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2023.05.29 01:43 Nickthebakuganfan (warning, Im about to gush autistily about a thing.) I JUST SAW THE MARIO MOVIE HOLY SHIT-

IT. WAS. SO. GOD. DAMN. GOOD! I EVEN BROUGHT MY OLD BOWSER AMIBO FROM SMASH 4 AND IM JUST GONNA AUTISTIC GUSH ABOUT IT RN. FIRST, PUNCH OUT WAS IN IT, THERE WAS GAME AND WATCH REP, DUCK HUNT, EVEN FUCKING BALLOON FIGHT GOT SOMETHING AND I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT OMG- AND THE M U S I C! CHRIST IT WAS SO GOOD. HONEST TO GOD I DIDN'T ACTUALLY LOOK INTO THE MOVIE AS A ✨ critic ✨ SO I DONT KBOW IF ANY OF THE ACTING WAS OFF BUT THAT AINT MATTER WHEN YOU JUST SIT DOWN AND HAVE FUN RIGHT? OH I LOVED IT I LOVED IT AND JACK BLACK WAS SO GODDAMN GOOD AS BOWSER AAAAAAAAAAA-
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2023.05.29 01:25 frn Recently adopted a German Shepard and I'm a little worried

I'm not great at writing long form, so I'm going to write most of this in bullets for clarity
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2023.05.29 01:08 MyFuneralHomeStories Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar

I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
Here this episode wherever you listen to podcasts:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-funeral-home-stories/id1462188362?i=1000437632125
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Download the 45 minute Epilogue & Commercial Free Episodes & Seasons: www.MyFuneralHomeStories.com
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2023.05.29 01:04 MyFuneralHomeStories Chapter Two: 3 drinks, 2 dead & 1 Candy Bar

I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
​
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2023.05.29 01:03 Trash_Tia Camp Redwood is running out of counsellors! These children... THEY'RE NOT CHILDREN.

In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks and crude jokes. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to catch his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!
submitted by Trash_Tia to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 01:03 subject-2- test

