotions at once. Colors seem more intense and objects appear to move in an almost stroboscopic manner. It has also been known for the user to feel as though they are seeing sounds and hearing colors. If a large enough dose is taken, the drug may produce perceptual delusions and hallucinations.

The Psychodynamic Model of Abnormality Essay -- Papers Psychology

The Psychodynamic Model of Abnormality The psychodynamic model of abnormality is useful to an extent. However it has many weaknesses. The psychodynamic model of abnormality was initiated by Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud was very interested in hysteria. This is the manifestation of physical causes. He became convinced that unconscious mental causes were responsible not just abnormality but also normality. Freud developed Psychoanalysis. This is a set of techniques for treating the unconscious causes of mental disorders and built up a psychoanalytic theory of how human personality and abnormality develop from childhood. His psychoanalytic approach had a great impact on psychology and psychiatry and was developed by other psychodynamic theorists. Psychoanalysis had a very fixed set of assumptions. One of these is the unconscious processes where many important influences on behaviour come from a part of the mind we have no awareness of called the unconscious. Another assumption is psychodynamic conflict. Different parts of the mind are in constant struggle with each other and the consequences of this are important in understanding behaviour. Freud also believed that behaviour is motivated by sexual and aggressive drives. The drives create psychic energy that builds up and create tension and anxiety if it cannot be released. Another assumption is development where personality is shaped by relationships, experiences and conflict, particularly during childhood. Freud’s psychoanalysis is probably the most important psychodynamic theory. His ideas developed a... ...century. It has had a significant effect on a wide range of disciplines such as anthropology, women’s studies and theology. Also, the sharp distinction between abnormality and normality of the biological model is ignored. Doing this, it has created more sympathy for people with psychological disorders. Psychoanalysis is more humane with its focus on talking as opposed to drugs, shock therapy or brain surgery. It also has the power to enhance our understanding of ourselves and from the number of people who testify how it has helped them in their own lives. In conclusion, the psychodynamic model is useful as it is still being used today by professional psychiatrists and works with many people. However, there are a lot of weaknesses to outweigh the positives, which means that the model can be seriously questioned.

Night World : The Chosen Chapter 8

Well?† Daphne said. â€Å"I think it's the slave trade.† And, Rashel thought, I think I was right-this is something big. The Night World slave trade had been banned a long time ago-back in medieval days, if she remembered the stories correctly. The Council apparently had decided that kidnapping humans and selling them to Night People for food or amusement was just too dangerous. But it sounded as if Quinn might be reviving it, probably without the Council's permission. How very enterprising of him. I was right about killing him, too, Rashel thought. There's no choice now. He's as bad as I imagined- and worse. Daphne was goggling. â€Å"They were going to make me a slave?† she almost yelled. â€Å"Sh.† Rashel glanced at the man behind the doughnut counter. â€Å"I think so. Well-a slave and a sort of perpetual food supply if you were sold to vampires. Probably just dinner if you were going to werewolves.† Daphne's lips repeated werewolves silently. But Rashel was speaking again before she could ask about it. â€Å"Look, Daphne-did you get any idea about where you might be going? You said they mentioned a boat. But a boat to where? What city?† â€Å"I don't know. They never talked about any city. They just said the boat was ready†¦ and something about an aunt-clave.† She pronounced it ont-clave. â€Å"The girl said, ‘When we get to the aunt-clave†¦'† Daphne broke off as Rashel grabbed her wrist. â€Å"An enclave,† Rashel whispered. Thin chills of excitement were running through her. â€Å"They were talking about an enclave.† Daphne nodded, looking alarmed. â€Å"I guess.† This was big. This was†¦ bigger than big. It was incredible. A vampire enclave. The kidnapped girls were being taken to one of the hidden enclaves, one of the secret strongholds no vampire hunter had ever managed to penetrate. No human had even discovered the location of one. If I could get there†¦ if I could get in†¦ She could learn enough to destroy a whole town of vampires. Wipe an enclave off the face of the earth. She knew she could. â€Å"Uh, Rashel? You're hurting me.† â€Å"Sorry.† Rashel let go of Daphne's arm. â€Å"Now, listen,† she said fiercely. â€Å"I saved your life, right? I mean, they were going to do terrible things to you. So you owe me, right?† â€Å"Yeah, sure; sure, I owe you.† Daphne made pacifying motions with her hands. â€Å"Are you okay?† â€Å"Yes. I'm fine. But I need your help. I want you to tell me everything about that club. Everything I need to get in-and get chosen.† Daphne stared at her. â€Å"I'm sorry; you're crazy.† â€Å"No, no. I know what I'm doing. As long as they don't know I'm a vampire hunter, it'll be okay. I have to get to that enclave.† Daphne slowly shook her blond head. â€Å"What, you're going to, like, slay them all? By yourself? Can't we just tell the police?† â€Å"Not all by myself. I could take a couple of other vampire hunters to help me. And as for the police†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Rashel stopped and sighed. â€Å"Okay. I guess there are some things I should explain. Then maybe you'll understand better.† She raised her eyes and looked at Daphne steadily. â€Å"First, I should tell you about the Night World. Look, even before you met those vampires, didn't you ever have the feeling that there was something eerie going on, right alongside our world and all mixed up in it?