am I going INSANE?? – it’s HAPPENING!!

Why do some people believe that Donald Trump was not shot in the ear?

I do not engage in conspiracy theories. I investigate and evaluate the evidence. These are the facts:

1. The Secret Service left a lot to be desired. There were obvious holes in their protection, which allowed a young man to enter the grounds, scale an HVAC unit and access a rooftop 150 yards from a presidential candidate.
2. Thomas Crooks fired multiple rounds from a semi-automatic weapon. At least one of those rounds fatally wounded a man on stage – a firefighter – who was protecting his family.
3. Something appeared to strike Donald Trump, who after a moment of confusion clutched his ear and took cover behind his podium. When he emerged, he had two blood streaks on his face, blood visible on his ear, but no blood on his hair.
4. The Secret Service took longer to move him from that position than was reasonable in an active shooter situation. Trump’s staff moved photographers around the scene to ensure they got what became the famous picture of Trump fist raised with the flag behind him.
5. After the shooting, Ronnie Jackson – previously Trump’s WH doctor – claimed that Trump had a 2cm wide wound on his ear.
6. At the RNC, Trump appeared with a large bandage on his ear.
7. Some time after his reelection, the press asked about the wound on his ear. Trump commented, with a smirk, that he heals very quickly.

So, those are the facts. Let’s evaluate them.

1. While they’re not perfect, the Secret Service isn’t known for being careless. The fact that the Swiss cheese model lined up so perfectly for the attacker creates an amount of suspicion that is hard to look past. However, there were other entities also responsible that Secret Service may have improperly relied upon.
2. Thomas Crooks was using an AR-15-style weapon, 5.56mm NATO or .223 Remington, which have similar enough ballistic profiles. Brandon Herrera did a ballistics test and the slow motion video showed remarkable temporary cavitation that would have done remarkable damage, even with a graze. The blood trail should’ve extended from the ear, across his hair, but there was nothing.
3. There were rumors that the thing that actually hit Trump was pieces of teleprompter. However, the teleprompter was intact so it was either the bullet or nothing.
4. When the Secret Service jumps into action, they cover the protectee and hustle them away very quickly because they don’t know how many shooters there are. Had this been a coordinated attack, there could’ve been another shooter in the crowd, or at second vantage point. The fact that they let Trump be exposed for his photo opportunity is criminal.
5. A 2cm (7/8 inch) wound is pretty big. That’s something you’re going to see the scar from for a long time. If a chunk of ear was missing, it isn’t growing back.
6. But he didn’t have a giant bandage on his ear the following day when he went golfing. In fact, he didn’t seem to act as though his life had ever been in danger.
7. Ears don’t really heal that well. Maybe if it was just a scratch and it was stitched up. But tellingly, there are no public photos of the wound. If it had been a worthy injury, I have no doubt that he would’ve posted pictures on his socials “look what they did to me!”
8. Bonus: he never talks about it. He has threatened every other “enemy” with jail or worse, people who slighted him 5 years ago by saying he lost the election, but he never talks about either of the men who tried to assassinate him. That’s weird.

Was it staged? Was it real? I don’t know. I hope to god it wasn’t staged because a man died and others were hurt. If someone died for a publicity stunt, there’s a special level of hell for all involved.

The Trouble with Nuns

Written in response to: “Center your story around someone who has (or is given) the ability to time travel.“

Rebecca Hurst

She was several minutes late for her appointment with Bram Dallaglio, and the reason for it was stupid. It was raining, or at least mizzling. The climate rarely produced a satisfying downpour, but preferred to wet the little people with light and persistent moisture, like being smothered by a wet towel. Her hair, straightened that morning, was prone to frizz, and she was vain enough to know that Mr Dallaglio was quite uniquely handsome.

 

She saw him immediately, sitting in a booth with a pint of Guinness, sporting a suit and tie. If he appeared incongruous amid the lunchtime gurners and yarn-spinners, he didn’t show it, and neither did they. She, on the other hand, attracted glances; not lascivious but simply curious.

‘I forgot my umbrella’, she said, by way of limp introduction. (I carried a water melon ..)