“Last time on Total Drama Revenge of the Island! The campers did a fun game of Truth-or-Laser-Shark, which they revolted against, so we instead did a Harold-McGrady-brand-patented obstacle course! Lightning got the boot in the Catapult of Shame (Trademark Pending) because the bird is no longer with us. Or, so it seems. We also cut the Chris Mclean campfire due to budget constraints. Truly tragic, I know. What’ll happen in this episode? What embarrassing comment will Sam make this time? Find out right now on Total Drama Revenge of the Island!”
The Mutant Maggots were sleeping soundly in the luxurious spa hotel. Zoey, in particular, was loving the lavish lifestyle. Her family wasn’t the richest. The whole reason she joined to show was to make some money, to help her father out. It’d been a hard-knock life (Pun very much intended, Zoey loved that film) for her and her father ever since her mother had died. She was determined to bring the money home, no matter what. She’d also joined the show to (hopefully) make some friends. A lonely girl, she was. (Wow, she really was just stocked to the brim with references today.) But it was true! She’d make a friend in this a sweer body on her team, Mike. Nothing out of the ordinary…. Besides the fact that he was her DREAM GUY!! Nice, cute, and got her references! Just thinking about him made her swoon. She shrugged it off and got out of her bed. She did not want to leave, but she had to. After all, it was her tradition to wake up extra early in the mornings and take a walk around her neighborhood. Or, in this case, the island. She slowly inched out of bed, taking account of the sleeping Anne-Maria. She quickly got dressed and brushed her teeth, opening the door. The cool September air hit her, and she shivered. But she loved it. Everything about the island was so peaceful. The waves crashed against the beach. The birds squawked in the distance. She took in a deep breath. It was truly amazing. She started to walk around the island, soaking in the sunlight. Suddenly, she heard the creaking of a door. She turned around. It was Jo.
“Hey, Zoey,” she said, speeding up as she went.
Zoey realized she had the perfect opportunity to make a new friend!
“No, wait! I was wondering if-um, if- you’d like to go on a walk with me?”
(…she Nailed It.)
Jo looked at her, slightly confused. “Uh… Sure?”
Jo wasn’t used to anyone wanting to actually be next to her. Willingly. You couldn’t have waterboarded this information out of her, but the true reason she joined Total Drama was very different from the persona she displayed. Of course, she wanted the Million. Who didn’t? But she also wanted a friend. Someone real! Someone who wouldn’t be scared of her. She was quickly snapped out of her daydreams. Zoey was asking her something.
“Uh, so… Why’d you join Total Drama?” She asked. The early morning sunlight hit her face perfectly.
“Well, for the money! Why else would I join?” She lied.
“Well, I joined to make friends,” said Zoey.
Jo took a mental note of that. I guess she wasn’t the only lonely girl on the island.
“Do you have any siblings?” Zoey asked.
“Yeah. I Have 4 older brothers. But if you came by my house, it certainly wouldn’t seem like it!” Jo laughed. Her laugh was burly and loud. But it was also infectious and full of joy. Zoey smiled and started laughing too. Soon, all that could be heard was the joyous harmony of the two girl's laughter.
Staci was having a much worse time. It was 9:30 when she woke up. She had about 10 minutes to spare before that challenge began. All she could think about was how much she utterly hated herself. She would never dare to admit it, though. She constantly hid behind her thick layer of lies. She wished that she could just stop. But no matter how many times she’d say that she’d stop, it never came. She never stopped lying. Everyone in her life hated her, and she knew it. She was surprised that she wasn’t the first boot, for crying out loud. She slowly climbed out of the crappy bed and walked to the main lodge. She walked in, hunched over. She felt invisible.
“Hey! Come sit with us!”
…Was that to her?
She turned over to find Dawn and B, her fellow teammates, calling to her. Dawn was smiling at her.
That’s new, she thought.
She gingerly took a seat next to the two. The bigger one, whose name was B, wrote something down on his notepad.
Hello! You looked lonely, so I asked Dawn to invite you to our table! Don’t worry, we don’t bite.
Staci still couldn’t process this. Nobody had ever willingly let her sit with them.
“…Thank you.”
B wrote something on his notepad.
You seem a bit tense. You alright?
“Yeah. I was just thinking. You know, my great, great-”
But Staci stopped halfway.
“You know, this dude named William Holley invented that notepad! He invented the pad around when he innovated the idea to collect all the paper scraps from various factories.”
She had done it. She hadn’t lied, for once in her life! She had finally done it!
But before Staci could celebrate, Chris threw open the door, carrying a boombox. He strutted into the lodge, then planted his feet in the center of the room and started to do that one Fortnite dance we all collectively forgot about.
“Please stop,” said Dakota. She was comforting a crying Sam, who was devastated that anyone was still doing that dance.
After a grueling thirty seconds, he finally stopped doing the awful dance.
“Ok, ok, I'll stop! Anyways, today’s challenge is called Wawanakwa Musical! Teams must perform a skit. Everyone must have a speaking part, and it must have a corny message about something found in a typical High School Disney Channel movie. The team with the best number gets to pair up people to go to prom, while the other team gets it randomly. The couples need to face off in prom-themed challenges, such as drinking all the punch, dancing off, and something else I wouldn't want to spoil for you all. The campers who win the most challenges and make the best skit will win!"
“I don't even want to know what that last challenge will be," said Mike.
"Don't worry, nothing too dangerous!" Chris replied. Some of the campers exchanged worried glances.
“Oh, a skit! How exciting!” Chirped Ella, the secret 7th member of the Mutant Maggots. She was surrounded by animals, per the norm.
“Can you please get your stupid animal friends out of my face!?” Shouted Scott, who had become a resting place for the birds, having several perched on his head.
“Little ones, farewell! You must depart, at least for now,” she said, the heartbreak break in her voice crystal clear.
Confessional- Brick.
“Is it just me, or was that girl not here before? But I’m not complaining! Another member of our troop is just what we need!” Brick blushed.
End Confessional.
“I can already tell this one has a wonderful soul! Her aura is exceptionally bright pink, and it suits her wonderfully. As to how she teleported here? Beats me."
End Confessional.
We cut to all the campers outside the main lodge. The Mutant Maggots were doing a group huddle to brainstorm ideas.
“Ok. Mags. Let’s organize a game plan! We’ve got this in the bag if we work hard and persevere!” Said Brick.
“Never call us “Mags” again,” snarked Jo.
“I like that attitude, Brick! I think our message should be about spreading kindness and not bullying!” Chirped Ella.
“I, um, thank you,” fumbled Brick, who was not used to someone complimenting him for a change.
“We need to cast everyone as a part. First off, we’ll need a bully character. Any volunteers?”
Most eyes went to Mike, the self-proclaimed Actor. He started to sweat but soon realized his team needed him. He sighed and took off his shirt. He instantly switched to Vito, one of Mike’s many alters.
“Ayo, what seems to be the issue?” said Vito. Anne-Maria was enamored instantly.
Confessional- Zoey.
“Mike sure does take his acting seriously. Must be a method actor. Not going to lie, it’s a bit weird. But I like weird!”
End Confessional.
“Who knew you had such a bod under that shirt?” Swooned Anne-Maria. She jumped on Vito, who didn’t mind.
“Ok Mike, we get it, you’re a good actor. Are you doing this or not?” screamed an irritated Jo.
“Yeah. sure, whatever,” said a completely uninterested Vito.
“We’ll also need a victim and five other roles. Any ideas?” asked Brick.
“How about we have one bystander and three people who spread the anti-bully message?” Ella suggested.
“Fine with me,” said Brick.
“Anyone want a particular role?” Ella asked.
“I want to be one of the spreaders,” said Jo, which was a surprise of most.
“Ok! Me and Brick can be the other two, Anne-Maria can be the victim, and Zoey can be the bystander. I have an idea for the plot- Mike bullies Anne-Maria, and Zoey doesn’t do anything. Then we come in and tell them to be kind, and then it works, and we live happily ever after!” said Ella.
“Ok, why don’t we run through it?” Suggested Jo.
“Ayo, what am I doing again?” Vito asked.
“Ugh, cut the crap and start acting!” Screamed an irritated Jo.
“Yeesh, it’s cold in here. I’m putting my shirt back on,” pretended Vito, aware that Mike probably needed to switch in. Mike was at first quite confused, but quickly realized what had happened.
We cut to a montage of the Maggots working very hard at refining the script. Lines were changed, parts swapped, and then swapped back again, but in the end, they’d created the perfect skit- the ultimate work of their labor.
However, on the other side of the auditorium were the Toxic Rats, who had fewer hurdles.
B wrote something down on his notepad.
Just make it about how great Chris is and we’re sure to win.
“Sounds like a plan to me!” Said Scott, giving the silent giant a fist-bump.
“Yeah. We can improvise it as we go! We don’t even need a script!” Dakota said.
“Wait, what are we doing?” Asked Staci, who was once again out of the loop.
Soon, Chris, Chef, and some intern sat at a table, waiting for the skits to be presented. They were at the auditorium, where the Talent Contest challenge had been done a few years back.
“Ok, maggots! Wow me!”
Chris leaned back as Mike and Anne-Maria walked out on stage.
“Hey nerd, give me your lunch money!” Said Mike, utterly failing at sounding intimidating.
“Oh no! Whatever will I do??” Said Anne-Maria, who was wearing one of Cameron’s glasses he’d left behind as a pitiful attempt for a nerd costume.
Zoey then walked out. “Oh no! I want to do something, but I’m scared!”
Jo, Ella, and Brick then walked out.
“Hey! Bullying is bad!” Shouted Ella.
“You need to stand up for yourself!” Screamed Brick at Anne-Maria.
“You need to stop being a bully!” Screamed Jo, who was significantly louder than the rest.
“And you need to learn not to be silent! If you see something, say something!” Ella finished.
“Wow! Thank you! I will always stand up for the victim next time I see someone being bullied!” said Zoey.
“And I will be kind!” said Mike.
“You better!” Shouted Jo. “Now get got and leave this poor girl alone!” Jo shoved Mike much harder than she had anticipated.
He fell off the stage, landing right on his head. The others winced at his misfortune.
“…So be kind!” Finished Ella, who then quickly scampered down to check on Mike.
Mike faded in and out of consciousness. But he knew one thing- this was not a good sign. Mike had a 6th Alter. A particularly malevolent one, should I say… His name was… Mal.
Mike stood up, sporting fresh bags under his eyes. Well, the lone eye you could see, as the other was covered by hair. He stood up and grabbed Jo by the collar.
“Don’t touch me,” he said in an even tone.
Jo was hardly threatened by Mike grabbing her, considering she was twice his size. He had no strength. But when he spoke, it was different. Something about the way he spoke scared her. His even but still threatening voice. His unwavering face of pure anger. She backed away.
“Sorry.”
Confessional- Jo.
“I don’t know what came over me. He’s so non-threatening in the physical department, but the way he talks?” Jo looked at the camera. “Someone give that twig actor of the year!”
End Confessional.
We cut to Chris, Chef, and the intern. They all sat with mostly stunned and confused faces. They got into a group huddle before Chris finally spoke.
“…Okay, that was weird. But it was also pretty good, and you did everything right. We’ll give you… a 7/10.”
The maggots cheered loudly. Even though it wasn’t a nine or a ten, they were simply glad Chris gave them a satisfactory score, especially for how much work had been put into the project. Mal took in a deep breath and switched back into Mike.
“…What did I miss?” He asked. Nobody said anything, simply glaring at him.
Confessional- Mike.
“Ok, I’m pretty sure I switched into Mal which is definitely not a good thing.” He buried his face in his hands. “They probably all hate me now…”
End Confessional.
Confessional- Zoey.
“Ok, so about what Mike did back there? So weird! I know Jo shoved him, but that just felt way out of line. Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Is this normal? Am I the weird one??”
End Confessional.
“Ok, you can sit on the bleachers now. Rats, you’re up!”
All of the rats came out at once.
“Man, I really love Chris!” Said Scott.
“Yeah, he’s so cool, and handsome to boot!” Swooned Dakota.
“Chris… Is an interesting guy!” Forced out Dawn, who genuinely could not think of anything good to say about the host.
“I don’t think Chris is all that cool,” said Staci, who hadn’t caught on yet. Scott quickly shoved her to the ground.
“How could someone not like Chris??” Scott questioned.
“That girl is insane,” added Dakota.
B drew something on his notepad. It was a drawing of Chris, with a 12-pack (if that's even possible) and surrounded by adoring fans.
They all bowed, and Chris clapped loudly, much to the chagrin of the Maggots. They had no chance.
“I LOVE it!! 10/10, Rats win!!” Chris shouted, not even bothering to ask for Chef's and the intern’s opinions.
Confessional- Chef.
“If you ask me, the skit the Rats made was a bunch of Chris-propaganda-spouting-nonsense. The Maggots? Now that was amazing. Every part was well played, and every line was perfect. 10/10, truly the Mutant Maggot's magnum opus. What a cinematic masterpiece." Chef then burst out laughing.
End Confessional
“So, it’s clear to everyone that the Rats win. You may start pairing up now. I’ll pair the Maggots in a second.”
“I can go with B!” Suggested Dawn. B nodded.
“I’ll go with Sam!” Stated Dakota. Sam looked up, surprised.
Confessional- Sam.
“You’re telling me that a pretty girl willingly picked me to go to prom with them??!” Sam fainted.
End Confessional.
The only two left were Scott and Staci.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” groaned Scott.
“Ok. Mike can go with Zoey, Ella goes with Brick, and Jo goes with Anne-Maria,” said Chris, without much thought.
We cut to the teams in a warehouse that was decorated to look like a high school. The lights were a deep purple. In the center was a disco ball, and there was a dance floor underneath it.
“Ok, the way this works is that each couple will compete in one challenge each, starting with the punch drinking contest. Each couple will need to down two giant bowls of punch, one for each person. Whoever finished their punch first wins. Also, no spilling can occur our you’re out!”
“We’ll take punch,” said Jo immediately.
“Whoa, I did not sign up for that!” Anne-Maria protested.
“Don’t care, didn’t ask. We’re doing it!” Anne-Maria rolled her eyes but eventually agreed to it.
“I’ll take the punch. I just want to get my “date” with Mrs. Flabby-Mc-chatter-mouth over as soon as possible,” groaned Scott.
The couples were waiting at the punch table for Chris to call start.
“BEGIN!”
Jo quickly grabbed the bowl and downed the juice in two big gulps. She instantly turned to Anne-Maria.
“Come on, hurry up!”
Anne-Maria was having a difficult time getting the punch down. Eventually, she just couldn’t finish it. She spat all of the punch into Jo’s face. Jo screamed and clenched her fists.
“Great job, you lunatic! You cost us the challenge!” Shouted Jo.
“Maybe I woulda done betta if you weren’t SHOUTIN’ AT ME!!” Screamed Anne-Maria, her jersey accent at full display.
Jo lunged at Anne-Maria. Unfortunately for the Maggots, Scott and Staci had already finished their punch. Scott smirked and wiped the punch from his mouth.
“Easy!”
Staci also had punch around her mouth. She wiped the punch residue off her lips, but she couldn’t wipe the permanent grin off her face. She felt a deep sense of accomplishment, despite the fact it was just a bowl of punch. She felt like she'd made a genuine contribution to her team.
“The Toxic Rats win the first round!” Shouted Chris. They cheered loudly, and the Maggots knew their fate was sealed. Jo and Anne-Maria were both fighting each other. Both were covered in the sticky fruit punch, and screaming.
Confessional- Brick.
“That was so unsportsmanlike that I don’t even know what to say.”
End Confessional.
The next challenge was a dance-off. It was Ella and Brick versus Sam and Dakota.
“Ok. So, whoever can dance the longest without tripping up or giving up wins! Good luck!”
Royalty-free romance music started to play in the background. Brick had prepared for this moment his whole life. Well, he wouldn’t have expected it to be on a reality TV show with a girl he’d only known for a few days, but you win some and you lose some. Brick swooped Ella up and spun her around. Ella grabbed his hands and slowly rocked with him. They started to move around the dance floor. They continued to spin each other around in beautiful harmony. Ella couldn’t help but imagine how much this reminded her of the dance scene between Belle and the Beast. Her heart swelled. Had she found her prince? Brick was having similar thoughts. He’d never found someone quite as graceful as Ella.
Sam and Dakota were dancing much less formally. They mostly goofed off, doing random and silly dances. They were laughing very hard. Dakota couldn’t stop thinking about how cute Sam looked! The two continued to boogie, laughing all the way.
After about 30 minutes, the couples were still going strong. Well, one of them was going strong. Ella and Brick were dancing the night away, as their dance was slower and less physically demanding. Sam and Dakota weren’t fairing so well. Sam could only do so many video game dances before he tired out, and he was already on the verge of passing out. Dakota was also getting tired, but in the end, it was Sam who fell.
“The Mutant Maggots win!”
Ella and Brick collapsed into a tight embrace, happy that what felt like hours of dancing was over.
Confessional- Ella.
“Wow, I’ve never felt so magical in my life… And Brick! He was an amazing dancer!” Ella sighed longingly.
End Confessional
Confessional- Brick
“She’s quite the dancer...” Brick looked away from the confessional’s camera, hiding his tomato-red face.
End Confessional
Mike, Zoey, B, and Dawn were nervously waiting for the final part of the challenge. One can only imagine all the messed up things Chris can come up with. Soon, Chris came close to the four teenagers.
Four interns lead the contestants to a large platform that was elevated over a pool of water. The four contestants got onto the platform, and they were given water guns filled with a red liquid.
“Inside these guns are PIG BLOOD!! You must shoot your opponents off the table and into the water. The team who can knock their opponents down first wins!”
Zoey gasped. “Is this some sort of messed up homage to Carrie?!” She asked.
“I can’t state that for copyright reasons, but I think you know the answer,” said Chris.
The duos put their fingers on the trigger, waiting for Chris to let them begin.
“Three… Two… One!”
Mike and Zoey ended up both targeting Dawn, who immediately flew into the water, as she weighed almost as much as a feather. B put his finger over the nozzle of his gun, spraying blood uncontrollably. Mike and Zoey sputtered, and Zoey was close to falling into the water.
“Zoey!” Mike screamed. He quickly jumped in front of the redhead, saving her from a particularly nasty blow from B. Zoey took B’s strategy, and also put her finger over the nozzle. Soon everyone was covered in pig blood. B was standing strong and taking the blows like a champ. However, Mike was still covering Zoey and was not fairing so well. He’d never wondered how bad pig blood would taste, and now he was experiencing it in full force. The disgusting, iron-like liquid flooded his mouth. Soon, he could take no more.
“Zoey, you got this!” He shouted as he was finally knocked into the water. Zoey trembled a bit. It was her versus the smartest guy on the show! Well, maybe besides the skinny one who’d been eliminated in episode one, but she’d already forgotten his name. B continued to spray Zoey, getting increasingly closer and closer. There was almost nothing Zoey could do. Her blows were hardly affecting the juggernaut. It didn’t help that the other team was cheering B on incredibly loudly, whilst the only person cheering for Zoey was Mike. Eventually, she couldn’t handle the blows. She tumbled off the platform and into the water.
“The Toxic Rats win! Maggots, I’ll see you at the campfire tonight.” Everyone started to clear out, sans Mike and Zoey.
B twirled the water gun around and pretended to put it in an invisible holster, stepping off the platform and leaving the warehouse. Zoey was still processing the fall and all the pig blood in her mouth. The water was cold and soothing. She wiggled around in the water, trying to get all the blood off. Once she got most of it off, she resurfaced. Mike was eagerly waiting for her.
“You did so well!” Zoey couldn’t help but smile at his adorable buck-toothed grin. When he wasn’t acting as one of his kooky personas, he sure was sweet. But Zoey still didn’t feel right about him. When he played his characters, he’d act so vastly different. That might seem normal as he was an actor overall, but he was just way too method for her liking. She was planning on asking him to maybe tone it down, if it was ok with him.
“Hey… I’ve been meaning to ask you if you could maybe tone down your acting. If that’s okay with you. It’s just… With the whole jersey shore persona and whatever you did with Jo? It’s just kind of weird because I really like you and I thought you liked me, but then you start flirting with Anne-Maria and...” Zoey started to tear up. “Obviously I don’t owe you anything but...” Suddenly the was met with the warm -if not wet and bloody- feeling of Mike’s body wrapped around her.
“Zoey... I’ve got to confess something. I have this thing called MPD. Basically, it means I have multiple personalities. When I flirt with Anne-Maria and act like an old man? Those are just some of my personalities. I just lied about the acting thing. I didn’t want to seem weird and-” Zoey quickly kissed him.
“You should’ve led with that, you dummy! Why would I judge you for that? Hell, that just makes you ten times cooler!” Mike sighed a deep sigh of relief.
Confessional- Mike
“I can’t believe it! She accepts me! And I didn’t need anyone’s help telling her!”
End Confessional.
Confessional- Zoey
“Well, that explains everything. I suppose it’s best that I found out this now rather than later.”
End Confessional.
“Can you not tell anyone though? I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about me.” Mike saw something move in the corner of his eye, but he shrugged it off. Probably just a rat or something. The rest of the campers had left the warehouse, and it was just Mike and Zoey. Well, at least that’s what they thought.
“Of course! Your secret’s safe with me.”
The camera panned out to reveal a hidden Scott, who was hiding behind one of the lockers.
Confessional- Scott.
“So, Mike had MPD? I’m sure I can use that in the future. Zoey may not tell anyone, but I might!”
End Confessional.
Confessional- Mike.
“Ok. So, it’s great that Zoey is cool with me, but I haven’t forgotten that… He resurfaced. I might as well fill you all in. Mal is my 6th alter. He’s a protector. But he usually ends up overdoing his job and scaring people away. He knows I need this money, and I know he’ll do anything to get it. He hasn’t come out since my Juvie days.” Mike looked to the side. “But that’s another story.”
End Confessional.
The maggots were quite in a very somber mood. Zoey and Mike were covered in blood. Jo and Anne-Maria were covered in punch. Brick and Ella were the only people who seemed happy, albeit awkward.
“Ok, I think I’m going to take a shower,” said Mike.
The other three girls followed him, realizing that probably was a good idea. The only people left were Brick and Ella.
“Soo, what’d you think about my dance skills?” Brick asked in a joking tone.
“They were good! And I’m not lying, you really know how to dance!” Ella said, pointing at Brick.
“Thank you. I was actually saving that routine for a real prom. But I suppose a fake prom is just as good.”
“Oh! Well, you can always use it again. This of me as a practice round,” chuckled Ella.
“No, it was more than that!” Brick said. “I don’t know, it felt… Magical?”
“I know! It really did,” Ella said. Both parties looked away, blushing.
Confessional- Ella.
“I think I’ve found my prince…” she swooned. “And I didn’t even need to lose my shoe!”
End Confessional.
Ella and Brick both leaned in for a mutually agreed kiss. Their lips almost touched. Almost.
“Oh my god!” Sam shouted. Both Brick and Ella screamed back. Brick even fell off the log they were sitting on.
“I am so sorry! I won’t tell anyone.” Sam covered his eyes with his hands. He stumbled away.
Confessional- Sam.
"Brick? And Ella?! Who would've expected that?"
End Confessional.
Brick and Ella sat in awkward silence. It was finally broken by Brick’s infectious and hearty laugh. It was booming and loud, but it was still beautiful to Ella. She started to laugh too- her laugh was much lighter. It could’ve been mistaken for singing.
A few hours later, The Mutant Maggots were gathered at the campfire. They all exchanged nervous glances with each other. One member of their team would leave the island- permanently.
“Mutant Maggots. Welcome. There are five marshmallows on my plate. One of you will not receive one tonight, and you will catch a ride on the Bird of Shame.”
“I thought the bird died?”
“I lied. So go cast those votes and we’ll get to it!”
Voting Confessionals- Everyone on the Mutant Maggots.
“I’m voting for Jo. That bossy B-I-T-C-(Bleep) Has got to go!” Shouted Anne-Maria.
“Anne-Maria is annoying, and hardly a team player. She’s leaving tonight,” said Jo, casting her vote.
“I’m voting for Anne-Maria. I’d vote for Jo, but I feel bad after the whole Mal thing,” said Mike.
“Anne-Maria. If she keeps rubbing up on Mike, even as one of his alters, I’ll lose it!” Zoey shouted.
“I’ll vote for Jo. Sure, Anne-Maria messed up, but she initiated the fight. Not very sportsmanlike,” stated Brick, casting his vote.
“I’m voting for Jo. She lunged at Mike and set him off. Not very kind,” said Ella.
End Voting Confessionals.
“Okay. You’ve all cast your votes. Let’s get to it.”
“Zoey! Come get your marshmallow. You’re safe.”
Zoey eagerly jumped up and ate her marshmallow.
“Mike- so are you.”
He sighed a deep sigh of relief and took his marshmallow.
“Brick and Ella! Looks like you two lovers are safe.”
Brick and Ella exchanged a glance. “Uh, were not lo-”
“Sure, you aren’t. I can see the cameras, you know that, right?”
Everyone looked at the duo.
“Whatever.” Chris turned to Anne-Maria and Jo.
“Welcome, girls. You both got three votes each.”
The two looked at each other nervously.
“And because of this… You will engage in a tiebreaker!”
We cut to Jo and Anne-Maria on top of an elevated platform over water. In their hands were sticks with foam ends.
“Okay. Your goal is to knock your opponent into the water before the timer runs out. The winner will stay in the game, and the loser will take the bird home. BEGIN!”
Jo immediately lunged at Anne-Maria, expecting her to buckle underneath Jo’s so-called superior strength. But to Jo’s surprise, she held her ground. The metal sticks clashed against each other, and each girl took turns exchanging blows.
“Not bad, jersey girl!” Grunted Jo, who was genuinely struggling. Anne-Maria responded with a growl, knocking Jo to the ground.
“I’m staying in this game, Jo!” She shouted through her teeth.
Jo yelled and lunged at her, for the second time that day. She tackled Anne-Maria into the water, unfortunately taking herself down with her. The girls crashed into the water with a mighty splash. Jo quickly resurfaced.
“Do I win?!” She asked eagerly.
“Not exactly. You both fell into the water…” Chris grinned slyly.
“So?” Both girls asked.
“So, your both eliminated!” Chris shouted, laughing.
We cut to both girls on the docks.
“This is stupid. I won fair and square!” Jo yelled.
“Tell It to the bird!” Chris yelled back. The bird swooped down and took both girls by their arms. They yelled all the way.
“All right! Now that Jo and Anne-Maria are gone, how will the maggots fare? Will Brick and Ella continue their oh-so-secret romance? What will Mike do now that Scott knows about his MPD? Find out next time on,
Total!
Drama!
Revenge of the island!”
submitted by subject-2- to u/subject-2- [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 01:00 GuitarGuy971 Resistance - any spoilers for an intro to SW?