† She made it as simple as she could, and tried to answer Daphne's questions patiently. And at last, Daphne sat back, looking sick and more frightened than Rashel had seen her yet. â€Å"They're all over,† Daphne said, as if she still didn't believe it. â€Å"In the police departments. In the government. And nobody's ever been able to do anything about them.† â€Å"The only people who've had any success are the ones who work secretly, in small groups or alone. We stay hidden. We're very careful. And we weed them out, one by one. That's what it means to be a vampire hunter.† She leaned forward. â€Å"Now do you see why it's so important for me to get to that enclave? It's a chance to get at a whole bunch of them all at once, to wipe out one of their hiding places. Not to mention stopping the slave trade. Don't you think it should be stopped?† Daphne opened her mouth, shut it again. â€Å"Okay,† she said finally, and sighed. â€Å"I'll help. I can tell you what to talk about, how to act. At least what worked for me.† She cocked her head. â€Å"You're going to have to dress differently†¦.† â€Å"I'll get a couple of other vampire hunters and we'll meet tomorrow after school. Let's say six-thirty. Right now, I'm taking you home. You need to sleep.† She waited to see if Daphne would object, but the other girl just nodded and sighed again. â€Å"Yeah. You know, after some of the things I've learned, home's starting to look good.† â€Å"Just one more thing,† Rashel said. â€Å"You can't tell anybody about what happened to you. Tell them anything-that you ran away, whatever-but not the truth. Okay?† â€Å"Okay.† â€Å"And especially don't tell anyone about me. Got it? My life may depend on it.† â€Å"Elliot's not here.† The voice on the telephone was cold and as hostile as Rashel had ever heard it. â€Å"Vicky, I need to talk to him. Or somebody. I'm telling you, this is our chance to get to an enclave. The girl from the warehouse heard them talking about it.† It was Friday afternoon and Rashel was phoning from a booth near her school. Vicky was speaking heavily. â€Å"We staked out that street for days and didn't see anything, but you just happened to be in the right place at the right time to help a girl escape.† â€Å"Yes. I already told you.† â€Å"Well, that was convenient, wasn't it?† Rashel gripped the handset more tightly. â€Å"What do you mean?† â€Å"Just that it would be a very dangerous thing, going to a vampire enclave. And that a person would have to really trust whoever was giving them the information about it. You'd have to be sure it wasn't a trap.† Rashel stared at the phone buttons, controlling her breathing. â€Å"I see.† â€Å"Yes, well, you don't have much credibility around here anymore. Not since letting that vampire get away. And this sounds like just the sort of thing you'd do if you were in on it with them.† Great, Rashel thought. I've managed to convince her that I really am a vampire sympathizer. Aloud she said, â€Å"Is that what Nyala is telling everybody? That I'm working with the Night World?† â€Å"I don't know what Nyala is doing.† Vicky sounded waspish and a little uneasy. â€Å"I haven't seen her since Tuesday and nobody answers at her house.† Rashel tried to make her voice calm and reasonable. â€Å"Will you at least tell Elliot what I'm doing? Then he can call me if he wants to.† â€Å"Don't hold your breath,† Vicky said, and hung up. Great. Terrific. Rashel replaced the handset wondering if she wasn't supposed to hold her breath until Elliot called, or until Vicky passed on the message. One thing was clear: she couldn't count on any help from the Lancers. Or any other vampire hunters. Nyala could be spreading any kind of rumors, and Rashel didn't dare even call another group. There was no choice. She'd have to do it alone. That night she went to Daphne's house. â€Å"Well, she's grounded,† Mrs. Childs said at the door. She was a small woman with a baby in one hand, a Pampers in the other, and a toddler clutching her leg. â€Å"But I guess you can go upstairs.† Upstairs, Daphne had to chase a younger sister out of the bedroom before Rashel could sit down. â€Å"You see, I don't even have a room of my own,† she said. â€Å"And you're grounded. But you're alive,† Rashel said, and raised her eyebrows. â€Å"Hi.† â€Å"Oh. Hi.† Daphne looked embarrassed. Then she smiled, sitting cross-legged on her bed. â€Å"You're wearing normal clothes.† Rashel glanced down at her sweater and jeans. â€Å"Yeah, the ninja outfit's just my career uniform.† Daphne grinned. â€Å"Well, you're still going to have to look different if you're going to get into the club. Should we start now, or do you want to wait for the others?† Rashel stared at a row of perfume bottles on the dresser across the room. â€Å"There aren't going to be any others.† â€Å"But I thought you said†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Look. It's hard to explain, but I've had a little problem with the vampire hunters around here. So I'm doing it without them. It's no problem. We can start now.† â€Å"Well†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Daphne pursed her lips. She looked different from the disheveled wild creature Rashel had rescued from the street last night. Her blond hair was soft and fluffy, her cornflower blue eyes were large and innocent, her face was round and sweet. She was fashionably dressed and she seemed relaxed, in her own element in this normal teenager's room. It was Rashel who felt out of place. â€Å"Well†¦ do you want to just take along a friend or something?† Daphne asked. â€Å"I don't have a friend,† Rashel said flatly. â€Å"And I don't want one. Friends are people to worry about, they're baggage. I don't like baggage.† Daphne blinked slowly. â€Å"But at school†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"I don't stay at schools more than one year at a time. I live with foster families, and I usually get myself sent to a new city every year. That way I stay ahead of the vampires. Look, this isn't about me, okay? What I want to know-â€Å" â€Å"But†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Daphne was staring at the mirror. Rashel followed her gaze to see that the reflecting surface was almost completely covered by pictures. Pictures of Daphne with guys, Daphne with other girls. Daphne counted her friends in droves, apparently. â€Å"But doesn't that get lonely?