‘There’ll be plenty behind the bar,’ he said, rising to greet her, to ask her what she wanted to drink. ‘People bring them out and forget them when the rain stops. I don’t think I’ve ever bought one in my life.’

 

She watched him walk to the bar, aware that her pulse was racing. How ridiculous. She was at least a decade older than him and every one of those years showed at least once. Her friend Miriam had warned her of the Dallaglio Effect, made all the more devastating because he seemed so oblivious to it.

 

Nursing her G&T, (it’s too early, too early,) they settled into a businesslike talk about the nature of her problem.

 

‘It’s not a problem,’ she began. ‘Not really. In fact, now I’m here it feels so trivial. It isn’t much of a story, I’m afraid.’

Noticing that Dallaglio wasn’t one for conversational fillers, she ploughed on under the gaze of his striking eyes.

 

‘My grandmother lives with me and my children. And my husband (an afterthought). She’s 97 now and still as bright as a button. We have to speak more loudly than we used to, but beyond that she’s in fairly good shape. She doesn’t even have arthritis … ’

‘But something troubles her,’ Dallaglio said, licking the creamy Guinness from his lips, an action which she found shamefully provocative.

‘Yes.’

She settled her back against the banquette, this woman of rational mind reduced, as she saw it, to expose the vulnerability of fantasy.

 

‘You see, all her life she’s been completely dismissive of the supernatural, the spiritual, or anything else you can name along those lines. She is fearless and often quite rude about it.’

‘Me too,’ said Bram, taking her by surprise.

‘Really? You’re not a time traveller then?’ She said this with irony, but still, there was talk that he could.

‘Time travel is theoretically impossible,’ he said. ‘Certainly when it comes to going backwards. There is talk of forward travel, but it involves a lot of spinning objects in space and countless and unknowable variations of gravitational pull from which you would never return, least of all recover. Besides, no one needs to know their future.’

‘I suppose not,’ she said, aware of a flush creeping towards her cheeks. ‘But you have a talent for solving past mysteries. Surely there is more to that than a Holmesian instinct?’

‘I am simply connected to it,’ he said modestly. ‘A gift I was born with. But I still have to focus, like everyone else … ’

That, she realised, was a subtle prompt to get on with it.

 

*****

 

Her grandmother, Heather Rose, had been evacuated in the first months of the war. She had just passed her exams and was heading for Grammar School when the War Office decided that children should be sent away from the industrial cities and the port areas, especially those along the south coast.

 

So she, with a cohort of other children from her former primary school, were sent to a country house in Worcestershire called The Elms. Like a lot of these places, its foundations were much older than the building that replaced it over time. By the time Heather Rose went there, the main body of it was Georgian. The owners were a Baron and his wife, Sir Richard and Lady Marion Brooke, who were polite but otherwise disengaged, just doing their duty. The children shared a spacious attic room in the main wing, where they were regularly but sparingly fed, and otherwise left to amuse themselves. It was a stud at the time, which the year before had produced a Derby winner, so there was a lot to do and see. Horses, open countryside, an intriguing clock tower, a stuffy old Boy’s School and lanes as far as the legs could walk and the eyes could see.

 

*****

 

As she continued, she wondered at his concentration. He never once let his attention roam, as though this rather workaday story was the most fascinating thing in the world to him.

 

‘You mentioned in your email that something happened one night,’ he prompted. ‘Can you explain to me what it was and why it bothers her so much?’

She cleared her throat, noted her empty glass. ‘Another?’ he asked.

‘Please,’ she said.

 

*****

 

‘She’s not sure of the exact date, but it was sometime in the late November of 1940. Her friends, those she shared the attic with, dared my grandmother to sneak down to the kitchens to see if there was any food in the pantry. They were growing children and rationing made things tight.’

‘That was brave of her,’ said Bram.

‘Like I say, the woman was born fearless. So she slipped down the servants’ stairs in the middle of the night and exited through a door that led out to the main part of the house; where the sweeping staircase was and the main reception hall down below. It was pitch black, but she daren’t use a candle, so she felt her way down the grand stairs, holding on to the bannister and measuring every step before she took it. And as she was about halfway down, a light suddenly appeared.’

‘From where?’ he urged.