I will be taking my 7 year old on the Starcruiser at Disney and she hasn’t seem Star Wars yet. The booking agent suggested Resistance for being geared towards kids. Is this fine for 7 year olds, and is it a weird way to introduce her to SW?
My other concern is the risk of spoilers. They don’t just casually drop any spoilers to the original movies do they? Like “oh Anakin, the guy who is also Vader?”
submitted by GuitarGuy971 to StarWars [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 01:00 Znobaii [Playlist] I've spent the past 6 years refining 25 Spotify and Apple Music playlists so that I can take the aux in any scenario. With over 120 hours of music, I'm ready to share them with the world so that you can also take the aux whenever needed.

Hey /Music,
A few years ago I posted my playlists to this subreddit, and I still get some comments on that post, so I decided to post them so more people can see them, and hopefully be prepared whenever someone asks them to play some music!
Some of these playlists might have a couple of familiar songs, but I'm entirely confident that everyone will find some new music in every single playlist here. I won't give you any more filler than is necessary, just a quick explanation of the intended mood of each playlist - and its flagship songs.
Playlist Listening Context Flagship Songs Links
Sanctuary Sessions This is music for when you need to put yourself in a good mood and remind yourself that the world is an alright place. Sam the Samba Man, Sense, Para Ouvir No Rádio Spotify / Apple Music
Sapphire Sessions This is the melancholic playlist of the bunch. Play this when you're down in the dumps. I Need Some Sleep, Shadow's Song, Good News Spotify / Apple Music
Scarecrow Sessions This is a playlist for autumn. A good mix of hearty songs for when the leaves change colour. Old Friends, Grumpus, Never Meant Spotify / Apple Music
Seaweed Sessions Songs that make you feel like you're in the Krusty Krab. A feel-good mix. Fisherman, Quiero, Waikiki Wiggle Spotify / Apple Music
Snowboard Sessions Songs to shred to. I'll use it as a pump up playlist at different points as well. Lots of punk and rap. Tondo, Popeye, Six Wave Hold-Down Spotify / Apple Music
Snowfall Sessions One of two winter playlists. This playlist has cozy acoustic music to warm you up when you need it. Little Garçon, Pale Blue Eyes, Fantasy Theme Spotify / Apple Music
Soirée Sessions Having guests over for a fancy dinner? This smooth playlist will help them feel at home. Great for board game night too. Moondance, Autumn Leaves, I'm So Happy Now Spotify / Apple Music
Sprouting Sessions A very happy playlist. Meant for spring when the snow is starting to melt and you are feeling optimistic again. Lisztomania, Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken, Paint Me Silver Spotify / Apple Music
Stairwell Sessions Vol. 1 The first of the Stairwell Sessions - all of which are meant to be accompanied with psychoactive substances. This one is great for relaxing conversations with friends. O Trem Azul, Dreams Tonite, Crazy Spotify / Apple Music
Stairwell Sessions Vol. 2 This one has a pretty simple mandate: hip-hop to get high to. Snakes, Rapp Snitch Knishes, Where I'm From Spotify / Apple Music
Stairwell Sessions Vol. 3 This playlist has a lot of synthpop for when you're feeling energetic. Also meant to get high to. Realiti, Crimewave, Écoute Chérie Spotify / Apple Music
Stairwell Sessions Vol. 4 This is the closest thing to a personal playlist out of these all. Listening to this playlist can be a very intense experience while high. Some songs are not as accessible. Serious Shit, Navy & Cream, Romanticist Spotify / Apple Music
Stairwell Sessions Vol. 5 This is a playlist with all the "epic" songs. I think the average track length is over 10 minutes; don't let that distract you from how great some of these songs are. Long Season, Maggot Brain, Impossible Soul Spotify / Apple Music
Stairwell Sessions Vol. 6 This one is almost like a sister playlist of Vol. 4. It has a lot of ethereal music for when you want to disassociate. That's Us/Wild Combination, Sept, Clube Da Esquina No. 2 Spotify / Apple Music
Starlight Sessions A playlist for stargazing. Lots of pensive tracks to help you realize our scale in this universe. Man of Oil, Space Song, Sleeping on the Roof Spotify / Apple Music
Steppin' Sessions This is the party playlist. Not enough people are giving Disco love these days, but it's still great music to get sent. Histoire d'1 soir, Stayin' Alive, And the Beat Goes On Spotify / Apple Music
Stormcloud Sessions For really murky days where you can't see much but gray. This playlist gives you room to sulk but also energy to still get things done. Guns of Brixton, Dreams, Riot! Spotify / Apple Music
Strawberry Sessions This is one of the most accessible playlists. Play this one in a casual setting if you don't know people's music taste yet. Great for balmy summer nights. Buttercup, BLEACH, It Was A Good Day Spotify / Apple Music
Streetlight Sessions Play this when you are driving somewhere late at night, with only the moon and streetlights guiding you. It is a high enough tempo playlist to keep you up, and fits the surroundings quite well. Roads, Girl, Nightcall Spotify / Apple Music
Study Sessions An ambient playlist. I understand not everyone studies to ambient music, but this is great for those who do. It is also a lovely mix to put on as you fall asleep. Quiet Friend, Banteay Srey 1991, A Walking Embrace Spotify / Apple Music
Subaru Sessions A mix for road trips. The only word relating to road trips that I could find that also began with an 'S' is Subaru, so I had to go with it. Corona, Ain't No Rest For The Wicked, Better Days Spotify / Apple Music
Subzero Sessions One of two winter playlists. Compared to Snowfall Sessions, this one is for when you give in to the cold. Chilling songs are in this mix. Iron Galaxy, Lorelei, Keep The Streets Empty For Me Spotify / Apple Music
Sunflower Sessions One of three summer playlists. This playlist has casual acoustic music that puts you into a good headspace. Have a beer with the lads. Golden Days, Patio Song, Listen to the Music Spotify / Apple Music
Sunscreen Sessions Vol. 1 One of three summer playlists. This playlist is full of summer jams for when you are soaking in the sun. It also works as a party playlist. Dapper, Slide, Hoes at Trader Joe's Spotify / Apple Music
Sunscreen Sessions Vol. 2 One of three summer playlists. This playlist is the spiritual successor to Vol. 1. There's some overlap, but it's mostly a fresh batch of great summer tunes. Don't Need You, Walking in the Rain, Shine Blockas Remix Spotify / Apple Music
Sweaty Sessions For when you get sweaty with that special someone. Thinkin About You, West Coast Love, Brown Spotify / Apple Music
System Sessions A playlist of very low-key house music. Lots of deep/outsider house is great for when you're doing repetitive tasks. Right Here! Right Now!, Innerbloom, Fish Spotify / Apple Music
I have spent years curating these playlists, taking out songs almost as fast as I add them to keep quality high. Somewhere along the way, I decided to collect all the songs that either didn't make the cut or didn't fit into any specific playlist. Thus, Spare Sessions was born. This is an incredibly eclectic mix of music, recommended for only the very adventurous listener.
As happy as I am with all of these playlists, none of them are (or ever will be) fully complete. I'll continue to add and remove songs from them in the future. So, if you have any song recommendations for any of these playlists I would love to hear them. Last note, I use Spotify so I will rarely update the Apple Music playlists, but I felt like sharing them since not everyone is on Spotify.
Enjoy :)
submitted by Znobaii to Music [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:59 Inevitable-Bread2206 the dark

I've been writing free verse poetry, which has helped me process some of the transphobia I internalized growing up. I'm working up the courage to transition for real this time, after coming out 15 years ago and feeling forced back into hiding. This is really just me putting my thoughts to paper, but figured I would share in case it can help anyone else feel like they're not so alone.
TW: religious trauma, shame/guilt, internalized transphobia
​
most children are afraid of the dark, but not me
it was the one place I could laugh and I could cry
it was the one place I knew I wouldn’t make you angry
it was the one place I could wear bracelets and dresses and lip gloss and eyeshadow - as long as I stuffed it under the mattress before the morning came
​
it was the one place I could exist - even if just for a moment
​
the first time I told you who I really was, I was 15 years old
you reminded me god’s salvation was a gift, meant for everyone
other than me
​
“sinful,” “perverted,”
oh, and my personal favorite - “abomination”
​
do you remember sharing that part of the gospel with me?
hallelujah!
​
do you remember telling me, “abomination means there is nothing that disgusts god more?”
do you remember painting your daughter with the shame that your convictions told you she should be covered in?
did it make you feel better? I hope it made you feel better.
​
the belt, the wooden spoon, the wednesday service
a cycle of abuse
under the guise of discipline
​
a lifetime spent comforting
a broken man who buried
my existence in the back of both of our minds
​
I will not let you silence me
I refuse to stay in the dark
submitted by Inevitable-Bread2206 to gaypoetry [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:58 TSMaynard1 [RF] ABP "Always Be Preparing"