† â€Å"No, it doesn't get lonely,† Rashel said through her teeth. She found herself getting rough with the lacy little throw pillow on her lap. â€Å"I like being on my own. Now are we done with the press conference?† Looking hurt, Daphne nodded. â€Å"Okay. I talked with some people at school and everything at the dub is going on the same as usual-except that Quinn hasn't been there since Sunday. Ivan and the girl were there Tuesday and Wednesday, but not Quinn.† â€Å"Oh, really?† That was interesting. Rashel had known from the beginning that her greatest problem was going to be Quinn. The other two vampires hadn't seen her-she didn't think they even realized that Daphne had run off with a vampire hunter last night. But Quinn had spoken to her. Had been†¦ very close to her. Still, what could he have seen in that cellar, even with his vampire vision? Not her face. Not even her hair. Her ninja outfit covered her from neck to wrist to ankle. All he could possibly know was that she was tall. If she changed her voice and kept her eyes down, he shouldn't be able to recognize her. But it would be easier still if he weren't there in the first place, and Rashel could try her act on Ivan. â€Å"That reminds me,† she said. â€Å"Ivan and the girl- are their little groups into death, too?† Daphne nodded. â€Å"Everybody in the whole place is, basically. It's that kind of place.† A perfect place for vampires, in other words. Rashel wondered briefly if the Night People owned the dub or if some obliging humans had just constructed the ideal habitat for them. She'd have to check into that. â€Å"Actually,† Daphne was saying, a little shyly, â€Å"I've got a poem here for you. I thought you could say you wrote it. It would sort of prove you were into the same thing as the other girls.† Rashel took the piece of notebook paper and read: There's warmth in ice; there's cooling peace in fire, And midnight light to show us all the way. The dancing flame becomes a funeral pyre; The Dark was more enticing than the Day. She looked up at Daphne sharply. â€Å"You wrote this before you knew about the Night World?† Daphne nodded. â€Å"It's the kind of thing Quinn liked. He used to say he was the darkness and the silence and things like that.† Rashel wished she had Quinn right there in the room, along with a large stake. These young girls were like moths to his flame, and he was taking advantage of their innocence. He wasn't even pretending to be harmless; instead he was encouraging them to love their own destruction. Making them think it was their idea. â€Å"About your clothes,† Daphne was going on. â€Å"My friend Mamie is about your size and she lent me this stuff. Try it on and we'll see if it looks right.† She tossed Rashel a bundle. Rashel unfolded it, examined it doubtfully. A few minutes later she was examining herself even more doubtfully in the mirror. She was wearing a velvety black jumpsuit which clung to her like a second skin. It was cut in a very low V in front, but the sleeves reached down in Gothic points on the backs of her hands almost to the middle finger. Around her neck was a black leather choker that looked to her like a dog collar. She said, â€Å"I don't know†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"No, no, you look great. Sort of like a Betsey Johnson ultra model. Walk a little†¦ turn around†¦ okay, yeah. Now all we have to do is paint your fingernails black, add a little makeup, and-â€Å" Daphne stopped and frowned. â€Å"What's wrong?† â€Å"It's the way you walk. You walk like-well, like them, actually. Like the vampires. As if you're stalking something. And you don't ever make a noise. They're going to know you're a vampire hunter from the way you move.† It was a good point, but Rashel didn't know what to do about it. â€Å"Um†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"I've got it,† Daphne said brightly. â€Å"We'll put you in heels.† â€Å"Oh, no,† Rashel said. â€Å"There is absolutely no way I'm going to wear those things.† â€Å"But it'll be perfect, see? You won't be able to walk normally.† â€Å"No, and I won't be able to run, either.† â€Å"But you aren't going there to run. You're going to talk and dance and stuff.† Hands on her hips, she shook her head. â€Å"I don't know, Rashel, you really need somebody to go there with you, to help you with this stuff†¦.† Daphne stopped and her eyes narrowed. She stared at the mirror for a moment, then she nodded. â€Å"Yeah. That's it. There's no other choice,† she said, expelling her breath. She turned to face Rashel squarely. â€Å"I'll just have to go with you myself.† â€Å"What?† â€Å"You need somebody with you; you can't do this all alone. And there's nobody better than me. I'll go with you and this time we'll both get chosen.† Rashel sat on the bed. â€Å"I'm sorry; this time you ‘re crazy. You're the last person the vampires would ever choose. You know all about them.† â€Å"But they don't know that,† Daphne said serenely. â€Å"I told everybody at school today that I didn't remember anything that happened from Sunday on. I had to tell them something, you know. So I said that I never got to meet Quinn; that I didn't know what happened to me, but I woke up last night alone on this street in Mission Hill.† Rashel tried to think. Would any of the vampires believe this story? The answer surprised her. They just might. If Daphne had begun to come out of the mind control while she was in the truck†¦ if she had jumped out and started running, only to become fully conscious a little while later.. .. Yes. It could work. The vampires would assume that she'd have amnesia for the whole period she was in a trance, and maybe for a little before. It could work†¦. â€Å"But it's too dangerous,† she said. â€Å"Even if I let you go to the club with me, I could never let you get chosen.† â€Å"Why not? You already said I must be resistant to their mind-control thingy, right?† Daphne's blue eyes were sparking with energy and her cheeks were flushed. â€Å"So that makes me perfect for the job. I can do it. I know I can help you.