‘She doesn’t know,’ she replied. ‘All she remembers is that two horrible faces lit up in the dark. They were nuns.’

 

Dallaglio sat back. She felt a girlish pleasure that she had somehow managed to shock him.

 

‘She said they seemed to loom out at her, sometimes flickering and other times just glaring. She swears she heard some sort of thud, too, a noise which didn’t seem to come from anywhere. She was so frightened she fled back the way she’d come, and the children just had to go hungry until breakfast.’

‘And that’s it?’ he asked.

‘I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have wasted your time with this—’

He leaned forward and took her hand. His palm was cool and dry. ‘I mean, is that the one and only time she saw them? The nuns?’

She nodded. ‘And here’s the more human part of things. My grandmother doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she believes she saw them on that night. She can’t rationalise it, and it’s making her last years increasingly difficult. You see, she doesn’t believe in the afterlife either, and that’s the problem.’

‘Because if she believes in ghosts then she has to accept the afterlife?’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Something like that. Some people look forward to it, I suppose, but it fills her with horror, the thought of existing in perpetuity – or to be reborn and have to go through life all over again. She just wants to be dead and done with it, when the time comes.’

‘Have you tried lying to her? Making up an explanation?’

‘I’ve thought about it, but I can’t think of anything,’ she said haplessly.

 

The rest of their time was involved with business arrangements. Very shortly after the war ended, The Elms was turned into a Hotel and Spa, and she had booked Bram in for one night. He assured her that would be enough, and at the prices they were charging she was glad of it.

He glanced at his watch and stood up, shaking her hand. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I know,’ he said.

‘I can’t imagine you’ll discover anything,’ she said, ‘but I’m hoping you can at least come out with a convincing lie I can pass on ..’

He frowned at her. ‘Oh, I think I already know,’ he said. ‘I just need to go there to confirm things.’

He didn’t wait for an answer. Just seconds after he left, she looked for him all along the main street, but he was nowhere to be seen.

 

*****

 

The hotel had undergone various extensions and renovations since the ’40s, but the main body of the house remained the same. He had asked for the attic room, once the servant’s domain, and then later the evacuees’. It had become, by dint of the space and view, the most expensive room in the hotel. Although much had changed, in the distance he could see the grammar school and the clock tower. Beyond the necessities of modern life, the new roads and the electricity pylons, it was the same view that eleven-year-old Heather Rose would have seen. He sat on the bed, briefly, but felt nothing. He placed his palms on the walls and waited until he heard it; the faint chatter of pre-pubescent girls. He was connected. He was in.

 

He spent some time on his laptop, and then walked the grounds, but nothing of what he felt was pertinent to Heather Rose. Later again, he went to the village pub, which for centuries has been the only place to discover the truth of anything in this country.

 

*****

 

She received a text message from Dallaglio the next morning. She was to meet him in the same bar at 1pm. Clearly he hadn’t taken advantage of the spa facilities.

 

*****

 

He was in a different place this time. She thought there might be a message in that, a clue as to his nature. She doubted he was ever in the same place at the same time.

They ordered the same drinks. He wore the same suit but a different tie. He was impeccable in all respects. She took a deep breath and looked at him with her head cocked, as if to say Well, Romeo, I’m waiting ….

 

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here’s the story.’ He raised a finger. ‘Don’t interrupt unless you have to.’

‘Guides’ Honour,’ she said.

‘Apart from one thing. Were the children ever allowed into the main body of the house?’

‘No. They used the servant’s stairs to get to the attic. They could enter the kitchens through the outside door, but it was locked at night. I thought I told you that …’

‘You didn’t,’ he said, ‘but I guessed it. Of course, running around the grounds, they must have looked through the ground floor windows on occasion; see how the other half live.’

‘Yes, I suppose they did.’

‘So they could see the staircase, but not what was in front of the staircase. That’s why your grandmother knew the layout, but only up to a point.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

 

He took a deep draft of his drink and fixed her again with those abiding eyes.

 

‘The exact day she saw the apparition was the 29th November 1940. It was a new moon on that night, the perfect time for the Junkers 88 bombers to fly. No natural light at all. They must have flown over the village and The Elms before that night, because it was on the direct flight path to Coventry, where all the vehicle plants were.’