Pine needles brushed across Paul's arms as he charged through the trees with his bugout bag slung over his shoulders. Weighing in at forty pounds, it hardly slowed him down as he’d practiced this hike many times. He flicked his wrist and checked his Garmin Solar 2 Tactical Watch. The timer read: 2:23.
“You can do this, Paul.” He increased the pace and gritted his teeth, the weight finally having an effect. Paul bounded over a small creek, up a rolling hill, and pushed through a row of baby birches into a clearing. He doubled over to catch his breath and looked at his watch one more time. Two hours and twenty-eight minutes. Paul pumped his fist in victory.
After a short break, he approached a thorny bush in the center of the clearing. Paul brushed aside sand at the bush’s trunk, revealing a yellow rope. He pulled it, which lifted a hidden door in the ground covered with dirt, shrubbery, and other camouflage on the top side, and drab gray iron on the other. Underneath, wooden stairs descended into darkness. Paul retrieved a flashlight from his pack, clicked on the beam, and disappeared into the earth.
At the bottom of the steps, Paul faced a steel door and a combination lock. With several quick swipes of the dial, he opened the lock and tugged the metal door, which creaked as it cracked open. Paul flashed the beam on the offending hinges and shook his head. Something to fix later. He stepped into the secret chamber and pulled a hanging aluminum chain that turned on a large halogen light, illuminating a twenty-foot by eight-foot metal rectangle. The exposed corrugated walls revealed the bunker was nothing more than a shipping container. Paul buried it two years ago and had divided the interior into three spaces. The entry had a shelf with four dozen gallon jugs of sealed water along with a portable toilet, stacks of toilet paper, and a wastebasket. The middle section was the main living area and contained a futon, a TV with a DVD player, and a neat collection of movies underneath. A nightstand housed a small library of books, including the Bible, The Art of Meditation, Buddhism for Dummies, and other spiritual tomes. The back area of the unit had two shelves filled with canned food—black beans, green beans, peaches, peas, carrots, beef, and chicken. There was also a stationary bike, which was Paul’s proudest accomplishment because he had rigged it to a giant battery that provided power to all the electronics.
Paul was a prepper, and this would be his home when the end of the world came, an event he believed was imminent. The global economy was a house of cards built on greed, corruption, and inflated asset prices, but worst of all, it was based on a faith in paper and digital money.
His fear was triggered four years ago when he attended a lecture by a professor who explained the fragility of the world’s financial system. If a few banks failed, it would rattle people’s confidence, causing a herd-like response. Thousands of people would rush to withdraw their cash, which the banks no longer had because they’d invested it. The banks would either fail, and everyday folks would lose their life savings, or the government would print new money to replace the missing money, making all money worth a lot less. Anyone holding dollars would attempt to convert them to other assets.
Just like dominoes, the banks would topple over one by one, and as they crashed, people’s faith in money would crater. After all, what was money? It was just paper with printed images and numbers that we’d all accepted as having value. More recently, money had become numbers displayed on a computer screen, something Paul knew firsthand as he spent the first seven years of his career working at a regional bank in Asheville, North Carolina. Paul could literally change someone’s net worth with a few keystrokes. He could turn a pauper into a millionaire, or he could bankrupt the richest account holder. Sure, there were safeguards, but all were built on faith, which Paul believed was misplaced. Most people didn’t realize that the Federal Reserve only required each bank to hold at least ten percent of its deposits as a reserve. Ten percent. That’s it. The rest of the money was invested in loans or other financial instruments. As the rich bank owners and executives pushed for bigger and bigger returns, they invested in riskier and riskier assets. The lessons from the financial crisis of 2008 had been forgotten.
Once the monetary system collapsed, the entire economy would become paralyzed. Without a means of exchange, transactions would halt. Think about it. If someone tried to give you a slip of paper that you thought was worthless, would you give them anything of value in return?
The doomsday scenario would escalate. Food and water prices would skyrocket, but with no way to purchase them, many would starve. But people don’t just roll over and die, they would riot and take what they need to survive. Marshall Law would be implemented, but citizens would revolt against the government they felt had cheated them.
As Paul listened to the lecturer that fateful day, a depressing epiphany struck. Everything he’d learned and everything he’d spent his life acquiring was worthless.
Growing up, Paul had been taught the value of money, saving, and planning for retirement. He internalized these lessons as a teen after his father got sick and lost his job. His mother had died when he was very young, but his father still managed to provide him with a stable childhood, even though they were barely middle class. When his father fell ill, Paul witnessed firsthand how fast a family could sink into financial trouble, which couldn’t have come at a worse time. He was applying to colleges, and instead of choosing the one he liked best, he chose the one that gave him the most financial aid, which turned out to be a small school half-way across the country. He also didn’t choose a major he was excited about; he chose the one that would offer the safest financial prospects—economics with an emphasis on banking.
The distance from home meant that Paul didn’t see the rapid deterioration of his father. It wasn’t until he returned for the funeral that family friends told him how the disease had spread. His father had refused to let anyone tell Paul because he didn’t want that to distract Paul from his studies.
After graduating, Paul accepted a job at a bank, and immediately signed up for the company’s 401K match. Most college graduates can't grasp retirement when they enter the workforce, but a 401K match was free money. Over the next several years, Paul worked diligently to advance his career while saving most of his salary. He’d mapped out his life on an excel spreadsheet and calculated that he’d be financially secure at 53.
Everything went according to plan until that damn lecturer came along and blew it up. Sifting through the rubble of his grand scheme, Paul realized that in the new world order, he possessed no skills to survive. The savings he’d so meticulously built up would have little to no value. When the economy collapsed, he'd be like a baby, unable to do anything for himself.
After a week of wallowing in despair, Paul rallied himself. “I can still fix this” became a daily mantra. To start, he threw himself into survival classes. The first was a basic camping course where he learned how to create shelters and start a fire. The next class was more advanced and focused on water purification and building snares for small game.
Paul continued working at the bank, because he needed to pay for the classes and survival equipment he began hoarding, but on his next vacation, he put his training to the test. He planned to camp for a week in the Appalachian Mountains, but the temperature swings, especially at night, were too much. Paul lasted three nights in the wild. The humbling experience forced him to admit that he wasn’t a bushman. His depression returned until he stumbled upon an article about “preppers”—individuals who prepare for end of world disasters. Suddenly, things made sense. He didn’t need to abandon all the comforts of modern society. He needed to prepare for the end of the world the way he had planned for retirement.
As Paul traveled down the rabbit hole of prepping, he uncovered an underground society of people like him who knew the truth about the world’s demise. Of course, not everyone believed it would end because of an economic collapse. Some thought a nuclear war would destroy civilization. Others feared electromagnetic pulses from the sun would wipe out all modern electricity. And still others worried a massive volcanic eruption would spew enough ash and soot into the air to blot out the sun. There was no shortage of theories about the world ending, but one thing was clear. The world would end. Did it matter how it happened?
Paul began his prepping quest by purchasing ten acres an hour and a half outside of Asheville. It had plenty of small animals and a creek running through the middle. He then transported an unused cargo container to the land and buried it. This was the toughest part of the plan because it required heavy equipment. Next, he dug out a staircase and installed a steel door at the entrance. Finally, he furnished it with a mix of modern comforts and survival essentials.
Almost every weekend, Paul trekked to his underground sanctuary and made improvements. He also planned his bugout strategy. When the end of the world hit, he figured he needed to be safely hidden in his home within two and a half hours, a time he had achieved with this latest trip. Everything was set, and Paul could finally relax. He was prepared.
Paul slumped down on his futon and considered playing a movie or cracking the bottle of Jim Beam whiskey he stored in a special cabinet, but he shook off the urge. Those things were the rewards and comforts he’d enjoy after the world ended. His fingers rubbed the top of the Bible, something he planned to read cover to cover once the global economy cratered. He’d have plenty of time then to discover his spiritual side, but not now. Something else needed to be done. Something he’d missed.
The biggest mistake a prepper can make is assuming he had everything covered. This was the lesson taught by Yannis, the guru of the prepping world. He was so well-known within the doomsday community; he only went by one name. The guy was sharp as a whip and could live off the land, if necessary, but he preferred a more sophisticated lifestyle, so he created a luxurious cave that contained backup systems for all his backups. Food, water, shelter, and electricity were all taken care of, and it was projected that Yannis could survive ten years comfortably after the apocalypse. His famous blog titled “ABP” stood for Always Be Preparing. It was a motto Yannis lived by and something Paul aspired to, but as he sat in his bunker after the relentless hike, fatigue set in. He didn’t want to think about prepping or his bugout strategy. He wanted to just be.
Paul tilted his head back onto the futon’s cushion, and a loneliness crept into his mind. All his prepping left little time for relationships. He dated off and on in college, but it was never anything serious. It wasn’t like his high school sweetheart, Kristin Summer. They dated junior and senior year, but then Paul broke it off when his father got sick. Paul couldn’t focus on romance, and he knew the relationship wouldn’t have worked when he left for school 1,500 miles away. It still hurt when he learned from a friend that Kristin started dating Derek Gorman, an old classmate Paul hated. It hurt even more when he found out they had gotten married.
After college, Paul joined a couple of dating sites, but he hadn’t used them in over two years. Most women wouldn’t understand his prepping lifestyle, at least that’s what he feared, so he rejected dating before anyone could reject him. But most wasn't all, and with eight billion people on the planet, there had to be someone for him. Almost without thinking, Paul pulled out his phone and opened “My Match,” the site where he’d had the most luck. His profile still had a photo from his early banking days. He was clean shaven with a naïve smile. The face staring back in the picture differed greatly from the bearded survivalist he’d become. Would anyone consider a relationship with the new Paul? Only one way to find out. He snapped a selfie, uploaded it, and then updated his hobbies with the first being “prepping” followed by “survival skills training.” He finished by pressing the button that showed he was actively looking for someone. All he had to do now was wait.
After spending the night in his bunker, Paul checked the dating site in the morning. No response. “It was a stupid idea,” he told himself, and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. He locked his container and returned home.
Over the next two weeks, Paul received zero requests for a date. He didn’t even receive a message from anyone to start a conversation and test the waters. “Shake it off, dumbass,” he said alone in the confines of his cottage-style home. “The world is going to end, anyway.” He clenched his jaw and did what he always did. He researched more ways to survive. Paul poured over blog posts and imagined worst-case scenarios. How could his water be contaminated? Maybe he should bury some caches of water. What if someone finds his shelter? Maybe security cameras were needed. What if he gets lonely in his shelter? No ideas came to mind.
After his eyes got tired from reading, Paul clicked out of his browser, and the list of all his apps stared at him. For reasons unknown to him, he opened Facebook, something he hadn’t done for months. There were a handful of notifications and a couple of friend requests sent weeks ago. His heart raced when he saw the name of one—Kristin Summer. When he accepted, he saw she was on-line right then.
Should he message her? Would that be weird right after accepting her request? But wasn’t it weird that he hadn’t responded for several weeks? He pulled up the messenger and typed. “Hey. Sorry for the delay in accepting your request. Hadn’t been on Facebook in a while. Been busy. Hope you and Derek are well.”
He curled his lip in disgust as he typed Derek’s name and considered deleting it, but he took the moral high ground and hit “send” with his message unaltered.
Kristin Summer. Just the thought of her name brought a smile to Paul’s face.
Bing.
The sound alerted Paul to a response, which he read out loud. “Hey Paul. Good to hear from you. Derek and I divorced a little over a year ago. It was rough at first, but it was for the best. How are you?”
Paul’s eyes widened with shock and excitement. He couldn’t believe Derek was so stupid to let Kristin go. Paul could at least blame their breakup on his father’s illness. His fingers prattled away on the keyboard. “Things are amazing.” He stopped typing. That was a lie. Should he pretend like things were great or should he be honest and tell her about his prepping and the end of the world? Neither option sounded appealing. He tapped the keys without writing until he settled on something uncontroversial.
“Working at Trinity Bank in Asheville. It pays the bills. Where are you?”
Within a minute, the sweet sound of the notification binged. “I’m not too far away in Durham. If you’re ever in town, let me know.”
If you’re ever in town, let me know.
Paul couldn’t believe his eyes. Was Kristin asking him out? He shook his head. Nah, she’s probably just being polite. But maybe. If there was any chance, he had to find out. He chewed his lip and deliberated his next response. Fortune favors the bold, he told himself. Then he remembered Matt Damon telling people that in the now infamous commercial for FTX months before its collapse. When that occurred, Paul thought it was the beginning of the end, and he lived in his bunker for two days before emerging and finding the world still intact.
Paul clenched his fist. It was still good advice, and he had to try. Almost involuntarily, he typed, “I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. If you want to get together, let me know.” His finger hit send before he could talk himself out of it. There was no qualification in the message. No waffling or hedging. It was clear Paul wanted to see Kristin. The only question now was whether she wanted to see him.
The next ten minutes felt like ten days. Paul paced back and forth with his hands over his head, and he glanced at the monitor every few seconds, just in case his ears had missed the notification alert.
There was nothing.
A dark depression filled the room. Why had he gotten his hopes up? What was the point, anyway? The world was going to end.
Bing.
Paul leapt to the computer and his eyes widened with each word he read. “How about a lunch at The Fig Tree Restaurant on 7th?”
People overuse the word literally, but Paul at least felt like his jaw was literally on the floor. He had a date with Kristin Summer, the one woman he had loved. His hands rattled away at the keyboard. “See you at 1 tomorrow.”
“Holy crap,” he muttered to himself.
Panic replaced his excitement when he imagined sitting down and talking to Kristin. What would he say? “Hey Kristin, what have you been up to? Oh me? I’ve been working at a job I hate and planning for the end of the world.”
He drifted into the bathroom and stared at the scruffy character in the mirror. Paul could only cringe at the thought of Kristin’s reaction upon seeing him. She might not recognize the bearded loner who resembled Ted Kaczynski more than the short-haired, clean-shaven teen she last saw.
Only one thing to do.
Paul had to prepare. He opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of clippers. He began trimming his beard and mustache as short as the clippers would allow. Next, he applied a generous amount of cream and shaved all of it off. Paul smirked at the young man hiding under the shabby beard, but it still wasn’t enough. He set the guard on the clippers to a four and began shaving his head. In college, Paul cut his own hair to save money, and the skill came back to him quickly. He dropped to a three and worked in a fade on the sides and then finished with a two. Paul turned to the left, then to the right, and assessed his work. Not bad.
Next thing to prepare was his outfit. Paul slid the door of his closet open and evaluated his choices. A banker’s suit was too stuffy, and his mountain man denim was too hermit inspired. He yanked the clothes aside and climbed deeper into the recesses of his wardrobe until he found a nice buttoned-down shirt and a dark pair of slacks. It gave just the right vibe of successful and stable, while not trying too hard to impress, even though that was his precisely his goal. Paul laid the selection on the chair by his bed. Durham was a three-and-a-half-hour drive away, and he wanted to make sure he got there with time to find parking, and maybe use the restroom. He set the alarm on his iPhone for 6 a.m. That would give him plenty of time to take a shower, have breakfast, and get dressed.
There was no chance of falling asleep easily. His mind raced with thoughts, questions, and various scenarios about what the day would bring. To relax, he poured himself a double whiskey, which he downed with a single slurp. He poured another and sipped.
Kristin Summer. He shook his head, still in disbelief.
As the effect of alcohol set in, Paul laid down on his bed and shut his eyes. Tomorrow would be a good day.
Paul slipped into a deep, satisfying sleep until his mind jolted him awake. It was past 6 a.m. He didn’t know how he knew. He just knew. Paul had slept through his alarm. He snatched his phone off the nightstand, but it was out of battery. He checked his watch and saw it was 7 a.m. There was still time to get to Durham.
Paul jumped out of bed and into the bathroom. He flicked on the light switch, but nothing came on. Paul toggled it on and off, but the outlet was dead.
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Paul meandered out of his house and onto the front lawn. Aside from the sirens, there was an uneasy stillness. Paul’s neighbor Kurt ran out from his home with two suitcases that he flung into the trunk of his car.
“Kurt. What’s going on?” Paul asked.
“Fort Knox was bombed. All the gold was obliterated. And something happened to the electricity and the internet. They shut it down.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, man, but it’s not good. No one has access to news, no money, nothing.”
“Where are you going?” Paul asked.
“I don’t know. Somewhere isolated. I’m just hoping there are no more bombings or other attacks.” Kurt jumped into his car and sped away.
This was it. The world was ending. All of his preps were about to pay off. But what about Kristin? Paul didn’t want the world to end. If he tried to get Kristin, there was no chance he could reach his shelter before things get hairy. Plus, there was no way he could find her. He didn’t have her address, and she might have already left Durham for somewhere safe.
Paul forced himself to focus on his plan. This was what he had prepared for. He dashed back inside and changed into his camouflage gear, grabbed his bugout bag, and then sprinted to his truck. He drove through his neighborhood and reached the main road. His shelter and plans were to the left. Kristin and the unknown were to the right. The whites of Paul’s knuckles flared as he gripped the steering wheel. Now was not the time to waffle. He turned left and hit the accelerator.
Paul gritted his teeth and raced down the street. Keep going. Keep going. He urged himself on. Almost involuntarily, his foot slammed on the brakes. Paul couldn’t do it. He’d planned for the worst all his life, and while he sat alone with the engine idling, he had to admit the truth. He’d lived all his life in fear.
Paul yanked the wheel and turned around toward Durham.
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2023.05.29 00:48 ExitVelocity66 Kendall or GTFO