† Rashel stood helplessly. Take this fluffy bunny of a girl to a vampire enclave? Let her get sold as a slave to bloodsucking monsters? Ask her to fight ruthless snakes like Quinn? â€Å"I like to work alone,† she said in a hard voice. Daphne folded her arms over her chest, refusing to be intimidated. â€Å"Well, maybe it's time you tried something different. Look, I've never met anyone like you. You're so independent, so adventurous, so–amazing. But even you can't do everything by yourself. I know I'm not a vampire hunter, but I'd like to be your friend. Maybe you should try trusting a friend this time.† Her eyes met Rashel's, and at that moment she didn't look like a fluffy bunny, but like a small, confident, and intelligent young woman. â€Å"Besides, it was me who got kidnapped,† Daphne said, shrugging. â€Å"Don't you think I should get to pay them back a little?† Rashel caught herself almost grinning. She couldn't help liking this girl, or feeling a glow of warmth at her praise. But still†¦ She drew in a careful breath and watched Daphne closely. â€Å"And you're not scared?† â€Å"Of course I'm scared. I'd be stupid not to be. But I'm not so scared I can't go.† It was the right answer. Rashel looked around the cluttered lacy room and nodded slowly. At last she said, â€Å"Okay, you're in. Tomorrow's Saturday. We'll do it tomorrow night.†

Black House Chapter Twenty-two

22 THIS TIME THERE'S something that isn't quite silence: a lovely white rushing he has heard once before. In the summer of 1997, Jack went up way north to Vacaville with an LAPD skydiving club called the P.F. Flyers. It was a dare, one of those stupid things you got yourself into as a result of too many beers too late at night and then couldn't get yourself out of again. Not with any grace. Which was to say, not without looking like a chickenshit. He expected to be frightened; instead, he was exalted. Yet he had never done it again, and now he knows why: he had come too close to remembering, and some frightened part of him must have known it. It was the sound before you pulled the ripcord that lonely white rushing of the wind past your ears. Nothing else to hear but the soft, rapid beat of your heart and maybe the click in your ears as you swallowed saliva that was in free fall, just like the rest of you. Pull the ripcord, Jack, he thinks. Time to pull the ripcord, or the landing's going to be awfully damn hard. Now there's a new sound, low at first but quickly swelling to a tooth-rattling bray. Fire alarm, he thinks, and then: No, it's a symphony of fire alarms. At the same moment, Wendell Green's hand is snatched out of his grip. He hears a faint, squawking cry as his fellow sky diver is swept away, and then there's a smell Honeysuckle No, it's her hair and Jack gasps against a weight on his chest and his diaphragm, a feeling that the wind has been knocked out of him. There are hands on him, one on his shoulder, the other at the small of his back. Hair tickling his cheek. The sound of alarms. The sound of people yelling in confusion. Running footfalls that clack and echo. â€Å"jack jack jack are you all right† â€Å"Ask a queen for a date, get knocked into the middle of next week,† he mutters. Why is it so dark? Has he been blinded? Is he ready for that intellectually rewarding and financially remunerative job as an ump at Miller Park? â€Å"Jack!† A palm smacks his cheek. Hard. No, not blind. His eyes are just shut. He pops them open and Judy is bending over him, her face inches from his. Without thinking, he closes his left hand in the hair at the nape of her neck, brings her face down to his, and kisses her. She exhales into his mouth a surprised reverse gasp that inflates his lungs with her electricity and then kisses him back. He has never been kissed with such intensity in his entire life. His hand goes to the breast beneath her nightdress, and he feels the frenzied gallop of her heart If she were to run faster, she'd catch her feet and fall, Jack thinks beneath its firm rise. At the same moment her hand slips inside his shirt, which has somehow come unbuttoned, and tweaks his nipple. It's as hard and hot as the slap. As she does it, her tongue darts into his mouth in one quick plunge, there and gone, like a bee into a flower. He tightens his grip on the nape of her neck and God knows what would have happened next, but at that moment something fall s over in the corridor with a huge crash of glass and someone screams. The voice is high and almost sexless with panic, but Jack believes it's Ethan Evans, the sullen young person from the hall. â€Å"Get back here! Stop running, goldarnit!† Of course it's Ethan; only a graduate of Mount Hebron Lutheran Sunday school would use goldarnit, even in extremis. Jack pulls away from Judy. She pulls away from him. They are on the floor. Judy's nightdress is all the way up to her waist, exposing plain white nylon underwear. Jack's shirt is open, and so are his pants. His shoes are still on, but on the wrong feet, from the feel of them. Nearby, the glass-topped coffee table is overturned and the journals that were on it are scattered. Some seem to have been literally blown out of their bindings. More screams from the corridor, plus a few cackles and mad ululations. Ethan Evans continues to yell at stampeding mental patients, and now a woman is yelling as well Head Nurse Rack, perhaps. The alarms bray on and on. All at once a door bursts open and Wendell Green gallops into the room. Behind him is a closet with clothes scattered everywhere, the spare items of Dr. Spiegleman's wardrobe all ahoo. In one hand Wendell's holding his Panasonic minicorder. In the other he has several gleaming tubular objects. Jack is willing to bet they're double-A Duracells. Jack's clothes have been unbuttoned (or perhaps blown open), but Wendell has fared much worse. His shirt is in tatters. His belly hangs over a pair of white boxer shorts, severely pee-stained in front. He is dragging his brown gabardine slacks by one foot. They slide across the carpet like a shed snakeskin. And although his socks are on, the left one appears to have been turned inside out. â€Å"What did you do?