‘She never mentioned it.’

‘They would usually have been asleep by then. But that night was a Friday, so no school in the morning. They’d already flown by when she decided to take that dare, on their way to bomb Coventry again. That’s why she didn’t hear them when she walked down that staircase. But she did hear a thud. And that thud was Theodor Schinkel.’

‘Who?’

‘A bad Nazi and a very good German.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. He looked at her as though he thought she should.

 

‘Let’s change direction,’ he said. ‘The house was built in 1745 on the foundations of a Tudor building, some parts of which remain. That is not uncommon at all. But less common is the fate of the original owner, who was hung, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.’

‘So a Catholic?’ She said, realising again that her drink was empty.

‘Another?’

‘Yes please.’

 

‘In amongst the various priest holes, now used for cleaning supplies, were two terrible portraits of unknown nuns, no doubt commissioned at the time of the first owner. These portraits are situated on either side of the main entrance to the house. They’re still there. Your grandmother would not have seen them when peering through the windows in childish curiosity.’

‘Why are they still there?’

‘No idea, really. The hotel has allowed a rumour to circulate that they are cursed and must not be removed. Customers like that sort of thing.’

‘Do they?’

‘Apparently, yes.’

‘God. Nuns. Really? Who paints nuns?’

‘Especially those nuns,’ he said. ‘They’re enough to put the fear in God in anyone.’

‘Or enough to make you stop believing in Him at all,’ she said.

 

‘So who was Theodor Schinkel?’

‘A German gunner in the Luftwaffe. On that night he was positioned in the underbelly of the plane, a bubble-type structure, preparing to aim his sites on Coventry. But he bailed out, because he didn’t want to do it.’

‘And he landed on the roof of Elm House?’

‘Yes. It’s got all the usual turrets and pediments, but where he landed, the roof was flat, and it’s directly above the main staircase, which, if you look up, has a large skylight – again, something your grandmother would not have noticed peering through the window. Had there been a moon, she might have done, but remember that on that night, there was none. It was his mag-light, shining through it, that accidentally picked up the faces of the nuns at the bottom of the stairs. That’s what your grandmother saw.’

‘Good grief,’ she exhaled. ‘So that’s it?’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘And what happened to Schinkel?

‘He was interned at Camp 287, Perdiswell, and spent an idyllic war farming the English countryside. He also furnished the Home Office with all they needed to know about the Junkers’ satellite systems. After the war, he married an English girl and died, a happy old man, twenty years ago.’

 

‘How did you find out?’

He looked at her, and in his eyes she could see a flicker of mild and yet not unkind contempt.

‘The main failing of the human race is that most of them lack curiosity.’

It was a rebuke.

‘Well, Grandmother will be pleased to hear it.’

He passed her a sheath of papers in a slim file. ‘It’s all in there,’ he said. ‘Just in case she doesn’t believe you.’

‘Oh, she’ll believe me. It’s too simple an explanation to be untrue.’

‘Almost all explanations are simple,’ he said, rising and offering her his hand, just like before.

‘What do I owe you?’

‘Nothing at all. I only charge when I find lost treasure.’ At this he winked. ‘But you must tell her immediately.’

‘I’m thinking of leaving it until next week. It’s her 98th and I was going to tell her then.’

‘Tell her tonight,’ he said with finality.

 

*****

 

In the early morning, she realised why. And all through the grief of it, she was so glad that she had done as instructed. There were no ghosts and there would be no afterlife for Heather Rose. The knowledge of it had tugged a smile to her thin blue lips and induced an unearthly erasure of wrinkles. She had died in her own grace.

 

She heard no more from Bram Dallaglio, and although she knew that he was entirely corporeal, she couldn’t help but question that reality. It was a small story but a huge final act. It was a play of kindness from someone who surely had better things to do. It was strange and it was beautiful, (he was beautiful), and however much she tried to explain him, she never really could.

 

And there were many times when she wondered where he might be right now, not in terms of location, but in terms of century. Because for all his denials, she was not at all convinced that he was entirely anchored to his timeline: that in the swell and the vagaries of the wind, he could so easily find himself elsewhere.