There's only one proper way the end the show. Kendall gets what he was always after. But of course it comes at a price. Anyone other than Kendall, and its going to be a letdown
Greg winning would be an insult to the audience and borderline trolling. Tom? Doubtful. Shiv? Oh please. The old guard? Meh. Roman? That could work. But if they wanna wrap things up in a poetic way
Gotta be Ken
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2023.05.29 00:47 JoshAsdvgi The Adventures of Ictinike

The Adventures of Ictinike
​
The Adventures of Ictinike
From "Myths and Legends of the North American Indians", by Lewis Spence, published by David D. Nickerson & Company.
​
Many tales are told by the Iowa Indians regarding Ictinike, the son of the sun-god, who had offended his father, and was consequently expelled from the celestial regions.
He possesses a very bad reputation among the Indians for deceit and trickery.
They say that he taught them all the evil things they know, and they seem to regard him as a Father of Lies.
The Omahas state that he gave them their war-customs, and for one reason or another they appear to look upon him as a species of war-god.
A series of myths recount his adventures with several inhabitants of the wild.
The first of these is as follows.
​
One day Ictinike encountered the Rabbit, and hailed him in a friendly manner, calling him 'granchild', and requesting him to do him a service.
The Rabbit expressed his willingness to assist the god to the best of his ability, and inquired what he wished him to do.
"Oh, grandchild," said the crafty one, pointing upward to where a bird circled in the blue vault above them, "take your bow and arrow and bring down yonder bird."
The Rabbit fitted an arrow to his bow, and the shaft transfixed the bird, which fell like a stone and lodged in the branches of a great tree.
"Now, grandchild," said Ictinike, "go into the tree and fetch me the game."
This, however, the Rabbit at first refused to do, but at length he took off his clothes and climbed into the tree, where he stuck fast among the torturous branches.
Ictinike, seeing that he could not make his way down, donned the unfortunate Rabbit's garments, and, highly amused at the animal's predicament, betook himself to the nearest village. There he encountered a chief who had two beautiful daughters, the elder of whom he married.
The younger daughter, regarding this as an affront to her personal attractions, wandered off into the forest in a fit of the sulks.
As she paced angrily up and down she heard some one calling to her from above, and, looking upward, she beheld the unfortunate Rabbit, whose fur was adhering to the natural gum which exuded from the bark of the tree.
The girl cut down the tree and lit a fire near it, which melted the gum and freed the Rabbit.
The Rabbit and the chief's daughter compared notes, and discovered that the being who had tricked the one and affronted the other was the same.
Together they proceded to the chief's lodge, where the girl was laughted at because of the strange companion she had brought with her.
Suddenly an eagle appeared in the air above them.
Ictinike shot at and missed it, but the Rabbit loosed an arrow with great force and brought it to earth.
Each morning a feather of the bird became another eagle, and each morning Ictinike shot at and missed the newly created bird, which the Rabbit invariably succeeded in killing.
This went on until Ictinike had quite worn out the Rabbit's clothing and was wearing a very old piece of tent skin; but the Rabbit returned to him the garments he had been forced to don when Ictinkie had stolen his.
Then the Rabbit commanded the Indians to beat the drums, and each time they were beaten Ictinike jumped so high that every bone in his body was broken.
At length, after a more than ususally loud series of beats, he leapt to such a height that when he came down it was found that the fall had broken his neck.
The Rabbit was avenged.
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2023.05.29 00:46 EntirelyPossible13 The Book: Introduction

It had to be there somewhere. I refused to be believe that the authors of this damned thing hadn't included any cypher, master code, or cryptogram of any kind. It still didn't make any sort of sense at all; why go to all the trouble to write the cursed thing and not bury the solution to unlocking its secrets somewhere in its pages?
Shoving my glasses to my forehead and pinching the bridge of my nose in equal measures of exhaustion and resignation, I rocked back in my chair, away from the pile of scanned pages before me. I knew the ceiling wouldn't hold the answers I sought, but I searched for them there anyway. Dr. Van Gennep would drop me for sure if I didn't come up with something soon; funding my project and research had already cost him and the department a small fortune over the last four years. Granted, the fact that I'd actually found the thing right where I said it would be had bought me considerable favor among the assorted faculty of the school's Archeology department, but that was almost two years ago now, and I'd produced a whopping fuck-all since then. The way I saw it, I had another 6 months, tops, to make good on my proposals before the "We're sorry to inform you" emails started filling my inbox.
As the more discerning among you might have surmised, I was a graduate student late in my funded research terms at that time. The tagalong son of a pair of prolific treasure hunters and grave robbers, I'd spent my youth being packed up and dragged along on my parents' oft misbegotten adventures. Turkey, Tunisia, Madagascar, Thailand; there wasn't an inch of sacred earth those two wouldn't plunder if given half a chance. I missed them tremendously. It was all I could do for their memories to dedicate my life's work to something they'd be proud of.
Of course, any success I'd enjoy to that point had been entirely thanks to them. If not for all our 'special vacations', I'd never have made it half as far as I had. Hell, the only reason I was here now was because the 'Cambodian temple of the dead' that I'd recovered this profane tome from in the first place was actually a dusty shelf in the basement of our old house. Dr. Van Gennup didn't need to know that though. Nor did the faculty. As far as they were concerned, I was a first rate researcher who had enjoyed a highly productive field excursion, on the university's dime, and made the find of a lifetime. In reality, I'd spent a semester's funding stipend earning a penicillin-resistant strain of chlamydia on a beach you've never heard of.
It didn't rightly have a name, so to speak, but my parents always just called it "The Book". Heavy, several hundred years old, and bound in a repulsive brown material of dubious origins, my parent's had bought the thing for a handful of pennies from a street peddler in Marrakesh the year before I was born. Having failed to fence the thing to their usual customers repeatedly, eventually they just stuffed the thing on a shelf and forgot about it entirely. Valuable or not, Pa always insisted it's worth was beyond measure to the right person. The right person ended up being his own orphaned son, and 'beyond measure' turned out to be a whopping 5 years of doctoral funding to Yale's Archaeology department.
I was done for the day. I'd looked at the scans for hours, again, tonight. The actual volume sat in the rare items collection of the faculty library, just up the street; as the dubiously rightful owner of the volume, I was welcome to access it whenever I wanted, but it was kept in better conditions than I could manage there. Besides, this thing smelled horrendous, and I didn't want it around.
I stripped down and hopped in the shower, failing to make good on my intention to stop thinking about the scrambled scrawling of the mad author who'd frustrated me for months. As the faculty's resident occultist, Van Gennep had helped nudge me along with the translation of anything I hadn't managed myself, but his aid continually failed to reveal anything of substance on the velum pages. That it was an allegorical text was obvious; the tale of a timeless consciousness doomed to visit depraved predations on the souls of those who eagerly embraced their own intentional destructions, written as an account from the being's point of view. The missing piece of the puzzle was, irritatingly, evidence of what drew the ire of the entity in question. The origin of The Book, some 800 years old, was impossible to determine; if I could just figure out what cardinal sin the thing was drawn to, then I might be able to confidently trace it's origins or identify its author; if it went for gluttons, I'd look at places wracked by famine in that period. If it went for blasphemy, then areas with documented religious turmoil would be candidates. Still, nothing sprung from the pages.
Exasperated, dejected, and worn out entirely, I trotted off to bed after lazily toweling off. I knew sleep would elude me entirely unless I redirected my frustrations toward something irrefutably more interesting which, as you'd be correct in guessing, meant a date with the tissues and baby oil on my nightstand. Pornhub never left much to the imagination, or forced me to decode impossible puzzles to give me what I wanted. Unlike a certain centuries-old exercise in frugality, the ol' Hub always bared its secrets to me. Tonight's prize was "Blonde Cutie Cums in the Library". A favorite of mine, both the video and the girl never failed to disappoint. 4 minutes of heavenly stroking later while the busty coed rubbed herself into oblivion, I began to urgently reach for the tissues on my nightstand. I slapped around desperately with the hand not flagellating my abused cock while the certainty that I wasn't going to find them in time built; this would have to be a free range eruption. Eyes screwed tightly shut while the wet ministrations and stifled moans continued to play from my laptop beside me, I covered myself from navel to chest in the hot mess I'd produced. My hand dropped limply to my side as my dick did the same back between my legs. I slammed the spacebar to pause the video, suddenly revolted at the idea of busting a nut in the library.
Laying for long, quiet minutes like that, I was entirely at ease and blessedly relaxed for a change. Fearing I'd fall asleep with my own cum all over me, I grabbed the shirt occupying the other side of the bed and lazily scrubbed it off my tummy and out of my chest hair. I flung the thing into the corner of the room, flicked the light off, closed the lid of the laptop, and let myself drift off into the sweet nothingness of my slumber.
"Oh god yes".
My eyes flew open and my heart skipped a beat as my body jerked itself awake in terror.
"Fuck, that's so good" the voice said again, breathy and quiet. The fans of my laptop hummed next to me. "I'm gonna cum soon".
Relieved to find that my sleep's interruption came at the hands of my outdated and unreliable laptop instead of a home invader, I spied the time on my alarm clock with less enthusiasm; 6:20am. It ought to be illegal to wake up this early.
"Fuck, I have to be quiet" said the voice from the inexplicably resumed video.
"I don't want to get caught" I said in unison with Jennica St. Claire, opening the lid of the computer and keying in my password to close the tab and cease her unwanted murmurs. I might have watched this one a few too many times.
The login screen faded and the video resolved itself, right where I had left off last night. I paused in the act of pushing the cursor to the top right of the screen, spotting something I hadn't before; joke at my expense if you want, but the green walls in the background were an unmistakable shade of vomitus green that I'd know anywhere. Yes, there over the shoulder of the woman I'd donated a hundred loads to in the last 6 months alone, was the unmistakably tacky pastel green of the Yale Archeology department's special collections library. There was no way in hell. It just wasn't possible; the coincidence was too great. I searched around the frame for more clues, wishing for the first time ever that Jennica's tits would get out of the shot so I could confirm my suspicions. I scanned through the video like a man possessed, but couldn't spot anything more useful than what was surely the corner of the shelf dedicated to Mesoamerican reference materials. I had to confirm this for myself. I had to know.
The card scanner flashed green as the happy beep admitted me to the building; locked on weekends, I was permitted access by dint of my status as a grad student. Steaming coffee in hand and nearly empty messenger bag slung over my should more out of habit than necessity, I beat a hasty path to the basement stair case and thundered down.
The familiar smell of old books and slightly rotted carpet filled my nose. This place was more a home to me than any I'd known. Call me a fraud if you want for the deception of how I came to possess The Book, I was nonetheless a decent academic. I'd have ended up here on my own, without the book, if I'd had to. I just hadn't needed to.
Another swipe of my keycard and I pushed into the special collections room, seeing it as if for the first time again. This had to be it, the room from the video. I looked around furtively to try to find the exact desk she'd sat at. It had to be in the back somewhere if she'd wanted to avoid detection. I hurried on through the stacks, delightedly matching the color of the walls to the video. My heart beat unreasonably fast as I neared the corner I suspected to be the one she'd used, unwilling to admit that confirmation wouldn't actually mean all that much; it's not like she'd be sitting there.
I rounded the corner of the last shelf, and there it was. The desk. The very one. And the chair, too. I refused to acknowledge my fading enthusiasm, going through the motions of placing a reverent hand back of the chair and imagining that this discovery meant literally anything at all. I looked back, away from the desk, lining the background elements up with what I remembered from the video. This was definitely it. Yup.
Yup.
I don't know what I thought I'd get out of this. It had seemed so important half an hour ago as I was pulling on anything at hand and rushing out the door. I must have oozed crackhead energy at the coffee place, impatiently standing there checking my watch every thirty seconds while the girl poured my flat white at a half past the ass crack of dawn. Now just felt dumb; I'd skipped brushing my teeth to be at a library at like 7:00 in the morning just to look at a chair that someone had masturbated in at some point in the past. Woo hoo.
Entirely underwhelmed, I figured I'd make the most of the trip. There was no harm in pulling the stupid thing out and flipping through it for the million and seventieth time.
I fumbled the keys into the locked cabinet that The Book slumbered in, scribbling my name on the access record card that bore only my own autograph in the last dozen lines, and hefted the weighty tome out with carefully practiced caution.
"Come on you stupid bastard" I muttered as I knocked the drawer back shut with a hip.
"Oh god yes."
My eyes widened in horror as I realized what must be happening. Piece of shit thing. I should have left it at home.
"Fuck, that's so good" she said again from my bag, muffled only slightly. I worked to calm down by assuring myself that there was nobody else there to hear. I still didn't waste any time getting back over to the desk, only slightly amused at the irony of having left my stuff at 'her' desk while her digital memory did its naughty work there again.
"I'm gonna cum soon" she insisted predictably.
"Yeah yeah," I replied sarcastically, "but what if someone hears you, huh?". I set The Book down carefully and reached for the bag.
"Fuck, I have to be quiet" she replied. I chuckled to myself as I undid the clasps and flopped the bag open.
I froze.
I had left it at home. I hadn't brought it at all. My laptop was still sitting on my bed, where I'd left it. There wasn't anything in my bag except a notebook, a stack of papers I needed to grade, and a few pens. There was nothing that could have produced the audio at all.
The Book sat there, immobile and unremarkable, as it always did, daring me to look upon it. I don't mind admitting to having let my imagination get the best of me in the moment; it was what it was, and the things it portrayed were hardly the stuff of children's bedtime stories. Telling myself that I knew better did absolutely nothing to steel my nerves. A fat pearl of beading sweat ran from my brow; it was late in the fall and cooling quickly outside, but I felt as though I'd burst to flame as I stared down at that damned book. I absentmindedly unzipped my hoodie and tore it off, dropping it to the floor and raising my hands to put them between me and the leather-bound volume, as if I'd fight it if need arose.
"I DON'T WANT TO GET CAUGHT"
I did scream then, and jumped half out of my skin. It's a wonder I didn't shit myself.
I realized almost immediately, before I'd even finished my terrified yelp, that the voice had come from my phone; in my earlier uncaring haste, I'd dumped it along with the rest of my pockets' contents onto the table, and thrown my bag down atop it. Recalling that I'd opened the video before leaving the house to compare details of the room, if needed, I laughed at my own nervousness. It wasn't even a little laugh either; relief at not being haunted by an ethereal pornstar washed over me in waves that produced a deep belly laugh in me. Clutching my chest with the effort to catch my breath, I patted The Book's cover in earnest appreciation for it's part in the now-hilarious deception. Her dialogue had sounded so loud a moment ago, but my nerves had undoubtedly amplified the effect; the rest of the video's audio continued on reasonably from my otherwise dormant phone on the desk. I must have hit play from the home screen preview when I took it out of my pocket.
Relieved laughter subsiding, I flicked the phone's lock slider to the left and closed the web browser, taking care to be absolutely sure that I'd done so, and committing the act to memory. It was only then that I afforded myself the clarity of mind to realize what I'd done; in a rush to get here, and not exhibiting an ounce of adult patience, I'd pulled on whatever was lying around before I left the house. Yes, dear reader. I had put on my cum shirt.
Horror of a different flavor bloomed within me as I let myself lift my hand from the cover of The Book; the same hand that I'd clutched my wheezing chest with moments ago, and the same one I'd wiped up my cum with only a few hours earlier in the privacy of my own home. Examining my sticky digits in disgust, I could only thank my lucky stars that I'd pulled a sweater overtop; I'm pretty sure the barista's would have called the cops if I'd walked in proudly wearing a load of cum all over myself.
Worse was the realization that I'd gotten it on the front of The Book. Mine by right of inheritance or not, the thing was likely to end up in a museum at some point during it's life, and I was loathe to consider some graduate student 50 years in the future getting writing their capstone project on The Jizzy Handprint Grimoire's dubious provenance.
Cursing myself for a fucking fool, I scrubbed the drying mark off the cover, praising myself for the fine work that I was able to do in removing any trace of my unholy offence. Deciding that the day was entirely too fucked already to consider getting any work done, I put it back in it's drawer, muttered an apology to it, and left the building as swiftly as I could. There were other libraries, and I could always mark some papers or something.
submitted by EntirelyPossible13 to u/EntirelyPossible13 [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:42 lucas4114 Ahhhhh, Reddit.