† Wendell blares. â€Å"Oh you Hollywood son of a bitch, WHAT DID YOU DO TO M â€Å" He stops. His mouth drops open. His eyes widen. Jack notes that the reporter's hair appears to be standing out like the quills on a porcupine. Wendell, meanwhile, is noting Jack Sawyer and Judy Marshall, embracing on the glass- and paper-littered floor, with their clothes disarranged. They aren't quite in flagrante delicious, but if Wendell ever saw two people on the verge, dese are dem. His mind is whirling and filled with impossible memories, his balance is shot, his stomach is chugging like a washing machine that has been overloaded with clothes and suds; he desperately needs something to hold on to. He needs news. Even better, he needs scandal. And here, lying in front of him on the floor, are both. â€Å"RAPE!† Wendell bellows at the top of his lungs. A mad, relieved grin twists up the corners of his mouth. â€Å"SAWYER BEAT ME UP AND NOW HE'S RAPING A MENTAL PATIENT!† It doesn't look much like rape to Wendell, in all truth, but who ever yelled CONSENSUAL SEX! at the top of his lungs and attracted any attention? â€Å"Shut that idiot up,† Judy says. She yanks down the hem of her nightgown and prepares to stand. â€Å"Watch out,† Jack says. â€Å"Broken glass everywhere.† â€Å"I'm okay,† she snaps. Then, turning to Wendell with that perfect fearlessness Fred knew so well: â€Å"Shut up! I don't know who you are, but quit that bellowing! Nobody's being â€Å" Wendell backs away from Hollywood Sawyer, dragging his pants along with him. Why doesn't someone come? he thinks. Why doesn't someone come before he shoots me, or something? In his frenzy and near hysteria, Wendell has either not registered the alarms and general outcry or believes them to be going on inside his head, just a little more false information to go with his absurd â€Å"memories† of a black gunslinger, a beautiful woman in a robe, and Wendell Green himself crouching in the dust and eating a half-cooked bird like a caveman. â€Å"Keep away from me, Sawyer,† he says, backing up with his hands held out in front of him. â€Å"I have an extremely hungry lawyer. Caveet-emporer, you asshole, lay one finger on me and he and I will strip you of everything you OW! OW!† Wendell has stepped on a piece of broken glass, Jack sees probably from one of the prints that formerly decorated the walls and are now decorating the floor. He takes one more off-balance lurch backward, this time steps on his own trailing slacks, and goes sprawling into the leather recliner where Dr. Spiegleman presumably sits while quizzing his patients on their troubled childhoods. La Riviere's premier muckraker stares at the approaching Nean-derthal with wide, horrified eyes, then throws the minicorder at him. Jack sees that it's covered with scratches. He bats it away. â€Å"RAPE!† Wendell squeals. â€Å"HE'S RAPING ONE OF THE LOONIES! HE'S â€Å" Jack pops him on the point of the chin, pulling the punch just a little at the last moment, delivering it with almost scientific force. Wendell flops back in Dr. Spiegleman's recliner, eyes rolling up, feet twitching as if to some tasty beat that only the semiconscious can truly appreciate. â€Å"The Mad Hungarian couldn't have done better,† Jack murmurs. It occurs to him that Wendell ought to treat himself to a complete neurological workup in the not too distant future. His head has put in a hard couple of days. The door to the hall bursts open. Jack steps in front of the recliner to hide Wendell, stuffing his shirt into his pants (at some point he's zipped his fly, thank God). A candy striper pokes her fluffy head into Dr. Spiegleman's office. Although she's probably eighteen, her panic makes her look about twelve. â€Å"Who's yelling in here?† she asks. â€Å"Who's hurt?† Jack has no idea what to say, but Judy manages like a pro. â€Å"It was a patient,† she says. â€Å"Mr. Lackley, I think. He came in, yelled that we were all going to be raped, and then ran out again.† â€Å"You have to leave at once,† the candy striper tells them. â€Å"Don't listen to that idiot Ethan. And don't use the elevator. We think it was an earthquake.† â€Å"Right away,† Jack says crisply, and although he doesn't move, it's good enough for the candy striper; she heads out. Judy crosses quickly to the door. It closes but won't latch. The frame has been subtly twisted out of true. There was a clock on the wall. Jack looks toward it, but it's fallen face-down to the floor. He goes to Judy and takes her by the arms. â€Å"How long was I over there?† â€Å"Not long,† she says, â€Å"but what an exit you made! Ka-pow! Did you get anything?† Her eyes plead with him. â€Å"Enough to know I have to go back to French Landing right away,† he tells her. Enough to know that I love you that I'll always love you, in this world or any other. â€Å"Tyler . . . is he alive?† She reverses his grip so she is holding him. Sophie did exactly the same thing in Faraway, Jack remembers. â€Å"Is my son alive?† â€Å"Yes. And I'm going to get him for you.† His eye happens on Spiegleman's desk, which has danced its way into the room and stands with all its drawers open. He sees something interesting in one of those drawers and hurries across the carpet, crunching on broken glass and kicking aside one of the prints. In the top drawer to the left of the desk's kneehole is a tape recorder, considerably bigger than Wendell Green's trusty Panasonic, and a torn piece of brown wrapping paper. Jack snatches up the paper first. Scrawled across the front in draggling letters he's seen at both Ed's Eats and on his own front porch is this: Deliver to JUDY MARSHALL also known as SOPHIE There are what appear to be stamps in the upper corner of the torn sheet. Jack doesn't need to examine them closely to know that they are really cut from sugar packets, and that they were affixed by a dangerous old dodderer named Charles Burnside. But the Fisherman's identity no longer matters much, and Speedy knew it. Neither does his location, because Jack has an idea Chummy Burnside can flip to a new one pretty much at will. But he can't take the real doorway with him. The doorway to the furnace-lands, to Mr. Munshun, to Ty. If Beezer and his pals found that Jack drops the wrapping paper back into the drawer, hits the EJECT button on the tape recorder, and pops out the cassette tape inside. He sticks it in his pocket and heads for the door. â€Å"Jack.