GROUNDBREAKING: China Unveils First-Ever Global Defence System

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A Doorway on Lenox

Written in response to: “Center your story around someone who has (or is given) the ability to time travel.“

🏆 Contest #317 Winner!

Ovett Chapman

Theo had been staring at the same sentence so long the letters bled together. Lineage in Postmodern Black Poetics. He mouthed the words once more, flat and sour on his tongue. His coffee from the bodega on 121st sat cold beside him, the surface gone slick and oily, but he drank anyway.

The radiator groaned in protest, the pipes rattling like brass warming up before a set.

Theo pressed a palm against the open book, willing the words to stay still. For a moment they held. Then the page trembled beneath his hand.

He told himself it was fatigue.

The air sharpened with coal smoke. Somewhere beyond the walls, a horn broke loose in the night.

The lights went dark.

And when he opened his eyes again, Harlem was different.

The words swam, and the sidewalk cracked into cobblestones.

Horse hooves clopped. Trumpets rang from a window above. A boy in suspenders sprinted past with a sack of newspapers.

Theo looked down. His phone was gone.

He closed his eyes again, slowly, and he was back in Harlem 2025. The coffee had spilled all over his notes.

He told himself it was a stress-induced hallucination.

Two weeks later, when he touched the yellowed cover of Torchlight Verse, it happened again.

This time, the streetlamps and car horns didn’t dissolve into fluorescent light and radiator hiss.

***

Theo Marshall had never planned to write about his great-granduncle. Elias Marshall was barely a footnote in most Harlem Renaissance anthologies. His one slim volume of poems, printed in 1925. Then nothing else. It had taken Theo three semesters and an irritable dissertation advisor to even find the book.

But here he was, dozing over its fragile binding in Columbia’s archive reading room, the heater rattling like a dying trombone, when the world folded neatly into itself.

The cold vanished.

Ink and coal hung heavy in the room, a bitter perfume. From outside drifted Harlem’s chorus: boots striking pavement in syncopation, a horn laughing wild from a tenement window, a dice game punctuated by cheers, and far off, the steel tempo of the train threading it all together.

Theo stood. The desk under him was now a dark walnut, carved with initials.

Outside the tall window, dusk spread over Harlem, streetlamps flickering on as voices rose from the sidewalks.

His hand dug into his sternum, waiting for the sharp bite of something fatal. The pulse was strong, stubbornly alive.

But if he was right, and Theo Marshall put more faith in science than faith, he had time-traveled by accident. Again.

Footsteps pounded the stairs, each one strong enough to rattle the doorframe.

The door flew open hard, slamming against the wall.

In the doorway stood Elias Marshall.

***

Elias’s suit sagged at the shoulders, the fabric gone shiny with wear. Ink clung to the creases of his fingers, and one sock had slouched low inside a scuffed shoe. The socks didn’t match. His steps struck the floor with a restless energy that filled the room.

“Jervis lied,” Elias muttered, slamming a folder onto the desk. “He said he’d get it to Locke. Said he’d help. All they want is another Langston, another Claude. I ain’t the right color for them.”

 

Theo blinked.

Elias spun on him. “Who the hell are you?”

 

“Me?”

 

“Yeah, boy. I don’t see no one else here.”

 

“I… uhm.. friend of Jervis.”

 

“Make sense. You got that damn Jervis look.” He poured himself a half-glass of amber liquid. “You here to laugh too? Read my poems, say they ain’t finished, ain’t worth a damn?”

 

“No. I…” Theo stared. “You’re Elias Marshall.”

 

The man narrowed his eyes. “Boy, how do you know my name?”

Theo’s throat tightened. ‘You… wrote Torchlight Verse. Published next year.’”

 

“Next year?” Elias squinted. “You drunk already?”

Theo let out a single bark of laughter that cracked the silence. “Maybe.”

 

Elias stared a beat longer, then dropped into a chair. “Well, mystery man, since you’ve materialized into my misery, might as well read them. Maybe you’ll say something new.”

Theo picked up the folder. Inside: ink-scrawled lines, thick with metaphor, grief knotted into cadence. They weren’t finished, but they carried a heat that felt alive.