If you've come here to readit, then welcome! This is where you'll have Reddit! Obviously, Reddit is a fascinating place for young and old people alike to congregate, share ideas, and participate in productive, civil discussion. Unfortunately, Reddit is also an incredibly unprofessional place at times, and forms the basis of a more casual forum--especially in past eras of the internet.
This account is no longer active. However, I believe in historic views into things, especially in the ongoing process of meaning-making which we all face in day-to-day life.
A good book!
  1. Depth Psychology And A New Ethic by Erich Neumann (get the one with forewords by Carl Jung)
  2. Human All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche
  3. Powershift by Alvin Toffler
  4. What Makes Biology Unique by Ernst Mayr (although Mayr himself disagrees with me on the points of a "concept" [Dawkins' "Meme"], and other things, it is--as a scientific, historic overview--a good experience)
  5. Crime And Punishment by Dostoevsky and War And Peace by Tolstoy and all that stuff! Oh, also the Steppenwolf by Hesse!
  6. You, yourself * Always keep in mind that books represent the past, even past thought-up 'futures'. This is an interesting thing to understand and be mindful of, at times. Secondly, human beings generally tell the truth.
submitted by lucas4114 to u/lucas4114 [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:41 _krisper_ Does Old Navy run similar in size to Cat & Jack?

Would you say toddler sizing is similar in Old Navy and Target Cat & Jack?
My toddler is 3T in Cat & Jack. I can’t remember if Old Navy is similar or if I should size up!
submitted by _krisper_ to toddlers [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:40 purplehashira My collection (Super Mid)

Collection 5/23
Hey everyone, Saw some people do this and I thought it would be fun to see this and possibly get some feedback and/or answer questions!! I am also going to add the ones I am still getting shipped to me; I'll add them at the very end. Im going to talk about why I like them, give them my rating based off of everything, and for the memes, put how many compliments I've gotten from them LOL hahaha.
(Row by Row)
Row 1 ________________________________________________
YSL Y EDT: Super Aromatic, I feel like it has a mass appeal. Its super fresh and this is my 2nd bottle of it since I liked it so much. 8.5/10 (4 compliments in 2 years (Lol))
YSL L'Homme: Nice, Calm, and Cirtus-y scent. Doesnt really project too much but the dry down is super nice. Wish it lasted longer but it is an EDT. 6.5/10 (1 compliment in 1 year)
Versace Pour Homme: You can wear this cologne for most occasions and it really does show. Its super popular and it shows, it has a really nice dry down and I pick up on the grapefruit top note HEAVILY. I like it a lot. 7/10 (0 compliments in 1.5 years)
Haltane Parfums de Marly: My first niche cologne that I hesitantly spent 300 dollars on LOL. So worth it. It lasts for so long on clothes and skin. It has a nice sweet oud scent that I love and so do other people that arent my mom! I was really reluctant buying my first niche cologne, but I really like this one and I am going to get a few more from De Marly for sure. 8.8/10 (2 compliments in 6 months)
Xerjoff Uden: I bought this because someone gave me a sample, and I kind of felt like pressured to buy it lmaooooo. I liked it a lot and to be honest I bought this during the end of the Souths winter. It was way too warm to wear this sweet scent. Nevertheless, it is a very calm and sweet scent. I cant wait till it gets a little colder to wear because it really does smell amazing. 8/10 (0 compliments in 5 months)
Touch Burberry: I got this as a gift 3 years ago, its nice, I dont personally love it. I wore it here and there, and everytime I wore it, my friends told me I smell like baby powder and it pissed me off. I dont smell that. I smelt the ocean and the dry down is not my favorite on my skin 4.5/10 (1 compliment in 3 years)
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Row 2 ________________________________________________
Valentino Uomo Born In Roma Yellow Dream: Man, I LOVE this scent. I got a bundle of like 7 colognes at once from Kohls when I got my bonus and I spent them on a few things. You'll notice from the timeline of when I got them. This one of those colognes that I literally looooove. It just has such nice sweet and tame fruity scent. Super nice. Only downside is that it doesnt really last all that long, and the projection and sillage is only good for the first hour. 8.5/10 (3 compliments in 6 months)
Valentino Uomo Born in Roma: This fragrance is really woody and it works well. I didnt know it had a salty top note until I googled it, and whenever I went to spray it again, I smelt it. I wore this cologne everyday doing absolutely nothing. While I was working from home, getting groceries, filling up gas. I liked it a lot. Doesnt project the best on me. 8/10 (1 compliment in 6 months)
Acqua di Giò Profondo: I got this cologne because the lady at Kohls told me that it was perfect for the summer. Aromatic, fresh, aquatic. I liked the other Armani colognes and I loved this one. I wear it quite often since the weather is getting warmer. It lasts pretty long and it is definitley a go-to for me. 8.3/10 (2 compliments in 6 months)
Club de Nuit Intense Man: My brother bought this like 2 years ago because he really wanted the Creed Aventus cologne. I liked the way it smelt but it was my brothers so I never sprayed it. I always had doubts about it smelling like Creed but whenever my brother eventually pulled the trigger and spent 500 bucks of a bottle, he gave me this. My oh my does it smell exactly like his. Creed definitely lasts 3x longer but I will still wear this one here and there. 6.8/10 (0 compliments in 2 years)
Xerjoff Torino21: This is my most recent purchase. I went to Neimann Marcus to smell some samples that I saw on google and was really interested in a specific cologne. The lady offered this and when I smelt it, I fell in love. It was either this or the alexandria fragrance. Torino 21 is sooooooo fresh; Its the perfect spring scent. Top note of lemon, basil, mint, you smell all of those. The dry down is amazing, the sillage is great, the projection is out there. 8.9/10 (1 compliment in 1 month)
Dior Homme: I got this as a gift and I really liked it. It has such a manly smell to it and I wore this whenever I wore a suit or to a fancy occasion. I realized a lot of people have it and its clear to see why. The projection on this is pretty good for an EDT. Whenever my brother comes and visits, he ignores all my colognes and just sprays this on him while he plays video games haha. I pick up on a leathery and musky scent. 8/10 (0 compliments in 2 years)
Mr. Burberry EDP: I used to be a server back in 2019 when I got this cologne; it was a gift. I wore it every day and I got a few compliments from my coworkers. I sprayed in the car right before I left when it was the most prominent. Now when I smell it, I get really crazy flashbacks of when I was 19 years old; kinda makes me a little sad lol. Grapefruit and minty top note, amber base notes. Nice and masculine. 0/10 (I want to cry when I smell this.) (6 Compliments in 3 years)
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Row 3 ________________________________________________
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1 Million Lucky Paco Rabanne: This was my first real cologne and I got it back in 2018. I was a freshman in college and I kid you not, this was MY scent. I have so many stories on this cologne and I will share my favorite. I used to cheat this cologne by spraying it in the elevator coming up to the library where everyone used to hangout after classes, not only did everyone on the table smell me and compliment me, but I used to get texts from friends telling me that they smell me in the elevator. I used to get guys asking me to spray them because of how often I would get compliments and how people always asked me what I was wearing. I had people who would hug me and then come back and hug me again because I smelled good. I bought maybe 5 bottles total and I will buy my 6th if this runs out. it is my all time favorite cologne. My brother bought it for me in 2018 and I cannot thank him enough. The scent is a nice and sweet one with ozonic top notes, hazelnut middle notes, and amber base notes. The dry down is amazing and of course im biased and am going to say that the projection and sillage are 10/10, even for an EDT. 10/10 (70ish compliments in 5.5 years)
Titanium for men Aris: Got this as a gift from my aunt when she came back from Qatar. Its alright, I like to spray it whenever I am home and just want to smell something. Fruity top notes, Leather woody mid notes, and amber base notes. My mom complimented me on this once but that doesnt count. hahaha. Projection and Sillage are ehhh. 5/10 (0 compliments in 1.5 years)
K by Dolce & Gabbana: I got this in an airport because I forgot my GOAT 1 million cologne. My dad was hurrying me to get something because I have a fear of not smelling good, I couldnt find anything I wanted and so my dad picked this for me. Its a fresh aromatic and citrusy scent. Lemon top notes, cedar base notes. Projection is alright, sillage is not the best. I cant believe I paid 100 something dollars because my dad was yelling at me. lmao. 6/10 (0 compliments in 2.5 years)
The Most Wanted Azzaro: I remember asking my super-into-fragrance friend about what I should get since I liked amberish and sweet scents. He gave me this and scent me a link to buy it. I have worn this on a date and a few occasions considering the weather is too warm in the south to really wear this. The 4 times I have worn this, i got compliments. I got told it is alluring which is good? Lol idk. the projection is really good for the first hour and so is the sillage. 8/10 (4 compliments in 6 months)
Spicebomb Extreme Viktor&Rolf: I bought this at Kohls as well. Originally I didnt like the scent but when it dried down after like an hour, I went back the next day and got it. Its a sweet and spicy scent and its actually insane how it smells. My friend came over and smelt this and started to wrestle me because he wanted to steal it lol. It was super funny and I enjoy wearing it but again, the weather makes it tough to wear. The vanilla and spice really are prominent in this. Someone told me I smelt like Dr.Pepper and it pissed me off. 8/10 (3 compliments in 6 months)
Freshy R183 MAA ALTHAHAB: I got this as a gift from Saudi Arabia. I am super cautious with when to spray this because it is rare in my opinion. It is a sweet scent that smells holy-like. I dont know how to explain it. It is like spicy, vanilla, musky, etc. 9/10 (1 compliment in 1 year)
Hero Burberry: Woody and aromatic. Hints of citrus. Super elegant smell and I feel like you can wear this in whatever occasion. My brother also comes and tries to steal this one too. It smells amazing and I sprayed this once before playing sports and the people were telling me "why do you smell good when were playing soccer?" In my defense, I didnt know I was about to play soccer. 8.5/10 (2 compliments in 6 months)
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THINGS THAT ARE STILL OTW AND BEING SHIPPED TO MY HOUSE

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Millésime Impérial Creed: I went into the creed store to smell a few of them out of curiosity, I wish I didnt. I know creed is one of the most duped fragrances ever, however, I felt like a connection to this bottle along with the other one I was going to smell. It was truly amazing. Oceany, Fruity, Musky, Citrusy. It was just a holy grail of things. 9/10 (N/A)
Aventus Cologne Creed: My favorite creed, not to get confused with Aventus, this is a lot different. Perfect for warmer weather as it has citrusy, fresh, and woody smell. I cant wait to have this and get absolutely no compliments. LOL. But seriously, this is a very good scent and I love it. I cant wait till it gets shipped so I can start wearing it to sleep. 9.2/10 (N/A)
Galloway Parfums de Marly: When I smelled Haltane by de Marly, I went the next week to smell its other collections. I did some research on ones that I might like, and this one caught my eye. Citrusy and musky, fresh and sweet. I was hesitant to buy this so I got a small decant and wore it for a few days and I liked it a lot. So i bit the bullet and got it. Im really glad I did because the decant finished and Im waiting for this. 9/10 (1 compliment in 2 weeks)
Baccarat Rouge 540 Extrait MFK: yeah shut up i know. i know its basic, but guess what. IT SMELLS SOOOOOOOOOO GOOD. The sample bottle was 15 dollars and I wore it out with my friends and they told me that I smelled so good. 6 hours after when I went to say goodbye, they said it was still really nice and strong. I cannot wait till this one comes in 10/10 (2 compliments in 6 hours)
Edit: yes i bought them at once (I had points about to expire so I used them and got a good deal)
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I really hope you guys liked this. It took like 2 hours to do lol. If there is anything questions lmk! I am open to feedback and criticism!!
submitted by purplehashira to fragrance [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:40 RandomAppalachian468 Don't fly over Barron County Ohio.