† He looks back at her. Beyond them, fire alarms honk and blat, lunatics scream and laugh, staff runs to and fro. Their eyes meet. In the clear blue light of Judy's regard, Jack can almost touch that other world with its sweet smells and strange constellations. â€Å"Is it wonderful over there? As wonderful as in my dreams?† â€Å"It's wonderful,† he tells her. â€Å"And you are, too. Hang in there, okay?† Halfway down the hallway, Jack comes upon a nasty sight: Ethan Evans, the young man who once had Wanda Kinderling as his Sunday school teacher, has laid hold of a disoriented old woman by her fat upper arms and is shaking her back and forth. The old woman's frizzy hair flies around her head. â€Å"Shut up!† young Mr. Evans is shouting at her. â€Å"Shut up, you crazy old cow! You're not going anywhere except back to your dadblame room!† Something about his sneer makes it obvious that even now, with the world turned upside down, young Mr. Evans is enjoying both his power to command and his Christian duty to brutalize. This is only enough to make Jack angry. What infuriates him is the look of terrified incomprehension on the old woman's face. It makes him think of boys he once lived with long ago, in a place called the Sunlight Home. It makes him think of Wolf. Without pausing or so much as breaking stride (they have entered the endgame phase of the festivities now, and somehow he knows it), Jack drives his fist into young Mr. Evans's temple. That worthy lets go of his plump and squawking victim, strikes the wall, then slides down it, his eyes wide and dazed. â€Å"Either you didn't listen in Sunday school or Kinderling's wife taught you the wrong lessons,† Jack says. â€Å"You . . . hit . . . me . . .† young Mr. Evans whispers. He finishes his slow dive splay-legged on the hallway floor halfway between the Records Annex and Ambulatory Ophthalmology. â€Å"Abuse another patient this one, the one I was just talking to, any of them and I'll do a lot more than that,† Jack promises young Mr. Evans. Then he's down the stairs, taking them two at a time, not noticing a handful of johnny-clad patients who stare at him with expressions of puzzled, half-fearful wonder. They look at him as if at a vision who passes them in an envelope of light, some wonder as brilliant as it is mysterious. Ten minutes later (long after Judy Marshall has walked composedly back to her room without professional help of any kind), the alarms cut off. An amplified voice perhaps even Dr. Spiegleman's own mother wouldn't have recognized it as her boy's begins to blare from the overhead speakers. At this unexpected roar, patients who had pretty much calmed down begin to shriek and cry all over again. The old woman whose mistreatment so angered Jack Sawyer is crouched below the admissions counter with her hands over her head, muttering something about the Russians and Civil Defense. â€Å"THE EMERGENCY IS OVER!† Spiegleman assures his cast and crew. â€Å"THERE IS NO FIRE! PLEASE REPORT TO THE COMMON ROOMS ON EACH FLOOR! THIS IS DR. SPIEGLEMAN, AND I REPEAT THAT THE EMERGENCY IS OVER!† Here comes Wendell Green, weaving his way slowly toward the stairwell, rubbing his chin gently with one hand. He sees young Mr. Evans and offers him a helping hand. For a moment it looks as though Wendell may be pulled over himself, but then young Mr. Evans gets his buttocks against the wall and manages to gain his feet. â€Å"THE EMERGENCY IS OVER! I REPEAT, THE EMERGENCY IS OVER! NURSES, ORDERLIES, AND DOCTORS, PLEASE ESCORT ALL PATIENTS TO THE COMMON ROOMS ON EACH FLOOR!† Young Mr. Evans eyes the purple bruise rising on Wendell's chin. Wendell eyes the purple bruise rising on the temple of young Mr. Evans. â€Å"Sawyer?† young Mr. Evans asks. â€Å"Sawyer,† Wendell confirms. â€Å"Bastard sucker punched me,† young Mr. Evans confides. â€Å"Son of a bitch came up behind me,† Wendell says. â€Å"The Marshall woman. He had her down.† He lowers his voice. â€Å"He was getting ready to rape her.† Young Mr. Evans's whole manner says he is sorrowful but not surprised. â€Å"Something ought to be done,† Wendell says. â€Å"You got that right.† â€Å"People ought to be told.† Gradually, the old fire returns to Wendell's eyes. People will be told. By him! Because that is what he does, by God! He tells people! â€Å"Yeah,† young Mr. Evans says. He doesn't care as much as Wendell does he lacks Wendell's burning commitment but there's one person he will tell. One person who deserves to be comforted in her lonely hours, who has been left on her own Mount of Olives. One person who will drink up the knowledge of Jack Sawyer's evil like the very waters of life. â€Å"This kind of behavior cannot just be swept under the rug,† Wendell says. â€Å"No way,† young Mr. Evans agrees. â€Å"No way, Jos? ¦.† Jack has barely cleared the gates of French County Lutheran when his cell phone tweets. He thinks of pulling over to take the call, hears the sound of approaching fire engines, and decides for once to risk driving and talking at the same time. He wants to be out of the area before the local fire brigade shows up and slows him down. He flips the little Nokia open. â€Å"Sawyer.† â€Å"Where the fuck are you?† Beezer St. Pierre bellows. â€Å"Man, I been hittin' redial so hard I damn near punched it off the phone!† â€Å"I've been . . .† But there's no way he can finish that, not and stay within shouting distance of the truth, that is. Or maybe there is. â€Å"I guess I got into one of those dead zones where the cell phone just doesn't pick up â€Å" â€Å"Never mind the science lesson, chum. Get your ass over here right now. The actual address is 1 Nailhouse Row it's County Road Double-O just south of Chase. It's the babyshit brown two-story on the corner.† â€Å"I can find it,† Jack says, and steps down a little harder on the Ram's gas pedal. â€Å"I'm on my way now.† â€Å"What's your twenty, man?† â€Å"Still Arden, but I'm rolling. I can be there in maybe half an hour.† â€Å"Fuck!† There is an alarming crash-rattle in Jack's ear as somewhere on Nailhouse Row Beezer slams his fist against something. Probably the nearest wall. â€Å"The fuck's wrong with you, man? Mouse is goin' down, I mean fast. We're doin' our best those of us who're still here but he is goin' down.