He cleared his throat. “This one here, Stove Smoke. It’s got the bones of something incredible. But here.” He pointed. “Don’t finish this metaphor. Let it hang. Let it ache.”

Elias frowned. “The line about Mama’s laugh?”

“Yes. Let her live in the smoke. Don’t tie a bow on it.”

Elias leaned forward. “What did you say your name was again, boy?”

Theo paused. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You some kind of spirit or figment of my ‘magination.”

“Maybe.”

 

They traded short, uneven chuckled bursts, the kind that tested the air, before the sound grew freer, tumbling between them.

Elias poured him a drink. Theo accepted.

***

They worked through the night.

“Your verbs are good,” Theo said. “But you over-explain the emotion.”

Elias bristled. “People don’t read between the lines.”

“They do if the line hits right.”

At one point, Elias demanded, “You sure you’re not Alain Locke in disguise?”

Theo snorted. “Please. Locke doesn’t quote Kendrick.”

 

Elias blinked. “Who on earth is Kendrick.”

 

“Never mind.”

 

Later, as they restructured a poem called Inheritance, Elias leaned back. “When I was eight, I wrote about a dead bird. Mama said, ‘you got heavy hands for a child.’ Been dragging that weight since.”

Theo nodded. “Heavy hands leave marks.”

“You talk like a professor.”

“Guess I do.”

Elias laughed.“ You’ve got the look of a man stuck between places.”

Theo’s eyes dropped to the ink stains on Elias’s hands. His own fingers flat against the desk, unsure what to hold on to. “I… I shouldn’t be here,” he said, then after a breath, “though I’ve never felt more at home.”

He leaned in slightly, his next words quiet, as if asking permission. “Can I give you one line?”

 

“Only one, huh.”

 

Theo wrote: You cannot name the stars unless you’ve walked beneath their heat.

His gaze lingered on the words. His lips parted, and released a breath so slow it seemed to carry something out of him.

“Damn. That kind of line could make a man immortal.”

Theo shrugged. “It’s yours.”

 

“Hell it is,” Elias said. “A line like that don’t belong to one man. But I’ll keep it.”

 

He turned back to the page.

Theo felt the jolt before it happened.

The room shimmered. Elias’s voice echoed. And the desk beneath his fingers transformed.

 

***

He woke in the library. A radiator hissed.

The poem lay open on the desk. The final one. The one that had always ended mid-line.

Except now it didn’t.

You cannot name the stars

unless you’ve walked beneath their heat –

so I walk. Still walking.

Theo’s throat caught.

He flipped to the acknowledgements. There, in ink faded by time:

To the man whose name I never caught, who found me in the hour I was ready to quit.

Theo sat back.

He checked the archive database. Elias Marshall: still one book, still no further publications, still nearly forgotten.

But that line, the one about stars, had become part of the canon. Quoted in anthologies. Tattooed on artists. It had survived.

Theo had given it. And history had kept it.

Without him.

***

He didn’t tell anyone.

Not his advisor. Not his friends. Not even his mother.

He redrafted his proposal:

Inherited Voice: Ghosts, Lineage, and the Unwritten Contributors to the Harlem Renaissance.

He quoted Elias liberally.

And when he defended it months later, voice steady, heart full, he wore a pin in his lapel: a star, tiny and unremarkable to anyone else.

***

One rainy afternoon, Theo found himself outside the old brownstone on Lenox, the one he’d first “arrived” in. It was a crumbling walk-up now, paint peeling, windows cracked.

He stood for a moment in the doorway and listened.

He didn’t hear any music, nor keyboard clacking, only the rain working its way through the cracks where sound used to be.

A boy passed on a scooter, blasting trap music.

Theo smiled.

 

He decided not to go inside.

Instead, he walked down Lenox, coat collar up, heels tapping to the music in his head. He wasn’t chasing after doorways or strange coincidences anymore.

For now, he held on to what he’d found.

He carried a past close enough to touch and a future opening ahead, his shoes striking wet pavement as he walked clear between the two.

Taiwan Will Serve as FLASH POINT as U.S. Plans Tactical NUKES for War with China – KJ Noh