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.
submitted by RandomAppalachian468 to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:28 XboxCorgi I can't delete the Career and Old Career files help i've tried everything!

I can't delete the Career and Old Career files help i've tried everything! submitted by XboxCorgi to KerbalSpaceProgram [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:21 James-Hawker [TotK] I'm loving this game, but something just feels... Wrong. Spoilers below, you've been warned.

Okay, so. Let me start off with the obligatory "I'm actually really loving the game, BUT..." comment. I really do mean that, the gameplay feels fine from moment-to-moment exploration, I love having the expanded biomes (Sky and Caverns) to explore, I like the idea of iterating on the powers from the previous game to make entirely new inventions and creations. The core gameplay loop of TotK is EXTREMELY tight, and I appreciate it for that. I'm constantly remembering that something is only hard because I'm making it hard, I'm not using the tools I have access to.
But what is going on with the story? I've been talking to a few friends about this, and I know, Zelda games are never really about the connecting story as they are about the current version of Hyrule. Every Link is a new Link, every Hyrule a new Hyrule, the connections are best considered random chance or direct references, and not intended connections. But Tears of the Kingdom is a new kind of Zelda game, one that is directly linked to its predecessor. We aren't meeting the Hero of Time from an age long past in a dungeon, we *ARE* the same Link, we're in the same Hyrule. The only other time we've taken up the mantle of the same Link, directly after a sequel, is... Majora's Mask. But even there, we play in an entirely new kingdom... It isn't even Hyrule, it's a new, completely original location, where the only shared similarities are character names and occupations and models.
I'm going to liken TotK to Majora's Mask multiple times in this post, for that exact reason. This game, at it's core, is very closely related to MM in ways that, even if not directly (Mechanically) similar, are at their core spiritually similar.
Okay, here's what I mean by that. Characters who SHOULD know Link, who have had direct interactions with him in the past, are completely oblivious to him now. Even if we're talking about four or five years, Link is... Well, Link. Bolson, the man you help in BotW with his construction company, doesn't recognize you at all. And, well, that could be a canonical inconsistency... It would be absurd to think that Link does EVERY side quest, and EVERY mission from a gameplay point of view, then you really are leaving out people who never did every single side quest in BotW. Mass Effect uses a similar system wherein Shepard has a "set" series of actions/decisions, and specific missions, with specific outcomes, that are decided for you if you begin a new game later in the series without carrying over a save.
Problem is, though, we KNOW that the house in Hateno is owned by Link. Link's pictures are there, along with the image from Champion's Ballad if you did the DLC. So why doesn't Bolson remember us?
Where are the Divine Beasts? The new Champions still exist in the world, we interact with them for our four main Dungeon quests... But where did they go? And it isn't as if Nintendo washed them out, they're still referenced (Albeit lightly) in the gameplay in a few locations, they just -don't exist-. Not one line of dialogue explains it, no environmental clues hint as to their fate. The old Shrines disappearing into the earth once they served their purpose, I can be fine with no explanation. The Towers to scan for Malice and the return of Ganon being torn down and rebuilt into the Skyview Towers, I can also easily enough accept without an explanation... But where the hell did the Purah Pad come from? It's so clearly the Shieka Slate from BotW, but it's inexplicably stripped of its power, renamed, and thrust upon Zelda once more.
And we'll get to Zelda later, don't worry about that. My point, for now, is that the game feels like it's trying to put Link in a world where he's still an unknown, despite being the savior of Hyrule, and the Hero of the Wilds. But the game isn't really sure how to handle the existence of BotW, either. People don't remember or don't know you, when they should. Items, like the Master Sword, are apparently -never canonically collected- in BotW, as shown by a cutscene while collecting Memories Dragon Tears. The world has changed only slightly, but it seems to have already forgotten Link and the Calamity he put an end to only a FEW YEARS prior.
Okay, so. I'll be honest, all of that isn't even my biggest problem with the game. It's left me scratching my head, as I can think of one of a half-dozen of ways the Divine Beasts and previous Shieka Tech could be worked into the story, and then written out, without much of an issue to provide closure. But it's still a Zelda game, at it's core, and no two Zelda games are ever going to be the exact same world and exact same characters, even Majora's Mask proves that to us. The gameplay comes first and foremost, and giving the player characters that they can interact with without having done every faucet of the previous game should take priority over making everyone know Link on a first-name basis, I just wish they'd put more thought into who he does and doesn't know. Minor issues.
You know what aren't minor issues? That god-awful main story and its design. References to MM end here, for the most part.
MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW.
So let's ignore, for a moment, that the Memories Dragon Tears are massively relevant to the main plot, and figuring out what happened to Princess Zelda, which is a change that itself spoils massive chunks of the game if you happen to stumble across the wrong Geoglyph at the wrong time. The game tells you, explicitly, FOUR TIMES, with the SAME CUTSCENE about the evils of Ganondorf and how the Sages need to help Link defeat him. The only thing that changes are the character models and voices.
Moving back to Dragon Tears, I believe three or four of them all reference the same snippet of dialogue from one of the Zonai about swallowing Sacred Stones turning you into a dragon, and how that's bad, because you lose yourself, and it's forbidden. If you do them in order, then you'll get that repeat cutscene snippet back to back to back.
I understand that they need to account for the player possibly finding these things out of order. You can, from the start of the game, go do Zora, or Goron, or Gerudo, or the Rito quests just like in BotW. But you know what BotW did differently? Each of the four races had the same cutscene in spirit, the Champion from 100 years ago reuniting with Link and sharing their powers with him. But the actual cutscenes were different, they all said different things to him, they all had different interactions. In TotK, each cutscene is "My descendant, take my power, and help Link fight the big bad."
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. They all have snippets of what I'm dubbing Bizzaro Zelda (Again, getting to it.), three of them have almost the exact same concept of "puzzle" (Oh my GOD the Temples make me want Divine Beasts back, I'll GET TO IT.) where you spend five minutes looking for the door, then tell your Power Friend to power you up, then you do the thing, and then push ONE button instead of five.
The game reuses assets and concepts harder than an indie dev in the early 2010s trying to get on the Steam marketplace. Which finally brings us on to...
Princess Zelda. Every time I stumble into a new place "Oh but I saw Princess Zelda, but she did something mysterious and/or evil!" This is only half-explained in ONE of the Dragon Tears, where Ganondorf creates a clone of Zelda to do nefarious things. It isn't explained, they just cold open to a clone of Zelda who acts and talks a little strange compared to what we've seen of her, then "Zelda" does her evil deed, and surprise, it's an evil clone of Zelda! But it comes out of the goddamn blue.
It makes sense that if Ganondorf can do this in the past, he can do it in the present. But the question is... Why? He doesn't know Zelda comes from whatever the current year is, in TotK. Why create phantoms of this one specific girl you met possibly millennia ago, and do vaguely evil stuff with said clone?
TLoZ writing has never been particularly amazing. It doesn't have to be, because the story itself is timeless and classic. The brave knight goes on an adventure to rescue the princess. But for whatever reason in TotK, they start going on this weird tangent about being super narrative-driven, the player HAS to always know what's happening at all times. Every new location a reminder that Princess Zelda is missing, that she's doing evil things, that Ganondorf is evil... It holds your hand, constantly, while beating you over the head with the same concepts you heard *twenty hours ago* when you first discovered Ganondorf beneath Hyrule Castle.
And then there's the twist. Oh my god, the twist. Keep in mind, that I haven't fully beaten the game yet, so maybe they do -something- to make this a little less painful and irritating, but in order to save the Master Sword after magically taking it from Link in the tutorial island, Zelda swallows her Sacred Stone and transforms into the Dragon of Light, taking the Master Sword with her that it may bask in her radiant powers of evil-banishing Light until Link finds her and takes it back.
I would think this is an absolutely amazing piece of plot development, if they didn't KEEP BASHING YOUR SKULL IN over it. Zelda, the princess who RARELY has any agency over her own story, who so often is just the princess with magical powers, sacrifices herself to ensure that Link can banish the evil once and for all. But it feels wrong. I know it feels wrong, because you remember how I mentioned that the game loves to spoil itself if you do the wrong thing at the wrong time?
I now know what happened to Princess Zelda. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that these Bizzaro Zelda appearances aren't our Zelda, they're Ganondorf's puppet clones. And yet, the game still insists that I find out "what happened to Zelda". I know the truth, but rather than acknowledge that, it treats me as if I've learned nothing. My quest still says "Find out what happened to Zelda" even though I -know- what happened. Which makes me think... Well, maybe I spoiled myself with spoilers, because they're probably going to undo the grand sacrifice of Zelda's transformation at the end of the game, right? That's when that quest goes away, Zelda comes back after Rauru de-dragonifies her with his magical hand, and everyone lives happily ever after, or something. I can't be awestruck at the sacrifice, because I'm already numb to the idea that in another hour or two, I'll just be told to go investigate another false Zelda appearance from some random schmuck that doesn't have a damn clue who I am, even though he should.
Like I said at the beginning of this. I love the gameplay of TotK. It feels so freeing to make a gizmo to help me in battle, or to remember that I can just attach a rocket to my shield if I need to get somewhere fast. I love playing around with weapon fusions, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the Depths, crawling through the darkness while throwing lightseeds every few feet like I'm 5, and scared to go in the basement.
But the gameplay is where it stops being good, for me. Nintendo has access to amazing story writers, and plot threads from previous Zelda games have been amazing, even though they don't break the mold. Why does Tears of the Kingdom feel like it's so... Hollow? The voice acting is rarely amazing, the direction is questionable... And the worst part is, none of this is even the fault of the people who made the game world, itself.
Hyrule still looks amazing. The way fusions work is astonishingly good, everything is crafted with such love, and detail, and care. They really did put in their best work. But atmosphere, and visual design, only carry me so far in games like this. Zelda didn't NEED some grand, epic story, but they felt like they had to give it one, anyway. And they failed, in my opinion. Massively. I don't want to do the Gerudo or Goron temples because I know I'm going to get the same drivel I've had shoveled in my face for hours and hours of gameplay, there's nothing *new* there except a new ability to use in the open world. I don't even really feel like hunting down shrines, because it's more of the same from the last game.
TotK had the potential to be amazing. It really could have been everything Breath of the Wild wasn't, but at the end of the day, I'm left wanting to put the game down and pick up its predecessor more and more. And the worst part? I wouldn't have had a problem paying $70 for this game, if they had just stayed in their lane, and not somehow managed to tarnish something that should have been stainless.
I don't regret buying the game. But I can't believe no one else has talked about its flaws, the muddled and confused story, or how terrible the new dungeons are. Tears of the Kingdom is the game I'll boot up when I feel like soaring through the sky to try and land on new islands, or delving through the gloomy depths searching for lost souls...
But Breath of the Wild will always be the game I go back to when I want to save the princess from evil.
submitted by James-Hawker to zelda [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:18 Lucid-Guardian Munchausen by proxy, but with mental illness? Family insisting you're crazy and dependent?

Did anyone else experience this? Is there a better term for it?
I went NC with my family this year. Throughout my life, I've been treated (medicated, in therapy, in special schools, and hospitalized) for a multitude of mental disorders I don't have.
When I moved away from family, the symptoms vanished almost instantly.
I was told I didn't need medications, so I went off meds. I was excited to tell my family the (I thought) good news that I had gotten better, but they were furious at me for "quitting" meds and insisted I get back on them immediately.
So I got a second opinion. Same answer.
My family was furious again. So I went on to get over half a dozen more second opinions over the course of 10+ years, rinsing and repeating this cycle over and over again.Looking back, I realize how absurd it was that I kept following their advise.
No doctor will medicate me, but my family blamed me for "giving up" trying to get help, no matter how many psychiatrists I went through. And I kept trusting that maybe they were right and I just needed another fourth or fifth opinion.
They generally treat me like a dependent who should be institutionalized. They deny the existence of my job, my spouse, and shut down my attempts at adult conversation.
For example:
Them: “Hey! What have you doing today? I hear you pounding on the keyboard.”
Me: “I had work today! Was working. Just finished a project.”
Them” “Oh! Lol! You’re being crazy again.”
They also treat my spouse like a caregiver. They don't refer to us as a couple (even though we've been together for over a decade) and tried to get me to sign her up as my legal in-home caregiver to receive government payments. I suspect they committed fraud in a similar way when I was a child. They have a long history of fraud and were caught several times.
I finally stopped seeing through rose tinted glasses and noticed the patterns. They go into rages when my mental health is questioned, argue, deny, and blame me for 'being stubborn not wanting help' even when I'm just following advise from professionals. Then they turn a 180 in public, act like saintly heros for me in front of outsiders.
They tell people I'm unstable and use the make-believe illnesses to demonize me, painting a picture of me being a low functioning antisocial adult child that they have to care for (I found out from outsiders telling me the things They'd say behind my back).
In reality, I've often been the one paying their bills in adulthood and getting raged at. I have no trouble socializing and love having emotional connection (which I've been trying fruitlessly to cultivate using positive reinforcement with my family for years, trying to tiptoe around their anger).
I'm surprisingly mentally stable. I have a high tolerance for discomfort, so not a lot bothers me, in contrast to what my family claims. My job involves managing people and I'm liked in my communities. I'm not perfect, but I'm not mentally unstable.
Feels like I'm grieving myself now... I've wasted much of my whole life believing these lies, and not seeing my true nature. No one (in my ex-family) has ever been on my side despite what they claim, and for the first time, I've decided to be on my own side. I've told them the reality of the situation, and am met with more denial and rage, so I finally left.
My family always said I was terrible and I always felt bad for it even though I couldn't pinpoint "why" I was so bad.
I look back now and realize it was BS.
This is the first time I've ever truly loved or even liked myself. I was a loving and kind person my whole life... It's even in my childhood journal, Just looked through them recently. 10 year-old me wrote things like "I love my family so much and want to please them.", "I wish my family wasn't mean to me.", and "I wish I wasn't crazy, I don't know why I'm crazy."
I'm immensely relieved (I no longer have to deal with my family's constant drama), and simultaneously heartbroken.
Anyone else go through this?
submitted by Lucid-Guardian to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]