† Beezer is panting, and Jack thinks he's trying not to cry. The thought of Armand St. Pierre in that particular state is alarming. Jack looks at the Ram's speedometer, sees it's touching seventy, and eases off a tad. He won't help anybody by getting himself greased in a road wreck between Arden and Centralia. â€Å"What do you mean ? ®those of us who are still here'?† â€Å"Never mind, just get your butt down here, if you want to talk to Mouse. And he sure wants to talk to you, because he keeps sayin' your name.† Beezer lowers his voice. â€Å"When he ain't just ravin' his ass off, that is. Doc's doing his best me and Bear Girl, too but we're shovelin' shit against the tide here.† â€Å"Tell him to hold on,† Jack says. â€Å"Fuck that, man tell him yourself.† There's a rattling sound in Jack's ear, the faint murmuring of voices. Then another voice, one which hardly sounds human, speaks in his ear. â€Å"Got to hurry . . . got to get over here, man. Thing . . . bit me. I can feel it in there. Like acid.† â€Å"Hold on, Mouse,† Jack says. His fingers are dead white on the telephone. He wonders that the case doesn't simply crack in his grip. â€Å"I'll be there fast as I can.† â€Å"Better be. Others . . . already forgot. Not me.† Mouse chuckles. The sound is ghastly beyond belief, a whiff straight out of an open grave. â€Å"I got . . . the memory serum, you know? It's eatin' me up . . . eatin' me alive . . . but I got it.† There's the rustling sound of the phone changing hands again, then a new voice. A woman's. Jack assumes it's Bear Girl. â€Å"You got them moving,† she says. â€Å"You brought it to this. Don't let it be for nothing.† There is a click in his ear. Jack tosses the cell phone onto the seat and decides that maybe seventy isn't too fast, after all. A few minutes later (they seem like very long minutes to Jack), he's squinting against the glare of the sun on Tamarack Creek. From here he can almost see his house, and Henry's. Henry. Jack thumps the side of his thumb lightly against his breast pocket and hears the rattle of the cassette tape he took from the machine in Spiegle-man's office. There's not much reason to turn it over to Henry now; given what Potter told him last night and what Mouse is holding on to tell him today, this tape and the 911 tape have been rendered more or less redundant. Besides, he's got to hurry to Nailhouse Row. There's a train getting ready to leave the station, and Mouse Baumann is very likely going to be on it. And yet . . . â€Å"I'm worried about him,† Jack says softly. â€Å"Even a blind man could see I'm worried about Henry.† The brilliant summer sun, now sliding down the afternoon side of the sky, reflects off the creek and sends shimmers of light dancing across his face. Each time this light crosses his eyes, they seem to burn. Henry isn't the only one Jack's worried about, either. He's got a bad feeling about all of his new French Landing friends and acquaintances, from Dale Gilbertson and Fred Marshall right down to such bit players as old Steamy McKay, an elderly gent who makes his living shining shoes outside the public library, and Ardis Walker, who runs the ramshackle bait shop down by the river. In his imagination, all these people now seem made of glass. If the Fisherman decides to sing high C, they'll vibrate and then shatter to powder. Only it's not really the Fisherman he's worried about anymore. This is a case, he reminds himself. Even with all the Territories weirdness thrown in, it's still a case, and it's not the first one you've ever been on where everything suddenly started to seem too big. Where all the shadows seemed to be too long. True enough, but usually that funhouse sense of false perspective fades away once he starts to get a handle on things. This time it's worse, and worse by far. He knows why, too. The Fisherman's long shadow is a thing called Mr. Munshun, an immortal talent scout from some other plane of existence. Nor is even that the end, because Mr. Munshun also casts a shadow. A red one. â€Å"Abbalah,† Jack mutters. â€Å"Abbalah-doon and Mr. Munshun and the Crow Gorg, just three old pals walking together on night's Plutonian shore.† For some reason this makes him think of the Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice. What was it they took for a walk in the moonlight? Clams? Mussels? Jack's damned if he can remember, although one line surfaces and resonates in his mind, spoken in his mother's voice: â€Å"The time has come,† the Walrus said, â€Å"to talk of many things.† The abbalah is presumably hanging out in his court (the part of him that isn't imprisoned in Speedy's Dark Tower, that is), but the Fisherman and Mr. Munshun could be anywhere. Do they know Jack Sawyer has been meddling? Of course they do. By today, that is common knowledge. Might they try to slow him down by doing something nasty to one of his friends? A certain blind sportscaster-headbanger-bebopper, for instance? Yes indeed. And now, perhaps because he's been sensitized to it, he can once more feel that nasty pulse coming out of the southwestern landscape, the one he sensed when he flipped over for the first time in his adult life. When the road curves southeast, he almost loses it. Then, when the Ram points its nose southwest again, the poisonous throb regains strength, beating into his head like the onset of a migraine headache. That's Black House you feel, only it's not a house, not really. It's a worm-hole in the apple of existence, leading all the way down into the furnace-lands. It's a door. Maybe it was only standing ajar before today, before Beezer and his pals turned up there, but now it's wide open and letting in one hell of a draft. Ty needs to be brought back, yes . . . but that door needs to be shut, as well. Before God knows what awful things come snarling through. Jack abruptly swings the Ram onto Tamarack Road. The tires scream. His seat belt locks, and for a moment he thinks the truck may overturn. It stays up, though, and he goes flying toward Norway Valley Road. Mouse will just have to hang on a little bit longer; he's not going to leave Henry way out here on his own. His pal doesn't know it, but he's going on a little field trip to Nailhouse Row. Until this situation stabilizes, it seems to Jack that the buddy system is very much in order. Which would have been all well and good if Henry had been at home, but he's not. Elvena Morton, dust mop in hand, comes in response to Jack's repeated jabbing at the doorbell. â€Å"He's been over at KDCU, doing commercials,† Elvena says. â€Å"Dropped him off myself. I don't know why he doesn't just do them in his studio here, something about the sound effects, I think he might have said. I'm surprised he didn't tell you that.† The bitch of it is, Henry did. Cousin Buddy's Rib Crib. The old ball and chain. Beautiful downtown La Riviere. All that. He even told Jack that Elvena Morton was going to drive him. A few things have happened to Jack since that conversation he's reencountered his old childhood friend, he's fallen in love with Judy Marshall's Twinner, and just by the way he's been filled in on your basic Secret of All Existence but none of that keeps him from turning his left hand into a fist and then slamming himself directly between the eyes with it. Given how fast things are now moving, making this needless detour strikes him as an almost unforgivable lapse. Mrs. Morton is regarding him with wide-eyed alarm. â€Å"Are you going to be picking him up, Mrs. Morton?† â€Å"No, he's going for a drink with someone from ESPN. Henry said the fellow would bring him back afterward.† She lowers her voice to the timbre of confidentiality at which secrets are somehow best communicated. â€Å"Henry didn't come right out and say so, but I think there may be big things ahead for George Rathbun. Ver-ry big things.† Badger Barrage going national? Jack wouldn't be entirely surprised, but he has no time to be delighted for Henry now. He hands Mrs. Morton the cassette tape, mostly so he won't feel this was an entirely wasted trip. â€Å"Leave this for him where . . .† He stops. Mrs. Morton is looking at him with knowing amusement. Where he'll be sure to see it is what Jack almost said. Another mental miscue. Big-city detective, indeed. â€Å"I'll leave it by the soundboard in his studio,† she says. â€Å"He'll find it there. Jack, maybe it's none of my business, but you don't look all right. You're very pale, and I'd swear you've lost ten pounds since last week. Also . . .† She looks a bit embarrassed. â€Å"Your shoes are on the wrong feet.† So they are. He makes the necessary change, standing first on one foot and then the other. â€Å"It's been a tough forty-eight hours, but I'm hanging in there, Mrs. M.† â€Å"It's the Fisherman business, isn't it?† He nods. â€Å"And I have to go. The fat, as they say, is in the fire.† He turns, reconsiders, turns back. â€Å"Leave him a message on the kitchen tape recorder, would you? Tell him to call me on my cell. Just as soon as he gets in.† Then, one thought leading to another, he points to the unmarked cassette tape in her hand. â€Å"Don't play that, all right?† Mrs. Morton looks shocked. â€Å"I'd never do such a thing! It would be like opening someone else's mail!† Jack nods and gives her a scrap of a smile. â€Å"Good.† â€Å"Is it . . . him on the tape? Is it the Fisherman?† â€Å"Yes,† Jack says. â€Å"It's him.† And there are worse things waiting, he thinks but doesn't say. Worse things by far. He hurries back to his truck, not quite running. Twenty minutes later Jack parks in front of the babyshit brown two-story at 1 Nailhouse Row. Nailhouse Row and the dirty snarl of streets around it strike him as unnaturally silent under the sun of this hot summer afternoon. A mongrel dog (it is, in fact, the old fellow we saw in the doorway of the Nelson Hotel just last night) goes limping across the intersection of Ames and County Road Oo, but that's about the extent of the traffic. Jack has an unpleasant vision of the Walrus and the Carpenter toddling along the east bank of the Mississippi with the hypnotized residents of Nailhouse Row following along behind them. Toddling along toward the fire. And the cooking pot. He takes two or three deep breaths, trying to steady himself. Not far out of town close to the road leading to Ed's Eats, in fact that nasty buzzing in his head peaked, turning into something like a dark scream. For a few moments there it was so strong Jack wondered if he was perhaps going to drive right off the road, and he slowed the Ram to forty. Then, blessedly, it began to move around toward the back of his head and fade. He didn't see the NO TRESPASSING sign that marks the overgrown road leading to Black House, didn't even look for it, but he knew it was there. The question is whether or not he'll be able to approach it when the time comes without simply exploding. â€Å"Come on,† he tells himself. â€Å"No time for this shit.† He gets out of the truck and starts up the cracked cement walk. There's a fading hopscotch diagram there, and Jack swerves to avoid it without even thinking, knowing it's one of the few remaining artifacts which testify that a little person named Amy St. Pierre once briefly trod the boards of existence. The porch steps are dry and splintery. He's vilely thirsty and thinks, Man, I'd kill for a glass of water, or a nice cold The door flies open, cracking against the side of the house like a pistol shot in the sunny silence, and Beezer comes running out. â€Å"Christ almighty, I didn't think you were ever gonna get here!† Looking into Beezer's alarmed, agonized eyes, Jack realizes that he will never tell this guy that he might be able to find Black House without Mouse's help, that thanks to his time in the Territories he has a kind of range finder in his head. No, not even if they live the rest of their lives as close friends, the kind who usually tell each other everything. The Beez has suffered like Job, and he doesn't need to find out that his friend's agony may have been in vain. â€Å"Is he still alive, Beezer?† â€Å"By an inch. Maybe an inch and a quarter. It's just me and Doc and Bear Girl now. Sonny and Kaiser Bill got scared, ran off like a couple of whipped dogs. March your boots in here, sunshine.† Not that Beezer gives Jack any choice; he grabs him by the shoulder and hauls him into the little two-story on Nailhouse Row like luggage.