2023.05.29 00:11 CaptainChristopher02 My Floridian Arxur Daughter (Part 15)

My Floridian Arxur Daughter (Part 15)
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Art by u/HaajaHenrik
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Content Warning: Mentions of Pancakes between two consenting adults'.
It's really nothing but I'll put it in case someone prefers a warning. Love you guys.
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Memory Transcript Subject: Chalta Rodriguez, Adopted Arxur Youth
Date [Standardized Human Time]: November 24, 2136
Finn is a good friend. We would walk around the park with our families, and he would tell me about all the fish in the ocean.
“Okay so like- there’s this fish. It looks like it’s melted but it really isn’t because it lives in really deep water. And you know when like- you like- have someone hug you really tight you go squish!” fin said.
“Yea! Mommy and daddy give the best hugs!” I thought of last night, when I showed all my weakness and was given a big warm hug from my family.
“Well, what if you were always hugged so hard… that when everyone let go you’re body went mushy! Because those hugs were the thing that was- um, keeping your bones tight together! That’s what a blob fish is.”
“If we went to water that deep, would we squish?”
“Yup! It’s also really dark down there too! You wouldn’t be able to see your hand in front of your face!”
I checked to see if I could already see my hand in front of my face. Yup, that would be dark.
“Wow,” I said softly.
“Hey Chalta, can I see your claws?”
“Sure.” I gave Finn my hand and he started looking and playing with my claws. They weren’t very long, only about half the length of his fingers, but Fin didn’t mind. He gently rubbed them and pressed his finger against the pointy end.
“They’re very shiny and pointy,” Finn said with an exited smile on his face.
“Thank you! Mom helped me clean them this morning. They’re so pretty now. Hey Finn, can I see your claws now?”
“They aren’t as nice as yours but sure.”
I played with Finns claws. They were short like daddies. Cut really close to the end. I wonder why humans didn’t keep them long. How would a human hunt? I also noticed that his hands are also warm and very soft. Even softer than mommies! Arxur have much rougher skin to protect us. How did humans protect themselves?
“Finn,” I asked. “How did humans hunt without claws?”
“We threw rocks.”
Throwing rocks, that was their weapon of choice? “Why rocks?”
“We could throw hard and accurately so we could hunt from a safe distance, or if food was running too fast.”
“How did you know that would work?”
“Well… there’s a lot of rocks everywhere, and the deer over their looks like they could use one. I guess we threw one too hard one day and some cave man went ‘hey I got an idea’.”
“What’s a deer?”
“An animal we used to eat a lot. I think we still do.”
“Are they tasty?”
“I dunno, maybe.”
“If you threw a rock at a deer, could I eat it later?”
“Sure, I don’t need a rock.”
“…”
I like talking with him, he makes me feel happy.
We kept walking until Finn stopped in front of a sign that said, The Kraken.
“Oh cool, a roller coaster! Mommy can I ride it with Chalta!”
“R-r-roller c-coaster?” I asked, remembering the screaming humans. I looked up and saw the deathtrap he was talking about. Why would I ride this? Why would anyone ride this?!
But what if he thinks you’re weak?
We tell him he’s stupid!
But I wanna show him we’re brave, also that’s mean!
Fine! Be my guest, but when you’re falling to your death it will be your fault.
“S-sure they can’t be that bad r-right?” I said, knowing it can be that bad.
“Chalta sweety, I don’t even go one those, and I know you don’t want to either!” Mommy said, remembering how I reacted earlier today.
Finn’s mother overheard and realized why I wanted to suddenly go. “Listen to your mother, don’t try impressing Finn if you don’t want to.”
Carlos and Salisek looked at each other.
“Carlos no!”
“What?”
“You were going to go on that death trap!”
“Finn, wanna ride with me?”
Big brother was so brave! I wish I was brave enough to- Wait, if he can do it maybe I can too!
“Okay Carlos!” Finn said, “You and me! Bros!”
“Count us in too!” Daddy said with his arm around a proud looking Tarvik.
Mommy realized she had lost her husband to the coaster crossed her arms in frustration, “Okay than, Chalta you can wait with us girls.”
“A-actually mommy… can I go?”
Mommy gave a big sigh. “Yes bebé, but if you’re feeling uncomfortable come back. Even if it’s a little bit m, okay?”
“Yes mommy.”
I walked with the boys up the very, very long line. Every time I thought we were close there was just more line! I looked at a photo of the ride we passed to see how high we were going and… oh. Oh, that’s high.
I turned to Finn, “Um… is this safe?”
“Yea! They strap you in real tight!”
“Why are all the humans screaming?”
“They’re screams of fun!”
Daddy snickered. “Kinda reminds me of my honeymoon.” I didn’t know what a honeymoon was, but it sounded like a pretty scary roller coaster.
Big brother’s eye’s shot wide open. “There are two kids here!”
Honeymoon must be an adult secret.
“What? We went to Disney! We got fast passes and where riding Space Mountain and Tron all day!”
“That’s not what is sounded like!” Big brother is so silly. He makes me smile. Finn was laughing too.
After what felt like days, Daddy said it was only 30 minutes, we finally made it to the end. Four seats per row. Me and Finn sat next to each other with Big brother and Tarvik next to us. Dad sat with some strangers in the back, but I wish he was next to me. I was really scared.
After checking the uniformed humans checked the restraints, the ride was ready to start, and I could feel my heart beating faster than it ever has.
Finn grabbed my hand. His grip helped me feel safer. “It’s okay Chalta, I used to be scared of these but now I’m not! You’re safe with me, I’ll protect you!” Finn said proudly and I wrapped my tail around his leg and tightened my hands grip.
“Y-you better not let go!”
It’s starting! Oh no! I want mommy!
3… 2… 1…
The ride started… slowly? This isn’t so bad. Wow, we’re going high now. Really high. Wait how are we getting down. Oh, oh no. We’re dropping at speeds I didn’t know I could survive! Are we going upside down? Again! How are we moving like this? This… feels… AWESOME! It feels like I’m flying! I LOVE ROLLER COASTERS!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When we got off the ride I was filled with a sense of relief after finally returning to the ground. Tarvik also looked relived and proud of himself.
“Did you see that! I conquered the beast didn’t I. Ha, only humans could come up with something so dangerously fun!”
The boys giggled with each other while Finn and I raced back to our Mommies resting spot so we can tell them how brave we are.
A ran as fast as I could and gave mommy a big hug.
“Mommy, mommy! Did you see me? I was so brave wasn’t I! It wasn’t so bad; I’m not scared anymore!”
Mommy held me close and smiled. “Yes sweety, you were very brave! I’m so proud of you! You and Tarvik.”
“Hey what’s that supposed to mean,” Tarvik said sounding a little angry.
Big brother gave him a back pat. “Tarvik, I don’t think you realize that you’re probably the first Venlil to ever ride a rollercoaster. And you did it of your own free will. That’s almost unbelievable, yet here I am, standing in front of the living legend!”
We all giggled, but now I was feeling hungry.
“Mommy, daddy. Can we go eat something?”
“Sure,” mommy said. “These lady’s drank most of the water and ate almost all the sandwiches anyways. And I know the boys want their fill.”
Big sister looked embarrassed. “H-hey! It’s hot out here. My fur and size and all the walking aren’t helping either.”
Speaking of water, I was getting thirsty.
“Water sweety?” Mommy said before I could ask her myself.
“How did you know I was thirsty?”
“My mother senses where tingling.”
I took a sip of the water and noticed my legs were aching. We were close to a restaurant with all sorts of fish to eat.
So… close… can’t walk…
Finn noticed my struggle.
“Chalta are you okay? Do you need a break? Wait… are you hibernating?! It’s winter so I understand.”
“What’s hyper mating?”
“No silly, hibernating!” Finn said with a giggle. “Some animals do it when it gets cold. They sleep for a really long time.”
“Oh, okay. No, I’m not hibernating. My legs are tired. I didn’t know humans could walk so much!”
Finns’ mommy spoke up. “Darling, if you want, I could rent some strollers. We could also take a break.”
I suddenly felt like I was about to trip over my own weight when Finn caught me.
“Chalta if you can’t walk, I can carry you.”
“You can do that?”
Mommy looked worried. “I… I don’t think that’s such a good-”
Finn didn’t hesitate when he picked me up like a princess and carried me to the restaurant. The whole family looked surprised. I was too, how was he able to pick me up? Was I that light? I could tell he was struggling a little bit, but he kept going, determined to make sure I enjoyed a nice meal.
“Wow you’re really strong!” I said to Finn.
“Thanks, it’s from helping mom with all the groceries!”
“And those weights dad has that I keep telling you not to play with!” Finn’s mom said.
“If you don’t want me to pick up the weights than why do they have a handle?”
“Because you can hurt yourself!”
My mom spoke up, “Why don’t you just lock up the equipment?”
“I do! But somehow this little gremlin keeps getting past everything. Locked doors? No. Locked windows? No. Hide them? Always finds it! Punish him? He considers it a challenge. The closest I got was putting a piece of broccoli on all the equipment because he hates it. Wanna guess the day he started liking broccoli? It was the day he decided to force the stuff down his throat so he could use the weights. At this point I might as well hire a personal trainer, so he gets proper gym lessons and maybe just gets bored.”
“You still love me though, right mommy?”
“Of course! You little muscle baby!”
Big brother gave Finn a head pat while he carried me. “You know Marleen, I know a thing or two about fitness. I could teach him some things if you’re okay with it.”
“That would be wonderful. At lease he would have someone watching him and maybe learn not to hurt himself.”
Finn was still carrying me, and I could feel the warmth from his body. It was wonderful! It reminded me almost of how daddy carried me on the day we first met, but this was different. Dad’s felt like a comfort, but Finn’s felt like… a protector?
“Come on Chalta let’s go on an adventure!” Finn’s pace picked up and finally put me down once we got in line. I felt much better with some water and rest. Once we ordered and got our food we finally got to eat. I took one bite of the food called sushi. It had raw fish, with tons of vegetables that mom said should be fine in small amounts and pick off if I wanted.
*munch* “Mmm, so good!” I said aloud trying to contain my excitement.
After the sushi I had fish sticks. They were amazing, almost as good as chicken tendies! The French fries where good too, even if they were vegetables. I was fine at first, but then my stomach started telling me to stop eating plants for the day, so I had more fish sticks.
“Aw, I ran out,” I said, disappointed that I couldn’t enjoy any more fish sticks. I gave my fries to the table to share, but Finn still had some fish sticks.
Maybe I can ask? No that would be rude. He should enjoy fish sticks too!
“Hey Chalta! Have the rest of my fish sticks, I know you need them more than me,” Finn said as he placed the tasty fish on my basket.
*gasp* “Yay! I love you, Finn!” I said hugging him close while Dad spat out his drink. “You’re my best friend!”
Daddy calmed down. “Oh, thank god!”
Silly daddy. I love him too.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I felt bad about leaving but it was getting late. I said goodbye to Finn with a nice hug. Our moms told us that we could talk to each other again anytime we wanted and could even set up play dates! I was so happy!
The ride back home was smooth, and everyone headed to their rooms. Mommy pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to sleep with her and Daddy since everyone needs a bed.
Big brother came and gave me uppies. “She can stay with me and Salisek, we talked about it. Go and enjoy some alone time with dad.”
“Thank you sweety.”
Mom went up to her room while Big brother and sister took me to theirs. After we got ready, they laid me between them for the night. I nuzzled up against brother’s soft and warm arms, and sister’s fluffy body. It was so cozy, but before I drifted off, I asked Big brother to sing me a lullaby.
Big sister gave an excited smile and wrapped us all around her tail. “I’ve never heard you sing! Please sing to us.”
Brother giggled and sang in a soft, surprisingly beautiful voice, "The song is called Send Me a Peach,"
“I never dreamed that there'd come a day
When I'd find myself far from your arms
Now that I am, I can hardly stand
Not to be near your sweet southern charms
Send me a peach from ol' Georgia
Down where the Savannah flows
If I could have one bite of Georgia
I would feel right here at home
I miss the shady old lanes there
Walkin' with you by my side
Just send me one peach from Georgia
Just so I know you'll be mine
I hope that you won't forget me
Before my road leads back to you
Though the winter may bring the whole world to its knees
The spring shall return with its fruit
The wind here is ready for winter
It seems to turn everything blue
So just send me (Send me) send me one little peach
Just a sweet, sunny piece of you”
Big sister whispered, “I love you.” As we all dozed into a peaceful sleep.
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Memory Transcript Subject: Elena, School Teacher, Loving Wife and Mother
Date [Standardized Human Time]: November 24, 2136
For the first time in almost a couple weeks I was finally alone with my husband. He was reading in bed when I did my little ‘routine’. I jumped in and peppered him with kisses while he giggled profusely. I missed that wonderful laugh.
“My love,” my darling dearest said. “I know you’ve missed me, but our house is full. Are you sur-”
I put my finger over his lips and got into the ‘paint me like one of your French girls’ position. I know he loves that. “I have been without your presence for far too long, never mind your touch. Your wife has needs. Your wife wants to feel you all around, and for you to feel her all around. Are you gonna keep her waiting any more… mi amor?”
My husband sighed and pulled me right next to him. He gave me a wonderful, passionate kiss. “Okay my love, let’s just be quiet. We have guests AND a new daughter, okay?” I nodded excitedly. “I love you so much.”
We looked into each other’s eyes for the first time in a while. With him leaving and the new baby alone time was sparce. But moments like these… they were priceless. We gave each other another passionate kiss before we started making love.
I love my husband.
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submitted by CaptainChristopher02 to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]